{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_72134/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_72134","id":"gutenberg_72134","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72134","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Secularism"],"text":"THE\n                            BIBLE OF NATURE;\n                                OR, THE\n                       PRINCIPLES OF SECULARISM.\n             A Contribution to the Religion of the Future.\n\n\n                                   BY\n                            FELIX L. OSWALD.\n\n\n              \u201cLight is help from Heaven.\u201d\u2014G. E. Lessing.\n\n\n                               New York:\n                       THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY,\n                          28 LAFAYETTE PLACE.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                                   TO\n                             THE MEMORY OF\n\n                           BENEDICT SPINOZA,\n\n                   THIS WORK IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED\n                             BY THE AUTHOR.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n                                                   PAGE.\n    Introduction,                                     9\n\n    PHYSICAL MAXIMS.\n\n        CHAP.\n        I.      Health,                              18\n        II.     Strength,                            33\n        III.    Chastity,                            45\n        IV.     Temperance,                          56\n        V.      Skill,                               73\n\n    MENTAL MAXIMS.\n    \n        VI.     Knowledge,                           85\n        VII.    Independence,                        95\n        VIII.   Prudence,                           106\n        IX.     Perseverance,                       116\n        X.      Freethought,                        124\n\n    MORAL MAXIMS.\n\n        XI.     Justice,                            137\n        XII.    Truth,                              148\n        XIII.   Humanity,                           160\n        XIV.    Friendship,                         172\n        XV.     Education,                          182\n\n    OBJECTIVE MAXIMS.\n\n        XVI.    Forest Culture,                     194\n        XVII.   Recreation,                         203\n        XVIII.  Domestic Reform,                    212\n        XIX.    Legislative Reform,                 221\n        XX.     The Priesthood of Secularism,       231\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE BIBLE OF NATURE; OR, THE PRINCIPLES OF SECULARISM.\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nFrom the dawn of authentic history to the second century of our\nchronological era the nations of antiquity were beguiled by the fancies\nof supernatural religions. For fifteen hundred years the noblest\nnations of the Middle Ages were tortured by the inanities of an\nantinatural religion. The time has come to found a Religion of Nature.\n\nThe principles of that religion are revealed in the monitions of our\nnormal instincts, and have never been wholly effaced from the soul of\nman, but for long ages the consciousness of their purpose has been\nobscured by the mists of superstition and the systematic inculcation of\nbaneful delusions. The first taste of alcohol revolts our normal\ninstincts; nature protests against the incipience of a ruinous\npoison-vice; but the fables of the Bacchus priests for centuries\nencouraged that vice and deified the genius of intemperance. Vice\nitself blushed to mention the immoralities of the pagan gods whose\ntemples invited the worship of the heavenly-minded. Altars were erected\nto a goddess of lust, to a god of wantonness, to a god of thieves.\n\nThat dynasty of scamp-gods was, at last, forced to abdicate, but only\nto yield their throne to a celestial Phalaris, a torture-god who\ncruelly punished the gratification of the most natural instincts, and\nforedoomed a vast plurality of his children to an eternity of horrid\nand hopeless torments. Every natural enjoyment was denounced as sinful.\nEvery natural blessing was vilified as a curse in disguise. Mirth is\nthe sunshine of the human mind, the loveliest impulse of life\u2019s truest\nchildren; yet the apostle of Antinaturalism promised his heaven to the\ngloomy world-despiser. \u201cBlessed are they that mourn.\u201d \u201cIf any man will\ncome after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.\u201d \u201cBe\nafflicted, and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned to mourning\nand your joy to heaviness.\u201d \u201cWoe unto you that laugh.\u201d \u201cIf any man come\nto me and hate not his father and mother, his wife and children, his\nbrothers and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my\ndisciple.\u201d\n\nThe love of health is as natural as the dread of pain and decrepitude.\nThe religion of Antinaturalism revoked the health laws of the Mosaic\ncode, and denounced the care even for the preservation of life itself.\n\u201cTake no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall\ndrink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.\u201d \u201cBodily exercise\nprofiteth but little.\u201d \u201cThere is nothing from without a man that,\nentering him, can defile him.\u201d\n\nThe love of knowledge awakens with the dawn of reason; a normal child\nis naturally inquisitive; the wonders of the visible creation invite\nthe study of every intelligent observer. The enemies of nature\nsuppressed the manifestations of that instinct, and hoped to enter\ntheir paradise by the crawling trail of blind faith. \u201cBlessed are they\nthat do not see and yet believe.\u201d \u201cHe that believeth and is baptized\nshall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.\u201d \u201cHe that\nbelieveth not is condemned already.\u201d\n\nThe love of freedom, the most universal of the protective instincts,\nwas suppressed by the constant inculcation of passive resignation to\nthe yoke of \u201cthe powers that be,\u201d of abject submission to oppression\nand injustice. \u201cResist not evil.\u201d \u201cOf him that taketh away thy goods\nask them not again.\u201d \u201cWhosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with\nhim twain.\u201d \u201cSubmit yourselves to the powers that be.\u201d\n\nThe love of industry, the basis of social welfare, that manifests\nitself even in social insects, was denounced as unworthy of a true\nbeliever: \u201cTake no thought, saying, What shall we eat? what shall we\ndrink? or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things\ndo the gentiles seek.\u201d \u201cTake no thought of the morrow, for the morrow\nshall take thought for the things of itself.\u201d \u201cAsk and it shall be\ngiven you,\u201d i.e., stop working and rely on miracles and prayer.\n\nThe hope for the peace of the grave, the last solace of the wretched\nand weary, was undermined by the dogmas of eternal hell, and the\npre\u00f6rdained damnation of all earth-loving children of nature: \u201cHe that\nhateth not his own life cannot be my disciple.\u201d \u201cThe children of the\nkingdom shall be cast out into utter darkness, there shall be weeping\nand gnashing of teeth.\u201d \u201cThey shall be cast into a furnace of fire,\nthere shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.\u201d \u201cThey shall be tormented\nwith fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the\npresence of the Lamb.\u201d \u201cAnd the smoke of their torment ascendeth\nforever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night.\u201d\n\nFor fifteen centuries the pilot of the church lured our forefathers to\na whirlpool of mental and physical degeneration, till the storms of the\nProtestant revolt enabled them to break the spell of the fatal eddies,\nand, like a swimmer saving his naked life, mankind has struggled back\nto the rescuing rocks of our mother earth. Lured by the twinkle of\nreflected stars, we have plunged into the maelstrom of Antinaturalism,\nand after regaining the shore, by utmost efforts, it seems now time to\nestimate the expenses of the adventure.\n\nThe suppression of science has retarded the progress of mankind by a\nfull thousand years. For a century or two the Mediterranean peninsulas\nstill lingered in the evening twilight of pagan civilization, but with\nthe confirmed rule of the church the gloom of utter darkness overspread\nthe homes of her slaves, and the delusions of that dreadful night far\nexceeded the worst superstitions of pagan barbarism. \u201cThe cloud of\nuniversal ignorance,\u201d says Hallam, \u201cwas broken only by a few glimmering\nlights, who owe almost the whole of their distinction to the\nsurrounding darkness. We cannot conceive of any state of society more\nadverse to the intellectual improvement of mankind than one which\nadmitted no middle line between dissoluteness and fanatical\nmortifications. No original writer of any merit arose, and learning may\nbe said to have languished in a region of twilight for the greater part\nof a thousand years. In 992 it was asserted that scarcely a single\nperson was to be found, in Rome itself, who knew the first elements of\nletters. Not one priest of a thousand in Spain, about the age of\nCharlemagne, could address a common letter of salutation to another.\u201d\nIn that midnight hour of unnatural superstitions every torch-bearer was\npersecuted as an enemy of the human race. Bruno, Campanella, Kepler,\nVanini, Galilei, Copernicus, Descartes, and Spinoza had to force their\nway through a snapping and howling pack of monkish fanatics who beset\nthe path of every reformer, and overcame the heroism of all but the\nstoutest champions of light and freedom. From the tenth to the end of\nthe sixteenth century not less than 3,000,000 \u201cheretics,\u201d i.e.,\nscholars and free inquirers, had to expiate their love of truth in the\nflames of the stake.\n\nThe systematic suppression of freedom, in the very instincts of the\nhuman mind, turned Christian Europe into a universal slave-pen of\nbondage and tyranny; there were only captives and jailers, abject serfs\nand their inhuman masters. Freedom found a refuge only in the\nfastnesses of the mountains; in the wars against the pagan Saxons the\nlast freemen of the plains were slain like wild beasts; a thousand of\ntheir brave leaders were beheaded on the market square of Quedlinburg,\nthousands were imprisoned in Christian convents, or dragged away to the\nbondage of feudal and ecclesiastic slave farms where they learned to\nenvy the peace of the dead and the freedom of the lowest savages. \u201cOne\nsees certain dark, livid, naked, sunburnt, wild animals, male and\nfemale, scattered over the country and attached to the soil, which they\nroot and turn over with indomitable perseverance. They have, as it\nwere, an articulate voice; and when they rise to their feet they show a\nhuman face. They are, in fact, men; they creep at night into dens,\nwhere they live on black bread, water, and roots. They spare other men\nthe labor of plowing, sowing, and harvesting, and, therefore, deserve\nsome small share of the bread they have grown. Yet they were the\nfortunate peasants\u2014those who had bread and work\u2014and they were then the\nfew\u201d (while half the arable territory of France was in the hands of the\nchurch). \u201cFeudalism,\u201d says Blanqui, \u201cwas a concentration of all\nscourges. The peasant, stripped of the inheritance of his fathers,\nbecame the property of ignorant, inexorable, indolent masters. He was\nobliged to travel fifty leagues with their carts whenever they required\nit; he labored for them three days in the week, and surrendered to them\nhalf the product of his earnings during the other three; without their\nconsent, he could not change his residence or marry. And why, indeed,\nshould he wish to marry, if he could scarcely save enough to maintain\nhimself? The Abbot Alcuin had twenty thousand slaves called serfs, who\nwere forever attached to the soil. This is the great cause of the rapid\ndepopulation observed in the Middle Ages, and of the prodigious\nmultitude of convents which sprang up on every side. It was doubtless a\nrelief to such miserable men to find in the cloisters a retreat from\noppression; but the human race never suffered a more cruel outrage;\nindustry never received a wound better calculated to plunge the world\nagain into the darkness of the rudest antiquity. It suffices to say\nthat the prediction of the approaching end of the world, industriously\nspread by the rapacious monks at this time, was received without\nterror.\u201d\n\nThe joy-hating insanities of the unnatural creed blighted the lives of\nthousands, and trampled the flowers of earth even on the bleak soil of\nNorth Britain, where the children of nature need every hour of respite\nfrom cheerless toil. \u201cAll social pleasures,\u201d says Buckle, \u201call\namusements and all the joyful instincts of the human heart, were\ndenounced as sinful. The clergy looked on all comforts as sinful in\nthemselves, merely because they were comforts. The great object of life\nwas to be in a state of constant affliction. Whatever pleased the\nsenses was to be suspected. It mattered not what a man liked; the mere\nfact of his liking it made it sinful. Whatever was natural was wrong.\u201d\n\nThe dogma of exclusive salvation by faith made forcible conversion\nappear an act of mercy, and stimulated those wars of aggression that\nhave cost the lives of more than thirty millions of our fellow-men. In\nthe Crusades alone five millions of victims were sacrificed on the\naltar of fanaticism; the extermination of the Moriscos reduced the\npopulation of Spain by seven millions; the man-hunts of the\nSpanish-American priests almost annihilated the native population of\nthe West Indies and vast areas of Central and South America, once as\nwell-settled as the most fertile regions of Southern Europe. The horrid\nbutcheries in the land of the Albigenses, in the mountain homes of the\nVaudois, and in the Spanish provinces of the Netherlands exterminated\nthe inhabitants of whole cities and districts, and drenched the fields\nof earth with the blood of her noblest children.\n\nThe neglect of industry and the depreciation of secular pursuits proved\nthe death-blow of rational agriculture. The garden-lands of the Old\nWorld became sand-wastes, the soil of the neglected fields was scorched\nby summer suns and torn by winter floods till three million square\nmiles of once fruitful lands were turned into hopeless deserts. \u201cThe\nfairest and fruitfulest provinces of the Roman empire,\u201d says Professor\nMarsh\u2014\u201cprecisely that portion of terrestrial surface, in short, which\nabout the commencement of the Christian era was endowed with the\ngreatest superiority of soil, climate, and position, which had been\ncarried to the highest pitch of physical improvement\u2014is now completely\nexhausted of its fertility. A territory larger than all Europe, the\nabundance of which sustained in bygone centuries a population scarcely\ninferior to that of the whole Christian world at the present day, has\nbeen entirely withdrawn from human use, or, at best, is thinly\ninhabited.... There are regions, where the operation of causes, set in\naction by man, has brought the face of the earth to a state of\ndesolation almost as complete as that of the moon; and though within\nthat brief space of time which we call the historical period, they are\nknown to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and\nfertile meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by\nman, nor can they become again fitted for his use except through great\ngeological changes or other agencies, over which we have no control....\nAnother era of equal improvidence would reduce this earth to such a\ncondition of impoverished productiveness as to threaten the\ndepravation, barbarism, and, perhaps, even the extinction of the human\nspecies\u201d (Man and Nature, pp. 4, 43).\n\nThe experience of the Middle Ages has, indeed, been bought at a price\nwhich the world cannot afford to pay a second time. The sacrifices of\nfifteen centuries have failed to purchase the millennium of the\nGalilean Messiah, and the time has come to seek salvation by a\ndifferent road.\n\nThe Religion of the Future will preach the Gospel of Redemption by\nreason, by science, and by conformity to the laws of our\nhealth-protecting instincts. Its teachings will reconcile instinct and\nprecept, and make Nature the ally of education. Its mission will seek\nto achieve its triumphs, not by the suppression, but by the\nencouragement of free inquiry; it will dispense with the aid of pious\nfrauds; its success will be a victory of truth, of freedom, and\nhumanity; it will reconquer our earthly paradise, and teach us to\nrenounce the Eden that has to be reached through the gates of death.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI.\u2014PHYSICAL MAXIMS.\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nHEALTH.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nNature has guarded the health of her creatures by a marvelous system of\nprotective intuitions. The sensitive membrane of the eye resents the\nintrusion of every foreign substance. An intuitive sense of discomfort\nannounces every injurious extreme of temperature. To the unperverted\ntaste of animals in a state of nature wholesome food is pleasant,\ninjurious substances repulsive or insipid. Captain Kane found that only\nthe rage of famine will tempt the foxes of the Arctic coastlands to\ntouch spoiled meat. In times of scarcity the baboons of the Abyssinian\nmountains greedily hunt for edible roots, which an unerring faculty\nenables them to distinguish from the poisonous varieties. The\nnaturalist Tschudi mentions a troop of half-tamed chamois forcing their\nway through a shingle roof, rather than pass a night in the stifling\natmosphere of a goat stable.\n\nMan in his primitive state had his full share of those protective\ninstincts, which still manifest themselves in children and\nNature-guided savages. It is a mistake to suppose that the lowest of\nthose savages are naturally fond of ardent spirits. The travelers Park,\nGerstaecker, Vambery, Kohl, De Tocqueville, and Brehm agree that the\nfirst step on the road to ruin is always taken in deference to the\nexample of the admired superior race, if not in compliance with direct\npersuasion. The negroes of the Senegal highlands shuddered at the first\ntaste of alcohol, but from a wish to conciliate the good will of their\nvisitors hesitated to decline their invitations, which subsequently,\nindeed, became rather superfluous. The children of the wilderness\nunhesitatingly prefer the hardships of a winter camp to the atmospheric\npoisons of our tenement houses. Shamyl Ben Haddin, the Circassian war\nchief, whose iron constitution had endured the vicissitudes of\nthirty-four campaigns, pathetically protested against the pest air of\nhis Russian prison cell, and warned his jailers that, unless his\ndormitory was changed, Heaven would hold them responsible for the guilt\nof his suicide. I have known country boys to step out into a shower of\nrain and sleet to escape from the contaminated atmosphere of a city\nworkshop, and after a week\u2019s work in a spinning mill return to the\npenury of their mountain homes, rather than purchase dainties at the\nexpense of their lungs.\n\nThe word frugality, in its original sense, referred literally to a diet\nof tree fruits, in distinction to carnivorous fare, and nine out of ten\nchildren still decidedly prefer ripe fruit and farinaceous dishes to\nthe richest meats. They as certainly prefer easy, home-made clothes to\nthe constraint of fashionable fripperies. The main tenets of our\ndress-reformers are anticipated in the sensible garments of many\nhalf-civilized nations. Boys, within reach of a free bathing river, can\ndispense with the advice of the hydropathic school. They delight in\nexercise; they laugh at the imaginary danger of fresh-air draughts, and\nthe perils of barefoot rambles in wet and dry. They would cast their\nvote in favor of the outdoor pursuit of hundreds of occupations which\ncustom, rather than necessity, now associates with the disadvantages of\nindoor confinement. The hygienic influence of arboreal vegetation has\nbeen recognized by the ablest pathologists of modern times; avenues of\nshade trees have been found to redeem the sanitary condition of many a\ngrimy city, and the eminent hygienist, Schrodt, holds that, as a\nremedial institution, a shady park is worth a dozen drug stores. But\nall these lessons only confirm an often manifested, and too often\nsuppressed, instinct of our young children: their passionate love of\nwoodland sports, their love of tree shade, of greenwood camps, of\nforest life in all its forms. Those who hold that \u201cnature\u201d is but a\nsynonym of \u201chabit\u201d should witness the rapture of city children at first\nsight of forest glades and shady meadow brooks, and compare it with the\ncity dread of the Swiss peasant lad or the American backwoods boy,\nsickened by the fumes and the uproar of a large manufacturing town. A\nthousands years of vice and abnormal habits have not yet silenced the\nvoice of the physical conscience that recalls our steps to the path of\nNature, and will not permit us to transgress her laws unwarned.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe reward of nature-abiding habits is not confined to the negative\nadvantage of escaping the discomforts of disease. In the pursuit of\ncountless competitive avocations the Art of Survival is a chief secret\nof success, but in this age of sanitary abuses our lives are mostly\nhalf-told tales. Our season ends before the trees of hope have time to\nripen their fruit; before their day\u2019s work is done our toilers are\novertaken by the shadows of approaching night. Sanitary reforms would\nundoubtedly lengthen our average term of life, and an increase of\nlongevity alone would solve the most vexing riddles of existence: the\napparent injustice of fate, the disproportion of merit and\ncompensation, the aimlessness, the illusive promises and baffled hopes\nof life. For millions of our fellow-men an increase of health and\nlongevity would suffice to make life decidedly worth living. Health\nlessens the temptations to many vices. Perfect health blesses its\npossessor with a spontaneous cheerfulness almost proof against the\nfrowns of fortune and the cares of poverty. With a meal of barley cakes\nand milk, a straw couch, and scant clothing of homespun linen, a\nshepherd-boy in the highlands of the Austrian Alps may enjoy existence\nto a degree that exuberates in frolic and jubilant shouts, while all\nthe resources of wealth cannot recall the sunshine which sickness has\nbanished from the life of the dyspeptic glutton. If happiness could be\ncomputed by measure and weight, it would be found that her richest\ntreasures are not stored in gilded walls, but in the homes of frugal\nthrift, of rustic vigor and nature-loving independence. The sweetness\nof health reflects itself in grace of form and deportment, and wins\nfriends where the elegance of studied manners gains only admirers.\nHealth is also a primary condition of that clearness of mind the\nabsence of which can be only partially compensated by the light of\nlearning. Health is the basis of mental as of bodily vigor;\ncountry-bred boys have again and again carried off the prizes of\nacademical honors from the pupils of refined cities, and the foremost\nreformers of all ages and countries have been men of the people;\nlow-born, but not the less well-born, sons of hardy rustics and\nmechanics, from Moses, Socrates, Epictetus, Jesus Ben Josef, and\nMohammed, to Luther, Rousseau, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nHabitual sin against the health-laws of Nature was originally chiefly a\nconsequence of untoward circumstances. Slaves, paupers, immigrants to\nthe inhospitable climes of the higher latitudes, were forced to adopt\nabnormal modes of life which, in the course of time, hardened into\nhabits. Man, like all the varieties of his four-handed relatives, is a\nnative of the tropics, and the diet of our earliest manlike ancestors\nwas, in all probability, frugal: tree-fruits, berries, nuts, roots, and\nedible herbs and gums. But the first colonists of the winter lands were\nobliged to eke out an existence by eating the flesh of their\nfellow-creatures, and a carnivorous diet thus became the habitual and,\nin many countries, almost the exclusive diet of the nomadic\ninhabitants.\n\nAlcohol is a product of fermentation, and the avarice of a cruel master\nmay have forced his slaves to quench their thirst with fermented must\nor hydromel till habit begot a baneful second nature, and the at first\nreluctant victims of intoxication learned to prefer spoiled to fresh\ngrape-juice. Sedentary occupations, however distasteful at first, are\napt to engender a sluggish aversion to physical exercise, and even\nhabitual confinement in a vitiated atmosphere may at last become a\nsecond nature, characterized by a morbid dread of fresh air. The slaves\nof the Roman landowners had to pass their nights in prison-like\ndungeons, and may have contracted the first germ of that mental disease\nknown as the night-air superstition, the idea, namely, that after dark\nthe vitiated atmosphere of a stifling dormitory is preferable to the\nbalm of the cooling night wind.\n\nIn modern times an unprecedented concurrence of circumstances has\nstimulated a feverish haste in the pursuit of wealth, and thus\nindirectly led to the neglect of personal hygiene. The abolition of the\npublic festivals by which the potentates of the pagan empires\ncompensated their subjects for the loss of political freedom, the\nheartless egotism of our wealthy Pharisees, venal justice, and the dire\nbondage of city life all help to stimulate a headlong race toward the\ngoal of the promised land of ease and independence\u2014a goal reached only\nby a favored few compared with the multitudes who daily drop down\nwayworn and exhausted.\n\nBut the deadliest blow to the cause of health was struck by the\nanti-natural fanaticism of the Middle Ages, the world-hating\ninfatuation of the maniacs who depreciated every secular blessing as a\ncurse in disguise, and despised their own bodies as they despised\nnature, life, and earth. The disciples of the world-renouncing messiah\nactually welcomed disease as a sign of divine favor, they gloried in\ndecrepitude and deformity, and promoted the work of degeneration with a\npersevering zeal never exceeded by the enlightened benefactors of the\nhuman race. For a period of fifteen hundred years the ecclesiastic\nhistory of Europe is the history of a systematic war against the\ninterests of the human body; the \u201cmortification of the flesh\u201d was\nenjoined as a cardinal duty of a true believer; health-giving\nrecreations were suppressed, while health-destroying vices were\nencouraged by the example of the clergy; domestic hygiene was utterly\nneglected, and the founders of some twenty-four different monastic\norders vied in the invention of new penances and systematic outrages\nupon the health of the poor convent-slaves. Their diet was confined to\nthe coarsest and often most loathsome food; they were subjected to\nweekly bleedings, to profitless hardships and deprivations; their sleep\nwas broken night after night; fasting was carried to a length which\noften avenged itself in permanent insanity; and their only compensation\nfor a daily repetition of health-destroying afflictions was the\npermission to indulge in spiritual vagaries and spirituous poisons: the\nsame bigots who grudged their followers a night of unbroken rest or a\nmouthful of digestible food indulged them in quantities of alcoholic\nbeverages that would have staggered the conscience of a modern\nbeer-swiller.\n\nThe bodily health of a community was held so utterly below the\nattention of a Christian magistrate that every large city became a\nhotbed of contagious diseases; small-pox and scrofula became pandemic\ndisorders; the pestilence of the Black Death ravaged Europe from end to\nend\u2014nay, instead of trying to remove the cause of the evil, the\nwretched victims were advised to seek relief in prayer and\nself-torture, and a philosopher uttering a word of protest against such\nillusions would have risked to have his tongue torn out by the roots\nand his body consigned to the flames of the stake.\n\nMankind has never wholly recovered from that reign of insanity.\nIndifference to many of the plainest health-laws of nature is still the\nreproach of our so-called civilization. Our moralists rant about the\ngolden streets of the New Jerusalem, but find no time to expurgate the\nslums of their own cities; our missionary societies spend millions to\nacquaint the natives of distant islands with the ceremony of baptism,\nbut refuse to contribute a penny to the establishment of free public\nbaths for the benefit of their poor neighbors, whose children are\nscourged or caged like wild beasts for trying to mitigate the martyrdom\nof the midsummer season by a bath in the waters of the next river.\nTemperance, indeed, is preached in the name of the miracle-monger who\nturned water into alcohol; but millions of toilers who seek to drown\ntheir misery in the Lethe of intoxication are deprived of every\nhealthier pastime; the magistrates of our wealthy cities rage with\npenal ordinances against the abettors of public amusements on the day\nwhen nine-tenths of our laborers find their only leisure for\nrecreation. Poor factory children who would spend the holidays in the\nparadise of the green hills are lured into the baited trap of a\nSabbath-school and bribed to memorize the stale twaddle of Hebrew\nghost-stories or the records of fictitious genealogies; but the offer\nto enlarge the educational sphere of our public schools by the\nintroduction of a health primer would be scornfully rejected as an\nattempt to divert the attention of the pupils from more important\ntopics.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nBut the laws of Nature cannot be outraged with impunity, and the aid of\nsupernatural agencies has never yet protected our ghost-mongers from\nthe consequences of their sins against the monitions of their physical\nconscience. The neglect of cleanliness avenges itself in diseases which\nno prayer can avert; during the most filthful and prayerful period of\nthe Middle Ages, seven out of ten city-dwellers were subject to\nscrofula of that especially malignant form that attacks the glands and\nthe arteries as well as the skin. Medical nostrums and clerical\nhocus-pocus of the ordinary sort were, indeed, so notoriously\nunavailing against that virulent affection that thousands of sufferers\ntook long journeys to try the efficacy of a king\u2019s touch, as recorded\nby the unanimous testimony of contemporary writers, as well as in the\nstill current term of a sovereign remedy. A long foot-journey, with its\nopportunities for physical exercise, outdoor camps, and changes of\ndiet, often really effected the desired result; but, on their return to\ntheir reeking hovels, the convalescents experienced a speedy relapse,\nand had either to repeat the wearisome journey or resign themselves to\nthe \u201cmysterious dispensation\u201d of a Providence which obstinately refused\nto let miracles interfere with the normal operation of the\nphysiological laws recorded in the protests of instinct. Stench,\nnausea, and sick-headaches might, indeed, have enforced those protests\nupon the attention of the sufferers; but the disciples of\nAntinaturalism had been taught to mistrust the promptings of their\nnatural desires, and to accept discomforts as signs of divine favor,\nor, in extreme cases, to trust their abatement to the intercession of\nthe saints, rather than to the profane interference of secular science.\n\nThe dungeon-life of the monastic maniacs, and the abject submission to\nthe nuisance of atmospheric impurities, avenged themselves in the\nravages of pulmonary consumption; the votaries of dungeon-smells were\ntaught the value of fresh air by the tortures of an affliction from\nwhich only the removal of the cause could deliver a victim, and\nmillions of orthodox citizens died scores of years before the\nattainment of a life-term which a seemingly inscrutable dispensation of\nHeaven grants to the unbelieving savages of the wilderness. The\ncheapest of all remedies, fresh air, surrounded them in immeasurable\nabundance, craving admission and offering them the aid which Nature\ngrants even to the lowliest of her creatures, but a son of a\nmiracle-working church had no concern with such things, and was\nenjoined to rely on the efficacy of mystic ceremonies: \u201cIf any man is\nsick among you, let him call for the elders of the church, and let them\npray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.\u201d \u201cAnd\nthe prayer of faith shall cure the sick, and the Lord shall raise him\nup.\u201d\n\nThousands of the fatuous bigots who prayed for \u201cmeekness of spirit\u201d\ncontinued to gorge themselves with the food of carnivorous animals, and\nthus inflamed their passions with the sanguinary, remorseless\npropensities of those brutes. Luigi Cornaro, the Italian reformer,\nassures us that it was no uncommon thing for a nobleman or prelate of\nhis century to swallow fourteen pounds of strong meats at a single\nmeal, and that, after invoking the blessing of Heaven upon such a\nrepast, the devourer of meat-pies would rise with his paunch distended\n\u201clike the hide of a drowned dog.\u201d The \u201cLove of Enemies,\u201d \u201cforgiveness\nand meekness,\u201d were on their lips; but those fourteen pounds of\nmeat-pie worked out their normal result; and among the carnivorous\nsaints of that age we accordingly find men whose fiendish inhumanity\nwould have appalled the roughest legionary of pagan Rome. C\u00e6sar Borgia,\nthe son of a highest ecclesiastic dignitary, a disciple of a priestly\ntraining-school, and himself a prince of the church, seems to have\ncombined the stealthy cunning of a viper with the bloodthirst of a\nhyena. Four times he made and broke the most solemn treaties, in order\nto get an opportunity to invade the territory of an unprepared\nneighbor. His campaigns were conducted with a truculence denounced even\nby his own allies; with his own hand he poisoned fourteen of his boon\ncompanions, in order to possess himself of their property; twenty-three\nof his political and clerical rivals were removed by the dagger of\nhired assassins or executed upon the testimony of suborned perjurers.\nHe tried to poison his brother-in-law, Prince Alphonso of Aragon, in\norder to facilitate his design of seducing his own sister; he made\nrepeated, and at last partly successful, attempts to poison the brother\nof his mother and his own father, the pope.\n\nThe heartless neglect of sanitary provisions for the comfort of the\npoor avenges itself in epidemics that visit the abodes of wealth as\nwell as the hovels of misery. A stall-fed preacher of our southern\nseaport towns may circulate a petition for the suppression of Sunday\nexcursions, in order to prevent the recreation-needing toilers of his\ncommunity from leaving town on St. Collection Day; he may advocate the\narrest of bathing schoolboys, in order to suppress an undue love of\nphysical enjoyments, or to gratify a female tithe-payer who seeks an\nopportunity of displaying her prudish virtue at the expense of the\nhelpless; he may vote to suppress outdoor sports in the cool of the\nlate evening, when the inhabitants of the tenement streets are trying\nto enjoy an hour of extra Sabbatarian recreation\u2014a privilege to be\nreserved for the saints who can rest six days out of seven, and on the\nseventh harvest the fruits of other men\u2019s labor. But epidemics refuse\nto recognize such distinctions, and the vomit of yellow fever will\nforce the most reverend monopolist to disgorge the proceeds of the\ntithes coined from the misery of consumptive factory children. Nor can\nwealth purchase immunity from the natural consequences of habitual\nvice. The dyspeptic glutton is a Tantalus who starves in the midst of\nabundance. The worn-out tradesman, whose restless toil in the mines of\nmammon has led to asthma or consumption, would vainly offer to barter\nhalf his gold for half a year of health. Thousands of families who deny\nthemselves every recreation, who linger out the summer in the\nsweltering city, and toil and save \u201cfor the sake of our dear children,\u201d\nhave received Nature\u2019s verdict on the wisdom of their course in the\npremature death of those children.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REDEMPTION.\n\nIt has often been said that the physical regeneration of the human race\ncould be achieved without the aid of a miracle, if its systematic\npursuit were followed with half the zeal which our stock-breeders\nbestow upon the rearing of their cows and horses. A general observance\nof the most clearly recognized laws of health would, indeed, abundantly\nsuffice for that purpose. There is, for instance, no doubt that the\nmorbid tendency of our indoor modes of occupation could be counteracted\nby gymnastics, and the trustees of our education fund should build a\ngymnasium near every town school. As a condition of health, pure air is\nas essential as pure water and food, and no house-owner should be\npermitted to sow the seeds of deadly diseases by crowding his tenants\ninto the back rooms of unaired and unairable slum-prisons. New cities\nshould be projected on the plan of concentric rings of cottage suburbs\n(interspersed with parks and gardens), instead of successive strata of\ntenement flats.\n\nIn every large town all friends of humanity should unite for the\nenforcement of Sunday freedom, and spare no pains to brand the Sabbath\nbigots as enemies of the human race. We should found Sunday gardens,\nwhere our toil-worn fellow-citizens could enjoy their holidays with\noutdoor sports and outdoor dances, free museums, temperance drinks,\nhealthy refreshments, collections of botanical and zo\u00f6logical\ncuriosities. Country excursions on the only leisure day of the laboring\nclasses should be as free as air and sunshine, and every civilized\ncommunity should have a Recreation League for the promotion of that\npurpose.\n\nIn the second century of our chronological era the cities of the Roman\nempire vied in the establishment of free public baths. Antioch alone\nhad fourteen of them; Alexandria not less than twelve, and Rome itself\nat least twenty, some of them of such magnificence and extent that\ntheir foundations have withstood the ravages of sixteen centuries. Many\nof those establishments were entirely free, and even the Therm\u00e6, or\nluxurious Warm Baths, of Caracalla admitted visitors for a gate-fee\nwhich all but the poorest could afford. Our boasted civilization will\nhave to follow such examples before it can begin to deserve its name;\nand even the free circus games (by no means confined to the combats of\narmed prize-fighters) were preferable to the fanatical suppression of\nall popular sports which made the age of Puritanism the dreariest\nperiod of that dismal era known as the Reign of the Cross.\n\nThe preservation of health is at least not less important than the\npreservation of Hebrew mythology; and communities who force their\nchildren to sacrifice a large portion of their time to the study of\nAsiatic miracle legends might well permit them to devote an occasional\nhour or two to the study of modern physiology. We should have health\nprimers and teachers of hygiene, and the most primitive district school\nshould find time for a few weekly lessons in the rudiments of sanitary\nscience, such as the importance of ventilation, the best modes of\nexercise, the proper quality and quantity of our daily food, the\nsignificance of the stimulant habit, the use and abuse of dress, etc.\n\nSuch text-books would prepare the way for health lectures, for health\nlegislation and the reform of municipal hygiene. The untruth that \u201ca\nman can not be defiled by things entering him from without\u201d has been\nthoroughly exploded by the lessons of science, and should no longer\nexcuse the neglect of that frugality which in the times of the pagan\nrepublics formed the best safeguard of national vigor. Milk, bread, and\nfruit, instead of greasy viands, alcohol, and narcotic drinks, would\nsoon modify the mortality statistics of our large cities, and we should\nnot hesitate to recognize the truth that the remarkable longevity of\nthe Jews and Mohammedans has a great deal to do with their dread of\nimpure food.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nSTRENGTH.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nBodily vigor is the basis of mental and physical health. Strength is\npower, and the instinctive love of invigorating exercise manifests\nitself in the young of all but the lowest brutes. The bigot who\nundermines the health of his children by stinting their outdoor sport\nas \u201cworldly vanity,\u201d and \u201cexercise that profiteth but little,\u201d is\nshamed by animals who lead their young in races and trials of strength.\nThus the female fox will train her cubs; the doe will race and romp\nwith her fawn, the mare with her colt. Monkeys (like the squirrels of\nour northern forests) can be seen running up and down a tree and\nleaping from branch to branch, without any conceivable purpose but the\nenjoyment of the exercise itself; dogs run races, young lions wrestle\nand paw each other in a playful trial of prowess; even birds can be\nseen sporting in the air, and dolphins on the play-fields of the ocean.\nIn nearly all classes of the vertebrate animals the rivalry of the\nmales is decided by a trial of strength, and the female unhesitatingly\naccepts the victor as the fittest representative of his species.\n\nNormal children are passionately fond of athletic sports. In western\nYucatan I saw Indian girls climb trees with the agility of a\nspider-monkey, and laughingly pelt each other with the fruits of the\nAdansonia fig. The children of the South-sea Islanders vie in aquatic\ngymnastics. Spartan girls joined in the foot-races of their brothers,\nand by the laws of Lycurgus were not permitted to marry till they had\nattained a prescribed degree of proficiency in a number of athletic\nexercises. Race-running and wrestling were the favorite pastimes of\nyoung Romans in the undegenerate age of the republic; and, in spite of\nall restraints, similar propensities still manifest themselves in our\nschool-boys. They pass the intervals of their study-hours in\ncompetitive athletics, rather than in listless inactivity, and brave\nfrosts and snowstorms to get the benefit of outdoor exercise even in\nmidwinter. They love health-giving sports for their own sake, as if\ninstinctively aware that bodily strength will further every victory in\nthe arena of life.\n\nThe enthusiasm that gathered about the heroic games of Olympia made\nthose festivals the brightest days in the springtime of the human race.\nThe million-voiced cheers that hailed the victor of the pentathlon have\nnever been heard again on earth since the manliest and noblest of all\nrecreations were suppressed by order of a crowned bigot. The rapture of\ncompetitive athletics is a bond which can obliterate the rancor of all\nbaser rivalries, and still unites hostile tribes in the arena of pure\nmanhood: as in Algiers, where the Bedouins joined in the gymnastic\nprize-games of their French foemen: the same foemen whose banquets they\nwould have refused to share even at the bidding of starvation. In\nBuda-Pesth I once witnessed a performance of the German athlete\nWeitzel, and still remember the irrepressible enthusiasm of two\nbroad-shouldered Turks who crowded to the edge of the platform, and,\nwith waving kerchiefs, joined in the cheers of the uncircumcised\nspectators.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d means, in many important respects, the\nsurvival of the strongest. In a state of nature weakly animals yield to\ntheir stronger rivals; the stoutest lion, the swiftest tiger, has a\nsuperior chance of obtaining prey; the stouter bulls of the herd defy\nthe attack of the wolves who overcome the resistance of the weaker\nindividuals; the fleetest deer has the best chance to escape the\npursuit of the hunter.\n\nA state of civilization does only apparently equalize such differences.\nThe invention of gunpowder has armed the weak with the power of a\ngiant; but the issue of international wars will always be biased by the\ncomparative strength of sinew and steadiness of nerve of the men that\nhandle those improved weapons. In the last Franco-Prussian war the\nFrench were favored by an undoubted superiority of arms, but they were\nutterly beaten by a nation whose sons had devoted their youth to\ngymnastics. The arms of the Gothic giants were of the rudest\ndescription: hunting-spears and clumsy battle-axes; but those axes\nbroke the ranks of the Roman legionaries, with their polished swords\nand elaborate tactics. For the last two thousand years the wars that\ndecided the international rivalries of Asia, Europe, and North America\nnearly always ended with the victory of a northern nation over its\nsouthern neighbors. The men of the north could not always boast a\nsuperiority in science or arms, nor in number, nor in the advantage of\na popular cause; but the rigor of their climate exacts a valiant effort\nin the struggle for existence, and steels the nerves even of an\notherwise inferior race. \u201cFortis Fortuna adjuvat,\u201d said a Roman\nproverb, which means literally that Fortune favors the strong, and\nwhich has been well rendered in the paraphrase of a modern translator:\n\u201cForce begets fortitude and conquers fortune.\u201d Nor is that bias of fate\nconfined to the battles of war. In the contests of peace, too, other\nthings being equal, the strong arm will prevail against the weak, the\nstout heart against the faint. Bodily strength begets self-reliance.\n\u201cBlest are the strong, for they shall possess the kingdom of the\nearth,\u201d would be an improved variation of the gospel text. The Germanic\nnations (including the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon) who have most\nfaithfully preserved the once universal love of manly sports, have\nprevailed against their rivals in the arena of industry and science, as\nwell as of war.\n\nAn American manufacturer, who established a branch of his business at\nHavre, France, hired American and British workmen at double wages,\nmaintaining that he found it the cheapest plan, since one of his\nexpensive laborers could do the work of three natives. In the seaport\ntowns, even of South America and Southern Europe, a British sailor is\nalways at a premium. American industry is steadily forcing its way\nfurther south, and may yet come to limit the fields of its enterprise\nonly by the boundaries of the American continent. From the smallest\nbeginnings, a nation of iron-fisted rustics has repeatedly risen to\nsupremacy in arms and arts. Two hundred years before the era of Norman\nconquests in France, Italy, and Great Britain, the natives of Norway\nwere but a race of hardy hunters and fishermen. A century after the\nbattle of Xeres de la Frontera, the half-savage followers of Musa and\nTarik had founded high schools of science and industry. And, as the\nfairest flower springs from the hardy thorn, the brightest flowers of\nart and poetry have immortalized the lands of heroic freemen, rather\nthan of languid dreamers. The same nation that carried the banners of\nfreedom through the battle-storm of Marathon and Salamis, adorned its\ntemples with the sculptures of Phidias and its literature with the\nmasterpieces of Sophocles and Simonides.\n\nPhysical vigor is also the best guarantee of longevity. Nature exempts\nthe children of the south from many cares; yet in the stern climes of\nthe higher latitudes Health seems to make her favorite home; in spite\nof snowstorms and bitter frosts the robust Scandinavian outlives the\nlanguid Italian. In spite of a rigorous climate, I say, for that his\nlength of life is the reward of hardy habits is proved by the not less\nremarkable longevity of the hardy Arab and the manful Circassian, in\nclimes that differ from that of Norway as Mexico and Virginia differ\nfrom Labrador. Men of steeled sinews overcome disease as they brave the\nperils of wars and the hardships of the wilderness; hospital-surgeons\nknow how readily the semi-savages of a primitive borderland recover\nfrom injuries that would send the effeminate city-dweller to the land\nof the shades. Toil-hardened laborers, too, share such immunities. On\nthe 25th of March, 1887, Thomas McGuire, the foreman of a number of\nlaborers employed at the night-shift of the Croton Aqueduct, fell to\nthe bottom of the pit, a distance of ninety-five feet, and was drawn up\nin a comatose condition, literally drenched in his own blood. At the\nBellevue Hospital (city of New York) the examining surgeon found him\nstill alive, but gave him up for lost when he ascertained the extent of\nhis injuries. Both his arms were broken near the shoulder, both thighs\nwere fractured, his skull was horribly shattered about the left temple\nand frontal region, six of his ribs were broken and their splinters\ndriven into the lungs. There seemed no hope whatever for him, and,\nafter the administration of an anesthetic, he was put in a cot and left\nalone to die. To the utter surprise of the attending surgeon, the next\nmorning found the mass of broken bones still breathing. His fever\nsubsided; he survived a series of desperate operations, survived an\napparently fatal hemorrhage, and continued to improve from day to day,\ntill about the middle of June he recovered his complete consciousness,\nand was able to sit up and answer the questions of the medical men who,\nin ever increasing numbers, had visited his bedside for the last three\nweeks. As a newspaper correspondent sums up his case: \u201cHis strong\nconstitution had repulsed the assaults of death, till finally the grim\nmonster went away to seek a less obstinate victim.\u201d And, moreover, the\nexercise of athletic sports lessens the danger of such accidents: a\ntrained gymnast will preserve his equilibrium where a weakling would\nbreak his neck.\n\nAccording to the mythus of the Nature-worshiping Greeks, the darling of\nVenus was a hunter (not a tailor or a hair-dresser), and the gift of\nbeauty is, indeed, bestowed on the lovers of health-giving sports, far\noftener than on the votaries of fashion. Supreme beauty is\ncountry-bred; the daughters of peasants, of village squires, of\nfox-hunting barons, have again and again eclipsed the galaxies of court\nbelles. Country boys have won hearts that seemed proof against the\ncharm of city gallants. \u201cI have seen many a handsome man in my time,\u201d\nsays old Mrs. Montague in Barry Cornwall\u2019s \u201cTable Talk,\u201d \u201cbut never\nsuch a pair of eyes as young Robbie Burns kept flashing from under his\nbeautiful brow.\u201d \u201cWomen will condone many a moral blemish in a suitor,\u201d\nsays Arthur Schopenhauer; \u201cthey will pardon rudeness, egotism, and\nintellectual poverty; they will forgive even homeliness sooner than\neffeminacy. Instinct seems to tell them that in the result of marriage\na mother\u2019s influence can neutralize any defect but that.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe history of Antinaturalism is the history of a persistent war\nagainst the manlier instincts of the human race. Buddha and his\nGalilean disciples considered the body the enemy of the soul. According\nto their system of ethics, Nature and all natural instincts are wholly\nevil; the renunciation of earth and all earthly hopes is their price of\nsalvation, and the chief endeavor of their insane zeal is directed\nagainst the interests of the human body. The gospel of Buddha\nSakiamuni, and its revamp, the \u201cNew Testament\u201d of the Galilean messiah,\nabound with the ravings of an anti-physical fanaticism as unknown to\nthe ethics of the manly Hebrews as to the philosophy of the\nearth-loving Greeks and Romans. The duty of physical education and\nhealth-culture was entirely ignored in the gospel of the life-despising\nNazarene. \u201cA healthy mind in a healthy body,\u201d was the ideal of the\nGrecian philosopher. A world-renouncing mind in a crushed body, was the\nideal of the Christian moralists. The sculptors and painters of the\nMiddle Ages vied in the representation of cadaverous saints,\nhollow-eyed devotees, and ghastly self-torturers. Physical training was\ntolerated as a secular evil indispensable for such purposes of the\nmilitant church as the hunting of heretics and the invasion of\nMussulman empires; but its essential importance was vehemently\ndisclaimed; the superior merit of sacrificing health to the interests\nof a body-despising soul was constantly commended, and the founders of\nthe monastic orders that superseded the pagan schools of philosophy did\nnot hesitate to enforce their dogmas by aggressive measures; the\nwretched convent slaves had to submit to weekly bleedings and\nstrength-reducing penances; their novices were barbarously scourged for\nthe clandestine indulgence of a lingering love for health-giving\nsports\u2014wrestling in the vacant halls of their cloister-prison, or\nracing conies on their way to their begging-grounds. The Olympic\nfestivals were suppressed by order of a Christian emperor. The fathers\nof the church lost no opportunity to inveigh with rancorous invectives\nagainst the pagan culture of the manly powers, \u201cso inimical to true\ncontriteness of spirit and meek submission to the yoke of the gospel.\u201d\nThe followers of Origenes actually practiced castration as the most\neffectual means of taming the stubborn instincts of unregenerate boys.\nTheir exemplar, who had recommended that plan for years, came at last\nto suspect the necessity of eradicating a germ of worldliness in his\nown mind, and proceeded to accomplish that purpose by emasculating\nhimself. The anti-physical principle of European Buddhism manifests\nitself likewise in the fanaticism of the Scotch ascetics who raged\nagainst the scant physical recreations of a people already sufficiently\nafflicted by climatic vicissitudes and the parsimony of an indigent\nsoil. It still survives in the bigotry of those modern zealots who\ngroan at sight of a horse-race or wrestling-match, and would fain\nsuppress the undue worldliness of ball-playing children. Manly pastimes\nwere banished from the very dreams of a world to come; and while the\nheroes of Walhalla contest the prizes of martial sports, and the guests\nof Olympus share in the joyful festivals of the gods, the saints of our\npriest-blighted heaven need the alternative of an eternal hell to enjoy\nthe prospect of an everlasting Sabbath-school.\n\n\n    Trials of strength and of skill,\n    Rewarded by festive assemblies,\n    Feasts in the halls of gods, where the voice of the muses\n    Answered in songs to the ravishing lyre of Apollo,\n\n\nquotes a German poet from the Vulgata, \u201cwhen suddenly,\u201d he adds, \u201ca\ngaunt, blood-streaming Jew rushed in with a crown of thorns on his head\nand a huge wooden cross on his shoulder, which cross he dashed on the\nbanquet table of the appalled gods, who turned paler and paler till\nthey finally faded away into a pallid mist. And a dreary time then\nbegan; the world turned chill and bleak. The merry gods had departed;\nOlympus became a Golgotha, where sickly, skinned, and roasted deities\nsneaked about mournfully, nursing their wounds and chanting doleful\nhymns. Religion, once a worship of joy, became a whining worship of\nsorrow.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nBut Nature had her revenge, and the despisers of their own bodies\nbecame so truly contemptible that in comparison the rudest barbarians\nof antiquity seemed respectable men. The neglect of physical exercise\navenged itself in loathsome diseases, the perverted instincts exploded\nin vices; the monkish self-abasers became caricatures of manhood:\nbloated, whining, mean, and viciously sensual wretches, the\nlaughing-stock of foreign nations and the curse and disgrace of their\nown. Physically, mentally, and morally, the earth-despising convent\ndrone represented the vilest type of degeneration to which the manhood\nof our race has ever been degraded, and the enforced veneration of such\nmonsters, as exemplars of perfection, has perverted the ethical\nstandards of mankind to a degree for which our present generation is as\nyet far from having wholly recovered. The love of athletic recreations\nis still smirched with the stigma of the Middle Ages; \u201crespectability\u201d\nis too often mistaken for a synonym of pedantry and conventional\neffeminacy; parents still frown upon the health-giving sports of their\nchildren; vice still sneaks in the disguise of saintliness and\nworld-renouncing aversion to physical recreations.\n\nThe degeneration of many once manful races has reached an incurable\nphase: the listless resignation to physical abasement and decrepitude.\nEarth has spurned her despisers; millions of priest-slaves in southern\nEurope have lost the inheritance of their fathers, and have to till the\nsoil for aliens and despots. The arbitrament of war has made them taste\nthe lowest dregs of national humiliation; the life-long worshipers of\nwhining saints appealed in vain to the God of Battles, and were forced\nto eat dust at the feet of the despised Infidel and heretic. The ships\nof the Spanish Armada were consecrated by a chorus of ranting priests\ncommending them to the miraculous protection of heaven; and heaven\u2019s\nanswer came in the blast of the hurricane that buried their fleet in\nthe depths of the sea. The same nation once more invoked the aid of the\nsaints for the protection of an armament against the great naval powers\nof the nineteenth century. The ships were ceremoniously baptized with\nthe most fulsomely pious names: \u201cThe Holy Savior of the World,\u201d \u201cSaint\nMaria,\u201d \u201cSaint Joseph,\u201d \u201cThe Most Holy Trinity,\u201d and sent forth in full\nreliance on the protection of supernatural agencies. But in the\nencounter with Nelson\u2019s self-relying veterans the sacred bubble at once\ncollapsed. St. Joseph\u2019s impotence howled in vain for the assistance of\nthe Holy Ghost. The Savior of the World could save himself only by a\nshameful flight, and the Most Holy Trinity succumbed to a decided\nsurplus of holes.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REDEMPTION.\n\nIn the work of physical regeneration Nature meets the reformer more\nthan half-way. Our children need but little encouragement to break the\nfetters of the fatuous restraint that dooms them to a life of physical\napathy. They ask nothing but time and opportunity to redeem the coming\ngeneration from the stigma of unmanliness and debility. Physical and\nintellectual education should again go hand in hand if we would promote\nthe happiness of a redeemed race on the plan that made the age of\nGrecian philosophy and gymnastics the brightest era in the history of\nmankind. Physical reform should be promoted by the systematic\nencouragement of athletic sports; every township should have a free\ngymnasium, every village a free foot-race park; by prize-offers for\nsupremacy in competitive gymnastics wealthy philanthropists could turn\nthousands of boy topers into young athletes. We should have athletic\ncounty meetings, state field-days, and national or international\nOlympiads.\n\nEducational ethics should fully recognize the rights of the body. We\nshould admit the unorthodox, but also undeniable, truth that an upright\nand magnanimous disposition is a concomitant of bodily strength, while\nfickleness, duplicity, and querulous injustice are the characteristics\nof debility. We should teach our children that a healthy mind can dwell\nonly in a healthy body, and that he who pretends to find no time to\ntake care of his health is a workman who thinks it a waste of time to\ntake care of his tools.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nCHASTITY.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nThe manifestations of the sexual instinct are guided by the plain and\nemphatic monitions of a physical conscience, developed partly with the\nprimordial evolution of our organism, partly by the hereditary\nexperience transmitted during the social development of our species.\nThe guardians of our prevailing system of ethics, too, have enforced\nthe regulations of their added supervision with a zeal apparently\njustified by the importance of its purpose; but an analysis of those\nregulations strikingly illustrates the perils of abandoning the plain\npath of Nature, to follow the vagaries of hyper-physical dogmatists.\nThe Nature-guided bias of sexual intuitions refers to time, selection,\nand circumstantial restrictions. The control of our clerical moralists\nignores the first and second law of modification, while their\nrecognition of the third involves a large number of irrelevant and\nirrational precepts.\n\nIn a state of nature, instinct and circumstances co\u00f6perate in the\nprevention of sexual precocity. Active exercise furnishes a vent to\nthose potential energies which physical sloth forces to explode in\nsensual excesses. The adult males of all species of vertebrate animals\nfiercely resent the encroachments of immature rivals. Savages postpone\ntheir nuptials to a period of life when the possession of property or\nprestige enables them to undertake the adequate support of a family. In\ncountries where both sexes spend a large portion of their time in\noutdoor occupations, precocious prurience is very rare. In the pastoral\nhighlands of the Austrian Alps (Styria, Salzburg, and the Tyrol), boys\nand girls meet only at church festivals, but enjoy their amusements\napart, the girls in dances and singing-picnics; the boys in\nshooting-matches, foot-races, and mountain excursions. A lad under\neighteen caught in flirtations is at once laughed back to manlier\npastimes, while girls even more jealously guard the exclusiveness of\ntheir festivals, and would chase away an intrusive bachelor as promptly\nas a trespassing boy. Lycurgus fixes the marriageable age of a groom at\nthirty years, of a bride at twenty. Among the martial Visigoths thirty\nand twenty-five years were the respective minima.\n\nThe importance of limiting the license of precocious passion has never\nbeen directly denied, but the significance of the instinct of sexual\nselection seems to have been unaccountably misunderstood. Marriages\nwithout the sanction, and even against the direct protest, of that\ninstinct are constantly encouraged. \u201cLove matches,\u201d in the opinion of\nthousands of Christian parents, seem to be thought fit only for the\ncharacters of a sentimental romance, or the heroes of the stage. The\noverpowering sway of a passion which asserts its claims against all\nother claims whatever ought sufficiently to proclaim the importance of\nits purpose and the absurdity of the mistake which treats its appeals\nas a matter of frivolous fancy.\n\nAnd, in fact, only the universality of that passion transcends the\nimportance of its direction. For, while the sexual instinct, per se,\nguarantees the perpetuation of the species, the instinct of selection\nrefers to the composition of the next generation, of which it thus\ndetermines the quality as the other determines the quantity. And just\nas the vital powers of the individual organism strive back from disease\nto health, the genius of the species seeks to re\u00ebstablish the\nperfection of the type, and to neutralize the effects of degenerating\ninfluences. We accordingly find that the individuals of each sex seek\nthe complement of their own defects. Small women prefer tall men;\nfickle men worship strong-minded women; dark grooms select fair brides;\npractical business men are attracted by romantic girls; city belles\nadmire a rustic Hercules, and vice versa. Exceptional intensity of\nmutual passion denotes exceptional fitness of the contemplated union,\nor rather the results of that union; for, here as elsewhere, Nature, in\na choice of consequences, will sacrifice the interests of individuals\nto the interests of the species. Passionate love, accordingly, is ever\nready to attain its purpose at the price of the temporary advantages of\nlife, nay, of life itself; and the voluntary renunciation of such\nadvantage is, therefore, in the truest sense a self-sacrifice for the\nbenefit of posterity, a surrender of personal interests to the welfare\nof the species. In spite of the far-gone perversion of our ethical\nstandards, we accordingly find an instinctive recognition of such truth\nin the popular verdict that applauds heroic loyalty to a higher law\nwhen lovers break the fetters of sordid interest or caste restrictions.\nIn their hearts, the very flatterers condemn the decision of a bride\nwho has sacrificed love to wealth, even in obedience to a parental\nmandate, or the monitions of Nature-estranged moralists.\n\nIn extremes of adverse circumstances, love itself, however, will often\nvoluntarily withdraw its claim. Hopeless inequality of station,\ndisease, and irremediable disabilities will extinguish the flame of a\npassion that would have defied time and torture. A lover struck with a\ncureless malady will shrink from transmitting his affliction; a proud\nbarbarian will refuse to make a refined bride the witness of his\nhumiliations. The perils of consanguinity may reveal themselves to a\nsort of hereditary (if not aboriginal) instinct; and the discovery of\nan unsuspected relationship has more than once deadened desire as if by\nmagic, and turned love into self-possessed friendship.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nIn the oldest chronicle of the human race the historian of the\npatriarchs has preserved a genealogical record which seems to have been\ntransmitted for the special purpose of showing the casual connection of\ncontinence and longevity. That record (the fifth chapter of Genesis)\nstates the age and the marriage date of the progenitors of ten\ndifferent generations, with a regularly correspondent decrease of\nperiod in both respects, from the first to the sixth, when both\nincrease in a single instance and then decrease to the end of the list.\nThe lessons of that record might be read in every branch of every\ngenealogical chronicle from Noah to the latest posterity of his sons.\nIn all countries, among all nations of all times, premature courtship\nhas courted premature death. Continence during the years of development\nrewards itself in health and vigor, both of body and of mind. Success\nin every line of endeavor is the reward of reserved strength. That\nstrength becomes available in the needs of after years, and is the\nchief basis of that love of independence and impatience of tyranny\nfound only among manful and continent nations. The love of the gentlest\nfemales is reserved for the manliest males of their species, while\nprecocious coveters of such prizes meet with humiliations and\ndisappointments. Those who forbear to anticipate the promptings of\nNature can rely on the favor of her undiminished aid; and to such only\nis given the power of that \u201clove that spurs to exertions.\u201d\n\nAnd if marriages are planned in heaven, that heaven manifests its will\nin the appeals of love, and not in the counsels of avarice or\nexpedience. If the sorrows of poverty-straitened love could be measured\nagainst the misery of disgust blighted wealth, it would be admitted\nthat the course of true love is, after all, the smoothest, in the long\nrun as well as in the beginning. For the inspirations of genuine love\nwill resist the assaults of misfortune as they defied its menace, and\nthe ban of prejudice can detract but little from the happiness of a\nunion hallowed by the sanction of Nature.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe enemies of Nature have not failed to pervert an instinct which they\ncould not wholly suppress. That this suppression was actually attempted\nin the first outbreak of antinatural insanity is abundantly proved by\nthe history of the early Christian sects, the Novatians, the\nMarcionites, and the followers of self-mutilating Origenes. Absolute\nabstinence from sexual intercourse was made the chief text of\n\u201cunworldliness.\u201d Novices were brought up in strict seclusion;\nmutilation was the usual penalty of violated vows, but was also\npracticed as an \u00e0-priori safeguard against the awakening of the sexual\ninstinct. St. Clemens of Alexandria, one of the few semi-rational\nleaders of the patristic era, gives an appalling account of the\nconsequences of those crimes against Nature, and vehemently denounces\nthe fatuous dogma, which was nevertheless only modified, but never\nwholly renounced, by the moralists of a church whose ethics were\nundoubtedly derived from the physical nihilism of Buddha Sakiamuni. The\nGalilean apostle of Antinaturalism indirectly inculcates the superior\nmerit of suppression in his allusions to \u201ceunuchs for the kingdom of\nheaven\u2019s sake,\u201d and the saints \u201cwho neither marry nor are given in\nmarriage,\u201d as well as in the example of his personal asceticism; and\nPaul distinctly informs us that marriage is only a lesser evil, a\ncompromise with the passions of the unregenerate, which perfect virtue\nshould forbear to gratify: \u201cIt is good for a man not to touch a woman;\nnevertheless to avoid ...,\u201d etc. Such dogmas bore their natural fruit\nin the society-shunning fanaticism of hermits and anchorites; in\naberrations \u00e0 la Origenes, and in that dreadful source of unnatural\nvice, the enforced celibacy of monks and priests.\n\nIn the philosophy of those moralists, the physical interests of mankind\nwere of no moment whatever. The church that burnt nuns and priests for\nyielding to the power of an irrepressible instinct, has in millions of\ncases sanctioned the nuptials of immature minors and the\nnature-insulting unions of avarice and flunkeyism. For the sake of a\nsmall fee it has encouraged the marriage of reluctant paupers, but\nhowled its anathemas against the unions of orthodox Christians with\ngentiles, Jews, or Christian dissenters. Thus encouraged, Christian\nparents have not hesitated to sacrifice the highest interests of their\nchildren and children\u2019s children to considerations of \u201cexpedience.\u201d In\nSpanish America thousands of baby-brides\u2014girls of twelve and thirteen;\nnay, even of ten years\u2014are delivered to the marital tyranny of wealthy\nold debauchees; in France, Italy, and Austria millions of mutually\nreluctant boys and girls are compelled to wed in obedience to the\ndecision of a business committee of relatives and panders. In the\ncities of the northland nations marriages of expedience, though rarer,\nare still of daily occurrence. \u201cWhatever is natural is wrong,\u201d was the\nshibboleth of the medieval dogmatists, and the protests of instinct\nwere suppressed in the name of morality.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nNext to dietetic abuses, premature and unfit marriage is undoubtedly\nthe most fruitful cause of the degeneration of the human species. The\npenalties of Nature, which every husbandman knows to avoid in the case\nof his cattle, are recklessly risked by parents and guardians of\nhelpless children\u2014perhaps in the vague hope that the normal\nconsequences might be averted by the intercession of supernatural\nagencies. But miracles have ceased to suspend the operation of Nature\u2019s\nlaws, and it would not be an over-estimate to say that a hundred\nmillion Christians annually incur the penalty of moral or physical\nsufferings and premature death, as a retribution of their own or their\nparents\u2019 outrages against the laws of the sexual instinct. Premature\nintercourse of the sexes stunts the further development of the organism\nand entails physical defects on the offspring of a series of successive\ngenerations. Puny, weakly, and scrofulous children people the cities of\nsouthern Europe from Havre to Messina, though infant mortality has\nassumed proportions which partly counteract the evil by the sternest of\nNature\u2019s remedies. Our fatuous modes of indoor education, combined with\nthe influence of a stimulating diet (meat, pepper-sauces, and coffee,\ninstead of fruit, bread, and milk) systematically promote premature\nprurience. Our school-boys are thus driven to vices of which they know\nneither the name nor the physiological significance, though, like the\nvictims of convent-life, they suffer the consequences\u2014\n\n\n    Losing their beauty and their native grace,\n\n\nwith but a small chance of subsequent redemption by healthier\noccupations. The monasteries of southern Europe are foster-schools of\neven more baneful vices\u2014crimes against Nature, which in the slave-dens\nof the Middle Ages were more frequent than in the most dissolute cities\nof pagan antiquity. Dr. Layton\u2019s report on the result of the \u201cRoyal\nCommission of Investigation\u201d (1538) describes the moral status of the\nBritish convents as an absolute ne plus ultra of imaginable corruption.\nThe memoirs of Guiccardini and Pedro Sanchez depict a depth of\nimmorality that would have revolted the libertines of the Neronic era.\nThe indictment of Pope John XXII. contains forty-six specifications\nthat can hardly be quoted in Latin. Jordanus Bruno, however, sums up\nthe secret of such aberrations:\n\n\n             Insani fugiant mundum, immundumque sequuntur.\n   (The maniacs, despising earth, stray into unearthly abominations.)\n\n\nThe absurd interdictions of marriage on account of a difference in\nspeculative opinions were for centuries enforced with all the\ntruculence of Inquisitorial butcher-laws; the espouser of a Jewess or a\nMorisca was burnt at the stake, together with his bride; even\nclandestine intercourse with an unbelieving paramour was punished with\nbarbarous severity; and a similar prejudice still frowns upon the loves\nof Catholics and Protestants, of Christians and Mohammedans, and even\nFreethinkers. In Ireland the priest-encouraged custom of early\nmarriages has filled the rural districts with starving children; in\nthousands of cities marriages of expedience invoke the curse of Nature\non the traitors to the highest interests of our species. Every\nmarriage, unsanctioned by love, avenges itself on several generations\nof innocent offspring, as well as directly in blighted hopes and years\nof unavailing regrets.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nBefore we can hope to abate the prevalence of genetic abuses we must\npromote a more general recognition of the truth that the organism of\nthe human body is subject to the same laws that govern the organic\nfunctions of our fellow-creatures; and that health does not dispense\nits blessings as a reward of prayer and theological conformity, but of\nconformity to the promptings of our sanitary intuitions. We must dispel\nthe delusion which hopes to conciliate the favor of a miracle-working\ndeity by sacrificing the physical interests of our species to the\ninterests of a clerical dogma.\n\nLike the seductions of Intemperance, the temptations of precocious\nIncontinence may be counteracted by more abundant opportunities of\ndiverting pastimes. According to the significant allegory of a Grecian\nmyth, Diana, the goddess of hunters and forest-dwellers, was the\nadversary of Venus, and outdoor exercise is, indeed, the best\npreventive of sexual aberrations. Athletes are instinctively continent.\nSensuality seems incompatible with a hardy, active mode of life, as\nthat of hunters, trappers, and backwoodsmen. The stigma of public\nopinion alone would, however, suffice to reduce the frequency of\npremature marriages; for, in the island of Corsica, where the\nrecognition of their baneful tendency is based on purely economical\nconsiderations (the perils of over-population), the dread of social\nostracism has proved more deterrent than the fear of poverty and\nstarvation.\n\nIn a community of Reformants (as the German philosopher Schelling\nproposed to call the friends of reform) twenty-five and thirty years\nshould be accepted as the lawful minima of a marriage age, and the\nteachers of Secularism should lose no opportunity to plead the cause of\nNature against the usurpations of priestcraft and conventionalism.\nPublic opinion should be trained to the recognition of the truth that\nthe sacrifice of love to lucre, caste-prejudice, and bigotry is a crime\nagainst the genius of mankind, and that a marriage, vetoed by the\nverdict of Nature, cannot be hallowed by the mumbling of a priest.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTEMPERANCE.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nInstinct is hereditary experience. The lessons derived from the\nrepetition of pleasant or painful impressions have been transmitted\nfrom an infinite number of generations, till impending dangers have\ncome to proclaim themselves by instinctive dread, opportune benefits by\ninstinctive desire. The shudder that warns us to recede from the brink\nof a steep cliff is felt even by persons who have never personally\nexperienced the peril of falling from the rocks of a precipice.\nMountain breezes are more attractive than swamp odors; the fumes of a\nfoul dungeon warn off a child who has had as yet no opportunity to\nascertain the danger of breathing contaminated air. A few years ago I\nbought a pet fox, with a litter of cubs, who were soon after orphaned\nby the escape of their mother. They had to be fed by hand; and, among\nother proceeds of a forage, my neighbor\u2019s boy once brought them a\nbundle of lizards, and a dead rattlesnake. For the possession of those\nlizards there was at once an animated fight, but at sight of the\nserpent the little gluttons turned tail and retreated to the farther\nend of their kennel. They were not a month old when I bought them, and\ncould not possibly have seen a rattlesnake before or known the effects\nof its bite from personal experience; but instinct at once informed\nthem that an encounter with a reptile of that sort had brought some of\ntheir forefathers to grief.\n\nThe vegetable kingdom, that provides food for nine-tenths of all living\ncreatures, abounds with an endless variety of edible fruits, seeds, and\nherbs, but also with injurious and even deadly products, often closely\nresembling the favorite food-plants of animals; which in a state of\nNature are nevertheless sure to avoid mistake, and select their food by\na faculty of recognizing differences that might escape the attention\neven of a trained botanist. The chief medium of that faculty is the\nsense of smell in the lower, and the sense of taste in the higher\nanimals. In monkeys, for instance, the olfactory organs are rather\nimperfectly developed, and I have often seen them peel an unknown fruit\nwith their fingers and then cautiously raise it to their lips and rub\nit to and fro before venturing to bring their teeth into play. The\npreliminary test, however, always sufficed to decide the question in a\ncouple of seconds. The Abyssinian mountaineers who catch baboons by\nfuddling them with plum brandy have to disguise the taste of the liquor\nwith a large admixture of syrup before they can deceive the warning\ninstincts of their victims. Where copper mines discharge their drainage\ninto a water-course, deer and other wild animals have been known to go\nin quest of distant springs rather than quench their thirst with the\npolluted water.\n\nThat protective instincts of that sort are shared even by the lowest\nanimals is proved by the experiment of the philosopher Ehrenberg, who\nput a drop of alcohol into a bottle of pond water, and under the lens\nof his microscope saw a swarm of infusoria precipitate themselves to\nthe bottom of the vessel.\n\nAnimals in a state of Nature rarely or never eat to an injurious\nexcess; the apparent surfeits of wolves, serpents, vultures, etc.,\nalternate with long fasts, and are digested as easily as a hunter,\nafter missing his breakfast and dinner, would be able to digest an\nabundant supper. Instinct indicates even the most propitious time for\nindulging in repletion. The noon heat of a midsummer day seems to\nsuspend the promptings of appetite; cows can be seen resting drowsily\nat the foot of a shade-tree; deer doze in mountain glens and come out\nto browse in moonlight; panthers cannot afford to miss an opportunity\nto slay their game at noon, but are very apt to hide the carcass and\ncome back to devour it in the cool of the evening.\n\nThe products of fermentation are so repulsive to the higher animals\nthat only the distress of actual starvation would tempt a monkey to\ntouch a rotten apple or quench his thirst with acidulated grape-juice.\nPoppy fields need no fence; tobacco leaves are in no danger of being\nnibbled by browsing cattle. Nature seems to have had no occasion for\nproviding instinctive safeguards against such out-of-the-way things as\ncertain mineral poisons; yet the taste of arsenic, though not violently\nrepulsive (like that of the more common, and therefore more dangerous,\nvegetable poisons), is certainly not attractive, but rather insipid,\nand a short experience seems to supplement the defects of instinct in\nthat respect. Trappers know that poisoned baits after a while lose\ntheir seductiveness, and old rats have been seen driving their young\nfrom a dish of arsenic-poisoned gruel.\n\nCertainly no animal would feel any natural inclination to seek arsenic\nor alcohol for its own sake, and there is no reason to suppose that\nman, in that respect, differs from every known species of his\nfellow-creatures. Our clerical temperance lecturers rant about \u201cthe\nlusts of the unregenerate heart,\u201d the \u201cweakness of the flesh,\u201d the\n\u201cdanger of yielding to the promptings of appetite,\u201d as if Nature\nherself would tempt us to our ruin, and the path of safety could be\nlearned only from preternatural revelation. But the truth is that to\nthe palate of a child, even the child of a habitual drunkard, the taste\nof alcohol is as repulsive as that of turpentine or bitterwood. Tobacco\nfumes and the stench of burning opium still nauseate the children of\nthe habitual smoker as they would have nauseated the children of the\npatriarchs. The first cigar demonstrates the virulence of nicotine by\nvertigo and sick headaches; the first glass of beer is rejected by the\nrevolt of the stomach; the fauces contract and writhe against the first\ndram of brandy. Nature records her protest in the most unmistakable\nlanguage of instinct, and only the repeated and continued disregard of\nthat protest at last begets the abnormal craving of that poison-thirst\nwhich clerical blasphemers ascribe to the promptings of our natural\nappetites. They might as well make us believe in a natural passion for\ndungeon air, because the prisoners of the Holy Inquisition at last lost\ntheir love of liberty and came to prefer the stench of their\nsubterranean black-holes to the breezes of the free mountains.\n\nThe craving for hot spices, for strong meats, and such abominations as\nfetid cheese and fermented cabbage have all to be artificially\nacquired; and in regard to the selection of our proper food the\ninstincts of our young children could teach us more than a whole\nlibrary of ascetic twaddle. Not for the sake of \u201cmortifying the flesh,\u201d\nbut on the plain recommendation of the natural senses that prefer\npalatable to disgusting food, the progeny of Adam could be guided in\nthe path of reform and learn to avoid forbidden fruit by the symptoms\nof its forbidding taste.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThere is a tradition that the ancient Thessalians made it a rule that\nthe guests of their banquets must get drunk on pain of expulsion. To\nlet anyone remain sober, they argued, would not be just to the\nbefuddled majority, of whose condition he might be tempted to take all\nsorts of advantage. If the evils of drunkenness were undeserved\nafflictions, it would certainly be true that sobriety would give an\nindividual an almost unfair advantage over the rest of his fellow-men.\nHe would be an archer trying his skill against hoodwinked rivals, a\nrunner challenging the speed of shackled competitors. There is not a\nmechanical or industrial avocation in which sobriety does not give a\nman the advantage which health and freedom confer over crippling\ndisease. For the baneful effects of intemperance are by no means\nlimited to the moments of actual intoxication, but react on the\nhalf-lucid intervals, and even on the after years of the reformed\ntoper. Temperance, in the widest sense, of abstinence from unfit food\nand drink, would be the best gift which the fairies could bestow on a\nfavorite child, for the blessing of frugal habits includes almost all\nother blessings whatever. Spontaneous gayety, the sunshine of the\nunclouded soul, is dimmed by the influence of the first poison-habit,\nand the regretful retrospects to the \u201clost paradise of childhood\u201d are\nfounded chiefly on the contrast of poison-engendered distempers with\nthe moral and physical health of earlier years. Temperance prolongs\nthat sunshine to the evening of life. By temperance alone the demon of\nlife-weariness can be kept at bay in times of fiercest tribulation:\nUndimmed eyes can more easily recognize the gleam of sunshine behind\nthe cloudy. The prisoners of the outlawed Circassian insurgents\nadmitted that, in spite of hunger, hardships, and constant danger,\ntheir captors contrived to enjoy life better than their enemies in the\nbrandy-reeking abundance of their headquarters. The myth of the\nLotos-eaters described a nation of vegetarians who passed life so\npleasantly that visitors refused to leave them, and renounced their\nnative lands. The religion of Mohammed makes abstinence from\nintoxicating drinks a chief duty of a true believer, and that law alone\nhas prevented the physical degeneration of his followers. With all\ntheir mental sloth and the enervating influence of their harem life,\nthe Turks are still the finest representatives of physical manhood. At\nthe horse fairs of Bucharest I saw specimens of their broad-shouldered,\nproud-eyed rustics, whose appearance contrasted strangely with that of\nthe sluggish boors and furtive traffickers of the neighboring natives.\nAfter twelve hundred years of exhaustive wars, alternating with periods\nof luxury and tempting wealth, the descendants of the Arabian\nconquerors are still a hardy, long-lived race, physically far superior\nto the rum-drinking foreigners of their coast towns. For more than six\nhundred years the temperate Moriscos held their own in war and peace\nagainst all nations of Christendom. Their Semitic descent gave them no\nnatural advantage over their Caucasian rivals; but they entered the\narena of life with clear eyes and unpalsied hearts, and in an age of\nuniversal superstition made their country a garden of science and\nindustry. Their cities offered a refuge to the scholars and\nphilosophers of three continents, and in hundreds of pitched battles\ntheir indomitable valor prevailed against the wine-inspired heroism of\ntheir adversaries.\n\nFrugality has cured diseases which defied all other remedies. For\nthousands of reformed gluttons it has made life worth living, after the\nshadows of misery already threatened to darken into the gloom of\napproaching night. Luigi Cornaro, a Venetian nobleman of the sixteenth\ncentury, had impaired his health by gastronomic excesses till his\nphysicians despaired of his life, when, as a last resort, he resolved\nto try a complete change of diet. His father, his uncles, and two of\nhis brothers had all died before the attainment of their fiftieth year;\nbut Luigi determined to try conclusions with the demon of unnaturalism,\nand at once reduced his daily allowance of meat to one-tenth of the\nusual quantity, and his wine to a stint barely sufficient to flavor a\ncup of Venetian cistern-water. After a month of his new regimen he\nregained his appetite. After ten weeks he found himself able to take\nlong walks without fatigue, and could sleep without being awakened by\nnightmare horrors. At the end of a year all the symptoms of chronic\nindigestion had left him, and he resolved to make the plan of his cure\nthe rule of his life. That life was prolonged to a century\u2014forty years\nof racking disease followed by sixty years of unbroken health, undimmed\nclearness of mind, unclouded content. Habitual abstinence from\nunnatural food and drink saves the trials of constant self-control and\nthe alternative pangs of repentance. \u201cBlessed are the pure, for they\ncan follow their inclinations with impunity.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe poison-habit, as we might call the craving for the stimulus of\nunnatural diet, is the oldest vice, and in some of its forms has been\npracticed by almost every nation known to history or tradition.\nThousands of years before Lot got drunk on home-made wine, the\nancestors of the Brahmans fuddled with soma-juice; Zoroaster enacts\nlaws against habitual intoxication; the art of turning grape-juice from\na blessing into a curse seems to have been known to the nations of\nIran, to the Parsees, and to the first agricultural colonists of the\nlower Nile. Nunus, the Arabian Noah, is said to have planted vineyards\non the banks of the Orontes; the worship of Bacchus was introduced into\nAsia Minor several centuries before the birth of Homer. The origin of\nthe opium habit antedates the earliest records of Chinese history; for\nimmemorial ages the Tartars have been addicted to the use of Koumis\n(fermented mare\u2019s milk), the Germanic nations to beer, the natives of\nSiam to tea and sago-wine. Intoxication and the excessive use of animal\nfood were prevalent vices, especially in the larger cities, of pagan\nGreece and Rome.\n\nYet the ancients sinned with their eyes half open. Their recognition of\ndietetic abuses was expressed in the word frugality, which literally\nmeant subsistence on tree fruits\u2014or, at least, vegetable products\u2014in\ndistinction from the habitual use of flesh-food. The advantages of\ntemperate habits were never directly denied; the law of Pythagoras\nenjoins total abstinence from wine and flesh, and the name of a\n\u201cPythagorean\u201d became almost a synonym of \u201cphilosopher.\u201d In all but the\nmost depraved centuries of Imperial Rome, wine was forbidden to\nchildren and women. The festival of the Bona Dea commemorated the fate\nof a Roman matron who had yielded to the temptation of intoxicating\ndrink, and was slain by the hand of her stern husband. Lycurgus\nrecommends the plan of letting the pupils of the military\ntraining-schools witness the bestial conduct of a drunken Helot, in\norder to inspire them with an abhorrence of intoxication. The bias of\npublic opinion always respected the emulation of patriarchal frugality\nand frowned upon the excesses of licentious patricians.\n\nBut the triumph of an anti-physical religion removed those safeguards.\nMistrust in the competence of our natural instincts formed the keystone\nof the Galilean dogma. The importance of physical welfare was\nsystematically depreciated. The health-laws of the Mosaic code were\nabrogated. The messiah of Antinaturalism sanctioned the use of\nalcoholic drinks by his personal example\u2014nay, by the association of\nthat practice with the rites of a religious sacrament. The habit of\npurchasing mental exaltation\u2014even of a fever-dream\u2014at the expense of\nthe body, agreed perfectly with the tendencies of a Nature-despising\nfanaticism, and during the long night of the Middle Ages monks and\npriests vied in an unprecedented excess of alcoholic riots. Nearly\nevery one of the thick-sown convents from Greece to Portugal had a\nvineyard and a wine cellar of its own. The monastery of Weltenburg on\nthe upper Danube operated the largest brewery of the German empire. For\ncenturies spiritual tyranny and spirituous license went hand in hand,\nand as the church increased in wealth, gluttony was added to the\nunnatural habits of the priesthood, and only the abject poverty of the\nlower classes prevented intemperance from becoming a universal vice. As\nit was, the followers of the Nature-despising messiah lost no\nopportunity to drown their better instincts in alcohol. They could\nplead the precedence of their moral exemplars, and vied in sowing the\nseeds of bodily diseases which their system of ethics welcomed as\nconducive to the welfare of a world-renouncing soul.\n\nAmong the slaves of the Scotch kirk-tyrants the long-continued\nsuppression of all healthier pastimes contributed its share to the\nincrease of intemperance. On the day when the laboring classes found\ntheir only chance of leisure, outdoor sports were strictly prohibited.\nDancing was considered a heinous, and on the Sabbath almost an\nunpardonable, sin. The tennis-halls were closed from Saturday night to\nMonday morning. Bathing was sinful. Mountain excursions, strolls along\nthe beach, or in the open fields, were not permitted on the day of the\nLord. Dietetic excesses, however, escaped control, and thus became the\ngeneral outlet for the cruelly suppressed craving for a diversion from\nthe deadly monotony of drudgery and church-penance. For \u201cNature will\nhave her revenge, and when the most ordinary and harmless recreations\nare forbidden as sinful, is apt to seek compensation in indulgences\nwhich no moralist would be willing to condone, ... and the strictest\nobservance of all those minute and oppressive Sabbatarian regulations\nwas found compatible with consecrating the day of rest to a quiet but\nunlimited assimilation of the liquid which inebriates but does not\ncheer\u201d (Saturday Review, July 19, 1879). \u201cEveryone,\u201d says Lecky, \u201cwho\nconsiders the world as it really exists, must have convinced himself\nthat in great towns public amusements of an exciting order are\nabsolutely necessary, and that to suppress them is simply to plunge an\nimmense portion of the population into the lowest depths of vice.\u201d\n\nClerical despotism is still a potent ally of intemperance. In hundreds\nof British and North American cities the dearth of better pastimes\ndrives our workingmen to the pot-house. They drink to get drunk, as the\nonly available means of escaping tedium and the consciousness of their\nmisery. Nature craves recreation, and the suppression of that instinct\nhas avenged itself by its perversion.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nDietetic abuses have contributed more to the progress of human\ndegeneration than all other causes taken together. Our infants are\nsickened with drastic drugs. The growth of young children is stunted\nwith narcotic beverages; the suppression of healthier pastimes drives\nour young men to the rum-shop; intemperance has become the Lethe in\nwhich the victims of social abuses seek to drown their misery. The\ncurse of the poison-habit haunts us from the cradle to the grave, and\nfor millions of our fellow-men has made the burdens of life to outweigh\nits blessings. There is a doubt if the \u201cyears\u201d of Genesis should be\nunderstood in the present meaning of the word; but historians and\nbiologists agree that the average longevity of our race has been\nenormously reduced within the last twenty centuries, and intemperance\nis the chief cause of that decrease. Our average stature has been\nreduced even below that of the ancient natives of an enervating\nclimate, like that of the lower Nile, as proved by D\u2019Arnaud\u2019s\nmeasurements of the Egyptian mummy-skeletons. On our own continent,\noutdoor life in the struggle with the perils of the wilderness has\nsomewhat redeemed our loss of physical manhood; but what are the men of\nmodern Europe compared with their iron-fisted ancestors, the athletic\nGreeks, the world-conquering Romans, the Scandinavian giants, the\nheroic Visigoths? Like a building collapsing under the progress of a\ndevouring fire, the structure of the human body has shrunk under the\ninfluence of the poison-habit; and there is no doubt that the moral\nvigor of our race has undergone a corresponding impairment\u2014appreciable\nin spite of the recent revival of intellectual activity and the\nconstant increase of general information.\n\nThe tide is turning; the victims of anti-physical dogmas are awakening\nto the significance of their delusion; the power of public opinion has\nforced the dupes of the alcohol-brewing Galilean to join the crusade of\nthe temperance movement; diet-reform has become a chief problem of\ncivilization; but the upas-tree of the poison-habit is too deeply\nrooted to be eradicated in a single generation, and the task of\nredemption will be the work of centuries. As yet the probing of the\nwound has only revealed the appalling extent of the canker-sore. The\nstatistics of the liquor traffic have established the fact that the\nvalue of the resources wasted on the gratification of the poison-vice\nfar exceeds the aggregate amount of the yearly expenditure for\neducational, charitable, and sanitary purposes\u2014nay, that the abolition\nof that traffic would save a sum sufficient for all reforms needed to\nturn earth into a physical and social paradise. And yet that waste\nexpresses only the indirect and smaller part of the damage caused by\nthe curse of the poison-habit. The loss in health and happiness cannot\nbe estimated in coin; but if the sum thus expended in the purchase of\ndisease were devoted to the promotion of arson and robbery, the utmost\npossible extent of the consequent mischief would probably fall short of\nthe present result. The stimulant habit in all its forms clouds the\nsunshine of life like an all-pervading poison-vapor. Alcohol undermines\nthe stamina of manhood; narcotic drinks foster a complication of\nnervous diseases; opium and tobacco impair the vigor of the cerebral\nfunctions. The excessive use of animal food, too, avenges itself in all\nsorts of moral and physical disorders. It inflames passions which no\nprayer can quench. \u201cAlas! what avails all theology against a diet of\nbull-beef?\u201d Father Smeth wrote from the Sioux missions; and the almost\nexclusive use of flesh food has, indeed, afflicted our Indians with the\ntruculence of carnivorous beasts. The same cause has produced the same\neffects in western Europe. The carnivorous saints of medieval Spain\ndelighted in matanzas and heretic-hunts, as their carnivorous ancestors\nin the butcher sports of the circus, and their British contemporaries\nin bear-baits and Tyburn spectacles.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe consequences of intemperance have at all times provoked protests\nagainst the more ruinous forms of the poison-habit, but the advance\nfrom special to general principles is often amazingly slow; and even\nnow the cause of temperance is hampered by the shortsightedness of\nreformers who hope to eradicate the Upas-tree by clipping and hacking\nits more prominent branches. They would limit prohibition to the more\ndeadly stimulants, not dreaming that the fatal habit is sure to\nreproduce its fruit from the smallest germs; that the poison-vice, in\nfact, is infallibly progressive, ever tending to goad the morbid\ncraving of the toper to stronger and stronger poisons or to a constant\nincrease in the quantity of the wonted stimulant: from cider to brandy,\nfrom laudanum to morphine, from tonic bitters to rum, from a glass of\nwine to a dozen bottles, from beer and tobacco to the vilest tipples of\nthe dram-shop. \u201cPrincipiis obsta\u201d (Resist the beginnings) was a Latin\nmaxim of deep significance. The cumulative tendency of the stimulant\nvice may be resisted, but only by constant vigilance, constant\nself-denial, constant struggles with the revivals of a morbid\nappetency, all of which might be saved by the total renunciation of all\nabnormal stimulants whatever, for only in that sense is it true that\n\u201cabstinence is easier than temperance.\u201d\n\nWe must accustom our boys to avoid the poison-vice as a loathsome\ndisease, rather than as a forbidden luxury which could ever be indulged\nwithout paying the penalty of Nature in a distressing reaction, far\noutweighing the pleasures of the morbid and momentary exaltation. We\nmust teach them that the artifice by which the toper hopes to cheat\nNature out of an access of abnormal enjoyment is under all\ncircumstances a losing game, which at last fails to produce, even for\nthe moment of the fever-stimulus, a glimpse of happiness at all\ncomparable to the unclouded sunshine of temperance.\n\nBut before we can hope to redeem the victims of the poison-vender, we\nmust learn to make virtue more attractive than vice. We must counteract\nthe attractions of the rum-shop by inviting reforming topers, not to\nthe whining conventicles of a Sabbath-school, but to temperance\ngardens, resounding with music (dance music, if \u201csacred concerts\u201d\nshould pall) and the jubilee of romping children, and shortening summer\ndays with free museums, picture galleries, swings, ball grounds, and\nfoot-race tracks. The gods of the future will contrive to outbid the\ndevil.\n\nIt would be unfair, though, to depreciate the services of the Christian\nministers who in a choice between dogma and reform have bravely sided\nwith Nature, and, defying the wrath both of spiritual and spirituous\npoison-mongers, of rum-sellers and heretic-hunters, are trying their\nutmost to undo the mischief of their antinatural creed, by frankly\nadmitting that a man can be defiled by \u201cthings that enter his mouth,\u201d\nand that the sacrament of eucharistic alcohol should be abandoned to\nthe rites of devil-worshipers.\n\nBut the religion which pretends to inculcate a peace-making spirit of\nmeekness has been strangely remiss in opposing the excessive use of a\ndiet which is clearly incompatible with the promotion of that virtue.\nIn Christians, as in Turks, Tartars, and North American Redskins, a\nchiefly carnivorous diet engenders the instincts of carnivorous beasts,\nand a Peace Congress celebrating its banquets with sixteen courses of\nflesh food might as well treat a vigilance committee to sixteen courses\nof opium. \u201cFrugality\u201d should again be promoted in the ancient sense of\nthe word; in a community of reformants temperance and vegetarianism\nshould go hand in hand. Or rather, the word \u201ctemperance\u201d should be used\nin the extended sense that would make it a synonym of Abstinence from\nall kinds of unnatural food and drink; and Dr. Schrodt\u2019s rule should\nbecome the canon of every dietetic reform league. \u201cAvoid,\u201d he says,\n\u201call drinks and stimulants repulsive to the palate of an unseduced\nchild, but also all comestibles that need artificial preparation to\nmake them palatable.\u201d The first part of that rule would exclude opium,\ntobacco, alcoholic beverages, tea, coffee, absinthe, fetid cheese, and\ncaustic spices. The second would abolish many kinds of animal food, but\nsanction milk, butter, eggs, honey, and other \u201csemi-animal\u201d substances,\ncondemned by the extreme school of vegetarians. \u201cFrom the egg to the\napple,\u201d is an old Latin phrase which proves that the frugality of the\nancient Romans never went to such extremes. Milk, eggs, and vegetable\nfats, in their combination with farinaceous dishes, might amply replace\nthe flesh food of the northern nations, and, considering the infinite\nvariety of fruits and vegetables known to modern horticulture, there\nseems no reason why a vegetarian diet should necessarily be a\nmonotonous one. The Religion of Nature will require the renunciation of\nseveral deep-rooted prejudices, but its path of salvation will in no\nsense be a path of thorns.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nSKILL.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nThe organic faculties of each species of animals are marvelously\nadapted to its peculiar mode of life, but only in the lower creatures\nthe skilful exercise of those faculties appears to be an inborn gift.\nThe young bee builds its first hexagon with mathematical precision. The\nyoung ant needs no instructor to aid her choice of proper\nbuilding-material, of proper food to be stored for winter use or\ndistributed in the nurseries of the larv\u00e6. The young butterfly, an hour\nafter issuing from the shell of the chrysalis, can use its wings as\nwell as at the end of the summer, and displays the same skill in\nsteering its way through the maze of a tangled forest.\n\nYoung birds, on the other hand, have to acquire such accomplishments by\nlong practice. Instead of driving them back to their nests, their\nparents encourage their attempts at longer and longer flights, and seem\nto know that occasional mishaps will prove a useful lesson for future\nemergencies. The mother fox carries half-crippled game to her burrow\nand sets her cubs a-scampering in pursuit, allowing the best runner to\nmonopolize the tidbits. Young kittens practice mouse-catching by\nplaying with balls; puppies run after grasshoppers, young squirrels\nplay at nest-building by gathering handfuls of leaves and moss. A\nBritish naturalist, who had domesticated a young beaver, one day caught\nhis pet building a dam across the floor of his study. The little\nengineer had dragged up a cartload of books, papers, sticks of wood,\netc., and piled them up to best advantage, placing the heavier volumes\nin the bottom stratum and the lighter ones higher up, and filling out\nthe interspaces with letters and journals. Every now and then he would\n\u201cstand off\u201d to scrutinize the solidity of the structure and return to\nmend a misarrangement here and there.\n\nChildren manifest early symptoms of a similar instinct. Infants of two\nor three years can be seen squatting in the sand, excavating tunnels,\nor building prairie-dog towns. Young Indians insist on the privilege of\nbreaking colts; the youngsters of the Bermuda Islanders straddle a\nplank and paddle around with a piece of driftwood, if their parents are\ntoo poor to afford them a canoe of their own. To a normal American boy\na tool-box is a more welcome present than a velvet copy of Dor\u00e9\u2019s\nIllustrated Bible. Swiss peasant lads practice sharp-shooting with\nself-constructed cross-bows. The old English law which required the son\nof a yeoman to practice archery for three hours a day was probably the\nmost popular statute of the British code. On new railroads, bridges,\netc., artisans, plying their trade in the open air, are generally\nsurrounded by crowds of young rustics, who forego the pleasures of\nnutting and nest-hunting for the sake of watching the manipulations of\na new handicraft. Even in after years the instinct of constructiveness\nfrequently breaks the shackles of etiquette, and princes and prelates\nhave defied the gossip of their flunkeys by getting a set of tools and\npassing whole days in the retirement of an amateur workshop. The\nemperor Henry I. invented a number of ingenious hunting-nets and\nbird-traps. Mohammed II., the conqueror of Constantinople, forged his\nown chain-armor. Charles V., the arbiter of Europe, preferred\nwatchmaking to every other pastime. Cardinal de Retz delighted in the\nconstruction of automatons. Peter the Great was the best ship-carpenter\nof his empire.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe English word king, like Danish kong and German K\u00f6nig, are derived\nfrom k\u00f6nnen (practical knowledge), and the first ruler was the most\nskilful, as likely as the strongest, man of his tribe. Skill, whether\nin the sense of bodily agility or of mechanical cleverness, established\nthe superiority of man over his fellow-creatures, and is still in many\nrespects a test of precedence between man and man. Supreme physical\ndexterity is always at a premium, in peace as in war, in the sports of\nprinces, in the pastimes of pleasure-seekers, in the adventures of\ntravelers, in moments of danger, in camps, in the wilderness and on the\nsea, as well as in smithies and workshops. Conscious skill and agility\nform the basis of a kind of self-reliance which wealth can only\ncounterfeit. In a cosmopolitan sea-port town of western Europe I once\noverheard a controversy on the comparative value of protective weapons.\nRevolvers, stilettos, air guns, slung-shots, and bowie knives found\nclever advocates, but all arguments yielded to the remark of an old\nsea-captain, who had faced danger in four different continents.\n\u201cThere\u2019s a use for all that, no doubt,\u201d said he, \u201cbut, I tell you,\nmynheers, in a close row the best thing to rely upon is a pair of quick\nfists.\u201d For the efficacy, even of the best weapons, depends to a large\ndegree on the expertness of the handler, the panoply of a weakling\nbeing as unprofitable as the library of an idiot. \u201cPresence of mind\u201d is\noften only the outcome of such expertness, and in sudden emergencies\ntheories are shamed by the prompt expedients of a practical man. In war\nthe issue of a doubtful campaign has more than once been decided by the\nsuperior constructiveness of an army that could bridge a river while\ntheir opponents waited for the subsiding of a flood. The conquest of\nCanada was achieved by the skill of a British soldier who devised a\nplan for hauling cannon to the top of a steep plateau. The fate of the\nByzantine empire was decided by the mechanical expedient of a Turkish\nengineer who contrived a tramway of rollers and greased planks, as an\noverland road for a fleet of war ships. By the invention of the chain\ngrappling-hook Duilius transferred the empire of the Mediterranean from\nCarthage to Rome.\n\nEven for the sake of its hygienic influence the development of\nmechanical skill deserves more general encouragement. Crank-work\ngymnastics are apt to pall, but in pursuit of a favorite handicraft\neven an invalid can beguile himself into a good deal of health-giving\nexercise, and, besides, the versatile development of the muscular\nsystem reacts on the functions of the vital organs, and thus explains\nthe robust health of active mechanics often laboring under the\ndisadvantage of indoor confinement. The poet Goethe, whose intuitions\nof practical philosophy rival those of Bacon and Franklin, records the\nopinion that every brain-worker should have some mechanical by-trade in\norder to obviate one-sidedness, and mental as well as physical\ndebility. Every handicraft reveals by-laws of Nature which no\ncyclopedia can teach an inquirer; manual labor is a school of practical\nwisdom, and sound \u201ccommon sense,\u201d as the English language happily\nexpresses the sum of that wisdom, is a prerogative of farmers and\nmechanics far, far oftener than of speculative philosophers.\n\nNor are such benefits limited to emergencies from which wealth could\ndispense its possessor. An amateur handicraft is the best safeguard\nagainst the chief bane of wealth: ennui, with its temptations to folly\nand vice. Nabobs can do worse than imitate the example of Carlo\nBoromeo, who spent every leisure hour of his philanthropic life in\npractical landscape gardening, and turned a large and once barren\nlake-island into the loveliest paradise of southern Europe. \u201cHeroum\nfilii noxae,\u201d \u201cthe sons of the great are apt to be nuisances,\u201d would be\nless true if Goethe\u2019s advice were heeded by our fashionable educators,\nand the benefits of his plan would extend to emergencies for which\nfashionable accomplishments afford only a dubious safeguard. \u201cA\nmechanical trade,\u201d says Jean Jacques Rousseau, \u201cis the best basis of\nsafety against the caprices of fortune. Classical scholarship may go\nbegging, where technical skill finds its immediate reward. A distressed\nsavant may recover his loss in the course of years; a skilful mechanic\nneed only enter the next workshop and show a sample of his handiwork.\n\u2018Well, let\u2019s see you try,\u2019 the reply will be; \u2018step this way and pitch\nin.\u2019\u201d\n\nThus, too, gymnastic agility is the best safeguard against numberless\nperils. A mother who hopes to protect her boy by keeping him at home\nand guarding him from the rough sports of his playmates, forgets that\nher apron-strings cannot guide him through the perils of after years;\nand a better plan was that of Cato, the statesman, warrior, and\nphilosopher, who, in the midst of his manifold duties, found time to\ninstruct his young sons in leaping ditches, and swimming rapid rivers,\nin order to \u201cteach them to overcome danger that could not be\npermanently avoided.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe absurd contempt of mechanical accomplishments is due partly to the\ndirect influence of anti-physical dogmas, partly to the indirect\ntendency of that caste spirit which has for ages fostered the\nantagonism of wealth and labor. The opulent Brahmans of ancient\nHindostan thought themselves so immeasurably superior to the children\nof toil that a Sudra was not permitted to approach a priest without\nample precautions against the defilement of the worshipful entity. The\ntemples of high-caste devotees were closed against low-caste believers.\nThe very breath of a Sudra was supposed to pollute articles of food to\nsuch an extent that a Brahman had always to take his meals alone.\n\nThe secret of such prejudices was probably the supposed antagonism of\nbody and soul and the imagined necessity of emphasizing that contrast\nby constant insults to the representatives of physical interests and\noccupations. For in Europe, too, the propagation of an anti-physical\ncreed went hand in hand with the systematic depreciation of secular\nwork, excepting, perhaps, the trade of professional manslaughter, the\nmilitary caste, which here, as in India, found always means to enforce\nrespect by methods of their own. During the most orthodox centuries of\nthe Middle Ages industrial burghers were valued only as tax-payers;\npeasants were treated little better than beasts of burden\u2014in many\nrespects decidedly worse, for after drudging all day for an inexorable\nmaster, the serf had often to work by moonlight, in order to get a\nlittle bread for himself and his family. The proposition to join in any\nmanual occupation (the handling of a whip, perhaps, excepted) would\nhave been resented as a gross insult by every little baron or priest of\nChristian Europe. Paul Courier describes the indignation of a French\nnobleman who caught a tutor instructing his boys in botany and the\nsecret of improving trees by grafting: \u201cGoing to make a clown of him?\nYou had better get an assistant-teacher with a manure cart.\u201d The\nmanual-labor dread of several medieval princes went to the length of\nemploying special chamberlains for every detail of their toilet: a\nchief and assistant shirt-warmer, a wig-adjuster, a hand-washer, a\nfoot-bather, a foot-dryer. German barons thought mechanical labor an\nincomparable disgrace\u2014more shameful, in fact, than crime\u2014for the same\nRitter who would have starved rather than put his hand to a plow, had\nno hesitation in eking out an income by highway robbery. The princes of\nthe church thought it below their dignity to walk afoot, and kept\nsedan-bearers to transport them to church and back. They kept writing\nand reading clerks, and now and then fought a duel by proxy, or sent a\nvicar to lay the corner-stone of a new court-house, in order to convey\nthe impression that their spiritual duties left them no time for\nsecular concerns.\n\nThat sort of other-worldliness still seems to bias our plans of\neducation. Colleges that would fear to lose prestige by devoting a few\nminutes a week to technical work or horticulture, surrender dozens of\nhours to the bullying propaganda of a clerical miracle-monger.\nMechanical mastership (after all, the basis of all science) is denied a\nplace among the honorable \u201cfaculties\u201d of our high-schools. Fashionable\nparents would be shocked at the vulgar taste of a boy who should visit\njoiner-shops and smithies, instead of following his aristocratic\nfriends to the club-house. They would bewail the profanation of his\nsocial rank, if he should accept an invitation to impart his skill to\nthe pupils of a mechanical training-school; but would connive at the\nmental prostitution of a young sneak who should try to re\u00ebstablish a\nsanctimonious reputation by volunteering his assistance to the managers\nof a mythology-school.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nNeglected development, either of physical or mental faculties, avenges\nitself in ennui, modified, for the benefit of the poor, by the less\nmonotonous afflictions of care. There is no doubt that the feeling of\nemptiness that seeks refuge in the fever of passion or intoxication, is\na wholly abnormal condition, as unknown to the children of the\nwilderness, who never feel the craving of unemployed faculties, as to\nthe truly civilized man, who finds means to satisfy that craving.\nUnemployed muscles, like idle talents, rebel against continued neglect\nand goad the sluggard to seek relief in the morbid excitement of vice,\nand the father who thinks it a waste of money to invest a dollar in a\ntool-box may have to spend hundreds for the settlement of rum bills and\ngambling debts.\n\nBoth the effect and the cause of such excesses were rather rare in the\nprime of the North American republic, when nearly every colonist was a\nfarmer, and every farm a polytechnicum of home-taught trades; but\nEuropean luxuries introduced European habits, and our cities now abound\nwith plutocrats who are ashamed of the toil by which their forefathers\nlaid the foundation of their wealth. Our cities have bred the vices\nfaster than the refinements of wealth, and have become acquainted with\nennui\u2014\n\n\n        We lack the word but have the thing;\n\n\nand thousands who would fail to find relief on the classical\nhunting-grounds of Peter Bayle might imitate his landlord, who\npracticed sharp-shooting with a medieval hunting-bow till he could\nchallenge the best pistol shots of the neighboring garrison. In a\nchoice of evils the most puerile game of skill is, indeed, clearly\npreferable to games of chance; but to that last resort of inanity the\ntraditional aversion to manual employments has actually driven\nthousands of city idlers. Yet our American towns have never sunk to the\nabject effeminacy of European cities, where physical apathy has become\na test of good breeding and a taste for mechanical accomplishments a\nstigma of eccentricity, and where, consequently, social prestige has to\nbe purchased at the price of practical helplessness, of dependence in\nall mechanical questions of life on the aid and the judgment of\nhirelings.\n\nLife-endangering accident may now and then illustrate the disadvantages\nof physical incapacity; a drowning bather may be inclined to admit that\nthe saving influence of a swimming-school might compare favorably with\nthat of the baptismal miracle tank; but the survivors will persist in\nrelying on the vicarious omnipotence of coin, ignoring the clearest\nillustrations of the truth that physical incapacity avenges itself in\nevery waking hour, even of the wealthiest weakling, while the\nguardian-spirit of Skill accompanies its wards from the workshop to the\nplayground and follows them over mountains and seas.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe growing impatience with the dead-language system of our monkish\nschool-plan will soon lead to a radical reform of college education,\nand a fair portion of the time gained should be devoted to the culture\nof mechanical arts. For boys in their teens the \u201cinstinct of\nconstructiveness\u201d would still prove to retain enough of its native\nenergy to make the change a decidedly popular one, as demonstrated by\nthe success of the mechanical training schools that have attracted many\npupils who have to find the requisite leisure by stinting themselves in\ntheir recreations. \u201cApplied gymnastics\u201d (riding, swimming, etc.) would\nbe still more popular, and greatly lessen the yearly list of accidents\nfrom the neglect of such training.\n\nThe bias of fashion would soon be modified by the precedence of its\nleaders, as in Prussia, where the royal family set a good example by\neducating their princes (in addition to the inevitable military\ntraining) in the by-trade of some mechanical accomplishment (carpentry,\nsculpture, bookbinding, etc.), the choice of handicraft being optional\nwith the pupil. No model residence should be deemed complete without a\npolytechnic workshop, furnished with a panoply of apparatus for the\npractice of all sorts of amateur chemical and mechanical pursuits\u2014a\nplan by which the Hungarian statesman-author, Maurus Jockar, has\nbanished the specter of ennui from his hospitable country seat. His\nprivate hobby is Black Art, as he calls his experiments in recondite\nchemistry, but any one of his guests is welcome to try his hand at\nwood-carving, glass-painting, metallurgy, or any of the more primitive\ncrafts, for which the laboratory furnishes an abundance of apparatus.\nPrivate taste might, of course, modify the details of that plan, and\neven without regard to eventual results, its proximate benefits if once\nknown would alone insure its general adoption in the homes of the\nennui-stricken classes. The educational advantages of mechanical\ntraining, though, can, indeed, hardly be overrated. A scholar with\nnerveless arms and undextrous hands is as far from being a complete man\nas a nimble savage with an undeveloped brain.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nII.\u2014MENTAL MAXIMS.\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nKNOWLEDGE.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nIn the arena of life animal instinct triumphs over the elemental forces\nof Nature, as human intelligence triumphs over instinct, and the secret\nof that superiority is knowledge. Skill is well-directed force.\nPrudence is well-applied reason. The efficiency of that directing\nfaculty depends on experience, as we call the accumulation of\nrecollected facts. Knowledge is stored light, as helpful in the\nnarrowest as in the widest sphere of conscious activity, and the\ninstinctive appreciation of that advantage manifests itself in the\nlowest species of vertebrate animals, nay, perhaps even in the winged\ninsects that swarm in from near and far to explore the mystery of a\nflickering torch. Curiosity, rather than the supposed love of rhythm,\ntempts the serpent to leave its den at the sound of the conjurer\u2019s\nflute. Dolphins are thus attracted by the din of a kettledrum,\nriver-fish by the glare of a moving light. Where deer abound, a\npitchwood fire, kindled in a moonless night, is sure to allure them\nfrom all parts of the forest. Antelope hunters can entice their game\nwithin rifle-shot by fastening a red kerchief to a bush and letting it\nflutter in the breeze. When the first telegraph lines crossed the\nplateau of the Rocky Mountains, herds of bighorn sheep were often seen\ntrotting along the singing wires as if anxious to ascertain the meaning\nof the curious innovation. Every abnormal change in the features of a\nprimitive landscape\u2014the erection of a lookout-tower, a clearing in the\nmidst of a primeval forest\u2014attracts swarms of inquisitive birds, even\ncrows and shy hawks, who seem to recognize the advantage of\nreconnoitering the topography of their hunting-grounds. In some of the\nhigher animals inquisitiveness becomes too marked to mistake its\nmotive, as when a troop of colts gathers about a new dog, or a pet\nmonkey pokes his head into a cellar-hole, and wears out his\nfinger-nails to ascertain the contents of a brass rattle.\n\nFor the intelligence of children, too, inquisitiveness is a pretty sure\ntest. Infants of ten months may be seen turning their eyes toward a new\npiece of furniture in their nursery. Kindergarten pets of three years\nhave been known to pick up a gilded pebble from the gravel road and\ncall their teacher\u2019s attention to the color of the abnormal specimen.\nWith a little encouragement that faculty of observation may develop\nsurprising results. The wife of a Mexican missionary of my\nacquaintance, who had taken charge of an Indian orphan boy, and made a\npoint of answering every pertinent question of the bright-eyed\nyoungster, was one day surprised to hear him usher in a stranger and\ninvite him to a seat in the parlor. \u201cHow could you know it was not a\ntramp?\u201d she asked her little chamberlain after the visitor had left.\n\u201cOh, I could tell by his clean finger-nails,\u201d said Master Five-years,\n\u201cand also by his straight shoes. Tramps always get their heels\ncrooked!\u201d\n\nThe shrewd remarks of boy naturalists and girl satirists often almost\nconfirm the opinion of Goethe that every child has the innate gifts of\ngenius, and that subsequent differences are only the result of more or\nless propitious educational influences. And in spite of most\ndiscouraging circumstances, the love of knowledge sometimes revives in\nafter years with the energy almost of a passionate instinct. On the\nveranda of a new hotel in a railroad town of southern Texas, I once\nnoticed the expression of rapt interest on the face of a young hunter,\na lad of eighteen or nineteen, who here for the first time came in\ncontact with the representatives of a higher civilization and with\nbreathless attention drank in the conversation of two far-traveled\nstrangers. \u201cIf they would hire me for a dog-robber (a low menial), I\nwould do it for a dime a day,\u201d he muttered, \u201cjust for the chance to\nhear them talk.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut if they should take you to some smoky, crowded, big city?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t care,\u201d said he, with an oath, \u201cI would let them lock me up in\na jail, if I could get an education like theirs.\u201d\n\nIt would, indeed, be a mistake to suppose that the thirst for mental\ndevelopment is the exclusive product of advanced culture. In the thinly\nsettled highlands of our western territories, miners and herders have\nbeen known to travel ten miles a day over rough mountain roads to get\nthe rudiments of a school education. Missionaries who have mastered the\nlanguage of a barbarous tribe have more than once been followed by\nconverts whom the charm of general knowledge (far more than any special\ntheological motive) impelled to forsake the home of their fathers and\nfollow the white stranger to the land of his omniscient countrymen.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nKnowledge is power, even in the contests of brutes. Superior\ntopographical knowledge enables the chasing wolf to intercept the\nflight of his game; a well-chosen ambush makes the tiger the master of\nhis would-be slayer. Familiarity with the habits of enemies and rivals\ndecides success in the struggle for existence.\n\nThe advantage of superior knowledge is not limited to the prestige of\nsuperlative scholarship, but asserts itself in the chances of every\ncompetitive pursuit, so infallibly, indeed, as to justify Diderot\u2019s\nparadox that there is no need of any such thing as love of science for\nits own sake, since all knowledge repays its acquisition by collateral\nbenefits. A farmer\u2019s boy studying statute law, a lawyer collecting\nmarket reports, will sooner or later find a chance to profit by their\nstudy. The infinite interaction of human affairs connects the interests\nof all branches of human knowledge, and makes the humblest handicraft\namenable to scientific improvement. Knowledge has never hindered the\nsuccessful pursuit of any manual vocation. Fifty years ago several\nstates of the American Union made it a penal offense to teach a slave\nreading and writing; and if the planter valued his laborers in\nproportion to their canine submissiveness, he was perhaps right that\n\u201ceducation spoils a nigger.\u201d It qualified his servility, and by making\nhim a better man, made him perhaps a less available dog. But with that\nsingle exception, ignorance is a disadvantage, and knowledge an\nadvantage, both to its possessor and his employers. In the solitudes of\nthe Australian bush-land, Frederick Gerst\u00e4cker found a herdsman reading\nAristophanes in the original. Neither the sheep nor their owners were\nany the worse for that incidental accomplishment of the poor shepherd,\nwho found his study a sufficient source of pastime, while his comrades\nwere apt to drown their ennui in bad rum. James Cook, the greatest of\nmodern maritime discoverers, served his apprenticeship on board of a\ncoal-barge and employed his leisure in studying works on geography and\ngeneral history. The knowledge thus acquired might seem of no direct\nadvantage, but three years after, on board of the Eagle frigate, the\nerudition of the brawny young sailor soon attracted the attention of\ntwo intelligent officers whose recommendations proved the\nstepping-stones of his successful career. Mohammed Baber Khan, the\nemperor of the Mogul empire, owed his triumphs to his topographical\nstudies of a region which afterward became the battleground of his\ngreat campaigns. Mohammed the Prophet gained the confidence of his\nfirst employer by his familiarity with the commercial customs of\nneighboring nations. Superior knowledge compels even an unwilling\nrecognition of its prestige. In the Middle Ages, when Moslems and\nTrinitarians were at daggers drawn, Christian kings sent respectful\nembassies to solicit the professional advice of Ibn Rushd (\u201cAverroes\u201d),\nthe Moorish physician. During the progress of the life-and-death\nstruggle of France and Great Britain, the discoveries of Sir Humphrey\nDavy impelled the Academie Fran\u00e7aise to send their chief prize to\nEngland. The benefits of great inventions are too international to\nleave room for that envy that pursues the glory of military heroes, and\nthe triumphs of science have often united nations whom a unity of\nreligion had failed to reconcile.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThere is a tradition that a year before the conversion of Constantine\nthe son of the prophetess Sospitra was praying in the temple of\nSerapis, when the spirit of his mother came over him and the veil of\nthe future was withdrawn. \u201cWoe to our children!\u201d he exclaimed, when he\nawakened from his trance, \u201cI see a cloud approaching, a great darkness\nis going to spread over the face of the world.\u201d That darkness proved a\nthirteen hundred years\u2019 eclipse of common sense and reason. There is a\ndoubt if the total destruction of all cities of the civilized world\ncould have struck a more cruel blow to Science than the dogma of\nsalvation by faith and abstinence from the pursuit of free inquiry. The\nethics of the world-renouncing fanatic condemned the love of secular\nknowledge as they condemned the love of health and the pursuit of\nphysical prosperity, and the children of the next fifty generations\nwere systematically trained to despise the highest attribute of the\nhuman spirit. Spiritual poverty became a test of moral worth;\nphilosophers and free inquirers were banished, while mental castrates\nwere fattened at the expense of toiling rustics and mechanics; science\nwas dreaded as an ally of skepticism, if not of the arch-fiend in\nperson; the suspicion of sorcery attached to the cultivation of almost\nany intellectual pursuit, and the Emperor Justinian actually passed a\nlaw for the \u201csuppression of mathematicians.\u201d\n\nWhen the tyranny of the church reached the zenith of its power, natural\nscience became almost a tradition of the past. The pedants of the\nconvent schools divided their time between the forgery of miracle\nlegends and the elaboration of insane dogmas. The most extravagant\nabsurdities were propagated under the name of historical records;\nmedleys of nursery-tales and ghost-stories which the poorest village\nschool-teacher of pagan Rome would have rejected with disgust were\ngravely discussed by so-called scholars. Buckle, in his \u201cHistory of\nCivilization,\u201d quotes samples of such chronicles which might be\nmistaken for products of satire, if abundant evidence of contemporary\nwriters did not prove them to have been the current staple of medieval\nscience.\n\nWhen the gloom of the dreadful night was broken by the first gleam of\nmodern science, every torch-bearer was persecuted as an incendiary.\nAstronomers were forced to recant their heresies on their bended knees.\nPhilosophers were caged like wild beasts. Religious skeptics were burnt\nat the stake, as enemies of God and the human race. It was, indeed,\nalmost impossible to enunciate any scientific axiom that did not\nconflict with the dogmas of the revelation-mongers who had for\ncenturies subordinated the evidence of their own senses to the rant of\nepileptic monks and maniacs. And when the sun of Reason rose visibly\nabove the horizon of the intellectual world, its rays struggled\ndistorted through the dense mist of superstition which continued to\nbrood over the face of the earth, and was only partially dispersed even\nby the storms of the Protestant revolt.\n\nThe light of modern science has brought its blessings only to the\nhabitants of the social highlands; the valley dwellers still grope\ntheir way through the gloom of inveterate superstitions and prejudices,\nand centuries may pass before the world has entirely emerged from the\nshadow of the life-blighting cloud which the son of Sospitra recognized\nin the rise of the Galilean delusion.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nOf all the sins of Antinaturalism, the suppression of human reason has\nbrought down the curse of the direst retribution. It is the\nunpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit. The actual extinction of\ntheir local sunshine could hardly have entailed greater misery upon the\nslaves of the Christian church. The victims of a permanent Egyptian\ndarkness might have taken refuge in the Goshen of their neighbors, in\nthe sunny garden-homes of the Parsees and Spanish Moriscos, but the\njealousy of the clerical tyrants closed every gate of escape, and for\nthirteen centuries the nations of Christian Europe suffered all the\nhorrors of enforced ignorance and superstition. The history of that\ndismal night is, indeed, the darkest page in the records of the human\nrace, and its horrors bind the duties of every sane survivor to a war\nof extermination upon the dogmas of the insane fanatic whose priests\nturned the paradise of southern Europe into a hell of misery and\nbarbarism.\n\nThe battle against the demon of darkness became a struggle for\nexistence, in which the powers of Nature at last prevailed, but for\nmillions of our fellow-men the day of deliverance has dawned too late;\nspring-time and morning returned in vain for many a once fertile land\nwhere the soil itself had lost its reproductive power, where the\noutrages of Antinaturalism had turned gardens into deserts and freemen\ninto callous slaves. The storm that awakened the nations of northern\nEurope from the dreams of their poison-fever could not break the spell\nof a deeper slumber, and the moral desert of the Mediterranean\ncoast-lands remains to warn the nations of the future, as the bleaching\nbones of a perished caravan remain to warn the traveler from the track\nof the simoom.\n\nThe religion of Mohammed, with its health-laws and encouragements to\nmartial prowess, has produced no ruinous results of physical\ndegeneration, but the entire neglect of mental culture has not failed\nto avenge itself in the loss of national prestige. For after the\nnorthern nations of Christendom had broken the yoke of their spiritual\ntyrants, the children of Islam remained faithful to the task-masters of\ntheir less grievous bondage, but also to its total indifference to\nsecular science, and from that day the crescent of the prophet became a\nwaning moon.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe experience of the Middle Ages has made the separation of church and\nstate the watchword of all true Liberals. But the divorce of church and\nschool is a duty of hardly less urgent importance. While many of our\nbest Freethinkers waste their time in hair-splitting metaphysics,\nCatholic and Protestant Jesuits co\u00f6perate for a purpose which they have\nshrewdly recognized as the main hope of obscurantism: The perversion of\nprimary education by its re-subjection to the control of the clergy.\nThe definite defeat of those intrigues should be considered the only\npermanent guarantee against the revival of spiritual feudalism. A\nperhaps less imminent, but hardly less serious, danger to the cause of\nScience is the stealthy revival of mysticism. Under all sorts of\nnomenclatural modifications, the specter-creed of the ancient Gnostics\nis again rearing its head, and menacing reason by an appeal to the\nhysterical and sensational proclivities of ignorance.\n\nIn the third place, there is no doubt that under the present\ncircumstances of educational limitations the adoption of female\nsuffrage would prove a death-blow to intellectual progress and re-doom\nmankind to the tutelage of a clerical Inquisition; but rather than\nperpetuate a twofold system of oppression, we should complete the work\nof emancipation by admitting our sisters to all available social and\neducational advantages, as well as to the privilege of the polls. From\nthe suffrage of educated women we have nothing to fear and much to\nhope.\n\nIt has long been a mooted question if the progress of knowledge can be\npromoted by arbitrary encouragement, such as prize offers and\nsinecures, but the preponderance of logic seems on the side of those\nwho hold that science should be left to its normal rewards, and that\nthe proper sphere of legislation does not extend beyond the duty of\nsecuring the full benefit of those rewards by the removal of absurd\ndisabilities and unfair discriminations in support of worm-eaten\ndogmas. Reason may be safely left to fight its own battle, if the arms\nof Un-reason cease to be strengthened by statutes which enable every\nvillage ghost-monger to silence the exponents of science by an appeal\nto medieval heretic-laws.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nINDEPENDENCE.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nIf the scale of precedence in the mental development of our\nfellow-creatures can be determined by any single test, that test is the\ninstinctive love of Independence. Many of the lower animals may\nsurprise us by constructive achievements that rival the products of\nhuman science, but their instinct of freedom is quite imperfectly\ndeveloped. The caterpillar of the silk-moth will spin its satin\nwinter-gown in a box full of mulberry leaves as skilfully as in the\nfreedom of the tropical forests. In the hive of their captor a swarm of\nwild bees will continue to build hexagons and store up honey as\ndiligently as in the rocks or hollow trees of the wilderness. Captive\nriver-fish will eat and pair a day after their transfer to a fishpond.\nBirds, on the other hand, mourn their lost liberty for weeks. During\nthe first half-month of its captivity, a caged hawk rarely accepts any\nfood; sea-birds and eagles starve with a persistence as if they were\nthus trying to end an affliction from which they see no other way of\nescape. Wild cows can be domesticated in a month; wild elephants hardly\nin a year. Several species of the larger carnivora can be trained only\nif caught in their cub-hood, as in after years they become almost\nwholly untamable. The lower varieties of quadrumana, the Brazilian\ncapuchin monkeys and East Indian macaques, seem almost to invite\ncapture by the frequency of their visits to the neighborhood of human\ndwellings, while the apes proper are, without any exception, the shyest\ncreatures of the virgin woods. The gorilla is so rarely seen in the\nvicinity of human settlements that its very existence was long\nconsidered doubtful. Sir Stamford Raffles asserts that at the distant\nsound of an ax the orang of Sumatra at once abandons its favorite\nhaunts in the coast jungles. On the west coast of Borneo a large orang\nwas once surprised by the crew of an English trading-vessel, but fought\nwith a desperation that obliged its would-be captors to riddle it with\nrifle-balls, though they knew that a living specimen of that size would\nbe worth its weight in silver.\n\nThat same resolution in defense of their liberties has always\ndistinguished the nobler from the baser tribes of the human race. The\nnatives of the Gambia Valley have no hesitation in selling their\nrelatives to the Portuguese slave-traders, while the liberation of a\nsingle countryman (whom the enemy had determined to hold as a hostage)\nimpelled the Circassian highlanders to risk their lives in a series of\ndesperate assaults upon the ramparts of a Russian frontier post. The\nhope of covering the retreat of their fleeing wives and children\ninspired the heroes of Thermopyl\u00e6 to make a stand against\nsix-thousandfold odds. The crimps of the Christian church-despots found\nno difficulty in foisting their yoke upon the former vassals of the\nRoman empire, but when they attempted to cross the border of the Saxon\nLandmark, the kidnappers were slain like rabid wolves; and when the\nneighboring ruffian-counts, and at last Charlemagne in person, marched\nto the support of the clerical slave-hunters, they met with a\nresistance the record of which will forever remain the proudest page in\nthe chronicle of the Germanic races. Cornfields were burnt, villages\nwere leveled with the ground; for hundreds of miles the means of human\nsubsistence were utterly destroyed; but the council of the Saxon\nchieftains refused to submit, and when the homes of their forefathers\nwere devastated, they carried their children to the inaccessible wilds\nof the Harz highlands, where they grimly welcomed the aid of the winter\nsnows, and defied frost and starvation, rather than crawl to cross (zu\nKreuze kriechen), as their vernacular stigmatized the cowardice of\ntheir crucifix-kissing neighbors. And when the Frankish autocrat had\nshackled their land with a chain of forts, they thrice rebelled with\npersistent disregard of consequences; nay, after the loss of the last\nmurderous battle, the prisoners of war refused to accept the ultimatum\nof the conqueror, and rather than crawl to cross four thousand of their\ncaptive noblemen mounted the scaffold of the executioner on the\nmarket-square of Quedlinburg. The bodies of the heroes were thrown to\nthe birds of the wilderness; but their deathless spirits revived in the\nphilippics of Martin Luther and the battle-shout of L\u00fctzen and\nOudenaarde, and will yet ride the storm destined to hurl the last cross\nfrom the temples of the Germanic nations.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nSince the dawn of history the lands of freedom have produced fruits and\nflowers that refused to thrive on any other soil. For several centuries\ncivilization was confined to a small country of republics: Attic and\nTheban Greece. \u201cStudy the wonders of that age,\u201d says Byron to his\nfriend Trelawney, \u201cand compare them with the best ever done under\nmasters.\u201d Switzerland, in spite of its rocky soil, has for centuries\nbeen the happiest, as well as the freest, country of Europe. The\nprosperity of the United States of America, since the establishment of\ntheir independence, stands unparalleled in the history of the last\neighteen hundred years; and, moreover, the degree of that prosperity\nhas been locally proportioned to the degree of social freedom, and has\nbegun to become general only since the general abolition of slavery.\nFreedom blesses the poorest soil, as despotism blights the most\nfertile, and it is only an apparent exception from that rule that Italy\ncontinued to flourish during the first two centuries of the empire. The\nchange in the form of government was at first nominal, rather than\nreal, and under the rule of Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian, and the\nAntonines, Rome enjoyed more real liberty than many a so-called\nrepublic of modern times. When despotism became a systematic and\nchronic actuality, the sun of fortune was soon eclipsed, and the social\nclimate became as unfavorable to art and literature as to valor and\npatriotism.\n\nPersonal independence is a not less essential condition of individual\nhappiness. Bondage in any form, and of silken or gilded, as well as of\niron, fetters, is incompatible with the development of the highest\nmental and moral faculties. The genius of Poland and modern Italy has\nproduced its best fruit in exile. The progress of modern civilization\ndates only from the time when knowledge once more flourished in a\nRepublic of Letters; and for a thousand years the monastery system of\nmedieval literature produced hardly a single work of genius. Within the\nperiod of the last three or four generations the sun of freedom has\nripened better and more abundant fruit in any single decade than the\ndungeon-air of despotism during a series of centuries. All foreign\ntravelers agree in admiring (or condemning) the early mental\ndevelopment of American children, who have a chance to exercise their\nintellectual faculties in an area untrammeled by the barriers of caste\ndivisions and social restraints. They may yield to the pupils of the\nbest European colleges in special branches of scholarship, but in\ncommon sense, general intelligence, general information, in\nself-respect, in practical versatility and self-dependence, an American\nboy of twelve is, as a rule, more than a match for a\ncontinental-European boy of sixteen; and the same holds good of the\naverage intelligence and self-dependence of our country population.\nWith the rarest exceptions the political economists of our Southern\nstates agree that the agricultural negro as a freeman is a more\nvaluable laborer than as a slave, and that emancipation, in the long\nrun, has benefited the planter as well as his serf. I venture even to\nadd the verdict of Professor Hagenbeck, the founder of the great\nzo\u00f6logical supply depot, that menagerie-trainers of the least despotic\nmethods are the most successful. Turf-men know that the best horses do\nnot come from the unequaled perennial pastures of the lower Danube, but\nfrom England and Araby, where pet colts enjoy almost the freedom of a\npet child.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe ethics of Anti-naturalism include the Buddhistic doctrine of\nself-abasement, as an indispensable condition of salvation. That\nsalvation meant extinction, the utter renunciation of earthly hopes and\ndesires, the mortification of all natural instincts, including the\ninstinct of freedom. Abject submission to injustice, the subordination\nof reason to dogma, the sinfulness of rebellion against the \u201cpowers\nthat be,\u201d were inculcated with a zeal that made the church an\ninvaluable ally of despotism. For centuries a scepter combining the\nform of a cross and a bludgeon was the significant emblem of tyranny.\nWith the aid, nay, in the name, of the Christian hierarchy, the despots\nof the Middle Ages elaborated a system of subordination of personal\nfreedom to autocratic caprices, which, by comparison, makes the tyranny\nof the C\u00e6sars a model of liberalism. Every important function of social\nand domestic life was subjected to the control of arbitrary\nfunctionaries, armed with irresponsible power or with a system of\noppressive penal by-laws. Censors suppressed every symptom of visible\nor audible protest. Every school was a prison, every judgment-seat a\nstar-chamber. Peasants and mechanics had no voice in the councils of\ntheir rulers. The merit of official employees was measured by the\ndegree of their flunkeyism. But the ne-plus-ultras of physical and\nmoral despotism were combined in the slavery of the monastic convents.\nThe attempt of reviving the outrages which abbots for centuries\npracticed on the unfortunates whom a rash vow (or often the mandate of\na bigoted parent) had submitted to their power, would certainly expose\nthe manager of a modern convent to the risk of being mobbed and torn\nlimb from limb. Novices were subjected to all sorts of wanton tortures\nand arbitrary deprivation of his scant privileges; they were compelled\nto perform shameful and ridiculous acts of self-abasement, all merely\nto \u201cbreak their worldly spirit,\u201d i.e., crush out the last vestige of\nself-respect and life-love, in order to prepare them for the\nconsolations of other-worldliness. The moral emasculation of the human\nrace seems, indeed, to have been the main purpose of the educational\npolicy which the priests of the Nature-hating Galilean pursued wherever\nthe union of Church and State put children and devotees at the mercy of\ntheir dogmatists.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nVoluntary slavery means voluntary renunciation of the chief privilege\nof human reason: the privilege of self-control. The spendthrift divests\nhimself of external advantages; the miser yields up his life-blood for\ngold; but he who surrenders his personal liberty has sold his soul, as\nwell as his body. Bondage circumscribes every sphere of activity.\nPolitical despotism impedes the progress of industry as galling fetters\nimpede the circulation of the blood. Enterprising autocrats of the\nFrederic and Peter type have as utterly failed in the attempt of\nenforcing a flourishing state of commerce, as they would have failed in\nthe attempt of enforcing the growth of a stunted tree by the tension of\niron chains. In free America a voluntary pledge of abstinence has\naccomplished what in medieval Europe the most Draconic temperance and\nanti-tobacco laws failed to achieve.\n\nThe educational despotism of moral pedants has ever defeated its own\npurpose, and succeeded only in turning frank, merry-souled children\ninto hypocrites and sneaks. The idea that a barbarous system of\nmilitary discipline could develop model warriors has been refuted on\nhundreds of battle-fields, where the machine-soldiers of despotic kings\nwere routed by the onset of enthusiastic patriots, half-trained,\nperhaps, and ill-armed, but assembled by an enlistment of souls as well\nas of bodies. The unparalleled intellectual barrenness of the Middle\nAges was well explained by the indictment of a modern English poet.\n\u201cThe bondage of the Christian doctrine,\u201d says Percy Shelley, \u201cis fatal\nto the development of originality and genius.\u201d The curse of mediocrity\nhas, indeed, for ages rested upon every literary product devoted to the\npromotion of clerical interests. The Muses refuse to assemble on\nGolgotha. Pegasus declines to be yoked with the ass of the Galilean\nascetic. Outspoken skepticism is almost as rare as true genius, and it\nis not possible to mistake the significance of the fact that the great\npoets and philosophers of the last seven generations were, almost\nwithout an exception, persistent and outspoken skeptics. Rousseau,\nVoltaire, Diderot, D\u2019Alembert, Holbach, Leibnitz, Lessing, Kant,\nFichte, Hegel, Schiller, Heine, Schopenhauer, Humboldt, Pope, Hume,\nByron, Shelley, Keats, Gibbon, Buckle, and Darwin have all inscribed\ntheir names in the temple o! Liberalism; and Wolfgang Goethe, the\nprimate of European literature, was at once the most consistent and the\nmost anti-Christian of modern thinkers. \u201cHis personal appearance,\u201d says\nHeinrich Heine, \u201cwas as harmonious as his mind. A proudly erect body,\nnever yet bent by Christian worm-humility; classic features, never\ndistorted by Christian contrition; eyes that had never been dimmed by\nChristian sinner-tears or the apathy of monkish resignation.\u201d\n\nThat resignation was for centuries enforced as the first of moral\nduties; but Nature has had her revenge, and even the fallen hierarchy\nwould hesitate to recover the loss of their prestige by a return to the\nmoral desert which for ages marked the empire of a mind-enslaving\ndogma.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nNot all slaves can be freed by breaking their shackles; the habit of\nservitude may become a hereditary vice, too inveterate for immediate\nremedies. The pupils of Freedom\u2019s school may be required to unlearn, as\nwell as to learn, many lessons; the temples of the future will have to\nremove several aphoristic tablets to make room for such mottoes as\n\u201cSelf-Reliance,\u201d \u201cLiberty,\u201d \u201cIndependence.\u201d Victor Jacquemont tells a\nmemorable story of a Hindoo village, almost depopulated by a famine\ncaused by the depredations of sacred monkeys, that made constant raids\non the fields and gardens of the superstitious peasants, who would see\ntheir children starve to death rather than lift a hand against the\nlong-tailed saints. At last the British stadtholder saw a way to\nrelieve their distress. He called a meeting of their sirdars and\noffered them free transportation to a monkeyless island of the Malay\narchipelago. Learning that the land of the proposed colony was fertile\nand thinly settled, the survivors accepted the proposal with tears of\ngratitude; but when the band of gaunt refugees embarked at the mouth of\nthe Hooghly, the stadtholder\u2019s agent was grieved to learn that their\ncargo of household goods included a large cageful of sacred monkeys.\n\u201cThey are beyond human help,\u201d says the official memorandum, \u201cand their\nchildren can be redeemed only by curing them of the superstition that\nhas ruined their monkey-ridden ancestors.\u201d\n\nAt the end of the fifteenth century, when southern Europe was in danger\nof a similar fate from the rapacity of esurient priests and monks,\nProvidence, by means of an agent called Christoval Columbus, offered\nthe victims the chance of a free land of refuge; but when the host of\nemigrants embarked at the harbor of Palos, philosophers must have been\ngrieved to perceive that their cargo of household-pets comprised a\nlarge assortment of ecclesiastics. \u201cThey are beyond human help,\u201d\nExperience might sigh in the words of the British commissioner, \u201cand\ntheir children can be redeemed only by curing them of the superstition\nthat has proved the ruin of their priest-ridden ancestors.\u201d\n\nIn regions of our continent where colonists might live as independent\nas the birds of their primeval forests, bondage has been imported in\nthe form of an intriguing hierarchy, working its restless bellows to\nforge the chains of their pupils\u2014of the rising generation, who as yet\nseem to hesitate at the way-fork of Feudalism and Reform. A timely word\nmay decide their choice, and, by all the remaining hopes of Earth and\nMankind! that word shall not remain unspoken.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nPRUDENCE.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nThe first germs of animal life have been traced to the soil of the\ntropics, and in the abundance of a perennial summer the instincts of\npleasure and pain may long have sufficed for the protection of mere\nexistence. But when the progress of organic development advanced toward\nthe latitude of the winter-lands, the vicissitudes of the struggle for\nexistence gradually evolved a third instinct: The faculty of\nanticipating the menace of evil and providing the means of defense. The\nword Prudence is derived from a verb which literally means fore-seeing,\nand that faculty of Foresight manifests itself already in that curious\nthrift which enables several species of insects to survive the long\nwinter of the higher latitudes. Hibernating mammals show a similar\nsagacity in the selection of their winter quarters. Squirrels and\nmarmots gather armfuls of dry moss; bears excavate a den under the\nshelter of a fallen tree; and it has been noticed that cave-loving bats\ngenerally select a cavern on the south side of a mountain or rock.\nBeavers anticipate floods by elaborate dams. Several species of birds\nbaffle the attacks of their enemies by fastening a bag-shaped nest to\nthe extremity of a projecting branch. Foxes, minks, raccoons, and other\ncarnivora generally undertake their forages during the darkest hour of\nthe night. Prowling wolves carefully avoid the neighborhood of human\ndwellings and have been known to leap a hundred fences rather than\ncross or approach a highway.\n\nYoung birds, clamoring for food, suddenly become silent at the approach\nof a hunter; and Dr. Moffat noticed with surprise that a similar\ninstinct seemed to influence the nurslings of the Griqua Hottentots.\nTen or twelve of them, deposited by their mothers in the shade of a\ntree, all clawing each other and crowing or bawling at the top of their\nvoices, would abruptly turn silent at the approach of a stranger, and\nhuddle together behind the roots of the tree\u2014babies of ten months as\nquietly cowering and as cautiously peeping as their elders of two or\nthree years. Young savages, and often the children of our rustics, show\nan extreme caution in accepting an offer of unknown delicacies. I have\nseen a toddling farmer\u2019s boy smelling and nibbling an orange for hours\nbefore yielding to the temptation of its prepossessing appearance. Only\nthe distress of protracted starvation will induce the Esquimaux to\ntouch their winter stores before the end of the hunting season; and the\nsupposed improvidence of savages is often due to the influence of a\nhereditary disposition once justified by the abundance which their\nforefathers enjoyed for ages before the advent of their Caucasian\ndespoilers.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nCivilization has partially healed the wounds of that Millennium of\nMadness called the Rule of the Cross, and of all the insanities of the\nMiddle Ages the Improvidence Dogma has perhaps been most effectually\neradicated from the mental constitution\u2014at least, of the\nNorth-Caucasian nations. Instead of relying on the efficacy of prayers\nand ceremonies, the dupes of the Galilean miracle-monger at last\nreturned to the pagan plan of self-help, and it would not be too much\nto say that the progress thus achieved in the course of the last\nfourteen decades far exceeds that of the preceding fourteen centuries.\nEarth has once more become a fit dwelling-place for her noblest\nchildren. Pestilential swamps have been drained. Domestic hotbeds of\ndisease have been expurgated. Airy, weather-proof buildings have taken\nthe place of the reeking hovels that housed the laborers of the Middle\nAges. Farmers no longer live from hand to mouth. The price of the\nnecessities and many luxuries of life has been brought within the\nresources of the humblest mechanic. Affluence is no longer confined to\nthe palaces of kings. There is no doubt that the cottage of the average\nmodern city tradesman contains more comforts than could be found in the\ncastle of a medieval nobleman. Prudence, in the sense of economic\nforesight, has become almost a second nature with the industrial\nclasses of the higher latitudes, and the benefits of such habits can be\nbest appreciated by comparing the homes of the thrifty\nNorthlanders\u2014Scotch and Yankees\u2014with those of the Spanish-American\npriest-dupes: here deserts tilled into gardens, there gardens wasted\ninto deserts. In natural resources, South America, for instance, excels\nNew England as New England excels the snow-wastes of Hudson\u2019s Bay\nTerritory; yet industrial statistics demonstrate the fact that the\nfinancial resources of Massachusetts alone not only equal but far\nsurpass those of the entire Brazilian empire.\n\nThe contrast between Prussia and Spain is not less striking, and that\nclimatic causes are insufficient to explain that contrast is proved by\nthe curious fact that within less than five centuries Spain and North\nGermany have exchanged places. Two hundred years before the conquest of\nGranada the fields of Moorish Spain had been brought to a degree of\nproductiveness never surpassed in the most favored regions of our own\ncontinent, while Catholic Prussia was a bleak heather. Since the\nexpulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the monks from northern Germany,\nPrussia has become a garden and Spain a desert; the contrasting results\nof prudence and superstition. While the Prussians were at work the\nSpaniards were whining to their saints, or embroidering petticoats for\nan image of the holy Virgin. While the countrymen of Humboldt studied\nchemistry, physiology, and rational agriculture, the countrymen of\nLoyola conned oriental ghost stories; while the former placed their\ntrust in the promises of nature, the latter trusted in the promises of\nthe New Testament. Prudence, rather than military prowess, has\ntransferred the hegemony of Europe from the Ebro to the Elbe, and\nprudence alone has smoothened even the path of exile which ill-fated\nIsrael has pursued now for more than a thousand years. For, with all\nthe Spiritualistic tendency of their ethics, the children of Jacob have\nlong ceased to deal in miracles, and train their children in lessons of\nsecular realism which effectually counteract the influence of their\nschool-training in the lessons of the past, and as a result famine has\nbeen banished from the tents of the exiles. Like the Corsicans and the\nprudent Scots, they rarely marry before the acquisition of a\ncompetency, but the tendency of that habit does not prevent their\nnumerical increase. Their children do not perish in squalor and hunger;\ntheir patriarchs do not burden our alms-houses.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThere is a story of an enterprising Italian who increased the patronage\nof an unpopular mountain resort by effecting an inundation of the\nlowlands; and if the apostles of other-worldliness had tried to enhance\nthe attractions of their hereafter on the same plan, they could\ncertainly not have adopted a more effective method for depreciating the\nvalue of temporal existence. The vanity of work, of thrift, of economy,\nand the superior merit of reliance on the aid of preternatural\nagencies, were a favorite text of the Galilean messiah. \u201cTake no\nthought of the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things\nof itself.\u201d \u201cTake no thought, saying, What shall we eat? what shall we\ndrink? or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these do the\ngentiles seek.\u201d \u201cAsk and it shall be given you.\u201d\n\nSecular foresight was depreciated even in the form of a prudent care\nfor the preservation of physical health; the selection of clean in\npreference to unclean food was denounced as a relic of worldliness; and\nin mitigating the consequences of such insults to nature, prayer and\nmystic ceremonies were recommended as superior to secular remedies. \u201cIf\nany man is sick among you, let him call for the elders of the church,\nand let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the\nLord.\u201d \u201cAnd the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall\nraise him up.\u201d \u201cAnd when he had called unto him his twelve disciples,\nhe gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out, and to\nheal all manner of disease.\u201d\n\nIf such instructions had been followed to the letter, the human race\nwould have perished in a hell of madness and disease. As it was, a\nthousand years\u2019 purgatory of half insanity cured the world of its\ndelusion; and the sinners against the laws of common sense escaped with\nthe penalty of a millennium of barbarism, a barbarism which, in the\nmost orthodox countries of the fourteenth century, had sunk deep below\nthe lowest ebb of pagan savagery. The untutored hunters of the primeval\nGerman forest were at least left to the resources of their animal\ninstincts; they were illiterate, but manly and generous, braving\ndanger, and prizing health and liberty above all earthly blessings.\nTheir children were dragged off to the bondage of the Christian\nconvents and doomed to all the misery of physical restraint, not for\nthe sake of their intellectual culture, not with a view of purchasing\nthe comforts of after years by temporal self-denial, but to educate\nthem in habits of physical apathy and supine reliance on the aid of\ninterposing saints\u2014a habit which at last revenged itself by its\ntransfer to the principles of ethics, and encouraged malefactors to\ntrust their eternal welfare to the same expedient to which indolence\nhad been taught to confide its temporal interests. Where was the need\nof rectitude if iniquity could be compromised by prayer? Where was the\nneed of industry if its fruits could be obtained by faith? Where was\nthe need of sanitary precautions if the consequences of their neglect\ncould be averted by ceremonies?\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nThe consequences of that dogma refuted its claims by lessons which\nmankind is not apt to forget for the next hundred generations. From the\nday when the doctrine of Antinaturalism succeeded in superseding the\nlingering influence of pagan philosophy, progressive industry waned,\nand at last almost ceased to supply even a reduced demand; commerce\nlingered, and the sources of subsistence were wholly confined to the\nproduce of a more and more impoverished soil. With the exception of\n(still half pagan) Italy, not one of the many once prosperous countries\nof Christian Europe had anything like a profitable export trade. On the\ninternational markets of the Byzantine empire the products of skilled\nlabor\u2014fine clothes, fine fruits, perfume, and jewelry\u2014were sold by\noriental merchants, while the Christian buyers had little to offer in\nexchange but the spontaneous products of Nature: timber, salt, amber,\nand perhaps hides and wool. Medical science had become such a medley of\nvagaries and barbarisms that even the princes of Christendom could not\nboast of a competent family physician, and in critical cases had to\ntrust their lives to the skill of Moorish or Persian doctors. Abderaman\nel Hakim, a king of Moorish Spain, had so many applications for the\nservices of his court-doctor that he often jestingly called him the\n\u201cSavior of Christian Europe.\u201d The prevalence of the militant type\nshould certainly have encouraged the manufacture of warlike implements;\nyet not one of the twelve heavy-armed countries of Trinitarian Europe\nhad preserved the art of tempering a first-class sword, and proof-steel\nhad to be imported from Damascus. The traditions of architecture were\nlimited to the fantastic elaboration of religious edifices; peasants\ndwelt in hovels, and citizens in dingy stone prisons, crowded into\ncrooked and cobble-paved alleys.\n\nThe unspeakable filth of such alleys produced epidemics that almost\ndepopulated the most orthodox countries of medieval Europe. Under the\nstimulus of clerical theories, those epidemics in their turn produced\noutbreaks of fanatical superstition, which in pagan Rome would\ncertainly have been ascribed to the influence of a contagious mental\ndisease. Diseases, according to a doctrine which it was deemed\nblasphemy to doubt, could be averted by prayer and self-humiliation. In\nspite of a diligent application of such prophylactics, diseases of the\nmost virulent kind became more prevalent. The logical inference seemed\nthat prayer had not been fervent and self-abasement not abject enough.\nHordes of religious maniacs roamed the streets of the plague-stricken\ncities, howling like hyenas and lacerating their bodies in a manner too\nshocking to describe. After exhausting the available means of\nsubsistence, the blood-smeared, wretches would invade the open country,\nand by frantic appeals frighten thousands of peasants into joining\ntheir ranks, and in carrying the seeds of mental and physical contagion\nto a neighboring country. In Germany and Holland the total number of\n\u201cFlagellants\u201d were at one time estimated at three hundred and fifty\nthousand; on another occasion at more than half a million. If the\ndisease had exhausted its fury, the self-torturers would claim the\nreward of their services by falling like hungry wolves upon the homes\nof the sane survivors. If the plague refused to abate, the leading\nfanatics would ascribe the failure to their followers\u2019 want of zeal,\nand enforce their theory by an indiscriminate application of a rawhide\nknout, till the dispute was referred to the arbitrament of cold steel,\nand the ranks of the howling maniacs were thinned by mutual slaughter.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REWARDS.\n\nThe world has trusted in the doctrine of miracle-mongers till\nskepticism became a condition of self-preservation, and the benefits of\nopen revolt are now conspicuous enough to impress even the\nnon-insurrected slaves of the church. With all their hereditary bias of\nprejudice the victims of the miracle dogma cannot help contrasting\ntheir lot with that of the industrial skeptic. They cannot help seeing\nself-reliant science succeeds where prayer-relying orthodoxy fails. The\nprosperity of Protestantism, its physical, intellectual, political, and\nfinancial superiority to Conservatism, with the aid of all its saints,\nare facts too glaringly evident to ignore their significance, and our\nethical text-books might as well plainly admit that this universe of\nours is governed by uniform laws and not by the caprice of ghosts\u2014at\nall events not of ghosts that can be influenced by rant and ceremonies.\nWhatever may be the established system of other worlds, in this planet\nof ours Nature has not trusted our welfare to the whims of tricksy\nspooks, but has endowed our own minds with the faculty of ascertaining\nand improving the conditions of that welfare; and the time cannot come\ntoo soon when well-directed labor shall be recognized as the only\nprayer ever answered to the inhabitants of this earth.\n\nThe philosophic author of the \u201cHistory of Morals\u201d remarks that the\nmedieval miracle-creed still lurks in the popular explanation of the\nmore occult phenomena. While the natural sequence of cause and effect\nis, for instance, freely admitted in such plain cases as the stability\nof a well-built house and the collapse of a rickety structure, the\nphenomena of health and disease, of atmospheric changes or of the\n(apparent) caprices of fortune in war or games of chance are still\nascribed to the interference of preternatural agencies. That bias is\nundoubtedly at the bottom of the still prevalent mania for hazardous\nspeculation and the reckless disregard of the laws governing the\ncondition of our physical health.\n\nUnconfessed, and perhaps unknown, to themselves the grandchildren of\northodox parents are still influenced by the hope that in such cases\nthe event of an imprudent venture might be modified by the interceding\nfavor of \u201cprovidence.\u201d\n\nSecularism should teach its converts that the most complex as well as\nthe simplest effect is the necessary consequence of a natural cause;\nthat the \u201cpower behind phenomena\u201d acts by consistent laws, and that the\nstudy and practical application of those laws is the only way to bias\nthe favor of fortune.\n\n\u201cPray and you shall receive,\u201d says Superstition. \u201cSow if you would\nreap,\u201d says Science. The Religion of Nature will teach every man to\nanswer his own prayers, and Prudence will be the Providence of the\nFuture.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nPERSEVERANCE.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nIn the course of evolution from brute to man some of our organs have\nbeen highly developed by constant use, while others have been stunted\nby habitual disuse. In special adaptations of the sense of touch and\nsight, for instance, man surpasses all his fellow-creatures, most of\nwhom, in turn, surpass him in the acuteness of their olfactory organs.\nAn analogous result seems to have been produced by the exercise or\nneglect of certain mental faculties and dispositions. The instinct of\nenterprise, for instance, has been developed from rather feeble germs\nof the animal soul, while the instinct of perseverance appears to have\nlost something of its pristine energy. The African termite ant rears\nstructures which, in proportion to the size of the builders, surpass\nthe pyramids as a mountain surpasses the monuments of the\nmound-builders. By the persistent co\u00f6peration of countless generations\nthe tiny architect of the coral reefs has girt a continent with a\nrampart of sea-walls. The prairie wolf will follow a trail for half a\nweek. The teeth of a mouse are thinner and more brittle than a darning\nneedle, yet by dint of perseverance gnawing mice manage to perforate\nthe stoutest planks. Captive prairie dogs have been known to tunnel\ntheir way through forty feet of compact loam.\n\nAn instinct, which one might be tempted to call a love of perseverance\nfor its own sake, seems sometimes to influence the actions of young\nchildren. There are boys whose energies seem to be roused by the\nresistance of inanimate things. I have seen lads of eight or nine years\nhew away for hours at knotty logs which even a veteran woodcutter would\nhave been pardoned for flinging aside. There are school boys, not\notherwise distinguished for love of books, who will forego their recess\nsports to puzzle out an arithmetical problem of special intricacy.\n\nOur desultory mode of education hardly tends to encourage that\ndisposition which, nevertheless, is now and then apt to develop into a\npermanent character trait. There are young men who will act out a\nself-determined programme of study or business with persistent\ndisregard of temporary hardships, and pursue even minor details of\ntheir plan with a resolution only strengthened by difficulties. The\nmoral ideals of antiquity seem to have been more favorable to the\ndevelopment of that type of character, which also manifests itself in\nthe national policy of several ancient republics, and the inflexible\nconsistency of their legal institutions.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe advantages of perseverance are not too readily admitted by the\nnumberless victims of that facile disposition that loves to ascribe its\nfoibles to the \u201cversatility of genius,\u201d or a high-minded \u201caversion to\npedantic routine;\u201d yet now, as in the days of yore, life reserves its\nbest rewards for the most persistent competitors. Singleness of\npurpose, like a sharp wedge, forces its way through obstacles that\nresist many-sided endeavors. The versatile poets and philosophers of\nAthens have wreathed her memory with unrivaled laurels, yet in the\naffairs of practical life her merchants were out-traded, her\npoliticians out-witted, and her generals beaten by men whose nations\nhad steadfastly followed a narrower but consistent policy. \u201cAut non\ntentaris aut perfice,\u201d \u201ceither try not, or persevere,\u201d was a Roman\nproverb that made Rome the mistress of three continents. In the Middle\nAges the dynasty of the Abbassides, as in modern times the house of the\nHohenzollern, attained supremacy by persistent adherence to an\nestablished system of political tactics. Even questionable enterprises\nhave thus been crowned with triumph, as the ambitions of the Roman\npontiffs, and the projects of Ignatius Loyola. The chronicles of war,\nof industry, and of commerce abound with analogous lessons. Patient\nperseverance succeeds where fitful vehemence fails. In countless\nbattles the steadiness of British and North German troops has prevailed\nagainst the enthusiasm of their bravest opponents. The quiet\nperseverance of British colonists has prevailed against the bustling\nactivity of their Gallic rivals, on the Mississippi and St. Lawrence,\nas well as on the Ganges and Indus. Steady-going business firms,\nconsistently-edited journals, hold their own, and ultimately absorb\ntheir vacillating competitors. Dr. Winship, the Boston Hercules, held\nthat the chances of an athlete \u201cdepend on doggedness of purpose far\nmore than on hereditary physique.\u201d Even the apparent caprices of\nFortune are biased by the habit of perseverance. \u201cIn the Stanislaus\nmining-camp,\u201d says Frederic Gerstaecker, \u201cwe had a number of experts\nwho seemed to find gold by a sort of sixth sense, and came across\n\u2018indications\u2019 wherever they stirred the gravel of the rocky ravines. We\ncalled them \u2018prospectors,\u2019 and the brilliancy of their prospects was,\nindeed, demonstrated by daily proofs. But at the first frown of Fortune\nthey would get discouraged, and remove their exploring outfit to\nanother ravine. Most of the actual work was done by the \u2018squatters,\u2019 as\nwe called the steady diggers, who would take up an abandoned claim and\nstick to it for weeks. Bragging was not their forte, but at the end of\nthe season the squatter could squat down on a sackful of nuggets, while\nthe prospector had nothing but prospects.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe ambition of the ancients was encouraged by the conviction that life\nis worth living, and that all its social and intellectual summits can\nbe reached by the persistent pursuit of a well-chosen road. But the\nbasis of that confidence was undermined by a doctrine which denied the\nvalue of earthly existence, and made the renunciation of worldly\nblessings the chief purpose of moral education. The pilgrim of life who\nhad been taught to spurn earth as a vale of tears, and turn his hopes\nto the promises of another world, was not apt to trouble himself about\na consistent plan of secular pursuits, which, moreover, he had been\ndistinctly instructed to trust to the chances of the current day: \u201cTake\nno thought for the morrow;\u201d \u201cTake no thought for your life, nor yet for\nyour body ... for after all these things do the gentiles seek.\u201d\n\nIndecision, inconsistency, fickleness of purpose, vitiated the politics\nof the Christian nations through-out the long chaos of the Middle Ages,\nand in their features of individual character there is a strange want\nof that moral unity and harmony which the consciousness of an\nattainable purpose gave to the national exemplars of an earlier age.\n\nThe Rationalistic reaction of the last two centuries has greatly\nmodified the moral ideals of the Caucasian nations; the legitimacy of\nsecular pursuits is more generally recognized, but still only in a\nfurtive, hesitating manner, and the glaring contrast of our daily\npractice with the theories of a still prevalent system of ethics cannot\nfail to involve contradictions incompatible with true consistency of\nprinciples and action.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nFor thirteen hundred years the importance of perseverance in the\npursuit of earthly aims was depreciated by the ethics of\nAntinaturalism, and the word Failure is written in glaring letters over\nthe record of the physical, mental, and moral enterprises of all that\nperiod. The nations of northern Europe, whom the prestige of Rome\nsurrendered to the power of popish priests, were giants in stature and\nstrength, and the love of physical health was too deeply rooted in the\nhereditary constitution of those athletes to be at once eradicated by\nthe machinations of spiritual poison-mongers. Yet the poison did not\nfail to assert its virulence. Athletic sports were still a favorite\npastime of all freemen; but the gospel of the Nature-hating Galilean\ninsisted on the antagonism of physical and moral welfare; penances and\nthe worship of cadaverous saints perverted the manlier ideals of the\nmasses, the encouragement of ascetic habits and the enforced inactivity\nof convent life undermined the stamina of the noblest nations, and in\nthe course of a few orthodox generations the descendants of the\nherculean hunter-tribes of northern Europe became a prey to a multitude\nof malignant diseases.\n\nThe love of knowledge still fed on the literary treasures of antiquity;\nthe flame of philosophy was now and then rekindled at the still glowing\nembers of pagan civilization; but the doctrine of other-worldliness\ndenounced the pursuit of worldly lore, and science degenerated into a\nmedley of nursery-legends and monkish fever-dreams. Men walked through\nlife as Sindbad walked through the perils of the spirit-vale, in\nconstant dread of spectral manifestations, in constant anticipation of\nghostly interference with their earthly concerns, the pursuit of which\nall but the wisest undertook only in a desultory, tentative way,\nhaunted by the idea that success in worldly enterprises could be bought\nonly at the expense of the immortal soul.\n\nAnd how many thousand wanderers of our latter-day world have thus been\ndiverted from the path of manful perseverance, and almost directly\nencouraged in the habit of palliating inconstancy of purpose with that\n\u201cdissatisfaction and weariness of worldly vanities,\u201d which the ethics\nof their spiritual educators commend as a symptom of regeneration! The\nvoices of re-awakened Nature protest, but only with intermittent\nsuccess, and the penalty of vacillation is that discord of modern life\nthat will not cease till our system of ethics has been thoroughly\npurged from the poison of Antinaturalism.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThat work of redemption should include an emphatic repudiation of the\nnatural depravity dogma. Our children should be taught that steadfast\nloyalty to the counsels of their natural reason is sufficient to insure\nthe promotion of their welfare in the only world thus far revealed to\nour knowledge. The traditional concomitance of perseverance and\nmediocrity should be refuted by the explanation of its cause. For a\nlong series of centuries the predominance of insane dogmas had actually\nmade science a mere mockery, and application to the prescribed\ncurriculum of the monastic colleges a clear waste of time\u2014clear to all\nbut the dullest minds. The neglect of such studies, of the disgusting\nsophistry of the patristic and scholastic era, was, indeed, a proof of\ncommon sense, since only dunces and hypocrites could muster the\npatience required to wade through the dismal swamp of cant, pedantry,\nand superstition which for thirteen centuries formed the mental pabulum\nof the priest-ridden academics. During that era of pseudo-science and\npseudo-morality, of fulsome rant centered on a monstrous delusion, the\neccentricity of genius was more than pardonable, being, in fact, the\nonly alternative of mental prostitution. The ideas of waywardness and\nmental superiority became thus associated in a way which in its results\nhas wrought almost as much mischief as in its cause. The delusions of\nthat idea have wrecked as many promising talents as indolence and\nintemperance.\n\nThe pupils of Secularism should be instructed to observe the benefits\nof perseverance in the pursuit of minor projects, and encouraged to\napply that experience to the higher problems of life. Perseverance\nshould be recognized as the indispensable ally of loftiest genius as\nwell as of the lowliest talent.\n\nFailure in secular enterprises should cease to be regarded as a symptom\nof divine favor; and for those who insist on claiming the protection of\nsupernatural agencies, Goethe\u2019s grand apostrophe to the Genius of\nManhood [1] should be condensed in the motto that \u201cHeroic perseverance\ninvokes the aid of the gods.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nFREETHOUGHT.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nThe Brahmans have a legend that the first children of man ascended\nMount Gunganoor, to visit the castle of Indra and inquire into the\nsecret of their origin. Speculations on the source of life, on the\nmystery of creation, the cause of good and evil, and similar problems\nwhich we might sum up under the name of religious inquiries, seem,\nindeed, to have occupied the attention of our ancestors at a very early\nperiod. An irrepressible instinct appears to prompt the free discussion\nof such questions, and in a normal state of social relations the\nattempt to suppress that instinct would have appeared as preposterous\nas the attempt to enforce silence upon the inquirers into the problems\nof health or astronomy. A thousand years before the birth of Buddha,\nthe Sakyas, or ethic philosophers, of northern Hindostan visited the\nmountain-passes of Himalaya to converse with travelers and seek\ninformation on the religious customs and traditions of foreign nations.\nThe book of Job, probably the oldest literary product of the Semitic\nnations, records a series of free and often, indeed, absolutely\nagnostic discussions of ethical and cosmological problems.\n\n\u201cCanst thou by searching find out God?\u201d says Zophar. \u201cIt is as high as\nheaven: what canst thou do? It is deeper than hell: what canst thou\nknow?\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it good unto thee that thou shouldst oppress the work of thy own\nhand?\u201d Job asks his creator; \u201cthine hands have made me; why dost thou\ndestroy me? Thou huntest me like a fierce lion. Wherefore, then, hast\nthou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh, that I had given up the\nghost and no eye had seen me! I should have been as though I had not\nbeen; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave. Are not my\ndays few? Cease, then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a\nlittle, before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of\ndarkness and the shadow of death.\u201d\n\nAnd again: \u201cMan dieth and wasteth away; man giveth up the ghost, and\nwhere is he? As the waters fall from the sea and the flood dryeth up:\nso man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more he shall\nnot awake nor be raised out of his sleep.\u201d... \u201cIf a man die, shall he\nlive again?\u201d \u201cWherefore is light given unto them that are in misery,\nand life unto the bitter in soul? who long for death, but it cometh\nnot; who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the\ngrave?\u201d\n\nOr Elihu\u2019s interpellation: \u201cLook up to heaven and see the clouds which\nare higher than thou: If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? If\nthou be righteous, what givest thou to him, or what can he receive of\nthine hand?\u201d\n\nCould a committee of modern skeptics and philosophers discuss the\nproblems of existence with greater freedom?\n\nFor a series of centuries the monkish custodians of the literary\ntreasures of Greece and Rome expurgated the writings of the bolder\nFreethinkers, and for the sake of its mere parchment destroyed more\nthan one work that would have been worth whole libraries of their own\nlucubrations; yet even the scant relics of pagan literature furnish\nabundant proofs of the ethical and metaphysical liberty which the\nphilosophers of the Mediterranean nations enjoyed for nearly a thousand\nyears. The marvelous development of Grecian civilization in art,\nscience, politics, literature, and general prosperity coincided with a\nperiod of almost unlimited religious freedom. Speculations on the\norigin of religious myths were propounded with an impunity which our\nlatter-day Freethinkers have still cause to envy. The possibility of\nall definite knowledge of the attributes of the deity was boldly denied\ntwo thousand years before the birth of Emmanuel Kant. The Freethinker\nDiagoras traveled from city to city, propagating his system of\nAgnosticism with a publicity which seems to imply a degree of tolerance\nnever yet re-attained in the progress of the most intellectual modern\nnations. The skeptic Pyrrho ridiculed the absurdity of all our modern\nSecularists would include under the name of other-worldliness. A Roman\nactor was applauded with cheers and laughter for quoting a passage to\nthe effect that \u201cif the gods exist, they seem to conduct their\nadministration on the principle of strict neutrality in the affairs of\nmankind!\u201d\n\nDemocritus, Euhemerus, Anaxagoras, Epicurus, Aristotle, Libanius,\nPliny, Lucretius, and the latter Pythagoreans, almost entirely ignored\nthe doctrines of Polytheism, which, indeed, never assumed an aggressive\nform, the attempted suppression of the Christian dogmatists being an\nonly apparent exception, dictated by motives of political\napprehensions, rather than by religious zeal; for at the very time when\nthe followers of the life-hating Galilean were persecuted as \u201cenemies\nof mankind,\u201d a large number of other oriental religions enjoyed\nprivileges bordering on license. The Grecian colonists of Asia Minor\nnever interfered with the religious customs of their new neighbors.\nThey studied and discussed them as they would study the curiosities of\nother social phenomena; and a purely naturalistic system of education\nwould undoubtedly lead to analogous results. Intelligent children often\nevince a remarkable tact in avoiding certain topics of conversation,\nsuch as allusions to personal or national defects, scandals, the arcana\nof sexual relations, private affairs, etc., and the experience of after\nyears may confirm such habits of discretion; but no conceivable motive\nbut deference to an arbitrary precept could dictate a similar reticence\nin the discussion of purely metaphysical topics, or of dogmas which by\ntheir very pretense to a mission of extreme importance should justify\nan extreme frankness in debating the basis of their claims.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nReligious liberty guarantees every other kind of freedom, as every form\nof slavery walks in the train of priestly despotism. In America\nreligious emancipation led the way to the Declaration of Independence,\nand still continues to make this continent the chosen home of thousands\nof Liberals whom the material prosperity of the New World would have\nfailed to attract. It is possible that a policy of intolerance would\nhave averted or postponed the fate of the Moorish empire, which was\nultimately overthrown by the fanatics of a creed which the followers of\na more rational faith had permitted to survive in their midst; yet it\nis not less certain that for nearly five hundred years religious\ntolerance made the realm of the Spanish caliphs the one bright Goshen\nin a world of intellectual darkness. In northern Europe the history of\ncivilization begins only with the triumph of Rationalism.\nProtestantism, in that wider sense which made the revolt of the\nGermanic nations an insurrection against the powers of superstition,\nhas laid the foundation of national prosperity in Great Britain, in the\nNetherlands, and in the rising empire of northern Germany. The real\nfounder of that empire was at once the greatest statesman and the\nboldest Freethinker of the last fourteen centuries. His capital became\na city of refuge for the philosophers of Christian Europe. The eastern\nprovinces of his kingdom were colonized by refugees from the tyranny of\nclerical autocrats. His absolute tolerance protected even the Jesuits,\nexpelled by the Catholic rulers of France and Spain. During the reign\nof that crowned philosopher the religious and political dissenters of\nPrussia expressed their views with a freedom which in semi-republican\nEngland would have involved them in a maze of endless lawsuits. Among\nthe fruits of that freedom were products of science and philosophy\nwhich have made that period the classic age of German literature.\n\u201cBefore the appearance of Kant\u2019s \u2018Critique of Pure Reason,\u2019\u201d says\nSchopenhauer, \u201cthe works of duly installed government professors of\nphilosophy were mostly medleys of sophisms, pretending to reconcile\nscience and dogma, or reason and despotism. Here, at last, a state\nuniversity could boast of a man who lived at once by and for the\nservice of Truth\u2014a phenomenon made possible only by the circumstance\nthat, for the first time since the days of the great Aurelius and the\ngreater Julian, a Freethinker had mounted the throne of an independent\nmonarchy.\u201d\n\nThe protection of Freethought is likewise the best safeguard against\nthat virus of hypocrisy that has undermined the moral health of so many\nmodern nations.\n\n\u201cWhat an incalculable advantage to a nation as well as to its ruler,\u201d\nsays a modern philosopher, \u201cto know that the pillars of state are\nfounded on the eternal verities, on natural science, logic, and\narithmetic, instead of casuistry and immaculate conceptions!\u201d\n\nThe consciousness of that advantage has more than once upheld the\nbirthland of Protestantism in its struggles against the allied powers\nof despotism, and should uphold our republic in the inevitable struggle\nagainst the allied despots of the twentieth century.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe experience of the last sixteen centuries has made priestcraft\nalmost a synonym of intolerance; and yet it would be a mistake to\nsuppose that the interests of Freethought are incompatible with the\nsurvival of any system of supernatural religion. The myths of\npolytheism were for ages accepted as the basis of a creed enjoying all\nthe prerogatives and emoluments of an established religion, but the\npriests of that religion had no need of protecting their prestige by\nthe butchery of heretics. With all their absurdities, the rites of\ntheir creed were essentially a worship of Nature, naturally attractive\nto all lovers of earth and life, and by their harmlessness conciliating\nthe favor of philosophers who might have studied the baneful tendencies\nof a different creed\u2014a creed which could propagate its dogmas only by\nan unremitting war against the natural instincts of the human race, and\nby constant intrigues against the protests of human reason. \u201cThe\nNature-worshiping Greeks repeated the harmless myths and practiced the\nmerry rites of their creed for centuries without troubling themselves\nabout the myths and rites of their neighbors. Their superstition\ndiffered from that of the church as the inspired love of Nature differs\nfrom the ecstatic fury of her enemies, as the day-dream of a happy\nchild differs from the fever-dream of a gloomy fanatic. \u2018Procul\nProfani!\u2019 was the cry of the Eleusinian priests. They had more\nfollowers than they wanted. Their joy-loving creed could dispense with\nautos-da-f\u00e9. The Hebrews, in stress of famine, conquered a little strip\nof territory between Arabia and the Syrian desert, and then tried their\nbest to live in peace with heaven and earth, and their sects contented\nthemselves with metaphorical rib-roastings. The Saracens spread their\nconquests from Spain to the Ganges, but their wars had a physical,\nrather than metaphysical, purpose. They needed land, and made a better\nuse of it than the former occupants. They contented themselves with\nassessing dissenters, and did not deem it necessary to assassinate\nthem. But the Galilean pessimists could not afford to tolerate an\nunconverted neighbor. To the enemies of Nature the happiness of an\nearth-loving, garden-planting, and science-promoting nation was an\nintolerable offense: reason had to be sacrificed to faith, health and\nhappiness to the cross, and earth to heaven\u201d (The Secret of the East,\np. 62).\n\nAnd even in the modified form of Protestant Christianity, that creed\nremains the rancorous enemy of Freethought. The doctrine of the\nGalilean Buddhist is essentially a doctrine of pessimism, of\nother-worldliness and Nature-hating renunciation of human reason and\nearthly prosperity, and therefore wholly irreconcilable with the\npromotion of progressive science and secular happiness. Philosophers\nhave for centuries assembled their scholars undisturbed by the songs\nand dances of pagan festivals; the exponents of secular science have\nenjoyed the good-will of health-loving Hebrews and Mohammedans, and\nwill find a modus vivendi with the Spiritualists and Theosophists of\nthe future; but Secularism, \u201cthe Science of Happiness on Earth,\u201d can\nnever hope to conciliate the dogmatists of a creed that denies the\nvalue of life itself, and wages war against Nature as well as against\nthe claims of natural science.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nWherever Reason surrenders to Dogma, the exponents of that dogma will\nclaim unreasonable prerogatives. Irresponsible dogmatists have never\nfailed to pursue the interests of their creed at the expense of the\ninterests of mankind. The lessons of Science could not be reconciled\nwith the doctrines of Antinaturalism, and in the interest of that\ndoctrine the spiritual taskmasters of medieval Europe suppressed\nScience by methods that have retarded the progress of mankind for\nthirteen hundred years. The suppression of Freethought enabled the\nenemies of Nature to complete their triumph by the suppression of\nsocial and political liberty; and for ages the church has been the\nfaithful ally of Despotism. The priest-ridden rulers of the expiring\nRoman empire and the priest-ridden rabble of the Roman provinces\nassisted in the persecution of Freethought, and that crime against\nreason was avenged by the development of a system of spiritual tyranny\nwhich at last forced even princes to kiss the dust of Canossa and\ndegraded the lot of peasants beneath that of savages and wild beasts.\nThe war against natural science avenged itself in the neglect of\nagriculture, and the enormous spread of deserts, which the priests of\nthe Galilean miracle-monger proposed to reclaim by prayer-meetings. The\nsurrender of Freethought to faith sealed the fate of millions of\nheretics and \u201csorcerers,\u201d who expiated an imaginary crime in the\nagonies of the stake. Not the abrogation of civil rights, not the\nintimidation of princes and commoners, but the eradication of\nFreethought, enabled the priests of an unnatural creed to enforce their\nhideous superstitions upon the prisoners of the numberless monasteries\nwhich for a series of centuries combined all the conditions for the\nsystematic suppression of moral, intellectual, and personal freedom.\n\n\u201cI am not come to bring peace but the sword,\u201d said the ingenuous\nfounder of a creed which could not fail to produce an irrepressible\nconflict between the delusions of its doctrines and the inspirations of\nnature and science\u2014and, of course, also between the would-be followers\nof its own preposterous precepts\u2014and neither the lust of conquest nor\nthe jealousy of rival nations has ever stained this earth with the\ntorrents of blood shed by the bigots of that creed after its triumph\nover the protests of Freethought. The fatuous attempt to crush out\ndissent by substituting a roll of parchment for the book of Nature\navenged itself by murderous wars about the interpretation of those same\nparchments. The dogmatists who had tried to perpetuate their power by\nthe murder of modest rationalists, were assailed by hordes of their own\nirrationalists, raging about the ceremonial details of the wafer-rite\nand the immersion rite. The bigots who had refused to heed the\npleadings of Bruno and Campanella were forced to acknowledge the\nbattle-axe logic of the Hussites.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nTruth that prevails against error also prevails against half truths,\nand the recognition of just claims cannot be furthered by unjust\nconcessions. Uncompromising right is mightiest, and Freethinkers would\nhave served their cause more effectually if they had contended, not for\nthe favor to enjoy a privilege, but the right to fulfil a duty. The\nministry of reason imposes obligations to posterity, and to the memory\nof its bygone martyrs, as well as to our help-needing contemporaries;\nand the defense of its rights is a truer religion than submission to\nthe yoke of a mind-enslaving dogma. The Rishis, or sainted hermits of\nBrahmanism, used to devote themselves to the service of a forest\ntemple, and guard its sanctuary against vermin and reptiles; and the\nbelievers in a personal God cannot devote their lives to a nobler task\nthan by guarding his temples against the serpent of priestly despotism.\n\nThe disciples of Secularism should learn to value the right of\nFreethought as the palladium of their faith, as the basis of all other\nblessings\u2014moral and material, as well as intellectual. They should\nlearn to revere the memory of the martyrs of their faith, and recognize\nthe importance of their services to the cause of modern civilization\nand its sacred principles; but they should also learn to recognize the\nmagnitude of the remaining task. It is no trifle that the prevalent\nsystem of ethics and the temporal and eternal hopes of millions of our\nbrethren are still based on a lie. It is no trifle that the health and\nhappiness of millions of our fellow-men are still sacrificed on the\naltar of that untruth by the suppression of public recreations on the\nonly day when a large plurality of our working-men find their only\nchance of leisure. It is no trifle that honest men are still branded as\n\u201cInfidels,\u201d \u201crenegades,\u201d and \u201cscoffers,\u201d for refusing to kneel in the\ntemple of a nature-hating fanatic. The struggle against the spirits of\ndarkness is by no means yet decided in Italy, where the arch-hierarch\nis spinning restless intrigues to regain the power which for ages made\nEurope a Gehenna of misery and despotism. Nor in Spain, where a swarm\nof clerical vampires is still sucking the life-blood of an impoverished\nnation. Nor in Austria and southern Germany, where the alliance of\nchurch and state remains a constant menace to the scant liberties of\nthe people.\n\nFreethinkers need not underrate the influence of individual efforts to\nrecognize the superior advantage of organized co\u00f6peration, so urgently\nneeded for the reform of Sabbath laws, of press laws, and the\neducational system of the numerous colleges still intrusted to the\ncontrol of the Jesuitical enemies of science. The strength-in-union\nprinciple should encourage the oft-debated projects for the\nestablishment of Freethought colleges (as well as Freethought\ncommunities); but still more decisive results could be hoped from that\nunion of the powers of knowledge and of moral courage which has never\nyet failed to insure the triumph of social reforms. We should cease to\nplead for favors where we can claim an indisputable right. We should\ncease to admit the right of mental prostitutes to enforce the penalties\nof social ostracism against the champions of science; but we, in our\nturn, should deserve the prestige of that championship by scorning the\nexpedients of the moral cowardice which strains at gnats and connives\nat beams, attacking superstition in the harmless absurdities of its\nceremonial institutions, and sparing the ruinous dogmas that have\ndrenched the face of earth with the blood of her noblest children, and\nturned vast areas of garden-lands into hopeless deserts. The skeptics\nwho scoff at the inconsistencies of a poor clergyman who tries in vain\nto reconcile the instincts of his better nature with the demands of an\nanti-natural creed, should themselves be consistent enough to repudiate\nthe worship of the fatal founder of that creed, and not let the hoary\nage of the Galilean doctrine palliate the tendencies of its\nlife-blighting delusions.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIII.\u2014MORAL MAXIMS.\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nJUSTICE.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nMoral philosophers have long conjectured the distinction between\nnatural and conventional duties; and only the full recognition of that\ndistinction can reconcile the conflicting views on the natural basis of\nethics. On the other hand, the defenders of the theory of \u201cIntuitive\nMorality\u201d claim the existence of an innate moral conscience, common to\nall nations and all stages of social development, while, on the other\nhand, we hear it as confidently asserted that the standards of virtue\nare mere standards of expedience, and vary with circumstances as\nfashions vary with seasons and climates. There is no doubt, for\ninstance, that religious bigotry has begot a sort of factitious\nconscience, shrinking from the mere idea of devoting the seventh day of\nthe week to physical recreations, while the devotees of the joy-loving\ngods of paganism thought it a solemn duty to celebrate their holidays\nwith festive revels. Marriage between persons of adventitious\nrelationship (such as widows and their surviving brothers-in-law) is\nprohibited by the statutes of one creed, and not only sanctioned, but\ndistinctly enjoined, by those of another. Speculative dogmas that would\ndeeply shock the followers of Abd el Wahab are tolerated in\nConstantinople and venerated in Rome.\n\nBut such contrasts diminish, and at last disappear, as we turn our\nattention from conventional to essential duties. A Mussulman bigot, who\nwould slay his son for drinking wine in honor of a supplementary god,\nwould agree with the worshipers of that god that theft is a crime and\nbenevolence a virtue. The innkeepers of Palermo obey their church and\nspite heretics by selling meat in June, but not in March; The\ninnkeepers of El Medina spite unbelievers and honor the Koran by\nselling meat in March, but not in June. The Buddhist innkeepers of\nLassa sell only salt meat, imported from China, and spite Infidels by\nrefusing to kill a cow under any circumstances. But Sicilians,\nThibetans, and Arabs would agree that no innkeeper should be permitted\nto spite a personal enemy by salting his meat with arsenic. Nations\nthat totally disagree in their notions of propriety, in matters of\ntaste, and in their bias of religious prejudice, will nevertheless be\nfound to agree on the essential standards of humanity and justice. The\n\u201cinstinct of equity,\u201d as Leibnitz calls the sense of natural justice,\nhas been still better defined as the \u201cinstinct of keeping contracts.\u201d A\nstate of Nature is not always a state of equal rights. Skill, strength,\nand knowledge enjoy the advantage of superior power in the form of\nmanifold privileges, but the expediency of \u201ckeeping contracts\u201d\nnaturally recommends itself as the only safe basis of social\nintercourse. Those contracts need not always be specified by written\nlaws. They need not even be formulated in articulate speech. Their\nobligations are tacitly recognized as a preliminary of any sort of\nsocial co\u00f6peration, of any sort of social concomitance. \u201cGive every man\nhis due;\u201d \u201cPay your debts;\u201d \u201cGive if you would receive,\u201d are\ninternational maxims, founded on the earliest impressions of social\ninstinct, rather than on the lessons of social science or of\npreternatural revelation. The first discoverers of the South Sea\nIslands were amazed by a license of sexual intercourse that seemed to\nexceed the grossest burlesques of French fiction; but they were almost\nequally surprised by the scrupulous exactness of commercial\nfair-dealing observed by those incontinent children of Nature. An\nislander, who had agreed to pay three bagfuls of yam-roots for a common\npocket-knife, delivered two bagfuls (all his canoe would hold) before\nthe evening of the next day, and received his knife, as the sailors had\nabout all the provisions they could use. But the next morning, in\ntrying to leave the coast by tacking against a fitful breeze, they were\novertaken by a canoe, containing a desperately-rowing savage and that\nthird bag of yam-roots. The traveler Chamisso mentions a tribe of\nSiberian fishermen who boarded his ship to deliver a harpoon which\nformer visitors had forgotten in their winter-camp. Theft, according to\nthe testimony even of their Roman adversaries, was almost unknown among\nthe hunting-tribes of the primitive German woodlands. The natives of\nSan Salvador received their Spanish invaders with respectful\nhospitality, and scrupulously abstained from purloining, or even\ntouching, any article of their ship-stores; and a similar reception\nwelcomed their arrival in Cuba and San Domingo, the natives being\napparently unable to conceive the idea that their guests could repay\ngood with evil. \u201cFair play\u201d is the motto of boyish sports in the kraals\nof Kaffir-land, not less than on the recess-ground of Eton College. A\nrudimentary sense of justice manifests itself even among social\nanimals. A baboon who wantonly attacks an inoffensive fellow-ape is\nliable to get mobbed by the whole troop. A nest-robbing hawk has to\nbeat an immediate retreat under penalty of being attacked by all the\nwinged neighbors and relatives of his victims. Dogs that will endure\nthe most inhuman methods of training are not apt to forgive an act of\ngratuitous cruelty. They may resign themselves to a system of\nconsistent severity, but refuse to submit to evident injustice.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nJustice is the royal attribute of noble souls; the most inalienable\ncrown of their prestige. Men who would defy the power of superior\nstrength, or envy and depreciate the superior gifts of genius, will do\nunbidden homage to the majesty of superior justice. \u201cMars is a tyrant,\u201d\nsays Plutarch, in the epilogue of \u201cDemetrius,\u201d \u201cbut justice is the\nrightful sovereign of the world.\u201d \u201cThe things which kings receive from\nheaven are not machines for taking towns, or ships with brazen beaks,\nbut law and justice; these they are to guard and cultivate. And it is\nnot the most warlike, the most violent and sanguinary, but the justest\nof princes, whom Homer calls the disciple of Jupiter.\u201d History has more\nthan once confirmed that test of supremacy. The reputation of\nincorruptible integrity alone has made poor princes, and even private\ncitizens, the arbiters of nations.\n\nKing Hieron of Syracuse thus arbitrated the disputes of his warlike\nneighbors. Plato, Phocion, Philopoemen, Cato, and Abencerrage (Ibn\nZerrag) settled international quarrels which the sword had failed to\ndecide. The prestige of uprightness has made honor almost a synonyme of\nan \u201chonorable,\u201d i.e., honest, reputation. The commercial integrity of\nHebrew merchants has overcome race-jealousies and religious prejudices,\nand in America the worship of wealth does not prevent an upright judge\nfrom ranking high above a wealthier, but less scrupulous, attorney.\n\nThe consciousness of a just cause is an advantage which, more than\nonce, has outweighed a grievous disadvantage in wealth and power. It\nbiased the fortune of war in the battles of Leuctra and Lodi; it\nenabled the Scythian herdsmen to annihilate the veterans of King Cyrus,\nand the Swiss peasants to rout the chivalry of Austria and Burgundy. A\njust cause enlists sympathy, and, as a bond of union, surpasses the\nvalue of common interests, which a slight change of circumstances is\napt to turn into conflicting interests and disagreement. Strict\nadherence to the principles of political equity has preserved small\nstates in the midst of powerful neighbors, whose greed of conquest is\nrestrained by their hesitation to incur the odium of wanton aggression.\nBelgium, Holland, and Denmark have thus preserved their national\nindependence in Europe, as Japan and Acheen in the East. In Central\nAfrica the honesty and simplicity of the agricultural Ethiopians has\nproved a match for the cunning of the predatory Moors, who constantly\npillage their neighbors, but as constantly quarrel about the division\nof their spoils, and, in the vicissitudes of their civil wars, have\nagain and again been obliged to purchase the alliance of the despised\n\u201cheathen.\u201d\n\nThe practical advantages of integrity have been recognized in the\nproverbial wisdom of all nations, but are not confined to the affairs\nof commercial intercourse. In the long run, honesty is the \u201cbest\npolicy,\u201d even in avocations where the perversion of justice may seem to\npromise a temporary advantage. A lawyer who refuses to defend a wealthy\nknave against a poor plaintiff will gain in self-respect, and\nultimately also in professional reputation, more than he has lost in\ndirect emoluments. A politician who refuses to resort to chicanes may\nmiss the chance of a short-lived triumph, but will sow a seed of\nprestige sure to ripen its eventual harvest.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nJustice, in the pristine pagan sense of the word, was too natural and\ntoo manly a virtue to find much favor with the whining moralists of\nAntinaturalism. The truth which a modern philosopher has condensed in\nthe sarcasm that \u201can honest god is the noblest work of man,\u201d was\nrecognized already by the ancient historian who observed that \u201cevery\nnation makes its gods the embodiments of its own ideals,\u201d though,\nhappily, it is not always true that \u201cno worshiper is better than the\nobject of his worship.\u201d To some degree, however, the moral standards of\nthe Mediterranean pagans were undoubtedly prejudiced by the lewd\npropensities of their Olympians, and it is equally certain that the\nextravagant injustice of Christian fanatics can be partly explained, as\nwell as condoned, by the moral characteristics of their dogma-God.\nAccording to the accepted doctrine of the Middle Ages, the\nadministrative principles of that God seemed to imply a degree of moral\nperversity which even the poetic license of a saner age would have\nhesitated to ascribe to a fiend. The same deity whom the creed of the\nGalilean church makes the omniscient creator of all the physical and\nmoral instincts of human nature, nevertheless was supposed to punish\nwith endless torture nearly every free gratification of those\ninstincts, and demand a voluntary renunciation of a world which his own\nbounty had filled with every blessing, and adorned with every charm of\nloveliness. The God who endowed us with faculties of reason, of which a\nmoderate share is sufficient to perceive the absurdities of the\nChristian dogma, nevertheless avenges the repudiation of that dogma as\nan \u201cunpardonable sin against the authority of his sacred word.\u201d The\nmost natural action, the eating of an apple, is made the pretext of the\nsupposed fall of man, and of penalties affecting not only his progeny,\nbut all his fellow-creatures, and even the lower products of organic\nNature; while the greatest of all imaginable crimes, a Deicide, the\ncruel murder of a god, is accepted as a basis of redemption. The\ndoctrine of salvation by grace made the distribution of punishments and\nrewards a matter of mere caprice. The dogmatists of predestination\ndistinctly taught that the \u201celect\u201d were not saved by their own merits,\nbut by an inscrutable, incalculable, and gratuitous act of divine\nfavor, while others were as inevitably foredoomed to an eternity of\nwoe. By faith alone, or by faith and the ceremony of immersion, the\nguilt of a sinful life could, withal, be cancelled in the eleventh\nhour, while the omission of that ceremony doomed even children, nay,\nnewborn babes, to the abyss of hellfire. \u201cThere is no doubt,\u201d the\nSolomon of the Patristic Age assures us, \u201cthat infants, only a few\nspans in length, are crawling on the bottom of hell,\u201d a doctrine which\nthe historian of Rationalism justly stigmatizes as \u201cso atrocious, and\nat the same time so extravagantly absurd, that it would be simply\nimpossible for the imagination to surpass its insanity.\u201d Yet for more\nthan twelve hundred years Christians were in danger of being burnt at\nthe stake for refusing to attribute such infamies to their creator.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nNeed we wonder that the converts of that creed believed in the merit of\npassive submission to the caprices of earthly despots, and scorned the\nappeals of justice in their dealings with pagans and Freethinkers? Why\nshould men try to be better than their God? The worshiper of a God who\ndoomed the souls of unbaptized children and honest dissenters,\nnaturally had no hesitation in assailing the bodies of their\nunbelieving fellow-men, and princes who loaded fawning sycophants with\nfavors which they denied to honest patriots could appeal to the\nsanction of a divine precedent. Every petty \u201csovereign of six faithful\nsquare miles\u201d accordingly became a law to himself. A man\u2019s might was\nthe only measure of his right; the Faust-Recht, the \u201cfirst law\u201d of\niron-clad bullies, reigned supreme from the Baltic to the\nMediterranean, and the judges of (the only independent) ecclesiastic\ncourts confined their attention to ferocious punishments of neglect in\nthe payment of tithes, and the performance of socage duties and\nceremonies. The belief in the divine right of potentates, and passive\nsubmission to even the most outrageous abuse of that power, were\nassiduously inculcated as primary duties of a Christian citizen.\nNatural justice, civil rights, and the laws of humanity had no place in\nthat code of revealed ethics.\n\nSuch teachings bore their fruit in the horrors of insurrection. In the\nPeasants\u2019 War thousands of convents and castles were rent as by the\noutburst of a hurricane, and their dwellers had to learn the\ninconvenience of having to submit to the powers that happened to be, by\nbeing torn limb from limb, or flayed and roasted alive.\n\n\u201cSi no se obedecen los leyes, es ley que todo se pierde,\u201d is the\nSpanish translation of an old Arabian proverb: \u201cIf justice is\ndisregarded, it is just that everything perish\u201d\u2014a doom which the\nintolerable outrages against human rights and humanity at last\nexperienced in the cataclysm of the French Revolution. There, too, the\ndespisers of natural justice had to eat their own doctrine, the\nstrongholds of absolutism that had withstood the tears of so many\ngenerations were swept away by a torrent of blood, and the priests and\nprinces whose inhumanity had turned their serfs into wild beasts\nlearned the significance of their mistake when their own throats were\nmangled by the fangs of those beasts.\n\nThe doctrine of salvation by grace had substituted favor and caprice\nfor the rights of natural justice, and for a series of centuries the\nconsequences of its teachings were seen in the treatment of nearly\nevery benefactor of mankind. The prince who devoted the fruits of his\nconquests to the feeding of countless convent drones, let scholars\nstarve and loaded the discoverer of a New World with chains. His\nsuccessors who lavished the treasures of their vast empire on pimps and\nclerical mountebanks, let Cervantes perish in penury. The sovereign\nprotector of a thousand stall-fed prelates refused to relieve the last\ndistress of John Kepler. The moralists who thought it a grievance that\nthe church should be denied the right of tithing the lands of southern\nSpain, had no pity for the sufferings of the men whose labor had made\nthose lands blossom like the gardens of paradise, and who were exiled\nby thousands for the crime of preferring the unitary God of the Koran\nto the trinitary gods of the New Testament.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe perversion of our moral standards by the dogmas of an antinatural\ncreed is still glaringly evident in the prevailing notions of natural\njustice and the precedence of social duties. The modern Cr\u0153sus who\ndeems it incumbent on his duties as a citizen and a Christian to\ncontribute an ample subvention to the support of an orthodox seminary,\nhas no hesitation in swelling his already bloated income by reducing\nthe wages of a hundred starving factory children and taking every\nsordid advantage in coining gain from the loss of helpless tenants and\ndependants. The pious Sabbatarians who doom their poor neighbors to an\nearthly Gehenna and premature death by depriving them of every chance\nfor healthful recreation, lavish their luxuries and their endearments\non the caged cutthroat who edifies his jailer by renouncing the\nvanities of this worldly sphere and ranting about the bliss of the New\nJerusalem. The bank cashier who would never be pardoned for kicking the\nhind-parts of a mendicant missionary is readily absolved from the sin\nof such secular indiscretions as embezzling the savings of a few\nhundred widows and orphans.\n\nBefore resuming the rant about our solicitude for the interests of\ndeparted souls, we should learn to practice a little more common\nhonesty in our dealings with the interests of our living fellow-men.\nNatural justice would be less frequently outraged if our moral\nreformers would distinctly repudiate the doctrines of vicarious\natonement and salvation by faith, and hold every man responsible for\nhis own actions, irrespective of his belief or disbelief in the claims\nof an Asiatic miracle-monger. And moreover, the exponents of Secularism\nshould insist on a truth not unknown to the moralists of antiquity,\nthat habitual submission to injustice is a vice instead of a virtue,\nand that he who thinks it a merit to signalize his unworldliness by\nfailing to assert his own rights encourages oppression and fraud and\nendangers the rights of his honest fellow-men.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nTRUTH.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nThe enemies of Nature have for ages based the favorite arguments of\ntheir creed on the doctrine of Natural Depravity. According to the\ntheories of that tenet the natural instincts of the human heart are\nwholly evil, and its every nobler impulse is due to the redeeming\ninfluence of theological education. The baseness of the \u201cunregenerate\nsoul\u201d is their favorite antithesis of \u201choliness by grace;\u201d and the best\ntest of that dogma would be a comparison of the moral characteristics\nof a young child of Nature with the moral results of theological\ntraining. We need not adduce the extreme case of a child like Kaspar\nHauser or the ape-nursed foundling of Baroda, whose propensities had\nbeen modeled in communion with solitude or the dumb denizens of the\nwilderness. For, even in the midst of \u201cChristian civilization,\u201d\nthousands of peasants and mechanics are practically pure Agnostics, and\nignore the absurdities of the New Testament as persistently as their\ndeer-hunting ancestors ignored the absurdities of pagan mythology. At\nthe end of his sixth or seventh year the offspring of such parents\nwould still represent a fair specimen-child of unregenerate Nature, and\nthe normal bias of that Nature is revealed in the honesty, the trusting\ninnocence, the purity, and the cheerfulness of the young Agnostic, and\nthe absence of every appreciable germ of the secret vices, the\nrancorous spites, and the joy-hating bigotries of the representative\nChristian convent-slave.\n\nBut the most characteristic features of that contrast would perhaps be\nthe double-tongued hypocrisy of the old Jesuit and the artless candor\nof the young peasant boy. The truthfulness of young children antedates\nall moral instruction. Its motives are wholly independent of\ntheological, or even abstract-ethical, influences, and are based merely\non a natural preference for the simplest way of dealing with the\nproblems of intellectual communication. Truth is uniform, falsehood is\ncomplex. Truth is persistent and safe; falsehood is unstable, fragile,\nand precarious. Children instinctively recognize the difficulties of\nplausibly maintaining the fictions of deceit, and dread the risk of\nincurring the suspicion of habitual insincerity. Hence their\nuncompromising loyalty to facts; their innocence of artifice and mental\nreservation; hence also their extreme reluctance in conforming to the\nconventional customs of social hypocrisy and polite prevarication.\n\n\u201cAre you not glad Mrs. D. is gone?\u201d Master Frank once asked his mother\nin my presence. \u201cWell, yes, I am.\u201d \u201cThen what\u2019s the use asking her to\ncall again and stay for supper? She could not help seeing that we were\ntired of her gabble.\u201d \u201cWell, it wouldn\u2019t do to insult her, you know.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, but what\u2019s the use telling her something she cannot believe?\u201d\n\nThat last remark, especially, recurs to my memory whenever the\nexpedience of hypocrisy is defended by the conventional sophisms of\nChristian civilization. That prevarications are unprofitable as well as\nunpardonable is a truth which Jesuitry has shrouded with a veil of its\nchoicest cant, but the clear vision of childhood penetrates that cant,\nand the \u201cnatural depravity\u201d of unregenerate souls may reach the degree\nof doubting the merit of simulation even in the interest of an orthodox\ncreed, as the reverend dogmatist might ascertain by happening to\noverhear the recess comments of our American Sabbath-school youngsters.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe Utilitarians hold that motives of enlightened self-interest would\nbe sufficient to make a man perfectly virtuous. With the conventional\ndefinition of \u201cvirtue,\u201d that tenet might require certain\nqualifications; but it is more than probable that perfect prudence\nwould insure a voluntary devotion to perfect truthfulness. In its most\naggressive form the hatred of falsehood may imperil the temporary\ninterests of the aggressor, but in every other sense the path of truth\nis the path of safety. All the ultimate tendencies of the moral and\nphysical universe conspire to vindicate truth and discredit fraud.\n\nAssertions based on fact stand erect, upheld by the evidence of\nexperience as an upright building by the law of gravity; deception,\nwith all its props of plausible sophisms, is tottering like a wall out\nof plumb, or a rotten tree upheld by artificial supports which in their\nturn must yield to the test of time.\n\nEven from a standpoint of purely secular considerations, truth, like\nhonesty, is in the long run the best policy. Abstinence from insidious\npoisons is easier than temperance, and the lessons of experience have\nat all times convinced the most clear-sighted of our fellow-men that\nconsistent abstinence from the vice of hypocrisy is preferable to any\ncompromise with the interests of imposture. The non-clerical, and\nalmost Agnostic, education of the American wilderness seems to favor\nthat type of moral teetotalism, and among the hardy hill-farmers of our\nNew England highlands, and Southern mountain states, one may find men\nalmost constitutionally incapable of conscious deceit in deed or word,\nand practicing veracity without the least pretense to superior\nsaintliness, in a quite untheological and often, indeed, decidedly\nprofane medium of speech. They stick to truth from habit, rather than\nfrom moral principles, yet among their simple-hearted neighbors they\nenjoy a respect withheld from unctuous hypocrisy, and in emergencies\ncan always rely on the practical value of a life-long reputation for\ncandor. Their word is sufficient security; their denial of slanderous\nimputations is accepted without the aid of compurgators.\n\nThe simple religion of Mohammed has favored the development of a\nsimilar disposition, and on the Austrian-Turkish frontier the word of a\nMussulman generally carries the weight of a casting vote. On the Indian\nocean, too, the verdict of international opinion favors a preference\nfor Unitarian testimony. \u201cWish to heaven we could fall in with some\nAcheen fishermen,\u201d Captain Baudissin heard his pilot mutter among the\nreefs of the Sunda Islands, \u201cit\u2019s no use asking such d\u2014\u2014 liars as those\nHindoos and Chinese.\u201d\n\nThe love of truth compels the respect even of impostors and of\nprofessional hypocrites, as in the case of that curate mentioned by the\nGerman Freethinker, Weber (author of the philosophical cyclopedia,\n\u201cDemocritus\u201d). Professor Weber passed his last years in the retirement\nof a small south-German mountain village, where his undisguised\nskepticism made him the bugbear of the local pharisees; yet on moonless\nevenings he was more than once honored by the visits of a neighboring\nvillage priest, who risked censure, and, perhaps, excommunication, for\nthe sake of enjoying the luxury of a respite from the sickening cant of\nhis colleagues, and devoting a few hours to intellectual communion with\na champion of Secular science.\n\nLessing\u2019s allegory of \u201cNathan\u201d is founded on something more than\nfiction, and there is no doubt that even in the midnight of the Middle\nAges the gloomy misery of the Hebrew pariahs was often cheered by the\nsecret visits of some intelligent Christian whom the thirst for truth\nimpelled to defy the vigilance of the heretic-hunter, and to prefer an\nintellectual symposium in the garret of a Jewish slum alley to a feast\nin the banquet hall of a Christian prelate.\n\n\u201cIt is lucky for you that your opponents have not learned to utilize\nthe advantage of truth,\u201d Mirabeau replied to the taunt of an insolent\nJesuit; and in logic that advantage can, indeed, hardly be overrated.\n\u201cThey find believers who themselves believe,\u201d and, as the philosopher\nColton observes, a sort of instinct often enables the simplest\ncountryman to distinguish the language of honest conviction from the\nlanguage of artful sophistry. \u201cOur jurymen seem to appreciate a\nfirst-class lie only from an artistic standpoint,\u201d confessed a lawyer\nof my acquaintance, \u201cfor some of them privately hinted that they could\ntell it every time.\u201d\n\nOthers, no doubt, lack that degree of acumen; but first-class orators,\nas well as first-class authors, have always recognized the wisdom of\nnot relying on such mental defects of the public. Charles Darwin\u2019s\nworks, for instance, owe their popularity to their erudition and their\ngrace of style, hardly more than to the absolute candor of the author,\nwho reviews the evidence for and against his theories with the fairness\nof a conscientious judge, and by that very impartiality has succeeded\nin prevailing against the partisan arguments of his adversaries. For\nsimilar reasons our \u201cChristian\u201d temperance societies can date their\ntriumphs only from the time when they frankly repudiated the sophisms\nof their predecessors, who hoped to reconcile the lessons of science\nwith the teachings of the alcohol-brewing Galilean. For truth prevails\nagainst half-truth, as well as against absolute untruth.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nSince the dawn of rationalism perhaps no other literary product of\nFreethought has provoked the enemies of Nature to that degree of\nrancorous fury excited by the appearance of Moliere\u2019s \u201cTartuffe.\u201d The\nhero of that famous drama is an old pharisee whose resolve to renounce\nthe \u201cvanities of earth\u201d is constantly tripped by the promptings of his\nphysical instincts, and who resorts to all kinds of ludicrous sophisms\nto palliate the antagonism of two ever irreconcilable principles:\n\n\n    Le ciel d\u00e9fend, de vrai, certain contentements,\n    Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodements\u2014\n\n\nand the drama never failed to attract a jubilant audience; but the\nFrench priesthood moved heaven and earth to stop the performance, and\ncan, indeed, hardly be blamed for rejecting the apologies of the\nauthor\u2019s friends; for the irony of Tartuffe ridicules the shams, not\nonly of the Catholic clergy, but of their creed and the creed of their\nProtestant colleagues: it is, in fact, a scathing satire on the\nabsurdities of Christian Antinaturalism. The impossibility of\nreconciling the demands of Nature with the precepts of a\nworld-renouncing fanatic has, indeed, made the worship of that fanatic\na systematic school of hypocrisy and subverted the moral health of its\nvictims as effectually as the unnatural restraints of convent life\nsubverted the basis of physical health.\n\n\n    God is paid when man receiveth;\n    To enjoy is to obey;\n\n\nsays Nature with the poet of reason. \u201cGod delights in the self-torture\nof his creatures\u2014crucify your flesh, despise your body, disown the\nworld; renounce! renounce!\u201d croaks the chorus of Christian dogmatists,\nand can silence protest only by turning health into disease or candor\ninto hypocrisy.\n\nThe dogma of salvation by faith offers an additional premium on mental\nprostitution. By punishing honest doubt as a crime and inculcating the\nmerit of blind submission to the authority of reason-insulting\ndoctrines, the defenders of those doctrines struck a deadly blow at the\ninstinct of free inquiry, and for a series of generations actually\nsucceeded in eradicating that instinct from the mental constitution of\ntheir victims.\n\n\u201cThe persecutor,\u201d says W. H. Lecky, \u201ccan never be certain that he is\nnot persecuting truth rather than error, but he may be quite certain\nthat he is suppressing the spirit of truth. And, indeed, it is no\nexaggeration to say that the doctrines I have reviewed represent the\nmost skilful and at the same time most successful conspiracy against\nthat spirit that has ever existed among mankind. Until the seventeenth\ncentury, every mental disposition which philosophy pronounces to be\nessential to a legitimate research was almost uniformly branded as a\nsin, and a large proportion of the most deadly intellectual vices were\ndeliberately inculcated as virtues.... In a word, there is scarcely a\ndisposition that marks the love of abstract truth and scarcely a rule\nwhich reason teaches as essential for its attainment that theologians\ndid not for ages stigmatize as offensive to the Almighty.\u201d\n\nAnd those perversions culminated in the miracle-mongery of the wretched\nsuperstition. If the material universe was at the mercy of witches and\ntricksy demons, no man could for a moment trust the evidence of his own\nsenses and was naturally driven to complete his mental degradation by\nan absolute surrender of common sense to dogma. The history of\nChristian dogmatism is the history of an eighteen hundred years\u2019 war\nagainst Nature and Truth.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nThe drift sand of the deserts covering the site of once fertile empires\nstill attests the physical consequences of a thousand years\u2019 reign of\nAntinaturalism, but, happily, the time has already come when many of\nour fellow-men almost fail to credit the degree of mental abasement\nrealized during the most orthodox centuries of that reign. It would be\nno overstatement to say that for nearly six hundred years the priests\nof the Galilean miracle-monger persuaded a plurality of the Caucasian\nnations to risk their lives in defense of dogmas the mere profession of\nwhich would start a modern Christian on a galloping trip to the next\nlunatic asylum.\n\nDecapitated saints were believed to have emerged from their tombs and\npaid their respects to a newly appointed bishop; flying dragons\ndescended through the air to snatch the bodies of unbelievers and\ndisappeared with screams that frightened orthodox neighbors to take\nrefuge in their cellar-holes; swarms of angels carried bones, crosses,\nand whole buildings from Bethlehem to Loretto; King Philip the Second\npaid a thousand doubloons for a skeleton of St. Laurentius, and having\nbeen informed that a complete skeleton of the same saint was for sale\nin the south of Italy, he at once ratified the bargain and blessed\nheaven for having favored him with a duplicate of the precious relic.\nThousands of unfortunates were tried and executed on a charge of having\ntaken an aerial excursion on a broomstick or a black he-goat; of having\ncaused a gale by churning a potful of froth and water; of having turned\nthemselves into foxes, wolves, and tomcats.\n\nThe instinct of recognizing the absurdity of even the most glaring\nsuperstitions seems to have become wholly extinct in the minds of the\nforty generations from the middle of the tenth to the end of the\nfourteenth century; and during that millennium of madness the\nsuppression of free inquiry encouraged thousands of pious tract-mongers\nto devote their lives to the wholesale forgery of saintly biographies\nand miracle legends, and disseminate under the name of historical\nrecords insanities too extravagant even for the readers of a modern\nnursery-tale.\n\nThe war against Truth was carried to the length of suppressing not only\nthe skeptical inferences of science, but science itself; chemists,\nastronomers, physiologists, mathematicians, and bona fide historians\ncould pursue their inquiries only at the risk of an inquisitorial\nindictment; and a cloud of ignorance, which in the days of Horace and\nPliny would have been thought disgraceful to the obscurest hamlet of\nthe Roman empire, brooded for ages over the face of the entire\nChristian world.\n\nFor a series of centuries the encouragement of credulity and imposture\nalmost annulled the value of contemporary records. Travelers and\nchroniclers, as well as biographers, accommodated the popular taste by\ndealing, not in marvels only, but in miracles; witchcraft anecdotes,\npreternatural resurrections, prodigies of skill and physical prowess,\ngiants, dragons, were-wolves, and no end of spectral manifestations. It\nis no exaggeration to say that for a period of more than nine hundred\nyears the dogma of the Galilean antinaturalist systematically favored\nthe survival of the unfit, by offering a premium on mental prostitution\nand making common sense a capital crime.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe triumph of the Protestant revolt has ushered in a dawn which, in\ncomparison with the preceding night, may justly vaunt its era as an Age\nof Reason; but the thousand years\u2019 perversion of our moral instincts\nhas not been wholly redeemed by the educational influences of a short\ncentury. For even eighty years ago the educational reforms of the\nProtestant nations attempted little more than a compromise between\nreason and dogma, while their southern neighbors revolted against the\npolitical influence, rather than against the dogmatical arrogance, of\ntheir priesthood. Nay, even at present the fallacies of the compromise\nplan still hamper the progress of reform in manifold directions. As an\nAmerican Freethinker aptly expresses it: \u201cTruth is no longer kept under\nlock and key, but is kindly turned loose to roam at large\u2014after being\nchained to a certain number of theological cannon-balls.\u201d Evolution may\npursue its inquiries into specific phases of organic development, but\nmust not question the correctness of the Mosaic traditions;\nrationalists may inveigh against the insanities of the Middle Ages, but\nmust pretend to overlook the fact that the doctrine of the New\nTestament contains the germs of all those insanities; the science of\nhealth may denounce modern fallacies, but must beware to mention the\nanti-physical precepts of the body-despising Galilean; Materialists\nmust attack the hobgoblins of the Davenport brothers, but ignore the\nhog-goblins of Gadara; historical critics may call attention to the\ninconsistencies of Livy and Plutarch, but must not mention the\nself-contradictions of the New Testament.\n\nYet logic and philosophy will be little more than a farce till the\naxiom of a great biologist can be applied to the pursuit of every human\nscience. \u201cInquiries of that sort\u201d (the \u201cDescent of Man\u201d), he says,\n\u201chave nothing whatever to do with personal tastes or vested interests,\nbut only with facts. We should not ask: \u2018Will it be popular?\u2019 \u2018Will it\nseem orthodox?\u2019 but simply, \u2018Is it true?\u2019\u201d\n\nAnd in just as much as the theory of moral duties deserves the name of\na science, the exponents of that science would gain, rather than lose,\nby the adoption of the same maxim. \u201cReligion,\u201d in the traditional sense\nof the word, needs to be purged from an enormous percentage of spurious\nelements, before its ministers can be acquitted from the guilt of\ntempting their disciples to associate the ideas of Ethics and\nImposture, and thus reject the basis of morality together with the\nbasis of an Asiatic myth. \u201cTruth is the beginning of Wisdom,\u201d \u201cJustice\nis Truth,\u201d \u201cMendacity is the Mother of Discord,\u201d would be fit mottoes\nfor the ethical Sunday-schools of the Future. \u201cWhat is Truth?\u201d asks\nPilate; yet even in religious controversies the fury of sectarian\nstrife could be obviated if we would truthfully admit the uselessness\nof disputes about the unknowable mysteries of supernatural problems.\nStill, we cannot hope to eradicate the roots of discord unless we\nresolve with equal frankness to reject the interference of\nSupernaturalism with the knowable problems of secular science. Evident\nTruth can dispense with the indorsement of miracle-mongers, and\n\u201cevident Untruth,\u201d in the words of Ulrich Hutten, \u201cshould be exposed\nwhether its teachers come in the name of God or of the devil.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII.\n\nHUMANITY.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nThe wanton disposition of young children, like the mischievousness of\nour next relatives, the tree climbing half-men of the tropical forests,\nhas often been mistaken for natural malevolence, but is rather due to\nan excess of misdirected vital energy. In seeking a vent for the\nexuberance of that energy, a frolicsome child, like a playful monkey,\nis apt to become destructive, merely because destruction is easier than\nconstruction. Mischievousness, in the sense of cruelty and gratuitous\nmalice, is, however, by no means a prominent character-trait of monkeys\nor normal boys. The most wayward of all known species of fourhanders\nare undoubtedly the African baboons; yet a long study of their natural\ndisposition, both in freedom and captivity, has convinced me that even\ntheir fits of passionate wrath stop short of actual cruelty, and are,\nin fact, almost invariably intended as a protest against acts of\ninjustice or violence. At Sidi Ramath, Algiers, I saw a number of\nbabuinos hasten to the aid of a shrieking child, who had hurt his hand\nin the gear of an ox-cart, and whose cries they evidently attributed to\nthe brutality of his companions. The sight of a wounded\nfellow-creature, a crippled rat, a mangled bird, a dying rabbit, never\nfails to throw my pet Chacma-baboon into a paroxysm of shrieking\nexcitement, and within reach of her chain she will act upon the impulse\nof compassion by trying to redress the injuries of her playmates or\nrescuing the victim of a dog-fight. The fierce mandril, with resources\nof self-defense that would defy the attack of a panther, is\nnevertheless so averse to an aggressive exertion of that strength that\nmenagerie-keepers can trust him to spare, if not protect, the smallest\nspecies of his distant relatives, as well as such petulant\nfellow-captives as young dogs and raccoons. The hunters of the Orinoco\nValley can attract fourhanders of all species by imitating the peculiar\nlong-drawn wail of a young capuchin-monkey. At the sound of that cry\nspider-monkeys, stentors, and tamarins will hasten up from all parts of\nthe forest, attracted less by curiosity than the evident desire to\nsuccor a distressed fellow-creature.\n\nThat instinct of compassion still manifests itself in the disposition\nof children and primitive nations. I have seen youngsters of five or\nsix years gasp in anguish at sight of a dying dog, or turn with horror\nfrom the bloody scenes of a butcher-shop. Sir Henry Stamford describes\nthe frantic excitement of a Hindoo village at the discovery of a number\nof buckshot-riddled hanuman apes; and that sympathy is not limited to\nthe nearest relatives of the human species, for in the suburbs of\nBenares the gardener of a British resident was pursued with howls and\nexecrations for having killed a young Roussette\u2014some sort of\nfrugivorous bat. The mob repeatedly cornered the malefactor, and with\nshrieks of indignation shook the mangled creature before his face. The\ntraveler Busbequius mentions a riot in a Turkish hamlet where a\nChristian boy came near being mobbed for \u201cgagging a long-billed fowl.\u201d\n\n\u201cMan\u2019s inhumanity to man,\u201d as practiced by their foreign visitors,\ninspired the South Sea Islanders with a nameless horror. A sailor of\nthe British ship Endeavor having been sentenced to be punished for some\nact of rudeness toward the natives of the Society Islands, the natives\nthemselves interceded with loud cries for mercy, and seemed, indeed, to\nsettle their own quarrels by arbitration, or, at worst, boy-fashion, by\nwrestling and pummeling each other, and then shaking hands again. A\nsimilar scene was witnessed in Prince Baryatinski\u2019s camp in the eastern\nCaucasus, where a poor mountaineer offered to renounce his claim to a\nnumber of stolen sheep, rather than see the thief subjected to the\nbarbarous penalties of a Russian court-martial. In Mandingo Land Mungo\nPark was mistaken for a Portuguese slave-trader, nevertheless the pity\nof his destitute condition gradually overcame the hostility of the\nnatives; so much, indeed, that they volunteered to relieve his wants by\njoint contributions from their own rather scanty store of comestibles.\nEven among the bigoted peasants of northern Italy the butcheries of the\nHoly Inquisition at first provoked a fierce insurrection in favor of\nthe condemned heretics. In India and Siam some two hundred million of\nour fellow-men are so unable to overcome their horror of blood-shed\nthat in time of famine they have frequently preferred to starve to\ndeath rather than satisfy their hunger by the slaughter of a\nfellow-creature.\n\nA diet of flesh food has, indeed, a decided influence in developing\nthose truculent propensities which our moralists have often been misled\nto ascribe to the promptings of a normal instinct. In our North\nAmerican Indians, for instance, a nearly exclusively carnivorous diet\nhas engendered all the propensities of a carnivorous beast; but the\nnext relatives of those sanguinary nomads, the agricultural Indios of\nMexico and Central America, are about as mild-natured as their\nHindostan fellow-vegetarians, while Science and tradition agree in\ncontrasting the customs of flesh-eating hunters and herders with the\nfrugal habits of our earliest ancestors. The primitive instincts of the\nhuman soul are clearly averse to cruelty.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe apologists of Supernaturalism have frequently insisted on the\ndistinction between naturally advantageous and naturally thankless\nvirtues. Under the former head they would, for instance, include\nTemperance and Perseverance; under the latter, charity and the love of\nenemies\u2014thus arguing for the necessity of assuming an other-worldly\nchance of recompense for the unselfish merits of a true saint.\n\nBut a humane disposition is, on the whole, quite natural enough to\ndispense with the promise of preternatural rewards. Good-will begets\ngood-will; benevolence is the basis of friendship, while malice begets\nill-will, and is apt to betray its claws in spite of the soft-gloved\ndisguise of polite formalities.\n\nA humane master is better served than a merciless despot; his\ndependants identify his interests with their own; his family, his\ntenants, his very cattle, thrive as in an atmosphere of sunshine, while\nhabitual unkindness blights every blessing and cancels all merits.\nMental ability seems rather to aggravate the odium of a cruel\ndisposition, while, on the other hand, we are almost ashamed to notice\nthe mental or physical shortcomings of a kind-hearted man. Intellectual\nattainments have never reconciled the world to the demerits of a\nspiteful despot. Tiberius, the most abhorred of all the imperial\nmonsters of tyrant-ridden Rome, was, next to Julian, mentally perhaps\nthe most gifted of C\u00e6sar\u2019s successors. Philip the Second was the most\nastute, as well as the most powerful, sovereign of his century, but his\ncold-blooded inhumanity prevented him from ever becoming a popular\nhero. Henry the Eighth\u2019s services to the cause of Protestantism did not\nsave him from the execrations of his Protestant subjects. Pedro el\nCruel was probably the most enlightened man of his nation, a friend of\nscience in an age of universal ignorance, a protector of Jews and\nMoriscos in an age of universal bigotry. But his delight in refinements\nof cruelty made him so hateful that at the first opportunity his\nTrinitarian and Unitarian subjects joined in a revolt which the tyrant\ntried in vain to appease by promises of the most liberal reforms.\n\nTolerance, properly speaking, is nothing but common humanity, applied\nto the settlement of religious controversies; the essential principle\nof civilization is humanity applied to the daily commerce of neighbors\nand neighboring nations. Superior humanity alone has founded the\nprestige of more than one potentially inferior nation.\n\nA benevolent disposition, moreover, finds its own reward in the fact\nthat the order of the visible universe is, in the main, founded on a\nbenevolent plan. The system of Nature, with all the apparent ferity of\nher destructive moods, tends on the whole to insure the greatest\npossible happiness of the greatest possible number, and the natural\ninclination of the benevolent man is therefore in sympathy, as it were,\nwith the current of cosmic tendencies; his mind is in tune with the\nharmony of Nature.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe unparalleled inhumanities of the medieval bigots seem to form a\nstrange contrast with the alleged humanitarian precepts of the Galilean\nprophet, but were nevertheless the inevitable consequence of a doctrine\naimed at the suppression of the natural instincts of the human soul.\n\u201cWhatever is pleasant is wrong,\u201d was the shibboleth of a creed that has\nbeen justly defined as a \u201cworship of sorrow,\u201d and the practice of the\nself-denying virtues was valued chiefly in proportion to their\nafflictiveness. Herbert Spencer, in his \u201cData of Ethics,\u201d has\ndemonstrated with absolutely conclusive logic that the universal\npractice of altruism (i.e., the subordination of personal to alien\ninterests) would lead to social bankruptcy, but the clear recognition\nof that result would have been only an additional motive in\nrecommending its promotion to the world-renouncing fanaticism of the\nGalilean Buddhist. Secular advantages were more than foreign to the\npurposes of his reform. \u201cDivest yourself of your earthly possessions,\u201d\nwas the sum of his advice to salvation-seeking inquirers. \u201cRenounce!\nrenounce!\u201d\u2014not in order to benefit your worldly-minded neighbor, but to\nmortify your own worldliness. Abandon the path of earthly happiness\u2014not\nin order to make room for the crowding multitude, but in order to guide\nyour own steps into the path of other-worldliness. Disinterestedness,\nin the Christian sense, meant the renunciation of all earthly interests\nwhatever; and the same moralist who commands his disciple to love his\nenemies also bids him hate his father, mother, sister, brother, and\nfriends.\n\n\u201cSeek everything that can alienate you from the love of earth; avoid\neverything that can rekindle that love,\u201d would be at once the rationale\nand the summary of the Galilean doctrine. Shun pleasure, welcome\nsorrow; hate your friends, love your enemies. It might seem as if\nprecepts of that sort were in no danger of being followed too\nliterally. We can love only lovely things. We cannot help finding\nhatefulness hateful. We cannot relish bitterness. We might as well be\ntold to still our hunger with icicles or cool our thirst with fire. But\neven in its ultimate tendencies the religion of Antinaturalism was\nanything but a religion of love. The suppression of physical\nenjoyments, the war against freedom, against health and reason, was not\napt to increase the sum of earthly happiness; and the sense of\ntolerance\u2014nay, the instinct of common humanity and justice\u2014was\nsystematically blunted by the worship of a god to whom our ancestors\nfor thirty generations were taught to ascribe what Feuerbach justly\ncalls \u201ca monstrous system of favoritism: arbitrary grace for a few\nchildren of luck, and millions foredoomed to eternal damnation.\u201d \u201cThe\nexponents of that dogma,\u201d says Lecky, \u201cattributed to the creator acts\nof injustice and barbarity which it would be absolutely impossible for\nthe imagination to surpass, acts before which the most monstrous\nexcesses of human cruelty dwindle into insignificance, acts which are,\nin fact, considerably worse than any that theologians have attributed\nto the devil.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nThe Millennium of Madness, as a modern Freethinker calls the thousand\nyears\u2019 reign of the Galilean superstition, might with equal justice be\ncalled the Age of Inhumanity. \u201cThe greatest possible misery of the\ngreatest possible number\u201d seems to have been the motto of the medieval\ndogmatists, and, short of any plan involving the total destruction of\nthe human race, it seems, indeed, not easy to imagine a more effective\nsystem for crowding the greatest conceivable amount of suffering into a\ngiven space of time. In the pursuit of their chimeras fanatics have\nnever shrunk from sacrificing the happiness of their fellow-men; class\ninterests have made patricians callous to the sufferings of the poor,\nand revolted pariahs to the fate of the rich, and in the party warfare\nof antiquity cruelty was merely a means for the attainment of enlarged\nopportunities of enjoyment. But to the maniacs of the Middle Ages\ninhumanity seems to have become an end as well as a means. They\ninflicted misery for its own sake; they waged a persistent war against\nhappiness itself, and their sect-founders vied in the suppression of\nsympathy with every natural instinct of the human heart. \u201cIf any sect,\u201d\nsays Ludwig Boerne, \u201cshould ever take it into their heads to worship\nthe devil in his distinctive qualities, and devote themselves to the\npromotion of human misery in all its forms, the catechism of such a\nreligion could be found ready-made in the code of several monastic\ncolleges.\u201d\n\nDissenters were murdered, and converts, under the full control of their\nspiritual taskmasters, were doomed to a slower, but hardly less cruel,\ndeath by wearing out their lives with penance and renunciation.\n\n\u201cAccording to that code,\u201d says Henry Buckle, \u201call the natural\naffections, all social pleasures, all amusements, and all the joyous\ninstincts of the human heart were sinful.... The clergy looked on all\ncomforts as sinful in themselves, merely because they were comforts.\nThe great object of life was to be in a state of constant affliction.\nWhatever pleased the senses was to be suspected. It mattered not what a\nman liked; the mere fact of his liking it made it sinful. Whatever was\nnatural was wrong.\u201d\n\nThe dogma of salvation by faith seemed to make the enforced propagation\nof that faith a sacred duty, and soon drenched the face of the earth\nwith the blood of pagans and dissenters; the worship of sorrow drove\nthousands to devote themselves and their children to a life of\nperpetual penance; and the insanities of the hideous superstition\nculminated in that dogma of eternal hell tortures that deprived its\nconverts of the last solace of nature, and barred the last gate of\nescape from the horrors of existence.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe skeptic Holbach, and several of his philosophical friends, directed\nthe keenest shafts of their logic against the doctrine of eternal\npunishment, and never wearied of repeating that the belief in a\nmerciless God naturally tends to fill the world with merciless bigots.\n\u201cHow insignificant,\u201d they argued, \u201cthe occasional sufferings of a\ntransient life on earth must appear to the converts of John Calvin, who\nheld that about nine-tenths of the human race are foredoomed to an\neternity of nameless and hopeless tortures. How absurd they must deem\nthe complaints of a life-weary wretch, who, ten to one, will soon look\nback to the comparative bliss of that life as to the happiness of a\nlost Eden.\u201d The Universalists are fond of enlarging on the moral of\nthat theme, yet from a wider point of view their objections might be\nextended to the entire doctrine of other-worldliness, since Holbach\u2019s\nargument might find its exact analogue in the dogma of post mortem\ncompensation. \u201cHis soul will be the gainer,\u201d thought the Crusader who\nhad demonstrated the dangers of unbelief by smashing a Moorish skull,\n\u201cand if he should die his spirit will enter the gates of the New\nJerusalem.\u201d \u201cOh, the ingratitude,\u201d actually said a priest of the\nSpanish-American land robbers, \u201cthe ingratitude of the wretches who\ngrudge us the territories of their base earthly kingdoms and forget\nthat our gospel offers them a passport to the glorious kingdom of\nheaven!\u201d \u201cThe ingratitude!\u201d repeats the modern pharisee, \u201cthe base\ningratitude of those factory children who grudge me the privileges of\nmy position, and clamor for an increase of wages to gratify their\nworldly desires. Consumption? Hunger? Frost? should not the rich\npromises of the gospel compensate such temporal inconveniences, and\nhave I not founded a Sabbath-school to save them from the lusts of\ntheir unregenerate souls?\u201d\n\nOnly a few months ago a Chinese philosopher acquainted us with the\nverdict of his countrymen on the \u201cgospel of love\u201d that sends its\nmissionaries on ships loaded with brandy and opium, and escorted by\narmadas for the demolition of seaports that might refuse to admit the\ncargo of spirituous and spiritual poisons.\n\nSecularism, the religion of Nature, should teach our brethren that\ntheir highest physical and their highest moral welfare can be only\nconjointly attained, and that cramping misery stunts the soul, as well\nas the body of its victim. It should preach the solidarity of human\ninterests which prevents the oppressor from enjoying the fruits of his\ninhumanity, and makes the curses of his dependents, nay, even the mute\nmisery of his starving cattle, react on the happiness of a cruel\nmaster. It should expose the business methods of the humanitarians who\npropose to silence the clamors of their famished brethren with\nconsecrated wafers and drafts on the bank of the New Jerusalem.\n\nThe Christian duty of transferring our love from our friends to our\nenemies may be one of those virtues that have to await their recompense\nin a mysterious hereafter, but natural humanity can hope to find its\nreward on this side of the grave.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV.\n\nFRIENDSHIP.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nPhilosophers of the utilitarian school have begun to re\u00ebstablish the\nlong-forgotten truth that Materialism is the indispensable root of the\nplant which bears its flowers in spiritual aspirations. The consequence\nof universal practice is the best test of a dogma, and if all men were\nto divest themselves of their earthly possessions and devote their\nlives to the hyperphysical vagaries of the Galilean messiah, there\nwould soon be neither crops to harvest nor bread to eat, and unworldly\nsaints would starve as surely as ungodly sinners. \u201cIdeality\u201d may be the\ncrown of the brain, as the brain is of the body, but the organs of the\nmind cannot dispense with the aid of the alimentary organs; the\npinnacle of the social fabric needs intermediate supports. Education\nhas to secure the welfare of the body before it can successfully\ncultivate the faculties of the mind; and it is not less certain that a\nman has to be a good patriot before he can be a worthy cosmopolitan,\nand a good friend before he can be a good patriot.\n\nIn the progress of individual development the instinct of friendship\nasserts itself at a very early period. Its recollection hallows the\nmemory of the poorest childhood. The shepherd-boys of the upper Alps\ntravel dozens of miles over cliffs and rocks to meet their friends at a\nsalt-spring; on the shores of the Baltic the boys of the lonely\nfishermen\u2019s cabins frequent their trysting-places in spite of wind and\nweather. Early friendships throw the charm of their poetry even over\nthe dreary prosa of grammar-school life; the fellowship of\nschool-friends forever endears the scenes of their sports and rambles,\nand for many a poor office-drudge the recollection of such hours \u201cholds\nall the light that shone on the earth for him.\u201d True friendship\nsmoothens the rough path of poverty, while friendlessness, even in the\ngilded halls of wealth, is almost a synonyme of cheerlessness:\n\n\n    Ich w\u00fcsste mir keine gr\u00f6ssre Pein,\n    Als w\u00e4r\u2019 ich im Paradies allein,\n\n\nsays Goethe. \u201cTo be alone in paradise would be the height of misery.\u201d\nFriendship will assert itself athwart the barriers of social\ninequality, and its germs are so deeply rooted in the instincts of\nprimitive nature that, in default of a communion of kindred souls, the\nbonds of sympathy have often united saints and sinners, nay, even men\nand brutes. The traditions of Grecian antiquity have preserved the\npossibly apocryphal legend of a dolphin that became attached to the\ncompany of a young fisherman, and after his death left the sea in\nsearch of its friend, and thus perished; but the story of Androcles was\nconfirmed by the experience of Chevalier Geoffroy de la Tour, a\ncrusader of the thirteenth century, who was charmed, but finally\ndistressed, by the affection of a pet lion that followed him like his\nshadow, and at last fell a victim to his attachment by trying to swim\nafter the ship that conveyed his master from Damascus to Genoa. The\ntraveler Busbequius mentions a lynx that set his heart on escorting a\ncamp-follower of a Turkish pasha; and Sir Walter Scott vouches for the\ntouching episode of the Grampian Highlands, where a young hunter met\nhis death by falling from a steep cliff, and was found, months after,\nhalf covered by the body of his favorite deerhound, who had followed\nhis friend to the happy hunting-grounds by starving to death at the\nfeet of a corpse.\n\nAmong the ancestors of the Mediterranean nations the betrayal of a\nfriend was deemed an act of almost inconceivable infamy; friends and\nfriends engaged in a pledge of mutual hospitality, which was held\nsacred even in times of war; and among the natives of the South Sea\nIslands a similar brotherhood of elective affinities existed in the\nsociety of the Aroyi, or oath-friends, who held all property in common,\nand in times of danger unhesitatingly risked their own lives in defense\nof their ally\u2019s. Professor Letourneau has collected many curious\nanecdotes of that devotion, which should leave no doubt that altruism\nin its noblest form can dispense with the hope of post-mortem\ncompensation, and, indeed, with all theological motives whatever.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nUnselfishness is the soul of true friendship, yet it nevertheless\nremains true that all instincts are founded on the experience of\nbenefits or injuries. During the rough transition period from beasthood\nto manhood, when our uncivilized ancestors roamed the forests of the\nforeworld, it must have been an incalculable advantage to the\nindividual hunter or herder to secure the co\u00f6peration of a trusty\ncompanion, whose watchful eye would double his chance of finding food\nor avoiding danger, whose stout arm might parry a blow which unaided\nstrength would have failed to avert. As in other circumstances of\nnatural selection, those who most successfully availed themselves of\nsuch advantages had a superior chance of survival and consequently of\ntransmitting their disposition to subsequent generations, and the habit\nof friendship thus became a hereditary instinct.\n\nThe social system of civilized life has since devised manifold\nsubstitutes for the co\u00f6peration of elective affinities, but various\nunalienable advantages of the primitive plan have been more or less\nclearly recognized by all nations, especially by the manful and\nnature-abiding nations of pagan antiquity. The benefits secured by the\nmutual aid of sympathizing friends are not limited to the guarantee of\ncivil rights, but extend to the realization of individual hopes and the\nindulgence of personal inclination and predilections, as well as to the\nhigher privileges of a mental communion for which the panders of\nselfish wealth have as yet devised no equivalent. The power of\napprobativeness, the main stimulus of ambition, is infinitely\nintensified by the emulation of noble friendship, which, in the words\nof an ancient philosopher, \u201cinspires to deeds heroic, and makes labor\nworth the toils that lead to success.\u201d Such friendship inspired the\nheroism of Theseus and Pyrithous, of Harmodius and Aristogiton, of\nNisus and Euryalus, and recorded its experience in proverbs which have\nfew parallels in the languages of the Christianized nations: \u201cSolem e\nmundo qui amicitiam e vita tollunt\u201d\u2014\u201cThey deprive the world of sunshine\nwho deprive life of friendship.\u201d \u201cAmicum perdere damnorum est\nmaximum\u201d\u2014\u201cTo lose a friend is the greatest of losses.\u201d \u201cAmicus magis\nnecessarius quam ignis aut aqua\u201d\u2014\u201cA friend is more needful than fire or\nwater.\u201d\n\nIn times of tribulation, when the fury of party-strife overrode all\nother restraints, friendship has more than once proved its saving power\nby averting otherwise hopeless perils. Diagoras was thus saved from the\nrage of allied bigots, Demetrius from the dagger of a wily assassin,\nthe elder Cato from the rancor of political rivals. Without the aid of\na friend Cicero would never have survived the intrigues of Catiline.\nEpaminondas made the approval of friends the sole reward of his heroic\nlife, and vanquished the enemies of his country by the enthusiasm of\nthe \u201csacred legion\u201d of mutually devoted and mutually inspiring friends.\nMohammed the Second yielded to the prayer of a humble companion what he\nrefused to the united threats of foreign embassadors, and Simon\nBolivar, the liberator of South America, often confessed that he owed\nhis triumphs to the counsel of private friends rather than to the\nsuggestions of his official advisers.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe blessing of friendship, \u201cdoubling the joys of life and lessening\nits sorrows,\u201d could not fail to be specially obnoxious to the moralists\nof a creed that seeks to lure its converts from earth to ghostland, and\ndepreciates the natural affections of the human heart. The gloomy\nantinaturalism of the Galilean prophet has been glossed over by the\nwhitewashing committee of the revised Bible, but is too shockingly\nevident in the less sophisticated version of the original text to\nmistake its identity with the moral nihilism of the world-renouncing\nBuddha. The phil\u2019adelphia, or \u201cbrother-love,\u201d of the New Testament, is,\nin fact, merely a \u201cfellowship in Christ\u201d\u2014the spiritual communion and\nmutual indoctrination of earth-renouncing bigots. With the joys and\nsorrows of natural friendship their prophet evinces no sympathy\nwhatever. \u201cI am come,\u201d says he, \u201cto set a man at variance against his\nfather, and the daughter against her mother, ... and a man\u2019s foes shall\nbe those of his own household.\u201d \u201cHe who hates not his father and\nmother, his brothers and sisters, cannot be my disciple.\u201d \u201cAnd the\nbrother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son.\u201d\n\nBy that test of moral merit the obligation of natural affection counted\nas nothing compared with the duty of theological conformity. \u201cVerily, I\nsay unto you, there is no man that has left brethren or sisters or\nfather and mother for my sake and the gospels\u2019, but he shall receive a\nhundredfold,\u201d etc. \u201cHe that loveth father and mother more than me is\nnot worthy of me.\u201d \u201cAnd another of his disciples said unto him: Lord,\nsuffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him:\nFollow me, and let the dead bury their dead.\u201d \u201cFor if you love them\nwhich love you, what reward have ye?\u201d\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nThe conversion of Rome, which theologians are fond of representing as\nthe crowning miracle of Christianity, was a natural consequence of its\npessimistic tendencies, which could not fail to recommend themselves to\nthe instincts of a decrepit generation. \u201cWorn-out sensualists consoled\nthemselves with the hope of a better hereafter. Cowards pleased\nthemselves with the idea of fulfilling the duty of meek submission to\nthe injustice of the \u2018powers that be.\u2019 Monastic drones denounced the\nworldliness of industrial enterprises. Physical indolence welcomed the\ndiscovery that \u2018bodily exercise profiteth but little.\u2019 Envious\nimpotence insisted on the duty of self-abasement. Transgressors against\nthe health-laws of Nature relied upon the efficacy of the prayer-cure.\nStall-fed priests sneered at the lean philosopher who wasted his time\nupon laborious inquiries, while he might wax fat on faith and the\nsacrifices of the pious. The demon-dogma was a godsend to the spiritual\npoverty of the elect. The so-called scholars of the Galilean church,\nwho could not encounter the pagan philosophers on their own ground,\nfound it very convenient to postulate a spook for every unknown\nphenomenon.... Despots before long recognized the mistake of\npersecuting a creed which inculcated the duty of passive submission to\noppressors\u201d (Secret of the East, p. 54).\n\nThey also recognized the advantage of a spiritual excuse for the infamy\nof their ingratitude to the secular benefactors of mankind. C\u00e6sar and\nTrajan treated the humblest centurion as a friend rather than as a\nservant. Constantine and Justinian treated the ablest ministers like\nslaves who can be forced to toil, and turned out to starve after having\nworn out their strength in the service of the Lord\u2019s anointed.\nBelisarius, after repeatedly saving his master from well-deserved ruin,\nwas sacrificed to the spite of a crowned harlot, and left to beg his\nbread in the streets of the city which his valor alone had for years\nprotected from the rage of hostile armies. Aetius, who had saved all\nEurope by stemming the torrent of Hunnish conquest, was treated like a\nrebellious slave for refusing to betray his brave allies, and the\nstipulated pay of his veterans was squandered on pimps and clerical\nparasites. Charles Martel, whose heroism turned the scales against the\npower of the invading Moriscos, was openly reviled by the very priests\nwho owed him the preservation of their lives, as well as of their\nlivings; his image was dragged in the mire, his soul consigned to the\npit of torment\u2014all for having defrayed the costs of his campaign by\ntithing prelates as well as laymen. Columbus was loaded with chains by\nthe pious prince whose castles he had filled with the treasures of a\nnew world; the philosopher Vanini was betrayed to death by a Christian\nspy who had for years enjoyed his confidence and his hospitality. John\nHuss was surrendered by the imperial priest-slave whose own hand had\nsigned the document of his safe-conduct. The earl of Stafford was\nsacrificed by the crowned Jesuit who divided his time between prayers\nfor the theological interests of his subjects and plots for the\nsubversion of their political liberties. The dogma of self-denial has\nnot prevented our financial pharisees from amassing fortunes that would\ndwarf the spoils of a Roman triumphator; but the hospitality of M\u00e6cenas\nhas not survived the religion of Nature. Our philosophers have to study\nthe problems of life in a personal struggle for existence; our poets\nhave to choose between starvation and hypocrisy. Patriots are left to\nthe consoling reflection that virtue is its own reward. The endowers of\ntheological seminaries seem to rely on the mercy of Christ to cancel\nthe odium of their shortcomings in the recognition of secular merit.\nKepler, Campanella, and Spinoza perished in penury. Locke and Rousseau,\nthe recognized primates of the intellectual world, were left to\nlanguish in exile, admired and neglected by a host of\n\u201cfriends\u201d\u2014Christian friends\u2014in every city of the civilized world.\nSchubert, Buerger, and Frederick Schiller, the idols of a poetry-loving\nnation, were left to fight the bitter struggle for existence to an\nextreme of which all the records of pagan antiquity furnish only a\nsingle parallel. Anaxagoras, the founder of a philosophic school\ncounting its disciples by thousands, was left to languish in exile,\ntill the rumor of his extreme distress brought the most illustrious of\nthose disciples to the sick-bed of his neglected teacher. \u201cDo not, do\nnot leave us!\u201d he cried, in an agony of remorse; \u201cwe cannot afford to\nlose the light of our life!\u201d\n\n\u201cO Pericles,\u201d said the dying exile, \u201cthose who need a lamp should take\ncare to supply it with oil!\u201d\n\nBut how many lights of our latter-day lives have thus been extinguished\nbefore their time! Not one of the plethoric British aristocrats who\nspiced their leisure with the sweets of poetry ever dreamed of\nrelieving the cruel distress of Robert Burns, or of cutting the knot of\nthe financial embroglio that strangled out the life of Sir Walter\nScott.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nTime is the test of truth; and the fallacies of the \u201cBrotherhood in\nChrist\u201d plan have been abundantly demonstrated by their consequences.\nInstead of being a bond of union, the doctrine of renunciation has been\nfound to be a root of discord and rancor, and in times of need the\nfellowship of its converts has proved a most rotten staff. Even the\nwretches who betrayed their friends to the spies of the Holy\nInquisition had no difficulty in palliating the infamy of their conduct\nwith the sanction of scriptural precepts. For centuries the appeals of\nmartyrs to the cause of freedom and Freethought have been answered with\nthe advice of Christian submission to the \u201cpowers that be,\u201d and our\nmodern pharisees rarely fail to reprove the \u201cworldliness\u201d of a poor\nneighbor\u2019s lament for the loss of his earthly possessions.\n\nThe founder of \u201cPositivism,\u201d the Religion of Humanity, proposes to\ndedicate the days of the year to the leaders of progress, and inscribe\nour places of worship with the names of discoverers, reformers, and\nphilosophers rather than of bigots and world-despising saints. And for\nthe sake of those who would not wish to repeat the mistake of\nsacrificing the present to the past, the builders of those sanctuaries\nshould add a temple of Friendship. From the adoration of self-torturing\nfanatics, from the worship of sorrow and the love of enemies, mankind\nwill at last revert to the ancestral plan of elective affinities, and\nthe dread of preferring natural to theological duties will not much\nlonger prevent our fellow-men from recognizing their obligations to\ntheir earthly benefactors.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV.\n\nEDUCATION.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nThe doctrine of Pythagoras, the philosophic Messiah of Paganism,\nincluded the strange tenet of metempsychosis. After death, held the\nconfessors of that dogma, the souls of men and brutes would reappear in\nnew forms, higher or lower, according to the character-traits of the\ndying individual. Thus the soul of a wealthy glutton might be reborn in\na pig-sty, that of a high-minded peasant perhaps on the throne of a\nking. Death and rebirth are the upper and lower spokes of a wheel that\nturns and turns forever, and in the persons of their neighbors the\nPythagoreans saw wanderers that might have walked this earth thousands\nof years ago.\n\nThe strangeness of such a theory is still increased by the circumstance\nthat its teacher was an eminent astronomer, an accomplished\nmathematician, and the leader of a memorable hygienic reform. Our\nastonishment is not lessened by the well-established fact that, under\nsome form or other, the doctrine of soul-migration has for ages been\nthe accepted creed of a large plurality of our fellow-men. It is well\nknown, however, that to his trusted disciples Pythagoras imparted an\nesoteric or explanatory version of his dogmas; and if we learn that the\ngreat philosopher attached a special importance to the influence of\nhereditary dispositions, the truth at last dawns upon us that the\ndoctrine of metempsychosis referred to the reappearance of individual\ntypes, passions, and dispositions in the bodily and mental\ncharacteristics of the next generation. \u201cParents live in their\nchildren.\u201d The instinctive recognition of that truth reconciles our\ndumb fellow-creatures to the prospect of death. At the end of summer\nthe night-moth carefully deposits her eggs in a silver cradle, hidden\nsafe in the crevice of some sheltering nook, where they will survive\nthe rigor of the winter and answer the first summons of spring. Having\nthus, as it were, insured the resurrection of her type, the parent moth\nquietly resigns herself to the fate of sleeping her own winter-slumber\nin the arms of death. On the Orinoco wounded river-turtles will use\ntheir last strength to climb the slope of some bush-hidden sand-bank,\nand after intrusting their eggs to the protection of the deep drift\nsand, will re\u00ebnter the water and quietly float off with the seaward\ncurrents. In the virgin-woods of Southern Mexico, where the harpy-eagle\nfills the maws of her hungry brood by incessant raids on the small\ndenizens of the tree-tops, the traveler D\u2019Armand once witnessed a\ncurious scene. An eagle had pounced upon a nursing mother monkey, who\nat first struggled desperately to free herself from the claws of the\nmurderer; but, finding resistance in vain, she loosened her grasp on\nthe branches, and, just as the eagle carried her off, she disengaged\nthe arm of her baby from her neck, and shaking off the little creature\nwith a swing of her arm, she deliberately flung it back into the\nsheltering foliage of the tree-top, thus taking the last possible\nchance of surviving in her child.\n\nThe \u201cdread of annihilation\u201d reveals itself in the instincts of a dying\nphilosopher as plainly as in the instincts of a wounded animal; but, on\nself-examination, that fear would prove to have but little in common\nwith a special solicitude for the preservation of material forms or\ncombinations\u2014conditions which the process of organic change constantly\nmodifies in the cradle as well as in the grave. It is rather the type\nof the body and its correlated mental dispositions which the hope of\nresurrection yearns to preserve, and even childless men have often\npartly realized that hope by impressing the image of their soul on a\nyounger mind, and transmitting their cherished projects and theories\nthrough the medium of education. In the consciousness of that\naccomplished task Socrates could as calmly die in the arms of his\ndisciples as the Hebrew patriarch in the arms of his children and\ngrandchildren. \u201cYou kill a sower,\u201d cried St. Adalbert under the clubs\nof his assassins, \u201cbut the seed he has planted will rise and survive\nboth his love and your hatred.\u201d\n\nEven the influence of a great practical example has often impressed the\nmental type of a reformer or patriot on a series of subsequent\ngenerations. The Buddhist Calanus, preaching the doctrine of\nrenunciation to an audience of scoffers, deeply affected the most\nthoughtless of his witnesses by proving his personal convictions in the\nflames of a funeral pile. \u201cI leave no sons,\u201d were the last words of\nEpaminondas, \u201cbut two immortal daughters, the battles of Leuctra and\nMantinea.\u201d Rousseau smiled when he learned the intrigues of his enemies\nwho were trying their utmost to enlist the co\u00f6peration of a violent\npulpit-orator. \u201cThey are busy recruiting their corps of partisans,\u201d\nsaid he, \u201cbut Time will raise me an ally in every intelligent reader of\nthe next generation.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nIn the simple lives of the lower animals every day may bring the\nsufficient reward of its toil; but the problem of progress, even from\nthe first dawn of civilization, involves tasks too apt to extend beyond\nthe span of individual existence. The forest-clearing husbandman, the\nstate-founding patriot, the scientific inquirer, all risk to receive\nthe summons of night before the completion of their labor. Before\nreaching the goal of their hopes their earthly pilgrimage may end at\nthe brink of the unknown river, and education alone can bridge that\ngulf, and make every day the way-station, of an unbroken road. Children\nor children\u2019s children will take up the staff from the last\nresting-place of their pilgrim father; and, moreover, all progress is\ncumulative. Every laborer works with the experience of his forefathers,\nas well as his own; every son stands on the shoulders of his father.\nEven the failure of individual efforts contributes a helpful lesson to\nthe success of the next attempt:\n\n\n    Freedom\u2019s brave battle, once begun,\n    Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,\n    Though often baffled, e\u2019er is won.\n\n\nPersistent adherence to the programme of a traditional policy has often\nmade the work of successive centuries the triumphant execution of a\nsingle plan. The empire of Islam sprung from the seed which the prophet\nof Mecca had planted in the soil of his native land. The storm of the\nProtestant revolt rose from the anathemas of a poor Wittenberg friar;\nthe unquenchable fire of the French Revolution was kindled by the\nburning indignation of a Swiss recluse, and his fervid appeals:\n\n\n    Those oracles that set the world aflame,\n    Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;\n\n\nand the vast fabric of our republican federation was founded by the\npoor colonists who sought independence in the freedom of the\nwilderness, and combined against the power of a selfish despot.\nEducation sows a seed which may sprout even during the life-time of the\nsower, and bless individual life with the sweets of a guaranteed\ntriumph over the power of death. Resurgam, \u201cI shall live after death,\u201d\nexpresses the significance of that triumph, and of the \u201cesoteric\ndoctrine of Pythagoras.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe Christian church has constantly perverted the purpose of education,\nbut has never yet deserved the reproach of having neglected its means.\nFrom the very beginning the sect of the apostle-training Galilean has\nbeen a sect of assiduous educators. They were not satisfied with\nfounding schools and opening their doors to all comers, but went forth\nin quest of new converts, and pursued their aim with a persistence of\nzeal and a versatility of skill that could not fail to accomplish its\npurpose. As soon as a sufficient increase of power enabled them to\ncontrol the institutes of primary instruction they turned their chief\nattention to the dogmatical education of the young. They derived no aid\nfrom the attractiveness and still less from the plausibility of their\ndoctrine, but they realized Schopenhauer\u2019s remark that \u201cthere is in\nchildhood a period measured by six, or at most by ten years, when any\nwell-inculcated dogma, no matter how extravagantly absurd, is sure to\nretain its hold for life.\u201d And though the propagation of an unnatural\ncreed is not favored by natural fertility, the naturally barren\ndoctrine of renunciation was thus successfully propagated by a system\nof incessant grafting. By the skilful application of that process the\nmost dissimilar plants were made subservient to its purpose. The\n\u201cWorship of Sorrow\u201d with its whining renunciation of worldly\nenjoyments, and its indifference to health and physical education, was\ngrafted on the manful naturalism of the Hebrew law-giver.\nSaint-worship, the veneration of self-torturing fanatics, was grafted\non a stem of pagan mythology, and dozens of Christian martyrs have thus\nusurped the honor and the sacrifices of pagan temples. Christian\nholidays were grafted on the festivals of the nature-loving Saxons. But\npersuasion failing, the missionaries of the cross did not hesitate to\nresort to more conclusive measures. Like refractory children cudgeled\nalong the path of knowledge, the obstinate skeptics of northern Europe\nwere harassed with fire and sword till they could not help admitting\nthe dangers of unbelief. The garden-lands of the Albigenses were wasted\ntill they found no difficulty in yearning for the peace of a better\nworld. Philosophers were tortured in the prisons of the Holy\nInquisition till the sorrows of life favored the renunciation of its\nhopes.\n\nFor thirteen centuries the sunshine of millions of human hearts was\nruthlessly sacrificed to promote the task of luring mankind from life\nto ghost-land, and during all those ages education was systematically\nturned from a blessing into an earth-blighting curse.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nThere is a story of a Portuguese slave-dealer who carried a private\nchaplain on his pay-roll, and frequently expressed his solicitude for\nthe spiritual welfare of his shackled captives. A very similar kind of\nspiritual duty has for centuries been made the excuse for an almost\ntotal neglect of secular education. Divorced from the control of common\nsense, religion soon degenerated into mere ceremonialism. A priest who\nwould travel twenty miles through a snow-storm to supply a dying man\nwith a consecrated wafer had no sympathy with the needs of the living.\nHe would extort the last penny of his tithes at the risk of starving a\nvillage full of needy parishioners. He would groan at the sight of an\nunbaptized child, but had not a drop of water to cool the brows of\nburning Moors or Jews. He would rave about the cruelty of a prince who\nhad deprived the clergy of their mass-shillings, but had no ear for the\nlaments of the exiled Moriscos or the curses of starving serfs.\n\nSuch was the morality which arrogated the right of suppressing that\nsystem of physical and intellectual education which had filled the\nhomes of the Mediterranean nations with all the blessings of health,\nscience, and beauty. Theological training had failed to kindle the dawn\nof a supernatural millennium, but had thoroughly succeeded in\nextinguishing the light of human reason. Not absolute ignorance only,\nbut baneful superstition\u2014worse than ignorance by just as much as poison\nis worse than hunger\u2014was for centuries the inevitable result of all\nso-called school-training; and the traditions of that age of\npriest-rule have made religion almost a synonyme of cant. It also gave\nbook-learning its supposed tendency to mental aberration. Can we wonder\nat that result of an age when the literary products of Christian Europe\nwere confined almost exclusively to ghost-stories and manuals of\nceremony? Can we wonder that delusions of the most preposterous kind\nassumed the virulence of epidemic diseases? Maniacs of self-mutilation,\nof epileptic contortions, of were-wolf panics, traversed Europe from\nend to end. Men gloried in ignorance, and boasted their neglect of\nworldly science till the consequences of that neglect avenged its folly\nin actual madness.\n\nThe saddest of all the sad \u201cit might have beens\u201d is, perhaps, a reverie\non the probable results of earlier emancipation\u2014of the employment of\nthirteen worse than wasted centuries in scientific inquiries,\nagricultural improvements, social and sanitary reforms. We might have\nfailed to enter the portals of the New Jerusalem, but we would probably\nhave regained our earthly paradise.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe days of the Holy Inquisition are past; but the restless propaganda\nof Jesuitry still shames the inactivity of Rationalism. Our friends sit\nlistless, relying on the theoretical advantages of their cause, while\nthe busy intrigues of our enemies secure them all practical advantages.\n\nEven in our model republic only primary education stands neutral, while\nprivate enterprise has made nearly every higher college a stronghold of\ndogmatism. And even the semi-secularism of primary instruction is more\nthan offset by the ultra-orthodoxy of \u201cSunday-schools.\u201d Millions of\nfactory children have to sacrifice their only day of leisure at the\nbidding of their dogmatic task-master and with the timid connivance of\ntheir parents. \u201cWe cannot row against the stream,\u201d I have heard even\nFreethinkers say. \u201cLet the youngsters join the crowd; if it does them\nno good, it can do no harm.\u201d But it will do harm, even beyond the waste\nof time and the wasted opportunities for health-giving exercise. The\nprocess of dogmatic inoculation may fail to serve its direct purpose,\nbut the weekly repetition of the experiment is sure to contaminate the\nmoral organism with unsound humors which may become virulent at\nunexpected times and, likely enough, undermine that very peace of the\nhousehold which a short-sighted mother hoped to promote by driving her\nboys to Sunday-school, as she would drive troublesome cattle to a\npublic pasture.\n\nThe Freethinkers of every community should combine to engage a teacher,\nor at least facilitate home instruction by collecting text-books of\nSecularism, such as Voltaire\u2019s \u201cPhilosophical Cyclopedia;\u201d Rousseau\u2019s\n\u201cEmile;\u201d Hallam\u2019s \u201cHistory of the Middle Ages;\u201d Ingersoll\u2019s pamphlets;\nPaine\u2019s \u201cAge of Reason;\u201d Lecky\u2019s \u201cHistory of Rationalism\u201d and \u201cHistory\nof Morals;\u201d Lessing\u2019s \u201cNathan;\u201d Goethe and Schiller\u2019s \u201cXenions;\u201d\nDarwin\u2019s \u201cDescent of Man;\u201d Plutarch\u2019s Biographies; Trelawney\u2019s \u201cLast\nDays of Shelley and Byron;\u201d McDonnell\u2019s Freethought novels; Parker\nPillsbury\u2019s \u201cReview of Sabbatarian Legislation;\u201d Reade\u2019s \u201cMartyrdom of\nMan;\u201d Bennett\u2019s \u201cGods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times;\u201d\nGibbon\u2019s \u201cHistory of Christianity;\u201d Keeler\u2019s \u201cShort History of the\nBible;\u201d \u201cBible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions;\u201d\n\u201cSupernatural Religion;\u201d Greg\u2019s \u201cCreed of Christendom;\u201d Lord Amberley\u2019s\n\u201cAnalysis of Religious Belief;\u201d \u201cReligion Not History.\u201d\n\nWe should have Freethought colleges and Secular missions, and even\nisolated Liberals might do better than \u201cdrift with the stream.\u201d They\nmight let their children pass their Sundays in the freedom of the\nforests and mountains to worship the God of Nature in his own temple,\nand learn a lesson from the parental devotion of their dumb\nfellow-creatures. She-wolves, deprived of their whelps, have been known\nto enter human habitations at night to suckle their young through the\nbars of a heavy cage. Thrushes and fly-catchers will enter an open\nwindow to feed or rescue their captive nestlings, and with a still\nwider sympathy a Liberal friend of mine tries to aid his neighbors\u2019\nchildren, as well as his own. Renouncing the hope of abolishing\nSabbatarianism, he conceived the idea of controlling it, and induced\nhis neighbors to send their children to a \u201cSunday Garden\u201d with a free\nmuseum of pictures and stuffed birds, gymnastic contrivances, and a\nlittle restaurant of free temperance refreshments\u2014apples, peanuts, and\nlemonade. He defrays the expenses of the establishment, which his\nneighbors consider a sort of modified kindergarten; and under the name\nof \u201cSunday books\u201d circulates a private library of purely secular\nliterature.\n\n\u201cIf life shall have been duly rationalized by science,\u201d says Herbert\nSpencer, \u201cparents will learn to consider a sound physical constitution\nas an entailed estate, which should be transmitted unimpaired, if not\nimproved;\u201d and with a similar recognition of social obligations\nFreethinkers should endeavor to transmit to their children a bequest of\nunimpaired common sense. Loyalty to their Protestant ancestors, loyalty\nto posterity, and to the majesty of truth herself, should prompt us to\nstand bravely by our colors and train our children to continue the\nstruggle for light and independence.\n\nBy the far-reaching influence of education Secularists should bridge\nthe chasm which orthodoxy hopes to cross on the wings of faith.\nSecularism shall preach the gospel of immortality on earth.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIV\u2014OBJECTIVE MAXIMS.\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI.\n\nFOREST CULTURE.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nIt is wonderful how often instinct has anticipated the practical\nlessons of science. Long before comparative anatomy taught us the\ncharacteristics of our digestive organs the testimony of our natural\npredilections indicated the advantages of a frugal diet. Long before\nmodern hygiene pointed out the perils of breathing the atmosphere of\nunventilated dormitories the evidence of our senses warned us against\nthe foulness of that atmosphere. And ages before the researches of\nagricultural chemistry began to reveal the protective influence of\narboreal vegetation, an instinct which the child of civilization shares\nwith the rudest savage revolted against the reckless destruction of\nfine woodlands, and sought to retrieve the loss by surrounding private\nhomes with groves and parks. The love of forests is as natural to our\nspecies as the love of rocks to the mountain-goat. Trees and tree-shade\nare associated with our traditions of paradise, and that the cradle of\nthe human race was not a brick tenement or a wheat-farm, but a\ntree-garden, is one of the few points on which the genesis of Darwin\nagrees with that of the Pentateuch. The happiest days of childhood\nwould lose half their charm without the witchery of woodland rambles,\nand, like an echo of the foreworld, the instincts of our forest-born\nancestors often awake in the souls of their descendants. City children\nare transported with delight at the first sight of a wood-covered\nlandscape, and the evergreen arcades of a tropical forest would charm\nthe soul of a young Esquimaux as the ever-rolling waves of the ocean\nwould awaken the yearnings of a captive sea-bird. The traveler Chamisso\nmentions an interview with a poor Yakoot, a native of the North\nSiberian ice-coast, who happened to get hold of an illustrated magazine\nwith a woodcut of a fine southern landscape: a river-valley, rocky\nslopes rising toward a park-like lawn with a background of wooded\nhighlands. With that journal on his knees the Yakoot squatted down in\nfront of the traveler\u2019s tent, and thus sat motionless, hour after hour,\ncontemplating the picture in silent rapture. \u201cHow would you like to\nlive in a country of that kind?\u201d asked the professor. The Yakoot folded\nhis hands, but continued his reverie. \u201cI hope we shall go there if we\nare good,\u201d said he at last, with a sigh of deep emotion.\n\nThe importance of hereditary instincts can be often measured by the\ndegree of their persistence. Man is supposed to be a native of the\ntrans-Caucasian highlands\u2014Armenia, perhaps, or the terrace-lands of the\nHindookoosh. Yet agriculture has succeeded in developing a type of\nhuman beings who would instinctively prefer a fertile plain to the\ngrandest highland paradise of the East. Warfare has in like manner\nengendered an instinctive fondness for a life of perilous adventure, as\ncontrasted with the arcadian security of the Golden Age. There are men\nwho prefer slavery to freedom, and think pallor more attractive than\nthe glow of health, but a millennium of unnaturalism has as yet failed\nto develop a species of human beings who would instinctively prefer the\ndreariness of a treeless plain to the verdure of a primeval forest.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe love of forest-trees is a characteristic of the nature-abiding\nnations of the North, and has rewarded itself by an almost complete\nreversion of the original contrast between the garden lands of the\nSouth and the inhospitable wilderness of the higher latitudes. Forest\ndestruction has turned Southern Europe into a desert, while the\npreservation of forests has made the homes of the hyperborean hunters\nan Eden of beauty and fertility. \u201cOne-third to the hunter, two-thirds\nto the husbandman,\u201d was the rule of Margrave Philip in his distribution\nof forest and fields, and expresses the exact proportion which modern\nscience indicates as most favorable to the perennial fertility of our\nfarm-lands. In a single century the forest-destroying Spaniards turned\nmany of their American colonies from gardens into sand-wastes, while,\nafter fourteen hundred years of continuous cultivation, the fields of\nthe Danubian Valley are still as fertile as in the days of Trajan and\nTacitus. Along the river-banks and half-way up the foot-hills the\narable land has been cleared, but higher up the forest has been spared.\nAll the highlands from Ratisbon to Buda-Pesth still form a continuous\nmountain park of stately oaks and pines, and, as a consequence, springs\nnever fail; crops are safe against winter floods and summer drouths;\nsong-birds still return to their birthland, and reward their protectors\nby the destruction of noxious insects; meadows, grain-fields, and\norchards produce their abundant harvest year after year; famine is\nunknown, and contagious diseases rarely assume an epidemic form. In\nSwitzerland and Prussia the preservation of the now remaining woodlands\nis guaranteed by strict protective laws; Scandinavia requires her\nforest-owners to replant a certain portion of every larger clearing; in\nGreat Britain the parks of the ancient mansions are protected like\nsacred monuments of the past, and landowners vie in lining their\nfield-trails with rows of shade-trees. The fertility of those lands is\na constant surprise to the American traveler disposed to associate the\nidea of eastern landscapes with the picture of worn-out fields.\nSurrounded by Russian steppes and trans-Alpine deserts, the homes of\nthe Germanic nations still form a Goshen of verdure and abundance.\nForest protectors have not lost their earthly paradise.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nSixteen hundred years ago the highlands of the European continent were\nstill covered with a dense growth of primeval forests. The\nhealthfulness and fertility of the Mediterranean coastlands surpassed\nthat of the most favored regions of the present world, and the\ndependence of those blessings on the preservation of the\nspring-sheltering woodlands was clearly recognized by such writers as\nPliny and Columella, though their own experience did not enable them to\nsuspect all the ruinous consequences of that wholesale forest\ndestruction, which modern science has justly denounced as the ne plus\nultra folly of human improvidence. Practical experiments had, however,\ndemonstrated such facts as the failing of springs on treeless slopes,\nand the violence of winter floods in districts unprotected by\nrain-absorbing forests, and tree culture was practiced as a regular\nbranch of rational husbandry. But with the triumph of the Galilean\nchurch came the millennium of unnaturalism. Rational agriculture became\na tradition of the past; the culture of secular science was fiercely\ndenounced from thousands of pulpits; improvidence, \u201cunworldliness,\u201d and\nsuperstitious reliance on the efficacy of prayer were systematically\ninculcated as supreme virtues; the cultivators of the soil were treated\nlike unclean beasts, and for a series of centuries the garden regions\nof the East were abandoned to the inevitable consequences of neglect\nand misculture.\n\nMillions of acres of fine forest lands passed into the hands of\nignorant priests, who, in their greed for immediate gain, and their\nreckless indifference to the secular welfare of posterity, doomed their\ntrees to the ax, entailing barrenness on regions favored by every\nnatural advantage of soil and climate. Drouths, famines, and\nlocust-swarms failed to impress the protest of nature. Her enemies had\nno concern with such worldly vanities as the study of climatic\nvicissitudes, and hoped to avert the consequences of their folly by an\nappeal to the intercession of miracle-working saints.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nYet the saints failed to answer that appeal. The outraged laws of\nnature avenged themselves with the inexorable sequence of cause and\neffect, and in spite of all prayer-meetings the significance of their\ncrime against the fertility of their Mother Earth was brought home to\nthe experience of the ruthless destroyers. In their net-work of moss\nand leaves forests absorb the moisture of the atmosphere, and thus\nnourish the springs which in their turn replenish the brooks and\nrivers. When the highlands of the Mediterranean peninsulas had been\ndeprived of their woods the general failing of springs turned rivers\ninto shallow brooks, and brook-valleys into arid ravines. Summer rains\nbecame too scarce to support the vegetation of the farm lands; the\ntillers of the soil had to resort to irrigation and eat their bread in\na harder and ever harder struggle for existence, till vast areas of\nonce fertile lands had to be entirely abandoned, and the arable\nterritory of this planet was yearly reduced by the growth of an\nartificial desert. And while the summer drouths became more severe,\nwinter floods became more frequent and destructive. From the treeless\nslopes of the Mediterranean coastlands winter rains descended like\nwaterfalls, turning once placid rivers into raging torrents, and\ndepriving the fields of their small remnant of fertile mould. Hillsides\nwhich in the times of Virgil had furnished pastures for thousands of\nherds were thus reduced to a state of desolation almost as complete as\nthat of a volcanic cinder-field; their dells choked with rock debris,\ntheir terraces rent by a chaos of gullies and clefts, while the soil,\nswept from the highlands, was accumulated in mudbanks near the mouth of\nthe river. Harbors once offering anchorage for the fleets of an empire\nbecame inaccessible from the ever-growing deposits of diluvium. Yearly\nmud inundations engendered climatic diseases and all-pervading gnat\nswarms. Insectivorous birds, deprived of their nest shelter, emigrated\nto less inhospitable lands, and the scant produce of tillage had to be\nshared with ever-multiplying legions of destructive insects. Along the\nsouth coasts of Italy the shore-hills for hundreds of miles present the\nsame dreary aspect of monotonous barrenness. Greece is a naked rock;\nforests have almost disappeared from the plains of Spain and Asia\nMinor; in northern Africa millions of square miles, once teeming with\ncities and castles, have been reduced to a state of hopeless aridity.\nThe Mediterranean, once a forest-lake of paradise, has become a Dead\nSea, surrounded by barren rocks, and sandy or dust clouded plains.\nAccording to a careful comparison of the extant data of statistical\ncomputations, the population of the territory once comprised under the\njurisdiction of the C\u00e6sars has thus been reduced from 290,000,000 to\nless than 80,000,000, i.e., from a hundred to less than thirty per\ncent. In other words, an average of seventy-eight in a hundred human\nbeings have been starved out of existence, and the same area of ground\nwhich once supported a flourishing village, at present almost fails to\nsatisfy the hunger of a small family. For we must not forget that\nmodern industry has devised methods of subsistence undreamed of by the\nnations of antiquity, and that the religion of resignation has taught\nmillions to endure degrees of wretchedness which nine out of ten pagans\nwould have refused to prefer to the alternative of self-destruction. A\nwhole tenement of priest-ridden lazaronis now contrive to eke out a\nsubsistence on a pittance which a citizen of ancient Rome would have\nbeen too proud to ask a woman to share; yet with all their talent for\nsurviving under conditions of soul and body degrading distress, only\neight children of the Mediterranean coastlands can now wring a sickly\nsubsistence from the same area of soil which once sufficed to supply\ntwenty-nine men with all the blessings of health and abundance.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe discovery of two new continents has respited the doomed nations of\nthe Old World, but the rapid colonization of those land supplements\nwill soon reduce mankind to the alternative of tree-culture or\nemigration to the charity-farm of the New Jerusalem. In the words of a\ngreat German naturalist, \u201cWe shall have to work the world over again.\u201d\nOn a small scale the practicability of that plan has already been\nconclusively demonstrated. By tree-culture alone arid sand-wastes have\nbeen restored to something like tolerable fertility, if not to anything\napproaching their pristine productiveness. In the lower valley of the\nNile (the ancient Theba\u00efd) Ibrahim Pasha set out thirty-five million\nCircassian forest-trees, of which one-third at least took root, and by\ntheir growth not only reclaimed the sterility of the soil but increased\nthe average annual rainfall from four to fifteen inches. In the Landes\nof western France a large tract of land has been reclaimed from the\ninroads of the coast sand by lining the dunes with a thick belt of\ntrees, and some fifteen hundred square miles of once worthless fields\nhave thus been restored to a high degree of productiveness. In the\nAustrian Karst, a sterile plateau of limestone cliffs and caves has\nbeen dotted with groves till the valleys have been refreshed with the\nwater of resuscitated springs; and pasture-lands, long too impoverished\neven for the sustenance of mountain goats, once more are covered with\nherds of thriving cattle.\n\nThe experience of the next three or four generations will not fail to\nmake every intelligent farmer a tree-planter. Our barren fields will be\nturned into pine plantations, every public highway will be lined with\nshade-trees. The communities of the next century will vie in the\nconsecration of township groves, in the founding of forestry clubs, in\nthe celebration of arbor days and woodland festivals. The barren\ntable-lands of our central states will be reclaimed, and before the end\nof the twentieth century the work of redemption will be extended to the\ngreat deserts of the Eastern continents. And as a hundred years ago\narmies of tree-fellers were busy wresting land from the primeval\nforest, in a hundred years more armies of tree-planters will be busy\nwresting land from the desert. The men that will \u201cwork the world over\nagain\u201d will not be apt to forget the terms of their second lease.\n\nIn turning up the soil of the reclaimed desert they will unearth the\nfoundations of buried temples, temples once sacred to the worship of\ngods whose prophets drenched the world with blood to enforce the\nobservance of circumcision rites, wafer rites, and immersion rites, and\nfilled their scriptures with minute instructions for the ordinances of\npriests and the mumbling of prescribed prayers. In musing over the\nruins of such temples, the children of the future will have a chance\nfor many profitable meditations\u2014the reflection, for instance: From what\nmistakes those alleged saviors might have saved the world if their\nvoluminous gospels had devoted a single page to an injunction against\nthe earth-desolating folly of forest-destruction!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII.\n\nRECREATION.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nThe indoor occupations of civilized life imply the necessity of\nproviding artificial substitutes for the opportunities of physical\nexercise, which men in a state of nature can find abundantly in the\ncourse of such healthful pursuits as hunting, fishing, and primitive\nagriculture. For similar reasons civilization ought to compensate the\nlost chance of outdoor sports which only the favorites of fortune can\nafford to combine with the exigencies of city life. To the children of\nnature life is a festival; outdoor recreations, exciting sports, offer\nthemselves freely and frequently enough to dispense with artificial\nsupplements; but the dreariness of workshop life makes those\nsubstitutes a moral as well as physical necessity. Under the influence\nof unalloyed drudgery the human soul withers like a plant in a sunless\ncave, and weariness of heart reacts on the body in a way analogous to\nthe health-undermining effect of sorrow and repeated disappointment. To\nthe unbiased judgment of our pagan forefathers the necessity of\nproviding city dwellers with opportunities for public recreation\nappeared, indeed, as evident as the necessity of counteracting the\nrigors of the higher latitudes with contrivances for a supply of\nartificial warmth. The cities of ancient Greece had weekly and monthly\nfestivals, besides the yearly reunions of competing athletes and\nartists, and once in four years the champions of the land met to\ncontest the prize of national supremacy in the presence of assembled\nmillions. Hostilities, even during the crisis of civil war, were\nsuspended to insure free access to the plains of Corinth, where the\nOlympic Games were celebrated with a regularity that made their period\nthe basis of chronological computation for a space of nearly eight\nhundred years. When Rome became the capital of the world, the yearly\ndisbursements for the subvention of free public recreations equaled the\ntribute of a wealthy province. There were free race courses, gymnasia,\nmusic halls, and wrestling-ring; free public baths and magnificent\namphitheaters for the exhibition of free dramatic performances,\ngladiatorial combats, and curiosities of art and natural history. Every\nproconsul of a foreign province was instructed to collect wild animals\nand specimens of rare birds and reptiles; every triumphator devoted a\nportion of his spoils to a celebration of free circenses\u2014\u201ccircus\ngames\u201d\u2014by no means limited to the mutual slaughter of prize fighters,\nbut including horse races, concerts, trials of skill, and new arts. It\nwould be a mistake to suppose that the liberality of such\nestablishments offered a premium on idleness. The immense increase of\nthe metropolitan population justified the constant extension of that\nliberality, but even after the erection of permanent amphitheaters the\nvigilance of public censors discouraged mendicancy; the complaints of\nwives, creditors, and landlords against habitual idlers were made the\nbasis of penal proceedings, and from the total appropriations for the\nsupport of free municipal institutions the overseers of the poor\ndeducted considerable sums for purposes of public charity.\n\nNor did the citizens of the metropolis monopolize the privilege of free\npublic amusements. At the time of the Antonines not less than fifty\ncities of Italy alone had amphitheaters of their own, and the smallest\nhamlet had at least a palaestra, where the local champions met every\nevening for a trial of strength and skill.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe alternation of day and night should reveal the truth that nature is\naverse to permanent gloom. Sunlight is a primary condition of all\nnobler life, and only ignorance or basest selfishness can doom a child\nof earth to the misery of toil uncheered by the sun-rays of recreation.\nFor even enlightened selfishness would recognize the advantages of the\npagan plan. The passions of personal ambition burnt then as fiercely as\nnow, but the Roman world-conquerors thought it wiser, as well as\nnobler, to share their spoils with the soldiers who had fought their\nbattles, with the workmen who had reared their castles, with the\nneighbors who had witnessed their triumphs. The very slaves of Greece\nand Rome were indulged in periodic enjoyments of all the luxuries\nfortune had bestowed upon their masters; at the end of the working-day\nmenials and artisans forgot their toil amidst the wonders of the\namphitheater, and neither their work nor their work-givers were the\nworse for it. The promise of the evening cheered the labors of the day;\nminds frequently unbent by the relaxation of diverting pastimes were\nless apt to break under the strain of toil, less liable to yield to the\ntemptation of despondency, envy, and despair.\n\nDuring the last four weeks of his Egyptian campaign Napoleon relieved\nthe tedium of camp-life by a series of athletic games and horse-races,\nand thus succeeded in sustaining the spirit of his troops under\nhardships which at first threatened to demoralize even his veterans.\nFor similar purposes and with similar success, Marshal Saxe indulged\nhis men in a variety of exciting sports, and Captain Kane found\ndramatic entertainments the best prophylactic against the influence of\na monotonous diet combined with an average temperature of fifty degrees\nbelow zero. Captain Burton ascribes the longevity of the nomadic Arabs\nto their habit of passing their evenings as cheerfully as their stock\nof provisions and anecdotes will permit, and it is a suggestive\ncircumstance that the joy-loving aristocracy of medieval France could\nboast a surprising number of octogenarians, and that the gay capitals\nof modern Europe, with all their vices, enjoy a better chance of\nlongevity than the dull provincial towns.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe superstition which dooms its votaries to a worship of sorrow has\nfor centuries treated pleasure and sin as synonymous terms. In the era\nof the C\u00e6sars the licentious passions of a large metropolis gave that\nasceticism a specious pretext; but its true purpose was soon after\nrevealed by the suppression of rustic pastimes, of athletic sports, and\nat last, even of the classic festival which for centuries had assembled\nthe champions of the Mediterranean nations on the isthmus of Corinth.\nWith a similar rancor of bigoted intolerance the Puritans suppressed\nthe sports of \u201cmerry old England,\u201d and their fanatical protests against\nthe most harmless amusements would be utterly incomprehensible if the\nsecret of Christian asceticism had not been unriddled by the study of\nthe Buddhistic parent-dogma. The doctrine which the apostle of Galilee\nthought it wisest to veil in parables and metaphors, the Indian messiah\nof anti-naturalism reveals in its ghastly nakedness as an attempt to\nwean the hearts of mankind from their earth-born loves and reconcile\nthem to the alternative of annihilation\u2014\u201cNirvana\u201d\u2014the only refuge from\nthe delusions of a life outweighing a single joy by a hundred sorrows.\nNot life only, but the very instincts of life were to be suppressed, to\nprevent their revival in new forms of re-birth; and in pursuit of that\nplan the prophet of Nepaul does not hesitate to warn his disciples\nagainst sleeping twice under the same tree, to lessen the chance of\nundue fondness for any earthly object whatever. The indulgements of\nlife-endearing desires, that creed denounced as the height of folly and\nrecommended absolute abstinence from physical enjoyments as the\nshortest path to the goal of redemption. In its practical consequences,\nif not in its theoretical significances, the same principle asserts\nitself in the doctrine of the New Testament, and justified the dread of\nthe life-loving pagans in realizing the stealthy growth of the Galilean\nchurch, and anticipating the ultimate consequences of that gospel of\nrenunciation whose ideal of perfection was the other-worldliness of an\nearth-despising fanatic. More or less consciously, the suppression of\nearthly desires has always been pursued as the chief aim of Christian\ndogmatism; the \u201cworld\u201d has ever been the antithesis of the Christian\nkingdom of God, the \u201cflesh\u201d the irreconcilable antagonist of the\nregenerate soul. Hence that rancorous fury against the \u201cworldliness\u201d of\nnaturalism, against the pagan worship of joy, against the modern\nrevivals of that worship. Hence the grief of those \u201cwhining saints who\ngroaned in spirit at the sight of Jack in the Green;\u201d hence the crusade\nagainst Easter-fires, May-poles, foot-races, country excursions,\nround-dances, and picnics; hence the anathemas against the athletic\nsports of ancient Greece and the entertainments of the modern theater.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nWherever the fanatics of the Galilean church have trampled the flowers\nof earth, the wasted gardens have been covered with a rank thicket of\nweeds. Outlawed freedom has given way to the caprice of despots and the\nlicense of crime; outraged common sense has yielded to the vagaries of\nsuperstition; the suppression of healthful recreation has avenged\nitself in the riots of secret vice. The history of alcoholism proves\nthat every revival of asceticism has been followed by an increase of\nintemperance, as inevitably as the obstruction of a natural river-bed\nwould be followed by an inundation. When the convent-slaves of the\nMiddle Ages had been deprived of every chance of devoting a leisure\nhour to more healthful recreations, neither the rigor of their vows nor\nthe bigotry of their creed could prevent them from drowning their\nmisery in wine. When the Puritans of the seventeenth century had turned\nScotland into an ecclesiastic penitentiary, the burghers of the\nSabbath-stricken towns sought refuge in the dreamland of intoxication.\nThe experience of many centuries has, indeed, forced the priesthood of\nsouthern Europe to tolerate Sunday recreations as a minor evil. In\nSpain the bull-rings of the larger cities open every Sunday at 2 P.M.\nIn Italy the patronage of Sunday excursions and Sunday theaters is\nlimited only by the financial resources of their patrons. In France\nSunday is by large odds the gayest day in the week. In the large cities\nof Islam the muftis connive at Sunday dances and Sunday horse-races;\nand as a consequence a much less pardonable abuse of holidays is far\nrarer in southern Europe than in the cities of the Sabbatarian north,\nthe consumption of Sunday intoxicants being larger in Great Britain\nthan in France, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Italy taken together.\nClimatic causes may have their share in effecting that difference;\nanother cause was revealed when the followers of Ibn Hanbal attempted\nto enforce the asceticism of their master upon the citizens of Bagdad.\nIbn Hanbal, the Mohammedan Hudibras, used to travel from village to\nvillage, with a horde of bigots, breaking up dance-houses, upsetting\nthe tables of the confectionery pedlers, pelting flower-girls, and\nthrashing musicians, and when the revolt of a provincial city resulted\nin the death of the \u201creformer,\u201d his fanatical followers assembled their\nfellow-converts from all parts of the country, and raided town after\ntown, till they at last forced their way into the capital of the\ncaliphate. The recklessness of their zeal overcame all resistance, but\nthe completeness of their triumph led to a rather unexpected result.\nEvery play-house of the metropolis was not only closed, but utterly\ndemolished; musicians were jailed; dance-girls were left to choose\nbetween instant flight and crucifixion; showmen were banished from all\npublic streets; but the dwellings of private citizens were less easy to\ncontrol, and those private citizens before long evinced a passionate\nand ever-increasing fondness for intoxicating drinks. Elders of the\nmosque were seen wallowing in their gutters, howling blasphemies that\nwould have appalled the heart of the toughest Giaour; dignitaries of\nthe green turban staggered along under the weight of a wine-skin, or\nwaltzed about in imitation of the exiled ballet performers. The\nHanbalites convoked tri-weekly, and at last daily, prayer-meetings, but\nthings went from bad to worse, till a counter-revolution finally\nrestored the authority of the old city government, and the flight of\nthe fanatics was attended with a prompt decrease both of spiritual and\nspirituous excesses.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe predictions of our latter-day augurs would seem to indicate that\nthe civilization of the Caucasian race is drifting toward Socialism;\nbut a modern philosopher reminds us that \u201ca reform, however great, is\napt to come out in a different shape from that predicted by the\nreformers.\u201d The citizens of the coming republic will probably waive\ntheir claim to free government lunch-houses and similar \u201cestablishments\nfor preventing the natural penalties of idleness,\u201d but they will most\ndecidedly protest against government interference with the legitimate\nrewards of industry. Even now, few sane persons can realize the degree\nof ignorance that enabled the clergy of the Middle Ages to fatten on\nthe proceeds of witchcraft trials and heretic hunts, and the time may\nbe near when our children will find it difficult to conceive the degree\nof infatuation that could induce their forefathers to sacrifice their\nweekly leisure-day at the bidding of brainless and heartless bigots.\nDrudgery will perhaps continue the hard task-master of the\nworking-week; but the Sundays of the future will be as free as the\nlight of their sun.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII.\n\nDOMESTIC REFORM.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nIn the nest-building propensity of the social insects the biologist can\nrecognize the first germ of the instinctive desire for the\nestablishment of a permanent home. Certain birds, like the\nweaver-thrush of the tropics, imitate the community life of the ant and\nbee, but in all higher animals the homestead instinct is associated\nwith the desire for domestic privacy. The eagle will suffer no other\nbird to approach the rock that shelters his eyrie; the hawk, the heron,\nand the kingfisher rear their brood at the greatest possible distance\nfrom the nesting-place of their next relatives. Each pair of squirrels\ntry to get a tree all to themselves; and even the social prairie-dog\nshares its home with strangers (owls and serpents) rather than with\nanother family of its own tribe. The \u201chomestead instinct\u201d of our\nprimitive forefathers formed the first, and perhaps the most potent,\nstimulus to the acquisition of personal property. There is a period in\nlife when the desire for the possession of a private domicile asserts\nitself with the power almost of a vital passion; and success in the\nrealization of that desire solves in many respects the chief problems\nof individual existence. The love of domestic peace, the delight in the\nimprovement of a private homestead, are the best guarantees of staid\nhabits. There was a time when the neglect of husbandry was considered a\nconclusive proof of profligate habits; and the office of a Roman censor\ncomprised the duty of reproving careless housekeepers. The poorest\ncitizen of the Roman commonwealth had a little patrimonium of his own,\na dwelling-house, an orchard, and a small lot of land, which he did his\nbest to improve, and where his children learned their first lesson of\npersonal rights in defense of their private playgrounds.\n\nThe ruins of Pompeii show that the civilization of the Mediterranean\ncoast-lands had anticipated the conclusion of our sanitarian reformers,\nwho recommend the advantage of cottage-suburbs as a remedy for the\nhorrors of tenement life. Between the acropolis and the seaside villas\nthe town forms an aggregation of small dwelling-houses, mostly\none-story, but each with a private yard (probably a little garden) or a\nwide portico, with bath-room and private gymnasiums. And though the\nancients were well acquainted with the manufacture of glass, their\ndwelling-houses were lighted by mere lattice-windows, excluding rain\nand the glare of the sun, but freely admitting every breeze, and thus\nsolving the problem of ventilation in the simplest and most effective\nmanner. The dwellings of our Saxon forefathers, too, resembled the\nlog-cabins of the Kentucky backwoods, and admitted fresh air so freely\nthat the large family-hearth could dispense with a chimney, and vented\nits smoke through the open eaves of the roof. In the palaces of the\nRoman patricians there were special winter-rooms, with a smoke-flue\nresembling a narrow alcove; but even there, ventilation was insured by\nnumerous lattice doors, communicating with as many balconies or terrace\nroofs.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe evolution of all hereditary instincts has been explained by the\n\u201csurvival of the fittest,\u201d and the instinct of homestead-love has\ndoubtlessly been developed in the same way. The results of its\npredominance prevailed against the results of its absence. Defensive\nlove of a private \u201chearth and home\u201d is the basis of patriotism, so\nunmistakably, indeed, that the fathers of the Roman republic for\ncenturies refused to employ foreign mercenaries, who had no personal\ninterest in the defense of the soil. As a modern humorist has cleverly\nexpressed it: \u201cFew men have been patriotic enough to shoulder a musket\nin defense of a boarding-house.\u201d And the golden age of civic virtues is\nalmost limited to the time when every free citizen of Greece and Rome\nwas a landowner.\n\nNor would it be easy to overrate the subjective advantages of\nhome-life. Health, happiness, and longevity have no more insidious foe\nthan the canker-worm of vexation; and for the unavoidable\ndisappointments of social life there is no more effective specific than\nthe peace of a prosperous private homestead, soothing the mind with\nevidences of success in the growth of a promising orchard, in the\nincrease and improvement of domestic animals, in the happiness of merry\nchildren and contented dependents. Xenophon, after proving the\nexcitements of an adventurous life by land and sea, found a truer\nhappiness in the solitude of his Arcadian hunting-lodge. Felix Sylla,\nFortune\u2019s most constant favorite, abandoned the throne of a mighty\nempire to enjoy the frugal fare of a small hill-farm. Voltaire, worn\nout by the trials of a fifty years\u2019 life-and-death struggle against the\nrancor of bigots, recovered his health and his peace of mind amidst the\npear-tree plantations of Villa Ferney.\n\nIn the resources of medicine and scientific surgery the ancients were\nfar behind even the half-civilized nations of modern times, but their\nchildren could enjoy their holidays on their own playground, their\nsleepers could breathe pure air, their worn-out laborers could retire\nto the peace of a private home; and they enjoyed a degree of health and\nvigor which our most progressive nations can hope to re-attain only\nafter centuries of sanitary reform.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe germ of the ignoble patience which submits to the miseries of\nmodern tenement-life, and learns to prefer the fetor of a crowded\nslum-alley to the free air of the woods and fields, can be traced to\nthe voluntary prison-life of the first Christian monasteries. With all\nthe gregariousness of the African race, the very slaves of our American\nplantations preferred to avoid quarrels and constraint by building a\nseparate cabin for the use of each family; but the ethics of the\nGalilean church recognized no privilege of personal rights; the\nsympathies of family-life were crushed out by the enforcement of\ncelibacy; every symptom of self-assertion was denounced as a revolt\nagainst the duty of passive subordination; the very instincts of\nindividuality were systematically suppressed to make each convert a\nwhining, emasculated, self-despising, and world-renouncing \u201cmember of\nthe church of Christ.\u201d The mortification of the body being the chief\nobject of monastic seclusion, the hygienic architecture of convent\nbuildings was considered a matter of such absolute unimportance that\nmany of the cells (dormitories) had no windows at all, but merely a\ndoor communicating with an ill-ventilated gallery, after the plan of\nour old-style prisons. Eight feet by ten, and eight high, were the\nusual dimensions of those man-pens; and that utter indifference to the\nphysical health of the inmates was but rarely seconded by a view to the\nadvantages of private meditation is proved by the circumstance that the\nconvent-slaves of the eastern church (in the Byzantine empire, for\ninstance) were not often permitted to enjoy the privacy of their\nwretched dens; their dormitories were packed like the bunks of a\nPortuguese slave-ship, and the word Syncellus (cell-mate) is used as a\ncognomen of numerous ecclesiastics. The abbot, and in less ascetic\ncenturies perhaps the learned clerks (legend-writers, etc.), were the\nonly members of a monastic community who could ever rely on the privacy\nof a single hour. For the admitted purpose of mortifying their love of\nphysical comforts, the weary sleepers, worn-out with penance and\nhunger, were summoned to prayer in the middle of the night, or sent out\non begging expeditions in the roughest weather. Every vestige of\nfurniture or clothing apt to mitigate the dreariness of discomfort was\nbanished from their cells; they suffered all the hardships without\nenjoying the peace and security of a hermit\u2019s home; novices (on\nprobation), and even the pupils of the convent-schools, were submitted\nto a similar discipline, and thus monasticism became the\ntraining-school of modern tenement-life.\n\nDuring the latter half of the Middle Ages, feudalism found an\nadditional motive for suppressing the love of domestic independence.\nThe church usurers and aristocrats monopolized real estate, and made it\nmore and more difficult, even for the most industrious of their\ndependants, to acquire a share of landed property. Every feudal lord\nsecured his control over his serfs by crowding them together in a small\nvillage (literally an abode of villains, i.e., of vile pariahs), where\nhis slave-drivers could at any time rally them for an extra job of\nsocage duty. The incessant raids of mail-clad highway-robbers\u2014robber\nknights and marauding partisans\u2014obliged all peace-loving freemen to\ncongregate for mutual protection and rear their children in the stone\nprisons of an over-crowded burgh. The suppression of all natural\nsciences, including the science of health, aggravated the evil by a\npersistent neglect of such partial remedies as disinfectants and\nartificial ventilation. The home of a medieval artisan combined all the\ndisadvantages of a jail and a pest-house.\n\nThe revolt against feudalism has at last broken the stone-fetters of\nour larger cities; city walls have been turned into promenades, and\nconvents into store-houses or lunatic asylums; but the spirit of\nmonasticism still survives; indifference to the blessings of health and\ndomestic independence seems to have acquired the strength of a second\nnature, and thousands of our modern factory slaves actually prefer\ntheir slum-prisons to the freedom of a cheaper suburban home.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nNature rarely fails to avenge the violation of her laws, but it might\nbe doubted if the perversion of any other natural instinct has entailed\nmore numerous or direr penalties than our habitual outrages against the\ninstinct of home-life. The monstrosities of our tenement system, by a\nmoderate estimate, cost on the average every year the lives of\n1,500,000 children under ten years of age (in Europe and North\nAmerica), and of 1,200,000 consumptives, besides thousands of victims\nto epidemic disorders, aggravated, if not engendered, by the influence\nof vitiated air. Habitual intemperance, too, has undoubtedly been\nincreased by the dearth of home-comforts. Our factory-laborers, our\nmechanics, and thousands of students and young clerks, spend their\nevenings in riot, because the man-trap of the lowest grog-shop is,\nafter all, less unattractive than the dungeon of a stifling tenement\nhome. In many of our larger cities similar causes have led to a\nconstant increase of a manner of existence which a modern reformer\ncalls the \u201ccelibacy of vice.\u201d But the decreasing demand for independent\nhomes is not the only cause of the decreased supply, and the heartless\nselfishness of our wealthy land-gluttons has provoked a form of\nnihilism which threatens to shake, if not to subvert, the very\nfoundations of social life.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThat latter danger seems, at last, to have awakened our political\neconomists to the necessity of redressing a many-sided abuse, and the\nfailure of earlier reform projects has at least helped to emphasize the\ndemand for more adequate remedies. The traffic in human life in the\nfloating hells of the African slave-traders hardly called for more\nstringent repressive measures than the inhumanity of our tenement\nspeculators who fatten on the profits of a system propagating the\ninfallible seeds of pulmonary consumption, and sacrificing the lives of\nmore children than the superstition of the dark ages ever doomed to the\naltars of Moloch. Even in a country where the jealousy of personal\nrights would hardly countenance legislative interference with the\nconstruction of private dwelling-houses, the license of tenement-owners\nought to be circumscribed by the conditions of Dr. Paul Boettger\u2019s\nrule, providing for appropriation of a certain number of cubic feet of\nbreathing space, and square feet of window, front, and garden (or\nplay-ground) room for each tenant or family of tenants. The abuse of\nsub-renting could be limited by similar provisions, and the adoption of\nthe separate cottage plan should be promoted by the reduction of\nmunicipal passenger tariffs and suburban taxes.\n\nThe plan of equalizing the burden of taxation and the opportunities of\nland tenure by a general confiscation and redistribution of real estate\nmight recommend itself as a last resort, though hardly in preference to\nthe project of Fedor Bakunin, the \u201cRussian Mirabeau,\u201d who proposed to\nfound new communities under a charter, reserving the tenth part of all\nbuilding lots for communal purposes, and lease the tenant-right to the\nhighest bidder. The value of those reserve lots would increase with the\ngrowth of the town, and by renewing their lease from ten to ten years,\nthe rent could be made to cover the budget of all direct municipal\nexpenses, and leave a fair surplus for charitable and educational\npurposes. In comparison with the confiscation plan, that project could\nclaim all the advantages which make prevention preferable to a drastic\ncure.\n\nAs a check to the evils of land monopoly the least objectionable plan\nwould seem to be Professor De Graaf\u2019s proposition of a graded system of\nreal estate taxation, increasing the rate of tallage with each multiple\nof a fair homestead lot, and thus taxing a land-shark for the privilege\nof acquisition, as well as for the actual possession, of an immoderate\nestate.\n\nThe art of making home-life pleasant will yet prove the most effective\nspecific in the list of temperance remedies, and will aid the apostles\nof Secularism in that work of redemption which the gospel of\nrenunciation has failed to achieve.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX.\n\nLEGISLATIVE REFORM.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nProgress is a general law of Nature, and the comparative study of\nEvolution proves that the tendency to improvement increases with the\nadvance to higher planes of development. Among the lowest organisms the\nrate of progress is hardly appreciable. The sea shells of the Devonian\nperiod can scarcely be distinguished from the shells of our present\nseas. The balls of amber found on the shores of the Baltic often\ncontain the mummies of insects closely resembling certain species of\nlatter-day flies and beetles, while the horse, the zebra, and other\nmodern varieties of the equine genus, have developed from a creature\nnot much larger than a fox. The Neanderthal skull proves that the heads\nof our early ancestors were almost ape-like in their protruding jaws\nand flatness of cranium. The lower animals adhere to inherited habits\nwith a persistency that has often proved their ruin by diminishing\ntheir ability of adapting themselves to change of circumstances, as in\nthe case of that sea-lizard of the South sea islands, where its\nancestors had for ages managed to escape their only enemies by leaving\nthe water and crawling up the beach, and where their modern descendants\npersist in crawling landward in the hope of escaping from dogs and\nhunters.\n\nThe higher animals, on the other hand, rarely fail to profit by lessons\nof experience. Trappers know that the contrivances for capturing wild\nanimals have to be changed from time to time, the older methods being\napt to lose their efficacy after the fate of a certain number of\nvictims has warned their relatives. Old rats have been seen driving\ntheir young from a dish of arsenic-poisoned gruel. Deer, foxes, and\nwild turkeys learn to avoid the favorite trails of the hunter; monkeys,\non their first arrival in a cold climate, impatiently tear off the\njackets or shawls furnished by the kindness of their keeper, but soon\nlearn to appreciate the advantage of artificial teguments, and even try\nto increase their stock of wardrobe by appropriating every stray piece\nof cloth they can lay their hands on.\n\nThe instinct of adaptation to the conditions of progress has asserted\nitself both among modern and very ancient nations, though during the\nmental bondage of the Middle Ages its manifestations were\nsystematically suppressed by the conservatism of religious bigots.\nSavages show an almost apish eagerness in adopting the habits,\nfashions, and foibles of civilization. The political institutions of\nprimitive nations are very elastic. The Grecian republics were not only\nwilling but anxious to improve their laws by abolishing abuses and\ntesting amendments. In ancient Rome every general assembly of freemen\nexercised the functions of a legislative council; legislative reforms\nwere proposed by private citizens and were often carried by\nacclamation, like the edict for the expulsion of the Tarquins, and the\nresolution revoking the exile of Cicero.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nLegislative reform, the manful renunciation of entangling alliances\nwith the ghosts of the past, is a sword that has more than once cut a\nGordian knot of fatal complications. The suppression of monasteries\nsaved four of our Spanish American sister republics from a brood of\nvampires that had drained the life-blood of Spain for a series of\ncenturies. In England the timely repeal of the corn-laws averted an\nexplosion that might have rent the coherence of the entire British\nempire. The abolition of slavery with one blow destroyed a hydra that\nhad menaced the safety of the American Union by an endless series of\npolitical disputes. By the abolition of serfdom Czar Alexander elevated\nthe Russian empire to the rank of a progressive nation. The very\npossibility of national progress depends, indeed, on the hope of\nlegislative reform, for the rigor of unalterable laws prevents social\ndevelopment as the clasp of an iron ring prevents the growth of a tree.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nAll the intelligent nations of antiquity were distinguished by a\ntendency to legislative progress, till the freedom of that progress was\nchecked by the claims of religious infallibility. The founder of the\nZendavesta advanced that claim for a pandect of pretended revelations\nwhich became the religious code of Central Asia, and as a consequence\nthe intellectual and industrial development of two valiant nations was\nstunted by legislative conservatism\u2014the proverbially \u201cunalterable laws\nof the Medes and Persians.\u201d The claims of an infallible revelation\npreclude the necessity of reform. \u201cShould mortals presume to improve\nthe ordinances of a God?\u201d\n\nBut the blind hatred of progress which has for so many centuries\ndegraded the Christian hierarchy below the priesthood of all other\nintolerant creeds, is the earth-renouncing antinaturalism of their\nfounder. The priests of Zoroaster, Moses, and Mohammed claimed the\nsufficiency of their dogmas for the purposes of national prosperity.\nThe priests of the nature-hating Galilean attempted to suppress the\nvery desire of that prosperity. \u201cThe doctrine of renunciation made\npatriotism an idle dream: the saints, whose \u2018kingdom was not of this\nworld,\u2019 had no business with vanities of that sort; no chieftain could\ntrust his neighbor; cities were pitted against cities and castles\nagainst castles; patriotic reformers would vainly have appealed to the\nsympathies of men who had been taught to reserve their interest for the\npolitics of the New Jerusalem\u201d (Secret of the East, p. 76).\n\nThe Rev. Spurgeon, of London, England, recently provoked the protests\nof his Liberal colleagues by the confession that he \u201cpositively hated\nadvanced thought;\u201d but only five centuries ago such protests were\nsilenced with the gag and the fagot. For nearly a thousand years every\nclergyman who had the courage to lift his voice in favor of secular\nreforms was fiercely attacked as a traitor to the sacred cause of\nother-worldliness. To question the authority of the church was a crime\nwhich could not in the least be palliated by such pleas as the temporal\ninterests of mankind, and a mere hint at the fallibility of \u201crevealed\nscriptures\u201d could only be expiated in the blood of the offender. Nay,\nthousands of scientists, historians, and philosophers who had never\nexpressed a direct doubt of that sort, were doomed to a death of\ntorture merely because the logical inference of their discoveries was\nat variance with the dogmas of the Galilean miracle-mongers. From the\nreign of Charlemagne to the outbreak of the Protestant revolt the\nintolerance of Christian bigots interposed an insuperable dam between\nthe projects and the realization of social reforms.\n\n\u201cI cannot conceive,\u201d says Hallam, \u201cof any state of society more adverse\nto the intellectual improvement of mankind than one which admitted no\nmiddle line between dissoluteness and fanatical mortifications.\u201d\n\nIf it had not been for the exotic civilization of Moorish Spain, it\nwould be strictly true that at the end of the thirteenth century, when\nthe enemies of nature had reached the zenith of their power, \u201cthe\ncountries of Europe, without a single exception, were worse governed,\nmore ignorant, more superstitious, poorer, and unhappier than the worst\ngoverned provinces of pagan Rome.\u201d\n\nIn China and India, too, the resistance of religious prejudice has for\nages frustrated the hopes of political development, and the\ncivilization of Europe dates only from the time when a more or less\ncomplete separation of church and state was effected by the\ninsurrection of the Germanic nations, and where the work of that\nseparation has been left unfinished the march of reform halts at every\nstep. Every claim of dogmatic infallibility has proved a spoke in the\nwheels of progress.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nThe pig-headed conservatism of orthodox nations has never failed to\navenge itself in its ultimate results, but its fatuity has, perhaps,\nbeen most strikingly illustrated by the practical consequences of\nlegislative non-progressiveness. There was a time when the small value\nof real estate made it a trifle for an Italian prince to present a\nfavorite prelate with a few square leagues of neglected woodlands; but\nnow, when those woods have been turned into vineyards and\nbuilding-lots, and over-population makes the monopoly of land a\ngrievous burden, hundreds of industrious peasants are obliged to starve\nto swell the revenues of a bloated priest, who nevertheless succeeds in\nsilencing all protests by an appeal to the \u201cnecessity of respecting\ntime-honored institutions.\u201d At a time when agriculture and pastoral\npursuits were the chief industries of Scotland, it was no great\ngrievance to sequester the seventh day for the exclusive service of\necclesiastic purposes; but now, when thousands of poor factory children\nneed outdoor recreations as they need sunlight and bread, it has become\nan infamous outrage on personal rights to enforce a medieval by-law for\nthe suppression of outdoor sports on the day when those who need it\nmost can find their only chance for recreation. Nevertheless, the dread\nof innovations defeats the urged repeal of a law which for the last\nhundred years has obliged millions of city dwellers to sacrifice the\nsunshine of their lives for the benefit of a few clerical vampires. The\nrepeal of the witchcraft laws was preceded by a transition period of at\nleast two hundred years, when the mere dread of an open rupture with\nthe specters of the past cowed intelligent jurists into accepting the\ncharge of an impossible crime, and consigning the victims of\nsuperstition to the doom of a hideous death. Their private rationalism\nmight revolt against the absurdity of the proceedings, but there were\nthe witnesses, there were the legal precedents, there were the explicit\nprovisions of the penal code, and with or without the consent of their\nintellectual conscience they had to pronounce the sentence of death.\nThe penal statutes of medieval England made sheep stealing a capital\noffense, and the mulish conservatism of British legislators refused to\nabolish that relic of the Dark Ages till the common sense of the lower\nclasses found means to redress the abuse in a way of their own. Juries\nagreed to acquit sheep-stealers altogether, rather than vote away their\nlives for that of a quadruped. It was in vain that the prosecuting\nattorney established the fact of the offense beyond a shadow of\nreasonable doubt. It was in vain that the charge of the judge\nemphatically indorsed the indictment. It was in vain that the\ndefendants themselves completed the evidence of their guilt by a frank\nconfession; they were acquitted amidst the wrathful protests of the\ncourt and the plaudits of the audience, till sheep-owners themselves\nwere obliged to petition for the repeal of the time-dishonored law. The\nidea that the mere antiquity of a legal custom is an argument in its\nfavor is a twin sister of the superstitious veneration of antiquated\ndogmas.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nThe superstitious dread of innovation, rather than the want of natural\nintelligence, has for ages thwarted the hopes of rationalism, and the\nrenunciation of that prejudice promises to rival the blessing of\nSecular education in promoting the advance of social reforms. Orthodox\nrestiveness, rather than any conceivable degree of ignorance, has, for\ninstance, prevented the repeal of the Religious Disability laws which\nstill disgrace the statutes of so many civilized nations. A chemical\ninventor would be suspected of insanity for trying to demonstrate his\ntheories by quoting the Bible in preference to a scientific text-book,\nyet on questions as open to investigation and proof as any problem of\nchemistry, the courts of numerous intelligent nations still refuse to\naccept the testimony of a witness who happens to prefer the philosophy\nof Humboldt and Spencer to the rant of an oriental spook-monger. The\nproposition to oblige a water-drinker to defray the expense of his\nneighbor\u2019s passion for intoxicating beverages would justly land the\nproposer in the next lunatic asylum, yet millions upon millions of our\nCaucasian fellow-men are still taxed to enable their neighbors to enjoy\nthe luxuries of a creed which the conscience of the unwilling\ntithe-payer rejects as a degrading superstition. In Europe countless\nNonconformists have to contribute to the support of a parish-priest or\nvillage-rector on pain of having a sheriff sell their household goods\nat public auction. In America farmers and mechanics have to pay double\ntaxes in order to enable an association of mythology-mongers to hold\ntheir property tax-free. Because the pantheon of the Ammonites included\na god with cannibal propensities, helpless infants were for centuries\nroasted on the consecrated gridiron of that god; and because eighteen\nhundred years ago the diseased imagination of a world-renouncing bigot\nconceived the idea of a deity delighting in the self-affliction of his\ncreatures, the gloom of death still broods over the day devoted to the\nspecial worship of that God, and the coercive penalties of the law are\nweekly visited upon all who refuse to sacrifice their health and\nhappiness on the altar of superstition.\n\nBut legislative abuses are not confined to religious anachronisms. The\ninconsistencies of our penal code still betray the influence of\nmedieval prejudices in the unwise leniency, as well as in the\ndisproportionate severity, of their dealings with purely secular\noffenses. The vice of intemperance was for centuries encouraged by the\nexample of the clergy, while the control, or even the suppression, of\nthe sexual instinct was enforced by barbarous penalties. And while the\npanders of the alcohol vice are still countenanced by the sanction of\nlegal license and admitted to official positions of honor and\ninfluence, the mediators of sexual vice are treated as social outcasts,\nand punished with a severity out of all proportion to the actual social\nstandards of virtue. The deserted wife, who in a moment of despair has\ncaused the death of an unborn child, is treated as the vilest of\ncriminals, while the crime of a railway shark or tenement-speculator\nwhose selfishness and greed have caused a fatal disaster, is condoned\nin consideration of \u201csocial respectability,\u201d i.e., a mask of orthodox\nsentiments and unctuous cant. A Christian jury will thank a banker for\nshooting a poor wretch whom extreme distress may have driven to enter a\nhouse for predatory purposes, but if that same banker should be\nconvicted of embezzling the hard-earned savings of trusting widows and\norphans, his fellow-hypocrites will circulate an eloquent petition for\nhis release from a few years of light imprisonment.\n\nThere is need of other reforms, which recommend themselves by such\ncogent arguments that their adoption seems only a question of time,\nsuch as the protection of forests, the recognition of women\u2019s rights,\nthe \u201chabitual criminal\u201d law, physical education, and the abolition of\nthe poison-traffic.\n\nIt is undoubtedly true that the progress from barbarism to culture is\ncharacterized by the growth of a voluntary respect for the authority of\nlegal institutions, but it is equally true that the highest goals of\ncivilization cannot be reached till the degree of that respect shall be\nmeasured by the utility, rather than by the antiquity, of special laws.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX.\n\nTHE PRIESTHOOD OF SECULARISM.\n\n\nA.\u2014LESSONS OF INSTINCT.\n\nAn instinct inherited from the habits of many generations teaches our\nsocial fellow-creatures to entrust the welfare of their communities to\nthe protection of an experienced leader. Birds that become gregarious\nonly at a certain time of the year select a guide for that special\noccasion. Others have a permanent leader, and among the more\nintelligent quadrupeds that leadership becomes dual. Besides the stout\nchampion who comes to the front in moments of danger, wild cattle,\nhorses, antelopes, deer, and the social quadrumana have a veteran\npioneer who guides their migrations and sentinels their encampments.\n\nAmong the primitive tribes of our fellow-men, too, the authority of\nleadership is divided between a warrior and a teacher, a chieftain and\na priest. The obstinacy of savages, who refuse to yield to reason,\nsuggested the plan of controlling their passions by the fear of the\nunseen, but ghost-mongery was not the only, nor even the most\nessential, function of primitive priesthood. The elders of the Brahmans\nwere the guardians of homeless children and overseers of public\ncharities. The Celtic Druids were the custodians of national treasures.\nThe rune-wardens of the ancient Scandinavians preserved the historical\ntraditions and law records of their nation. The priests of the\nPh\u0153nicians (like our Indian medicine men) were trained physicians. The\nEgyptian hierophants were priests of knowledge, as well as of\nmythology. They were the historians and biographers of their nation.\nThey codified the national laws. They taught geometry; they taught\ngrammar; they taught and practiced surgery; they devoted a large\nportion of their time to astronomical observations. Their temple-cities\nwere, in fact, free universities, and the waste of time devoted to the\nrites of superstition was more than compensated by secular studies, and\nto some degree also by the political services of learned priests, who\nseem to have been occasionally employed in diplomatic emergencies.\n\nMotives of political prudence induced the law-givers of the\nMediterranean nations to circumscribe the authority of their pontiffs,\nwhich at last was, indeed, almost limited to the supervision of\nreligious ceremonies. But in Rome, as well as in Greece and the Grecian\ncolonies of western Asia, the true functions of priesthood were assumed\nby the popular exponents of philosophy, especially by the Stoics and\nPythagoreans. The weekly lectures of Zeno were attended by a\nmiscellaneous throng of truth-seekers; the disciples of Pythagoras\nalmost worshiped their master; Diagoras and Carneades traveled from\ntown to town, preaching to vast audiences of spell-bound admirers;\nApollonius of Tyana rose in fame till cities competed for the honor of\nhis visits; the client\u00e8le of no Grecian prince was thought complete\nwithout a court philosopher; the tyrant Dionysius, in all the pride of\nhis power, invited the moral rigorist Plato and submitted to his daily\nrepeated reproofs. Philosophers were the confessors, the comforters,\nand the counselors of their patrons, and philosophic tutors were in\nsuch request that wealthy Romans did not hesitate to procure them from\nthe traffickers in Grecian captives and indulge them in all privileges\nbut that of liberty. Centuries before a bishop of Rome contrived to\navert the wrath of King Alaric, doomed cities had been spared at the\nintercession of pagan philosophers, and philosophers more than once\nsucceeded in allaying the fury of mutineers who would have ridiculed an\nappeal to mythological traditions.\n\n\n\n\nB.\u2014REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.\n\nThe power of filial love hardly exceeds that of the passionate\nveneration which kindles about the person of a sincere teacher of\ntruth. The homage paid to an apostle of light is the noblest form of\nhero-worship. The hosannas of idol-service overflowing upon the\nidol-priest are marred by the discords of hypocrisy and the reproving\nsilence of reason; but the approval of wisdom is the highest reward of\nits ministry. The brightness of that prestige shames the gilded halo of\nthe mythology-monger; the minister of Truth may lack the pomp of\nconsecrated temples, but his disciples will make a hermit\u2019s cave a\nDelphic grotto and will not willingly let the record of his oracles\nperish. The chants of the Eleusynian festivals, the shout of the\nLupercalia, the mumblings of augurs and sibyls, have been forever\nsilenced; but the words of Plato still live; Socrates still speaks to\nthousands of truth-seekers; the wisdom of Seneca still brightens the\ngloom of adversity.\n\nReligions founded on any basis of truth can survive the fall of their\ntemples. Jerusalem was wrecked in the storm of Roman conquest, but the\nhealth-laws of the Mosaic code defied the power of the destroyer, and\nof all the creeds born on the teeming soil of the East, Judaism alone\ncan still be preached without an alloy of cant and compromise.\n\nThe enthusiasm of progress has nothing to fear from the growth of\nskepticism. Mankind will always appreciate their enlightened\nwell-wishers. In cities where the creed of the Galilean supernaturalist\nhas become almost as obsolete as the witchcraft delusion, progressive\nclergymen still draw audiences of intelligent and sincere admirers, and\nthe apostles of social reform are haunted by anxious inquirers,\ndisciples whom the penalties of heresy fail to deter, and who if barred\nout all day will come by night: \u201cMaster, what shall we do to be saved?\u201d\n\nIn spite of sham saviors, the search after salvation has never ceased,\nand after eighteen centuries of clerical caricatures the ideal of true\npriesthood still survives in the hearts of men.\n\n\n\n\nC.\u2014PERVERSION.\n\nThe puerile supernaturalism of the pagan myth-mongers could not fail to\ninjure their prestige, even in an age of superstition; but the\nantinaturalism of the Galilean fanatics not only neglected but\ncompletely inverted the proper functions of priesthood. The pretended\nministers of Truth became her remorseless persecutors; the promised\nhealers depreciated the importance of bodily health, the hoped-for\napostles of social reform preached the doctrine of renunciation. We\nshould not judge the Christian clergy by the aberrations engendered by\nthe maddening influence of protracted persecutions. It would be equally\nunfair to give them the credit of latter-day reforms, reluctantly\nconceded to the demands of rationalism. But we can with perfect\nfairness judge them by the standard of the moral and intellectual types\nevolved during the period of their plenary power, the three hundred\nyears from the tenth to the end of the thirteenth century, when the\ncontrol of morals and education had been unconditionally surrendered\ninto the hands of their chosen representatives. The comparative scale\nof human turpitude must not include the creations of fiction. We might\nfind a ne plus ultra of infamy in the satires of Rabelais, in the myths\nof Hindostan, or the burlesques of the modern French dramatists. But if\nwe confine our comparison to the records of authentic history, it would\nbe no exaggeration to say that during the period named the type of a\nChristian priest represented the absolute extreme of all the groveling\nignorance, the meanest selfishness, the rankest sloth, the basest\nservility, the foulest perfidy, the grossest superstition, the most\nbestial sensuality, to which the majesty of human nature has ever been\ndegraded. Thousands of monasteries fattened on the toil of starving\npeasants. Villages were beggared by the rapacity of the tithe-gatherer;\ncities were terrorized by witch-hunts and autos-da-f\u00e9. The crimps of\nthe inquisitorial tribunals hired spies and suborned perjurers by\npromising them a share of confiscated estates. The evidence of\nintellectual pursuits was equivalent to a sentence of death. Education\nwas almost limited to the memorizing of chants and prayers. \u201cA cloud of\nignorance,\u201d says Hallam, \u201coverspread the whole face of the church,\nhardly broken by a few glimmering lights who owe almost the whole of\ntheir distinction to the surrounding darkness.... In 992, it was\nasserted that scarcely a single person was to be found, even in Rome\nitself, who knew the first elements of letters. Not one priest of a\nthousand in Spain could address a common letter of salutation to\nanother.\u201d Every deathbed became a harvest-field of clerical vampires\nwho did not hesitate to bully the dying into robbing their children for\nthe benefit of a bloated convent. Herds of howling fanatics roamed the\ncountry, frenzying the superstitious rustics with their predictions of\nimpending horrors. Parishioners had to submit to the base avarice and\nthe baser lusts of insolent parish priests, who in his turn kissed the\ndust at the feet of an arrogant prelate. The doctrine of Antinaturalism\nhad solved the problem of inflicting the greatest possible amount of\nmisery on the greatest possible number of victims.\n\n\n\n\nD.\u2014PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.\n\nThe intellectual interregnum of the Middle Ages, the era of specters\nand vampires, received the first promise of dawn about the middle of\nthe fourteenth century, when the lessons of the Crusades and the\ninfluence of Moorish civilization began to react on the nations of\nChristian Europe. Yet, by methods of their own, the vampires succeeded\nin prolonging the dreadful night. They set their owls a-shrieking from\na thousand pulpits; they darkened the air with the smoke-clouds of\nautos-da-f\u00e9. They treated every torch-bearer as an incendiary.\n\nBut though the delay of redemption completed the ruin of some of their\nvictims, the ghouls did not escape the deserved retribution. Their fire\nalarms failed to avert the brightening dawn. Daylight found its way\neven through the painted glass of dome-windows, and in the open air the\nblood-suckers had to take wing on pain of being shaken off and trampled\nunder foot. The slaves of Hayti never rose more fiercely against their\nFrench tyrants than the German peasants against their clerical\noppressor. From Antwerp to Leipzig thousands of convents were leveled\nwith the ground; the villages of Holland, Minden, and Brunswick joined\nin a general priest-hunt, carried on with all the cruelties which the\nman-hunters of the Frankish crusade had inflicted on the pagan Saxons.\nIn the Mediterranean Peninsulas the Jesuits were expelled as enemies of\npublic peace, and their colleagues could maintain themselves only by an\nalliance with despotism against the liberal and intellectual elements\nof their country. To patriots of the Garibaldi type the name of a\npriest has become a byword implying the very quintessence of infamy.\nThe explosion of the French Revolution struck a still deadlier blow at\nclerical prestige. The fagot-arguments of the Holy Inquisition were\nanswered by a \u201cburning, as in hell-fire, of priestly shams and lies,\u201d\nand not one out of twenty French monasteries escaped the fury of the\navengers. Our Protestant clergymen see their temple walls cracked by a\nbreach of ever-multiplying schisms, and can prop their prestige only by\nmore and more humiliating concessions, and in every intelligent\ncommunity have to purchase popularity by rank heresies against the\ndogmas of their predecessors. Here and there the orthodox tenets of the\nNew Testament have survived the progress of rationalism, but haunt the\nshade, like specters scenting the morning air, and momentarily\nexpecting the summons that shall banish them to the realms of their\nnative night.\n\n\n\n\nE.\u2014REFORM.\n\nWhen the harbinger of day dispels the specters of darkness,\nhalf-awakened sleepers often mourn the fading visions of dreamland, as\nthey would mourn the memories of a vanished world, till they find that\nthe solid earth still remains, with its mountains and forests, and that\nthe enjoyment of real life has but just begun. With a similar regret\nthe dupes of Jesuitism mourn the collapse of their creed and lament the\ndecline of morality, till they find that religion still remains, with\nits consolations and hopes, and that the true work of redemption has\nbut just begun.\n\nThe reign of superstition begins to yield to a religion of reason and\nhumanity. The first forerunners of that religion appeared at the end of\nthe sixteenth century, when the philosophers of northern Europe first\ndared to appeal from dogma to nature, and since that revival of\ncommon-sense the prison walls of clerical obscurantism have been shaken\nby shock after shock, till daylight now enters through a thousand\nfissures.\n\nBut Secularism has a positive as well as a negative mission, and after\nremoving the ruins of exploded idols, the champions of reform will\nbegin the work of reconstruction. Temples dedicated to the religion of\nprogress will rise from the ruins of superstition. Communities of\nreformants will intrust the work of education to chosen teachers, who\nwill combine the functions of an instructor with those of an exhorter.\nIn the languages of several European nations the word \u201crector\u201d still\nbears that twofold significance. The ministers of Secularism will not\nsacrifice physical health to mental culture. They will be gymnasiarchs,\nlike the Grecian pedagogues who superintended the athletic exercises of\ntheir pupils and accompanied them on foot journeys and hunting\nexcursions. They will be teachers of hygiene, laboring to secure the\nfoundations of mental energy by the preservation of physical vigor, and\nto banish diseases by the removal of their causes. They will seek to\ncircumscribe the power of prejudice by the extension of knowledge. They\nwill obviate the perils of poverty by lessons of industry and prudence.\nTheir doctrines will dispense with miracles; they will make experience\nthe test of truth, and justice the test of integrity; they will not\nsuppress, but encourage, free inquiry; their war against error will\nemploy no weapons but those of logic.\n\nThe religion of reason will limit its proper sphere to the secular\nwelfare of mankind, but will ask, as well as grant, the fullest freedom\nof metaphysical speculation. Why should the friends of light darken the\nsunshine of earth with fanatical wars for the suppression of private\ntheories about the mystery of the unrevealed first cause? Why should\nthey rage about the riddle of the veiled hereafter to please the\nordainer of the eternal law that visits such inexorable penalties upon\nthe neglect of the present world? Should the friends of common sense\nquarrel about guesses at the solution of unknowable secrets? We need\nnot grudge our wonder-loving brother the luxury of meditating on the\nmysteries of the unseen or the possibilities of resurrection. Shall the\nsoul of the dying patriarch live only in his children? Shall it wing\nits way to distant stars? Shall it linger on earth:\n\n\n   \u201cSigh in the breeze, keep silence in the cave,\n    And glide with airy foot o\u2019er yonder sea?\u201d\n\n\nWhy should we wrangle about riddles which we cannot possibly solve? But\nwe might certainly have honesty enough to admit that impossibility.\nMusing on the enigmas of the \u201cland beyond the veil\u201d may entertain us\nwith the visions of a dreamy hour, but should not engross the time\nneeded for the problems of the only world thus far revealed.\n\nThus, founded on a basis of health-culture, reason, and justice, the\noffice of priesthood will regain its ancient prestige, and the best and\nwisest of men will become ministers of Secularism by devoting their\nlives to the science of happiness on earth.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNOTE\n\n\n[1]   Weibisches Klagen, b\u00e4ngliches Zagen\n      Wendet kein Ungl\u00fcck, macht dich nicht frei:\n      Allen Gewalten zum Trotz sich erhalten,\n      Nimmer sich beugen, kr\u00e4ftig sich zeigen\n      Rufet die Arme der G\u00f6tter herbei.","title":"The Bible of nature : $b or, The principles of secularism. A contribution to the religion of the future","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":57318}