A more than usual crowd attended the instructions of the Sage. The gay,
and the curious, the learned, and the idle, of all ages, and of either
sex, from the restless population of the city; many citizens of note,
collected from various parts of Attica; and no inconsiderable portion of
strangers from foreign states and countries.
They were assembled on the lawn, surrounding the temple already
frequently mentioned. The contracting waters of Ilyssus flowed nearly in
their accustomed bed; and earth and air, refreshed by the storm of the
preceding night, resisted the rays of the uncurtained sun, now climbing
high in the heavens. A crowd of recollections rushed on the young mind
of Theon, as he entered the beautiful enclosure, and gazed on the stream
which formed one of its boundaries. His thoughts again played truant to
philosophy, and his rapid glance sought another and a fairer form than
any it found there, when the approach of Epicurus divided the throng,
and hushed the loud murmur of tongues into silence. The Sage passed on,
and it was not till he ascended the marble steps, and turned to address
the assembly, that Theon perceived he had been followed by the beautiful
being who ruled his fancy. The hues of Hebe now dyed her lips and her
cheeks; but the laughing smiles of the preceding evening were changed
for the composure of respectful attention. Her eye caught that of Theon.
She gave a blush and a smile of recognition. Then, seating herself at
the base of a column to the right of her father, her face resumed its
composure, and her full dark eyes fastened on the countenance of the
Sage, in a gaze of mingled admiration and filial love.
“Fellow citizens, and fellow-men! We purpose, this day, to examine a
question of vital importance to human kind: no less a one than the
relations we bear to all the existences that surround us; the position
we hold in this beautiful material world; the origin, the object, and
the end of our being; the source from which we proceed, and the goal to
which we tend.—This question embraces many. It embraces all most
interesting to our curiosity, and influential over our happiness. Its
correct or incorrect solution must ever regulate, as it now regulates,
our rule of conduct, our conceptions of right and wrong; must start us
in the road of true or false enquiry, and either open our minds to such
a knowledge of the wonders working in and around us, as our senses and
faculties can attain, or close them forever with the bands of
superstition, leaving us a prey to fear, the slaves of our ungoverned
imaginations, wondering and trembling at every occurrence in nature, and
making our own existence and destiny sources of dread and of mystery.”
“Ere we come to this important enquiry, it behooves us to see that we
come with willing minds; that we say not, ‘so far will we go and no
farther; we will make one step, but not two; we will examine, but only
so long as the result of our examination shall confirm our preconceived
opinions.’ In our search after truth, we must equally discard
presumption and fear. We must come with our eyes and our ears, our
hearts and our understandings, open; anxious, not to find _ourselves_
right, but to discover what is right; asserting nothing which we cannot
prove; believing nothing which we have not examined; and examining all
things fearlessly, dispassionately, perseveringly.”
“In our preceding discourses, and, for such as have not attended these,
in our writings, we have endeavored to explain the real object of
philosophical enquiry; we have directed you to the investigation of
nature, to all that you see of existences and occurrences around you;
and we have shown that, in these existences, and occurrences, all that
_can_ be known, and all that _there is_ to be known, lies hid. We have
exhorted you to use your eyes, and your judgments, never your
imagination; to abstain from theory, and rest with facts; and to
understand that in the accumulation of facts, as regards the nature and
properties of substances, the order of occurrences, and the consequences
of actions, lies the whole science of philosophy, physical and moral. We
have seen, in the course of our enquiry, that in matter itself, exist
all causes and effects; that the eternal particles, composing all
substances, from the first and last links in the chain of occurrences,
or of cause and effect, at which we can arrive; that the qualities,
inherent in these particles, produce, or are followed by certain
effects; that the changes, in position, of these particles, produce or
are followed by certain other qualities and effects; that the sun
appears, and that light follows his appearance; that we throw a pearl
into vinegar, and that the pearl vanishes from our eyes, to assume the
form or forms of more subtle, but not less real substances; that the
component particles of a human being fall asunder, and that, instead of
a man, we find a variety of other substances or existences, presenting
new appearances, and new properties or powers; that a burning coal
touches our hand, that the sensation of pain follows the contact, that
the desire to end this sensation is the next effect in succession, and
that the muscular motion of withdrawing the hand, following the desire,
is another. That in all this succession of existences and events, there
is nothing but what we see, or what we could see, if we had better eyes;
that there is no mystery in nature, but that involved in the very
existence of all things; and that things being as they are, is no more
wonderful, than it would be, if they were different. That an analogous
course of events, or chain of causes and effects, takes place in morals
as in physics: that is to say, in examining those qualities, of the
matter composing our own bodies, which we call mind, we can only trace a
train of occurrences, in like manner as we do in the external world;
that our sensations, thoughts, and emotions, are simply effects
following causes, a series of consecutive phenomena, mutually producing
and produced.”
“When we have taken this view of things, observe how all abstruse
questions disappear; how all science is simplified; all knowledge
rendered easy and familiar to the mind! Once started in this only true
road of enquiry, every step we make is one in advance. To whatever
science we apply, that is, to whatever part of matter, or to whichever
of its qualities, we direct our attention, we shall, in all probability,
make important, because true, discoveries. Is it the philosophy of
nature in general, or any one of those subdivisions of it, which we call
the philosophy of Mind, Ethics, Medicine, Astronomy, Geometry, &c., the
moment we occupy ourselves in observing and arranging in order the
facts, which are discovered in the course of observation, we acquire
positive knowledge, and may safely undertake to develope it to others.”
“The ascertaining the nature of existences, the order of occurrences,
and the consequences of human actions constituting, therefore, the whole
of knowledge, what is there to prevent each and all of us from extending
our discoveries to the full limits prescribed by the nature of our
faculties and duration of our existence? What noble employment can we
invent? what pleasure so pure, so little liable to disappointment? What
is there to hold us back?—What is there not to spur us forward? Does our
ignorance start from the very simplicity of knowledge? Do we fear to
open our eyes lest we should see the light? Does the very truth we seek
alarm us in its attainment?—How is it that, placed in this world as on a
theatre of observation, surrounded by wonders and endowed with faculties
wherewith to scan these wonders, we know so little of what is, and
imagine so much of what is not? Other animals, to whom man accounts
himself superior, exercise the faculties they possess, trust their
testimony, follow the impulses of their nature, and enjoy the happiness
of which they are capable. Man alone, the most gifted of all known
existences, doubts the evidence of his superior senses, perverts the
nature and uses of his multiplied faculties, controls his most innocent,
as well as his noblest impulses, and turns to poison all the sources of
his happiness. To what are we to trace this fatal error, this cruel
self-martyrdom, this perversion of things from their natural bent? In
the over-development of one faculty and neglect of another, we must seek
the cause. In the imagination, that source of our most beautiful
pleasures, when under the control of judgment, we find the source of our
worst afflictions.”
“From an early age I have made the nature and condition of man my study.
I have found him in many countries of the earth, under the influence of
all varieties of climate and circumstance; I have found him the savage
lord of the forest, clothed in the rough skins of animals less rude than
himself, sheltered in the crevices of the mountains and caves of the
earth from the blasts of winter and heats of the summer sun; I have
found him the slave of masters debased as himself, crouching to the foot
that spurns him, and showing no signs of miscalled civilization but its
sloth and its sensualities; I have found him the lord over millions,
clothed in purple and treading courts of marble; the cruel destroyer of
his species, marching through blood and rapine, to thrones of extended
dominion; the iron-hearted tyrant, feasting on the agonies of his
victims, and wringing his treasure from the hard earned mite of
industry; I have found him the harmless but ignorant tiller of the soil,
eating the simple fruits of his labor, sinking to rest only to rise
again to toil, toiling to live and living only to die; I have found him
the polished courtier, the accomplished scholar, the gifted artist, the
creating genius; the fool and the knave; rich and a beggar; spurning and
spurned.
“Under all these forms and varieties of the external and internal man,
still, with hardly an exception, I have found him unhappy. With more
capacity for enjoyment than any other creature, I have seen him
surpassing the rest of existences only in suffering and crime. Why is
this and from whence? What master error, for some there must be, leads
to results so fatal—so opposed to the apparent nature and promise of
things? Long have I sought this error—this main-spring of human folly
and human crime. I have traced, through all their lengthened train of
consequents and causes, human practice and human theory; I have threaded
the labyrinth to its dark beginning; I have found the first link in the
chain of evil; I have found it—in all countries—among all tribes and
tongues and nations; I have found it,—Fellow-men, I have found it
in—RELIGION!”
A low murmur here rose from one part of the assembly. A deep and
breathless silence succeeded. The Sage turned his gaze slowly around,
and with a countenance, pure and serene as the skies which shone above
him, proceeded:—
“We have named the leading error of the human mind,—the bane of human
happiness—the perverter of human virtue! It is Religion—that dark
coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion—that poisoner of human
felicity! It is Religion—that blind guide of human reason! It is
Religion—that dethroner of human virtue! which lies at the root of all
the evil and all the misery that pervade the world!
“Not hastily formed, still less hastily expressed, has been the opinion
you hear this day. A long train of reflection led to the discarding of
religion as an error, a life of observation to the denouncing it as an
evil. In considering it as devoid of truth, I am but one of many. Few
have looked deeply and steadily into the nature of things, and not
called in question belief in existences unseen and causes unknown. But
while smiling at the credulity of their fellow-beings, philosophers have
thought reason good only for themselves. They have argued that religion,
however childish a chimera in itself, was useful in its tendencies:
that, if it rested upon nothing, it supported all things; that it was
the stay of virtue, and the source of happiness. However opposed to
every rule in philosophy, physical and moral; however apparently in
contradiction to reason and common sense, that a thing untrue could be
useful; that a belief in facts disproved or unproved could afford a
sustaining prop to a just rule of practice; the assertion came supported
by so universal a testimony of mankind, and by individual names of such
authority in practical wisdom and virtue, that I hesitated to call it
mistaken. And as human happiness appeared to me the great desideratum,
and its promotion the only object consistent with the views of a teacher
of men, I forbore from all expression of opinion, until I had fully
substantiated, to my own conviction, both its truth and its tendency.
The _truth_ of my opinion is substantiated, as we have seen, by an
examination into the nature of things; that is, into the properties of
matter, which are alone sufficient to produce all the chances and
changes that we behold. Its _tendency_ is discovered by an examination
into the moral condition of man.
“The belief in supernatural existences, and expectation of a future
life, are said to be sources of happiness, and stimuli to virtue. How,
and in what way? Is it proved by experience? Look abroad over the earth:
every where the song of praise, the prayer of supplication, the smoke of
incense, the blow of sacrifice, arise from forest, and lawn, from
cottage, palace, and temple, to the gods of human idolatry. Religion is
spread over the earth. If she be the parent of virtue and happiness,
they too should cover the earth. Do they so? Read the annals of human
tradition! Go forth and observe the actions of men! Who shall speak of
virtue—who of happiness, that hath eyes to see and ears to hear and
hearts to feel? No! experience is against the assertion. The world is
full of religion, and full of misery and crime.
“Can the assertion be sustained by argument, by any train of reasoning
whatsoever? Imagine a Deity under any fashion of existence; how are our
dreams concerning him in an imaginary heaven to affect our happiness or
our conduct on a tangible earth? Affect it indeed they may for evil, but
how for good? The idea of an unseen Being, ever at work around and about
us, may afflict the human intellect with idle terrors, but can never
guide the human practice to what is rational and consistent with our
nature. Grant that, by any possibility, we could ascertain the existence
of one god, or of a million of gods: we see them not, we hear them not,
we feel them not. Unless they were submitted to our observation, were
fashioned like unto us, had similar desires, similar faculties, a
similar organization, how could their mode of existence afford a guide
for ours? As well should the butterfly take pattern from the lion, or
the lion from the eagle, as man from a god. To say nothing of the
inconsistency of the attributes, with which all gods are decked, it is
enough that none of them are ours. We are men; they are gods. They
inhabit other worlds; we inhabit the earth. Let them enjoy their
felicity; and let us, my friends, seek ours.
“But it is not that religion is merely useless, it is mischievous. It is
mischievous by its idle terrors; it is mischievous by its false
morality; it is mischievous by its hypocrisy; by its fanaticism; by its
dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its promises. Consider it
under its mildest and most amiable form, it is still mischievous as
inspiring false motives of action, as holding the human mind in bondage,
and diverting the attention from things useful, to things useless. The
essence of religion is fear, as its source is ignorance. In a certain
stage of human knowledge, the human mind must of necessity, in its
ignorance of the properties of matter, and its dark insight into the
chain of phenomena arising out of those properties—must of necessity
reason falsely on every occurrence and existence in nature; it must of
necessity, in the absence of fact, give the rein to fancy, see a miracle
in every uncommon event, and imagine unseen agents as producing all that
it beholds. In proportion as the range of our observation is enlarged,
and as we learn to connect and arrange the phenomena of nature, we
curtail our list of miracles, the number of our supernatural agents. An
eclipse is alarming to the vulgar, as denoting the wrath of offended
deities; to the man of science it is a simple occurrence, as easily
traced to its cause, as any the most familiar to our observation. The
knowledge of one generation is the ignorance of the next. Our
superstitions decrease as our attainments multiply; and the fervor of
our religion declines as we draw nearer to the conclusion which destroys
it entirely. The conclusion, based upon accumulated facts, as we have
seen, that matter alone is at once the thing acting, and the thing acted
upon,—eternal in duration, infinitely various and varying in appearance;
never diminishing in quantity, and always changing in form. Without some
knowledge of what is styled natural philosophy, or physics, no
individual can attain this conclusion. And in a _certain_ stage of that
knowledge, more or less advanced according to the acuteness of the
intellect, it will be impossible for any individual, not mentally
obtuse, to shun that conclusion. This truth is one of infinite
importance. The moment we consider the hostility directed against what
is called Atheism, as the natural result of deficient information, the
mind must be diseased which could resent that hostility. And perhaps a
simple statement of the truth would best lead to examination of the
subject, and to the conversion of mankind.
“Imagine this conversion, my friends! Imagine the creature man in the
full exercise of all his faculties; not shrinking from knowledge, but
eager in its pursuit; not bending the knee of adulation to visionary
beings armed by fear for his destruction, but standing erect in calm
contemplation of the beautiful face of nature; discarding prejudice, and
admitting truth without fear of consequences; acknowledging no judge but
reason, no censor but that in his own breast! Thus considered, he is
transformed into the god of his present idolatry, or rather into a far
nobler being, possessing all the attributes consistent with virtue and
reason, and none opposed to either. How great a contrast with his actual
state! His best faculties dormant; his judgment unawakened within him;
his very senses misemployed; all his energies misdirected; trembling
before the coinage of his own idle fancy; seeing over all creation a
hand of tyranny extended; and instead of following virtue, worshipping
power! Monstrous creation of ignorance! monstrous degradation of the
noblest of known existences! Man, boasting of superior reason, of moral
discrimination, imagines a being at once unjust, cruel, and
inconsistent; then kissing the dust, calls himself its slave! ‘This
world _is_,’ says the Theist, ‘therefore it was made’—By whom?—‘By a
being more powerful than I.’ Grant this infantine reasoning, what
follows as the conclusion? ‘That we must fear him,’ says the Theist.—And
why? Is his power directed against our happiness? Does your god amuse
himself by awakening the terrors of more helpless beings? Fear him then
indeed we may; and, let our conduct be what it will, fear him we _must_.
‘He is good as well as powerful,’ says the Theist; ‘therefore the object
of love.’—How do we ascertain his goodness? I see indeed a beautiful and
curious world; but I see it full of moral evils, and presenting many
physical imperfections. Is he all-powerful? perfect good or perfect evil
might exist. Is he all-powerful _and_ all-good? perfect good _must_
exist. Of the sentient beings comprised in the infinity of matter I know
but those which I behold. I set no limits to the number of those which I
behold not; no bounds to their power. One or many, may have given
directions to the elementary atoms, and may have fashioned this earth as
the potter fashions its clay. Beings possessing such power may exist,
and may have exercised it. _All_-powerful still they are not, or being
so, they are wicked: _evil exists_. I know not what _may_ be—but this my
moral sense tells me CANNOT be—a fashioner of the world I inhabit, in
his nature all-good and all-powerful. I see yet another impossibility; a
fashioner of this world in his nature all-good and _fore-knowing_.
Granting the possibility of the attributes, their united existence were
an impossible supposition in the architect of our earth.
‘Let us accord his goodness, the most pleasing and valuable attribute.
Your god is then the object of our love, and of our pity. Of our love,
because being benevolent in his own nature, he must have intended to
produce happiness in forming ours; of our pity, because we see that he
has failed in his intention. I cannot conceive a condition more
unfortunate than that of a deity contemplating this world of his
creation. Is he the author of some—say, of much happiness? of what
untold misery is he equally the author? I cannot conceive a being more
desperately—more hopelessly wretched than that we have now pictured. The
worst of human miseries shrink into comparative insignificancy before
those of their author. How must every sigh drawn from the bosom of man
rend the heart of his god! How must every violence committed on earth
convulse the peace of heaven! unable to alter what he had fashioned, how
must he equally curse his power and his impotence! And, in bewailing our
existence, how must he burn to annihilate his own!
“We will now suppose his power without limit; and his knowledge
extending to the future, as to the past. How monstrous the conception!
What demon drawn from the fevered brain of insanity, ever surpassed this
deity in malignity! Able to make perfection, he hath sown through all
nature the seed of evil. The lion pursues the lamb; the vulture, in his
rage, tears the dove from her nest. Man, the universal enemy, triumphs
even in the sufferings of his fellow-beings; in their pain finds his own
joy; in their loss, his gain; in the frenzy of his violence, working out
his own destruction; in the folly of his ignorance cursing his own race,
and blessing its cruel author! Your deity is the author of evil, and you
call him good; the inventor of misery, and you call him happy! What
virtuous mind shall yield homage to such a Being? Who shall say, that
homage, if rendered, degrades not the worshipper? Or, who shall say,
that homage, when rendered, shall pacify the idol? Will abjectness in
the slave ensure mercy in the tyrant? Or, if it should, my friends,
which of us would be the abject? Are men found bold to resist earthly
oppression, and shall they bow before injustice, because she speak from
Heaven? Does the name of Harmodius inspire our songs? Do crowns of
laurel bind the temples of Aristogition? Let our courage rise higher
than theirs, my friends; and, if worthy of ambition, our fame! Dethrone,
not the tyrant of Athens, but the tyrant of the earth!—not the oppressor
of Athenians, but the oppressor of mankind! Stand forth! Stand erect!
Say to this god, ‘if you made us in malice, we will not worship you in
fear. We will judge of you by your works: and judge your works with our
reason. If evil pervade them, you are chargeable with it, as their
author. We care not to conciliate your injustice, any more than to
strive with your power. We judge of the future from the past. And as you
have disposed of us in this world, so, if it please you to continue our
being, must you dispose of us in another. It would be idle to strive
with Omnipotence, or to provide against the decrees of Omniscience. We
will not torment ourselves by imagining your intentions; nor debase
ourselves by expostulations. Should you punish, in us, the evil you have
made, you will punish it as unjustly as you made it maliciously. Should
you reward in us the good, you will reward it absurdly, as it was
equally your work, and not ours.’
“Let us now concede in argument the union of all the enumerated
attributes. Let us accord the existence of a being perfect in goodness,
wisdom, and power, who shall have made all things by his volition, and
decreed all occurrences in his wisdom. Such a being must command our
admiration and approval: he can command no more. As he is good and wise,
he is superior to all praise; as he is great and happy, he is
independent of all praise. As he is the author of our happiness, he has
ensured our love; but as he is our creator, he may command from us no
duties. Supposing a god, all duties rest with him. If he has made us, he
is bound to make us happy; and failing in the duty, he must be an object
of just abhorrence to all his sentient creation. Kindness received must
necessarily inspire affection. This kindness, in a divine creator, as in
an earthly parent, is a solemn duty,—a sacred obligation,—the
non-performance of which were the most atrocious of crimes. When
performed, love from the creature, as from the child, is a necessary
consequence, and an all-sufficient reward.
“Allowing then to the Theist his god, we stand to him in no relation
that can inspire fear, or involve duty. He can give us no happiness that
he was not bound to bestow: he can cherish us with no tenderness, that
he was not bound to yield. It is for him to gratify all our desires,—or,
if they be erroneous, to correct them. It is for us to demand every good
in his power to grant, or in ours to enjoy. Let then, the theologist
banish fear and duty from his creed. It is love—love alone that can be
claimed by gods or yielded by men.
“Have we said enough! Surely the absurdity of all the doctrines of
religion, and the iniquity of many, are sufficiently evident. To fear a
being on account of his power, is degrading; to fear him if he be good,
ridiculous. Prove to us his existence; and prove to us his perfections;
prove to us his parental care; love springs up in our bosoms, and repays
his bounty. If he care not to show us his existence, he desires not the
payment of our love, and finds in the contemplation of his own works,
their reward.
“But, says the Theist, his existence is evident—and, not to acknowledge
it, a crime. It is not so to me, my friends. I see no sufficient
evidence of his existence; and to reason of its possibility, I hold to
be an idle speculation. To doubt that which is evident is not in our
power. To believe that which is not evident, is equally impossible to
us. Theist! thou makest of thy god a being more weak, more silly than
thyself. He punisheth as a crime the doubt of his existence! Why, then,
let him declare his existence, and we doubt no more. Should the
wandering tribes of Scythia doubt the existence of Epicurus, should
Epicurus be angry? What vanity—what absurdity—what silliness, oh!
Theist! do ye not suppose in your god! Let him exist, this god, in all
the perfection of a poet’s imagery; I lift to him a forehead assured and
serene. ‘I see thee, oh! God! in thy power, and admire thee: I see thee
in thy goodness, and approve thee. Such homage only is worthy of thee to
receive, and of me to render.’ And what does he reply? ‘Thou art right,
creature of my fashioning! Thou canst not add nor take away from the sum
of my felicity. I made thee to enjoy thy own, not to wonder at mine. I
have placed thee amid objects of desire, I have given thee means of
enjoyment. Enjoy, then! Be happy! It was for that I made thee.’
“Harken, then, my children! hearken to your teacher! Let it be a god or
a philosopher who speaks, the injunction is the same: _Enjoy, and be
happy!_ Is life short? It is an evil: But render life happy, its
shortness is the _only_ evil. I call to you, as, if he exist, God must
call to you from heaven: _Enjoy, and be happy!_ Do you doubt the way?
Let Epicurus be your guide. The source of every enjoyment is within
yourselves. Good and evil lie before you. The good is—all which can
yield you pleasure: the evil—what must bring you pain. Here is no
paradox, no dark saying, no moral hid in fables.
“We have considered the unsound fabric of religion. It remains to
consider that, equally unsound, of morals. The virtue of man is false as
his faith. What folly invented, knavery supports. Let us arise in our
strength, examine, judge, and be free!”
The teacher here paused. The crowd stood, as if yet listening. “At a
convenient season, my children, we will examine farther into the nature
of man and the science of life.”
THE END.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.