MODERATUS.--In all ages of the world, the tide of human affairs hath
shown that reigning opinion, however ill-founded and absurd, is always
queen of the nations; and, since a man's interest and general good
footing in society, are, to a great extent, involved in his acquiescence
in these opinions, it is strange that you, Lucian, should venture to
entertain heresies so much at variance with everything that is called
orthodox. But as it is only upon hearsay that I judge of your opinions,
pray let me know from yourself your notions respecting the deity?
LUCIAN.--You must first define precisely and intelligibly, what you mean
by the terms deity or god: do you mean by either of them to designate a
fanciful personification of the physical powers of universal matter or
nature?
Mod.--No; I mean that infinite, eternal, incorporeal body in the human
form*--the creator of the universe out of nothing, that is, out of
himself, he being nothing, according to Christian orthodoxy.
* Zenophanes observed, that if the ox or the elephant
understood sculpture or painting, they would not fail to
represent the Deity under their own peculiar figure. In this
they would have as much reason at the Jews and Christians,
who gave him the human form.
"And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faith
Nurs'd by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon."
LUCIAN.--I can form no conception of such a being as you describe; but
such a phantasm may be very suitable for, as it is quite of a piece
with, a religion that is made up of chimeras. If your term nothing has
any meaning, it is the negation of matter, which is nonsense, because
the mind can form no conception of immaterial existence. By the same
rule, reason and common sense reject the word spiritual, because it is
a term absolutely without meaning, and represents no existing thing of
which the mind can possibly form any idea.* All these words have been
coined in the mint of theology for the purpose of deception; and,
together with the principal tool of priestcraft, called soul, make up
the machinery of delusion. Everything rational is foresworn by a set of
mystagogues, when they declare that their God was engendered before his
mother, and is of the same age as his father!
MOD.--But laying aside these foolish inventions, which could only be
imposed upon ignorance; and allowing that, to the question, "what is
god," no proper answer can be given, but that "we do not know;" still,
if all, or universal matter was created, it must have had a creator;
and there being no materials to work with, this creator, being himself
immaterial, must of necessity have created matter out of himself, that
is, out of nothing.
"These were Jehovah's words:
From an eternity of idleness,
I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth
From nothing; rested, and created man;
I placed him in a paradise, there
Planted the tree of evil; so that he
Might eat and perish."
And so says the church.
* Spirit is literally air, and air is matter in a gaseous or
fluid form; but this is not the sense in which the word is
used by the theologian.
LUCIAN.--That is going still deeper into theological absurdity. No axiom
can be clearer than this,--"out of nothing cometh nothing." There could
be no creation of that which necessarily and eternally exists in and
of itself There can be but one infinite being, one nature, i.e. the
boundless universe, (call it god, or by any other name you please) and
this all-in-all self-existent being, produces in itself, by an internal
or innate action, whatever changes matter undergoes by this essential
action or motion; whether in the production of living creatures,
or inanimate forms: thus universal matter is at once both agent and
patient--efficient cause and subject; it produces nothing but what
is its own modification. Spiritualism is supported only by fraud, and
ignorance of materialism.
MOD.--Are not the words creator and creation used in the Bible? what do
they mean?
LUCIAN.--The learned confess that we have a very false translation
of that book. In the Talmud of Jerusalem, creator and creation merely
signify the giver, and the act of giving forms to matter* There is
not one word in the Bible about a creation from nothing; this notion,
according to Mosheim,** was the invention of the Christians. All
identities of matter arise from motion alone; and as no portion of it
can ever cease to be in motion, that motion is perpetually destroying
existing forms, and out of these producing fresh identities of
matter; but this is change of form alone, and chemistry has proved the
self-existence of the material principle, in the demonstration that no
particle of it can be annihilated.
* The word Tsour has been adopted in Genesis, where it is,
say the learned, falsely translated creator, though it
merely signifies, "the giver of forms." According to Volney,
that name is also one of the definitions of Osiris.
** Appendix to Cudworth.
MOD.--In our Bible account of the creation, there are certainly some
apparent contradictions, or incongruities, such as the getting up of
three whole days before the sun was "made and set in the firmament;" now
it appears to us that, as the sun is the sole source of day, they were a
little preposterous in forgetting to make him first.
LUCIAN.--It must appear plain to every one not blinded by his slavish
fears and prejudices, that the writer of Genesis (the cosmographical
part) was entirely ignorant even of the rudiments of natural science.
The god he set up, and the handiwork he makes him perform, are proofs of
this. The Jupiter of the pretty and lively mythology of the Pagans, was
frequently engaged in ludicrous amours;* but in general he preserved an
awful dignity, and was never represented in the discharge of those mean
and servile offices, which the Jews depict their Jehovah as performing;
though these were nothing to the ferocious, cruel, and disgusting
caricatures which are everywhere drawn of him in their books. Allowing
for a moment the possibility that poor deluded man can be guilty of
impiety towards the all-ruling Power, certainly his mind could not
devise anything more blasphemous than to personify that power into such
a deity as that set up by Moses. Ignorance of the operations of matter
or Nature, has made man invent deities as causes of the effects he sees
produced; these deities were so many chimeras, and these chimeras have
been the basis of all religions.
* When Diagoras of Melos declared that there were no such
beings in existence as Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, etc., their
priests offered a talent for his head, or two talents if
taken alive. In the latter case, the higher sum was probably
offered, that they might have the pleasure of torturing him.
In the 15th century what would Christian priests have done
to the "blasphemer," who would haye been so impiously wicked
as to assert, that the above gods did still exist in full
power? Priests are ever the same; but gods change names and
wills, going in and out of power, like Whigs and Tories.
MOD.--I confess that in the all-important matters of morality, the Bible
presents exceeding great difficulties. Truth, justice, and mercy are
immutable principles, and must not be subverted to uphold any system of
religion whatsoever. That which is cruel and wicked in a man, cannot be
admitted or defended in a god; and every moral feeling of the virtuous
mind must be discarded ere we cease to doubt the truth of a religion
based upon the desecration of these principles. Besides, it is
repugnant, if not impossible to reconcile the god of Moses with the
reverential and sublime idea, which superior minds are capable of
forming of the almighty power.
LUCIAN.--As the man who takes a priest for his guide will be led astray;
so, if the Bible has been his sole instructor, he is likely ever to
remain in ignorance; the first will not teach him anything useful--the
latter cannot. Previous to the time when it is said the Bible lawgiver
entered upon his murderous invasion of the Canaanitish countries, each
of them had its local god or goddess, some of whom we have elsewhere
mentioned; these were so many personifications of the sun, moon, stars,
elements, and seasons, and served as objects of adoration amongst the
ignorant. As a priest of Heliopolis, Moses must have known all this, and
wishing to be like his new neighbors, he set up his barbarous deity in
imitation, changing his Theban name of Jahouh into Jehovah (see Strabo's
Geography), charging his followers not to represent it by any emblem, as
he was in vain wishful of preserving the Egyptian unity of the Supreme
Power. But as the sun was then in Taurus, or the Bull, the Egyptian
priests had taught the illiterate Israelites to worship a calf; and as
they were desirous of clinging to their calf adoration, Aaron, as every
other priest would have done, took advantage of this religious folly, to
despoil them of the gold ornaments, which, by Jahouh's command, they had
swindled from the Egyptians. In this affair Moses and his brother, no
doubt, understood each other well. To rob upon religious pretences, is
not altogether a modern invention.
MOD.--In the supposed time of Moses, the religion of Egypt being
polytheistic, Jahouh must have been one amongst many deities that were
worshipped by the Egyptians; so that if Moses borrowed that deity of the
Thebans, he could not at the same time borrow his doctrine of the unity
of god.
LUCIAN.--The learned Egyptian priests appear to have been decidedly
Materialists. Infinitely above the minor deities which they invented for
the ignorant populace, they believed in the great material principle,*
acting by self-existing energies and properties; infinite, therefore
causeless; and constituting the unity of the Supreme Power. They
represent this power by no emblem, conceiving that to be impossible; but
the Greeks personified it in the god Pan. Thus the unity of the Supreme
Power was the basis of the hierarchical religion of Egypt, as is
acknowledged by the learned Hyde, and also by Cudworth. As an Egyptian
priest, Moses (admitting his existence) must have known this, and was
therefore wishful of preserving this unity in his Theban deity; though
that availed nothing when neutralised by the discordant and inconsistent
qualities attributed to him. In order to be justified as an invader
and plunderer of peaceful countries, Moses was under the necessity
of endowing his god with fierce and barbarous passions, which on
most occasions led him to be cruel and unjust; as when he issued his
ferocious and bloody mandate to his priests, the sons of Levi, (Exod.
xxxii., 27) to sacrifice about three thousand "_Brothers, companions,
and neighbors_," in cold blood,* You say, "materiality cannot think--do
you know of any thinking without it? Pray how does immateriality think?"
* See also the inhuman mandate issued in Deut. xiii., 6th
to 10th. This has justified every refinement in the cruelty
of persecution throughout Christendom for more than fifteen
hundred years.
MOD.--That massacre was caused by the idolatry of the people, in setting
up and worshipping the golden calf.
LUCIAN.--Priest Aaron was herein the principal actor; yet he and his
tribe not only go unpunished, but are employed to commit the shocking
murders.
MOD.--But theologists assure us that what is justice with god is
injustice with man. Christians have ever drawn a line of distinction
between divine and human justice: proving that what appears to man
cruel, partial, and unjust, in the works of god, are, in reality,
justice, impartiality, and mercy towards man.
LUCIAN.--Robbery and murder are strange ways of showing mercy. It is
by the hideous and pernicious dogmas you mention, that pretended
supernatural revelations have poisoned the pure stream of morality; they
utterly confound every idea or perception we can have of the natural
principles of right and wrong; and have sanctioned or justified the
foulest enormities throughout Christendom. The principles of truth,
justice, and morality, are ever the same, and immutable from whatever
source they emanate.
MOD.--It is true that the Supreme Being is, upon the whole, not much
beholden to the Jewish priests for the sketches of character in which
he is portrayed in the Bible. But this is speaking according to human
reason.
LUCIAN.--The capricious and cruel character of this theological
creation, as set forth in the Jew books, is generally so demoralising
as to be altogether unworthy of imitation in human conduct, The cruelty
ascribed to it, is the shield behind which priestcraft has sheltered
itself in all its bloody persecutions. In other respects the various
menial, or bad offices and functions which it is made to perform, are
truly ludicrous when said to be executed by the all-ruling power; such
as, a god-midwife (a), a nightly assassin (b), a butcher (c), a barber
(d) a slave-dealer (e), a murderer (f), a fool (g), a deceiver (h), a
promise breaker (i),* a deluder (j ), a tailor (k), a shoemaker (l).
Such was the deity who the Jewish priests impiously and blasphemously
called the Supreme Power of the universe, though guised by them in the
form and likeness, having all the appendages and members physical,
of the human body; and possessing many, if not all the worst passions
incident to human nature. And such is the deity adopted by Christianity,
after undergoing such modifications, and receiving into partnership such
colleagues as suited the interests of his priests. These things, in a
mental point of view, have degraded man below the more rational animals
of the field.
* The Jewish god never gave his chosen people anything
better than promises.--Vide Acts vii., 5; and Heb. xi., 39.
In the reign of Ahab, a lying angel, or spirit, offers his
services as a deceiver, which services were very acceptable
to the "Lord." Here we have a lying angel, and the supreme
being endeavoring to deceive by prompting to a falsehood.
The belief of such impious absurdities shows that the
unbounded credulity of man is the safety of the priest.
MOD.--You have evinced a strong partiality for what you call the pretty
and lively mythology of the Gentiles, consisting of the numerous fabled
gods and goddesses of antiquity, which, you say, the lower orders of the
people were taught to consider as so many real personages, though,
in the esoteric doctrines of the initiated, they were merely so many
emblems of the "host of heaven," the elements and seasons.
LUCIAN.--Precisely so; and such is the origin of the Christian scheme
also, springing as it does out of the Egyptian and Zoroastrian systems;
for as the epithet Christ physically signifies the sun, so, in like
manner, has it been made to represent a fabled personage; whilst the
true revelation of this prosopopoeia (the figure by which things are
made persons) is now suppressed or lost through priestcraft, or its
foster-child, ignorance.
MOD.--In modelling his deity it was evidently the intention of Moses to
preserve his unity; but his followers being the most barbarous of human
beings, he was under the necessity of adapting his god to their ignorant
and rude notions of things; and, therefore, not blameable for the tricks
and deceptions he used, since these were the only means of governing
them. Why, then, should not similar means be used in the nineteenth
century to answer the same purpose? The ignorance and credulity of the
mass of mankind are at all times the sufficient warrant of theological
frauds. It is not at all necessary that men of learning, and the rulers
of nations, should believe in the irrational fictions of any scheme of
supematuralism; but experience seems to point out the utility of their
yielding them _a pretended belief, and a real support, for the sake of
governing the multitude_.
LUCIAN.--As an initiated Pagan priest, the conduct of Moses towards his
followers was quite in character; and the religion which he manufactured
was, no doubt, well suited to the extreme savageness of the Jews.*
But it is wonderful that this religion, blasphemous and absurd in the
highest degree, and contrived solely for the purpose of over-awing
and governing a horde of plundering banditti, should maintain a sacred
influence over nations where history and science abound. The grovelling
credulity of uninstructed man is such, that all despotic rulers, aided
by their iniquitous connexion with subservient priesthoods, have during
centuries of darkness, shackled the necks of mankind with great success
in the way you mention. But the wicked stratagem of keeping men in
ignorance, in order that they may be misgoverned by theological fables,
is now meeting a stumbling-block in the increasing light of reason and
useful knowledge among the people. This wretched policy has already
produced revolutions; and others of yet brighter aspect seem rising
on the political horizon, still farther to weaken, and ultimately to
overthrow, the church-contaminated governments of Europe. Superstition,
though still leagued with political rule, is utterly unable to be its
mainstay any longer, because of the reasonable hostility of the
people whose eyes begin to be opened to the evil tendency in regard to
morality, as well as to the prodigious expense entailed upon industry,
in support of the voracious hydra of superstition.
"An inhuman and uncultured race, who
Howl'd hideous praises to their 'jealous God'."
* To establish a religion upon the wild reveries of an
ignorant people, whose legends are in all cases filled with
miraculous events against the order of Nature, and bearing
on their very front the most glaring marks of imposture, is
the very acme of human folly--the pestilent mania which has
convulsed nations, and deluged the world with blood.
MOD.--That all rational and unprejudiced minds find an insuperable
repugnance at the idea of reconciling, or identifying the Supreme power,
with the deity of Moses, as depicted in the Bible, is a point which
I readily concede. When the man of free reflection meditates on a
boundless universe, governed in the most consummate order and harmony,
nothing appears to him so shocking as the impious comparison of the
incomprehensible Being, the creator and ruler of millions of worlds,
with the impotent, puerile, and inconsistent deity of the Jews--the
contrast is, beyond all expression, revolting and abhorrent. This
immutable order of all things (we are forced to the conclusion) could
not exist without the guidance of an infinite Being who is not only
independent of matter, or Nature, but regulates that principle.
LUCIAN.--Matter and motion alone constitute what we call Nature, which,
you allow, is the essential principle, therefore, there is no room
left for supposing any anterior existence; because, as the essential
principle, it could have no antecedent--no cause; and must in
consequence be self-existent and eternal. If invariable order and
harmony evince the design of an artificer, surely the transcendent
intellect of your supreme artificer (the demiourgos) evinces still more
the necessity of a greater designer, in his production. We know that
harmony and adaptation exist in the energies of matter, from which
spring all animal organization; is it not then quite as satisfactory,
and far more easy, to suppose that Nature--her harmony and
intelligence--have existed eternally, than it is to suppose a time when
boundless matter was not in being; and that it derived its existence
from an immaterial personage, of whom the mind cannot form the slightest
conception? As material Nature is the infinite Being, it cannot be an
effect; it is the principle of principles, whose innate energies
produce within itself the eternal routine of cause and effect.* Of this
necessitated process ad infinitum, man cannot know or describe even
the surface; yet has the folly to pretend to look beyond the boundless
plenum!
* To become a Materialist under existing modes of education,
is no easy attainment; it is the fruit of much impartial
research and knowledge, arising from independent and
fearless thought.
MOD.--But may not such an infinite spiritual power as the Platonists,
and after them the Christians, figured to themselves, exist and rule the
universe, although the mind of man can form no definite idea of this
Being?
LUCIAN.--Man has nothing to do with that which he can neither know nor
comprehend;* and it is impossible for him to believe in that which is
beyond his comprehension. Materialists maintain the existence of an
all-ruling POWER; but every attempt to personify that Power,--and all
pretensions to any knowledge of it beyond that which is gathered
from the process of Nature, in her works, they hold as deceitful
and pernicious; regarding all pretended revelations said to be
supernaturally made to man, as the work of the most dangerous and wicked
impostors: and their revelations as the direst curses that were ever
entailed upon mankind. It would be a perversion of terms to speak
of more than one infinite Being: whether then is it most rational to
suppose it to be that which we know to exist, or that which we do
not know** to exist? So far is it from being difficult to suppose the
eternity of matter, it is hardly possible to imagine anything but its
eternity. Previous to what you call its creation by your immaterial
artificer, was he a vacuum living in a vacuum?*** As the Christian's
definition of his deity confounds all language, it is its own best
refutation. With a face of gravity, he talks of his body spiritual that
has no body; an incorporeal something that is essentially nothing; an
immaterial substance that is non-substantial; and though this body is
immaterial, it possesses the form and likeness, together with the bodily
members, of a man! These are the pestilent offspring of theology--your
distracting chimeras, which
"Turns them to a shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."
* Man neither can nor ought to have anything to do with that
which is confessedly inconceivable; if he pretends to know
or say anything of such a being, he immediately falls into
contradictions. When did a theologian understand himself
when speaking of his deity or deities?--Never.
** We have five witnesses in favor of the existence of
matter, viz., seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and
tasting; but where is the proof of the existence of anything
that is immaterial? It is fancy alone that creates such a
chimera.
*** The old fact that nature abhors a vacuum is still
unrefuted; we may indeed go farther and say that she will
not allow it, for the art of man has never produced a space
where there was nothing.
"Your imagination bodies forth
In forms of things unknown;--"
Amongst the initiated in the mysteries of antiquity, the term God was
used only as being expressive of an effect, whose cause is Nature.
MOD.--Men are so accustomed to trace and find the origin of artificial
objects, that a supposed analogy readily presents itself, that matter
must have had an origin also; and, backed by superstition, they will not
give up their "Great First Cause."
LUCIAN.--Forgetting that their "Great First Cause" stands equally in
need of a cause. None of the phaenomena of Nature prove, but all disclaim
a first cause. Causes and effects have ever moved in an eternal circle;
and that which is an effect at one time becomes a cause at another, and
vice versa. Theology has taught man to reject that which is easy and
rational, and blinded him to the thousand-fold difficulty of supposing
a time when neither time* nor matter existed, contrasted with the simple
truth that matter is self-existent. This is a proposition too plain and
reasonable to answer the deceptive ends of the traders in that pseudo
science.
MOD.--If, as you say, no power ever did, or can create matter, there are
at least an endless series of changes--of new modes or forms of beings
which it unceasingly assumes, having the appearance of creation. All
this seems to require intelligence and a directing hand.
LUCIAN.--Why may not this directing hand be the essential energies of
matter alone, of which motion is the chief; for without it no change
whatever can take place? The word creation has no proper meaning except
when applied to these new combinations, and ever-varying forms. The
universe consists of infinitely-derived, and dependent modes of beings;
each of which owes its existence to the power and efficacy of the one
that immediately preceded it, in an infinite series of successions,
without a beginning, or original.**
* The theologist makes god say, "before time was, I was."
** According to Hobbes, "God is almighty matter."
Existence still maintains existences,
And nought begins where no existence is.
MOD.--The intercirculation* of the parts of matter, and its unceasing
changes into new states of being, in form and substance, seem to reveal
the mystery of transubstantiation, which, if I mistake not, was one of
the attributes ascribed to deity, long before it was adopted as a dogma
of Christianity.
LUCIAN.--Like everything else in our Christian fabrication,
transubstantiation was taken from the esoteric doctrines of the
Gentiles, where it was allegorised in the person of Proteus, who,
according to the poets, was Neptune's herdsman; and whose name properly
signifies primary, or oldest, meaning that he represented the eternal
nature of matter; and his changeableness was expressive of the endless
operations, new modes and combinations thereof, wrought chiefly in a
fluid state by the perpetual motion** of the sea (Neptune), and the
other elements. He was said to take all kinds of shapes and disguises,
turning himself into monstrous animals, fire, water, etc., denoting that
in him were personified the continually varying forms of matter.*** He
was called the servant of Neptune, and said to reside in a cave, meaning
the apparent concavity of the heavens. Time, matter and motion form the
only eternal Trinity and Unity.
* The perpetual change of form produced by this
intercirculation in the elements of matter, was called by
the Greeks Omoosia or Omousia. This mutual action is
universal; and is proved even in "the interchange of the
material of light between globe and globe in the solar
system; and from the fixed stars, through the medium of some
gaseous principle of matter, in the highest state of
rarefaction." All is matter, and matter is all.
** It is only by motion that we exist, or even known that we
exist. A dead animal begets motion of itself.
*** Empedocles says:--"Those are infants or short-sighted
persons with very contracted understandings, who imagine
that anything is born which did not exist before; or that
anything can be totally annihilated."
MOD.--The learned amongst the Christian priesthood, against their
private convictions, are under the necessity of supporting the dogma
of creation; because the giving up of that point would destroy the
foundation of their system; but many of them have no objection to allow
the eternity of time.
LUCIAN.--During which time, as has already been observed, their god,
being immaterial, was the vacuum inhabitant of a vacuum! Another plunge
into absurdity. The pretended creations and false revelations inculcated
by theology, have invariably operated to suppress or cripple the
sciences; particularly those of astronomy and geology. Sacerdotal
deception un-blushingly tells us that, something less than six thousand
years ago, there was no sun, no moon, no stars, no earth, no matter of
any kind! By the invention of this tremendous absurdity, priestcraft
has had the audacity to circumscribe within the comparative period of
a moment, the existence of even Nature herself; and as nothing is too
gross for unthinking ignorance, even this greatest of all monstrosities
goes down with the credulous herd of mankind, who dare to look at
nothing but through the spectacles of this "science of god."
MOD.--What proof have we that this globe has been in being longer than
the period assigned for it by the Jewish and Christian priesthoods?
LUCIAN.--There are innumerable astronomical and geological facts which
prove the existence of this earth for millions of years.* By a change so
wonderfully slow as to require perhaps thousands of centuries to bring
it round, the surface of this globe is so completely altered towards
the sun, that the frigid zones become the torrid, and _vice versa_,
in succession. The remains of tropical animals have been found at the
estuaries of the Oby and Lena, and even in more northern latitudes.
Petrified crocodiles have been found in Derbyshire, at the depth of
eighty-five fathoms; which proves that the land called England enjoyed a
tropical sun, in antiquity so remote as to show in a striking light, the
moment sand-glass--or, if you please, the perfect nothingness--of all
human chronology.
MOD.--It must be allowed that the Bible cosmogony and its stories
about deity, origin of man, etc., appear puerile, contradictory, and
irrational, unless they can be resolved into planetary allegories. But
in regard to the creation of matter, these Jew books are not so absurd
as to affirm that it was done out of nothing; that was a discovery made
by Christianity. The Jewish creation is a mere copy of cosmogonies of
eastern countries, all of whom, China excepted, pretend to account for
the origin of things.
LUCIAN.--We had everything from the east.* The Bible makers compiled out
of any oriental legends, or shreds of Pagan writings they could find;
and from ignorance, turned the sublime allegories having allusion to
the planets, into vague unmeaning narrative and anecdote. Even Druidism,
which, like primitive Christianity, was concealed sun worship,**
travelled to us from the east; and there is abundant reason to believe
that priestcraft had reached the highest perfection in India, some fifty
thousand years before the Jewish superstition existed. In western
Asia and Europe, the usual combination of crafts had robbed man of
his natural liberty, enslaved his mind, and eaten up the fruits of his
industry; but in Hindustan, the consummate subtlety, and all-subduing
art of the priest, has, by an utter annihilation of mind, reduced
certain castes of the Hindus far below the condition of the vilest
animal on earth, and with a fiendish influence, the most astonishing, it
stimulates other castes to actions at which Nature stands horrified.
* Christianism stole its materials in the east--deceived the
west, and now, in its purloined robes and oriental missions,
"it would retrace its steps, and deceive the world."
** "In Druidism, as in the most ancient religions, the
mythos in all being perfectly the same, it was required of
the votaries, that all prayers for good, as well as
invocations of curses, should be addressed to the sun, under
the name of Jupiter. In praying for blessings, they went
round the stone, or other object, according to the course of
the sun; and vice versa in the invocation of curses. These
imprecations are very numerous in those solar hymns, called
the psalms of David."
The Christian priestcraft, even in the eleventh century, when ignorance
and tyranny had raised it to its zenith of power and glory, was but a
novice compared with the subtle perfection of that of India. And it was
no doubt the complete success of this mind-enslaving delusion in the
east, which recommended and caused its adoption in the west; for with a
variation in names, it is identically the same astro-fable everywhere.*
* Most of the old churches on the continent, as has
elsewhere been observed, show that both the virgin and her
son were introduced into Europe, as black Gentoos.
MOD.--The absolute sway which Brahminism has over the mind of the
Hindus, is perhaps attributable to its being the oldest of all known
religions? its priests have the advantage of a prodigious antiquity,
through which they have matured it to serve their own ends, and
established a despotic power over their debased votaries.
LUCIAN.--No conceivable power over the mind can exceed that refined
delusion which causes millions of human beings voluntarily to throw
themselves under the wheels of the Juggernaut car, to be crushed to
death on earth, in order to attain some one of those heavens which their
villainous priests have invented. This astonishing power is perhaps
shown still more in the effects of that religious rite, which makes
it incumbent on widows to burn themselves alive on the death of their
husbands. The horrible wickedness of this sacerdotal injunction requires
that these victims must sacrifice themselves by this excruciating death,
dressed out in all the jewels and precious stones they are possessed of;
and after the dreadful immolation, these valuables become the perquisite
of the priests, whose emissaries carefully sift the ashes of the funeral
pile where all the gold and gems are found, with little or no injury
done them by the fire. This is either the usage now, or was so in former
times, and seems to be the acme of priestcraft.
MOD.--Whether the belief in supernatural powers, which, in all ages and
countries, a certain order of men has been maintained to inculcate and
enforce, has contributed most to human happiness or misery, is not for
me to decide; but while a vast majority of mankind are unfitted to
think for themselves, advantage will be taken of that ignorance, and
combinations formed between the rulers of states and churches for the
more effectual government of the many, who, if oppressed on earth by
supporting these institutions, will be remunerated by a supernatural
promotion in heaven.
LUCIAN,--Just so; under such governments, man is a mere puppet moved
at the pleasures of his oppressors, who keep him ignorant, and work
him thoroughly: promising him a post mortem happiness in another life,
provided he bears the yoke of misery quietly in this:--
"Then the mind's independence insensibly sinks
The taint of one portion enfeebling the whole,
Till oppression, preparing the doubled-twined links,
King and priests draw their victim down--body and soul."
But you forget the immensely different degrees of evil occasioned by
the inventions of theology; in England, Ireland, and Wales,* alone, the
enormous sum of nine millions nine hundred and twenty thousand pounds
is annually squandered in pampering and enriching the dignitaries, and
maintaining the rest of a body of ecclesiastics, about thirty thousand
in number. This sum is considerably more than half of all the clerical
revenues of Christendom; and cannot possibly have any other source
than the industry of the people, who, in return for their toil and
starvation, are robbed of their senses, their judgments, and their
liberties. That religion which attempts, through the aid of civil
tyranny, to enforce the belief or acquiescence in the truth of its
dogmas, virtually gives a premium to falsehood--renders truth injurious
in society, and, by these very actions, proves itself false.
MOD.--The religions of antiquity must have been a down-draught upon
industry also, and were used wholly for the purpose of deception. The
dominant superstition of a country will always be taken into partnership
by the political rulers; not because they think it true,** but as an
auxiliary and pillar of government, which confers upon the professors
thereof many privileges and immunities, in return for their support.
* To these countries nothing has been more burdensome and
ruinous than the expense of worshipping their gods.
** Wherever truth is compelled to hide her head, there is
necessarily a vicious order of things, both political and
moral. If instructors and governors were themselves
possessed of knowledge and virtue they would govern men more
easily, and much better, by realities than by fables.
LUCIAN.--The Athenians never had an established priesthood, that
overwhelming master-curse of modern times; and as for that of the Romans,
it did not, from the Pontifex Maximus, down to the lowest priest, exceed
from fifty to sixty persons; and as the dignitaries at the head of
these were always amongst the first men of the state, their offices were
purely honorary. Under these circumstances it was quite impossible
that the whole institution could be either oppressive upon industry or
dangerous to liberty. As the Roman superstition was supported by the
state for no other purpose than that of deception, to serve the ends
of political jugglery, or as a means of enabling generals of armies
to restrain the rashness of their troops, or excite them to fight
with enthusiasm when required; so, in like manner, are the more
recently-invented deceptions of theology supported, and from the same
motive, by the different nations of Europe, but in a degree, and
with effects infinitely more degrading and oppressive to all the real
wealth-producers. _Of all deceivers who have plagued the worlds none
are so deeply ruinous to human happiness, or so deserving of universal
execration, as those impostors who pretend to lead men by a light above
Nature_.
MOD.--The ignorant fears and inquisitiveness of mankind seems to require
such leaders; they cannot account for the phaenomena of Nature, and
therefore they keep a class of men in pay who pretend to explain to
them certain personified existences superior to Nature, who work the
machinery behind the scenes; and in whom is inherent, they say, the
sole power to cause and control all such phaenomena. But if the hopes and
fears of an ignorant populace impel them to keep such teachers, it is
true that those alone who require their services should contribute to
their support; yet as riches is power, confederate political rulers make
their adopted priesthoods wealthy, by the exaction of tithes and other
imposts upon industry; in all of which they are borne out and justified
by god's old will.
LUCIAN.--That was one of the reasons why Jahouh, when he ceased to be a
Jew, was not made to revoke his old will, which, like his new one, was
the word and will of his priests, who were not likely to permit him to
forget tithes. The present condition of the English and Irish churches
shows that the legal robbery of this exaction has been sadly aggravated
since its first introduction into Christianity. For the first eight
hundred years of our era tithes were given as alms. We are informed
by Sts. Jerome, Bernard, Chrysostom, Wickliffe, Huss, and many other
writers who uniformly agree, that tithes were purely voluntary. St.
Augustine says: "If we (the priests) do possess anything privately which
doth suffice us, the tithes, or alms, are not ours, but the goods of
the poor, whose stewards we are; _except we do challenge to ourselves
a property by some damnable usurpation_." Blackstone says that at first
tithes were distributed in a fourfold division; one for the share of the
Bishop, another for maintaining the fabric of the church, a third for
the poor, and a fourth to provide for the incumbent. When the sees of
the bishops became otherwise amply endowed, they were prohibited
from demanding their usual share; so that the poor became entitled to
one-third. As the clergy now eat up the whole, the "usurpation" of St,
Augustine has grown more and more "damnable." St. Jerome asserted that,
according to St. Paul, it was "_by the instigation of the devil_" that
distinctions of rank in religion were made, by the creation of bishops
and other dignitaries.
MOD.--All this serves only to show that human beings, so far as we know
their history, have always paid priests to lead or mislead them, through
the medium of supematurals, whether these be real or fanciful. In
denying any first cause, or creation of matter, I suppose you must allow
that man cannot be a spontaneous production of the earth, and therefore
the admission of his origin is unavoidable.
LUCIAN.--It is in vain that we see the human species propagated exactly
as are all the mammalia classes:--theology prevents a correct view
of everything; and it is its business to trample upon analogy and
experience, and to feed man with fables about his first production. You
ask, how came man into existence? But it would be quite as philosophical
to ask how the first tree, worm, or oyster, came into being.* All
organised life arises from some energy in the affinities and motions
of matter, that is altogether unknown to us, and which gives rise to
vegetable and animal life; so that the production of man is nothing more
wonderful than that of any shell fish. All generation is motion. But the
rational probability is, that the various species of homo found on this
globe, were always upon it; Nature propagating each upon that part of
its surface that is congenial to the particular species; and that in the
almost inconceivably slow process of the change, by which portions of
the globe's surface become alternately sea and land, they migrated
in succession, as old lands were wasted by the sea, and as new lands
afforded asylums.
* "Let us view man when within the shell, and when out of
it; let us take a microscope and examine the youngest
embryos, those of the growth of four, six, eight, or fifteen
days; after this age we may discover them with our naked
eyes. Then we can perceive the head only, a round egg with
two blackish specks, which represent the eyes. Before this
time, all being unformed, we can see nothing but a pulp of
marrow, which is the brain, where the original of the nerves
is first formed, where the principle of feeling is first
seated, and the heart, which begins already to beat in this
soft pulp; this is the punctum saliens of Malpighi, part of
the liveliness of which does, perhaps, already proceed from
the influence of the nerves. Then we see the head by degree
stretch for the neck, which being widened, first forms the
thorax, where the heart immediately descends, and takes up
its situation. The belly is framed next, which is divided
into two parts by a partition, called by anatomists the
diaphragm. These parts being expanded, furnish the arms, the
hands, the fingers, the nails, and the hair; the other gives
the thighs, the legs, the feet, etc., which form the support
and balance of the body. All this is surprising, but not
more so in man than in any other animal, or even in
vegetation; the same luxury of Nature shines throughout."
MOD.--Divines have long settled the question against you, that there is
no specific difference in the human race, though they allow a great many
_accidental_ varieties; but they declare upon Bible authority, that
all these varieties sprung from a single pair--one original stock of
mankind.
LUCIAN.--The absurd side of a question is the indisputable right of
theology.* Wilful blindness or ignorant prejudice alone can raise a
doubt, that the Whites, the Negroes, the Albinos, the Hottentots, the
Chinese, and the native Americans, are altogether different species,
under the genus homo. The white-skinned, bearded native of Northern Asia,
could no more beget the copper-colored, beardless native of America,
than a bull-dog could beget a f ox; the Negro of Africa, the Laplander;
the leopard, the lion; the European, the Ethiopian; the ass, the horse;
or an Esquimaux, & Hottentot. Therefore, when theology asserts that
America must have been peopled from Asia, it is quite consistent with
itself, that is, a tissue of glaring contradictions. When divines can
show us how the oak and the ash got to America, and who carried over
the dogs, cats, and hogs, the difficulty as to how man got there will
be easily solved. Nature did there, as she has done everywhere else, in
producing that species of the genus that is proper for the climate. But
theology, in its disinterested cares for man, whose folly supports it,
shows no kind regard about the migration of other animals, but is,
on the contrary, their most deadly enemy; inasmuch as the abominable
doctrine that all of them were created solely for his use, has
authorised those atrocious cruelties which we daily see exercised upon
them.
* The only proper definition of this word is--the science of
priest-craft.
MOD.--Your argument is, that in America, as everywhere else, Nature
always produced the animals and plants that were proper for the climate
and soil; but according to your theory the surface of this globe is
everlastingly undergoing changes, from the motion of the sea and other
elements, which unceasing action is alternately making and reducing
land; so that the sea becomes the true creator or parent of the land.
Now, if this be the case, the best criterion of the age of the child
will be its height above the parent; consequently, as Asia has higher
land than America, it must be older in its formation by the sea, and
might, therefore, furnish the more recent continent with man and other
animals.
LUCIAN.--That the sea, by its restless, mighty, and irresistible
workings and creations, is the parent of all land, is a fact so
demonstrable, from the proofs it has everywhere left behind it, that
it is undisputed except by theology; and though it may require many
millions of years completely to alternate the surface of our globe, or
to make those portions of it sea, which had been land, and vice versa;
yet that process and routine, though almost inconceivably slow, is
nevertheless sure in endless succession. Man has no doubt migrated from
land to land in the way you state; but this would not affect the natural
distinction of species, which, however much they may be crossed and
mixed for a time, will assert and recur to their primitive distinction
ultimately; for Nature positively refuses to perpetuate, within
themselves, any of the varieties. This is conclusive proof of the
specific difference under the genus homo. Allowing that the height of
land is the best criterion of its antiquity, America may by this rule
dispute the palm with Asia, as the mountains of the former are nearly as
high as those of the latter; and, therefore, the theologian's assertion
that the western hemisphere was peopled from Asia, may, with as
much truth, be reversed. Whatever may be the respective age of these
continents, it seems highly probable, if not certain, that the Andes of
South America will be reduced to the fluid state, by the action of
the sea and other elements, many hundred thousands of years before the
Himmalaya mountains of Asia are levelled by these unsleeping powers;
for the former have now the great Pacific Ocean undermining their very
foundations, whereas, the latter are still two thousand miles from the
sea.
MOD.--The time required to bring about these and other changes which
have relation to the celestial globes is so prodigious, that in
giving it admittance we virtually set at nought not only all scripture
authority, but turn the extent of human chronology into something
inconceivably less than a moment sand-glass. Yet it is quite agreeable
to the opinion of a great authority among the ancients;--Ocellus Lucanus
says:
The universe admitteth neither creation nor annihilation, for it ever
was, and ever shall be; if any man should conceive it to have been made,
he would not be able to know from what material it was made. Now, I call
universal matter by the name of universe, which appellation it obtaineth
in that it comprehendeth all things, being an absolute and perfect
collection of all natures; and besides the universe there is nothing.
Wherefore, there can be nothing without, or external to that which
comprehends all things. After men and other animals finish the progress
of their nature, and have passed their several ages, they die, and are
dissolved, becoming in the same state they were; quo non nati jacent.
There is no such thing as _quies in natura_, all things being in a
perpetual circular motion. Nor hath man any original production from the
earth, or elsewhere, as some have believed; but hath always been, as
he now is, co-existent with the world, whereof he is a part. "Nature and
generation govern all things."
LUCIAN.--Such were the opinions of nearly all the wise men of antiquity.
Theology, in its ridiculous pretensions to knowledge about the origin of
time, has utterly infatuated the minds of its dupes, by instilling false
notions concerning it; and limiting, comparatively within the duration
of a moment, the existence of the material universe! All discoveries in
theology--every appearance in Nature, unite in exposing the absurdity
of what is called the Mosaic account of time and creation. So exceeding
slow is the resistless innovating progress of the sea, in changing the
face of the globe, that millions of years must elapse before a total
alternation of land and water takes place on its surface; but as the
quantity of water can never immerse the whole, a certain portion of the
surface must ever be land, in succession.* This alternate succession of
land and water is sure as fate, though imperceptible in the ephemeral
life of man.
* Succession no more implies a beginning, than it predicates
an end.
MOD.--This watery theory of yours seems not very objectionable; but I
can neither agree in the Mosaic account of the first man, nor in the
opinion of Ocellus, who says, "he had no original production from the
earth," but was always upon it, his power of propagation existing
in himself. Man is an animal so transcendent above all others in his
intellectual organisation, and reasoning powers, as to warrant our
inference that the supreme ruler of the world had some particular design
in his production, such as giving him dominion over all others, none
of whom are possessed of immortal souls, that distinguishing proof of
excellence which is found in man alone.
LUCIAN.--You may perhaps be able to tell me in what part of him it is to
be "found" and what it consists of; but until that is done demonstrably,
Nature, experience, reason, and all analogy, will flatly deny that man
is possessed of any immortal part that is not common to every other
animal. Man is immortal and universal in his materiality alone; as the
matter which composes his body belongs to the immortal whole called
Nature, or the infinite all-in-all; and he is annihilable in his
personal identity only. That which you call design in the production of
man, the Materialists, we repeat, ascribe to the energies, adaptations,
and affinities in matter, whereby all organic structure in Nature is
effected. _We cannot trace the effects which these and other motions
of matter produce, to anything above its own powers_; and therefore
the deceptive arrogance of the theologian, in pretending to look beyond
these powers, has been pernicious in the highest degree, in preventing
a more full development of Nature's secret arcanum. The non-existence
of the abstract immaterial something, which priests have set up as the
supernatural ruler of the universe, is best demonstrated by all they
have yet said of it--that all being downright contradiction.
The physical organisation of man is by no means superior to that of many
other animals, except in his extraordinary allowance of brain, which,
if cultivated for his advantage and happiness, would certainly set him
above most of the others, in intellectual qualities; but hitherto these
have been developed only to be perverted by a total departure from the
laws of his nature, in everything wherein that happiness is concerned.
Completely estranged at all points from the salutary paths which the
mother of all things intended for his walks, he beggars himself
in keeping hireling priests, who conjure up before his bewildered
mind's-eye those chimerical nonentities which decoy him, like an ignis
fatuus, madly to dance after them through life.
MOD.--With all your hostility to priests, you cannot do without them, as
our laws and society are at present constructed: from your birth to the
day of your death, the church has got something to do or say in every
step you take of importance.
LUCIAN.--That is the chief evil afflicting society. There is hardly
a bad law, custom, or institution amongst men, that has not been
priest-procured in some age ancient or modern. They have not left even
a vestige of the natural rights of women, and very few of those of
men; from the water sorcery called baptism, in infancy, to the funeral
incantation of the priest, they are misled, abused, and cheated
systematically, by the lawgiver and the theologian; whilst every
natural right is sacrificed on their altar of oppression. In room of
the birthright liberties, of which man is thus robbed from childhood,
supernatural excellencies (such as soul), and peculiar favors from a
place called heaven, are falsely bestowed upon him, without which he
cannot be sufficiently donkified to answer the purposes of priestcraft;
and the selfish and contemptible falsehood is palmed upon him, that the
ruler of this ideal region ycleped heaven, created everything for his
particular use and service. This stupid arrogance would be matchable
only in the vegetables declaring that all animals were made for their
sustenance.
MOD.--The pride of man will for ever prevent your convincing him that
he is not the most favored creature of the Supreme Being, who has fitted
him out with a soul, and given him such other qualities of mind and
body, as show indisputably his vast superiority over the brute creation,
to whom souls have been refused. Your appeal to the miseries of his
life, which are greater than those of any other animal, or even the
frightful number of chances recorded by his priests against him, on the
score of damnation, will not shake his belief in these preternatural
distinctions in his favor. You complain that soul-saving in England and
Ireland is too expensive; but by a late Transatlantic calculation,
the average per head for saving heathen souls, in the Australian
Archipelago, by the missionaries of the United States, costs the old
women of both sexes, children, and fools of these States, the sum of
L82 sterling. Now, reckoning the population of China and India at
450,000,000, which is nearly the half of all the human species on this
globe, without including the ourang outang species of homo, in whom
souls have not yet been detected (probably owing to their keeping no
priests), the total expense of saving the whole, at the rate of L82 per
soul, would cost the above description of persons among the Christian
godly, the enormous sum of L36,900,000,000. We cannot for a moment
suppose that these holy disinterested missionaries would charge a
farthing; above the prime cost in pursuing their "glorious work."
LUCIAN.--The grand support of missionaries abroad and of established
priesthoods at home, is the female sex of Christendom, without whose
sustaining zeal no one of all the great stocks of superstition which now
infest the world would stand for another century. Whatever may be the
origin or absurdity of any system of theology, set up in any country,
the timidity of the female sex stimulates them generally to cling to
it with fervor and devotedness, without the slightest examination.
And while the priest "harrows up their souls" through the fears of his
mysterious futurity, a subtle influence is exercised by them over the
weaker and more uninformed portion of the male sex, whose apathy gives
a tacit assent to the endless string of inconceiveables, for the sake
of domestic quiet. Here the double battery of the wife and priest is
irresistible. A learned clergyman, in writing to a female friend, makes
this remark:--"if, indeed, your sex should enter into the irreligious
notions, which now prevail too much among men, the next generation would
be irrecoverably lost." This amounts to a plain confession that, should
the priest lose his deep-rooted impulsive power over the female mind,
his trade would be "irrecoverably lost." Women have been, in all ages
and countries, the upholders of superstition, owing, in the first place,
to their nature, which, according to Hippocrates, "is more weak and
fearful than the nature and disposition of men"; secondly, to the
delusive and mischievous theological dogma about the superintendence of
what are called spiritual powers; to which may be added, the gaudy
and imposing pomp of ceremonies; all of which, taken together, readily
operate upon the female mind, it being, as it were, a softer and more
pliant wax than that of man, to receive the unnatural impression of the
priest. Before Christianity was known, Strabo made the following strong
remark:--"It is a thing universally taken for granted, that women are
the ringleaders of superstition; they tease their husbands into all
sorts of worship of the gods, into the observation of feasts and fasts;
but it is a rare thing that any man, leading a single life, is found to
be such a person." I shall close my authorities on this subject, with
a quotation from Selden. "When priests come into a family, they do as a
man that would set fire to a house,--he does not put fire to the brick
wall, but puts it into the thatch; _they work upon the women, and let
the men alone_."