It follows therefore that the representations of both the Old and New Testaments, concerning the origin and history of man are largely fict.i.tious impositions, not historical compositions, so much so, that no confidence can safely be reposed in any of them.
There is no rational doubt about the fict.i.tious character of the divine Jesus. Some think that the human Jesus may have been an historical personage; but, none among outstanding scholars believes that we have a connected account of his life and work, and most of them insist that we do not certainly know any saying or doing of his.
No religious doctrine or inst.i.tution of which we have an account in the New Testament is peculiar to Christianity and this is equally true of moral precepts.
The G.o.ds of all the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are so many creations of the dominant or master cla.s.s, and their revelations were put into their mouths by the makers for the purpose of keeping the slave cla.s.s ignorant and contented.
Orthodox Christians earnestly contend that this naturalistic doctrine makes for immorality. Heretical socialists rationally answer that the life which men, women and children live with reference to their terrestrial influence, rather than to celestial rewards or punishments, is the only one which is lived to any moral purpose.
According to socialism, morality, religion and Christianity are but synonyms of one and the same reality, which consists wholly in the desire and effort of a man to learn the laws or doings of nature, and to conform his thoughts and words to them, in order to make his present life on earth, and that of others, as long and happy as possible, and not at all in a desire and effort to learn what the will of a conscious, personal G.o.d is and to conform to it, in order to avoid a h.e.l.l and gain a heaven for a future life in the sky.
O threats of h.e.l.l and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--This Life flies; One thing is certain and the rest is Lies; The Flower that once has blown forever dies.
If you object that this is a representation of a sceptical poet, I reply that it is in alignment with a representation of a scriptural preacher:
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; Even one thing befalleth them; As the one dieth, so dieth the other; Yea, they have all one breath; So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; For all is vanity.
All go unto one place; All are of the dust, And all turn to dust again.
Darwin showed that each man in his physical development from the embryonic cell to birth pa.s.ses through, by short cuts, the different forms of life from say, the worm, fish and lemur with all that went before, intervened between and followed after, and Romanes showed that this is as true of the mind as of the body; that, in fact, all the representatives of the animal kingdom are physically and psychically related, and therefore on the same level as to their origin and destiny.
In his illuminating book ent.i.tled, "The Universal Kinship," Professor Moore says:
The embryonic development of a human being is no different from the embryonic development of any other animal. Every human being at the beginning of his organic existence is a protozoan, about 1-125 inch in diameter; at another stage of development he is a tiny sac-shaped ma.s.s of cells without blood or nerves, the gastrula; at another stage he is a worm, with a pulsating tube instead of a heart, and without a head, neck, spinal column, or limbs; at another stage he has as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending along the back, and a faint nerve cord, as in the amphioxus, the lowest of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a two-chambered heart, mesonephric kidneys, and gill-slits, with gill arteries leading to them, just as in fishes; at another stage he is a reptile with a three-chambered heart, and voiding his excreta through a cloaca like other reptiles; and finally, when he enters upon post-natal sins and actualities, he is a sprawling, squalling, unreasoning quadruped. The human larva from the fifth to the seventh month of development is covered with a thick growth of hair and has a true caudal (tail) appendage, like the monkey. At this stage the embryo has in all thirty-eight vertebrae, nine of which are caudal, and the great toe extends at right angles to the other toes, and is not longer than the other toes, but shorter, as in the ape.
Surely no argument is needed to convince you that Darwinism corroborates the representation of our ancient heretical poet and scriptural preacher concerning a life beyond the grave rather than the representations of modern orthodox theologians.
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who Before us pa.s.s"d the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the Road, Which to discover we must travel, too.
--Omar.
II.
In history slavery stands out as a huge mountain range traversing the whole of a continent. During long ages it was supposed that these phenomena of the human and physical worlds were due to the will of a G.o.d (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah or Buddha) but the vanguard of humanity has now reached a viewpoint from which it sees that both are alike due to a law, that a law is what nature does, not what a G.o.d has willed, and that a system of slavery and a range of mountains are due to the same law.
The matter-force law is everywhere the same, and it is as omnipotent and immutable in a social order as in a solar system.
"The very law that moulds a tear, And bids it trickle from its source, That law preserves the earth a sphere, And guides the planets in their course."
Most of the time, and especially just now, our world is very full of tears, almost as much so as s.p.a.ce is full of spheres, but there would not be half so many tears at any time, if the laws of states were so many correct interpretations of the laws of nature.
In every age, nearly all the hot tears which deluge the world flow, like streams of springs, from their deep sources as the result of unnecessary suffering by grinding poverty, by hopeless slavery, by avoidable diseases and by premature deaths; and by far the most of these and of all sufferings may be traced to man-made laws which not only have no correspondence with those of nature but are contrary to them--laws of which both the civil codes and religious bibles are too full.
You will agree with me that society should punish none of its members by the slightest fine or shortest imprisonment, not to speak of death, except on the basis of justice. So far, and it is a long way, we certainly walk together. We part company, if at all, on the question as to the basis of justice, but come together again in the conclusion that it is right, not might.
What, then, is this right? If you answer: the law of the state as it is interpreted by a competent court, I reply: no legal enactment, and so, of course, no interpretation of one, can really const.i.tute a right, unless it is an embodiment of a truth containing an indispensable stone in the foundation which is necessary to the superstructure of the ideal civilization, under the roof of which every man, woman and child shall possess the greatest of possible opportunities to make life for self as long and happy as it can be, and to help others in an ever widening circle to do this for themselves.
Laws are not made. All social laws (domestic, civil, commercial, yes, even the moral and religious ones) are matter-force realities, as much so as is any other among all the physical or psychical realities entering into the const.i.tution of the universe; which realities are but the expressions of the processes necessarily resulting from the necessary co-existence and co-operation of this matter and force; therefore, laws are so many eternal necessities and, this being the case, it is not possible that men in states or churches should make them, no, not even G.o.ds in heavens.
Man would, then, have progressed much further with the superstructure of an ideal civilization, if only in his efforts to rightly regulate his life, he had happily searched out the laws of nature as they are revealed through its phenomena and interpreted by experience and reason, instead of looking for direction to the laws of the G.o.ds (Jehovah, Allah, Buddha or even Jesus) as they are revealed through prophets and interpreted by kings or presidents, by priests or preachers and by other "powers that be of G.o.d" in states and churches--inst.i.tutions which exist in the interest of the capitalist cla.s.s and against that of the labor cla.s.s. The world owes by far the greater part of its most poignant sufferings to this fatal mistake of looking to G.o.ds in heavens and their representatives on earth for direction instead of to nature and reason.
Life in the physical realm is dependent upon living in harmony with the matter-force law. The representative of any form of life (mineral, vegetable, animal, human) which either through ignorance, accident or willfulness does not conform to it, is destroyed or at least injured.
Life in the moral part of the psychical realm consists in a disposition and effort to learn the matter-force law, and to fulfill in thought, word and deed the individual obligations to self and the social obligations to others imposed by it when it has been humanely interpreted by a man for himself.
Religion and Christianity are but wider extensions of one and the same great all-inclusive virtue, morality, without which human life would not be worth living, indeed not even a possibility, for without morality a man is a beast, not a human.
Morality is the greatest thing in the world. Yet, paradoxical as the representation may seem, there is one greater thing, freedom--the liberty to think, speak and act in accordance with one"s own convictions as to what is the law and as to what are its requirements. Without this liberty there could be no morality, and therefore, freedom is greater than the greatest thing in the world, morality.
But liberty, the greatest and most indispensable necessity to morality, religion and Christianity, indeed, to the existence of a human being, is manifestly impossible on the theory that a man must be guided by the will of a conscious, personal G.o.d in the sky as it is interpreted by the kings and priests, presidents and preachers on earth.
You will note that I am not contending for the liberty to live without reference to an external authority. If this were my contention you would rightly insist (as some among my friends do) that I am an atheist in religion and an anarchist in politics; but I am neither, for I recognize the fact that I must live with reference to the existence of an external authority, matter-force law, and there is no other, upon which anything good in religion or politics is dependent.
No one is an atheist in religion, an anarchist in politics or anything bad, who, in the physical realm of life, tries to live with reference to the law of nature, and who, in the moral realm of life, tries to live with reference to a truth which is that law humanely interpreted by himself in accordance with his own experience, observation, investigation and reason. In the nature of things, the interpretation cannot be by some one else, because one man cannot live the moral life on another"s ideals any more than he can live the physical life on another"s meals.
Since this is the case, it follows that the whole conception of a law which is willed by a G.o.d and revealed or formulated by his representatives (prophets, kings, priests, legislators) to which a man must have reference, if he would live the moral life, is, at best, a harmless fiction and at worst a hurtful superst.i.tion.
There is no one (man or G.o.d) with whom people can stand in the moral realm except themselves alone, and if they are not within this realm they are not men and women.
Manhood is dependent upon standing alone with matter-force nature and with human reason, and it is manhood which really counts everywhere in the social realm, for without manhood one is nothing anywhere in that realm.
Nature is my G.o.d. The G.o.ds of the several supernaturalistic interpretations of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) are so many symbols of this divinity. The words of this G.o.d are the facts of nature.
My religion and politics, worship and patriotism consist in a desire and effort to discover these facts and to interpret and live them humanely.
My G.o.d, Nature, is a triune divinity--matter being the Father, force the Son, and law the Spirit.
Nature is the sum of the matter-force-law phenomena of which the universe is const.i.tuted. Man with his barbarism and civilization is but one among such phenomena, on a level with the rest, as to his beginning and ending, and as to the dependence of his life and its fullness upon conformity to the matter-force law, without necessary or, indeed, possible reference to any divine-human system of laws as set forth by a catholic or protestant church or by an imperialistic or democratic state.
Unless states and churches persuade, encourage and help man to more fully discover, more correctly interpret and more perfectly live the matter-force law they are worthless; and indeed worse, if in the long run and on the whole they hinder him; and undoubtedly they have done this in the case of the slave cla.s.s--a cla.s.s which, ever since the rise of private property in the means of producing the necessities of life, has comprehended the vast majority of the human race.
Whether then man is barbarous or civilized is really and truly, wholly and entirely a question of the knowledge of and conformity to the matter-force law, that is, of whether or not the articles of his religious creed and political code are so many ideal embodiments and practical interpretations of facts or realities as they are revealed by the doings of my G.o.d, Nature.
There is no other creed, belief in the articles of which, and there is no other code, obedience to the articles of which, will advance mankind, individually or collectively, so much as one step in the long, rugged and steep way towards the goal of a perfect civilization--a civilization which will secure to every man, woman and child the greatest of possible opportunities to make the most of life that is within the range of possibilities.
My G.o.d, Nature (the triune divinity, matter-force-motion) the doings of which G.o.d are so many words of the only gospel upon which the salvation of the world is to any degree dependent, is an impersonal, unconscious, non-moral being.
For me, this G.o.d, Nature, rises into personality, consciousness and morality in myself, and in no other does nature do this for me, though what is true of me is of course equally so of every representative of mankind.
Jesus (either as an historical or dramatic personage, and it does not matter which he was) said, "I and my Father (G.o.d) are one," and in saying this he gave expression in one form to the most revolutionary and salutary of all truths. The other form of the same truth as taught by Darwin and Marx is: man has all the potentialities of his own life within himself. Every representative of the human race can and should say with Jesus, "I and my Father, G.o.d, are one."
Stop man! where dost thou run?
Heav"n lies within thy heart, If thou seek"st G.o.d elsewhere Misled, in truth, thou art.
--Angelus Silensius.
This truth const.i.tutes the most enn.o.bling and inspiring part of man"s knowledge, and it was naturally discovered by him, not supernaturally revealed to him. It is the foundation of socialism and the justification of optimism.