Christianism: A Supernaturalistic Other-worldly Gospel for the Passing
Age of Class Inequality and Economic Slavery--An Open Letter to a
Christian Theologian and Brother Churchman.
Revolutionize capitalism out of state and orthodoxy out of church.
FOREWORD[G]
The contradiction in terms known as the Christian Socialist is
inevitably antagonistic to working-class interests and the waging of the
class struggle. His policy (that of the Christian Socialist) is the
conciliation of classes, the fraternity of robber and robbed, not the
end of classes. His avowed object, indeed, is usually to purge the
Socialist movement of its materialism, and this means to purge it of its
Socialism and to divert it from its material aims to the fruitless
chasing of spiritual will-o'-the-wisps. A Christian Socialist is, in
fact, an anti-Socialist.
Clearly, then, the basis of Socialist philosophy is utterly incompatible
with religious ideas; indeed, the latter have been reduced to their
logical absurdity in what is called "Christian Science."
Moreover, the consistent Christian, if such exists, could look upon the
existing world only as an essential part of God's plan, to be accounted
for only through God, and modified at God's pleasure. He could regard
those who sought the explanation of social conditions in purely natural
causes, and who also sought to take advantage of economic development in
order to turn this vale of tears into a pleasant garden, only as men who
denied by their acts the very basis of his faith.
FOOTNOTES:
[G] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
CHRISTIANISM: A SUPERNATURALISTIC OTHER-WORLDLY GOSPEL FOR THE PASSING
AGE OF CLASS INEQUALITY AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY.
Come over and help us. Abandon Reformatory for Revolutionary
Socialism.
My Dear Brother:
Your letter (April 1st, 1920) enclosing an essay, entitled, Is There a
God, came duly to hand and I thank you warmly for it. The essay is a
masterpiece and I hope you can let me keep this copy, or make another
for myself, for reference when I am writing or conversing on its lines,
as is frequently the case.
I.
In the dispute between yourself and friend of which you speak, you are
altogether right and he is entirely wrong. In the last analysis it is a
disputation as to whether or not the Jewish-Christian bible contains an
infallible revelation from an omniscient being, a triune god, Father,
Son and Spirit. It does not.
As an objectivity there is no such divinity. He is a subjectivity
existing in the imagination of orthodox Christians. You do not agree
with me in this, but every day of thought and study deepens the
conviction that it is true. None among the gods of the supernaturalistic
interpretations of religion are objectivities. The lesser ones are
generally ghosts of dead men, and the greater ones are as generally
versions of the sun-myth.
The one god of the Jews and the triune god of the Christians, if taken
seriously, are superstitions; and the bible revelations of their
willings and records of their doings, if taken literally, are lies.
Both the Old and New Testaments are utterly worthless as history. The
twelve patriarchs of the Jewish God, Jehovah, are not historical
personages, but myths, and this is true of the twelve apostles of the
Christian God, Jesus.
Yes, the Old Testament is the Jewish version of the immemorial and
universal sun-myth, rewritten several times for the purpose, not of
telling any truth, but of imposing the fiction that Jehovah and his
people constitute the greatest procession that ever came down the pike
of supernaturalism. The New Testament is the Christian version of the
same myth, only with the view of showing that Jehovah and the Jews were
not, but Jesus and Christians are, this procession.
In itself, the sun-myth, as symbolism, is not only poetically beautiful,
but also scientifically true; yet, as literalism, it is in the case of
the ignorant, superstition, and in the case of the educated,
self-deception.
The sun is, in a very literal and real sense, the creator-god in whom
this world lives, moves and has its being; and he is the saviour-god who
was born of a virgin nebula, and every winter descends into hell and
rises from the dead (the southern solstice) by a new birth and ascends
into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the father (the sky) at
the northern solstice, and finally he is the illuminator god who
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
And the apostles who preached the gospel of the redemption of the world
are the twelve signs of the zodiac through which the sun apparently
passes in its annual ascension to the summer solstice and descension to
the winter solstice.
Nor is this all: "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the
world" is the sign of the zodiac, Aries (sheep, ram) through which the
sun passes towards the end of March, when all the saviour-gods annually
died and rose again. The rising symbolizes the return of the sun towards
the northern solstice from the southern one, upon which return seed-time
and harvest are dependent, without which the world would perish, not
indeed by sin but by starvation.
Jehovah is the sun-myth rewritten to fit in with the ideals and hopes of
the owning, master class of the Jews.
Jesus is the sun-myth rewritten to fit in with the ideals and hopes of
the owning master class of the Christians.
The Christian god, Jesus, is an improvement upon the Jewish god,
Jehovah, because of the division of labor. The task of the owning master
class is a twofold one, the robbing of the weak owners by the strong
ones in wars, and the robbing of the slaves by the masters which under
the capitalist system is done in surplus profits.
Jehovah serves Christians as the god of war. In his name they wage wars,
either as groups within a nation having different commercial interests,
as in the case of the Civil War of the United States, or as nations
against nations with different commercial interests, as in the case of
the Revolutionary war of the Colonies with England, or the World War of
the Allied countries with the Central ones.
Jesus serves Christians as the god of slavery. When they have
successfully waged a war of conquest, as the Pilgrim Fathers did against
the Indians of America, or when they have appropriated all the means and
machines of production, as the capitalists have everywhere, they
reconcile the propertyless to a terrestrial hell of toil, want, sorrow
and slavery by preaching the Jesuine gospel of hope for a celestial
heaven of eternal rest, joy, plenty and freedom.
"Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum."
In remaking the Jewish god to suit their purposes of robbing and
enslaving, the Christian owning master class provided for a further
division of his work by creating the Holy Ghost, who devotes himself to
the giving of new revelations of the will of Jehovah and interpreting
the earlier ones as they are recorded in the bible.
It is generally supposed that the masters are the strong people of the
world, but they are not. Labor is really the giant, the Samson, and it
would be impossible for the pigmy, capital, to rob him, but for his lack
of knowledge. The Holy Ghost sees to it that the slave class is kept in
ignorance.
The English-German, or if you prefer, the German-English war has been an
eye-opener to the giant, labor, and capital is ruined unless he can get
him to sleep again.
Capital knows that Marx was right in characterizing the orthodox
interpretations of religion, including the Christian one, and especially
it, as a sleeping potion.
The churches were the dormitories in which the slaves slept through the
night of the dark ages of traditionalism, but the light of the age of
scientism is breaking upon the world and most of the slaves have left
the churches and are now beyond the reach of their care-takers, the
preachers.
When I wrote the Level Plan for Church Union, I believed that the coming
together of the churches would prove to be a blessing to the world, but
I am now persuaded that it would be a curse, because the league of
churches would co-operate with the league of nations in its robbing and
enslaving schemes, the churches doing the lying and the nations the
coercing.
We are living in the age of scientism and, in the case of its true sons
and daughters, only scientifically demonstrated facts count in any
argumentation.
From the scientific point of view it is seen that there is but one
universal Kingdom of Life, Nature. This kingdom may be divided into
three, perhaps four, states constituting the United States of Life: the
mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human.
Beginning with the highest, each of these states, except the lowest, is
dependent upon the next lower. The only independent autonomous state in
the kingdom is the mineral. This is the greatest both as to its extent
and importance. It is the common source of every supply of all the
states of life, and the seat of each of their governments.
All theologians and some metaphysicians postulate a fifth state of
life, the divine, placing it above the rest as their source.
Comte, who preceded Marx as a social philosopher, and who is the founder
of modern socialism of the reformatory type, as Marx is of the
revolutionary one, had this to say about the theologians, metaphysicians
and scientists, and he was right:
From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all
directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great
fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has
a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts of our organization
and in our historical experience. This law is this: that each of
our leading conceptions--each branch of our knowledge--passes
successively through three different theoretical conditions: the
theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the
scientific, or positive. In other words, the human mind, by its
nature, employs in its progress three methods of philosophizing,
the character of which is essentially different and radically
opposed: viz., the theological method, the metaphysical and the
positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general systems of
conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes
the others. The first is the necessary point of departure of the
human understanding; the third is its fixed and definite state. The
second is merely a state of transition.
In order for a man who has reached the scientific stage in his
intellectual development to make anything out of the reasonings of those
who are still in the stage of theological childhood or in that of
metaphysical adolescence, it is necessary for him to use their
insubstantialities as symbols of his substantialities.
The only difference that I can see between a theologian and a
metaphysician is that, whereas the former personifies a generality
which is the creation of his imagination, calling it a god, the latter
objectifies a particularity which is the creation of his imagination
calling it an entity; but all such personifications and objectifications
(gods, things-in-themselves, vital entities, souls) are alike
fictitious, because the childish theologians and metaphysicians proceed
on the basis of philosophically assumed realities, not on scientifically
established facts which pave the way on which an adult proceeds.
Comte analyzes the difference between the intellectuality of theological
children, metaphysical youths and scientific adults as follows:
In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential
nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin and
purpose) of all effects--in short, absolute knowledge--supposes all
phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural
beings.
In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the
first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract
forces, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions)
inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena.
What is called the explanation of phenomena is, in this stage, a
mere reference of each to its proper entity.
In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vain
search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the
universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the
study of their laws--that is, their invariable relations of
succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly
combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood
when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the
establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some
general facts the number of which continually diminishes with the
progress of science.
There is no science which, having attained the positive stage, does
not bear the marks of having passed through the others. Some time
since it was (whatever it might be now) composed, as we can now
perceive, of metaphysical abstractions: and, further back in the
course of time, it took its form from theological conceptions. Our
most advanced sciences still bear very evident marks of the two
earlier periods through which they passed.
The progress of the individual mind is not only an illustration,
but an indirect evidence of that of the general mind. The point of
departure of the individual and the race being the same, the phases
of the mind of men correspond to the epochs of the mind of the
race. How each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own
history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a metaphysician
in his youth and a natural philosopher in his manhood. All men who
are up to their age can verify this for themselves.
According to the scientific classification, there are only three
kingdoms or states of life, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal.
The life of the vegetable kingdom has arisen out of the life of the
mineral kingdom and is sustained by it.
The distinguished scientist, Professor Lowell, says, "there is now no
more reason to doubt that plants grew out of chemical affinity than to
doubt that stones did," and nearly all outstanding zoologists would say
as much of animals.
Sir J. Burdon Sanderson, one of the most eminent among biologists,
insists that "in physiology the word life is understood to mean the
chemical and physical activities of the parts of which the organism
consists." The renowned Sir Ray Lankester strenuously holds that
"zoology is the science which seeks to arrange and discuss the phenomena
of animal life and form, as the outcome of the operation of the laws of
physics and chemistry," and goes so far as to say that he knows of no
leading biologist who is of a different opinion. The prince of
biologists, the late Professor Haeckel, occupied this position and
impregnably fortified it in several great books, especially in his
"Riddle of the Universe."
There is no force that is not life, nor life which is not force; and
there is no life or force, about which we know anything, without a body
or chemical laboratory.
So far as is known, there is only one life--force. The difference
between lives is a question of the organism, the laboratory, which gives
embodiment to force.
The life that enables the wheels of a locomotive to go, the sap of a
tree to flow, the heart of an animal to beat and the brain of a man to
think is the same chemical potentiality differently organized.
During all historical time and over all the earth, under one name or
another, the whole world has kept days of rejoicing for life, especially
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and Easter.
Nothing is so wonderful as life and perhaps the greatest of its wonders
is that all of it is of the same kind.
Everything and every being is alive with the same life. The Thanksgiving
day sheaf of wheat, the Christmas day Son of Man and the Easter day Son
of God (if there are conscious, personal gods and they have sons) are
alive and their life is the same, the difference being wholly in the
form and degree, not at all in kind.
A proof of the oneness and sameness of all life, notwithstanding its
widely different forms and degrees, is the fact that a bar of iron, a
stick of wood, a piece of flesh and a section of brain respond alike to
the same electrical stimulus, and all may be poisoned or otherwise
killed so that they will make no response to it. Perhaps even a more
conclusive evidence is that the eggs (every form of both vegetable and
animal life develops from an egg) of some animals rather high in the one
tree of mundane life, which has a common root and a stump, but two
stems, the vegetable and the animal, can be mechanically fertilized by
chemical processes.
Even Sir Oliver Lodge, the most conspicuous among the comparatively few
men of science who hold to the theory that life comes to the earth as
vital entities of celestial origin and destination, makes this fatal
admission: "There is plenty of physics and chemistry and mechanics about
every vital action." On the theory of traditional Christianity there was
no physics, chemistry or mechanics connected with the vital actions
which originally brought the universe and all that therein was,
including the earth with its vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, into
existence.
Every representative of each form of life in these kingdoms (in the
vegetable: a grass blade, a wheat stalk, an oak tree; or in the animal:
an insect, a horse, a man) is a chemical laboratory for the production,
sustentation, advancement and procreation of a particular type of one
universal life. These laboratories have all the potentialities of their
respective lives within themselves,--no laboratory, no chemistry; no
chemistry, no life.
What life is, both as to its manifestation and character, is determined
by the form of organization through which force, all there is of life,
becomes a particular and differentiated vital phenomenon. This is as
true of states and churches as it is of trees and men, for a church or a
state is a vital phenomenon as really so as a tree or a man.
The trouble with every reformatory socialism of modern times is that it
undertakes the impossibility of changing the fruit of the capitalistic
state into that of the communistic one, without changing the political
organism; but to do that is as impossible as to gather grapes from
thorns or figs from thistles. Hence an uprooting and replanting are
necessary (a revolution not a reformation) which will give the world a
new tree of state.
Capitalism no longer grows the fruits (foods, clothes and houses) which
are necessary to the sustenance of the world. Hence it encumbers the
ground and must be dug up by the roots in order that a tree which is so
organized that it will bear these necessities may be planted in its
place.
The people of Russia have accomplished this uprooting and replanting
(this revolution) in the case of their state, and those of every nation
are destined to do the same in one way or another, each according to its
historical and economic development, some perhaps with violence, most, I
hope, peaceably. The Russian Bolsheviki occupy the highest peak in man's
history; and while they stand, the world will be safe for industrial
democracy. This democracy is the tree of life whose fruits are for the
sustenance of the nations and whose very leaves are for their healing.
The only lives of which we need know aught are those that we shall live
in our bodies by chemical processes and in the race by conscious or
unconscious influences; for, if there is another, it will take care of
itself, if we take care of these.
Since, therefore, all life is on a level and since morality, religion
and Christianity are but manifestations of it, do you not see how
profoundly and incontrovertibly true is my levelism?
According to this levelism all interpretations of Christianity
(protestant and catholic--congregational, presbyterian, episcopalian and
papal) and all the interpretations of religion (Christian, Jewish,
Mohammedan, Buddhistic and the rest) are essentially on the same
footing, the difference between them being wholly a question of natural
excellencies, not at all of supernatural uniqueness.
The science of biology establishes my levelism by proving that animal
and human life are on a level as to their origin, character and destiny.
The science of sociology establishes my levelism by proving that animal
and human institutions are on a level, and that therefore, there is
nothing more supernatural about a human state or church than about an
ant hill or a bee hive.
The science of literary criticism establishes my levelism by proving
that the bibles of the several interpretations of religion are on a
level as to their entirely human origin and authority.
The science of the comparative interpretations of religion establishes
my levelism by proving that all the conscious, personal creator-gods,
destroyer-gods, saviour-gods and illuminator-gods, with all their
angels, heavens and hells, are so many myths--creations of the human
imagination, subjective fictions, not objective realities.
Until comparatively recent times, through all the theological history of
mankind, the sun was almost universally regarded as a god. Manifestly
without it there could be no life on earth, and its annually recurring
motions are such as to give the impression of birth and death--of birth
by ascension into the heaven of the summer solstice--of death by
descension into the hell or grave of the winter solstice. Not only is
the sun the giver and sustainer of life, but it is also the light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
Modern science justifies this ancient conception as to the dependence of
the earth, and all that thereon is, upon the sun for its being. By a
slight adaptation men of science and scientific philosophers could use
the very words of the apostle John at the opening of his version of the
Christian gospel, where he says of Jesus, what they say of the sun:
All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that
was made. In him is life; and the life is the light of men.
The birth, death, descension, resurrection and ascension of all the
Saviour-gods, not excepting Jesus, are versions of the sun-myth.
Yet the naturalness, the universalness, the beautifulness and withal the
profound truthfulness of this myth are such as to render it almost as
undesirable as it is next to impossible to relegate it to the realm of
superstition, to which it should undoubtedly be assigned if a literal
interpretation is a necessity.
The more science advances, the more of precious poetry and pathos, and
of deep verity, too, is seen in the Saviour-gods, who are essentially
the same mythical personifications of the glorious sun and of the happy
events of its annual career, because from it the earth with its brother
and sister planets had their origin, and because from it the earth, not
to speak of the other planets, has the heat, light and force which make
its life a possibility.
There is no reason for believing that any one among the gods of the four
old supernaturalistic interpretations of religion (Jehovah, Jesus,
Allah, Buddha) or that either of the gods of the two new interpretations
by the renowned physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge, and the distinguished
sociologist, Mr. H. G. Wells, has had more to do in creating, sustaining
and governing this world than another, that is to say, there is no
ground for believing that the personal, conscious gods in the skies
either individually or collectively have had anything at all to do with
it.
Science, as it is understood by the great majority of its exponents,
teaches that the earth (with all things, physical and psychical, which
contribute to make its world what it has been, is, and is to be) was
originally in the sun, and would quickly disappear into its original,
unorganized elements but for the sun.
This is as true of man as of all else. He with his brain and its
thought, with his hand and its skill; with his homes, farms, cities,
mines, shops, stores, trains, ships, schools, hospitals and churches;
with his hate, bestiality and barbarism, and with his love, humaneness
and civilization, was in the sun, billions of years before his
appearance on the earth.
Speaking of things appertaining to the world war: there in the sun,
before it had thrown off the earth, were the kaiser on the throne, the
president in the white house, the millions of soldiers, the uniforms,
the rations, the forts, the cannons, guns, powder and shot, the
trenches, the barbed wire, the dreadnoughts, the submarines, the
aeroplanes, the wireless telegraph stations, the wounded, their
sufferings and groans, the doctors and nurses, the corpses, the
cripples, the broken hearts; yes, and all the things connected with that
terrible war; the bereaved mothers, the widowed wives, the outraged
girls, the ruined country, the wrecked cities, were in the sun from its
beginning, indeed while it was yet a nebula, many thousands of millions
of years previous to the birth of the earth.
If we except intruders into our solar system, such as comets and their
comparatively inconsiderable effects, we may say that every physical or
psychical reality which at any time has entered into the history of this
planet and that of its brothers and sisters was in that vast flowing,
swirling, revolving globe of gases which is known to have been at one
time at least five billion miles in diameter, or fifteen billions in
circumference.
Of course no phenomenon, such as Jesus hanging on the cross, if He lived
and was crucified, was in the sun as an actuality, but only as a
potentiality. Nevertheless He, with His doctrine and His suffering, was
there, else He would never have been anywhere, not in the realm of
history, not even in the realm of imagination.
The universe is ever all that it can be, and every potentiality which
contributes to make it so is within itself. What is true in this respect
of the universe as a whole is equally so of every part of it, including
man, and especially him, because he is exceptionally capable of
controlling his own destiny, being able not only to preserve life by a
discovery of and conformity to the laws upon which it is dependent, but
also to enlarge and enrich its content by making these laws co-operative
servants.
The time cannot be far off when it will be seen by all educated,
thoughtful men and women that if the traditional, supernaturalistic
interpretation of Christianity is the only possible one, its message is
not a gospel, because its teaching touching three fundamentals is, in
each case, contrary to that of three relevant sciences:
1. The sciences of astronomy, geology and biology teach that the
representation of traditional supernaturalistic interpretation of
Christianity to the effect that the universe, including the earth with
its physical and psychical life, was supernaturally created out of
nothing by a conscious, personal god is not true and therefore can be no
part of any gospel; for, according to the teaching of these three
sciences, the truth is: the universe with all that therein is, not
excepting mankind and civilization, was naturally evolved out of a
self-existing matter by a self-existing force co-operating in accordance
with the necessity of their nature.
2. The sciences of biology, physiology and embryology teach that the
representation of the traditional, supernaturalistic interpretation of
Christianity to the effect that man and woman are unique beings, who
have supernaturally derived their physical form, vital and psychical
potentialities directly from a conscious, personal creator with whom are
their natural affiliations, is not true, and therefore can be no part of
any gospel; for, according to the teaching of these three sciences, the
truth is: man and woman as to their whole beings (body and mind, life
and soul) were naturally evolved from pre-existing animal life, not
supernaturally created respectively out of the dust and a rib, so that
they owe their existence to and natural affinities with a terrestrial
and bestial parentage, not a celestial and divine one.
3. The sciences of anthropology, sociology and comparative
interpretations of religion teach that the representation of the
traditional, supernaturalistic interpretation of Christianity to the
effect that man and woman were supernaturally created in the image and
likeness of a conscious, personal god, sinless and deathless beings with
ideal environments, but that they fell from this happy estate, through a
serpentine incarnation of a supernatural devil, and are being restored
to it, through a human incarnation of a supernatural saviour, is not
true, and therefore can be no part of any gospel; for, according to the
teaching of these three sciences, the truth is: during many ages man and
woman, in both appearance and predilection, were much more animal than
divine and that gradually, without any supernatural assistance, they
have worked themselves out of a state of bestial barbarism into one of
human civilization.
It follows therefore that the representations of both the Old and New
Testaments, concerning the origin and history of man are largely
fictitious impositions, not historical compositions, so much so, that no
confidence can safely be reposed in any of them.
There is no rational doubt about the fictitious character of the divine
Jesus. Some think that the human Jesus may have been an historical
personage; but, none among outstanding scholars believes that we have a
connected account of his life and work, and most of them insist that we
do not certainly know any saying or doing of his.
No religious doctrine or institution of which we have an account in the
New Testament is peculiar to Christianity and this is equally true of
moral precepts.
The gods of all the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are so
many creations of the dominant or master class, and their revelations
were put into their mouths by the makers for the purpose of keeping the
slave class ignorant and contented.
Orthodox Christians earnestly contend that this naturalistic doctrine
makes for immorality. Heretical socialists rationally answer that the
life which men, women and children live with reference to their
terrestrial influence, rather than to celestial rewards or punishments,
is the only one which is lived to any moral purpose.
According to socialism, morality, religion and Christianity are but
synonyms of one and the same reality, which consists wholly in the
desire and effort of a man to learn the laws or doings of nature, and to
conform his thoughts and words to them, in order to make his present
life on earth, and that of others, as long and happy as possible, and
not at all in a desire and effort to learn what the will of a conscious,
personal god is and to conform to it, in order to avoid a hell and gain
a heaven for a future life in the sky.
O threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.
If you object that this is a representation of a sceptical poet, I reply
that it is in alignment with a representation of a scriptural preacher:
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts;
Even one thing befalleth them;
As the one dieth, so dieth the other;
Yea, they have all one breath;
So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast;
For all is vanity.
All go unto one place;
All are of the dust,
And all turn to dust again.
Darwin showed that each man in his physical development from the
embryonic cell to birth passes through, by short cuts, the different
forms of life from say, the worm, fish and lemur with all that went
before, intervened between and followed after, and Romanes showed that
this is as true of the mind as of the body; that, in fact, all the
representatives of the animal kingdom are physically and psychically
related, and therefore on the same level as to their origin and destiny.
In his illuminating book entitled, "The Universal Kinship," Professor
Moore says:
The embryonic development of a human being is no different from the
embryonic development of any other animal. Every human being at the
beginning of his organic existence is a protozoan, about 1-125
inch in diameter; at another stage of development he is a tiny
sac-shaped mass of cells without blood or nerves, the gastrula; at
another stage he is a worm, with a pulsating tube instead of a
heart, and without a head, neck, spinal column, or limbs; at
another stage he has as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending
along the back, and a faint nerve cord, as in the amphioxus, the
lowest of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a
two-chambered heart, mesonephric kidneys, and gill-slits, with gill
arteries leading to them, just as in fishes; at another stage he is
a reptile with a three-chambered heart, and voiding his excreta
through a cloaca like other reptiles; and finally, when he enters
upon post-natal sins and actualities, he is a sprawling, squalling,
unreasoning quadruped. The human larva from the fifth to the
seventh month of development is covered with a thick growth of hair
and has a true caudal (tail) appendage, like the monkey. At this
stage the embryo has in all thirty-eight vertebrae, nine of which
are caudal, and the great toe extends at right angles to the other
toes, and is not longer than the other toes, but shorter, as in the
ape.
Surely no argument is needed to convince you that Darwinism corroborates
the representation of our ancient heretical poet and scriptural preacher
concerning a life beyond the grave rather than the representations of
modern orthodox theologians.
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel, too.
--Omar.
II.
In history slavery stands out as a huge mountain range traversing the
whole of a continent. During long ages it was supposed that these
phenomena of the human and physical worlds were due to the will of a god
(Jesus, Jehovah, Allah or Buddha) but the vanguard of humanity has now
reached a viewpoint from which it sees that both are alike due to a law,
that a law is what nature does, not what a god has willed, and that a
system of slavery and a range of mountains are due to the same law.
The matter-force law is everywhere the same, and it is as omnipotent and
immutable in a social order as in a solar system.
"The very law that moulds a tear,
And bids it trickle from its source,
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course."
Most of the time, and especially just now, our world is very full of
tears, almost as much so as space is full of spheres, but there would
not be half so many tears at any time, if the laws of states were so
many correct interpretations of the laws of nature.
In every age, nearly all the hot tears which deluge the world flow, like
streams of springs, from their deep sources as the result of unnecessary
suffering by grinding poverty, by hopeless slavery, by avoidable
diseases and by premature deaths; and by far the most of these and of
all sufferings may be traced to man-made laws which not only have no
correspondence with those of nature but are contrary to them--laws of
which both the civil codes and religious bibles are too full.
You will agree with me that society should punish none of its members by
the slightest fine or shortest imprisonment, not to speak of death,
except on the basis of justice. So far, and it is a long way, we
certainly walk together. We part company, if at all, on the question as
to the basis of justice, but come together again in the conclusion that
it is right, not might.
What, then, is this right? If you answer: the law of the state as it is
interpreted by a competent court, I reply: no legal enactment, and so,
of course, no interpretation of one, can really constitute a right,
unless it is an embodiment of a truth containing an indispensable stone
in the foundation which is necessary to the superstructure of the ideal
civilization, under the roof of which every man, woman and child shall
possess the greatest of possible opportunities to make life for self as
long and happy as it can be, and to help others in an ever widening
circle to do this for themselves.
Laws are not made. All social laws (domestic, civil, commercial, yes,
even the moral and religious ones) are matter-force realities, as much
so as is any other among all the physical or psychical realities
entering into the constitution of the universe; which realities are but
the expressions of the processes necessarily resulting from the
necessary co-existence and co-operation of this matter and force;
therefore, laws are so many eternal necessities and, this being the
case, it is not possible that men in states or churches should make
them, no, not even gods in heavens.
Man would, then, have progressed much further with the superstructure of
an ideal civilization, if only in his efforts to rightly regulate his
life, he had happily searched out the laws of nature as they are
revealed through its phenomena and interpreted by experience and reason,
instead of looking for direction to the laws of the gods (Jehovah,
Allah, Buddha or even Jesus) as they are revealed through prophets and
interpreted by kings or presidents, by priests or preachers and by other
"powers that be of God" in states and churches--institutions which exist
in the interest of the capitalist class and against that of the labor
class. The world owes by far the greater part of its most poignant
sufferings to this fatal mistake of looking to gods in heavens and their
representatives on earth for direction instead of to nature and reason.
Life in the physical realm is dependent upon living in harmony with the
matter-force law. The representative of any form of life (mineral,
vegetable, animal, human) which either through ignorance, accident or
willfulness does not conform to it, is destroyed or at least injured.
Life in the moral part of the psychical realm consists in a disposition
and effort to learn the matter-force law, and to fulfill in thought,
word and deed the individual obligations to self and the social
obligations to others imposed by it when it has been humanely
interpreted by a man for himself.
Religion and Christianity are but wider extensions of one and the same
great all-inclusive virtue, morality, without which human life would not
be worth living, indeed not even a possibility, for without morality a
man is a beast, not a human.
Morality is the greatest thing in the world. Yet, paradoxical as the
representation may seem, there is one greater thing, freedom--the
liberty to think, speak and act in accordance with one's own convictions
as to what is the law and as to what are its requirements. Without this
liberty there could be no morality, and therefore, freedom is greater
than the greatest thing in the world, morality.
But liberty, the greatest and most indispensable necessity to morality,
religion and Christianity, indeed, to the existence of a human being, is
manifestly impossible on the theory that a man must be guided by the
will of a conscious, personal God in the sky as it is interpreted by the
kings and priests, presidents and preachers on earth.
You will note that I am not contending for the liberty to live without
reference to an external authority. If this were my contention you would
rightly insist (as some among my friends do) that I am an atheist in
religion and an anarchist in politics; but I am neither, for I recognize
the fact that I must live with reference to the existence of an external
authority, matter-force law, and there is no other, upon which anything
good in religion or politics is dependent.
No one is an atheist in religion, an anarchist in politics or anything
bad, who, in the physical realm of life, tries to live with reference to
the law of nature, and who, in the moral realm of life, tries to live
with reference to a truth which is that law humanely interpreted by
himself in accordance with his own experience, observation,
investigation and reason. In the nature of things, the interpretation
cannot be by some one else, because one man cannot live the moral life
on another's ideals any more than he can live the physical life on
another's meals.
Since this is the case, it follows that the whole conception of a law
which is willed by a god and revealed or formulated by his
representatives (prophets, kings, priests, legislators) to which a man
must have reference, if he would live the moral life, is, at best, a
harmless fiction and at worst a hurtful superstition.
There is no one (man or god) with whom people can stand in the moral
realm except themselves alone, and if they are not within this realm
they are not men and women.
Manhood is dependent upon standing alone with matter-force nature and
with human reason, and it is manhood which really counts everywhere in
the social realm, for without manhood one is nothing anywhere in that
realm.
Nature is my God. The gods of the several supernaturalistic
interpretations of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) are so many
symbols of this divinity. The words of this God are the facts of nature.
My religion and politics, worship and patriotism consist in a desire and
effort to discover these facts and to interpret and live them humanely.
My God, Nature, is a triune divinity--matter being the Father, force the
Son, and law the Spirit.
Nature is the sum of the matter-force-law phenomena of which the
universe is constituted. Man with his barbarism and civilization is but
one among such phenomena, on a level with the rest, as to his beginning
and ending, and as to the dependence of his life and its fullness upon
conformity to the matter-force law, without necessary or, indeed,
possible reference to any divine-human system of laws as set forth by a
catholic or protestant church or by an imperialistic or democratic
state.
Unless states and churches persuade, encourage and help man to more
fully discover, more correctly interpret and more perfectly live the
matter-force law they are worthless; and indeed worse, if in the long
run and on the whole they hinder him; and undoubtedly they have done
this in the case of the slave class--a class which, ever since the rise
of private property in the means of producing the necessities of life,
has comprehended the vast majority of the human race.
Whether then man is barbarous or civilized is really and truly, wholly
and entirely a question of the knowledge of and conformity to the
matter-force law, that is, of whether or not the articles of his
religious creed and political code are so many ideal embodiments and
practical interpretations of facts or realities as they are revealed by
the doings of my god, Nature.
There is no other creed, belief in the articles of which, and there is
no other code, obedience to the articles of which, will advance mankind,
individually or collectively, so much as one step in the long, rugged
and steep way towards the goal of a perfect civilization--a civilization
which will secure to every man, woman and child the greatest of possible
opportunities to make the most of life that is within the range of
possibilities.
My god, Nature (the triune divinity, matter-force-motion) the doings of
which god are so many words of the only gospel upon which the salvation
of the world is to any degree dependent, is an impersonal, unconscious,
non-moral being.
For me, this god, Nature, rises into personality, consciousness and
morality in myself, and in no other does nature do this for me, though
what is true of me is of course equally so of every representative of
mankind.
Jesus (either as an historical or dramatic personage, and it does not
matter which he was) said, "I and my Father (god) are one," and in
saying this he gave expression in one form to the most revolutionary and
salutary of all truths. The other form of the same truth as taught by
Darwin and Marx is: man has all the potentialities of his own life
within himself. Every representative of the human race can and should
say with Jesus, "I and my Father, God, are one."
Stop man! where dost thou run?
Heav'n lies within thy heart,
If thou seek'st God elsewhere
Misled, in truth, thou art.
--Angelus Silensius.
This truth constitutes the most ennobling and inspiring part of man's
knowledge, and it was naturally discovered by him, not supernaturally
revealed to him. It is the foundation of socialism and the justification
of optimism.
The universe moves, with all that therein is. The vanguard of mankind is
moving to a viewpoint from which rapidly increasing numbers will see
that a revolution which is necessary on the part of a slave to free
himself from a master is not only justified but required by the great,
first law of the biological realm, the law of self-preservation--a
nature-made law on behalf of freedom. This nature-made law will
ultimately nullify all class laws, every law which is in favor of the
enslaving capitalist class and against the enslaved labor class.
Every state with its executive, legislative, judiciary, military and
educative systems is founded on capitalism. Since this is the case and
since human nature is what it is, all political institutions, the
American with the rest, are of the capitalist, by the capitalist, for
the capitalist, and each to the end that the capitalist may keep the
laborer in poverty and slavery.
Every modern church with its ministry, bible, creed, heaven and hell is
founded on capitalism. Since this is the case, and since human nature is
what it is, all religious institutions, the Christian with the rest, are
of the capitalist, by the capitalist, for the capitalist and each to the
end that the capitalist may keep the laborer in ignorance and slavery.
Whether Jesus was an historical or a dramatic person, the morality
involved in his trial, condemnation and execution is the same. Assuming
the historicity, he was put to death by Pilate because a class of the
people said: We have a law and by it, according to its official
interpretation, he should die. The Governor, finding that the legal
enactment and the judicial decision were in accordance with the
representation of the Jews, turned Jesus over to the executioners for
crucifixion, and the world condemns him because he knew that the law was
the embodiment of a fiction instead of a truth, because he interpreted
it in the interest of a sect instead of a people, and because he basely
acted with reference to his own political interests without regard to
justice for an heroic but helpless champion of slaves in their struggle
against the masters.
Philosophic anarchy differs by the space of the whole heavens from
practical anarchy, and it is the latter that I always have in mind. The
great essential of philosophic anarchy is individualistic freedom. The
great essential of practical anarchy is imperialistic slavery.
Capitalism is the outstanding, overshadowing imperialist, the father of
all the kaisers by which the world has been cursed, not only of the
terrestrial ones such as Wilhelm II, Nicholas II, Woodrow I, but also of
the celestial ones such as Jehovah, Allah, Buddha.
The occupants of regal thrones have no more responsibility for the
existence of imperialism than those of presidential chairs, nor they any
more than I, and I have none. The truth is that the responsibility for
this blight of all the ages is now at last, if indeed it has not always
been, wholly with the representatives of the working class. They have
the great majority in numbers and all of the revolutionary incentives
and power; therefore they, and only they can do away with imperialism,
and they can rid themselves of it whenever they choose. Prince
Kropotkin, the philosophic anarchist, a great soul, would agree to this
representation, for he says:
The working men of the civilized world and their friends in the
other classes ought to induce their Governments entirely to abandon
the idea of armed intervention in the affairs of Russia--whether
open or disguised, whether military or in the shape of subventions
to different nations.
Russia is now living through a revolution of the same depth and the
same importance as the British nation underwent in 1639-1648 and
France in 1789-1794; and every nation should refuse to play the
shameful part that Great Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia
played during the French Revolution.
Since death ends all of consciousness, the most inhuman of all
inhumanities and the most immoral of all immoralities is the shortening
of human life; and next to it is the diminishing of its happiness.
War shortens many lives and fills more with misery; hence its essential
inhumanity and immorality.
A large part of the world has just passed through the furnace of war--a
war between the German and English nations with their respective
national allies. All international wars are contests for supremacy in
the markets of the world, or at least for advantage in some among them.
This one was no exception.
The furnace of this war was seven times larger and seven times hotter
than any other has been. According to the latest estimates (September,
1920) its fierce flames directly and indirectly killed thirty million
young men and wrecked totally twice and partially thrice as many more.
Yet the fire by which the world upon the whole and in the long run
suffers most is not the intermittent, flaming one of the hell of
international war, which is always kindled and sustained by the
capitalists of the belligerent nations for the purpose solely of
securing commercial advantages over each other; but the greater
suffering is by the permanent, smoking fire of the hell of the
inter-class war which is always kindled and sustained by the capitalist
class in each nation for the purpose solely of robbing the labor class
of the fruit of their toil.
These national and class wars (hells, flaming and smouldering) are due
to the same matter-force law, the law of self-preservation, and,
paradoxical as it may seem, this law is equally operative on both sides
in each war.
Both hells exist as the result of the working out of the same law of
animal preservation by competition--the law of capitalism, and both
hells will be done away with as the result of the working out of the
same law of human preservation by co-operation--the law of socialism.
One proof of the rightness of the co-operative system is the fact that
it necessarily operates for the whole people and not for a class,
whereas the competitive system as necessarily operates for a class and
not for the whole people.
Still another proof, and it is in itself almost if not quite conclusive,
of the rightness of the co-operative system is the fact that its
competitive rival breaks down in every great emergency. It broke down
completely in all the belligerent countries (in none more than the
United States) immediately upon their entrance into the world war. Our
government was obliged to assume control of the railroads, coal mines
and food products.
If a class government, such as ours is, can provide during a war by the
co-operative system, and only by it, for the wants of a country, and
better, too, than during the time of peace, what may we expect in the
way of plenty, comfort and leisure, when under the classless
administration there shall be no more war with its wholesale waste, and
when there shall be one vast army of producers?
All the days which the fifty millions of soldiers spent in idleness will
then be so many holidays for toilers who are in need of them for rest
and self-improvement; and every dollar which is now wasted will then be
two dollars saved, so that the pecuniary prosperity of war times will be
increased, rather than diminished, and made continuous. Under a
classless administration the world would soon become comparatively rich
and happy.[H]
Representatives of the capitalist class are trying to create the
impression that the co-operative system which our government temporarily
established as a military necessity is socialism, and that the labor
class should seek no more than its restoration and continuance: but this
system is the same old wolf in sheep's clothing.
The rickety house in which we are living is a competitive structure and
it cannot be made into a co-operative one, at least not upon its present
foundation, the sand of capitalistic classism. Industrialism must take
it down and rebuild it upon the rock of classless labor. Neither this
demolition nor this reconstruction constitutes any part of the
government program. Its socialism is a mirage, not a reality, and the
matter-force law renders it necessarily so.
Marxian socialism is simplicity itself. It requires only three
conditions, each of which is perfectly intelligible; but no one of them
ever has existed or could exist under any capitalist government, because
all such governments, not excepting our own, especially not it, are
organized in the interest of parasitic profiteers, not productive
laborers. The three indispensable yet simple prerequisites to this real
socialism or communism are:
First, that the people within a municipality, either town or city,
own and control the utilities within the area occupied by that
municipality, which have to do with the immediate comfort of the
people who live there.
Second, that the people in each state own and control the utilities
that come in contact with the people on a state-wide scale.
Third, that the people within the nation own collectively and
control democratically the utilities which affect us on a national
scale.
Should we desire to go into more detail, we might say that the
things necessary to the individual be owned and controlled by the
individual, that the home be controlled by the family, and so on.
To go into the question on an international scale we might also add
that utilities mutually necessary to all the nations be owned by
the nations, as the Panama Canal, for instance.--Higgins.
Prince Kropotkin, though not a bolshevik, says approvingly of the
Russian revolution that it is trying to build up a society where the
whole produce of the joint efforts of labor by technical skill and
scientific knowledge should go entirely to the commonwealth; and he
declares that for the unavoidable reconstruction of society, by pacific
or any other revolutionary means, there must be a union of all the trade
unions of the world to free the production of the world from its present
enslavement to capitalism.
Higgins and Kropotkin have here put co-operative socialism or communism
in a nutshell both as to its aim and program.
The law of self-preservation is ever the same, but whether its salvation
is for a part of the people by competition--capitalist salvation, or for
the whole people by co-operation--socialist salvation, depends upon
whether it rides or is ridden.
So long as the law of self-preservation was supposed to be the will of a
conscious, personal god whose earthly representatives were kings and
priests or presidents and preachers, the law did the riding within the
large domain of animal competition--the domain of capitalism. War is the
normal, indeed necessary evil of this domain, and hence the world must
have wars so long as it remains within it, and it will remain there so
long as it has celestial divinities with terrestrial representatives in
states and churches for its governors.
Now that the law is known to be a matter-force necessity, not a divine
decree, the time may rationally be hoped for when the people will do the
riding within the small domain of human co-operation--the domain of
socialism. Peace is the normal, indeed necessary, state of this domain,
and hence the world must cease to have war when it enters it, and is
governed by itself instead of by a god and the powers of state and
church alleged to have been ordained by him.
Capital punishment should not be administered, if at all, except to a
murderer whose guilt has been established to the satisfaction of the
great majority of the people in the community to which he belongs, and
never in the case of a suspected murderer of whom this is not true.
If William II were really the devil behind the European war by which
many millions of the young men of the world have lost their lives, and
if Thomas Mooney were really the devil behind the San Francisco
explosion by which ten citizens of California lost their lives, their
punishment by death might be urged with much show of reason as a social
necessity. But if both were hung on the same gallows the world would go
on suffering by the ever recurring and closely related misfortunes of
war and riot as if nothing had happened. The real devil behind all wars
and riots is the capitalist system. There will never be an end of wars
and riots until this devil is overthrown.
The so-called Kaiser-war and the so-called Mooney riot are on the same
footing, both having the character of an insurrection and both having
the aim of self-preservation. The insurrection of the Kaiser was a riot
on behalf of the capitalist class of Germany and for the purpose of
protecting it against the capitalist class of England. The insurrection
of Mooney (assuming his guilt, merely for illustration) was a riot on
behalf of the labor class of California and for the purpose of
protecting it against the capitalist class of that state.
Incidentally, both riots have secondary aims of world-wide extent. The
Kaiser had two of these: to overthrow the commercial supremacy of
England that Germany might have it, and to overthrow industrial
republicanism (socialism) everywhere. Mooney had this: the overthrow of
commercial imperialism (capitalism) everywhere.
As rioters, there is this in common between Kaiser William and Thomas
Mooney, that though moving in opposite directions, they are nevertheless
carried by the same matter-force law which manifests itself in the same
riotous system, capitalism--a system which, under one form or another,
has ever produced international wars and class revolutions; and, so long
as it is allowed to exist, never will cease the production of them.
Hence the interests of the world require not that these rioters, Kaiser
William and Thomas Mooney, should be hung, but that the capitalist
system, which by the operation of the law of self-preservation by animal
competitions, produced both of the riots with which they are
respectively credited, should be overthrown by the labor system, which,
by the operation of the same law of self-preservation by human
co-operation, will put an end to all bloody conflicts.
But taking the popular view concerning the responsibility for this
commercial war and labor riot and assuming that they should be charged
respectively to Kaiser William and Thomas Mooney, why should the
promoter of the little riot die, or worse, suffer imprisonment during
life, and the promoter of the big war live?
Yet, if the Kaiser were captured even by England there is no probability
that he would be turned over to a court constituted of representatives
of the allied nations, tried, found guilty and put to death. Why not?
Because, like all wars, his war, no matter which side won the victory,
has been upon the whole, or will be in the long run, in the interest of
the capitalists of every nation on both sides, at least of the great
ones.
If Kaiser William would not be sent to the gallows by such a court why
should the court which tried Thomas Mooney be allowed to send him to it;
and, especially why, since California is part of a republic, and the
Kaiser's war was on behalf of imperialism and a small minority, while
Mooney's riot was on behalf of republicanism and the overwhelming
majority?
Just now the human part of the world is especially afflicted by
unnecessary and therefore unjustifiable deaths. The Governor of
California has the opportunity to prevent one such death. I say to him,
do it. In the name of Justice and in the name of Humanity, I with
millions of others solemnly call upon him to save Mooney, the
revolutionist, as Pilate, the Governor of Judea, according to the
verdict of all right-thinking men and women, should have saved Jesus,
the revolutionist.
III.
You say in effect that we must postulate a divine consciousness to
account for human consciousness; but, on your theory, how could human
consciousness come out of a divine consciousness; and, anyhow, contrary
to your implication, we know of no consciousness which has come, except
by inheritance, from another consciousness, but only of consciousnesses
which have come from unconsciousnesses.
Your contention, in this connection, is to the effect that nothing can
come out of nothing, and this is the core of a book, "A Short Apology
for Being a Christian in the Twentieth Century," by the learned
ex-president of Trinity College, Hartford, Dr. Williamson Smith, with
whom you have had, I think, some correspondence.
This Apology was written against a letter of mine to the House of
Bishops, entitled, "A Natural Gospel for a Scientific Age," which has
never seen the light, partly because the ex-President convinced me that
if I must give up the orthodox conception of God, I could not hold to
the one which I had worked out in the letter.
If you have not seen the ex-President's book, you will, I am sure, enjoy
it more than I did, but I doubt whether you will profit as much by it,
for it verges towards your lines and away from mine; and so it set me to
studying as it will not you, with the result of rejecting the new
conception of God which I had worked out for myself, but with it I threw
over the old one and ceased to believe in the existence of a conscious,
personal divinity. Of course, my faith in the existence of a spiritual
world and hope for a future life in it went with the god.
Dr. Williamson Smith and you are entirely correct in the contention that
something cannot come out of nothing: but I no longer pretend that it
can and I now see that the stones which have been thrown at me by you
both and others have come from glass houses; for this is really the
pretension of orthodox theologians. They affirm that the universe was
created by God out of nothing, but produce no scrap of evidence for His
existence, and even if they could prove that He exists, they would have
to admit that He came out of nothing, or at least from something which
did so.
It is indeed true that I am unable to tell what matter, force and motion
came from, or if I agree with most physicists that they arose from
ether, I cannot give its derivative; but, granting that I am as
incapable of proving their existence as you are of proving the existence
of the Christian trinity, nevertheless I have this immense advantage
over you, that I can prove that everything both physical and psychical
(including man and his civilization) entering into the constitution of
the universe, lives, moves and has its being in my divine
trinity--matter, force and motion: whereas you cannot prove that
anything is indebted for what it is to your divine trinity--Father, Son
and Spirit: therefore I insist that your trinity is a symbol of mine.
What is true of the Christian trinity is true of all the divinities of
the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion. The Jews live with no
reference to the Christian God, or at least not with any to his second
and third persons, and neither Christians nor Jews do so in the case of
either the Mohammedan or Buddhistic divinity, and so on, all around the
whole circle of gods.
But no representative of any god lives without constant reference to
mine, of which yours and all the others are, as I think, symbols, if
they are anything better than fetishes.
If you and ex-President Smith mean by your fundamental thesis, that a
thing which is essentially different from that from which it came is an
impossibility, you are certainly wrong, for the world is full of such
things. In the tree of life there are millions of examples, since (using
language in its general significance) everything above the amoeba must
be regarded as essentially different from it, though all, including man,
came out of it.
Going back as far as we safely can on solid ground, we come to the
nebulae from which the solar systems of the universe have evolved, and
surely a solar system is as essentially different from the nebula as a
man is from an amoeba. Coming to our earth when its primeval, flaming,
swirling gases had been condensed into inorganic matter, the protoplasm
which is organic matter, arose from it, and so something which grows
from within out, comes from something which grows from without in.
The large hoofed horse came from a small five-toed animal, not much
larger than a rabbit. The piano and the gun are brother and sister, born
of the bow and arrow, yet how different the children from the parent.
An infant is unconscious at birth and what it has of consciousness as a
child and an adult is dependent upon the development of its body.
Moreover, as the human body is a development through animal bodies, we
may logically conclude that human consciousness is ultimately dependent
upon and inherited from animal consciousness rather than a divine one.
Jesus is represented as saying that God is a spirit; and the fathers of
the English part of the Christian reformation said that there is but one
living and true God without body, parts or passions. This is their
explanation of his conception of God.
When the Jesuine definition of God and the Anglican explanation of it
were framed, the Divine Spirit was supposed to be an objective
personality.
Modern psychology teaches that no spirit, divine, human or otherwise, is
a personality. According to this science, spirit and soul are synonyms
for the subjective content of a conscious life, which content consists
of feelings, aspirations, ideals, convictions and determinations.
Psychologists know of no spirit or soul without a body constituted of
parts any more than physicists know of a force without matter
constituted of molecules, atoms, electrons and ions.
Gods represent the religious ideals of people and are symbols of what
they think they should be as religionists. They are symbolic,
emblematic, parabolic, allegoric devices of the imagination, and contain
nothing but the ideal, imaginary things which are put into them by
people for themselves, and they do nothing except what the people
perform through them in their names for themselves.
Matter and force constitute a machine, an automatic one, which produces
things, everything which enters into the constitution of the cosmos, by
evolutionary processes, or rather all such things, and there are no
others, are the result of one universal and eternal process of
evolution.
What is known as nature is the aggregation of the products of this
machine by this process. The machine is unconscious and its workings are
mechanical, yet some of its products rise into self-consciousness with
the power of self-determination, but both the consciousness and the
determination are limited. The infinite consciousness, personality and
determination which are postulated of gods are contradictions.
Of all beings man possesses most of consciousness, personality and
determination. What he has of these is not dependent upon gods, but all
they have of them is dependent upon him. Divine beings are, as to their
self-consciousness, personality and determination, human beings
personified and placed in the sky. Man does everything for gods. They do
nothing for him.
Such are the facts and arguments based upon them, which have forced me
step by step over the long way from the position of supernaturalistic
traditionalism in its Christian form, still occupied by you, to that of
naturalistic scientism in its socialist form which I am now occupying,
as tentatively as possible, pending further study in the light of
additional facts, for which (some six years ago, when I was desperately
battling to prevent the shipwreck of my faith in the god and heaven of
orthodox Christianity) I appealed to about 800 outstanding theologians,
among them yourself, representing all parts of christendom and every
great church, including of course all our bishops among the theologians,
and the Anglican communion among the churches.
You may remember how much of correspondence we had at that time, though
neither you nor any one who kindly tried to reach me with the rope of
the new scientific apologetics for which I appealed, can realize how
eagerly I looked for the replies to my questions, nor the sickness of
heart which I experienced when I saw that, in spite of every possible
effort of my own and help of others, I was slowly but surely drifting
towards what I then thought to be the fatal whirlpools and rocks, but
what I now regard as a sheltered port--the golden gate of that
delectable country, Marxian socialism, the only heaven that I am now
hoping to behold.
You earnestly contend that I am wrong in representing that the majority
of outstanding men of science and scientific philosophers do not believe
in the existence of a conscious, personal divinity, who created,
sustains and governs the universe, or in a conscious, personal life for
man beyond the grave, and that none among such scientists and
philosophers are orthodox Christians.
Prof. Leuba, the Bryn Mawr psychologist, is one among my authorities for
these representations. In his "Belief in God and Immortality" (1916) he
exhibits the results of a recent and thorough-going investigation in a
chart from which it appears that, taking the greater and lesser
representatives of the scientists together, they fall below 50 per cent
as to their belief in God, and below 55 per cent in their belief in
immortality.[I]
The showing for the scientists who are especially concerned with the
origin and destiny of life, biologists and psychologists, is much less
favorable to you; for, taking the greater and lesser together, only 31
per cent of the biologists believe in God and 35 per cent in
immortality; and only 25 per cent of the psychologists believe in God,
and 20 per cent in immortality.
But the worst by far, is yet to come; for, taking the greater biologists
and psychologists, those who count most, of the former 18 per cent
believe in God, and 25 per cent in immortality; and of the latter, the
greatest of all authorities, only 13 per cent believe in God, and only 8
per cent in immortality.
The greater psychologists are comparatively consistent in that fewer
among them believe in a conscious, personal life for humanity beyond the
grave than in the conscious, personal life of divinity beyond the
clouds. Human immortality is an absurdity without divine existence. The
overwhelming majority of great psychologists (the greatest of all
authorities, as to whether or not gods "without bodies, parts or
passions" can consciously exist in the skies, and disembodied men, women
and children in celestial paradises) see this and limit the career of
man to earth. In their judgment his heaven and hell are here, and the
gods who make and the devils who unmake civilizations are humans, not
good or bad divinities.
This is the conclusion of a rapidly increasing number of educated
people. A century ago only a few men of science and scientific
philosophers had reached it, not twenty five per cent, but now the
percentage is nearly ninety and it will soon be ninety-nine. The time is
coming, and in the not distant future, when no educated man shall look
to the god of any supernaturalistic interpretation of religion for light
or strength, and when none shall hope for a heaven above the earth or
fear a hell below it.
Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire.
--Omar.
Joseph McCabe and Chapman Cohen are among the most brilliant of present
day writers on scientific and philosophic subjects. They are not
socialists, but both see that modern socialism and orthodox Christianism
are utterly irreconcilable incompatibilities.
"How is it that on the Continent democratic bodies are so
sceptical, or sceptical bodies so democratic? Precisely because
they doubt (or reject altogether) the Christian heaven. They want
to make this earth as happy as it can be, to make sure of happiness
somewhere. Having taken their eyes from the sky, they have
discovered remarkable possibilities in the earth. Having to give
less time to God, they have more time to give to man. They think
less about their heavenly home, and more about their earthly home.
The earthly home has grown very much brighter for the change. The
heavenly home is just where it was.
"The plain truth is, of course, that the sentiment which used to be
absorbed in religion is now embodied in humanitarianism. Religion
is slowly dying everywhere. Social idealism is growing everywhere.
People who want to persuade us that social idealism depends on
religion are puzzled by this. It is only because they are
obstinately determined to connect everything with Christianity, in
spite of its historical record. There is no puzzle. We have
transferred our emotions from God to man, from heaven to
earth."--Joseph McCabe.
"Socialists who have one eye on the ballot box may assure these
people that Socialism is not Atheistic, but few will be convinced.
The statement that Socialism has nothing to do with religion, or
that many professedly religious people are Socialist, is quite
futile. A thoughtful religionist would reply that the first point
concedes the truth of all that has been said against Socialism,
while the second evades the question at issue. No one is specially
concerned with the mental idiosyncracies of individual Socialists;
what is at issue is the question whether Socialism does or does not
take an Atheistic view of life? He might add, too, that a Socialism
which leaves out the belief in God and a future life, which does
not, in even the remotest manner, imply these beliefs, which does
not make their acceptance the condition of holding the meanest
office in the State, and, at most, will merely allow religious
beliefs to exist so long as they do not threaten the well-being of
the State, is, to all intents and purposes, an Atheistical
system."--Chapman Cohen.
In summing up the results of his investigations Prof. Leuba observes
that:
In every class of persons investigated, the number of believers in
God is less and in most classes very much less than the number of
non-believers, and that the number of believers in immortality is
somewhat larger than in a personal God; that among the more
distinguished, unbelief is very much more frequent than among the
less distinguished; and finally that not only the degree of
ability, but also the kind of knowledge possessed, is significantly
related to the rejection of these beliefs.
In another connection Prof. Leuba speaking of Christian dogmatism as a
whole says:
Christianity, as a system of belief, has utterly broken down, and
nothing definite, adequate, and convincing has taken its place.
There is no generally acknowledged authority; each one believes as
he can, and few seem disturbed at being unable to hold the tenets
of the churches. This sense of freedom is the glorious side of an
otherwise dangerous situation.
Your conception of the origin, sustenance and governance of the universe
is burdened, as are all interpretations of religion which are hinged
upon the existence of conscious, personal divinities, with two
difficulties: (1) its physical impossibility, and (2) its moral
impossibility.
1. Physical Impossibilities. The atomic and molecular movements required
for the thinking of a single man would be beyond the capacity of all the
gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion together.
Some idea of the number of such motions which are taking place in every
human brain, will be derived from the conservative representations of
Hofmeister as exhibited in the following condensed form by McCabe in his
book, "The Evolution of Mind:"
We have reason to believe that there are in each molecule of
ordinary protoplasm at least 450 atoms of carbon, 720 atoms of
hydrogen, 116 of nitrogen, 6 of sulphur, and 140 of oxygen.
Nerve-plasm is still more complex.
Recent discoveries have only increased the wonder and potentiality
of the cortex. Each atom has proved to be a remarkable
constellation of electrons, a colossal reservoir of energy. The
atom of hydrogen contains about 1,000 electrons, the atom of carbon
12,000, the atom of nitrogen 14,000, the atom of oxygen 16,000, and
the atom of sulphur 32,000. These electrons circulate within the
infinitesimal space of the atom at a speed of from 10,000 to 90,000
miles a second. It would take 340,000 barrels of powder to impart
to a bullet the speed with which some of these particles dart out
of their groups. A gramme of hydrogen--a very tiny portion of the
simplest gas--contains energy enough to lift a million tons more
than a hundred yards.
Of these astounding arsenals of energy, the atoms, we have, on the
lowest computation, at least 600 million billion in the cortex of
the human brain.
Scientists, says Professor Olerich, in his book, "A Modern Look at
the Universe," estimate that the chemical atom is so
infinitesimally small that it requires a group of not less than a
billion to make the group barely visible under the most powerful
microscope, and a thousand such groups would have to be put
together in order to make it just visible to the naked eye as a
mere speck floating in the sunbeam.
The microscope reveals innumerable animalcules in the hundredth
part of a drop of water. They all eat, digest, move and from all
appearances of their frolics, they are endowed with sensation and
ability of enjoyment. What then shall we say of the minuteness of
the food they eat; of the blood that surges through their veins; of
their nervous system that thrills and guides them? Their minutest
organs must be composed of molecules, atoms, ions and electrons
inconceivably smaller than are the organs themselves.
Is there any god in a celestial field who could care for the movements
which occur in the molecules constituting a hundredth part of a drop of
water, not to speak of those which occur in the bodies of its myriads of
inhabitants? And what shall we say of all the inorganic and organic
movements in a small cup of whole drops of water, let alone those of a
great ocean of them?
But why go further into this subject? Is not the utter childishness of
the orthodox representative of a supernaturalistic interpretation of
religion, who credits his god with the governance of the motions
occurring in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms of this globe,
leaving out of account those of its solar system, and of other systems
which constitute the universe, sufficiently manifest?
If you say that the motions which issue in the phenomena of the universe
are regulated by a law which was once for all willed by the god of the
Christian interpretation of religion, I ask why the law should be
credited to the willing of this god rather than to that of the god of
Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic interpretation.
Newton took the first of the six initiatory steps in the long way which
led to the conclusion that the universe is self-existing,
self-sustaining and self-governing, by showing that all the movements of
the solar systems were necessarily what they have been by reason of a
matter-force law, gravitation. This discovery is the most momentous
event in the whole history of mankind.
Laplace took the second step by showing that the cosmic nebulae contain
within themselves all the potentialities necessary to the formation of
solar systems.
Lavoisier took the third step by showing that the matter which enters
into the constitution of the universe is an eternality.
Mayer took the fourth step by showing that the force which enters into
the constitution of the universe is an eternality.
Darwin took the fifth step by showing that the protoplasm contains all
the potentialities of every form of physical and degree of psychical
life from the moneron to man; that all representatives of both the
vegetable and animal kingdoms, including man, are related and so on a
level as to their origin and destiny, and that the different species are
the natural results of the necessary struggle with rivals and with
adverse environments for existence.
Marx took the sixth step by showing that the essential difference
between humans and beasts is primarily a question of the hand and
secondarily of the machines by which its efficiency is immeasurably
increased; that slavery has been and must continue to be the means of
advancement towards the ideal civilization; that the kinds of human
slavery were what they have been because machines have been what they
were, and that the time is coming when the slaves will no longer be men,
women and children, but machines which will be exploited for the good of
the many, not the profit of the few--then, and not until then, rapid
advance shall be made towards the goal where the whole world shall be
one great co-operative family, every member of which shall have the
greatest of possible opportunities to make the most of terrestrial life
by having it as long and happy as possible.
2. Moral Impossibilities. The moral impossibility of the assumptions of
these apologies is seen by all who have eyes for seeing things as they
are in the fact that if God is credited with the good He must also be
debited with the evil. If for example, He endowed the human body with
its useful and necessary parts. He also endowed it with its harmful and
unnecessary parts.
Experts in the field of anatomy tell us that there are in our bodies at
least 180 useless parts, some among which are the occasion of much
suffering and many premature deaths, the vermiform appendix alone
causing many thousands of such cases annually.
Do you not see that these useless structures, all of which are inherited
from the lower animals, are so many evidences of the truth of Darwinism
and the untruthfulness of Mosaism? Eleven of these wholly useless and
more or less harmful inheritances have been of no use to any of our
ancestors from the fish up and four are inherited from our reptilian and
amphibian forefathers, but according to Moses we have no such
progenitors.
Admitting the fact of the existence of evil there is no escaping from
the logical conclusions of dear, old sensible Epicurus:
Either God is willing to remove evil from this world and cannot, or
he can and is not willing, or finally he can and is willing. If he
is willing and cannot, it is impotence, which is contrary to the
nature of God. If he can and is unwilling, it is wickedness, and
that is no less contrary to the nature of God. If he is not willing
and cannot, there is both wickedness and impotence. If he is
willing and can, which is the only one of these suppositions that
can be applied to God, how happens it that there is evil on earth?
Oh, if only the world had been influenced by this logic instead of by
the metaphysics of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, it
would have been so far on the way towards the ideal civilization as to
have long since passed the point where it would have been possible to
have the world war which has recently deluged the earth with blood and
tears, or to make the Versailles treaty which is destined to issue in
one war after another, ever filling the world fuller with the tyranny,
poverty, slavery and misery which are the inevitable concomitants of all
wars.
In my opinion the fascinating essayist, Mallock, has written the best of
all apologies for theism. I cannot imagine a better one. He, however,
makes no more attempt than Sir Oliver Lodge does to establish
Christianity, or any other supernaturalistic interpretations of
religion. Like Kant and yourself, Mallock takes his stand on the ground
that a belief in a celestial God, and in the immortality which goes with
it, is necessary to morality, the basic virtue upon which civilization
rests. As Kant admits that the existence of God cannot be inferred from
pure reason, so Mallock admits and even strongly contends that it cannot
be established on scientific grounds. I quote a striking passage:
We must divest ourselves of all foregone conclusions, of all
question-begging reverences, and look the facts of the universe
steadily in the face.
If theists will but do this, what they will see will astonish them.
They will see that if there is anything at the back of this vast
process, with a consciousness and a purpose in any way resembling
our own--a Being who knows what he wants and is doing his best to
get it--he is, instead of a holy and all-wise God, a
scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi-impotent monster. They will
recognize as clearly as they ever did the old familiar facts which
seemed to them evidences of God's wisdom, love and goodness; but
they will find that these facts, when taken in connection with the
others, only supply us with a standard in the nature of this being
himself by which most of his acts are exhibited to us as those of a
criminal madman. If he had been blind, he had not had sin; but if
we maintain that he can see, then his sin remains. Habitually a
bungler as he is, and callous when not actively cruel, we are
forced to regard him, when he seems to exhibit benevolence, as not
divinely benevolent, but merely weak and capricious, like a boy who
fondles a kitten and the next moment sets a dog at it. And not only
does his moral character fall from him bit by bit, but his dignity
disappears also. The orderly processes of the stars and the larger
phenomena of nature are suggestive of nothing so much as a
wearisome court ceremonial surrounding a king who is unable to
understand or to break away from it; whilst the thunder and
whirlwind, which have from time immemorial been accepted as special
revelations of his awful power and majesty, suggest, if they
suggest anything of a personal character at all, merely some
blackguardly larrikin kicking his heels in the clouds, not perhaps
bent on mischief, but indifferent to the fact that he is causing
it.
But we need not attempt to fill in the picture further. The truth
is, as we consider the universe as a whole, it fails to suggest a
conscious and purposive God at all; and it fails to do so not
because the processes of evolution as such preclude the idea that
God might have made use of them for a definite purpose, but because
when we come to consider these processes in detail, and view them
in the light of the only purposes they suggest, we find them to be
such that a God who could deliberately have been guilty of them
would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible.
The god who had any part in bringing upon the world the English-German
war, the Versailles peace, the Russian blockade, is for me a devil not a
divinity. If you say that the Christian god had nothing to do with
them, I reply that these are among the greatest of all curses wherewith
mankind has been afflicted in modern times; and if he could not or would
not prevent them, what ground is there for looking to him for help in
any time of need?
How can I adequately express my contempt for the assertion that all
things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end? It is the
most utter falsehood, and a crime against the human race.... Human
suffering is so great, so endless, so awful, that I can hardly
write of it.... The whole and the worst, the worst pessimist can
say is far beneath the least particle of the truth.... Anyone who
will consider the affairs of the world at large ... will see that
they do not proceed in the manner they would do for our happiness
if a man of humane breadth of view were placed at their head with
unlimited power. A man of intellect and humanity could cause
everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner. But that
which is ... credited to a non-existent intelligence (or cosmic
"order," it is just the same) should really be claimed and
exercised by the human race. We must do for ourselves what
superstition has hitherto supposed an intelligence to do for
us.--Richard Jeffries.
Would but some winged Angel ere too late
Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise
Enregister, or quite obliterate!
Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Remold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
--Omar.
You frequently intimate that my doctrine concerning the origin and
destiny of the universe with all that therein is, including man, is not
that of the majority of men of science and scientific philosophers, but
that yours is. It will therefore be of interest to you to know that I
have submitted the most radical of my materialistic pieces to three men
of science, all great authorities, one of whom replied, that he was in
substantial agreement with me, but thought me to be 400 years ahead of
our time; another, that he found nothing to criticize unless it might be
my failure to give greater prominence to the fact that the gods of the
redemptive interpretations, of religion were so many versions of the
sun-myth, and the other, that the essay would pass any world congress of
scientists by a large majority.
You think that I am wrong in quoting Newton and Darwin on my side,
because they believed in the existence of a conscious, personal god. I
am persuaded that such was not the case with Darwin at his death; but,
however this may be, it is in neither of these cases, nor in that of any
other scientist, a question of what he philosophically believed
concerning a god, but of what he scientifically established as a fact.
Newton established the fact that the movements of the stars in their
courses are naturally regulated by the law of gravitation, not
supernaturally by the will of a god.
Darwin established the fact that all living species of animal and
vegetable life exist as the natural results of evolutionary processes,
not as the supernatural results of creative acts.
If Newton were to stand by his theological writings, he would fall in
your estimation, for his work on the book of Daniel would be regarded by
you as an absurdity. He considered Daniel to be the great revelation of
a God, Jehovah, but you know it to be the purest fiction of a man, quite
as much the work of the imagination of its author as Don Quixote is that
of Cervantes.
Among the many theological authorities whom you quote against me, the
greatest, in my estimation, is Dr. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, London,
whose utterances I have been noting with great interest of late; partly,
no doubt, because he seems to be giving up your orthodox side and coming
over, slowly but surely, to my heterodox one. In a London paper which
has just reached me, the Literary Guide, this is said of the Dean:
The theological opinions of Dean Inge, one of the official
mouthpieces of the Church of England, and probably the most
distinguished spokesman for the more liberally minded of the
clergy, have now reached an interesting stage, both for those
without the Church as well as for those within it. Although he does
not feel called upon to state his own private conclusions on such
debatable questions, he no longer regards the doctrines of the
Immaculate Conception and the Bodily Resurrection as essential
prerequisites of Christianity and would consider fit for ordination
any candidate who rejected them, provided such a person still
acknowledged the divine nature of Jesus Christ--that is, he would
not exclude him from the Church's ministry.
If I understand Dean Inge as he is reported in the article of which this
is the opening paragraph, he bases his faith in the divinity of Jesus
upon the uniqueness of his character and teachings, not on the
miraculousness of his birth and healings.
But Dean Inge has no authentic or reliable account of the life and
teachings of Jesus; and so, as a theologian, like all theologians, he
lives, moves and has his being in the realm of fiction, the difference
between him and yourself being that he is in that part of it where the
imagination sits enthroned, and you in the region where metaphysics is
monarch of all it surveys.
An outstanding theologian who, as it seems to me, overshadows Dean Inge,
commenting upon a piece of my writing which is quite as radical as any
part of this letter goes even further than he.
"I have," he says, "just read the Chapter of your Natural Gospel
for a Scientific Age, which you have kindly sent me, with the
greatest interest. Indeed I have come so heartily to share your
point of view that I can find no points for criticism; I can only
say how grateful I am to have had an opportunity of seeing your
uncompromising and clear expression of the only kind of Modernism
that has any promise for the future. I am beginning to feel more
and more uncomfortable in our Christian movement because so many of
our leaders here are attempting an impossible compromise with
dogma. Men like Dr. Rashdall have no place in the movement for men
who cannot accept their 'fullblooded theism.' In fact they are
Harnackians with their one or two unalterably fixed dogmas."
IV.
If you ask why I continue to be a member of an orthodox church and its
ministry, the answer is, there is no reason why I should not for (if
they may be interpreted by myself, for myself, spiritually) I accept
every article of the creed of catholic orthodoxy; but if the articles of
this creed must be interpreted literally there is no one in our church
(the Episcopal) or in any among the churches, who believes all of them.
For example, who believes, that God created the heavens and the earth
out of nothing in six days, as he is represented to have done in his
alleged revelation of which the creed is a condensation? All in this
church, or at least all the ministers of it, who have obeyed its
requirement respecting the devotion of themselves to study, as I have,
know that the firmament or heaven of which the revelation speaks has no
substantial existence, only an imaginary one. What was supposed to be
it, is but the reflection of light upon the dust of the atmosphere. As
for the earth it was not made out of nothing; and, indeed, it was not
supernaturally made at all but naturally evolutionized out of matter and
force, and even they were not created by a god, for they are co-existing
eternalities; nor were their evolutionary processes directed by him, for
they have eternally, automatically and necessarily co-operated in such
processes to the production of every phenomenon which has contributed to
make both the physical and psychical parts of the universe what they
have been at any time, including the divine, diabolical and angelic
fictions which men have made and placed above and below the earth.
If you ask whether I am still a professing Christian, I will answer:
yes, yet the Brother Jesus of the New Testament, catholic creed and
protestant confessions, is not for me an historical personage, but only
a symbol of all that is for the good of the world, even as the Uncle Sam
of American literature is not an historical personage but only a symbol
of all which is for the good of the United States.
If you ask whether I am a praying Christian, I shall answer: yes, yet
when I pray, as I do every day, my prayer is an appeal to a real
divinity within my heart, the better self, of which self all the unreal
divinities in the skies including the Christian trinity, Father, Son and
Spirit, are but poetic symbols, and I no longer expect this God to
answer otherwise than the symbol of parents, Santa Claus, answers the
prayers of children, or the symbol of the United States, Uncle Sam,
answers the prayers of Americans.
If you ask whether I am a communing Christian, I shall answer: yes, yet
when I go to the Lord's Supper, as I do every month, the strength which
I receive is derived from the feeling that through it I place myself in
communion with my human brethren on earth, not with a divine brother in
the sky, particularly with the members of my church and the citizens of
my town and its neighborhood, but generally with all men, women and
children throughout the whole world, of which real brethren the brother
god in the sky, Jesus, is but a poetic symbol; nor do I now regard the
communion of this supper as being essentially different from that of any
ordinary family-meal, lodge-banquet, or socialist-picnic, with each of
which repasts the informal Lord's Supper of the apostolic church had
much more in common than it has with the formal celebrations of the
sacrament in any among the sectarian churches.[J]
Many critics represent that, in view of the changes in my theological
opinion, if I am an honest man, not a hypocrite, I will leave the
ministry and communion of the Episcopal Church. But why should I go
while any of my brother clergymen remain? I give a symbolic or
allegorical interpretation to every article of the whole system of
Christian supernaturalism and uniqueism; yet as symbols, allegories,
parables, or myths, I do not reject any, and no member of our House of
Bishops literally accepts all.
Who among influential preachers of any rank in any church believes: (1)
that the world was made about six thousand years ago by a personal,
Creator-God out of nothing; or that it was made at any time out of
anything? (2) that such a God formed Adam out of dust and Eve out of a
rib; that they left His hands as perfect physical and moral images of
Himself, and fully civilized representatives of the human race; or that
there was any first man and woman? (3) that He planted a Garden of Eden
and placed them therein under ideal conditions, and that He walked in it
and talked with them; or that there ever was any such garden? (4) that a
personal destroyer-Devil, incarnated in a talking serpent, tempted them
into disobedience; or that there ever was any such Devil? (5) that but
for this Devil's influence and their sin, labor and suffering, physical
death and moral degradation would have been unknown on earth, and that
it would have been the permanent abode of mankind, as indeed of all
sentient creatures; or that any of the higher forms of life would have
been possible without death? and (6) that to repair the evils
accomplished by this Destroyer-Devil it was necessary for a personal
Restorer-God to become incarnated in a man, in order that he might shed
this blood as a sufficient sacrifice for the satisfaction of the
offended Creator-God; also, in order that the resurrection of the
bodies (bones, flesh, blood and animal organism) of all deceased men,
women and children and the rehabitation of them by their respective
souls could be accomplished, to the end that a few, on account of their
faith, might be transferred to a permanent home in a heaven on a
firmament above the earth, and the many, because of their lack of faith,
to a permanent home in a hell below; or that there ever was any such
incarnation for these purposes; or that there are any such firmament,
heaven, and hell, or that there will be any such resurrection, ascension
or descension?
If other bishops, priests and deacons can, as they must, bring in their
symbolism or allegorism touching any or all of these six fundamentals,
which constitute the basis of the supernaturalism of traditional
Christianity, and yet not leave the church, why may not I bring in mine
and remain?
Attention is called by several critics to Sir Oliver Lodge, as an
example of an outstanding man of science who accepts supernaturalism.
While I was desperately trying to retain my conception of a
supernaturalistic God and of all the supernaturalism that goes with it
(revelation of truth, answer to prayer, guidance by providence,
resurrection of the dead and their ascension, eternal consciousness and
happiness) I at one time centered a great deal of hope in him, and
eagerly studied his works as indeed I did those of most apologists for
supernaturalism among them the greatest, Flammarion, Balfour, Bergson
and Hudson, but my careful study of his many writings convinced me that
he does not hold any of the supernaturalistic doctrines which are
distinctively Christian.
However, it is my doctrine concerning Jesus, rather than that of
Christian traditionalism, that is in exact alignment with that of this
renowned physicist. We agree that Jesus, if historical, was a Son of God
and the Christ to men in no other sense, and therefore in no higher
degree, than all representatives of the human race may be sons or
daughters of God, if there are gods and christs, to the men, women and
children with whom they come in contact.
Most critics think that I am wrong in representing that the great
majority of the leading men of science are naturalistic, not
supernaturalistic, but Sir Oliver Lodge represents that among such
scientists it is generally believed that the universe is
"self-explained, self-contained and self-maintained;" and speaking on
his own behalf of its creation out of nothing he says: "The
improbability or absurdity of such a conception, except in the symbolism
of poetry, is extreme, and it is unthinkable by any educated person."
All these gods were created, endowed and located by man, and then he had
them make revelations, create churches, institute sacraments and appoint
priesthoods for his redemption from devils whom he also created, endowed
and located.
This is why people of the same country and time have such different gods
and revelations. Jehovah is the god and the Old Testament the revelation
of the kings and plutocrats who are responsible for wars; Jesus is the
god and the New Testament is the revelation of the doctors and nurses
who do what they can to alleviate the misery of them.
The gods, not excepting Jehovah and Jesus, are as mythical as Santa
Claus and answer their suppliants not otherwise than he answers his,
through human representatives. If the suffering, needy or afflicted do
not get help and sympathy from men, women and children they get none
from the gods and angels.
While on the one hand the great majority of scientists, scientific
philosophers and educated people generally doubt that any god ever
answered a prayer or exercised a providence, on the other, no one doubts
that men, women and children answer millions of prayers daily and that
every person's career is wholly different from what it would have been
but for human providence; that, indeed, life would be impossible without
the providence which all people exercise in the hearing and answering of
prayers.
Representatives of many of the interpretations of religion strewed every
battle-field of the European war. The celestial saviours did not care
for one of their devotees. The terrestrial saviours (doctors and nurses)
did everything for the desperately wounded and saved millions who would
have miserably perished but for them. These were the real christs and
angels of whom the celestial ones are but symbols. The celestials always
have passed by on the other side. The terrestrials are the Good
Samaritans when there are any.
Sceptics infer from this negligence that the gods and angels have no
real objective existence. Believers contend that they really exist
objectively and excuse the neglect on account of preoccupation. For
example, the God of traditional Christianity is supposed to spend much
time counting hairs on the heads of His people and watching sparrows
fall to the ground. Sceptics are reverently but earnestly asking: Why
does He not keep the sparrows from falling? Why does He not let the
hairs remain unnumbered, until He has put a stop to wars and promoted
good will among men to a degree which will render it impossible that
the world should any longer be cursed by them?
If believers say that we have no knowledge of the ways of God, sceptics
reply: Since all which is known about any objective reality is
concerning the ways thereof, what the action is under given
circumstances, how do you know that your God has anything to do with
either sparrows or men, or even that He exists?
As to their philosophy concerning the origin, sustenance and governance
of the universe, socialists of the school of Marx, are almost to a man
materialists; but, as to their philosophy concerning life, they are as
generally idealists. There is, I feel sure, as much idealism in my
thinking and living now as there was in the days of my orthodoxy, but I
will let you judge for yourself after reading the following confession
of faith:
My early life was blighted as the result of the premature death of my
father by the Civil War and the consequent breaking up of his family and
my bondage to a German who made a slave of me, broke my health by
overwork and exposure, and, worst of all, kept me in ignorance, so that
when, at the age of twenty-one, I began my education, I was assigned to
the fourth grade of a public school.
The prime of my life has been wasted in preaching as truths the dogmas
of the Christian theology, the representations of which I now believe,
with the overwhelming majority of educated people, to be at best so many
symbols and at worst superstitions.
But though I do not now and probably never shall again believe in the
existence of a conscious, personal god, a knowledge of and obedience to
whose will is necessary to salvation, yet an injustice is done me by
those who say I have abandoned god and religion.
Every one who desires and endeavors to fulfill the requirements of a law
which is independent of his will and beyond his control has a god and a
religion. I desire and endeavor this in the case of two such laws and so
have two gods and two religions. Both of my divinities are trinities.
One is in the physical realm and the other in the moral one.
In the physical realm my triune god is: matter, the father; force, the
son, and motion, the spirit.
In the moral realm, my triune god is: fact, the father; truth, the son,
and life, the spirit.
For me the triune divinity of Christianity is a symbol of these
trinities and it is my desire and effort to discover and fulfill what
they require of me, in order that I may make my own physical, psychical
and moral life as long, happy and complete as possible and help others
in doing this for themselves. This desire and effort is at once my
morality and religion, my politics and patriotism, and they are
spiritual realities.
On account of the first of these sets of spiritual virtues (morality and
religion) I claim to be a Christian of the highest type, and that any
accusation which is raised against me because of alleged disloyalty to
any essential of Christianism is an injustice.
On account of the second of these sets of spiritual virtues (politics
and patriotism) I claim to be an American of the highest type, and that
any accusation which is raised against me because of alleged disloyalty
to an essential of Americanism is an injustice.
From the viewpoint of the self-styled one hundred per cent Christians,
I am a betrayer of Brother Jesus because I do not believe that he ever
had any existence as a god and that, if he was at any time a man, the
world does not now and never can know of one thing that he did or of one
word that he said.
From the viewpoint of the self-styled one hundred per cent Americans, I
am a traitor to Uncle Sam, because I did oppose his going into the
English-German war, and because I do object to the partiality which he
shows to his rich nephews and nieces.
Still Jesus and Uncle Sam are as dear to me as ever and indeed dearer,
yet not as objective, conscious personalities, but as symbols, ideals or
patterns.
However, though I love my Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam all the time, as a
child does Santa Claus at Christmas time, I am no longer childish enough
at any time to look to either of them to do anything for me, because I
know that what is done for me must be done either by myself or by men,
women and children, and that as objective, conscious personalities, my
Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam have had no more to do with my life than the
man-in-the-moon.
Your observation concerning the American government as being the
standard to which all governments will ultimately conform challenges an
earnest word of friendly dissent.
Our government is what all the governments of the world are (with the
single exception of the Russian) a government in the interest of a small
class, the representatives of which own the means and machines of
production and distribution and who produce and distribute things for
profit, each for himself.
The representatives of one class produce things socially, and those of
another class appropriate them individually. This is capitalistic
anarchy, the worst of possible anarchism, and it must have an end soon
or the world will be lost.
Robbery is the essence of anarchy and Marx showed that every cent of
profit made under the existing system of economics (and in the United
States it amounts to several billions of dollars every year) is so much
robbery of the many who make and operate the machines, because they are
paid less in wages than the value of the products made and distributed
by them.
We are hearing much in these days about the anarchy of those who are
dissatisfied with the capitalistic governments, but the governments
themselves and those in whose interests they exist are the real
anarchists. The flesh and blood of anarchism are robbery and lying, and
these are the meat and drink of capitalism.
The English-German war was the most flagrant act of anarchy in the whole
history of mankind. The peace of Versailles and the blockade of Russia
were outrageous acts of anarchy, and so also are the terrorism and
tyranny of which every capitalistic country is so full, our own with the
rest.
Morality is the very heart of civilization and of all that really makes
for it; but morality is impossible on a capitalistic basis, for it is
founded on the most immoral things in the world, robbery, lying, murder,
ignorance, poverty and slavery.
If I am right in the conviction that the United States is more wholly
given over to capitalism than any other nation, not excepting even
England, it is the greatest robber, liar and murderer on earth. How
then, can the United States become the standard for the governments of
the nations?
If the government of Russia holds its own, it, rather than that of the
United States, will become the standard to which all governments must
measure up or else go down.
Yes, not the government of the United States but that of Russia is
destined to become the standard of all peoples, for the aim of our
government is money, more money, and then some, for the few, while the
infinitely higher aim of theirs is life, more life, fuller life for
every man, woman and child.
Within my generation the vanguard of humanity has passed from the age of
traditionalism to that of scientism and this transition is the greatest
and most salutary event in the whole history of humanity. It is
impossible to exaggerate its importance. It marks the time when man
began consciously to realize that he must look to himself rather than to
any god for salvation.
From time immemorial man has realized that ignorance is his ruin and
knowledge his salvation, but during the too many and too long ages of
traditionalism he made the fatal mistake of supposing that he was
dependent upon a supernatural revelation by an unconscious, personal god
for the necessary knowledge. But now the leading people of the world,
the shepherds of the sheep, are seeing with increasing clearness that
man has naturally inherited his knowledge and must naturally acquire by
his own experience, reason and investigation every addition to it.
The world is indeed passing through a long, dark night, but neither the
longest nor the darkest, and since at last a great and rapidly
increasing multitude happily realize that humanity must work out its own
salvation through the living of its own knowledge by its own inherited
and increased strength, not by a supernatural grace, we of this
generation may rationally hope, as those of no other did or could, for
the dawning of the longest and brightest of all days.
As an old year dies into a new one, and as flourishing generations die
into rising ones, so the old traditional ages, when nations and sects
looked to their rival gods in the skies for help, are happily dying into
the new scientific age, when all sensible and good men, relying upon the
strength of a common divinity which is within themselves, will unite in
an all-inclusive brotherhood for the promotion of the ideal
civilization, a universal reign of righteousness.
It is night,--midnight. The clock is striking twelve. But this is the
very hour and the very minute, when all the saviours of mankind have
always been and ever will be born. Then it is that the Virgin, Nature,
comes to this dark world with her new born Son, Truth, whom to know and
follow is morality, religion, politics and life. It is then that those
who give expression to the highest ideals and deepest longings of
mankind, hear the angels, Reason and Hope, sing: On earth peace and good
will towards men.
Very cordially and gratefully yours,
WM. M. BROWN.
Brownella Cottage,
Galion, Ohio.
[Illustration: FREDERICK ENGELS]
[Illustration: NIKOLAI LENIN]
FOOTNOTES:
[H] The difference between a political republic, such as America has
developed, and an industrial republic, such as Russia is developing, is
that the administrators of the former are elected from the geographical
divisions and those of the latter from the productive divisions into
which the population is divided.
If we liken states to fruit trees, the American tree may be said to have
been evolutionized for the purpose of producing the fruit of commodities
for the profit of the owning class, and the Russian, the fruit of
commodities for the use of the working class.
[I] See appendix.
[J] Nevertheless I consider church-going to be a bad habit, and if I
could live my life over, I would not allow myself to become addicted to
it.
COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW
Appendix.
I Scientific Socialism.
II God and Immortality.
III Mythical Character of Old and New Testament Personages.
IV Would Socialism Change Human Nature?
V What Will be the Form of the Workers' State?
VI Withdrawal of Prize Offer.
VII Afterword.
Morality is the greatest thing in the world; but paradoxical as it
may seem, there is one greater thing, liberty--the liberty which is
freedom to learn, interpret, live and teach the truth as it is
revealed by the facts or acts of nature. Without this freedom there
can be no morality, and of course no true religion, politics or
civilization.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.
In northern climes, the polar bear
Protects himself with fat and hair,
Where snow is deep and ice is stark,
And half the year is cold and dark;
He still survives a clime like that
By growing fur, by growing fat.
These traits, O bear, which thou transmittest
Prove the Survival of the Fittest.
To polar regions waste and wan,
Comes the encroaching race of man,
A puny, feeble, little bubber,
He has no fur, he has no blubber.
The scornful bear sat down at ease
To see the stranger starve and freeze;
But, lo! the stranger slew the bear,
And ate his fat and wore his hair;
These deeds, O Man, which thou committest
Prove the Survival of the Fittest.
In modern times the millionaire
Protects himself as did the bear:
Where Poverty and Hunger are
He counts his bullion by the car:
Where thousands perish still he thrives--
The wealth, O Croesus, thou transmittest
Proves the Survival of the Fittest.
But, lo, some people odd and funny,
Some men without a cent of money--
The simple common human race
Chose to improve their dwelling place;
They had no use for millionaires,
They calmly said the world was theirs,
They were so wise, so strong, so many,
The Millionaires?--there wasn't any.
These deeds, O Man, which thou committest
Prove the Survival of the Fittest.
--Mrs. Charlotte Stetson.