THE
SCIENCE OF EVIL;
OR
FIRST PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN ACTION:
TOGETHER WITH
THREE LECTURES;
SALVATION AND DAMNATION BEFORE BIRTH, OR THE SCIENTIFIC
AND THEOLOGICAL METHODS OF SALVATION COMPARED.SUNDAY;-ITS HISTORY, USES AND ABUSES.PRAYER;-THE TRUE AND FALSE
METHODS COMPARED.
BY JOEL MOODY.
OPEKIA, KANSAS:
CRANE & BYRON, PUBLISHERS.
1871.




Entered according to act of Congress, in the Year 1870, by
CRANE AND BYRON,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
Printed at the "COrnMONWEALTH" State Printing House.




INTRODUCTION.
THE SCIENCE OF EVIL the author places before the
public That Evil should claim the dignity of Science,
will, doubtless, appear absurd to some; it will startle
others, and a few will start back in holy horror at
the thought. But we would caution the reader to
suspend a judgment till an investigation is begun.
That the title is no advertising dodge, will be made
strikingly manifest before he has mastered its pages.
Evil has long bewildered the thinking world. Why
Evil is? has long been a complex question. Since the
dawn of history a theological notion has embraced a
scientific fact; and the myths of the ages have added to
the complexity. It is thus, many hypotheses have been
put forth to account for it. The early mind struggling
for truth, seized a fact of Nature, and dressing it in a
mythical garb, passed it down in song to the world.
The explanation has come from the imagination, and
has been strictly theological instead of' scientific. Yet
every explanation has had some truth in it. Myths are
by no means devoid of truth. They are the harbingers
of Science; the nursery songs of the world's infancy.




iv                INT'RODUCTION.
The true relationship of Theology to Science, we have
endeavored to point out.
Something has been said upon definition, and the
author's method is one which must commend itself; for
it aims to destroy the wrangle so deploringly prevalent
among writers on Ethics and Philosophy. How often it
is, that two persons or two schools of philosophy will
dispute for years, when at last it is found, the only
difference between them is in the definition of words.
They agree about the substance, but fight over the
shadow. This is the whole story of the controversy
between the Idealist and Materialist; the whole story
about Fate and Freedom. There is truth in both; and
the one is dependent upon the other. THE SCIENCE OF
EVIL aims to throw light on this controversy.
We would caution the reader about the word -Law.
As words are only symbols of thought, they cannot be
entirely divested of a figurative sense. Most frequently
we talk about a law of Nature as an active force;
whereas, a law is only an effect of the action of Force
on matter. Strictly speaking then, a law of Nature cannot be violated. Yet how frequently it is said: If we
do not violate a law of Nature it will be well with us.
As well say, however, that we can violate an eclipse of
the moon as a law of Nature. There is no way by
which we can get rid of this figurative sense, without
circumlocution. It is in this way, scientific precision is
frequently sacrificed to the idioms of speech; for example, we say: " The sun sets," and "Nature's Laws are
broken."  With this caution the author will be understood.
Particular attention is called to Chapter V, on the




INTR OD UCTION.                 v
"Origin of Morals and Science;" and to Chapter VI,
" How Theology Evolves Science," for a complete exposition of the author's method. That the world is in a
continual transition, that it is forever "a becoming,"
and never reaches any special goal, which can be
clearly defined; that Theology must precede Science
and is typical of it; and in fact that the whole religious
history of the world is only typical of Science, and all
the god-names are only symbols of Force, he has endeavored to make quite plain. Force personified in the
god; is only Force made real in Science. The tyranny of
a monotheistic worship, and the comparative freedom
of apolytheistic one, is strikingly manifest throughout
the world. The latter is conducive to the advancement
of Science; the former is inimical thereto.  Forcible
illustrations of this fact are given in the Jewish godthought and the early Catholic church on the one hand,
and in Grecian theology and Protestantism on the
other. Science must be strangled by the hand of the
ancient Jew and Catholic, while it was nourished by
the Greek and Protestant.  Conclusive reasons are
given for this, which the facts of history support.
That the freedom of Science will one day take the
place of a theologic tyranny, and that the scientific
lecture will take the place of the Sunday sermon, is
a fact shortly to be realized.  It is a fact already
knocking at the door of the Church.
The Chapter on "Special Evils," answers many
complex questions, and throws some light on the
mystery of a world's villainy. The tyranny of man
over woman, producing in the latter a prostitution of
her body, is briefly treated in. the Chapter on "The




vi               INTR OD UCTION.
Social. Evil.' That Prostitution in woman obeys a
law of Nature, and ought no more to be punished by
man than a man for saying his prayers, may at first
seem  destructive of good morals.  But, when it is
known that man demands of woman a submission to
his own lusts, and she only obeys through the stern
commands of Want and Worship, he may be led to
reverse this judgment.  By getting a glimpse at his
own hidious guilt, the crime of woman disappears.
The author has aimed in THE SCIENCE OF EVIL, to
give a connected and logical view of the First Prinpies of Human Action. That it is a full and complete
view, he by no means claims; but if he has opened the
way to a deeper research into the causes of crime, so
that it can be dealt with upon humane and scientific
principles, and not according to the caprices of ignorance; if he has given an impetus to the search after
Truth, though he may have erred in his own conclusions; or if he has in any way directed man to a higher
life, he has gained his object.
It pains the author to find that a few typographical
errors have crept into the book. This reminds him of
the world's most self-evident truth, that:  To err is
human. Hie would therefore caution the reader to read' Plato," not "Pluto," on page 134, and "god-men,"
not " god-man," on page 123. Other minor errors are
left to the disposal of the intelligent reader.
JOEL MOODY.
TOPEKA, Kansas, January 1, 1871.




CO NT E NT S.
CHAPTER I.
(Page 1-31;)
THE ETERNITY OF EVIL:-Evil cannot be Defined:-A Fable:-Conflict of
Desires:-Vexed Questions: - Morality born of Evil: —An Objection Answered:-A Distinction:-Evil Precedes Man on Earth:-Arlgument   firom Man's
Nature:-The Moral Sense:-A Dialogue:-Face to Face' Discnssion:-Further
Complexity:-Christian Morals:-No Definition of Morality:-Varying Conditions:-Varying Moral Standards:-Variation Organic.
CHAPTER II.
(Page 31-51.)
PERFECTION  IN  MAN  FOREVER IMPOSSIBLE:-An Illustration:-Conditions Govern the Will:-Conditions Govern Character:-"Stars Differ:"Ideals Differ:-The Gods Change: —No Perfect Estate:-A Vital Difference:The Golden Rule Fails:-A Sympathetic Ideal: —Ignorance has to be torn out
of Man by the Roots:-A Subtlety Unmasked.
CHAPTER III.
(Page 51-68.)
DIVERSITY IN UNITY:-Nature an Infinite Paradox:-Unity of Type:-Embryos Alike:-Man's Mentality Typified in the Animal Below Him n:-Vice in
the Animal World:-Man's Dark Nature Typified: -A Difference:-Tlh Ideal
Conception:-A Summary:-The Benefit of a Doubt.
CHAPTER IV.
(Page 68-94.)
MATTER AND FORCE: —The Polarity of Force:-What a Law is:-Conflict of
Forces:-Like Atoms Like Motions: —Like Begets Like: —The Law of Impression: —The Mystery of Inheritance:-Darwin's Theory of Gemmules:-A
Modification of Force:-Man a Storehouse of Forces:-A Strange Warfare of
Gemmules:-Mental Inheritance in Society:-The Present Built on the Past:Examples in Religion and Law:-The Laws or Force Explain the Phenomena
of Reproduction: —A Few Cases in Point:-Force the Infinite Unit:-Some
Conclusions.




viii                         CONiTEYS.
CHAPTER V.
(Page 94-140.)
THE ORIGIN  OF MORALS AND  SCIENCE:-The Genesis of Action: —The
Cause of Animal Motion:-Origin of Plants and Aninials:-H-unger, a Principle of Telegraphy:-Origin of Morals: Force Comlpulsory and Force Discretionary:-Law of Supply and Demand:-Mental Faculties Evolved4: —'New
Theory of Population:" —Definition of a Faculty:-No Definition of Religion:What Produces Religion: —Fear, the Cause of Worship:-Reason in Animals:Genesis of the God-Thought:-History Corroborates it:-The Fire Worshiper:A Revelation of Force: —The Genesis of Science:-A Higher Phase of Worship:-Science Born of Theology:-Dawn of the Esthetic:-Fron the Real to
the Typical:-Anthropomorphisim:-When Science will be Enthroned:-Intferences about God:-Men not Actors but Recipients.
CHAPTER VIT.
(Page 140-170.)
HOW THEOLOGY EVOLVES SCIENCE:-WarTire amnionr the Crods:-Germ Cells
of Astronomy: —Number and Equality Divine:-Grecian Astronomy:-Eclipses Objects of Fear: —From Ptolemy to Copernicus:-No Stationary Period:Causes of the Dark Ages:-Unsafe to iBiblical Doctrine:-Reason and History
Agree:-'omnie Conclusions: —A Phantom Necessary:-Why Science must be
bcourzed:-Man compelled to be Accurate:-A Continual Warfare in Nature:
- i he same Causes gave Greece her Homer, and Europe her Milton:-Resist or
be ]Extinguished:-Science Explains the'Fall:"-Evil drives to Activity.
CHAPTER VII.
(Page 170-204.)
SPECIAL EVILS:-A List of Evils:-Let the Actor Beow-are: —How shall I act?
says Morals:-Fables are Moral Axioms:-The Law of Common Prudence:Two Illustrations:-Negative and Positive Evil:-A  Question Answered:Eumotional Faculties are Blind:-Some Physical Evils: —an only Tortured
into Logical Thought and Moral Action:-Wisdom always Conies through
Evil:-EHow God talks:-Theft, God's Minister:-A Case in Point:-The Thief a
Necessity:-The Meaning of Sorrow:-Without Shade no Pictu e: —Every
Force True to Itself:-Every Wrong Act has its Penalty:-Sin cannot be Forgiven: —Perverted Faculties:-A Lust after God: —The Religious Ridlle Solved:
— Evils of i ove: —Love should have Eyes.
CIIAPTER VIII.
(Page 204-229.)
THE SOCIAL EVIL: —Propositions to Prove:-Why Woman a'orships Man:-The
Castles of Love shattered at a Blow:-The Religious Sentiment mnore Lasting:The 4 ause of Prostitution:- Want and Worship Produce It: —Cases in Point:
No Law of Nature Violated: —ManI the Cause:-Church and State Support It:
-False Method of Cure:-The Dragon's Teeth:-A Picture: —Cause of Failure:
Fallen Women of Boston:-An Experinlent:-What Man's Lust Demands of
Woman:-Sympathy cannot Save:-The Fire of this Hell in Man's Blood:Woman must be taught Her True Condition:-Woman must still be Tortured
to Educate the Frontal Lobes.
LECTURES.
(Page 231-342.)
SALVATION AND DAMNATION BEFORE BIRTH.
SUNDAY.-Its History, Uses and Abuses.
PRAYER.-The True and False Methods Compared.




CHAPTER I.
THE ETERNITY OF EVIL.
~. 1. Lord Bacon said: "'Sciences are facts
generalized."  There are many facts in the world
called evils; collectively they may be termed Evil.
These facts generalized, and their common meaning
found, constitute the Science of Evil. Evil is, and
therefore means, something. It has been doubted
that Evil is,-but this is only a matter of definition;
the facts called Evil have not been denied altogether;
another name has often been given some of them,
yet the same facts remain. It will be our task to
treat of these facts, under whatever name they may
have borne, to find their meaning. What Evil is, it
were foolish enough to attempt to answer. Force
and matter are, yet no one has ever told us what they
are. We have become cognizant of certain effects
of the action of force on matter, and have designated these effects by certain names, expressing
quality, quantity or condition.  We say certain
effects are good, and certain other effects are bad,
B




2           THE ETERNAITY OF EVIL.
So also of men, laws, institutions, actions; they are
good or bad. Definition becomes impossible when
we ask: Was Feudalism and the Inquisition good
or bad, as political and religious institutions among
Christians? was slavery good or bad, as a biblical
and Jewish institution? were Nero, Jesus, and Lincoln, evils as men?  For we find mankind divided
in opinion on all these questions. There is a no,
and a yes, to greet us at every turning.  The North
and the South answer yes, and no, in regard to Lincoln. The Christians and the Jews who crucified
Jesus answer yes, and no, in regard to him. Is
Mahometanism, or Christianity, good or bad? The
Christian and the Moslem give adverse answers, and
have often fought over this cquestion.  Were the
wars, which resulted in regard to opinion, evils or
blessings?  Now, as when waged, the public is
divided in opinion. Is war an evil?  Opinion is
divided; and thus definition of Evil is impossible.
There is no common consent to establish a definition.  The reason will soon be made manifest. A
living author, a deep thinker and close reasoner,
IIerbert Spencer, has volunteered an answer in his
"Social Statics:"  "All evil results from the nonadaptation of constitution to conditions."  And he
says, "this is true of everything that lives." About
the same time Theodore Parker, in nearly the same
language, defined Evil to be " The non-fulfilment of
the conditions of animal life."  The formier is less
restricted, but it still lacks comprehesivensiveess; and




CAATiTNOT BE DEFINED,             3
while true, may define a good, as well as an evil. It
would be quite as true sometimes to say, evil results
from adaptation of constitution to conditions; for
"What is pleasure and life to you, is pain and death
to me," as the hare said to the hound.  The adaptation of the rabbit's constitution to the conditions of
a dog's stomach, brings a good, as well as an evil. It
makes the dog happy, but the rabbit has to die for
it. If an evil to the latter, it is a blessing to the
former. iNor can it be argued that the evil to the
rabbit is the non-adaptation of its constitution to the
conditions which devoured it, for such animals as
rabbits are made for carnivorous animi-als to live on,
and to be deprived of them would bring death to a
large class of animals.  True, its life was shortened;
but this may be a good or an evil. This may be said
in regard to death in general. Death is not always
an evil-as when an aged man, ripe with years and
experience, goes down to the grave —yet death may
be said to always result from the non-adaptation of
constitution to conditions. Here the definition would
include a great good to man, and not an evil. As
well define a circle to be always the result of a curved
line; so are an ellipse, parabola, hyperbola, and infinite other curves, all radically different from the
circle.  The definition lacks definiteness, and, while
true, may therefore define a good as well as an evil.
The terms of which it is composed are variable
quantities, as conditions and constitutions may both
admit of an infinite nunmber of modifications, pass



4           THE ETER.NITY OF EVIL.
ing from the extreme of good to bad, and from the
finite to the infinite, as a curve may pass from the
finite circle to the infinite hyperbola. But let us
bring another element into the case of the dog and
the rabbit.  The rabbit eats the young apple tree in
the farmer's orchard; this brings pain and annoyance to the farmer, blighting his hopes, and rendering his labor useless. Here is an evil to the farmer;
yet there was a perfect adaptation of the tender little
apple tree to the stomach of the rabbit, which, serving for food, doubtless gave it pleasure.  The truth
is, the apple tree is adapted to more uses than one,
and the stomach of the rabbit to more kinds of
plants than one. The rabbit wanted it for food;
the farmer also wanted it for food in its fruit time;
and in the coeflie of desires there was pleasure to
the rabbit and pain to the farmer. He now hunts
it with his dog, who devours it; whereupon the
farmer rejoices, and the dog has a fine meal. The
apple tree might as well cry out against the rabbit,
as the rabbit to cry out against the dog, evil! or,
"' Non-adaptation of constitution to conditions!" or,
"Non-fulfillmnent of conditions!"
H-ere is a fable:  A lamb was caught by a wolf,
and not killing her at once, after the first fright was
over she began thus to the wolf: " Ah, me! iHow
cruel you are!  What a terriDble evil has come upon
me, of which I am entirely innocent! How wicked
you are! My constitution is not adapted to this
state of things! I-ow dreadful to die thus! There




A FABLE.                  5
must be a fit punishment ill store for you at the
hands of God!"
To whom the wolf responds.: "You little, impudent wretch, you deny the wisdom and goodness
of God! IHas he not made me as I am, and you as
you are, and the grass as it is? The grass to grow
fromn earth, you to eat the grass, and I to eat you?
3You chide God for his providence. He has provided
food for all his creatures, both differing in kind;
grass for you, and flesh for me; yes-, larb's flesh
occasionally. You talk about evil to you! Your
soul will go to the paradise of sheep, when I eat
your body. It would be truly a terrible evil to me,
could I not get lamb's flesh occasionally; in fact, I
should die outright of starvation, and God's wisdom
be turned into foolishness, and his government
come to naught. How was this you defined about
this state of things? Your' constitution not adapted
to these conditions?' Why, you little scouting and
blaspheming atheist! Your constitution is perfectly
adapted to all the conditions-death and my stomach;
therein I will assimilate you, and you will be made
bold and wolfish.  Your death is no evil.  God
designed, in his eternal plan., that you should die
as food for me. I feel the gnawings of hunger now,
his commands writ in my stomach to eat you. Besides, were the world's great Carnivora, who roam
the wide world, and soar in its air, and swim in its
sea, to take the advice of one little silly sheep, that
has been out to grass all its life, in a narrow and




6          THE ETEYRNITY OF EVIL.
short pasture, entirely undeveloped in head and body,
saying':  Oh! ye great Carnivora, stop your eating
flesh, thus making misery in the world; eat grass,
as we do.' Why, we would all be dead in a month's
time. You fool! A spear of your food would make
any one -of us vomit. You have to assimilate it for
us. Then, if we should all die, very soon the world
would be filled with pestilence, from rotten carcasses
which ought to have been devoured before they
decayed. Shortly after we died, you would die of
disease, so I might as well eat you now, for your
kindred's sake, and the good of the world. Besides
all this your constitution, physically and mentally,
is entirely adapted to me. Physically you are good
to eat; mentally you are a coward, and don't dare to
fight me. God Almighty made you so, for which I
give him thanks daily, and now especially. You cannot bite-you have no canine teeth; I have. Look
here! God made me so." And he opens his mouth
and displays a dreadful state of jaw; and the lamb,
trembling in fear, had just time to gasp out,' The
Devil, not God, made you," and it was torn in pieces.
Now the farmer comes in, and is greatly pained
to find one of his fine lambs devoured by a wolf;
and he hunts many a day to kill him; whereas, it
was but yesterday he hunted with dog and gun
to kill the rabbit which had eaten his tree. The
wolf, and the rabbit, he calls distressing evils, which
ought to be hunted down. Man reasons from selfishness and ignorance. The lamb will give him




CONFLICT OF DESIRES.             7
wool, and it is an evil for the wolf to kill it. The
rabbit will eat the young trees, and it is a great
good for the dog to kill it. Yet the rabbit has the
same right to life that the sheep has, and the wolf
to food that the dog has. The evil comes in the
conflict of desires; the conflict to obtain that which
is adapted to different uses and conditions.
Now there are carnivorous and herbivorous men.
There are-men whose constitutions are as widely
different as the wolf and the lamb; and the conditions of happiness are as widely opposite. A Carib
delights in a roasted captive; a Feejee Islander prays
to obtain the wife of his enemy, that he may eat her;
the Dyaks of Borneo, to secure the services of a
slave in the next world, waylay their enemies to
bring home their heads. They say,'M"White men
read books; we hunt for heads instead."  Let a
refined young lady of our highest civilization fall
captive to a Feejee, and it would be the fable just
repeated of the wolf and the lamb. The gentle and
timid poet Keats, lamb-like in disposition, was torn
to death by wolfish critics-a death more cruel than
by engines of wood and iron, with which Christians
used to torture the life out of each other for opinion's sake, and who could look upon these death
tortures " reveling with joy."
Because men are adapted to the varying conditions in which they live, they often hunt each other
down like wild beasts; war becomes not only their
amusement, but means of livelihood. Nay, it be



8           THE ETERNITY OF EVIL.
came the religious duty of a Christian king, near
the close of the seventeenth century, to drive out
the Scotch from their native heaths, with ruthless
barbarity, not unlike a western wolf-hunt. For like
crimes, Christian bishops gave him their support,
and called him the darling of Heaven, and prayed
"' that God might give him the hearts of his subjects
and the necks of his enemies."  In a community of
wolves and sheep, or dogs and rabbits, thact a:<4'ep and
rabbits die first, and when food becomci i.,;: "le and
difficult to obtain, then the weakest wolf Lor clog; and
the strongest perishes last. All those who have to
perish first will set up their complaints against the
survivor; and the weakest of all is the most to complain; not because the most injured, but simply
because the most imperfect; not because of its
"unfitness to the conditions of existence," but because of its lack of force, to change these conditions
in its own favor. A child does not die because unfit
to live, but because too weak.
Yet, because Evil cannot be defined, from the
fact that conditions and constitutions are continually
changing, both in earth and man, it is not therefore
meaningless. Even the conflict of ideas which itself
precludes definition, gives it a meaning, terrible as
well as significant. What, then, does it mean? It
will be the object of this volume to partially answer;
and which is meant only to prepare the way for
future labor and thought.




VEXED QUESTIONS.               9
~. 2. Does Evil exist in accordance with natural
law, or in violation of it? or both in accordance
with and in violation of it? For example: A man
is killed in the prime of life by lightning in the
harvest field; or, a Lincoln is killed by the hand of
a Booth; or, TUriah is slain in battle by the command of David; or, a man is stoned to death, by the
Lord's command, for gathering sticks on the Sabbath; or, a man is murdered for his money in the
highway, or for jealousy in a house of prostitution;
a man betrays his friend, for money, that he may be
made a victim to the religion of his countrymen; a
priest of the Hindu religion cuts off the head of his
mother, she consenting, that her ghost may torment
and pursue to death a man who had stolen forty
rupees out of his house; or, a minister of the Christian religion roasts the feet and heads of women, to
extract a confession of hidden gold, or whips his
son, less than three years old, to death for not saying
his prayers in a manner contrary to that taught him
by his own mother before she died. Are these cases
in accordance with or in violation of natural law, or
both? Wherein is a law of Nature violated in the
lightning's stroke? In other words, can Nature act
unnaturally?  If not, then what law of Nature did
the man violate who was killed by lightning in the
harvest field? If any, what? But further: Is Evil
the penalty attached to violated law? If so, is it
intended to teach or correct the person violating it?
And is this the sole object of such penalty? How




10        MTIE ETERNITY OF EVIL.
much is the person taught, corrected or benefitted,
who is killed by lightning? If none, what is the
meaning of it, when no other human being on earth
is or ever becomes cognizant of it? And this is a
quite probable ease.
These questions elicit thought.  They are accouchers of ideas. Let us follow them into Nature,
for it is there the man of thought wanders, and if
often lost as in an endless forest in which he was
born and is to live, it is therein he must return again
to his domlicil, or find a new home.
~. 8. Quite as much, in regard to definition,
might be said of morality, wisdom, perfection, and
the like, but as these terms are intimately connected
with Evil and human conduct, let us see what part
Evil performs in the conception of these terms; let
us inquire into the relationship and age of Evil, that
we may get clearer conceptions of tlheir meaning.
Did the whole universe act in perfect harmony,
then there would be no Evil, nor Morality.
For, if there were no Evil, there would be no bad
act, and a good act would never have had a name,
for goodness and badness are correlative terms, as
day and night, father and son, etc. Goodness would
be, if at all, a necessity of fate, and man would be
but a mere machine, incapable of pain or pleasure,
driven by a blind and unfeeling force. But this is
not.true of man. He is a conscious force on earth;
he is quickened with sensation; he feels pleasure




MORAILITY BORN Of EVIL.          11
and pain; his actions are often partially free; he
often designs his actions, knowing that he acts; and
he becomes cognizant of the good and bad effects
which follow his actions. It is the bad effect which
awakens him to the consciousness of its opposite in
Nature, and thus morality is born of Evil.
If this be not so, then will some one tell us what
morality is, and how it originated?  "It is," says
one, 1"the observance of the perfect law of God."
But, we ask, how expressed and how given? However this may be answered, there is no truth evolved;
we must deal with its essence and treat of first principles. This assumnes a law designed for man to
obey. But, if it be possible for him to obey a law,
it is also possible for him to disobey it; and the possibility of Evil is involved in the command-Obey!
But the command to obey would and could never
have been given without a knowledge or a belief
that evil effects would follow its violation. Whence
came this knowledge of evil which would result by
disobedience? It is quite evident that a knowledge
of Evil must precede any law designed for the good
of man. In fact, no rule of right action could ever
originate without a tacit or expressed knowledge of
Evil to precede it. This is true, whatever may be
the source of the law-Nature, God, legislature or
parent-or whether the lawv be perfect or not, if the
law be given with a design and is not a mere evolution of blind force. But if Evil precedes the perfect
law, and the law is to warn against Evil, then Evil




12          THE ETER-NITY OF EVIL.
is the prime cause of the perfect law.  That is,
imperfection must precede the perfect law, and be
the cause of it, which shows there can be no perfect
moral law of God. This conclusion is either true
or false. But if Evil does not precede the perfect
law, there would be no object in ordaining the law;
for a law without an object is no law at all. If Evil,
on the other hand, be considered as an evolution of
blind force, it must be treated of under the phenomena of Nature, governed by established laws.
~. 4. It may be objected to this reasoning that,
pushed to its furthest limit, from world to world,
in its application, supposing other worlds to be
inhabited, and from time to time back into a preceding eternity, it makles Evil precede any law of the
Infinite God. But this objection carries the seeds
of death within it. It is another phase of the argument in reasoning backwards from consequent to
antecedent to find a first cause which is called God.
But if God be the first cause, there was a time
when there was no God, for the first had to begin;
and it is useless to say there was a God before he
acted, or before he was wise enough to act. All we
can say of God is to posit the Absolute, and confer
such attributes as a finite conception may think best.
It would perhaps be best to say God is the Infinite
Force. There are reasons for considering this Infinite Force a conscious force, which will be treated
of hereafter.




A DISTINCTIONT.              13
But when we keep within the realm of the knowable, we'may define and discriminate. Herein we
find a distinction between a natural law and a moral
law; for while a moral law is a natural law, all
natural laws are not moral laws.  Natural law is
the genus of which moral laws are species. Oxygen
and nitrogen combine in definite proportions to form
air and other substances.  This is a natural law, but
it is not a moral law. But all human laws are in a
wide sense moral laws, even that one which says
man shall be the chattel of another. This, however,
may not be the best moral law. The moral law has
to do with _finite intelligences, not with unconscious
matter or infinite intelligence.  All that can be
affirmed in the obj ection is, that Evil may co-exist in
time with the Infinite Force, which always must
precede finite intelligences, or the finite expression
of Infinite Force.
But it is again argued, that God may fore-ordain
something which has never before existed, and thus
a perfect law may be given long before Evil exists
as a fact. This arises by confounding action and
fact: Action is progressive; Fact is eternal. There
is a difference between existence and taking place.
The knowledge of a fact can never be without the
fact exists. It may have transpired, or is yet to come.
In either case it exists and is known, as is the past
or future-as an eclipse of the moon. If you are to
die to-morrow, and the knowledge of it were as perfect as infinite wisdom could make it, the fact of




14         ITRE ETERNITY OF EVIL.
your death would be as real to you to-day as to those
who should witness it to-morrow. Were this not
true, there would be no science, and in fact nothing
known beyond our immediate and present action.
There would be no such word as to-morrow. It is
the sole object of science to fore-tell events, and,
were there no facts existing before they transpire,
science would be but a phantom of thought.
We thus come at the Eternity of Evil another
way. If infinite wisdom  is, then it is all now to
Omniscience, and the knowledge of Evil is an infinite fact. For it matters not when a particular evil
begins-last niglht, last year, last age, or last eternity,
or at any time in the future-it exists as a fact in
the universe, forever known to Infinite Force, and
must be co-eternal with infinite knowledge. It may
be set down then, as a conclusion of sound reasoning,
that moral law has Evil to precede it, and is a necessity thereof, or has been evolved from it. Whence
we may affirm, were there no Evil in the universe
we would know nothing of morality; for there would
be nonle.
An argument which leads to the same conclusion
may be drawn from mlan's own nature.  It will not
be denied that mlian is endowed with a faculty called
benevolence. It is the function of this faculty to
dispose us to alleviate suffering; to prompt us to
gentleness and kindness towards each other and
inferior animals; to make us charitable and solicitous for the welfare of all; in short, it is the mental




EVIL PRECEDES MAN.             15
finger-board pointing toward Evil in the world.
Whenever, therefore, you prove that man has benevolence, you prove also that Evil preceded the creation
of such a faculty in man, the sole function of which
is to warn us against it. This, however, only proves
that Evil was in existence before the existence of
benevolent man, and that the cause of evil is independent of man. But, should we confer benevolence
as an attribute of God, then we must affirm that
Evil is co-eternal with such an attribute. But, arguing solely from man's nature, we find him endowed
with many faculties which could never possibly have
originated without Evil to precede themn. Let us
apply the same rule to other faculties which we have
just applied to benevolence.
It is the function of a certain faculty to desire
property. This desire is independent of the manner
of acquiring it, and of the uses to which it shall be
put. But, how is this desire created or made known?
What is the cause of the function?  Simply the
bodily want of subsistence and the means of comfort. The body has been deprived of food, or felt
the pains of heat and cold; the limbs have been
torn, and the feet bruised. tHunger has driven man
to provide for the morrow; the pains of the flesh to
cover his body; the bruises of his feet have given
him  shoes; the heat and cold shelter and fuel.
Here is one of the noblest faculties of our nature
developed and stimulated by Evil to precede it. If
it be objected that this ought to confer upon the




16          THE ETERNAITY OF EVIL.
lower animals this faculty, it may be answered it
cannot be affirmed they have it not; and further, the
actions of animals would lead us to conclude they
did possess such a faculty, yet unaided by man's
superior scientific prevision. The dog, when he
buries a bone, and the squirrel, when he fills his
nest with nuts, are cases in point. What seems to
strengthen the conclusion still more than these, is
the fact that when animals are provided by man for
long periods of time they lose this faculty of provident thought, and often die of starvation; and even
further, lose the instinct of a proper selection of
food, and so die. If the riser should be brought
forward as a fatal objection to the foregoing conclusion, inasmuch as he is not impelled to accumulate
the means of subsistence solely by a view to consequences, it may be answered: The abnormal use of
a faculty cannot viciate or destroy the cause of such
faculty, and proves nothing. As well say, because
now and then a man is a glutton, or because frequently people eat too much, hunger is not, therefore, the cause of our eating.  But without the
desire to eat awakened by hunger, no one would
search for food; yet hunger is palin, and if prolonged
soon develops into secondary evils.
The faculty of caution prompts to common prudence; it anticipates harm; it is the sense of fear.
Fear is the ruling mental element in man, as well as
all other animals; without it, life would be a thousand-fold more in danger; and from this comes the




MIORAL SENSE.               17
first law of life-Preserve thy1self.  Yet, without Evil,
it is impossible for it to have originated, if man is
governed by law, and his faculties have evolved
from primary conditions; and if they were not thus
evolved, but were given by a wise Creator; then
man was thus endowed because of Evil, which existed as a fact in Divine knowledge, so that either
hypothesis brings us to the same conclusion.
Evil also as a pre-existent cause in the world,
may be seen in all animal action. It is finite, and
at best cannot be perfect. And while all imperfect
actions are by no means evil actions; yet all evil
actions are imperfect actions. From this very fact
arise the questions, "What is good?" " What is
right?"  "   lWhat is proper?"  " What is just?"
Yet none of these questions would have been asked
without Evil to precede them in the world, and to
accompany them in human action. No notion of
justice, of propriety, of right, of goodness, could
ever possibly have existed or come into existence
without Evil to precede such conception or knowledge, because each of these terms is correlative with
Evil. Hence what is called the "Moral Sense" has
its basis in Evil.
And herein we come upon a ternm which itself
shows there can be no definition of morality. For
if morality exists it is the result of those deeds
prompted by some faculty of mlan. This faculty
may be called the'" Moral Sense;" although we cannot use the word sense as meaning a blind mental
C




18          THE ETE RNITYI OF EVIL.
force, it must rather mean a conscious knowledge,
for without knowledge there is no rational action;
and the 1" Moral Sense" mnst arise from a plurality
of faculties. But this faculty, however we may define
it, never acts the same in any two individuals, it is
common to all, yet leads all to different conclusions.
In other words all have the knowledge of right in
the abstract, yet no two would agree as to what
right is in the concrete act. As millions have the
abstract idea of God, yet lno two would agree as to
what God is in being. All disagree in the concrete
conception.  What one man calls the moral law
another one would deny, or amend in -many ways;
a third would deny the conclusions of both, and a
fonrth would select from each and cast much away
that he considered rubbish.  The moral code of
Moses will not do for Jesus, and the code of Jesus
will not do fori any Christian of this age. The Christian code will not do for thousands of the most civilized and intelligent of the world. Whereas many
select from Moses and Buddha, Jesus and Mahomet,
Paul and Luther, and cast aside from all these much
they consider rubbish; others discard all men as
binding authority, taking no man for master, not
even Jesus of Nazareth, living up to their own hillghest convictions, as did Jesus himself.  To make this
statement quite clear, let us malke some of the world's'moral teachers, ancient and mIodern, expound their
own ethical doctrines, as though face to face in convention.




FACE TO PFACE.               19
Jesus-What is this you say, Moses, about loving
your neighbors but hating your enemies? do you
think that right?
Moses-Yes, that is according to the perfect
moral law of Jehovah. It is recorded, (Dent. xxiii:6,)
never make peace with an enemy; an eye for an
eye, and a tooth for a tooth; this is the law. Rememnber Amalek; blot him out. Thou shalt not forget
what he did, (Deut. xxv:19.)
Jesus —That is by no means the perfect law. I
speak as one having authority; I say, love your enemies; bless them'that curse you; do good to them
that hate yon; and pray for them which despitefully
use you, and persecute you, (Matt. v:44.).David-Y-T ou are certainly mistaken my son;
Moses is righlt. If the Lord pronounces a curse it
is most assuredly right for his servants to follow his
example. You are wrong about prayer also; I have
no hesitancy in praying the Lord to curse my enemies, and that right soundly, (Ps. i09th.)  This is, I
think, in accordance with the perfect moral law.
Luthevr-You are quite right King David, this is
a law found in human nature as well as the Bible;
I can preach and pray best when I am quite angry.
Protestant Christian-Yes, King David; you, and
Moses the Divine law-giver, and Luther the great
reformer, are right.  We are so beset with evil in
this world, that it is only a vale of tears to those who
cailnot get right down and pray to God to curse this
whole infidel crew, who are flooding the whole world




20         TIIE ETERNITY OF EVIL.
with irreligion and atheism  under cover of the
words morality and science; trying to overturn
God's government and establish the kingdom  of
Satan. Pray, too, with faith, the assurance that he
will blot out the iniquity,-yes blot out, that is the
language he used of old,-and blast the memory of
all who preach infidelity.-O0h! for thy fervor King
David, —and damn the fool who says in his heart
there is no God. Yes, he is a fool who denies Jehovah, the God of Abraham,  and Moses,'and David,
and our good and blessed master Jesus Christ. This
is according to the perfect moral law of God.
Jeszus-Not too hasty; you evince a zeal which
lacks thought. You are mistaken; I never worshiped Jehovah, —it was God, the Father of all, who
adorned the lilly and took charge of the sparrow;
not the God who would rejoice to destroy people,besides you must not call mle good, there is none
good but one, that is God. I believe in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man, not in
cursing and revenge; and you have no moral right
to call me a fool for not believing in the special god
of nmy countrymen; nay, verily, when you say " thou
fool," you are in danger of hell-fire, (Matt. v:22.)
Universalist-Oh! oh! Jesus, you didn't mean
that. You are a little provoked at that orthodox
fellow, I know; but you ought to have control of
yourself. You are to save us all friom that; one
extreme leads to another. You ought to have more
charity for weakness and error. It is really not




DISCUSS1 ON.                   21
Christian to talk about hell-fire when you believe in
the Brotherhood of man, and the golden rule.
Moses —This quarrel arises from  forsaking the
law.  Jehovah is the Lord, and he has a chosen people.  The rest of mankind are idolators anid will be
blotted out.  He has given us his law; this is perfect, and applies in all the relations of life.
Jesus —That law  says, when a man has found
something unclean in his wife (and this something
means anything) he may give her a bill of divorcement and send her out of his house, (Dent. xxiv:l.)
There is nio law to generalize this, and give the wife
the same right when she has found something uinclean in her husband.  But, I say, whosoever shall
put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication
causeth her to commit adultery, and whosoever shall
marry her that is divorced committeth adultery,
(Matt. v:31-32.)
Christian-Then you would make out this Christian age to be most adulterous and perverse.
Whittier —Yes, and the Christian ages ever have
been; you resist evil;
Where Christ hath spoken peace, his name hath been
The loudest war cry of contending men;
Priests, pale with vigils, in his name have blessed
The unsheathed sword, and laid the spear in restPriests wet their war banner with the sacred wine
And crossed its blazing folds with the holy signl
Jesus-Yes, and you swear; you call man.kind,
who do not believe your doctrine, fools; you pray inl
public; you pray in anger, and for the Father to
curse your enemies, his children; you commit adul



22          THE ETERNITY OF EVIL.
tery under sanction of law, and by lust in your hearts;
you are continually solicitous about the morrow;
you are laying up treasures on earth, all the very
contrary of what I teach. And, furthermore, your
moral law is a professed hypocrisy, inasimuch as you
do the very reverse of what you profess,-you profess to follow, to take rme for a master, and oftener
disobey than follow my instructions.
Moses- They profess to follow my instructions
also, but come infinitely short of it. All this arises
from forsaking the laIc. You despise my statutes,
saith the Lord; you keep not my Sabbaths; witchcraft goes unpunished; your children are disobedient and ask for rights; your wives are rising up and
demanding votes, when I have classed the wife
with property in the tenth commandment, placing
her in the Divine schedule above personal property,
but below real estate, and she ought to know her
sphere; you have abolished slavery in the blood of
your fellow; verily, thus saith the Lord, I will rejoice
to destroy you, (Dent. xxviii:63.)
Spiritualist-I suppose by witchcraft you mean
Spiritualism; but thank God we live in an age of
light and knowledgoe; in America, not Jewry; and
your command'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live,' falls on dull ears in these times.  Moses, this
section of your god's moral code is obsolete.  It
belongs with your law to give forty stripes for civil
offenses, (Dent. xxv:3;) your morals of selling unclean
meat to aliens, (Deut. xiv:21;) of stoning children to




FURTHER COOMPLEXITY.            23
death for disobedience, (Deut. xxi:21.) This belongs
with your barbarous law of taking women captive
and parceling them out to satisfy the lust of a brutal
soldiery, (Num. xxxi:17-18,) and stoning men to
death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath (Nunm. xvi:32-36.) We have a new code of morals suited to this
age, and a world's higher civilization.
The foregoing discussion cannot be said to be
unfairly represented, which shows howe useless it is
for one amidst such a complexity of opinions to
define morality. Even just now we find in a journal
especially devoted to the cause of Christianity the
following sound reasoning:  "For what does Christianity amount to, if the man who accepts it, and the
man who spurns it, may be alike'good.' Christianity is a superfluity and impertinence. It has no
indispensible mission. For by goodness of character much more is meant than mere external virtue
and amiability."  Then speaking of a certain ethical
teacher, who disclaimed the name Christian, presumes him to be "a man of virtuous impulse and
habits, who would scorn to do what the world calls
wicked and dishonorable;" and saysa: "but the
stand'ard of the world and the standard of Christianity are infinitely wide apart.'That which is
hihlly esteemed among men is abomination in the
sight of God.' Thousands will be condemned as
sinful and guilty in the sight of God, who were
accounted'good' in the sight of men."  * *
"Christ is the source of all real goodness."  Now by




24          THE ETERNITY OF EVIL.
this is meant, a belief in Christ is the source of all
morality. Yet, there are thousands of people of this
world who do not profess Christianity simply because
they live up to their highest convictions of knowledge, belief, and duty;-in other -words because
they are honest in matters of belief and profession;so that the very essence of morality in the Christian
religion is to believe in a god who will in some instances damn an honest man because he is honest.
BPy Christianity it is here meant, that system of
religious belief and practice most widely known as
such, and includes both Catholic and Protestant.
There munst be eliminated from this some of the
minor sects known as Christians, were we to test
them  by ethical or theological doctrine; such as
Unitarians and Universalists. These merely call
themselves Christians and are counted out by the
vaist majority of Protestants. Neither can we include many eminent moralists and teachers of religion who have been called Christians. As Moses,
Confucius, Socrates, Jesus, Parker, Emerson, and
others. For, while Theodore Parker called himself
a Christian, and Socrates has been called such by
eminent Christians; and Jesus has the honor of
being worshipped as a Christian god, yet these persons have in their teachings very little in common
with the Christian religion, and very much that is
radically different therefrom. This shows how difficult it would even be to define Christianity; how
much more difficult is it then to define morality.




VTAR YIANT CONTDIT1iONAS.       25
~. 4. The reason of the foregoing complexity is
because of conditions. These are ever varying in
time and place, and to sustain that harmony which
is ever prominent in Nature, man is so constituted
that he changes also with the varying conditions,
yet, perhaps never establishes a perfect harmonly, as
entire harm-ony would result in that mental disaster,
known as satisfaction. It is by bringing greatly
varying or adverse conditions together, which produces such varying actions and opinions, as illustrated in the fable of the wolf and the lamb, and
in the discussion between eminent moralists. Evil
and morality are both variable quantities; they are
finite in expression and admit of comparison, because dependent upon conditions and finite action.
This call be made nmathematically evident firom the
following illustration with regard to ignorance and
wisdom. Absolute wisdom is the entire absence or
zero of ignorance; and conversely, absolute ignorance is the entire absence or zero of wisdom. But,
between the two absolutes, of wisdom and ignorance,
there are the two finite and variable quantities which
take the unqualified expressions, wisdom and ignorance. In other words absolute wisdom and absolute
ignorance are the two poles of a progressive and
finite knowledge. In the life of man wisdom is the
increasing quantity, while ignorance is the decreasing one. But man is not omniscient, and the only
correct conclusion is, that he starts from  absolute
ignorance and progresses towards absolute wisdom.




26         THE ETEITITY OF E VIL.
TWith the least increment of knowledge he must be
wise in a degree, and yet almost absolutely ignorant.
WVith each increment of knowledge he travels on
towards wisdom. We say of a child, it gets larger,
stronger and wiser; but we can affirm of the wisest
man, he is ignorant; and we measure his quantity
of wisdom by the infinite ineasure of his ignorance.
It is when a man'lbecomes somewhat wise, he may
gain sufficient force of thought to conceive in some
small degree how profoundly ignorant he is. Surely,
when compared with omniscience, the wisest man
who ever lived, or lives, would be in quantity but
the infinitesimal part of an atom compared to the
earth. By ignorance, then, we mlean not wise; but
this by no means defines ignorance. We say the
babe is ignorant, the school-boy is ignorant, the
middle-aged and the old are ignorant, but by this we
do not mean they have no knowledge whatever, we
simply mean they are wise or ignorant as compared
with sonme standard of measuremlent, established by
common consent, and which varies in times and
places. That which falls short is ignorance, that
which is equal to, or exceeds is wisdom. But in
the progress of the race one age establishes the
standard of -measurement a little greater than the
age immediately preceding.' This change is by an
insensible movement as though the standard were an
elastic rod susceptible of being made longer but never
shorter; and it is only by comparing one age with
another, or many others, that any change can be




VFARYIVG STANDARDS.              27
observed. But this may be still further differentiated
by admitting the standard of each individual to figure in the question; and we have a quantity varying from the Hottentot to the HuIimboldts of the world.
Now, when one age says, this man is a fool, that man
is ignorant, and the other man is wise, it uses these
terms as compared with the standard of wisdom of
that age; and when the individual affirms that this,
that, or the other man is a fool, ignorant or wise, he
compares the man usually with himself.
It is just the same with morality. It is a variable
quantity, and passes onward from imperfection, as
tlhe starting poit, towards absolute perfection. The
standard of individuals and the ages are all different,
and must necessarily be so, else there would be no
varying conditions.  And thus it has come to pass;
the ages of Moses and Socrates, and Jesus and
Luther are widely different and can be distinguished.
What was considered morality in one of these, would
not in the others be a true conception; as what was
meant by wisdom in one of these ages would not be
meant in either of the others. So also of great religious teachers; the standards of Moses, and Socrates,
and Jesus, and Luther, and Parker are widely different. Yet, it is the standard which the age sets up;
which is accepted and rules public action. So in
morals; we have existing on earth the notions of the
Caribs as well as the Beechers of the land. Morality
is a wor d of comparison or degree.




28          THE ETERNITY OF EVIL.
In the progress of man the humanl race does
not equally advance. All do not go on with measured equal pace. Some races far outstrip others, some
individuals far outstrip the race, tribe, or family, to
which they belong,; so that we have to-day from the
highest to the lowest every phase of intellectual and
moral development. This age is not superimposed
upon the past, burying it entirely away froni the sunlight of to-day; but, like the geologic strata, all the
formations of past ages crop out on the surface of this
age somewlhere, showing us the changes which time
has brought about.  We study the past in its fossil
remains, both in earth and man. And as there are
living representatives of animals which predominated
in past ages, so there are living representatives of
moral doctrines which predominated in past ages,
but which are now looked upon as barbarous and
out of place.
This law of varying conditions is organic, and
perhaps inheres in the ultimate atom. Somle generalizations upon this fact nmay not be out of place.
The first great law we find in the world is, Nature,
distributively, never repeats herself. No two men, no
two women, no two children, can be found exactly
alike, either in physical features or mental organization; no two animals of the same species alike, no
two animaleulse nor insects wlhich swarm by the hundreds of millions can be found exactly alike. They
may appear alike to the natural eye but not to the
eye of science. No two plants alike. Nature seems




VARIATION  OR GANIC.            29
to be so prodigal of varieties, that no two flowers nor
blades of grass, nor seeds are alike; and we presume
no two ultimate atoms of matter alike. The different states of carbon, as the diamond, charcoal and
graphite, would lead to this conclusion, as also to
explain isomerism in chemistry supposing the atomic
theory to be true. Not only in the individual is
this law of variety to be seen out there are great
class and family distinctions.  Thus the race of mankind has its great typical distinctions, as the Caucassian or white race; the Indian or brown race; and
the Negro or black race. These typical distinctions
are founded in Nature, and a general law governs
them. They bear not only marks of physical variation but great mental differences as types of mankind. Not only this, but each type has also marked
characteristics as a nation of men. Thus, in the great
historic race, the Caucassian, we find marked mental
characteristics-the Romans, the conquerers; the
Grecians, the artistic; the Hebrews, the devout. The
Romans were the most combative, ambitious, acquisitive people on earth; they were a nation of Napoleons without his knowledge.  The Grecian mind
was metaphysical, elegant, highly literary. In this
soil sculpture, architecture, poetry and philosophy
all flourished. The IIebrew  mind reveled in its
barter and fervent worship.  To trade and to pray,
became a Jew. The IIebrew government even was
a theocracy.  Jehovah, in a miraculous manner,
according to their own history, chose the leaders.




30          THE ETERNITY OF EVIL.
I-Ie ann.ointed them with holy oil, breathed into them
the " spirit of God," fought their battles, preserved
them as a chosen people from the rapacity of surrounding nations, or sold them into slavery for their
lust after other gods.  Thus, in the life of nations,
in their great mental characteristics, a general law
is proclaimed in individual variation.
We are now able to see the immediate cause of
so many conflicting opinions, and why people are
engaged in an endless discussion of rights, privileges
and duties. The true cause of an opinion lies further
remote, and depends on the degree of knowledge.




CHAPTER  II.
P12RFEC'TION  IN  MAYI  FOREVER  IMPOSSIBLE.
~. 1. If the foregoing conclusions are true, it
follows that perfection in man is forever impossible.
For, suppose, starting from absolute ignorance, as
all are compelled to at birth, having inherited no
knowledge, but at most only a certain tendency or
capacity to know, and perhaps certain instincts
which are irrational, and can never rise higher than
a manifestation of transmitted habit, we progress
in a given ratio towards absolute wisdom; it would
be impossible to reach the infinite quantity for two
reasons. In the first place, we would have to progress by increments of finite knowledge, and finites
added to or )ulltiplied into finites never produce
an infinite.  And, in the second place, it would require infinite capacity to acquire and retain absolute or infinite wisdom.  Neither can we in a finite
or restricted sense become perfect.  Some further
remarks on this conclusion of man's unlimited
imperfection will not be out of place; for the assump



32     PERFECTION IN JIAN  IMI'POSSIBLE.
tion of attainable perfection has always led to failure in ethical teachings. Upon this false hypothesis
it is argued, and that truly, that man should have a
perfect code to govern him, and that to the command given in accordance with the perfect law there
is neither variableness nor shadow of turning,-that
the lasw, which was nmeant to govern him, has no
exceptions. From the false assumption of attainable
perfection has grown up what is called the perfect
law, which has never had that perfect expression,
which would make it applicable to man. If the
command be given, simply, as Jesus gave it, "' Be ye
therefore perfect," —this leaves the question a nullity
if literally construed, as it is absolutely impossible
to be perfect; but, if it be interpreted to mean'" aim
at perfection," then it is left open for each fallible
person to aim as he sees fit; discharging the forces
of action, regardless of consequences to others; aiming at the empty air; the mark in the midst of a
multitucde; or even shooting around the corner of
some great sin; ini either case lie may think he is
aiming at perfection.
~. 2. The mistake of conclludir that a perfect
law is applicable to nman arises from the tacit or
expressed assumption that man is perfectly free and
can be just as good or just as bad as he pleases.
Prospectively it assurmes, that ideal perfection is an
attainable real from such perfectly free action; and
retrospectively it is a theological dogma that our




CONDITIONS GOVERN THE WILL.          33
first parents enjoyed a "' perfect estate."  This gave
rise to the belief in a " Golden Age," common to all
Eastern mythologies. In the Christian theology it
is held that the Devil was thus free, and instead of
freely being good, freely made himself bad; that
Eve and Adam, instead of freely being good, freely
made themselves bad, and so of all their posterity.
In answer to this, it may be affirmed, mankind
are free to the extent of their capacities, abilities, or
circumstances; in other words, that conditions govern the direction of their free activities. Hence,
some persons are less free than others. The slave,
who toils nnder his master's lash, is not so free to
travel, acquire knowledge, amass wealth, in short to
call out all his mental activities, as is the master.
The man who is locked up in a jail is not so free to
steal or murder, as he would be at large among
people. Hence, what is often popularly called goodness may be the result of restraint, and badness the
result of more freedom. Again, the person who has
inherited a mania to steal and murder is not so free
to live without committing these crimes, as one who
has no such mania. The idiot has not the freedom
to become wise; he is mentally chained to ignorance. The " virtues" and "vices" of people are
often born with themn, and the will, instead of governing the conduct of people, is governed itself by
the mental condition; so that, given such a birth
and edclucation, a certain character, which guides the
will, is the product.  State the kind of a man you
D




34     PERFECTION IN MAN IMPOSSIBLE.
want, and science, under the conditions, will produce
him. This is why the Catholic is a Catholic, the
Protestant is a Protestant, the Mahometan a Mahometan, the Infidel an Infidel. Under ordinary or
normal conditions a mother is not free to stand and
look calmly on, without wondering whether it were
hurt or not, should her child fall from her chamber
window. She is only free to run and gather up her
child. Neither is she free to hate or love it. Love
is a normal necessity of mankind.  Nor is there
such a thing as love, hatred, or belief, freely pro'
duced by the will. None of these are free.  No one,
by willing, can love or hate an other, nor believe or
disbelieve anything. These are governed by the
necessities of his condition.  The condition he may
in a measure, though quite limited, change or
control.
There is a good illustration of human freedom
in the flying of the kite. You bind it to the air by
neans of a string. You restrain it with a string
and it soars aloft. The conditions of the kite are then
fulfilled. But remove the restraint by breaking the
string and it careens madly to earth. So man is free
to act virtuously, only because of his restraint.
His passions must be restrained by a knowledge of
the evils coming from their abuse.  He ought to
have the freedom to use well the materials which
are given him in greater or lesser abundance. Yet,
knowledge has the right to control ignorance at all
times. This gives the parent a right to control




CONDITIONS GOVERN CHARACTER.          35
the child, the master the pupil, the overseer the
workman, within their relative spheres.
But, if man has inherited weak or rotten materials, he can only build out of them a weak or rotten
life. If he has inherited strong and sound materials,
he may build, if he applies wisdom thereto, a strong
and sound life. Thus, if we have poor materials to
work upon, we are mostly what we are made, never
what we would wish to make ourselves, even within
the world's present attainment; and, if we have good
materials given us, we are in part what we are made,
and in part what we make ourselves. Man comes
into life unbidden on his part; seldom bidden on
the part of his parents. His acts are the budding
forth of a germ within, nourished by outward circumstances, and the resultant of these two forces,
called the conditions of his being, gives him character. If he is born a Negro, Indian, White man,
or idiot, he lives and dies such. The physica and
mental conditions of all these are engrafted into
their very being, and it is these which distinguish
us as Negro, Indian, WVhite man, sensible or idiotic.
~. 3. To live in accordance with the perfect
law, or even to fulfill his ideal, man must have the
power to make himself whatever he desires. But
his desires may far exceed his natural capacity, and
capacity is a condition bounded on all sides by his
desires. Education may increase the capacity, this
elevates the standard of intellectuality, but a partic



36     PERFECTION IN MIAN IMPOSSIBLE.
ular intellectuality soon reaches its limit.  In the
mental, as well as in the physical forces of the animal,
there is a certain limit, beyond which it seems impossible to pass, and this is called the natural capacity of the animal. The physical capacity of man
increases by education to a certain extent, and then
stops.  Milo might run the whole length of the
StadiuLm with a four year old bull on his shoulders,
having carried him daily from a calf up to that age;
but this does not prove that Tom Thumb could ever
possibly have done the same;:-, or, that Milo, himself,
could ever possibly have carried a full. grown elephant on his shoulders. So also in mental culture in
a particular direction, and by a life of study upon
any one thing, a person may become an adept, far
transcending in this his otherwise occupied neighbor; but it will be found he does not progress beyond
a certain degree, far this s;ide of perfection, or even
his own ideal. He stops at the natural limit of his
powers, and when he ha?. gained his utmost, he is
farther this side of his ideal than when he began;
for his ideal moves also on in an increasing ratio.
This is the testimony of all who have accomplished
great things. It is the testimony of all who can
grasp in memory, their own life.
Mentally, as well as physically, men are not
created equal.  Equality lies in the right to use,
according to their best knowledge, their unequal
powers of mind and body.  As one star differs
from another star in glory, so one person differs




STARS DIFFER.               37
from another in mental or physical capacity. Yet
both, stars and persons, have the equal right to dispense their own quality and quantity of light, and
if obscured by the dazzling brightness of others,
they must submit.
One person may have the taste and ability of
the writer, another of the orator, another of the
blacksmith, or farmer.  One may be a linguist,
mathematician, or musician, and some, with great
capacities, may succeed in much, while others succeed in nothing. Could we possibly become whatever we wished, simply from the "freedom" of our
will, and our capacities to grow, we might all of
us become Shakspeares, and Miltons, and Bacons,
and Newtons. But there was one Hamlet, and one
Iago to be created, and but one Shakspeare to create
them. There was but one "Paradise Lost" to be
written, and but one Milton to write it. Byron could
apostrophize the Ocean; Longfellow  could write
IHiawatha;" Burns hold conversation with "' Auld
Nicky Ben;" but it takes a Milton to speak like
Moloch, and a Shakspeare to cut the pound of flesh
for Shylock. There was but one Oliver Cromwell
for the greatest of English events; but one George
the Third for her smallest event. There was but
one Diogenes with the cynic pride of meanness, to
tread on the academic pride of Plato. There was
but the one Philip to call forth the invectives and
eloquence of the one Demosthenes, and but one
Aristotle to educate the one Alexander.  If Sir




38     PPERFECTION IN M-AN IMPOSSIBLE.
William Hamilton had been born an Osage indian,
Scotland would boast no philosopher the greatest in
the world. If Archbishop Whately had been born
a Hottentot, Ireland would have produced no one
to give us a logical effigy of Aristotle. That is,
to suppose other conditions, is to suppose entirely
different persons; and the freedom of the will and
the ideal perfection are swallowed up in the conditions; In other words, there is no way to arrive
at perfection but by progression, by bettering the
attained present in the attainable future. But we
would have to progress infinitely to reach the
ultimate. Like the curve of the hyperbola, which
continually approaches its asymptotes and does not
touch them till space ends; so man, in his progressive nature, may continually approach that divine
attribute which reaches out from the Absolute, but
at which he will never arrive.  Verily, were we
perfect we would be gods.
True, man may progress till he knows all about
this earth, perhaps to its very centre; till he knows
every element of the sun, and can tell its coming
effects on the earth for thousands of years; fore-tell
every adverse current of air, for weeks, and get such
control of the forces, which act with such awful
energy in earth and air, as to make the winds and
waters obey him. Yet, this would come as far short
of physical perfection, as the earth is less than the
whole bulk of infinite orbs. Moral, physical and
intellectual perfection is forever impossible.




IDEALS DIFFER.               39
~. 4. In the Ideal world, man by no means
makes to himself a perfect ideal.  The ideals of
men differ, as do their beliefs and actions.  The
ideal of a Michael Angelo, would not be that of a
Phidias, for the body of a god. They would differ
as widely in conferring mental attributes. The ideal
of an Emerson and a Christian, would differ widely
for both God and man. There is a vast abyss between the ideals of a Caffre and a Shelley. The
finest ideals of men, in their loftiest flights of thought,
fall far short of true conceptions, either of God
or the Ideal Man. A perfect man, has never yet
been conceived in thought. There is imperfection
beyond all possible conceptions.  The Jesuses of
the world all fail. We grow up to, and pass on
beyond them.  There may be finite intelligences
in the universe, far greater, in reality, than earth's
loftiest ideal. Why not? It is the most dwarfed
egotism to affirm, all finite intelligence is produced
upon this mote of a world. And, if other worlds
produce their intelligences, those intelligences may
be as much superior to us physically, morally, and
intellectually, as it is possible for conditions to be
as much superior to ours, as we can imagine; and
those intelligences may have their ideals after which
they are struggling, as much superior to our ideals,
as it is possible for them to imagine.
The prime cause of the worship of Jesus to-day,
is this struggle and longing after the ideal in manhood. The world has painted its Golden Age in




40     PERFECTION INT IMANT IMIPOSSIBLE.
the past, and looks forward to the Millennium. The
Jews looked forward to a temporal reign of the
Messiah, who would restore the Lost Tribes, and
deliver the people from the hand of the oppressors.
HIe is yet to come. The Christians claim  that the
Messiah came in the person of Jesus, but did not
stay. The disciples believed he was to return, as
he himself told them, within that generation. He
did not come. The early Christians said he would
come in the next generation, and the next, and the
next. Now, the time is postponed to the ideal fulfilllment of the " Good time coming."  The perfect
man and the perfect time are still in the future.
Science and sound reasoning teach us they will be
forever there, the ever sought, never obtained. The
Ideal is the reflection of the great fact of the world's
history within the consciousness, that the human race
is passing on to the better. This gives to each one the
Icldeal Manhood and Womanhood. That is, the better
man and woman, but in no wise the perfect. And
it is a necessity of the endless difference of mental
capacity in the human race, that each being must
have a particular ideal. The Ideal Manhood varies
as do people's conceptions of a personal god. In
fact the two methods of conception are similar.
Man projects his own image on the infinite back
ground, and calls it God, or Ideal Manhood. The
personal god, and Ideal Manhood are identical.
The god Jesus is but an ideal man; he even falls
below the ideal man of some. This is all that gives




THE GODS CHANGE.              41
intensity to worship. That the personal god and
the Ideal Manhood, are but reflections of self, is
proven from the fact, that sex has to enter into the
conception.  The Catholic is not alone contented
with Jesus, he must have his Mary,-the Shaker his
Annie Lee,-the Spiritualist his Father and Mother
god. The Protestant church fails in the feminine
conception, and what deductively must necessarily
follow, proves true. This wing of the Christian
church is composed largely of women; Jesus is the
ideal man whom they worship. There is no ideal
woman for man, and he seeks his god elsewhere.
Too Inmuch stress is often placed upon this worship
of the Ideal, whether as a god or an exalted man.
It is not this worship which makes the world progress. It is the progressive fact of human nature,
which creates within us the Ideal. Yet, among the
vast millions of earth, this order is reversed, and an
effect substituted for the cause. Mankind does not
progress because of laws and religions. Civilization does not arise from these; but progress which
is only another name for change, is the eternal law
of Nature which produces them all. It is Dissatisfaction, rooted in the soil of Evil, which is the cause
of all progress.  Man is dissatisfied with his lot.
He labors to better it.  Physical conditions thus
grow better. These re-act upon him mentally, and
tone down, and soften, and refine the feelings. The
god he had conceived of in a ruder state, he becomes
dissatisfied with, and he mentally changes his god,




42     PERFECTION 0   TX MAIN  IPOSSIBLE.
conferring other and more exalted attributes. This
changes his form of worship. He breaks his idols
of wood and stone, casts aside his cross, and ascends
to the soul's highest Ideal; and having forgotten
what he once was, wonders how those he has left
behind, can still be
"Pagans suckled in a creed outworn."
~. 5. We often hear it asserted that man will
some day reach a perfect estate.  This conclusion is
doubtless drawn from the constantly increasing rate
of progress.  It is often asserted, man progresses
in a geometrical ratio; and in a geometric series the
limit is soon reached, which, if not absolute perfection, is so near it, that it would be folly to try
to conceive of the difference; and, that in practical
results they would be so near perfection they might
be considered as such.
But we deny the conclusion founded upon any
geometrical progression. For the sake of any argument which may be founded thereon, we assent to
the geometrical progress of man; and affirm: man
may progress in a geometrical ratio, but only advance in an arithmetical one; and relatively he does
progress towards perfection, but absolutely he does
not progress at all. For the purpose of illustration,
we have constructed the following diagram: Let
K. K. etc., represent the indefinite plane of man's
activities; —I, the point of ignorance from which he
starts, and K. K. K. K. etc., the indefinite points








I'P
1"    -     WI         0       4o&.       0          0:;o 
~    ~ /
m




A VITAL DIFFERENCE.            43
of knowledge towards which he progresses.  To
cover the whole plane of his activities, he must pass
spirally outwards from the pole of his ignorance
towards knowledge. Let now these spiral revolutions about the point of his ignorance on the plane
of his activities, be represented as circular, and the
distance between each be represented by a constant
number, say unity.  Then the diameters would
increase in an arithmetical ratio. But the ratio of
diameter to circumference is 3-1415926-=p.  Now
suppose that man completes each revolution in the
same length of time, and we have one half of 1, 2,
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, for the rate of his advancement, but
p, 2p, 3p, 4p, 5p, 6p, 7p, for the rate of his progress. That is, he may progress in a geometrical
ratio but only advance in an arithmetical one.
But again: Let any point on I C represent
the Ideal Conception; and suppose that man's Ideal
Conception, increases in the same ratio of his advancement. Then at 1 he has the mental power of
10~, and at 2 of 2~, and so forth. But the distance
between the points of his attainment and the Ideal
Conception is always increasing. N4ow, really this is
true of man's conception in regard to his knowledge;
for at the point I, he is so profoundly ignorant that
he really thinks he knows everything; at 1, there
are a few things he does not know; at 2, quite a
number; at 3, very many; at 4, the knowledge of
his ignorance becomes quite annoying to him; and
thus he goes on, till at 7, he has sufficient knowledge




44     PERFECTION IN MAN IM1IPOSSIBLE.
to comprehend how profoundly ignorant he is; and
thus the perfect at last, only gets farther away from
him. But what he loses in the direction of C, he
gains toward 1K; so that relatively he advances, but
absolutely he does not.
Now, this is perhaps as good'an illustration of
progress, and the real facts in the case, as the history of man and his own feelings would warrant.
We may, therefore, safely conclude: that man may
progress. in a geometrical ratio, but only advance in
an arithmetical one; and that relatively he does
advance towards perfection on the plane of his own
activities, but absolutely he does not; for there are
infinite other planes he can never touch, both above
and below him.
~. 6. By force of the same fact of impossible
perfection in man, it follows that a perfect law can
not be given, and were it given could no be obeyed.
A perfect law has never yet been expressed. For,
if we try to give expression to the law of humnan
freedom; that is, the liberty of each, limited only
by the like liberty of all; and say with Spencer:' Every man has freedom to do all that he wills,
provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any
other man," then, it is no wrong for him to injure
himself nor any animal belonging to himself;
whereas, it is the chiefest of all chief wrongs to injure
one's self. It is a sin against the first law of life.
This law cannot be applied to children. It neutral



THE GOLDEN RULE FAILS.           45
izes parental rule. In fact, there could be no government of family or state; for it supposes a perfect
man who is to will and to do perfectly. But, on the
other hand, if we should restrict this perfect liberty,
by saying: do what you will so long as you injure
not yourself, nor any other person or animal; we
would bind him down to inaction and death.
The Golden Rule conies as near as it is perhaps
possible to express the Ideal Law; yet it conies far
short of perfection, and can never be obeyed. It
tells you to do nothing less, nor more, than you
would wish or desire others to do towards you.
This supposes you to be perfect to insure good
results; and, furthermore, supposes an absolute
equality in individuals, not in rights alone, but in
conditions.  The Golden Rule can not always be
obeyed with good results, from the fact it is a sympathetic ideal, devoid of a penalty. At most, it only
sets up yourself, a very imperfect creature, as the
standard of action. Your desires shall be the test;
all actions shall square with your desires. Perhaps
no one desires to be punished. Even when one has
transgressed, the desire is to shun the effect, to flee
the punishment. It matters not how villainous or
exemplary the transgressor, the desire always is, to
shun the penalty. The Golden Rule applied would
thus pardon every transgression, rather than inflict
a punishment. The Golden Rule expresses pardon;
it is not a law with a penalty. It cries out: " Forgive!"  From it does not come that merciless cry:




46     PERFECTION IN MAN IMPOSSIBLE.
"Oh, transgressor, now suffer!"  It grows out of
sympathy for weakness and ignorance, which are
ever leading people into error and sin. It binds up
the wounds of satisfied law, and would stay the arm
of Justice, which alone can bring health to a people.
It preaches the sermon on the Mount.  It is an
angel of love in the midst of vice.  It blesses
always and curses not. It would destroy a world
with kindness, never save it by a single act of justice. It pets and sympathises with the villain whom
Justice holds with a vice-like grip.
The Golden Rule does not come to us as a law.
It may be obeyed or'not, in thousands of instances
without bad results to us, and with good results to
others.  Unflinchingly carried out, no wayward
child of the family or state would ever be punished.
It would not only mar the exalted beauty of sympathy, but entirely destroy it, to put the Golden
Rule in the form of a law; thus: Do unto others
as ye would that they should do to you, or pay a
fine of    dollars and costs, or serve  years in
a state penitentiary, or hang by the neck onFriday till dead.  Yet, this is the blank form in
which all our statutory enactments aim to be written. Beautiful, as the Golden Rule is as an ethical
flower in the gardens of civilization, it would be
but a noxious weed yielding the seeds of death, if
applied to an Indian savage, who'thinks it the
chiefest of all human glory, to adorn his buckskin
shirt with the hair of women and children, he has




A SYYMPATHETIC IDEAL.          47
killed for their scalps. The Golden Rule is an ideal
thought, which cannot be conceived of by such a
savage, whose head is only a battery of cruelty and
death. Among such, the Golden Rule is simply oil
added to the fierce flame. Among men, it never has
worked, and must forever fail. Its language is: "If
a man compel thee to go with him one mile, go
with him twain; "-it matters not, whether he is
going to heaven or hell. "If he take thy coat,
give him thy cloak also;" —if he steal thy horse,
hunt him up' and give him thy cow. "If he smite
thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other
also; "-if he outrage and scalp thy wife, offer him
the scalp of thy child also. In short, be a lamb,
and enforce a lamb's ethics in a den of wolves.
The great mistake is, those who can appreciate
the Golden Rule the most, and see its transcendent
beauties, forget that the low and the vile have no
appreciation of it; and there are races of men, we
presume, so low in'the scale of developement, that
the Golden Rule has never yet been conceived of by
them; for it is the highest development of sympathy, the fairest flower of the Ages. That it has
not worked, we only have to open any page of the
World's history to find true. It does not prevent
slavery; for the Wolf's logic to the Lamb, is ever
in the mouth of the slaveholder, as thus: "If God
Almighty had made me like a negro, or other barbarian, I should think it a great kindness, nay, a
righteous act, to enslave me, and treat me as well as




48     PERFECTION IN NMAN IJMPOSSIBLE.
slaves are treated physically; and besides, morally,
it would be an infinite blessing to me, to bring me
within the fold of Christ, and save my soul."  It is
thus the Golden Rule is self-destructive, amidst
Evil. How could a half nation of Christians ever
defend Southern slavery with the Golden Rule on
their lips if it prohibited it?  Applied to the common school system of this country it will not work.
Does a man see no value inll an education, never
having learned to read and write, and thanks God
fo'r it, he prohibits his children from going to school,
and votes and works against commlon schools.  The
bliss and villainy of ignorance the Golden Rule can
never disturb.  Ignorance has to be torn out of
man by the roots; the operation always accompanied
with pain and bleeding.  Does a man rswhip his
child to death in obedience to a religious obligation,
his Golden Rule tells him he has done no wrong;
it even sustains him in the awsvful work of death.
Does he burn heretics at the stake, his Golden Rule
only says he ought to be treated in the same manner
if a heritic, which he assents to. Ignorance, glutted
with brutal indulgence, always folds the Golden
Rule about itself and goes to sleep.  The Carib
eats his captive, and the American indian decorates
himself with the scalps of babes and mothers;
Lovejoy goes down under the heel of a mob, and a
Parker is lampooned in the prayers of Boston; and
yet, the Golden Rule is as dumb as eternal silence.
Not that it is in itself wrong, but because the main



A SUBT'LETY UNTLASKED.            49
spring of all our actions does not lie in aolral codes
or any rule of conduct. We act independent of all
these. Action is not the result of moral- law; but
this is the result of our development-our imperfect
state-our condition.  Our actions are the effects of
causes lying back of, and beyond, all moral codes;
and were we possessed of the knowledge of the
constant forces which ever evolve actions we could
predict them  with that certainty with which an
astronomer predicts an eclipse.
From what has already been said on the conflict
of opinion, in regard to moral law, this is made
apparent. But let us once more illustrate the false
method of definition in regard to morals. It is an
oft repeated maxim: "A person has no rqyh.t to act
wrong."  It is safe to say a thousand people would
call this a truism, to one who would question its
truth. Yet, nothing could be farther from a just
law of action than this maxim. It at once supposes
the actor to be possessed of full knowledge of what
and how he is to do; and the exact result of all his
actions. Let us rob it of its subtlety and say: "A
person has no right to act unless he has a perfect
kmiowledge of what is right."  This at once says
a person shall never make an experiment because
of his ignorance. Because he does not know how,
he is never to learn. Yet experience is the school
in which people gain knowledge; all art has sprung
out of it; all science; all self-government; all civilization. The child politic or the child human has a
E




50      PERFECTION IN MAN IMPOSSIBLE.
right to act though it often stumbles and acts atmiss.
In fact it cannot help acting. If it acts wrong it
wrill soon know it, and the right is only thus made
known; and generalizing its actions, it has the
science of its life. That maxim, if enforced to-maorrow, would result in human inactivity, poverty,
ignorance, and, in a few years, entire extinction of
the race; yet it is the very essence of the Golden
Rule.  Science reveals to us punishment as the
inexorable law of Nature.  The Stomach and IBack
both say: "Do or die."  Nature does not merely say:
"Work or go hungry or cold."  Hunger and cold
often conme at best. But it is "do or die."  I-Io!"
cries the drowning man to his fellow in the water,
" help, or I perish!"  "I gladly would," responds the
more fortunate, "did I not have to save myself."
This is the response which the first law of life forces
from us all. Seldom do we find a person who will
willingly lay down his life for another, save his own
child, whose weakness demands his aid.  Here,
sympathy sways the parent into entire obliviousness
of his own life. It is the demand which weakness
always makes upon the strong; that inevitable
tendency in all nature to equilibrium, though the
strong have to suffer for it. All that can be laid
down as a rule in regard to human action is: "A
person has no right to do that which he knows to be
wrong. "




CHAPTER  III.
DIVERSIT Y IN  UNVIT Y.
~. 1. WVe have said that diversity is a fact of
Nature.  But Nature is an infinite Paradox. It
may be as truthfully asserted that unity is a fact of
Nature. This is seen both in the development of
plants and animals, and in the secondary action of
physical and mental, forces. The unity of Nature
proclaims its constancy, its precision of action. The
force which binds worlds together in harmonious
action, is no freak of God's will, for a special purpose; but an infinite and universal force for a
general and infinite purpose; and science proclaims,
as they go plunging through space with a seeming
reckless velocity and momentum, sufficient to burst
each other into  chaotic fragments should they
collide. they are so governed, that no unforeseen
accident can happen them; attracted by each other
their orbital aberrations are part of their predetermined movement.  The earth in going round the
sun from year to year keeps such time to the "l music




52           DIVERSITY IN UNITY.
of the spheres," that she swings round no millionth
part of a second too late, nor no hair's breath of
space gained: and though her orbit may intersect
the path of a comet, Infinite Intelligence, has
promised safety alike to earth and wandering star.
The constant forces of the Universe are no more
disturbed by comet or moon's nod, than is the earth's
mass by the falling of a sunbeam. The earth was
created and is sustained by a fixed law, and will so
continue to exist while an Infinite Force sustains
her. The stars look down ulpon us and "'have us
to bed," through fixed  laws, bringing  " tired
Nature's sweet restorer, balmy  Sleep," like an
angel of mercy to aching brain and weary muscle.
The sun shines by a fixed law. No motion of light
which reaches this dusty globe but reveals in
scientific truth, the universal Providence, and the
stability of the Universe. The grass grows and
withers, in accordance with an everlasting covenant.
So every material thing connected with this earth
declares the unity and harmlony of Nature.  The
air we breathe, in entering the lungs, or driving the cloud of thunder, or in the sweeping
cyclone, or gentle zephyrs' breath, fills all its offices
and makes all its varied manifestations through
fixed and general laws. The simple elements of
which it is composed mix in accordance with a
fixed purpose.  Two parts by weight of nitrogen
to one of oxygen is the "breath of Life;" reverse
this order —two of oxygen to one of nitrogen, and




UNITY OF TYPE.                53
it becomes the breath of Death; and this air we
breathe, and which gives us life, carries in its wings
the vapor to water the earth, and from which the
dew is distilled through laws which are as fixed and
constant as those which keep the earth in its orbit.
No drop of water that comes from the cloud but is
formed and falls by immutable laws, and in infinite
Providence it is made and sent for the comfort and
life no less of Judas than Jesus. It falls on the
good and bad alike, the just and the unjust.
~. 2. Naturalists, observing that members of
the same class resemble each other in the general
plan of organization, tell us of their "u tnity qf type."
This " unity of type" has been called the "soul"
of Natural history.  " What can be more curious,"
says Darwin, " than that the hand of a man formed
for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the
horse, the wing of the bat, and the paddle of the
porpois should all be constructed on the same
pattern, and should include the same bones, in the
same relative position."  Of the relative connection
in homologous parts Geoffroy St. IHilaire says: "The,parts may chanoe to almost any extent in form and
size and yet they always remain connected together
in the same or(ler. We never find, for instance, the
bones of the arm and the fore-arm, or of the thigh
and leg transposed.  Hence these names may be
given to the homologous parts in widely different
animals,"  Owen also tells us that'"the skeletons




54           DIVERSITY IN UNTITY.
of animals whether modified for aquatic, areial or
terrestrial life, will show that whilst they were
perfectly and beautifully adapted to the sphere of
life and exigences of the species, they adhered with
remarkable constancy to that general pattern or
archetype, which was first manifested on this planet,
as geology teaches in the class of fishes, and which has
not been departed from even in the most extremely
modified skeleton of the last and highest from that
creative Wisdom has been pleased to place upon
this earth."  This he tells us is no transcendental
dream, but the fruit of inductive research.
We see the same unity of plan in the construction of the mouths of insects. " VThat can be more
different," says Darwin, "than the immensely long
spiral proboscis of a sphynx moth, the curious
folded one of a bee or bug, and the great jaws of a
beetle; yet all these organs, serving for such different
purposes, are formed by numerous modifications of
an upper lip, mandibles, and two pairs of maxile.
Analogous laws govern the construction of the
mouths and limbs of crustaceans. So it is with the
flowers of plants."
That Nature works upon a general plan is seen
in the growth of vertebrate animals, however widely
different. This is strikingly manifest in the embryos
of animals. Thus Von B3aer, the emllinent IRussian
naturalist, for many years professor of zoology in
the University of Konigsberg, says,'" The embryos
of mammalia, of birds, lizards and snakces are in




EMBR YOS ALIKE.               55
their earlist states exceedingly like one another,
both as a whole and in the mode of development of
their parts; so much in fact that we can often
distinguish the embryos only by their size. In my
possession are two little embryos in spirit whose
names I have omitted to attach, and at present I
am' quite unable to say to what class they belong.
They may be lizards, or small birds, or very young
mammalia; so complete is the similarity in the
mode of formation of the head and trunk of these
animals. The extremities are still absent in these
embryos, but. even if they existed in the earliest
stage of their development, we should learn nothing,
for the feet of lizards and mammals, the wings and
feet of birds, no less than the hands and feet of
man, all arise from the same fundamental form."
It is thus that science is revealing the unity of
Nature, and the harmony of her action. At every
step, of physical science, there comes the evidence
that nature has but one mode in which she acts,
and that Diversity is swallowed up in Unity.
~. 3. But shall we say that nature only proves
constant in physical action, never in her mental
forces? Surely not. She is as constant in the one
as the other. Let us reason from what we know in
the animal world. As man's body was typified in
all vertebral forms below him, so was his mentality.
His passions, appetites, instincts, reason, and most
of his habits are all typified in the animal world




5 6;6.nl~DIVERSITY INA UATY.
below him. There is a unitary law running through
the mental world. Many animals of the same species
eat one another. Thus the male aligator eats his
young till too big to gorge at a mouthful. This
typifies cannibalism.  Hoogs will eat their young
often, and man will eat the flesh of this hog cannibal.
If man will eat man, deeming it a dainty morsel, it
is not shocking to find the like (lone by the inferior
animal. Men have wondered how man could have
fallen to such a depth as cannibalism.  The wonder
is how he has risen above it. Human theft is typified in every domestic animal, having brought it, no
doubt from their wild ancestors.  Many of t.hem, as
the cat and the dog, will often hide what they have
stolen, if too much to eat at once. Robbing' is a sort
of mental glory to the eagle. He will soar for hours
high in air, or sit perched on some lofty hight, watching the active and unwearyirLg fishhawk, hunting
his prey; and when the hawk has obtained it, and
is fluttering off through the air, that old robber will
pounce down on him with a scream and gather up
the fish before it can fall to the ground or water
again; and thus carry off the hard and honestly
earned food of his neighbor, never expecting to give
a valuable consideration therefor.  The English
cuckoo, and some other birds, will go succaneering,
lay their eggs in other birds' nests, and all unmindful of their own young malke other birds bring up a
foreign progeny. The young cuckoo, it is said, with
a, wonderful selfishness, will ca~st out the legal heirs




vIRC tAT TiHE ANT1IMAXL WTORLD.      57
of the nest to perish of cold or hunger.  In imitation of the cuckoo's selfishness and lack of maternal
love, how often do we find mothers belonging to the
race of man, to forsake their own children, sell or
give them to others. How often do we find some
basketful of infantile flesh left at some one's door.
It is difficult to see the distinction in animal morals
between the animal that eats its own offspring, and
the parent who kills the child either before or after
it is born.  If public opinion or selfishness demands
this of the parent, how low and sensual must be that
public opinion or selfishness. The seeds of prostitution are sown in the animal world far below man;
creating an insatiable demand in the male, which
no refinement of life or moral codes can remedy.
The fire is shot up from the hell of the lower world
into the veins of man, and there has yet been nothing
distilled in the laboratory of morals that can extinguish the fire.
Human slavery is typified in the red. ant enslaving the black ant. We are struck with wonder, and
almost horror after having been so long engtaged in
getting the black man liberated, through that bloodymeans —death, which is forever to cure the diseases
of nature, to find one ant enslaving its fellow; and
so helpless have the slaveholders become that it
seems Nature, in her eternal plan, has ordained slavery as a fact in the life of these ants. This fact was
first recorded by Pierre Huber in regard to the ant
Formica rtfescens.  "It is absolutely dependent on




58            DIVERSITY IN UNITY.
its slaves; without their aid the species would certainly become extinct in a single year," says this
learned naturalist.  "The males and fertile females
do not work, they are incapable of making their
own nests, or of feeding their own larve. When
the old nest is found inconvenient and they have to
migrate it is the slaves which determine the migration and actually carry their masters in their jaws."
" So utterly helpless are those masters," says Darwin, "that when Huber shut up thirty of them
without a slave, but with plenty of food which they
like best, and with their larvT and pupae to stimulate them to work, they did nothing; they could
not even feed themselves, and many perished of
hunger. Huber then introduced a single slave, and
she instantly set to work, fed and saved the survivors, made some cells, and tended the larve, and
put all to rights."  But the naturalist might have
taken this fact as an act of life-long benevolence in
one ant towards its feeble fellow had he not run
across the slave-catching Formica sangcuinea. These
ants are active, pioneering, courageous little fellows,
and capture the black ant as the Spanish and English
captured the black man in Africa, for the purposes
of labor.
Thus we might go on, and we would find in the
animal world, which many moralists have called so
innocent and pure, all the vices to which -nan is
addicted, typifying these vices in hinm.  There we
find murder, the nmost relentless and cruel; theft the




MAN'S DARK NATURE TYPIFIED.           59
most cunning and secretive; robbery the most pitiless and daring; slavery the most abject and perfect.
There we find all the horrid vices which arise from
the sexual instinct:-incipient prostitution, rape-in
short, Lust.  There we find the minor vices of a
refined selfishness; pride, vanity, jealousy, coquetry,
There we find also the vices of dishonor: —deceit,
lying, treachery, fraud, and, lastly, war.  We find
all Nature has a dark ground, an obverse as well as
reverse face. Name a crime, to which  man is addicted,
and its roots can be traced far down into the animal
world.
This dark side to all nature surely looks devilish;
it is slimy with the slippery embrace of monsters of
the land and sea; it is putrid with the festering vices
of hbumanity. We look into natural history, and
there we see reflected as in a mirror of hell, held by
fiendish hands, the image of man's dark nature
struggling in the coils of the fabled serpent.  We
are thus forced to conclude that physically and mentally, Nature has a unitary universal root, which runs
through the whole animal world.
~. 4. The assertion that "only man is vile,"
science bluntly contradicts; in fact the good and
purl are pre-eminently found there.  This leads us
on to ask: what is the great distinction between man
and inferior animals? In other words: how shall we
define man?  Shall we say with Carlyle, he is a
forked radish with a head fantastically carved, or




co           DITVERSITY IN -UATITI
that he is created in the image of God?  The one
is about as scientific as the other. Both are expressions of utter failure at definition.  Yet, the two
combined will bring us nearer the truth than any
definition Awe have hitherto seen. He is a combination of the vegetable and the god. There is mind
and matter wedded. He is an illustration of universal polarity, rooted to earth, yet stretching out
towards conscious existence hereafter.  He draws
his nourishment from the earth like the vegetable,
yet is quickened with sensations produced by an
infinite Force. Nor do we arrive at further truth by
trying to distinguish mllanl as a genus, and say herein
he is radically different from  all other animals.
HIuxley tells us, the difference between man and the
monkey is the anatomist's difficulty.  There is no
such anatomical difference as the hands and feet
indicate to the natural eye. Science looks closer
and finds none. Mentally we are at a farther loss
to distinguish.   Agassiz says he cannot say in
what the mental faculties of a child differ from
those of a young chimpanzee, and he thinks, as
did Theodore Parker, that the argument for immortal life will hold for the animal as well as man.
Professor Huxley says, "NNo impartial judge can
doubt, that the roots, as it were, of those great
faculties which confer on man his immeasurable
superiority above all other animate things, are traceable for down into the animate world. The dog,
the cat, the parrot, return love for our love, and




A DIFFERENACE.              61
hatred for hatred. They are capable of shame and
sorrow, and though they may have no logic, nor
conscious ratiocination, no one, who has watched
their ways, can doubt that they possess that power
of rational cerebration which evolves reasonable
acts, from the premises furnished by the senses-a
process which takes fully as large a share as concious reason in human activity."
It is safe to affirnl the difference between man
and the monkey is only one of growth, not one of
Nature's plans which would make us radically different. For example: the initiative faculty and reason
have grown into what is termed the inventive genius.
This is the perfection of the rudimentary instinct of
other ainmals. The bee makes her hexagonal comb
to store away her winter's food, but goes no farther
in art. For ages, perhaps, the young bee has made
no improvement on the mother's work. Yet, the
perfection of the hive-bee's work is one of physical
growth. The beaver builds his dam to deepen the
water to add to his commissary of provisions; but
the young beaver makes no perceptible improvement on generations past. The birds build their
nests just as the mothers of their kind built for ages
before them, and if any changes have come in these
instinct arts, they have been produced in change of
conditions, imperceptibly in long periods of time.
There is nothing progressive in desiqn. in all this.
But there seems to be no limit to the constructive
and inventive genius of man. He builds things in




62            DIVERSITY IN UNITY.
the' head before he puts them  in material shape.
He goes -forth and takes beams, and plates, and
polished wood out of the oak which grew for centuries uncared for and unthought of only in the
farrleaching thought of the Infinite, and builds
houses for himself, and barns for the companions of
the plowr. Hie builds ships, and guides his course on
sea by the stars and the magnetic needle. Ile builds
houses for transporting vehicles, driven by steam;
mlakes hoes and plows to cultivate the soil, to perfect
tree and grain and vegetable, that else could not
have been perfected.  He talks over land and under
water-speaking across a continent or through an
ocean; magnifies his eyesight a thousand-fold.  All
the happy arts of life which go to add comfort and
and ease, to give pleasure and secure peace, spring
directly fiom  the inventive genius of man, each and
all being first forimed in the ideal, the mind creating;
the hand fashing. In this he is superior to all other
animals. In intelligence, accurnmulated by dcesign, he
is also far superior. The knowledge of most of the
lower animals is confined to trainsmnitted habit, called
instinct, and a limited accumulation of facts through
reason and experience; but lman grasps to all else,
hidden truths of the world of matter and of man.
He not only discovers the simple truths of Nature,
but deduces others from known preimises by process
of abstract reasoning. In this field of knowledge
there seems to be no end to his attainments, digging
the truth out of the ideal soil of the world.  The




'HE IDEAL CONCEPTION.            63
facts of experience he stores awaay in the laboratory
of his knoiwledge, and when he wants a lesson of
wisdom to give to others, he tells of like results
-fiom like causes, and foretells coming events by
reasoning on the fixed purposes of Nature. It is inl
the Ideal world where some men rise inmleasurably above the animal world, aind the degarded and
barbarous of manlind. It is here necessacry to
particularize and qualify. In usingI the term mlan
as distinguishable from the animal we mean the
man who is caMble- of ideal eoncfeption. The Ideal
is the highest attainable conception, though in itself
it admlits of degrees, and forever varies. It is the
transition from the concrete sensation imaginlg the
real, to the abstract conception imaging the ideal,
which seems to maake the crowning distinction between man and animal. It is the. transition from
the imitative to the creative thought. We see no
work of animnal which cannot be explained upon the
hypothesis of imitation, even when they better their
own works. B3ut, man has ideal patterns which he
tries to put into material form, whether of tool
house, animal, or man; and the highest act is to aim
to create the ideal man. This does not violate the
assumption. that the ideal is the ripened fruit of the
imitative faculty. In other words that Imitation and
Ideality are opposite poles of the same faculty.
~. 5. Before we proceed let us sum up the foregoing conclusions:




64            DIVERSITY IN UNITY.
1. It is assumed that Evil is.
2. It cannot be defined.
3.  It precedes all finite intelligence.
4.  Imperfection is a perpetual fact; because, an
expression of finite force.
5.  Morality and special evils are the result of it.
6. Morality cannot be defined.
7. The Infinite is, but cannot be defined. It is
only posited as the Absolute Force.
8.  There are reasons for affirming the Absolute
Force to be a conscious Force.
9. Man is a progressive finite intelligence.
10.  lie must be forever imperfect.
11.  No perfect law can be given.
12. If given, it could not be obeyed.
18.  Condition determines volition.
14.  Self-preservation is the first law of life.
15.  Variation is universal, and this fact of endless distribution, is swallowed up in the infinite
unity of all. Nature expresses Diversity in Unity.
16. Dissatisfaction is the mainspring of Progress. This evolves the Better.
17.  Laws and religions are the result thereof.
18.  These express development do  not produce it.
19.  The Ideal is the crowning thought of man,
but is necessarily limited and imperfect.
20.  The Golden Rule is the law of sympathy and
will never work because devoid of a penalty.
21. Punishment is an inexorable law of tNature.




THE BENEFIT OF A DOUBT.          65
22. Justice is scientific and will work, because
it punishes error, sin and ignorance.
The foregoing. conclusions, it appears to us, are
founded in the nature of things. Viewed in the
light of the Infinite on the one hand and the finite
on the other, they come with axiomatic weight. But
as the human mind is prone at times to doubt the
authority of axioms,? and even to question the truths
of experience, we must grant what the mind requires
the benefit of a doubt. We do not feel authorized
to affirm that man a fool who questions the truth of
an axiom, but we are warranted in affirming that
man not wise who sets no value on the facts of experience. We will therefore present some further
considerations which may rise to the dignity of First
Principles, before we evolve the Science of Evil.




CHAPTER IV.
MATTER AND FOR CE.
~. 1. Nature is dual. That is, there exists JIaclter and Force.  These two things are real and distinct, and never can be in any sense identical itn
nature. The one acts, the other is acted upon..
There is the actor, and the medium of action. But
the two co-exist and cannot be separated. As manifestations of Force we may mention light, heat and
electricity. These manifestations of Force, are
often called forces. These, however, are only the
ffects of Force acting on Matter. For brevity we call
thenl forces, but must all be considered as one force.
They are all finite expression of the infinite and
one Force, as the atoms of matter may be distinguished as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, etc., yet all
finite expressions of Universal AMatter.  If the
Universal Force were called Mind it would answer
just as well.  But these separate kinds of matter
are known or distinguished only by the kind of
motion which Force produces by acting upon them,




THE POLARITY' OF FORCE.            6 7
as the chemical affinity between unlike elements.
The attraction of gravitation, acting upon like
rmasses, would not thus distinguish different elements. So also of forces; the affinity of chlorine
for the metal sodium  to form a salt is different
from the affinity of oxygen for the same metal to
form soda.  Soda and salt express a compound of
different chemical elements and forces, yet both
forces are called affinity.  So the force which keeps
the moon in its orbit around the earth, is a different
force from that which keeps the earth in its orbit
around the sun, yet both are of the same kind called
gravity. Now, if you go to the top of a tower, and
cast a stone horizontally, the force, which makes it
fall to the earth, is the same kind of force which
keeps the earth in its orbit around the sun. Yet
the motion of the stone is partial and incomplete,
describing a part of an hyperbolic curve and not
one which would keep it going.
So, also, of mental force, this is quantitative and
qualitative; secondary and original; that which is
produced and that which produces, at the same time
the effect and the cause.
~. 2. The most peculiar characteristic of Force
is that which is termed Polarity. IHere we must
particularize.  It is the function of Force to move
matter. Force expresses itself in the motion of
matter.  Matter is in perpetual motion.  There is
perhaps no atom of matter in the universe that ever




68           MATTER AND FORCE.
came to absolute rest.  This earth has several
motions; three upon its axis, one accomplished in
twenty-four hours, one in nineteen years, and a third
in about twenty-six thousand years. It also has a
yearly motion around the sun, and one with the
solar system; and doubtless other motions we know
not of, motions of aberration, caused by the disturbing influence of other celestial bodies. There are
motions produced by Force acting on celestial bodies,
which may be called Celestial force. But matter is
made to assume many motions, so made by Force,
from the atom or molecule to the celestial body,
and is known in its solid, liquid, gaseous and etherial states. Thus, we have the motion of matter
called light, the motion of matter called heat, and
another motion of matter called electricity; and we
affirm there is still another motion of matter called
thought; governed by the same general laws. What
is called mind we assume to be Force.
When Force acts, it is found to be in certain
definite ways. This is termed the manner of its
action, or its law. Thus it acts equally in opposite
directions; and, in mechanics, we say action and
re-action are equal. Herein we have evolved a law
of equality. This is when the force has a fixed
centre of action. Thus equal weights will balance
on the two equal arms of a lever. This is a definite
force in equilibrium.  Or drop a pebble in still water
and waves will radiate in every direction. These,
however, are but partial mainifestations of the law,




WIAT A LAW IS.               69
as the wave is only seen in latteral or horizontal
motion: and in the scales the wave of motion must
be perpendicular. But if we should say, the sun
radiates light, it is a complete centre of motion, and
the radiations would be as from  the centre of a
globe, continuous in all directions; and each wave
would represent the increasing surface of a sphere.
But again we may say, motion decreases inversely
as the square of the distance from its centre. This
is another law.  But these laws are deduced as
abstract. That is, no disturbing force is allowed to
figure in the premises. They are abstractlytrue, and
are called general laws, but in the concrete they are
not true, for there is constant interference, in the
finite parts, and one centre of motion may conflict
with another:  As when light radiates from the sun
in  accordance with the general law, the earth
breaks the wave of motion, at a certain point in the
radiating sphere, and makes a cone of darkness,r-the
earth as its base and the vertex reaching far into
space. So that really it is not true that light continues in all directions. What is meant is, it would
if not interfered with.  Nor can it be said it
diminishes inversely as the square of the distance
from the radiating centre; for it may be entirely
neutralized at a given point by counteracting forces
or augmented by other forces. Now, when we say,
motion radiates equally from a common centre ill
all directions, we express the polarity of force,
which is true in the abstract, but not truly expressed




70            MATTER AND FORCE.
in action when a force is disturbed. The magnet
is a good illustration of the polarity of electrical
force; and from this we use the terms positive and
negative as expressing one force acting in different
directions.
It is quite evident, if Force acts on matter to
move it, then Force and Matter must either be
universally diffused or have some great centre. It
is, perhaps, the only safe assumption to affirm
Infinite Force to be uliversally diffused and inheres
in the atom. But, if so, each atom must move and
express polarity.  The atomic motion must then be
the basis for other motions which are derivative and
dependent on this.  But derivative motion must
partake of the parent form, which has evolved it,
and so we have two great laws to express Force,
which we may combine, thus: _Force ever evolves its
ow7tn like, and acts in polarity. But this again, expresses Diversity in Unity.
~. 3. Inductively we may be led to the same
conclusions. If a magnetic needle be divided into
two parts it is fou-nd there are two magnetic needles
mlade by the division; and it matters not how many
times it be divided, polarity still exists in each part,
whence we may conclude this property inheres in
the atom. But again, if we now take two magnetic
needles of equal force, and place them together, with
poles reversed, the forces of both are neutralized,
so that the compound  needle will not exhibit




CONFLICT OF FORCES.              71
polarity. It cannot be said the forces are destroyed
but merely balanced, for polarity is at once evoked
with the slightest disturbance in the equilibrium.
In fact, it is from  its disturbance that we gain
knowledge of Force. Now this is true of forces, it
matters not what the conditions.  One will disturb
its fellow, and cause some change therein, when
brought into proximity; and it must necessarily
follow, the stronger force will prevail; yet weakened
in its inherent power by the quantity of conflicting
force, till the prevailing force has conquered the
weaker and brought all the atoms into the same
kind of motion. It then may have an increment
of force from the one which at first opposed it. If
this reasoning be true, then it is possible that sound
opposed to sound will produce silence; light opposed
by light will produce darkness; mechanical motion
opposed to mechanical motion will produce rest;
and chemical energy counteract chemical energy.
All of which science has proved true by experiment.
It is in this way Force may be rendered latent,
put to sleep as it were, for it can never be destroyed;
and at the same time be so bound, that the individual
atom may be replaced by others, and so continue
active yet apparently inactive, till other forces set it
free again. For all forces, which are derivative, con
tain primary forces within them which do not cease
acting while the derivative force is asleep. Secondary
force, which is thus at rest, is said to be in a statical
condition,-when active in a dynamical condition.




72           MiATTER AND FORCE.
For example:  The tree accumulates force from the
atmosphere and earth, storing it away in the wood.
To liberate this, great force is evolved in heat. The
whole vegetable world is a great storehouse of force.
The earth itself is a vast reservoir of force. The
coal beds are force in statical condition.  The force
of coal is unlocked and set free by chemical action.
These are examples of forces balancing or neutralizing each other, or force in equilibrium.
But on the other hand force in action begets its
like and this may be called impression or induction.
This must be true of both original and derivative
forces.
~. 4. We are now enabled to distinguish abstractly and scientifically between organic and
inorganic bodies, and this solely by the play of
forces within their parts.  To do this, we assume,
the ultimate atom or molecule is in motion.  This
motion is peculiar to each atom; as we assume no
two atoms are exactly alike; yet, very many may
nearly resemble each other, and their motions would
be almost alike; which would distinguish atoms
into elements. As, for example, we assume no two
kernels of wheat or corn are alike, yet they so
nearly resemble each other that they may be classed
as corn and wheat. It is in this way we also may
class the elements as oxygen, carbon, etc. The motions
of the elementary atoms are each as elements different and original, and never cease. Like atoms have like




LIKE ATO M0S, LIKE MiO TIONS.    78
motions, and these atoms may be aggregated in kind,
or diffused through each other. The atomic motion
is the most powerful. It would be easier to stop
the rotation of the earth than to stop the motion of
one atom of oxygen. But now these atomic motions
must conflict, as they are different in kind, yet have
no power to destroy one another; all they can do at
most, is to ogppose and by equality, as it were, place
each other in equilibrium, or by unzion produce a
new kind of motion. It is the like kind of motions
which produce equilibrium, but unlike kinds which
produce a new motion. This new motion we call a
compound motion; as for example oxygen and carbon combine to form new substances, but the new
substance only expresses a new or compound motion
in its parts. This we call a derivative motion, or
new expression of force. It is not a new or different kind of force, but merely a new expression in
matter; yet we will call it a new force, meaning
always thereby a new motion.
But it is plain this new or derivative force may
be again compounded with an original or compound
force and produce one differing from either. Now
this last derivative force may be opposed by another
of the same kind, and so neutralized or balanced,
that it may be said to be put to rest, but at the
same time the original or atomic force or other
derivative forces within, mav still be active: —which
is only saying the atoms of the whole are in motion;
but the compound body does not change. But if




74           TVATTER AND FORCE.
this be so, then the atoms may pass off, and their
places be filled by like atoms. That is the compound body, force or motion would remain; but the
atoms of which it is composed may also remain, or
partly or wholly pass offl  This is the legitimate
conclusion deduced from atomic motion which can
never cease. But this, we affirm, is the basis for a
distinction between inorganic and organic bodies.
In the formler all the atoms are retained with their
forces; in the latter, some of the atoms or all pass
out, to be replaced by other atoms with their like
forces in kind.  Only a partial transmission is,
perhaps, common to all vegetable and some animals;
lout just where, in the animal economy, all may be
said to pass off in the life of each it is difficult to
tell. But one thing must be evident, the change of
parts, the development and reduction of all bodies
whether organic or inorganic must be due to forces,
their constancy and precision of action, not on the
variable and constantly moving atom. To the atom
is due the variation, the diversity; to the force, the
likeness, and constancy expressed in the universe.
Force and Matter then express the law, Diversity in
Unity.
~. 5. But again, Motion is transferable; and by
this we mean that like begets its like.  This is
peculiarly the property of Force, which ever tends
to this, and it could not express variety were it not
for the unlike atoms. As simple and common illus



LIKE BEGETS LIKE.             75
trations of this we say laughter begets laughter,
weeping begets weeping; sympathy, love, hatred,
anger; these beget their like. This is only transferable force, or like atoms induced into like motions,
when coming within the vibrating wave. Fear also
begets fear. A panic is induced in a regiment by
the intense and uncontrolable fear of one soldier.
Bravery is also, transferred from a commander to
his army, as has often been shown. Sheridan at
Cedar Run is an illustration of this. Napoleon was
a peculiar illustration of this characteristic of Force.
He was conceived when his father was grasping the
sword; his mother carried him to battle in her
womb; and he was born upon tapestry embroidered
representing the battles and heroes of the Iliad. The
forces of war were all centred within him. He was
born a magazine of war-forces; and fromr himself
radiated their waves throughout France. This force
was strong and permanent within him, and he induced or begot its like temporarily within all who
came near him. It was not only a man or an army
he inspired with war; it was a whole nation. It
was not Cambronne, nor the Guard, but Napoleon,
who spoke when they returned to the Allied Forces:
"The Guard dies, it never surrenders."
It is thus, also, thought induces its own self.
How often two persons begin to speak after a protracted silence the same thing, however remote
from the subject of conversation when last talking.
That it was not a train of logical thought, has often




76           MA4TTEI? AND FORCE.
been proven in two ways; tracing back the thought
through two entirely different and conflicting routes,
and by the persons at the same instant speaking the
same words.'Some persons, also, looking at the diseased part of another, will often feel a like pain or
uneasy sensation in the like part upon themselves.
We have frequently seen a man read the characters of persons by simply holding a letter from them
in his hand, without looking at the writing; and a
man who would answer any written question by
placing it in his hand, however securely folded or
kept from his vision.
But this is not alone a peculiarity of mental
force; there may hundreds of illustrations be taken
from other sources; as, for example, the "Singing
Hydrogen Flame."  By lowering a glass tube over
a burning hydrogen jet a short distance, and securing it there, while in this position no sound is emitted. But if now a person begins to sing the scale,
when the proper note is struck the tube begins to
sing the note, and continues it. This is an illustration
only of transmitted motion in the atmosphere. But
it is the motion of matter, produced by force, which
makes all impressions of whatever kind.  These
impressions are universal wherever force acts; and
it is only a very small part that are made on, within
and around us, that we ever become conscious of.
These impressions are lasting, as well as instantaneous. It only wants science to bring them  out
and read them. Says Youmans in his chemistry



THE LA W OF IMPRESSION.         77
"If we cover a board with powdered sulpbite of
calcium, (made adherent by a previous coating of
gum arabic), lay a key upon it, and expose it for a
few minutes to sunlight; on bringing it into a dark
room and removing the key, a dark, well-defined
image of it is seen on a white ground. The surrounding phosphorescent glow gradually diminishes
and the image disappears. Now place a pencil on
the surface and expose it again, and when the image
vanishes repeat the exposure a third time with a
ring. When all traces of the last image are gone,
heat the board and the images will reappear in reverse order,-first the ring, then the pencil, then the
key. And they have been thus evoked weeks and
months after they were formed."  *  *  *  "It
would moreover seem that one object can hardly
touch or approach another without impressing a
change upon it which is more or less lasting. If
we lay a wafer or small coin upon a piece of clean,
cold glass, or polished metal, and breathe upon the
surface, upon tossing off the object after the moisture has evaporated, not a trace of it will remain.
But if we breathe upon it again, a spectral image
of the coin or wafer comes forth, which as it fades
away may be again, and again, recalled by a breath,
even months afterwards. Objects also impress each
other without contact. Engineers have noticed that
the near parts of machinery visibly impressed each
other.  By exposure over night, a very distinct
image of the grain of wood has been obtained,




78           MATTER AND FORCE.
when placed more than half an inch from the receiving surface."
All these facts are simple illustrations of the
orie law of Force, that it ever tends to produce its
like, and expressing this law only in the motion of
mnatter.
This beautifully solves the mystery of Inhheritance, as we will now briefly notice in a few objections to the Darwinian theory of " Gemnmules," as
stated in his chapter on Pangenesis.
~. 6. The great work of Darwin has laid the
world under lasting obligations for that vast collection of facts which he has brought together in his
book on "Plants and Animals under Domestication."
"Every one," he says, "would wish to explain to
himself, even in an imperfect manner, how it is possible for a character possessed by some remote ancestor suddenly to reappear in the offspring; how
the effect of increased or decreased use of a limb
can be transmitted to the child; how the male
sexual element can act not solely on the ovule but
occasionally on the mother form; how a limb can
be reproduced on the exact line of amputation, with
neither too much nor too little added; how the various modes of reproduction are connected, and so
forth."  To which we would add, how the image of
an object may be imprinted on the body of a child,
or how a permanent characteristic may be given to
it before birth from temporary mental excitement
or desire of the mother.




DARWVINA'S THEORY OF GEMIIMULES.      79
Darwin presents the following Provisional Hypothesis: " The whole organization, in the sense of
every separate atom or unit, reproduces itself.
Hence ovules and pollen grains,-the fertilized seed
or egg, as well as buds, —include and consist of a
multitude of germs thrown off fronm each separate
atom of the organism."  This multitude of germs
thrown off from each atom he terms " gemmules,"
and he further says they mlust be thrown off during
all the stages of development.  These gemmules
are matter and transmitted in substance. We would
substitute in place of this the following hypothesis:
Each organism  is a union of compound forces.
Each separate compound force begets its own like
motion in each cell of its structure.  These cellular
forces are continually modified by new conditions,
which will render in time the organism more complex. The atoms of each cell are in progressive
motion; that is, new atoms of the same kind are
continually taking the place of the old atoms which
pass away. But as it is the constant attribute of
Force to express polarity, each separate compound
force must express polarity in the organism. Hence
each separate faculty, muscle, nerve and bone must
be dual.  In other words, each entire organism,
however simple or complex, contains within it both
sexes, in cellular dttality.
The crowning difference between this theory and
Darwin's is, we assume that it is Force which begets
itself, while he assumes that it is matter which be



80           MATTER AND FORCE.
gets its own like. By Darwin's theory, each atom
throws off a multitude of " gemmules " during all the
stages of development. To make the theory work
and fulfill all the conditions of each supposable
case, this would have to be true. But this is not
all; these "gemmules" would all have to be
transmitted in substance. It may be objected that,
however minutely divided, these gemmules are
nevertheless matter; and if thrown off, say during
a period of sixty years, they would have to be retained in the body that time. It is moreover necessary that each atom should throw of its gemmules
at each minute subdivision of time, which it is
impossible to compute, for no one can tell how rapidly development takes place, if at all, by known
subdivisions of time. So that while the " gemmule "
is indeed minute, the time in which it is thrown off
is correspondingly short. The number, therefore,
of such atomic births for one hour must be immense; and if multiplied into a life of sixty years,
or more, must be quite materially perceptible. But
when all these " gemmules " are transmitted, either
in a latent or active form, there must be an accumulation of unchangeable matter at some point of
time, say in ten thousand years.  But in living
organisms we find no such fixity to matter; not
even that a single atom remains in the cell for a
day. The body of man changes so rapidly that
perhaps no individual atom of matter is retained in
it more than a month. But if a " gemmule" could




A MODIFICATION OF FORCE.          81
remain unchanged, an atom could; and if an atom
a cell, and if a cell a whole structure. Biology
seems, therefore, to negative the hypothesis.
Again: -How shall we account, upon this hypothesis, for acquired characteristics, transmitted
drunkenness; transmitted mania to steal; bodily
and mental impressions, directly from the mother,
while the child is in the womb; or for variation in
any form?: Simply by modified cells, which implies modified atoms and " gemmules."  This, the
author of Pangenesis asserts, must be the case.
But " gemmules" are matter,-and how is matter
modified? Not in the structure of the ultimate
atom, for chemistry negatives this; but simply in
its combination with other atoms. But this is only
chemical change. In other words, a "gemmule"
can only be modified by chemical action. But this
is a mocldfication of Force, not matter. Why not say,
then, there is a modification of forces in the living
organism, which is induced in each atom, with
which the modified force is related, and which must
be transmitted to the offspring, therein to act with
regularity and precision, to be again modified, controlled or counteracted by other forces with which
it comes in contact?  This modified force may
receive increments of like force, and so be enhanced or intensified, or it may be neutralized, and
so lie dormant.
Upon this hypothesis the force perpetuates itself
in the line of the least resistance; and leaps from
G




82           MATTER AND FORCE.
atom to atom as soon as brought within the circle
of its influence. The atoms of the body may be
replaced by other atoms, in the "wear and tear"
of the same body, or in the building up of a new
body in reproduction. It is in this way a force may
be lying latent, as It were, by action in a living and
changing organism, and may be perpetuated from
generation to generation, and only become visible
when some favorable condition will bring it out.
It is not necessary to perpetuate force, that the cell
or the gemmule should remain in the living organism, any more than that the raindrop which goes
to form the rainbow should halt to perpetuate the
image. As the rainbow is reflected from millions
of different drops in a shower, and at no two seconds is reflected from the same drops, so a force
may continue for years in the same body instantly
changing its atoms, or for ages in the reproduction
of its kind. The functional or structural modification of a cell must lead inevitably to the structural
or functional modification of an atom or "gemmule," which must be retained in the body in
multiple form to perpetuate itself in the offspring.
But, on the other hand, if it be force which is modified, its modification will at once produce structural
and functional modification in the organism. But
we find secondary force can be and is modified
daily and hourly. It may be increased or diminished, or entirely neutralized. It may be put to
sleep or awakened. It may be changed in form,




MAN A STOREHOUSE OF FORCES.         83
quality, quantity, intensity, but never destroyed,
while the atoms of matter in which it acts or sleeps
may, by an original motion of their own, pass away
from this secondary active or sleeping force. Force
may come in the sunlight and reappear in the coal
a million of years after, having locked up the atom
perhaps in mihieral form; or it may appear in the
thought of Peter the hermit, and inoculate nations
of men with a religious zeal which shall last two
hundred years, as a single atom with distructive
force would spread pestilence throughout a nation;
example of force acting in mental or physical form.
Or as a combination of both, it may appear in the
erratic course of a drunken man, and reappear in
the mad course of vicious offspring.  Nay, the
force which played such wild freaks in the bodies
of extinct animals, may be living to-day in other
bodies somewhat modified, while the cells and
gemmules of matter in those extinct animals upon
which this living force acted may be now bound
up in solid rock.
Man is not a storehouse of matter, for this constantly changes and passes away from the body, but
that which is constant and remains is Force. Matter cannot remain latent in man, or it would thus
accumulate and obstrnut the action of the many
busy housekeepers, the forces within. But we can
readily understand what is meant when one speaks
of a latent force coiled up like a spring in this bodily
temple of ours; and when some ancestral feature or




84           MATTER AND FORCE.
habit speaks out in us not known to our parents
even, it is made plain enough when it is affirmed
Ithe long bound force has been set free.' It would
obscure the mental vision and confound the understanding, to speak of latent matter in the body, residing in our ancestors for a thousand years. Man
is rather a storehouse of vast forces. These are
stored away in muscle, nerve, bone, brain, ready for
use when called into action, and he is not like the
plant acted upon by external conditions for a manifestation of force, but he can in some measure
invoke the forces within him, and compel them to
act. He can guide their action and bind them up
again. The theory of latent material "gemmules"
it appears to us is akin to the old theory of latent
fluid heat.
But again: How  can it be said that matter
begets its like? Matter we assume is increate and
unbegotten. It then has nothing to beget. Every
atom that will be is already begotten.  Changed, it
is said, into new forms, which new forms resemble
the parent forms. But how changed.2? Not by itself,
for it cannot itself act. It is Force then which acts
in, through and upon matter, Force only it is which
may lie dormant, Force only can be evoked. It is
only Force which begets its like. That is, induces
like motions in material atoms. When the son at
maturity resembles his father, we do not mean then,
that the son contains in his body some original matter in multitudinous " gemmules" which his father




A STRANGE WARFARE OF GEMMULES.   85
actually once carried about with him in his body,
which by multiplying produced the son in the image
of his father; but we mean, the force which generates its like in action, has aggregated like, yet entirely separate, elements into like features, which
force forces like features into like expressions, at
corresponding ages; moving the nostrils and lips
the same; modulating sound from the throat the
same; drives the flesh into like habits, of gesture,
gait and labor, and the mind: into like channels of
thought and disposition. It is Force, not Matter,
which does this.
Inheritance is a law of the mind as wvell as the
body. What aggregation of material " gemmules"
can be set off for theft begotten in the daughter,
drunkenness in the son, insanity in one, lust in another? What aggregation of material " gemmules"
which shall in these same persons oppose in mental
conflict all these vices, and cause contrition and remnorse. This would indeed be a strange warfare of
transmitted "'gemmules."  May it not better be said
it is a conflict of mental forces, and that man can in
a measure control these forces, guide or subdue
them?
But mental inheritance is displayed in society on
a far grander scale than in the animal alone. The
aggregate world where there is inter-communication
inherits the mental forces of the past. To-day is
mentally begotten of yesterday, and the variation
only comes in the new conditions of to-day produe



86           MATTER AND FORCE.
ing new or evoking latent forces; which are again
transmitted in worldly mental function to to-morrow.
These are the mighty mental forces which act as
States or Nations, the aggregate of many separate
centers of forces. Here we also see the great law
of Induction, or Force begetting its like in what is
called public opinion, or public conscience, guiding
each separate individual, the atom of the state, in
thought and action, appearing in dress and literature, and in habits of all sorts. There is no hypothesis of transmitted " gemmules" which can explain
this.
Every animal which has preceded man has had
a mental as well as physical life which has been
transmitted to the world. As two cells of matter
enlivened with Force may multiply a million-fold,
evolving from the homogenious cells a complex organism which passes into being of different form
and habit, evolving now a caterpillar, and then a flying moth; the one crawling on the earth and eating
its substance, the other a winged psyche living in the
sunbeam and extracting the nectar of flowers; so
mental action ever passes from  the lower to the
higher, from the simple cell of one idea to the complex logic of science; from the low and barbarous
instinct of savage life to the far-reaching and refined
thought of civilized man. This earth is older than
we have been accustomed to think. Physically and
mentally its foundations lie deep in time. The
softer strata which lie super-imposed upon each




THE PRESENT BUILT ON THE PAST.    87
other, all have a granite bed, lying close upon the
central fire, and the alluvium  of our fields tells a
story older than mountain or continent of to-day.
So the close reason, the quick perception, the intuitive inspiration, which give rise to all human mental
phenomena of to-day, lie super-imposed on the mental grantite of the stone age, and are older than the
Herschels and Newtons; the Aristotles and Platos
of the historic period. It is just as necessary that
Thales should precede Socrates, as that Socrates
should precede Aristotle.  Just as necessary that
these should precede Copernicus, as that Copernicus
should precede Galileo and Newton. Without the
Indian and Egyptian mind, there would have been
no Greece. Without Greece no science to-day, any
more than there could be to-day without yesterday.
So also of Religion.-The Protestant church has
numberless branches to-day; and it is itself a branch
of the Christian Catholic Trunk, whose roots penetrate the Roman, Grecian, Egyptian and Indian soil
for nourishment. The Cross of the Catholic is descended from more self-sacrificing and superstitious
times than the Christian age and many a god was
crucified on it before Jesus of Nazareth. There is
not a rite in the Christian church that does not date
back of Christianity a thousand years. And there
is no man, who says his prayers to-day, who does not
take hold of the hand of every worshipper on earth;
whether he kneels to Fire, Sun, Image, Hero or
Spirit. The origin of our worship is as humble as




"88         MATTER AND FORCE.
the lowest type of man, and the religions and faiths
and creeds of the world are all brothers and sisters
to one another. No Spiritualist would be to-day
without Protestantism; no Protestant without Catholicisin; no Catholic without the old Roman religion; no Roman religion without the Polytheism of
Greece and the Monotheism of the Jews; no Grecian or Hebrew faith, without Egyptian Idolatry;
no Egyptian worship without the countless years of
religion lying hid beyond.
Just so also of Law. The lawyer of to-day in this
country takes hold of the hand of Kent; Kent repeated Blackstone; he repeated Coke; Coke, Lyttleton; Lyttleton the Pandects of Justinian; and
he Numa, Solon and Lycurgus; and so on back to
song and traditional story, when the people obeyed
the verbal command of some hero, who was once
followed and reverenced as a man, but became, when
dead, worshipped as a god. In short, the mental
story of the world is one of inheritance, the ever
begetting of Force, and not by any means a transmission of material "gemmules."
~. 7. The known laws of Force will explain, so
far as we have investigated, all the phenomena of
reproduction, whether by fission, gemmation, or sextial generation.
In fission the animal is a simple illustration of
polarity manifested throughout the whole organisrnm; like a magnet, which must reproduce the




A FEW CASES IN POINT.          89
whole in all its parts. The animal represents one
compound animal Force, the sexual cells being in
contact, and when divided it matters not how often
each part must reproduce the whole animal. It is
a simple case of Force inducing like motions in all
the cells of the animal. The bud of a tree is more
complex; for each bud is an orginal centre of motion, which begets its own like in buds, however
numerous on the same stem or trunk; but as they
are original centers, each center is subject to separate modification, and is only sure to reproduce
itself in bud form, never from the seed, as the seed
may be a compound of many forces different from
the original bud. In sexual reproduction, there is
a compound or double union of sexes; two female
and two male forces, mingled in cell form. These
forces play upon each other, and represent every
force in both sexes, at the moment of their mingling.
These may blend and produce an offspring unlike
either parent force; one may entirely neutralize the
other, and produce nothing; one may shade into
this, that or the other, producing the mother here,
the father there; or they may evoke some latent
force by the combination. Or, again: the male
force may be so overpowering, that the offspring
not only will most resemble him, but the embryo offspring may induce a corresponding reproductive
force in the mother which will be permanent.  The
sympathy between the embryo and the mother,
must be great; the one more or less impressing the




90           MATTER AND FORCE.
other. This must be the seat of permanent changing conditions in the offspring, and sometimes may
be induced in the mother. The embryo represents
the weaker forces, and hence are the more easily
conditioned.,
There is a misnomer in the terms male and female, as there is in the terms positive and negative.
They do not represent two forces, but each of them
one force; neither is it a difference in the atoms,
but only a condition of the force, in finite expression. Each male and female are both separately
male and female. The one condition of force predominating in one more than the other. So that
man, for example, is more male than he is female,
and woman more female than she is male, and by
this we mean, not really, and in fact, but that each
has the other sex latent, which under conditions
may be developed, as is recorded of a certain hen
after laying and bringing up her brood, assumed the
whole male dress and disposition, ever after.
But it is useless to dwell on the application of
this hypothesis; this we leave for the reader and
student. We only wish to indicate the principle for
application hereafter. By applying this principle:
Force acting on unlike atoms of matter; Force ever
begetting like motions therein; its instantaneous
and irresistable effects thereon; its correlation and
conservation, must not only explain all inheritance,
but all phenomena of whatever kind. It is the
union of matter and Force —not matter alone, nor




.FOR CE THE INFINITE UNIT.        91
Force alone, which produces effects, and is the cause
of all effects.  But it is the peculiar function of
Force to beget its like, and of matter to produce
variation. For the atom is variable in being, and
Force is the Infinite Unit.
~. 8. We are now prepared to apply the foregoing principles to Evil, and evolve therein a science
which will evoke its meaning. But first let us see
how man is himself an expression of Force. We
find this in his bodily and mental activities. The
muscles express bodily force; the brain, head force.
These forces lie coiled up in muscle and brain. But
it is the universal law of Force to express polarity,
however it may be divided or cut up. The mental
force may thus be divided into faculties, and each
faculty in its functional activity will express polarity.
Thus we have as purely mental expressions, right
and wrong, happiness and sorrow, hope and despair,
love and hatred, knowledge and ignorance. These
are correlative terms, and each pair expresses one
force. The one brings the other as a necessary consequence; the one implies the other, as the positive
pole of a magnet implies its negative pole. But
either pole may act-nay, both poles must act.
These may be converted, the one into the other in
action, as right may be pushed into wrong, happiness into sorrow, hope into despair, love into hatred;
nay, knowledge into ignorance, when expressing
feeling. It is perhaps true that the wisest feel the




92          IMATTRER   AND FORCE.
most ignorant.. There is no hatred or jealousy
which has not a love basis. Those who love the most
can hate the most. Those who can pray the most
fervently, can curse the most bitterly.  The purest
can be the vilest. This law of polarity forces itself
upon us everywhere and at all times. It is thus we
speak of pain and pleasure, virtue and vice, heat
and cold —in short, good and evil, only as opposites,
and cannot conceive of the one only as in contrast
with the other. The animal and vegetable world
we distinguish as male and female. We speak also
of the centripetal and centrifugal forces, action and
reaction, and that antagonism which is everywhere
prominent in Nature. By all this we only mean the
polarity of Force. In a theological point of view,
we see the same manifest polarity in God and the
Devil. People taking- a purely personal view of
Force in Nature, have projected the one pole on-the
infinite background and called it God, and the
other in the same way has been called the Devil.
All of which results from the inherent and necessary antagonism expressed in the atomic forces of
which a body is made up.  Wherever there is a
center of force there must be polarity expressed, or
there could be no force.  To find the polarity is to
disturb the force. In fact, we can learn nothing of
Force only from its disturbance.
We have then as the expression of the universe:
The Infinite Force and the finite atom.
The Perfect and the imperfect.
The Unity and the diversity.




SOME CONCLUSIONS.               93
The above duality leads to the following conclusions: The infinite whole is made up of its finite parts.
Nature is one divisible unlimited whole.  The Infinite could not exist without its finite parts. The
Infinite universe of matter is absolutely dependent
on each one of its atoms. If one atom could be destroyed the whole could.  So of the Infinite force;
it is made up of finite forces, because of the variable
atom; and the Infinite could not exist without each
finite force. If the smallest possible force could be
destroyed the whole could.  If the force which
evolves the thought of a mosquito could be once destroyed, and the thought lost, so also could Infinite
Force, and Infinite intelligence be blotted out. As
no i)article of dust can be lost, so also, no thought
can be lost from  out the universe. But the mosquito's thought is an imperfect one, because finite.
The mosquito doubtless acts amiss quite often in
the sphere of its own operations. We say then of
each mosquito it is finite, imperfect, and different
from all things else. Yet the Infinite and Perfect
Unity, could not exist without this finite and imperfect diversity.




CHAPTER V.
THE ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
~. 1. The first command given to the animal
was ACT. This was compulsory and arbitrary. To
make the animal act it is first constructed to act,
and then forced into action by being acted upon.
This beautifully illustrates the play of forces, their
correlation and persistence. The creative forces we
have discussed elsewhere, and we will now treat only
of the active animal.
We will suppose that when Nature had formed
her animal and enlivened it with sensation, she
spoke and said: "Now my little animal act."  To
whom the little animal responded: "No, mother, I
like rest, I shall obey Statics rather than Dynamics." Here is the first disobedience so often expressed in the world. Nature then responds: "'But
I will compel you to act." She then breathes into
its nostrils the breath of life. In rushes the foe to
its organism oxygen gas. This begins to tear down
its body, burning and consuming the structure.




THE GENESIS OF ACTION.           95
Sensation now cries out, "Supply your loss."  This
is known by the animal saying to Nature: "Mother,
I am hungry."  Ah!" says Nature, "I told you I
would make you act."  "How pitiless and cruel you
are," says the animal, "why can't you just as well
feed me and let me rest."  "I know no rest," says
Nature,'neither shall any of my children."  "But
why torture me with hunger, have you no sympathy, no love for your child?" "Much indeed; I have
provided what I think necessary," responds Nature.
"But you would sleep always, and be nothing in the
universe did I not torture you while in the embrace
of Statics. I have sent Dynamics into every cell of
your body to war against Statics. When Dynamics overpower' Statics, then you will obey me; for I
always act." "But, mother, how shall I act?" "Ah!
that is a great moral question," responds Nature,
"which I shall never discuss with you nor enlighten
you upon till you act."  To whom the animal responds, "This is adding insult to injury, cruelty is
no name for this. You are burning me up with
oxygen and will not tell me how to extinguish the
flame."  "Fool!" says Nature, "I have but one
way to teach you. This flame shall never be extinguished while an aninmal lives. I will make
hunger gnaw at your vitals and thus drive you into
the jaws of Death, or into paths of wisdom. All you
can do at most is to add fuel to the fire, for a few
years or hours; but so long as you gather fuel fast
enough to feed the flame, and act wisely, I will tem



96     ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
porarily suspend the pain of Hunger. I shall drive
you out of your garden of Rest, and guard the gate
with a flaming sword, that you may never enter
therein. You shall never eat of the tree of knowledge but with pain."  And the animal with a desire
to live, goes out with Nature's blessing pronounced
upon it. "Do or die."  This has often been pronounced a cur.se by theological teachers. Nature
has driven it out hungry and ignorant. But is there
any relation between Hunger and Ignorance? Hunger is a physical active force, purely dynamical.
Ignorance is a mental state. It is mind at rest.
Force asleep: Statics. But Hunger is a sensation;
the effect of Force acting on matter; the first conscious thought of animal life. Thought is then not
/a force; it is not mind; but an effeet of Force acting
on matter. Thought we make universal, and special. The former is any effect of Force acting on
matter; the latter is conscious in the individual.
In the universal sense thought is stamped upon
the face of Nature.  Nature talks; she has voice
and motion; an articulate and silent language. The
landscape which the eye gathers in, is thought saluting thought; the me calling to the not me; the echo
of a god-thought beyoid, and without, back to the
conscious thought of man within. The world we
tread is a thought of the Infinite Force. The verdure of Spring; the gorgeous Summer; the sear
and yellow Autumn; Winter with its fleece of polar
ice and snow, are yearly fractions of the universal




THE CAUSE OF ANIMAL MOTION.         97
thought earthward. The longest life of man is but
a thought of God raceward. And how like the two
thoughts are, the year and the life of man; the
Spring time of youth, its tenderness and verdure;
the Summer with its strength and fullness and
honor; the Autumn storing up the fruits of labor;
and Winter bringing the winding sheet of death.
That sensation precedes hunger we do not doubt.
Sensation is the speech of a disturbed organism, and
tells of waste.  It is common to all animals and
some plants, but just where it passes into consciousness it is impossible to tell. Perhaps when food
has to be obtained by locomotion or slight movement of parts. The plant expresses rest rather than
motion; as a whole it is in a statical condition, yet
not entirely so; as the animal expresses motion, yet
not constant. In other words, Statics preponderates
in the plant, Dynamics in the animal. And it is
necessary that the plant should not feel pain, and
that the animal should. For the plant is a mechanism
of construction; whereas the animal is a mechanism of reduction: the plant supplies oxygen to the
atmosphere; the animal withdraws it from the air;
the plant deoxidizes, the animal oxidizes; and thus
the former absorbs heat and electricity, while the
latter produces both; and hence motion is necessary in the latter and unnecessary in the former.
In other words, pain must move the animal that it
may live. This is only another illustration of the
unity and conservation of Force. It would be an
H




98      ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
unwarrantable assertion, however, to say all plants
are devoid of all conscious thought. It is, however, asserted by many that no animal has thought
but man. This is by confounding thought with a
high expression of mind. But when we consider
mind as mental force, thought is only the effect, the
record of the action of this force, and may be conscious or not. Consciousness is secondary mental
force; the image, as it were, of an active force
which it itself beholds, as a man looking at himself
in a mirror. If this image be retained, it is experience; and man reads in his experience the record
of conscious sensations only as images of effects of
active force on matter.
Unconscious force is that which acts without reflecting its effect upon itself. This may be either a
material or mental force, which acts unconsciously;
as in sleep there must be unconscious mental
thought. But a purely material force is always unconscious, as the steam which pushes the piston rod
in an engine. That is, it is unconscious to self, but
may not be to other forces with which it is connected,
as the engineer. In this manner it is easy to see
how Infinite Consciousness may be an attribute
of Infinite Force, made up of its finite conscious
and unconscious parts. Each man who. is capable
of affirming consciousness of himself, and that he is
only a part of a posited whole, must come to a conclusion that consciousness is an attribute of the
whole. But if consciot.isness exists as a high or




ORIGIN OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS.    90
complex phase of force, as force it can never be
lost; it may be counteracted for a time, and so
sleep or rest unconscious, but can be evoked again;
not only may be, but perhaps must be.
~. 2. But hunger we have said is the first conscious thought, and is one of sensation, and that
sensation pain. But we have just stated that there
is a great antagonism between the animal and veg
etable forces. Taking a broader and more comprehensive view, we will see that the animal and
vegetable kingdoms illustrate the action of but one
force, in its positive and negative expressions, and
may be illustrated by placing the two poles of a
galvanic battery in water; the one will liberate
oxygen, the other hydrogen, in definite ratio. It is
thus by electrolysis we have the elements divided
into their antagonistic or opposite states. In the
animal we see the play of the positive part of the
force predominating, and in the plant the negative.
It thus also becomes evident that there is not only
a relation between the animal and vegetable, but
that the one implies the other, in origin as well as
subsequent development, as they are but different
expressions of the same force. Now, when the
animal first said, "I am hungry," it only told that
the force positive was predominating in it, sufficient
to produce motion in its parts to supply the waste.
That is, it becomes a self-acting force, capable of
connecting the circuit between the vegetable and




100    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENTCE.
the animal, or connecting the positive and negative
poles of this force.  The break produces hunger;
the connection satisfies. That is, when the animal
is hungry it lacks food; but all food comes from
the vegetable world. Hunger is therefore true,
unmistakable speech, and may be illustrated by the
telegraph. It is by a break, or combination of
breaks, in the passage of the electric force, to complete its circuit, which constitute the words in telegraphy. Without these breaks there could be no
speech. Well, Nature talks to her little animal in
just the same manner, precisely on the principle of
the telegraph. She breaks the circuit between it
and the vegetable, and this break is the first sensation, called hunger.
~..  But now see what is the result. The first
sensation is the first knowledge. It is the first blow
given upon the head of sleeping Ignorance. Oblivious, negative, statical Ignorance is now disturbed;
a few more blows awakens him, a greater number
makes him complain, a still greater number moves
him. That is, the animal is moved to search for
food only through pain. How otherwise could it
be moved to act? No one can imagine or guess.
It had refused to act because held tightly in the
arms of Rest, perfectly enamored of Statics, a
senseless, unfeeling thing. The only way was to
disturb it; to breathe into it the foe to its organism;
to make it writhe with pain; to inaugurate Evil as




ORIGIN OF MORALS.            101
a fact of its life. Here is the positive, the moving
force.  But where is the negative pole?  How
beautifully this manifests itself. Did not the little
animal ask, when commanded to act, "' But how,
mother?"  Here is the birth of morality, which
comprehends knowledge. The world's morals are
all bound up in that little word " how."  It comprehends the word "ought."   The " ought" is
partial, and dimly visible to the scientific moralist;
the "how" expresses all.  "Mother, how shall I
act?" What sympathy arises for the hungry, ignorant animal, asking that question to a parent, who
responds: " I shall not tell you till you act."  Here
is the birth of sympathy.  It goes forth in ignorance, driven by Pain, to find out not so much how
to do, but what to eat. But the one implies the
other. (We will not stop here to trace the animal
in a developental sense, in which it is necessary
that it should obtain food without locomotion,
brought to it by currents of air or water, and then
that the first locomotion must be in a buoyant fluid
before land life, but pass to consider it only in a
mental sense; and we will take the land animal,
man, for the illustration.) If food is not immediately at his mouth, movement becomes necessary.
But the first movement is accompanied with a fall,
perhaps; the fall with another source of pain.
Here he cries out " how?"  How  does Mother
Nature tell him how? First she has tortured him
into action, and then she begins a process of tor



102    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
turing to teach him how to act. " Step on this
thorn and suffer; this will learn you to provide
against it," expresses the whole command of life,
from the cradle to the grave. Here we are driven
to conclude that knowledge, as well as morals, are
born of Evil. And it is because Nature withholds
knowledge till it is obtained in the experience of
Pain, yet compels us to seek it, that the questions
how and why are asked; and the fear of pain is
the beginning of wisdom as well as of morals.
~. 4. The Necessity of life compels us to act.
This is force comnpulsory; we cannot evade it, change
it, nor annul it. But Moral law is one of restraint.
This is force discretionary. We may change, evade
or annul it, till the how is obtained. It is one of
trial and experiment. It only says, " Do nothing
that you know to be wrong." It could not say
more.  It is negative, the force of restraint, and
born of Evil; as is the command "Do or die!" on
the other hand, positive-the force which impels
onward-also born of Evil. And thus we return
again to the one force of Evil, with its positive and
negative expression s.
~. 5. But force must express itself. This we
call its language. The meaning of Force is both
moral and scientific. The word " how " expresses
moral action; the word "why" expresses science.
"How shall we act for our own good?" is the ever



LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND.          103
repeated question of morals. " Why is this so?"
is the ever-repeated question of Science. Morality,
then, comes first, and applies to the individual force.
Science comes later, and applies to the universal;
and thus many may learn the moral o0 life long
before they can comprehend its science. The law
of morals, in fact, runs far down into the animal
world; but doubtless few of the lower animals have
ever asked "why?"  And the question: 1" What is
the cause?" is perhaps confined to but few men.
The question " How?" is the incipient reason-the
half-born question " Why?"-which may develop
into "NWhat is the cause?"  Science is, therefore,
preceded by Morality, and must be born of Theology, as will be fully shown hereafter.
~. 6. But Hunger, which is waste in the animal,
evolves a universal law; or, rather, is a partial expression of such, namely: Waste must be restored,
or what is consumed must be supplied. It is the
law of Sutpply and Demand. This is plainly a polar
force. Waste creates a demand; the demand calls
for a supply. The waste is always accompanied
with pain, the supply with pleasure. But first there
must be Pain from Waste. But Pain is only the
cry of Waste for more materials, and when the
supply comes there is feasting, and merriment, and
joy. How beautifully this illustrates every joy of
life, every blessing, every pleasure, on the one
hand, and every sorrow, every curse, every paint




104    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
on the other. With loss comes sorrow; with gain
comes joy. When a child is born there is rejoicing;
when it dies there is sorrow. And why? Birth
and Death are opposite poles of Life. The one expresses waste, the other supply. It is the same law
of Demand and Supply. Pain and Pleasure, then,
are the two poles of this force, which expresses the
law of Demand and Supply, and it is Pain which
precedes Pleasure. It is the antecedent, the cause,
and expresses the positive pole. And thus it must
be concluded there is no pleasure in this world or
the universe that does not come primarily in this
way.  All our pleasures lie superimposed upon
pain, as the finer and softer earths lie superimposed
upon their granite bed, and this upon the central
fire. In fact, no one can trace back any pleasure of
his own experience without finding some waste,
some loss, some pain, for a starting point. The
first sensation of the child when it comes into the
world is pain. If we can judge anything from the
actions of children, we must draw this conclusion.
With the first breath is a cry. In rushes the foe,
oxygen, to disturb the sleeping, statical lump of
flesh which had been built up from other sources
than that one which would ever force it to act.
Till it breathed it was like the plant, unconscious.
The cry was the echo of the first sensation, and
doubtless conscious, but too feebly registered to be
long retained, and so lost to memory. Memory is
only a process of reading mental impressions, re



MENTAL FA CULTIES EVFOLVED.      105
tained in the brain, which often, by injury, may be
completely destroyed. Even the school education
of a person has been obliterated by a blow, and
when healed he had to relearn everything from the
alphabet up.
~. 7. We will now readily understand how
sensation will produce a mental faculty. Here we
must define, but to define we must trace the origin
of a faculty. Hunger, we have endeavored to show,
is the first sensation, which means action and knowledge. But action involves the "How?" and the
"Why?" as well as the Demand for Supply. flow
many faculties are included in these three words,
How, Why, and Supply? - Let us answer this question before we proceed to consider whether or not
hunger would create them, and how it is a child is
born with faculties before it experiences a sensation.
We care not how many separate faculties may be
attributed to man or how few to other animals, they
may all come within his Intellectual, Moral, and
Selfish nature. We wish to make the analysis
apply to all animals, and we have thus used terms
to suit all classifications. But "How?" expresses
all sympathy and morality, as we have already seen,
and "Why?" expresses all science and knowledge;
and "Supply" generalizes every selfish desire, even
our hunger and thirst after knowledge, righteousness, and future life. These three words all arise
in the same fundamental cause; the result of one
force Hunger, with the ever accompanying polarity,




106    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
conflict and antagonism. "Now, my little animal,
act!"  " No, for Rest has bound me."  " But I will
compel you!"  Now Waste enters upon its work,
and the animal cries out in pain, "H-Iow?" and afterwards "Why?"  We will briefly illustrate.
It is said man has acquisitiveness. Why so? To
supply waste in the system. How  caused?  By
primary sensation. And so has come those faculties, his love of food and property. But obstacles
oppose him on every hand; he has to meet with
difficulties and dangers; his food grows high and
he cannot reach it; low in the earth and he has to
dig for it; or in some place unknown to him and
he has to search for it;'and if not obtained in season he finds it is destroyed. Here are called into
play new forces. -To obtain food he finds life a
battle; a continual war with the elements, and
seemingly all Nature. He has to combat and destroy, step cautiously and secrete. And he evolves
here the most selfish of his faculties, and writes
over against them an " instinct" called the first law
of life, "Self Preservation."  But again: another
effect of the same law of Deinand and Supply not
coming from waste among atoms in the individual
body, but from waste in the race, by death, gives
rise to an irresistible passion to Multiply. That is,
Death implies birth. Here arise those faculties
which imply the union of the sexes and the care of
offspring. They are the result of an irresistible
force, with its polarity of death and birth.




NEJW' THEORY OF POPULATION.       107
The author of a "New Theory of Population,"
has called attention to a remarkable feature of this
law of Demand and Supply; namely, that the forces
destructive and the forces preservative perpetually
tend toward equilibrium, and vary inversely. That
is, the lower the organism and the less capable of
providing the means of subsistence, the greater the
power of reproduction. This he amply illustrates
from the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Beginning with the microscopic Infusoria in which the
rate of multiplication is beyond compute, we find
a constant ratio of decrease as we ascend in the
animal world, till we come to man and the elephant, in which it is the least. From this law he
concludes that eventually the rate of multiplication
will be just equal to the rate of mortality. That is,
the approach to equilibrium will never cease until
on the average, each pair bring to maturity but two
children. This is a view which all perfectionists
must take. Those who believe that a perfect law
can be given to man and that he will eventually be
enabled to obey it, are logically driven to the above
conclusion. But the question arises right here:
Can man ever have the power on earth to prevent
all the accidents to matter and man, or will he ever
acquire sufficient knowledge to shun them by mental contrivance? It is quite obvious he must not
only so perfect himself in science that he can foretell the " falling of lightning," or a meteoric stone,
or else have power to control them; but also this




108    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
knowledge or power must be made universal among
mankind, even down to the sucking infant; for how
is the young child to shun them but by knowledge
acquired? or is the universal knowledge to be born
with the child?  Will the young child unborn be
assured of the fact, that it will live out its full number of years, and that it is so provided for in wisdom that it is impossible for it to die till the day,
hour and second are fulfilled?  Shall there be no
quarrel among men, no predaceous animal, no drouth
or freshet, no railroad accident, no lost mariner of
sea or air, no earthquake or volcanic eruption, no
4' strong wind," no lion to lie down with the lamb
in this world?  No rattlesnake, mosquito or fly;
no hunger or pain? It would have to result in this
and far greater perfection.
Now, what would be the result of all this perfection?  Perfect satisfaction, the greatest catastrophe to man that could happen. As well open the
earth at every spot on which a being stood, and let
the central fire lick him in at once. The only difference would be in the means employed to extinguish him. It would be the embrace of death in
inaction to make man perfectly satisfied. It is
dissatisfaction which drives every wheel of industry, provides every mouthful of food, adds to the
head every increment of knowledge; and it is dissatisfaction which keeps it there.
There are two causes which combine to drive
metaphysicians and moralists into the above fallacy,




DEFINITION OF A FACULTY.           109
affirming a limit to the perfect, and approaching it
as a hound would overtake a hare. These are the
causes of failure shown in their reasonings; but we
are of opinion there is the crowning reason lying
back of and out of which these grow; the failure
to comprehend that man is the result of a positive
and negative force, and, because finite, can never
be in perfect equilibrium  and live. A finite force
is partial and related to other forces, which may
control, influence or neutralize, but never destroy it.
~. 8. Let us now define a faculty, and then
trace its development in some particular one, for
a clear exposition of what we mean.
A faculty is the capacity to receive and reflect a
definite sensation.  The kind of sensation is its
function, and names the faculty. Sensation is the
motion of a disturbed organism. The knowledge
of it is consciousness. For example: the faculty to
distinguish colors is the capacity to receive impressions of the coloring ray of light. These impressions of the ray are the sensation; the kind of ray
names the function. It may be said, then, man has
a faculty of color, the function of which is to distinguish colors. But this is only produced by force.
Intercepted, this force is retained.  There is no
escape for this motion of light; it does not pass
through the organism, nor is it reflected therefrom.
The sensation must, therefore, be retained in the
organism as intercepted force. In other words, the




110    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
force of sensation becomes latent. This is how a
faculty may grow, or may be evoked, or transmitted.  A faculty, then, may become an organ of
force, which, when awakened or excited, must find
bodily expression and reflect the sensation in consciousness.  Those faculties which arise from the
motion of light may be called the observing faculties.  The faculty of music must arise from the
motion of air. We have heretofore indicated how
hunger will produce the selfish instinct, or those
faculties which would protect the animal, and how
Death would lead to the domestic faculties, evolving
from waste in the body and waste in the race a law
of Demand and Supply.
~. 9. We now pass on to debatable ground, to
see if there be any " intuitive" faculty; that is, one
which has come in any other way than through
sensation. Let us take what is known as the " Religious faculty." And now, a few words of explanation before we proceed.
It is, perhaps, true that the word Religion cannot
be defined, as but very few would agree as to what
it is. It belongs to that class of words which express varying conditions in human affairs, such as
knowledge, ignorance, morality, etc., and mustitself
change with the ever changing human race. It is
one of those words which in meaning keep pace
with man's growth, if not with all animal growth.
To define Religionby generalizing a certain class of




NO DEFINITION OF RELIGION.        111
actions of the most civilized people on earth, into
one expression, would not be a true definition, any
more than to generalize a certain class of actions
common to the most barbarous; nor could we stop
here and affirm religion as certain actions common
to all men, by finding and defining by that which
was common to all men; for that which would be
stricken off from the highest might itself be the
very essence of the most civilized religion, and what
would be left after this were taken away would not
alone remain with the lowest type of man, but be
found common to the ape and dog. To define religion by the superior, or inferior limit, is simply to
affirm the utter failure at definition.  To get at the
truth we must go back to primary sensation; and
herein the animal kingdom may not be the limit.
Definition is here lost. Nor, on the other hand,
can we stop with the highest type of civilized man.
We must define so that all religious actions which
shall come after may come within the definition.
To define we have to circumscribe and limit. We
may, however, classify both mentally and physically.
As man is both a vertebrate and religious animal;
that is he is possessed of a backbone, with its neural
and hoemal arches, and he performs acts of religion.
Now the vertebral characteristic of the animal is
quite changeable, and varies widely in the snake
and man; and thus also of the religious act. As
there is a typical relation in the bony structure of
the two, so there may be in the religious action,




112    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
differing no more in the mental than in the physical. In fact man has done worse things, more hideous and brutal, in the holy name of religion, than
it is possible for a rattlesnake to do, owing to its
inferior development. Just where the animal act
can be classed as religious, it is difficult to tell, perhaps impossible; as no one can tell just where fear
passes into wonder, nor where wonder rises into
worship. The religious principle is one of taming
and domestication, but this only can come through
intense pain and fear. To tame a wild beast you
must begin by inflicting the severest pain. This
produces an. inordinate fear. This subsides into
submission, and may develope in the offspring that
faithful, confiding, obedient disposition, so manifest
in the dog toward his master. The dog worships
his master, and exhibits a devotion unparalleled by
man to his god. He often defends his master with
that ferocity with which Calvin defended his " Triune
God."  He will suffer and die for his master, and if
the master smites, he'crouches down and receives
the blow with a devotion and submission becoming
an ancient Christian, whereas he would rend any
other person who treated him thus. He will even
die worshipping the master, who in his passion slew
the worshipper. If there is anything, different from
religion as exhibited in man in all this, we fail to
find it. It is the nature of Force to reveal itself in
animal consciousness, and having thus revealed
itself, it compels its own worship. And when the




WHAT IS RELIGION?            113
animal acknowledges in action, and assents in reflection, to the existence of superior force, that assent
and acknowledgment makes the animal a religious
being in thought and deed. This develops into
reverence-a feeling of inferiority in self-with its
opposite pole of superiority conferred in other
beings, or Being. This is worship.  The actions
which Lthis worship produces is religion. What,
therefore, is religion in one community, is not in
another; what was religion in one age, was not in
another; what is religion to-day, was not yesterday,
and may not be to-morrow. It cannot be said that
religion is that endeavor or observance which tends
to make one better, for religious endeavors and
observances often make people worse.  Religion,
in fact, has been the mighty engine of man's
greatest cruelty, oppression and wrong.  It has
called human devils the servants of God, and mad
men saints. The religious sentiment in itself is
blind; it is an irresistable feeling; an impulse
which may drive mankind into a lust after God.
It is the mover of the will, and lies far back of the
endeavor or observance. The effort to make one
better is the product of Reason. There is design
in this: it is action founded upon cause and effect.
But religion is considered rather a duty toward
God, an observance to please him, and any effect
which it might have upon the character of man,
religion entirely ignores. Should such consideration
ever enter into religion, it is derived from Reason,
I




114    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
and not the blind feeling of the religious faculty.
The religious faculty is that one which prompts
man to worship. But this involves the conception
of a Supreme Being. It is thus the moralist who
does not discard the word religion, yet who discards
the popular notions of Deity, finds himself in conflict with the atheist on the one hand and the popular
theologian on the other. The difficulty rests in the
fact that Morals and Theology are as separate and
distinct, as is the opinion of the propriety of certain
human conduct and the speculations about an rnknown being. And this is the real distinction
between Morals and Theology. Now, religion may
be considered on the one hand purely theological,
and on the other hand purely humanitarian; or it
may, in the third place, hold an indefinite relation
to both. There must, therefore, ever be a quarrel
between Morals and Theology in regard to this
word religion, till Theology posits the Infinite
Force and there passes into science. The faculty
which prompts man to worship would still remain.
The object of the worship only would be changed.
Thousands already worship at no other shrine than
Science.
~. 10. We assert that the feeling of fear is the
primary cause of worship. We will indicate its
mode of development, and then trace it in history..
Before fear there must be something'to fear..
This is pain. Or, in other words,  EyUv preceds a nd4




FEAR THE CA USE OF WORSHIP.        115
is the cause of Fear. The experience of pain produces the anticipation of harm. This anticipation
of harm is not alone a sentiment of man; it is
common to all animals, and is almost as necessary
to life as food. It is the expressed command of
Nature to the animal: "Preserve thyself!"  From
this comes every phase of instinct in the animal, as
well as the development of far-reaching, provident
thought in Reason and Genius. It doubtless sprung
up originally with sensation in the demand for food
called hunger, with the most inferior animal, and is
the lowest or first expression of mental force. This
first sensation must have been anterior to the development of ear, eye, or even a permanent mouth,
when food might have been taken by absorption.
Among the small microscopic Polygastric Infusoria
we find, perhaps, the process by which animal
mouths were made. The food, coming in contact
with the body, sinks into it, and is enveloped by
the surrounding mass closing over it, as a ball of
tallow would sink into a k-ettle of soft soap, and be
finally absorbed. Thus, Motion brought Feeling,
and Feeling every organ of sense. Air and Sunlight brought Ear and Eye. It is said fishes have
been taken from the Mammoth Cave without even
the rudiment of an eye. These organs of sense are
necessary to the body as it passes from the homogeneous mass to the heterogeneous organism. They
are developed by external agencies, and produce,
in their turn, mental faculties.




116    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
The anticipation of harm is perhaps the first
reflection in the animal, for life depends on it. To
be kept whole it must shun that which would
destroy it; it must provide against cold and hunger;
it must provide for and against both internal and
external conditions.  But this implies knowledge
of its approach to danger; it implies a knowledge
of Evil as a fact of life. It matters not what we
call this knowledge-sensation, instinct, reason, intuition —it is simply knowledge, no more nor less:
the effect of Force on Matter; and if intuition exists
anywhere, it must be in the first sensation, which
brings its knowledge; the first reflection of itself in
the animal, which is the first experience. The numerous animals which sport in a drop of vinegar under
the solar microscope are found to swim  about,
shunning each other, sporting with and fleeing
from one another. The spider which weaves its
web and lies in wait for its prey has the same kind
of knowledge that the robber exhibits when he strikes
down his victim in the wood or highway.  The
rabbit which runs from the dog exhibits the same
kind of knowledge, or anticipation of harm, that
the man does when he runs from a band of savage
Indians who are pursuing him for his scalp. The
cunning of the bear or fox that will spring a trap
for the meat which is intended to betray them into
it, by striking it with the paw at right angles to the
jaws of the trap, exhibit about as much "genius"
as a man would in like circulmsta.nces; and this act




REASON IN ANIMALS.           117
will show a process' of ratiocination as full and complete as any abstract reasoning from cause to effect.
Thought, and reasoning from effect to cause, will
explain all the cbmplex actions of the animal.
Without it there is no explanation. Our actions
themselves negative the assumption that animals'
are solely guided by a force which is not a conscious
knowledge. The horse and dog receive our caresses.
If they have no conscious knowledge, and cannot
appreciate and reciprocate our affection, as well
caress a stick or stone. The watch-dog at the gate
bids his master welcome, and the stranger to wait
outside. The wild habits of animals are lost in
domestication, whether of man or wolf. Because an
animal is very small, is no evidence that it has not
much knowledge. The ant is less than the elephant, but we have no authority to say the ant
knows less than the elephant, relative to their own
plans of operation, any more than the force which
makes an atom revolve is less than that which keeps
the earth in its orbit. Nay, it may be easier to
destroy the orbital motion of the earth than the
orbital motion of one of its atoms; and for the
same reason we have no more authority to affirm a
mental force less strong when acting in a small
man than when acting in a large one. The difference is only one of condition. We cannot measure
experience with tape lines, nor gather thought in
bushels. A very small and delicately organized
woman of our highest culture, will experience more




118    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
pain or pleasure in a moment, than a Hottentot
would in a lifetime; and she might acquire more
knowledge of science in a day, than it were possible
for an Osage Indian to acquire in a lifetime, with
head and body twice as large. But what has this
to do with the development of worship? We shall
see.
Wonder and astonishment in man have been produced by the experience of unexpected pain. But
wonder is the incipient reason; it is the half-born
question: What is the cause?  The "why?" is
involved in it. This is at first connected with primary sensations, and doubtless long remained
closely related to physical pain, the "how?" governing all the animal's activities. Now, it is very
easy to see, in a train of causes, that one force must
beget another, the effect standing as the cause of
what must follow. But at first this was not so; the
effect was only studied. T-his, in fact, was all that
was thought of, and "I How shall I provide for
myself?" was the all-absorbing question. But when
the animal said "1 wonder," it became a reasoning
being: the cause was here conceived. Wonder is,
then, taken from pure sensations of pain, and may
be referred to every novelty in nature, from every
unaccountable effect which is felt to those which
are observed. Thus fear, which, from the primary
sensations, was always connected with wonder, and
doubtless antedated it in animal life thousands of
years, became at last a constituent element in every




6EPiNESIS OF TIEl GOD-THOUGHT.    119
unaccountable phenomenon; and the question which
came so early in the development of man's thought,
and which was born of Wonder: "What is the
cause?" was answered in the first mental conception
of cause by being personified in Being. This Being
was the " God," the " Wonder-Worker," the "Hidden," the "Spirit of Fire," the "Sun," the "Air;"
and when man had learned the use of the tool he
had made, this Being became the " Great Artificer,"
the "Master Builder," and so on in the catalogue of
names. But it could not be otherwise than that
this being should be feared, for Fear and Wonder
are twins of the same birth from the experience of
unexpected and unaccountable pain. See how naturally this comes. The child, enlivened with sensation, is ushered into the world full of external
realities. It feels: it knows not the meaning of
these startling sensations of pain. Even its first
sensation is pain, and whatever of pleasure that
shall come after must lie on this bed. It sees: it
knows not the meaning of these flitting shadows.
It passes on through that stage, when it only' asks
"How?" till it reflects and asks "Why all this?"
As the child passes upwards in years, older ones
cannot answer the question. When grown, he looks
within, and reflection is bewildered in the strange,
and hidden, and awful mysteries of life. He seeks
a cause without, and becomes dizzy treading the
paths whereunto the imagination leads him. He
wonders over a wonderful reality, and then names




120    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
his god " Wonder-Worker," or "' Hidden," or "Fire."
But this "hidden" cause must be grasped by the
senses. It is a real being, and not only feels and acts,
but must have an abode, a real dwelling. The wonder-working god must hide away in objects, and
reveal himself to man through the senses. And as
man grows in knowledge, his god flits from object to
object, ever taking higher forms, passing through
terrestrial and celestial forms-ever hidden, yet active, till revealed in man himself; thence passing
into infinite spirit, and thence into Infinite Force.
History seems to corroborate the above genesis
of the god-thought.  The first names of deity
which have descended to us in history are those
which express wonder, concealment, pain and fear.
Ammon, which means hidden, is an old Egyptian
god. Jupiter, a very modern god, always concealed
himself and dwelt in the highest and most inaccessible parts of the earth. Jehovah never permitted
himself to be seen, save in part, by the specially
chosen medium  of his commandments to man.
Thus has come the saying: "No man can see God
and live." To see God would be, it was thought,
a fearful and most calamitous sight.
We affirm there can be no worship without some
hidden and mysterious object to contemplate, and
to search after with feelings of awe. Even the
worshipers of Science exhibit a devotion worthy of
a Moslem or ancient Christian. That the world's
first worship came through fear is but an historic




THE FIRE WORSHIPER.            121
generalization. The early bibles of the world c3mmand the people to fear God; and as the first
worship was Fetichism-the worship of a god in a
thing, which the senses could grasp-stone, fire,
sun or animal which contained the hidden "Wonder-Worker," those things themselves became sacred
and objects of fear. When we study the history of
the barbarous races of the world at the present
time, we find fear the ruling element in their worship. It is fear which causes the tiger to be worshiped in many parts of the Old World.  In
Sumatra the people will not kill it, though it
commits frightful ravages. It is fear which makes
the inhabitants of KIamstchatka and Siberia pay
reverential respect to bears. It is fear which calls
forth the priest in Abyssinia to pray over the skin
of a hyena, and to thus exorcise the enchanter
within it. It is fear which prostrates the Guebre
of Persia before the fire on its altar.
In the worship of fire there is a prominent religious fact which runs far back into the history of
man. The Guebres affirm Zoroaster brought fire
from heaven, and they keep it continually burning
in temples erected to the one god. The Sun they
affirm is his eye. The Ancient Druids also worshiped the fire, and like the Guebres, they had no
idols, but the human sacrifice often ascended in the
flame. They had two yearly festivals of fire, the
one in May, "The fire of God," and the other in
November, "The fire of Peace."  But these festi



122    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
vals of fire were perhaps in honor of the Sun.
That fire should have been worshiped is most
natural and evident from the genesis of the godthought. There is the unaccountable thing called
fire. It is a subtile foe, or a warming, cheering
friend. To the untutored mind it is an object of
fear as well as pain. The Hidden cause is the Being of Fire. And this Being becomes at once an
object of worship. The early mind reached out in
speculations upon the origin of fire, always reasoning upon some theological hypothesis: for so great
a blessing must have been bestowed by the god of
fire, or else the god was really in it. The Grecian
fable of Prometheus, who, with the aid of Minerva,
the goddess of wisdom, went up to heaven and
lighted his torch at the charriot of the Sun, is perhaps the finest illustration in point. But if we leave
the fable to the beauties of that realm whereunto
the imagination leads, and descend into the region
more of fact than fancy, we might go back to the
early time which now lies hid in the unfathomable
past, and behold the untutored animal, we may give
the name of man to distinguish him from what is
still below him in animal life, picking up two
flints and striking them  together.  There now
comes flashing from the lips of those stones, the
burning words of _Force, —" This is the revelation of
fire to thee, oh, man!"  He drops them in amazement, and trembling in wonder and fear, falls down
and worships his god-this god of fire concealed in




THE GENESIS OF SCIENCE.          123
the stone. Here is, perhaps, the true Prometheus
of history. What speculations upon the "Hidden," the " Wonder Worker," the " Spirit of
Fire," must arise from this simple display of Force!
What gods may grow out of it!  What oft repeated stories! What legends of god-man! What
poems of history and theology shall descend from
it!  The worship of God in a stone is the most natural and irresistable effect of such a display of
Force, —when there is not that being on earth who
can give the true hypothesis. This worship expresses the first hypothesis of science.  Without
this it is impossible for us to imagine how science
can come to man. Fetichism, the conception of a
god in a thing, is the first hypothesis to account for
Force. This is the parent of every subsequent hypothesis in science; and without this there would
be no science to-day. "Why does this fire come
from the stone?" asks the untutored savage, little
dreaming that this question will shoot its fiery rays
of thought far up through the countless ages, culminating in art and science, guiding man's head to
knowledge, and his hands to comfort. "Why is
this so?" asks the savage. It matters not how
he answers this question —he cannot answer it
wrong. If he say it is the god acting, the same
may be said to-day of Force. And if he falls down
and worships the god, it is only worship paid to
Science at its birth.
Is it called superstition? There are the seeds of




124    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
science in every belief which rises to the dignity of
an hypothesis about God; and time was when they
were indispensible. The superstitions of the world
have retained within them the germs of all Science.
As a walnut, made up of its bitter rind and still
harder shell will contain and preserve the germn of a
future tree, so also Superstition has been the rind
and hard shell which has ever preserved the germs
of Science, and in which Science has been transferred from people to people, and from place to
place, taking new root in different soils of the world.
But let us now ascend from Fetichism, taking one
more step.
~. 11. Fear made the mother cast her child a
prey to a beast. Fear bent the necks of men beneath the Juggernaut.  Fear kindled the fire
which consumed the human sacrifice offered to this
god of Fire; nay it tore from the hearthstone the
nearest and dearest to appease the avenging wrath
of this " Hidden" god.
We are told in Grecian story how Agamemnon,
just before departing from Beotia to attack Troy,
while hunting in the forest, killed a stag which was
sacred to the goddess Diana. Whereupon the army
was visited with pestilence. Calchas, a priest who
stood as mediator between men and the gods,
thereupon declared that the wrath of the goddess
could only be appeased by the sacrifice of a virgin
on her altar-and none but the daughter of the
offender-himself a war-god among the Grecians.




A HIGHER PHASE OF WORSHiP.         125
The maiden was brought; the altar prepared; the
priest, with knife in hand, was ready to perform the
religious rite; when lo! Iphigenia, for that was the
virgin's name, was snatched away by the goddess
and a hind left in her place. We read a modified
version of this story in "Jephtha's daughter," and
in the arm of Abraham being stayed and a ram left
in the place of Isaac.
But we may come nearer home than Grecian or
Hebrew fable, and follow the early religious thought
of our own forefathers, the early inhabitants of
Western Europe. The same wild and awful godthought was theirs; the same dread superstition
hung over the land; the same fear sent them trembling in the same sacrificial rites before their altars.
That beautiful poem by Alfred Tennyson, entitled
The Victim, describes the human sacrifice to the gods
Thor and Odin, who gave their commands to the
priest to take the king's nearest and dearest, his
only son.
And why was all this? It was surely a higher
phase of worship than Fetichism. It is not difficult
to tell. Any natural yet unaccountable phenomenon
was thought to be the work of Deity.  But if it
came like a scourge, as in pestilence, famine or the
like, it was considered a special visitation. But
why scourge a people? Not knowing that scourges
obey natural laws, and may be provided against
as one may provide against hunger, they were
attributed to the wrath of, Deity.  To stop the




126    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
scourge was only to appease Deity. But why offer
up the nearest and dearest? Because the most
painful for man to do so. Here is the reasoning,
and it is just as conclusive as logic can make it.
If Deity sends pestilence, he must be angry at man.
But if he sends pestilence because he is angry, he
deligyts to see man suffer pain.  Therefore, if we
inflict the most severe pain on ourselves, and tell
him it. is to appease him, he will be delighted in
seeing us suffer; he will be appeased and stop the
pestilence. Newton's reasoning, which affirmed the
law of gravity, was no more conclusive than this.
When theology could be brought to the stern
logic of human sacrifice, the Reason of man
was grappling  with  First Principles.  At this
stage of man's development, Science was not only
possible, as in the incipient "why?" of Fetisch
worship, but it was actual. It had not only taken
root, it had put forth the shoot. Nothing but to
destroy all theological speculations could ever root
it out of man.
The religion which compels a worshiper to offer
up his only child to his god is the most sincere.
That man who can do this is a true worhiper of his
god.  This requires the greatest self-sacrifice, for
the tie which connects the parent to the child is the
strongest. At this point Fear culminates, and must
thereafter forever diminish. But at this point also
Science is born, in Logic. True mental ratiocination shall ever grow therein.- This will divide the




SCIENCE BORN OF THEOLOGY.        127
one person supreme into many parts, and distribute
his power. Then will science forever grow.
Now, it was faith in the Reason of man which
compelled those early worshipers to offer up the
human sacrifice. It was by obeying Logic, the
stern god of the head which brought those evils of
religion, so prevalent among the early races of the
world, so common among all races of low development, and so general among mankind everywhere
when ignorant of the true nature of Force. It is
Force which has been worshiped throughout the
ages, whether revealed in stone or book; and when
perceived by the senses and interrogated by Reason,
the answer which came back to man as the word of
God has ever been the conclusion which Logic has
given him from the premises supplied by the senses,
when trying to grasp the nature of Force. Nor
could science have come in any other way than
through the god-thought. Nor could it have come
without those terrible evils which have so afflicted
the world. Science, in fact, has not only been born
of Theology, but, like a wayward child, Theology
has cradled it in affliction, has beaten it at school,
spurned it from her presence when grown, immured it in dungeons, and, in the hope of destroying it in the world, has often driven its devotees to
the scaffold or stake. And why must Science be
thus scourged? Before we answer this question, let
us take one more step in the development of the
world's worship.




128   ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
~. 12. From the worship of the Fire-god which
spoke out of the stone, perhaps in the age of Stone,
naturally came the transferring of the god, which
is only Force, to other objects which are themselves
active agencies in Nature. Thus the Sun would be
truly a Fire-god. The air would be an invisible
Spirit. Hence the Latin, spiritus, which means air.
This would give life, for the living breathe it, and
to be deprived of it is death. Hence it would be
deemed sacred, and called The Holy Spirit. And
then taking a wider range of thought, this principle of Force, which is everywhere manifest, would
confer upon each department of Nature a presiding
god or goddess. And we have Grecian theology.
This is a great advance above Fetichism. It is an
advance from the simple to the complex. The homogeneous mass has now become a heterogeneous
organism. This must inevitably develop science,
and to destroy this theological speculation would indeed destroy the science of this people.
And it is necessary that the god-thought should
be thus divided to evolve science; for although
Force is an infinite unit, it only manifests itself
partially and in a special manner to man. He must
become acquainted with the simple and special
manifestations of Force before he can understand
the complex or grasp the universal. He has to
build on a foundation of thought older than his
own,-a foundation strong and suitable, yet rough
and unhewn; and he can never ascend to the con



DAWN OF THE ESTHETIC.           129
structing architect till he has passed through the
practical mechanic: he can never be a poet till he
has been a great sufferer; never a painter till
he has been a great observer; never an ideal
thinker till he has been a practical worker. And
it is when the god-thought passes from the tyranny
of one idea to the complex conception of many
gods that a genesis of science is possible, inasmuch
as this unfetters the mind and renders it less subject
to the control of Fear.
From the above conclusion it is easy to see how
the stern mandate of Logic, which compelled man
to offer the human sacrifice in obedience to his
fears, was countermanded in human reason even
without a knowledge of the true nature of Force,
or without conferring less revengeful attributes
upon Deity. See how this came about.
~. 13. The human sacrifice was superceded by
the sacrificial beast. Yet man must propitiate the
god through his fears in this also.
Among the Grecians the sacrificial beast was
decorated with flowers, and the person who offered
the sacrifice wore a garland around his head. Here
we see the dawn of the esthetic in man's nature,
for the love of the beautiful is a growth like all
other emotions, as truly as is knowledge itself.
IBefore he begins, he washes his hands in pure
water, "typical of washing away the sins of the
soul."  As the flowers which adorned his head
J




130    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
prophesied the coming fruit, so the water prophesied the pure man. In fact, the esthetic is only the
prophesy of the fairer, the purer, the better in the
world which man feels within him, and he baptizes
himself with water and the "Spirit of Fire" as
emblematic of the purer man. He now approaches
the altar with his offering. Here he has brought
the first-born or choicest of his herd or flock. In
solemn reverence and implicit faith he lifts the head
of the beast heavenward; he applies the knife to
the throat, catches the blood in a bowl, and secures
a sanctification through blood. And why? Because
the blood was thought to be the life of the animal,
and he has offered a life to his god. This notion
was common to all ancient peoples who offered
sacrifices to their gods. The legs of the animal
are inclosed in fat and burnt on the altar with wine
and incense, and while the savor of the flesh ascends
to heaven the ceremony is accompanied with prayer
and music.
That wine should be a necessary accompaniment
in the religious ceremony is by no means devoid of
meaning. In the early times wine was not typical,
as now; but it was thought to be the real blood of
a god.  Doubtless many of the early Christians
thought so; and if not really so when it came from
the grape, that the priest had the power to trans —
form it into the real blood of Christ. But among
the Grecians the interference of a priest was not
necessary. Wine was the blood of the grape, and




FROM THE REAL TO THE TYPICAL.   131
the vine was the sacred plant of the god Bacchus,
whose real blood was in the grape. Now this blood
came through the direct rays of the Sun-god, warming, cheering, beautifying and fructifying the earth.
Hence, the wine was held sacred because divine in
its origin and mysterious in its effects. It was most
natural, therefore, to use it upon religious occasions,
at first as a real and at last a typical offering.
This also marks an era in the progress of religious ideas. It marks the passage from the real,
in the sacrificial rite, to the typical. It was adopted
as that article which most resembled blood or life,
and at first must have been though to be the real
blood of life; for it was too bold a step to pass at
once from the real to that which is only typical.
But eventually, when the nature of Force became
more generally understood, and the wonderful and
miraculous effects of wine became quite natural,
instead of the blood this wine would become typical
only of blood. At this point the sacrifice entirely
disappears, save in the Catholic Christian church,
where the wine is thought to be changed into the
real blood of Christ, who offered himself a sacrifice
for a whole world. But with the Protestant this
wine is only used as typical. It is thus the sacrificial child, virgin, man and beast are no longer
slain nor brought to the altar.  This rite passes
gradually away, culminating in the typical wine.
Thus we see a gradual ascent from the sacrifice to
God of the first-born son of the king up to the less




132    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
favored or esteemed human victim,-to the first of
the flock or herd, then to any animal which had
blood, till we come to that which only typifies
blood, the juice of the grape from the god-plant
the vine, which is smiled upon by the Sun-god of
the world.
In this gradual ascent we see his fears gradually
giving way, and the finer and higher sentiments
growing stronger, and influencing the conduct of
man.
It is thus the religious world is forever appeasing
the stern god of the head Logic, by a continual offering of the " typical " and  " emblematic " sacrifices. It
must some day see that the whole religious history
of the world is only typical of Science, and all the
god-names are only symbols of Force.
~. 14. As the primitive conception, like all subsequent conceptions of God, was purely humanthat is, conferring human attributes-it was a most
natural and easy step from Fetichism to make man
a god. This doubtless first transpired in connection with some man-a leader, a brave or strong
man-who could perform physical feats beyond the
ordinary powers of man; for Force, it must be kept
in mind, it is that is worshiped, whether it be of
head or hand. He thus became the hero, who was
looked up to by those who knew him; was followed
and feared, and when dead worshiped. He became
the mighty man of the chase or battle; when he




ANTHR OPOMORPHISM.           133
dies he only goes away to return again, and the
funeral ceremony became a religious rite.  His
memory would be held sacred, and after generations, hearing the story from parental lips, would
magnify his powers and works, till at last.the story
of a wonder-working god, with name and history,
descends to the world.  The name of the gods
would thus become " The Strong," 1" The Mighty in
Battle," "The Man of War," "The Destroyer."
The attributes of savage natures would be conferred
in the assertions: "Vengeance is mine," "Blood
cryeth from the ground," "I will rejoice to destroy
you." Even the ancient Scandinavians conferred
upon their gods the "sacred duty of blood revenge." Jupiter was the father of gods and men,
the great Thunderer who dealt out the lightning to
suit his fancy. This was his weapon and the symbol
of his strength.  Mars drives his chariot of war,
and Apollo his chariot of the sun.,Vulcan is the
great artificer of heaven, and Mercury its swiftwinged messenger.  Hercules performs physical
prodigies, and is honored with a seat among the
gods. The ocean has its Neptune, and the central
fire its Pluto.  Thus the Grecians gave to each
department of Nature a presiding god or goddess;
but these gods were only mighty men.
The same anthropomorphitic notion is seen in
all early theology, both East and West. For example, we read in Genesis how the sons of God
saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and




134    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
from this was born a race of giants; but the Teutonic version is, that the marriage was between the
daughters of the gods and the sons of men, which
produced the strong men of the world. Pluto says
the Etheopians represent their gods with flat noses
and. black complexions, while the Thracians give
them blue eyes and ruddy complexions. The North
American Indian has a great Indian for a god. And
thus it has ever been; men project their own image
on the infinite back-ground, and worship it as god.
That is, Force is taken as the god; the attributes of
the god are only those of men. Perhaps the true
method of the genesis of the god-thought may be
summed up as follows: The Promethean savage of
the age anterior to the Stone, struck fire from two
flints, Which he fell down and worshiped as his god;
and in after ages, for his discovery, became a god
himself, who has been honored in many a fiery name
and feast of flame. From these two things came
the world's worship. Fire became the symbol of
divinity. Its festivals have been many a time honored from of old; the objects it represented manifold,-from sun and moon, and fire of earth, to the
red blood of man and beast,-appearing at last in
the blood of the vine, the intoxicating beverage of
the gods, and symbol of the blood of God to-day.
In all this progriess through the countless ages
of worship, from Fetichism to Symbolism, it is quite
obvious there has nothing been worshiped but
Force, the highest form of which has the attributes




WHEN SCIENCE WILL BE ENTHRONED. 135
of man. But the investigation into the nature of
Force has evolved Science. The theologic thought
was only to give Force a Being-to make it a material essence; and this, again, has been the history
of Force from Kepler's spirits, who kept the planets
in their orbits, down to latent fluid heat, or the
spirits of alcohol.  The theologic notion has forever hugged the idea of Force. But when Science
affirms the Infinite Force, manifesting itself in each
atom, Theology must ascent, and posit this as the
God; for there can be but one Infinite Force. Theology will then have passed into Science, and the
world's worship will have a transmutation  as
gradual and complete as that of the bloody rite of
human sacrifice into the harmless sacrament of the
symbolic wine. In fact, it is when this wine religion
shall have passed away?, that Science shall be enthroned. At this juncture it will be the sole office
of the religious faculty to apply Science to human
conduct, and evolve from Morals a science of life.
This might be truly termed a scientific morality, or
religion. But Theology and Morals are separate
and distinct. Theology is the incipient science. It
is the struggle of the Reason to grasp the cause, the
hidden, the nature of Force under its god names.
It must pass away with Science. But Morality
has to do with the conduct of man; and as man
is a growth with evervarying conditions, it must
forever remain with man; forever paint its ideals
of Beauty, and  Love, and  Wisdom; forever




136    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
interrogate Science; forever ask: "How  shall I
escape this evil?" A true Religion will never come
until it thus assumes a scientific form. A worship
of the Universal Force, with no other forms and
ceremonies than the manipulation and exhibition of
this Force in finite expression: the lecture room the
church, and the scientific lecture the Sunday sermon.
~. 15. Nor can we escape the god idea in the
scientific affirmation of Infinite Force, for the following reasons:
1. Intelligence is a fact in the universe, because
exhibited in ruan. But man is a finite expression of
Force, mentally, physically, or any way he may be
viewed. Man is a part, then, of Infinite Force.
But as man is not the only part of Infinite Force,
we may reasonably affirm intelligence, in the infinite other parts.
2. To deny the existence of Infinite Intelligence, is simply to deny all human knowledge.
Infinite Intelligence cannot therefore be denied. But
the universe manifests power. That is, we know there
is power in the universe, else it would not be manifested. But this is simply Force expressing itselfliterally telling man it is, and he is, and he knows it
is. Now if this does not prove an acting intelligence
in Nature, both in and outside of man, then nothing
can ever be proved by human reason. And in fact
this is above and superior to human reasoning; it is
the effect of primary sensation, that which evolves




INFERENCES ABOUT GOD.           137
the first knowledge. It is the germ cells of human
Reason. The first experience upon which all deduction rests, and where all knowledge begins.
3. Now the ancients called this manifestation
of power in the world the god or the gods. If
taken as a unit it was called god, if considered as
exhibited in each department of nature, the gods.
And what can we affirm  to-day in the light of
science more consonant with Reason than to say:
The Infinite Force is intelligent, and is God.
4. This Infinite Force can only be known by
man in part. But the part proves the existence of
the whole. If we know a part of something exists,
we must affirm the existence of the whole. But the
power of the universe is manifested upon so large
and grand a scale, we are lost in the contemplation
thereof, and to satisfy the ultimate of Reason we
posit the infinite. This is the absolute idea. But
all possible conceptions, that is the conferring of attributes, must forever fail. There is infinity beyond
all human conceptions. Force is infinitely powerful
and Intelligent; this is God. The God of Science.
5. The above hypothesis must destroy the long
continued wrangle about l Nature and God."  If
Nature be considered the display of Force acting on
matter, the action being regular, necessitated, and
fixed, this would only be saying God reveals himself
in matter, through fixed laws. No other hypothesis
of a perfect God is possible. And what has been
called the Power of God, in the Universe, is only




138    ORIGIN OF MORALS AND SCIENCE.
Force acting on matter.  Power of God equals
Force. Power of God manifesting himself in Na,ture would read: Force acting on matter. It is
only necessary to give the Force intelligence to
make the god idea complete.
6. There is a fallacy afloat, often appearing in
popular theological discussions, affirming that we
cannot possibly know anything of God. This may
have come from an entire misunderstanding of Herbert Spencer when he affirms: "the power which
the universe manifests is utterly inscrutable." So
it is; but no one has the right to say, therefore, we
know nothing of the power of the universe. The
power which moves an atom of oxygen is utterly
inscrutable; yet we may affirm many effects of this
power. The power which evolves conscious thought
is utterly inscrutable; yet we know thousands of
things about conscious thought. Force is utterly
inscrutable; but we can affirm  many things of
Force, and know its ulodes of operation. The ultimate atom is utterly inscrutable. Nobody knows
anything of an atom  of oxygen; cannot tell its
size, shape, color or motion. Yet, are we compelled
to say from this that therefore we know nothing
of its effects?  When we try to investigate the
nature of either Force or Matter-that is, to find
out what they are-we find them utterly inscrutable.
Yet they make known their existence in consciousness.  They manifest themselves.  We do not make
them reveal themselves. We do not fix ourselves




NOT ACTORS BUT RECIPIENTS.       139
into such a mental condition that we can grasp
them and know of their existence. We are not the
actors in this, but the recipients of knowledge. It is
they who make themselves known. Surely this is
utterly inscrutable. So that not only the God of
the universe is not only inscrutable, but so also is
his revelation in man.




CHAPTER  VI.
HO1 W TITEOO  G Y E VOL VES SCIENCE.
~. 1. We are now prepared to indicate the
method in which Theology evolves Science. We
have heretofore shown that Theology was born of
Fear and Wonder; that Pain and Evil must precede
it. Now, if it can be made apparent that Science
has a necessary historic relation to Theology, the
scientific meaning of Evil may be somewhat inferred. We have also already seen that Grecian
theology was one of many gods; that different
expressions of Force were represented therein; and
instead of being central and unitary, the godthought was thus widely distributed. The legitimate result of this is, it must destroy the tyranny
of Fear, which leads to theological control; for
man may choose the god from among many which
he is specially to worship. Religious worship becomes thus divided up, and the mind is at liberty
to speculate upon the manifold operations of Force,
and thus may assign different causes for the many
effects which are witnessed therein.




WARFARE AMONG THE GODS. -    141
Perhaps the first great step towards mental freedom was the notion that the gods faught among
themselves.  This warfare among the gods was
plainly derived from that antagonism which is
everywhere prominent in Nature.  The forces of
earth and sky warred against each other; the winds
and waters and thunders were seemingly in a tumultuous uproar.  Conferring the attributes of men,
they were subject to anger, and their anger was not
alone directed against men. There might be different opinions held by the gods, and a division in
their councils which led to open rebellion. But if
the gods could hold different opinions, and go to
war over them, surely men would be justified in
doing the same. This would open up the way to
that mental conflict which must ever evolve Truth,
and which it is impossible to imagine could come
in any other way. And when this mental conflict
was conducted in a measure free from  death, it
could only be so defended by an appeal to the conduct of the gods. Polytheism must therefore lead
to the broadest and most diverse speculations upon
all the phenomena of Nature. It is not alone sufficient to say: "And there was war in Heaven, and
one god conquered and ruled ever after with a rod
of iron;" but the battle must be left undecided.
The command: "'Thou shalt have no other gods
before me," if enforced upon a nation must fetter
the mind and squelch all scientific speculation in
that people. For, we affirm, theologic speculation




142   HO W THEOLOG Y EVOL VES SCIENCE.
is only the incipient science, the "why?" being
there first evolved. We must, therefore, look for
the greatest advance of science among that people
whose worship is the most polytheistic, and the least
advance among that people whose worship is the
most monotheistic. As examples of these we take
Grecian and Jewish theology. We will first take
up the Grecian thought, and see what that accomplished in one department of science, Astronomy,
before we treat of the other and its relation and
influence on Christian thought.
~. 2. When Xenophanes, the old Grecian poet,
went out at night, and looking into the vast depths
beyond, sang to the stars with low chant and fourstringed lyre, he was singing the natal song of Astronomy.  Without this song, and poetic frenzy,
and zeal of a "speculative madman," perhaps the
science as known to man would not have been.
This song was a hymn to the god of the stars,
who directed the throng in infinite space, and who
was himself the center of all.
But primarily the germ cells of astronomy lie in
the first contemplation of the stars.  That they
should have been contemplated is only to say people
have eyes and must observe; that sight will produce
sensation and sensation thought; that thought will
return and reflect its own self and wonder, and then
ask "Why?"  But contemplation alone would not
answer this question, nor woiuld song bring the




NUMBER AND EQUALITY DIVINE.    143
answer. There must be a basis for it to rest on in
human knowledge, independent of the star or stellar
phenomena.  In its broadest sense that basis is
Mathematics, which comprises number and equality.
But this is again only "Div)ersity in Unity," the everrepeated expression of the Universe, the Infinite
Force acting on divisible matter.
But Number was at once thought to be divine.
Pythagoras said: "Number is the Infinite, the substance of all things."  This was his god.  But
Equality, we have seen, is only a law of Force-its
undisturbed and definite expression. This is not
only the basis of mathematics and of mechanics,
but we may trace it throughout the whole social
organism-family, church, state-and we will find
it the basis of all just legislation and government,
as it is the basis of all reasoning,-the very substance of Logic.  But this Law of Equality, this
definite expression of Force, was considered Divine
also, and a special deity made to rule over it.
The peculiar phase of Grecian astronomy was
that of the spherical heavens, which at last materialized the stars, which had hitherto been considered
either as real gods or the panoply of the heavenly
host.  The sky, to all appearances, is a concave
sphere, and to suppose the stars fixed therein, and
the sphere revolving about the earth, turning upon
an axis, one pole of which was at or near the north
star, would make the conception full and complete.
The origin of this notion outdates history. It per



144   HOW THEOLOGY EVOL VES SCIENCE.
haps took ages to complete this thought.  The
Greeks inherited this hypothesis, together with the
history of the week, the days of which were presided over by the sun, moon, and five planetary
gods.* When the course of the sun was traced on
the concave surface of this revolving sphere, and
the constellations of the Zodiac named, a step was
taken in astronomy which insured it to coming ages.
It was then, as Pliny remarks, that the gates of
Nature were opened.  Plutarch says, Pythagoras
was the author of this discovery. This was the fact
that the sun travels in a circle obliquely situated
with regard to the circles in which the other stars
move about the poles. This gave rise to all the
technical terms used to-day with regard to a globe,pole, axis, equator, tropics, arctic and antarctic circles, equinoxial and solsticial points, zodiac, horizon,-all having local relation to the sphere, its
circles, and the various movements of the sun and
stars.
Now, see what this led to. It could not have
been otherwise than that the earth should have been
pronounced globular. It is said Anaximander, who
invented the Grecian sun-dial, held the opinion that
the earth was globular. This was six hundred years
before the -Christian Era. Whether this be so or
not, we do know that Aristotle, the great logician.
and naturalist, the deepest thinker, closest reasoner,
the greatest investigator of physical science, the
* We refer the reader to lecture on " Sunday," p, -- for 4 history of the-Week.




GRECIAN ASTRONOMY.              145
the brightest star of the Grecian galaxy, believed it
and taught it. Here is his argument, nineteen hundred and fifty years before Copernicus repeated it:
"As to the figure of the earth, it surely must be
spherical; and, moreover, from the phenomena, according to the sense; for if it were not so the eclipses
of the moon would not have such sections as they
have. For in the configuration, in the course of a
month, the deficient part takes all different shapes:
it is straight, and concave, and convex; but in
eclipses it always has the line of division convex.
Wherefore, since the moon is eclipsed in consequence of the interposition of the earth, the periphery of the earth must be the cause of this by
having a spherical form. And again: from the appearance of the stars, it is clear not only that the
earth is round, but that its size is not very large;
for when we make a small removal to the south or
to the north, the circle of the horizon becomes palpably different, so that the stars overhead undergo
a great change in position, and are not the same to
those who travel to the north and to the south. For
some stars are seen in Egypt or at Cyprus, but are
not seen in the countries to the north of these; and
the stars that in the north are visible while they
make a complete circuit, there undergo a setting.
So that from this it is manifest not only that the
form of the earth is round, but also that it is a part
of not a very large sphere; for otherwise the difference would not be so obvious to persons making so
K




146   HOW THEOLOGY EVOL ES SCIENCE.
small, a change of place. Wherefore we may judge
that those persons who connect the region in the
neighborhood of the Pillars of Hercules with that
towards India, and who assert that in this way the
sea is one, do not assert things very improbable.
The mathematicians who try to calculate the measure of the circumference make it amount to 400,000
stadia; whence we collect that the earth is not only
spherical, but is not large as compared with the
magnitude of the stars."
Long before the Christian Era, also, the earth
was said to revolve on its axis, and also around the
sun. Upon this point let us transcribe the words of
Copernicus: "I found in Cicero that Nicetas held
that the earth was in motion, and in Plutarch I
found that some others had been of that opinion;
and his words I will transcribe, that any one may
read them:' Philosophers in general hold that the
earth is at rest, but Philolaus, the Pythagorean,
teaches that it moves round the central fire in an
oblique circle, in the same direction as the sun and
moon. Heraclides, of Pontus, and Ecphantus, the
Pythagorean, give the earth a motion, but not a
motion of translation; they make it revolve like a
wheel about its own center from west to east.'"
We also find that Archimedes states that his contemporary, Aristarchus, of Samos, asserted that the
earth had not only a yearly motion about the sun,
but also a diurnal rotation on its axis. That this
hypothesis existed is further proven from the fact




ECLIPSES OBJECTS OF FEAR.         147
that Aristotle argued against it. Ptolemy also argued against the diurnal motion of the earth.
Cicero also believed that Mercury and Venus revolved about the sun.  This surely renders the
work of Copernicus not the first in discovery, and
which shows an ancestral foundation on which he
stood higher and stronger by far than he was aware
of. These Grecian opinions, however, were only
entertained by the few, and the astronomical conclusions were that the heavens and earth were
spherical-the earth the center, and the heavens
and earth revolving about it. This was the condition of astronomical science at the time of Ptolemy,
who lived in the Second century.
~. 3. As the origin of all worship arose in fear,
and the sun and moon were considered by the early
untutored mind to be gods, and especially the sun to
be a god of fire, the fire having at first caused pain, it
therefore could not well be otherwise than that any
unusual occurrence connected with the sun and
moon should be looked upon with dread. Hence,
an eclipse was a thing of superstitious fear. This,
above all things, would be noted and remembered.
We find at Babylon, nearly four hundred years
B. C., the Chaldeans had tables of eclipses. And
the story is perhaps true, that at the time of Alexander's conquest, the Chaldeans possessed a series of
observations which went back nineteen hundred
years, and which Aristotle commanded Callisthenes




148   HOW THEOLOGY EVOL VES SCIENCE.
to bring to him in Greece. It was the analytic and
generalizing head of Aristotle that reasoned so
well and soundly on these tables. Two hundred
years after -this, Hypparchus took these tables and
reduced the motion of the moon to rule; and so
accurate was his deduction, we find Cleomedes, in
the time of Augustus, saying that "we never see
an eclipse happen which has not been predicted by
those who made use of the tables."
So much for the Grecian thought, and what it
accomplished in astronomical science. We have
left unsaid anything about Euclid and Archimedes,
the mere mention of whose names will suggest to
the student large fields traversed in mathematics
and mechanics, by hundreds of deductive heads
unknown to history, which these two men only
represent. We will now pass to consider the effect
of monotheism upon physical science.
~. 4. From Ptolemy to Copernicus there was
no advance in astronomy. This is called the stationary period, and occupies thirteen hundred and
fifty years.
But that there is any such thing as a stationary
period we may well doubt.  The human mind
seems to have an historic ebb and flow, like the
ocean, but a stationary period is something not
known to history. Mankind may not progress in
some one or many branches of thought, but they
compensate it in some one or many other directions.




NO STATIONARY PERIOD.          149
We are also led to seriously doubt that mankind
retrograded in the Middle Ages. There was only
a warfare against Physical sciences, and more
especially Astronomy. But this warfare certainly
strengthened the reasoning faculty of man.  If
Astronomy suffered, Logic gained thereby. Never
before was the mind so sharp and subtle, as we see
exhibited in these metaphysical discussions of the
Neoplatonic School, when even the Virtues were
arranged in physical, moral, purificatory, theoretic,
and theurgic orders. Socrates or Plato could not
boast of greater analytic or synthetic powers than
this school exhibited in her Proclus and Plotinus.
Not even Aristotle could boast of a more logical
head than we find among Scholastic philosophers of
after times, when the monastery formed the cradle
of modern philosophy.
We find, also, that there were many discoveries
to be accredited to the so-called stationary period;
glass, gunpowder, type, the compass, and many
more, of which gunpowder alone did more to immediately advance civilization than all the discoveries
of the ancients; and the mariner's compass not
only opened up the highways of the ocean, and
proved the Grecian theory of the earth to be true,
but it unsealed the lips of thought, which Christianity had closed.
It is impossible that there should have been a
stationary period. A Dark Age in regard to Astronomy there undoubtedly was, but this was only




150   HOW THEOLOGY EVOLVES SCIENCE.
the night in which Physical Science slept. When
it awoke it was refreshed, and arose to gird on the
armor of experimental battle. As there is unconscious cerebration while we sleep, so also that force
which was to evolve Physical Science was active, all
unconscious though it slept.
~. 5. What was the cause of the Dark Ages?
We affirm, it was the theologic spirit of the age,
which made a central tyranny of the Church. The
god-thought was not allowed to branch out from the
Christian Catholic trunk. In fact, the Polytheism
of the world was called pagan, and so lopped off
from the religious tree of Christendom.. All there
was of it was a great hollow trunk, trifurcated at
the top. The hollow trunk was the church in
which alone the pope presided; the branches were
Jesus and Mary and Jehovah. It never bore a leaf
or a flower, much less the fruit of science, save
Logic, which is the primary necessity of Theology.
Around the barren trunk the world revolved. All
minds were stricken down with fear. People were
compelled to go up to pay tribute to the church;
were compelled to acknowledge the Pope as authority, and were made to swear by tradition under
penalty of eternal death, which was torment without end, that outside of this there was no god.
There was a three-fold tyranny connected with
this: the Jewish conception of Jehovah, with his
command: "Thou shalt have no other gods before




THE CAUSES OF THE DARK ACGES.    151
me," —the Bible as the only and infallible word of
God,-and the Pope as its only holy and infallible
interpreter. The carnal Reason of man had therefore to bow to this theologic tyranny. All that
could possibly be evolved in science from this
tyranny, was that which comes directly from metaphysical speculation.
The first notion, therefore, was, as soon as
Christianity became a fixed religion, that physical
and spiritual things conflicted; that the light and
transitory things of time must be banished from the
mind. And so says Eusebius, the great light and
authority of the church: "It is not through ignorance of these things admired by them, (the natural
philosophers,) but through contempt of their useless labor that we think little of these matters,
turning our souls to the exercise of better things."
And Lactantius, of the same century, the Third,
pronounces the investigation of physical causes
" empty and false." He also administered a withering rebuke to the cultivators of astronomy, as follows: " To search for the causes of natural things;
to enquire whether the sun be as large as he seems;
whether the moon is convex or concave; whether
the stars are fixed in the sky or float freely in the
air; of what size and of what material are the
heavens; whether they be at rest or in motion;
what is the magnitude of the earth; on what foundations it is suspended and balanced,-to dispute
and conjecture on such matters, is just as if we




152   HO W THEOLOG Y EEVOL ES SCIENCE.
chose to discuss what we think of a city in a remote
country, of which we never heard but the name."
This was surely a withering rebuke to the man who
thought about the ground on which he trod, or about
the sunbeam which gladdened his eye; and when it
came as a sort of God's command, it was necessarily
connected with fear, and must intimidate.
This Christian divine tries to destroy the Grecian
hypothesis of the sphericity of the earth by exclaiming: "' Is it possible that man can be so absurd as to
believe that the crops and trees on the other side of
the earth hang downwards, and that men there have
their feet higher than their heads."  Saint Augustin, however, admits the sphericity of the earth, and
shows how absurd and contemptible the notion is of
inhabitants on the opposite side, "because no such
race is recorded by Scripture among the descendants
of Adam."
It was in this manner that all astronomical speculation was squelched by the early defenders of the
church. These speculations were considered absurd,
trifling, impious and detestable, and all those bold
and true theories which had come from the unfettered Grecian mind were studiously thrust out as of
pagan origin and contrary to Scripture. This conquest of the church led to the adoption of a more
biblical notion, known as the geography of Cosmas,
who wrote in the Sixth century: "He describes the
earth as an oblong floor, surrounded by upright
walls and covered by a vault, below which the




UTNSAFE TO BIBLICAL DOCTRINE.    153
heavenly bodies perform their revolutions, going
round a certain high mountain, which occupies the
northern parts of the earth, and makes night by
intercepting the light of the sun." This geography
being deemed Scriptural, was ever after used as a
mighty engine to demolish the true theories which
the Grecian mind had wrought out, till the great
breaking up of this central tyranny of the Catholic
god-thought by the Protestant Reformation.
As late as the Eighth century, the heathen theory of antipodes was not wholly overturned, for
we find one Virgil, Bishop of Salzburg, not assenting to the Christian notion that the earth is fiat.
"And it is said when he was reported to Boniface,
Archbishop of Ments, as holding the existence of
antipodes, the prelate was shocked at the assumption, as it seemed to him, of a world of human
beings out of the reach of the conditions of salvation."  Kepler asserts that he was reported to Pope
Zachery, and deposed from his bishopric. So you
see how this notion of the rotundity of the earth
came at last to be a very unsafe doctrine, as Tostatus declared it to be about the time Columbus
sailed.
Now all this is consonant with the steady onward
progress of thought.  The theologic thunderbolt
was only leveled against the Physical sciences, and
especially Astronomy, as this was said to be opposed
to Scriptures; but Thought, in other channels, was
working out its own salvation. Theologic fear sup



154   HOW THEOLOGY EVOLVES SCIENCE.
pressed it in one direction, but it only became intensified in another. What Astronomy lost, the Reason
gained. This old Catholic Church had in her womb,
unconscious to herself, the Luthers and Galileos
and Newtons, who must be born.  Theologic fear
could intimidate for a while, but it could not curb
the Almighty and divine mental force.  The old
Catholic Church, with its hollow trunk, in which a
Pope dwelt and clasped his infallible book, and
with its trifurcated top, without a leaf or flower,
standing there lonely, and black, and grim, the central god-thought of Christendom was by no means
to be forever barren and fruitless. Though dead at
the top, it was alive at the root. From these roots
shot up the Luthers, and Melanchthons, and Brunos
of the Reformation. The religious scepter was not
wrested from the hand of the pope, but new scepters
were multiplied by breaking the power of the
Church.  The bible was not destroyed, but its
tyranny was destroyed by placing it in the hands of
the people, who interpreted it according to Reason,
and while assenting to its authority, unconsciously
made it bow to their own judgments. Neither was
the Christian god-thought destroyed, but the attributes of the Trinity became multiple and conflicting. The "Thus saith the Lord" spoken by Moses,
which once made all Jewish heads bow to Jehovah,
and afterwards all Christian heads, when spoken
by the infallible pope, came now not as the real
word directly from a central God, but as an emena



REASON AND HISTOR Y A GREE.       155
tion thereof reflected through the reason of man.
This broke the god-thought into as many fragments
as there were minds to contemplate Force. This is
a freedom from theological tyranny more perfect
than Greece could boast. Science is now not only
possible, it is necessitated. The head is ripe and
the tyranny of Theological Fear is broken, because
opinion is divided. Theology must now become
antagonistic to itself. Having served its purpose,
which is to evolve Science, it has preserved the
seeds of death within it, and must die in combating
itself.
~. 6. Now, if the foregoing reasoning be true,
the Protestant Reformation must precede the establishment of modern astronomical science.  The
causes of the reformation had been long at work
before Luther, and only culminated with him, in
1517. At this point of time the Catholic Church
was shattered-the tyranny of the central godthought was broken.  Let us now see how and
when modern astronomy was born.
After Astronomy had slept for thirteen hundred
and fifty years, Copernicus took it up, just as it had
been left by the Grecian mind. It had been preserved in Grecian beauty by the wandering Arabs.
This science had come on the wings of Speech, in
her rythmical flight, from the Grecian poet. This
Grecian song had been translated by the Arab, and
taken with him in his wanderings.  It had thus




156   HO W THEVOOGY' EVOLVES SCIENCE.
been preserved from contempt and neglect by a
people unlike those who held the science to be
"vain and transitory," " contrary to Scripture," and
"unsafe."  Copernicus took it up to see how "foolish" a thing the Grecian thought had wrought out.
But this foolish thing begot its own like in his head,
and as a basis of thousands of years of thought in
experiments, and records, and investigations, and
hypotheses, which the barbarians had given him,
he solved the problem of the motion of the stars.
The truth staggered him. He bent in fear before
the yet prevailing creed of Christendom, and for
thirty-seven years did not dare to publish his discovery. Nor did he dare to open his lips upon this
discovery for seventeen years, and until Magellan's
boat, Victoria, had gone round the world. The day
he died he received a copy of his work, which was
to make known his discovery, but never opened it.
This was twenty-six years after Luther shattered the
Catholic god-thought.
Till now the Christian world had defaced the
beauty of the Grecian thought, little dreaming that
the noblest thought of the Christian New Testament
had been borrowed therefrom. They tore down the
Grecian tower of strength, and in the high places of
scientific truth, where Pythagoras, and Aristotle, and
HIipparchus had sat, they set up the terrible image
of Hell and its devils, to frighten all who said there
were other gods beside Jehovah, and that the Pope
was not his only infallible priest. Fear smote the




SOME CONCLUSIONS.            157
land with a theologic curse, and the dens of idolatry
multiplied, as the images of Mary and her Son were
struck out by the chisel of the artist, who imitated
the Grecian thought in sculpture, but failed to copy
the Grecian spirit of Truth.
This, then, is the order in which Science is
evolved: First, it must spring from the primary
conception of Force. This Force is affirmed to be
the god, and the "why" is involved therein. But
the question "why?" is the basis of all Science. In
this first conception of a god it is unitary, and all
phenomena are attributed to the active god. Worship is born of Fear and Pain, and Theology of
Wonder. But Wonder is the incipient "Why?"
Of this comes Logic, or true mental ratiocination.
But Logic is born of Number and Equality, which
is Diversity in Unity. Force is here divided up,
and the god-thought becomes multiple. This destroys the tyranny of Fear, and thus Science is permitted to grow.
~. 7.. That it is necessary to have the godthought precede Science is quite manifest from the
fact that the animal loves rest rather than labor and
activity. He must be driven to toil and to study.
Mankind are averse to thinking in logical order;
and while induction is a necessity of sensation, deduction is only produced by the most active incentives. The love of knowledge in the early race was
not sufficiently strong to comnpel any great exertion.




158   HO W THEOLOGY EOL YVES SCIENCE.
Evil, myriad shaped-Pain, Hunger, Suffering,
Death-produced Despair and Hope, for Despair
and Hope are only the two poles of one force. The
one implies the other, and the one will always produce the other. But the Evils of the world which
tortured the body must produce their counterparts
in Hope; that looking forward to realize earthly
happiness, which painted boundless wealth, perfect
health and perennial youth on the background of
the Future. It may be said these are vain and illusory, and produce nothing in science, but serve only
as theological food to make madmen in the world.
But will some one tell us how Chemistry could have
come in any other way? By these vain and illusory
hopes, the Alchemist labored night and day, suffering all the ills of poverty during life, to wring from
Nature the secrets of her hidden lore. Nature held
up to the vision of man no heavenly and angelic lie
when she showed him a piece of dull lead, in which
he found some silver and a trace of gold, but he interpreted the vision falsely.  " Ah!" he said, "I
now have it; I will transmute the lead into gold.
But what will drive out the evil spirit and retain
the good in the baser metal?  Something, surely;
let us call it the philosopher's stone." And thus the
Alchemist was driven madly on in search of this
phantom of the brain. But if the philosopher's
stone could transmute the baser metals into gold, it
might transmute pain and disease into pleasure and
health; nay, turn old age into youth, and thus be



A PHANTOM NECESSAR Y.           159
come the elixir of life. But it is plain to be seen
that this doctrine and belief of the Alchemist had
parentage in the god-thought of earlier times, that
men were changed into gods, and that the gods had
power to expel evil spirits, to change water into
wine, rods into serpents; nay, even people into
beasts and trees. In further proof of this we cite
the decree of Henry the VI., of England, who declared "that the clergy should engage in the search
for the philosopher's stone, for since they could
change bread and wine into the body and blood of
Christ, they must also, by the help of God, succeed
in transmuting the baser metals into gold."  From
the god-thought we have Astrology and Magic, which
gave birth to Alchemy; and in the wild rambles of
Alchemy we have the first discoveries which laid the
foundations of Chemistry. And the word gas, so
often on the lips of the chemist, is only the ghost of
some ancient god-thought.
In all this theological speculation, in all this
rambling after the philosopher's stone, the " Why?"
has been forever involved; and in no other way is
it possible for us to imagine that the question could
have been asked. And in no other way can we
imagine that such boundless zeal could have been
produced save by these theological phantoms of
the brain.  The phantom destroyed Rest, and made
search compulsory.
~. 8. But as Theology is the mother of Science,




160   HOW J'THEOLOG Y EVOLVES SCIENCE.
it is not at all strange that she should scourge her
wayward child. It has ever been the disposition of
Theology to assume the highest authority. She has
ever tried to make all things bow to her.  She
dictates.the method of worship as to time, place
and object. She dispenses temporal and spiritual
blessings, and makes the necks of king and subject
to bow at her feet. She rules with a rod of iron,
and punishes without mercy. She proclaims no law
without a penalty, and has never been known to
reprieve an offender. She punishes so long as disobedience lasts, and holds the culprit with a vicelike grip.  But in all this Science is begotten in
her very image, for it is the sole attribute of Force
to beget its own like. Force personified in the god
is only Force made real in Science.
But why, we ask, must Science be scourged?
That it may gain strength through antagonism.
Who is it that scourges Science? Theology; nobody
else. Nobody else has the right. This she does in
anger, forever driving Science from her embrace.
He goes from the house where he has been cradled,
and learns to live without her. She pursues him in
vengeance, persecutes and curses him, till large
enough to master her; and after the first encounter,
when she is conquered, true motherlike, she immediately embraces, caresses and blesses him; and
seeing her child full grown and conqueror of the
world, she dies and he buries her. This is, perhaps,
a true allegory of this Mother and Son.




MAN. COMPELLED TO BE ACCURATE.  161
Any one who has studied the history of the Inductive Sciences must have noticed with what precision, care and accuracy its devotees have aimed to
labor. The Deductive Sciences are in themselves
accurate and true, but it is not so with those which
have come from observation and experiment. It is
therefore necessary to have true observers and nice
experimenters to establish an inductive truth; or,
rather, to arrive at truth inductively. Chemistry
must have no careless and stupid experimenter in
her laboratory; Geology, no hear-say, caged-up bookworm of a cave or monastery; Astronomy, no blind
poet to sit and chant to the stars, but practical,
careful, studious, unwearying men work there; men
who, when they have discovered a truth, know it,
and can prove it. Else Theology, who stands by
scolding for "this trifling waste of time" in the
philosopher's "contemptible pursuit" after these
physical things, should he fail, strikes away his
head, or his freedom, for his impiety, and the world
has gained nothing. But should he be successful
and reach the truth, he can well afford to suffer or
die for it. Thus Bruno was burned at the stake,
and Galileo imprisoned. This tyranny of Theology
makes men most cautious in the investigation of
physical causes. No knowing how many truths
have been discovered, and have been buried with
their authors, because of this Theologic tyranny
which compelled man to be accurate. And thus,
when Science comes, it is radiant with the glory of
L




162   HO W THEOLOGY EVOLVES S CIE.NCE.
Truth; and girt about with its own invincible
strength, it comes to conquor.
~. 9. Life and truth only come through a holy
warfare. Force in the universe has a record of a
great warfare. It wages a continual battle in the
world. Let us take one illustration: There is a
simple element in nature called oxygen gas. Its
action upon organic matter is highly destructive.
It attacks, in fact, all substances with which it is not
already combined, with greater or less -energy, to
destroy them; that is, to change them, or to literally
burn them up. The oil in a lighted lamp is no more
consumed in a few hours by oxygen combining with
the carbon and leaving carbonic acid gas, which
escapes in the atmosphere, than is the fence nail
consumed in the same number of years by oxygen
combining with iron and leaving rust. Both are
processes of burning up; that is, the force of oxygen
overpowering carbon and iron. This is the cause,
also, of animal and vegetable decay. When a tree
rots and withers away, it is burnt up by oxygen.
When a person starves to death, he is burnt up by
oxygen. Thus, also, every organ of the head, and
every tissue of the body,-is being daily and hourly
consumed by oxygen; and were there no physician
in nature, no holy oil distilled to supply the loss, the
lamp of life would soon go out. But we do find a
holy antagonist in the light of the sun. This wages
an almost even-handed warfare against this silent




A CONTINUAL WARFARE IN NATURE.  163
and invisible demon of death and Evil. And in this
warfare of Oxygen and Sunlight a divine compensation is produced, leaving food, life, health, beauty
and knowledge on earth. Says Youmoans, in speaking of the Chemistry of the Sunbeam: "We have
seen that oxygen gas is the foe of organization and
life, its affinity for the other organic elements being
such that it perpetually rends them firom their combinations, thus inducing constant decay and dissolution. We now perceive that the solar rays are the
great antagonists of oxygen. Under their influence
the mineral elements are changed to living forms.
Under the influence of oxygen they are returned
again to the inorganic world. If oxygen dilapidates,
they renovate; if that decomposes and breaks down,
they construct and build up; if that is seen in the
falling leaf of autumn, they are proclaimed in the
exuberant foliage and blossoms of spring. If oxygen is the mainspring of destruction upon the globe,
wasting, burning, consuming and hastening the dissolution of all things, the solar rays constitute the
mighty force of counteraction. They reunite the
dissevered elements, substitute development for
decay, call forth a glory from desolation, and life
and beauty from the very bosom of death."
But the record of this conflict is the exact record
also of Theology with Science. Knowledge has a
record of many facts in the world, and it has only
come through a holy warfare. If we call Force the
gods, we have, in the above warfare of Oxygen and




164   HO W THEOLOGY EVOL VES SCIENCE.
Sunlight, a scientific review of all the theologic
fables of the world. The early mind could easily
perceive a mighty warfare going on between the
different forces of earth. These forces were called
gods, spirits, angels of light and darkness, controlled
by the Powers of heaven and hell. Here we have
Michael and his angels battling against Satan and
his angels, which story the Jew borrowed from the
Persian theology. In this the Persian poet was not
mistaken as to the great fact of the warfare, but
only as to its cause, and meaning, and result.
Homer's Iliad and Milton's Paradise Lost are
grand epics written to commemorate this Theologic
warfare. They were both written in honor of Evil;
of war in heaven and trouble on earth. They were
also both written When the tyranny of the godthought was broken; the one' when Grecian theology had emerged from the unitary and central
god, perhaps of Fire; the other when the Catholic
Church was shattered. The former was written at
the dawn of Grecian science; the latter at the dawn
of modern science. The one was both the requiem
of Theology and the natal song of Science in Greece,
the other in Europe. It is thus the causes which lie
back of and herald great movements and revolutions in either theology or science ever produce like
results, because the forces which evolve them are
ever the same. The causes which gave Greece her
Homer, and Europe her Milton, were identical and
the same. The scientific spirit became more inten



RESIST OR BE EXTINGUISHED.        165
sified in Europe, because the mind became more
liberated from the tyranny and fear of the godthought.
~. 10. The above is only an illustration in one
department of nature. But the truth is, Force can
not act without an exhibition of this antagonism.
And why? Because Force ever acts in equal and
opposite directions. In all its expressions, physically, mentally and materially, it exhibits polarity.
If you raise twenty pounds from the earth, the impression of your foot in the soil will be twenty
pounds more perceptible. If you are opposed, resistance becomes a necessity of that opposition; else
the opposition will extinguish you. The worm  dies
beneath your tread but the serpent rises up and
strikes you. If you give, you must have received.
If weeds grow in your corn, to save the corn you
must root out the weeds. If disease wars against
your body, to save your life you must kill the disease. If tyranny sits enthroned over a nation, to
save the people the head of Tyranny must be
stricken off. If slavery gets rooted into the soil of
a nation, it will spread till a stronger force destroys
it. Vice-like ignorance has to be pulled up by the
roots; this is accompanied by pain and bleeding.
It is a war of forces, and the stronger will always
prevail. War is the watchword of Nature. People
may cry peace! peace! but there will be no peace;
for peace is satisfaction and death.




166   HO W THEOLOGY E OL ES SCIENCE.
~. 11. B3ut strength only comes from these opposing forces. Mental and physical strength are
born of antagonism.
A  celebrated exploit of Hercules, the god of
strength, so goes the Grecian fable, was his victory
over Antaeus, the son of the Earth. " Antaeus was
a mighty giant and wrestler, whose strength was
invincible so long as he remained in contact with
his mother Earth. He compelled all strangers who
came to his country to wrestle with him, on condition if conquered, as they all had hitherto been,
to be put to death. Hercules encountered him, and
finding that it was of no avail to throw him, for he
always arose with renewed strength with every fall,
he lifted him up from the earth and strangled him
in mid-air." This fable has more beauties than
one. It shows what accurate observers the ancients
were. Physical strength, which is force, was personified in the god Hercules, who was not able by
physical strength alone to subdue the giant who
had the miraculous gift of increasing strength.
But mental force came into play in Hercules, who
discovered the science of Antaeus' strength. With
this discovery the victory was easy.
It is thus man learns through experimentswhich
fail. He is also like Antaeus a great babe yet,
drawing nourishment and strength from mother
E:,arth. He is just learning to walk, and falling
often, cries out "-evil! " Yet the fall gives him renewed strength. It is the falling which the world




SCIENCE EXPLAIArS THE "FALL."     167
records as evil, yet it is in this very way and no
other, that he gains sufficient strength to walk or
stand erect. Two or three more falls of Antmus and
it would have been all over with the mighty powers
of Hercules. Now let Hercules represent the godthought and Anteus Science, and in this case we
would have had Science prevail; but as it was,
Theology was yet conqueror. It is in this way also
all the theological stories of the "Fall of Man" have
come about. These have been by no means false
stories; they have been true allegorical representations of Evil in the world. Man called the perfeclion from which he fell only child-like weakness
and innocence, and the fall those accidents which
overtook him when he went out in quest of food
and knowledge. With the food of experience must
come the knowledge of Good and Evil; the Moral
and Science of life; the ever-repeated how and why.
See how naturally this comes. It requires an
active life to learn. How man is urged on by the
necessities of life! He could not be moved in any
other way. Hunger is continually gnawing at his
vitals. Want is continually knocking at his door.
Hungry children cry for food-if not actually, prospectively-if parents remain idle. So they work
with body and mind to provide for the morrow.
There stands Want, lean and gaunt, the terrible
ghost of Hunger on the threshold, who says to
father and mother: "Hie thee out and bring in food
and raiment; labor and watch, or I will snatch




168   HOW THEOLOGY a  EVOLVES SCIENCE.
away thy little ones." And sometimes parents wish
they could not love so tenderly, lest they be compelled to sorrow too bitterly.
What appears to us the evils of hunger, are at
last all that would save our lives. Without hunger
we would not work; and without work, death.
Without Evil, no labor; no active mind; no dissatisfaction; no progress. So it is only a question
with us: which will we tZvke, the evils of the world,
or nonentity? And herein there can be no difference between what is called physical and moral evil.
The force which evolves the one also evolves the
other. As there is no growth of the body without
the pains of the nerves to compel us to protect it
against the blind forces which are ever ready to
destroy it, so there is no moral growth without
remorse of conscience, without shame and disgust,
to protect us against those blind forces which are
ever ready to turn man into a thief, a murderer, a
child of lust, an idiot, or a devil. To say we can
progress without Evil is just the same as saying we
can progress when perfect.
Evil may, then, be considered to be the means by
which the Infinite Force of the Universe evolves
conscious finite intelligence.  The same means
keeps it going, reproduces it, and drives it on to the
better. This is progressive inteltigence. The Infinite
Force is the Power; Evil is the lever which moves
the Intellectual and Moral World. It begets knowledge by driving the animal away from ignorance.




EVIL DRIVES TO ACTIVITY.         169
This driving away is a process of scourging.  With
knowledge the blessing comes; yet only partially,
because knowledge is only acquired in part. Evil
drives to activity, and Science crowns this Activity.
Science is the fruit of conscious thought. This is
rooted in the soil of Ignorance, and is nourished by
the forces of Evil. We are now prepared to more
fully illustrate this in our next chapter, on Special
Evils.




CHAPTER VII.
SPECIAL EVILS.
~. 1. Your good neighbor is stricken down in
cold blood by the hand of an assassin; a burglar,
grateful for cold cash, breaks into a store and takes
away the contents of a safe; Lust lays his polluted
hand on some fair daughter, and despoils her in
your midst: these are notorious individual crimes
and outrages. We thus become so enraged at some
creatures in the shape of man that we wonder what
they were ever made for. But there is a god's-fact
speaking out of these men, which will one day
ripen into Moral Science. We look upon snakes,
toads, flies, mosquitos, lice, curculio, chinch-bugs,
and grasshoppers, and wonder what this countless
swarm of torment and trouble was ever made for.
We plant our corn, and wonder why God could not
have made it to grow without weeds and briars, which
make us toil and sweat: and if we were disposed,
we could, in our ignorance, write a theologic fable
about it, saying "that God cursed the ground for




A LIST OF EVILS.             171
man's sake;" which fable, when knowledge had
crowned the head of man with science, would read:
" and God blessed the ground with briars and weeds
for man's sake."
Then, in our domestication and civilization, we
try to handle fire, and this fire-god of the untutored
mind often burns us up. WVe make us instruments
to work with, so that we may live better; and these
tools of the inventive genius, forged by this godVulcan of the head, cut, bruise, maim and kill us.
We capture and subdue steam, and it destroys millions of lives on land and sea.  We make gunpowder to equalize the rights of man through the
muscles, and we tread on the magazines of our own
wrath and destruction, and are blown up by the
million. We look abroad in civilized society, and
find a land studded with jails and penitentiaries,
with iron grated cells and massive walls, to confine
those who would unlawfully take the people's life
or property.  We find asylums for the poor and
insane, the halt, the dumb, and blind.  We find
nearly every well-constructed house with as many
locks as doors, to lock out the burglar and thief.
We often find a nation of soldiers, with all the
munitions of war on a large scale, keeping guard
over a race of slaves; and thus Evil is placed in
great black letters before our eyes. And we are
now compelled to exclaim: Whence all this mental
and physical deformity? in whose laboratory of vice
and wickedness was all this Ruin created? by




172             SPECIAL EVILS.
whose hand was it created?  And there swells in
our breasts the feeling of opposition to all this; we
rise up in indignation against this monster Evil; we
would war against and overthrow it; the slave we
would liberate, and punish the master; we would
make war against war; we would rob the robber
and murder the murderer; we would open the
prison doors, if our own safety did not compel us
to keep them shut, from a sympathy for our fellowman. This sympathy makes us care for the insane,
the halt, the blind; makes us educate the dumb
through the fingers, and school the villain to industry who is imprisoned for a crime. INay, we
would preach a salvation from death beyond the
grave.
Here we have the conflict of Good and Evil
lettered in Holy books; lettered in the history of
nations; lettered in the flesh of man.  What a
world of science is contained in the question of
Burns!
"If I'm designed yon lordling's slave,
By Nature's law designed;
Why was an independent wish
E'er planted in my mind?"
Or we may ask: If we are designed the slaves of
our own passions, appetites, lusts, by Nature's law
designed, why do we oppose in the flesh these
appetites, passions and lusts? Why do we strive
to better, not only our own condition, but the condition of our fellow? We do strive after the better,




LET THE ACTOR BEWARE.           173
the higher, the nobler, in man. We each of us
have an ideal manhood or womanhood for ourself
and the race, grander and better than it now exhibits; an ideal life better than it now lives. And
following on after this ideal, we pass on to the
better, so that
"Each to-morrow
Finds us better than to-day."
The answer to the above may all be summed up
in one sentence. Man is driven out to search after
knowledge, and stumbles over the precipice of his
own ignorance. There is a silent monitor within,
which says: "Let the a6tor beware!"
~. 2. How shall I act? say Morals. This can
only be answered by Experience. The precipice,
the thorns, the hard unmellowed earth, the floods,
the winds, the sleet and ice, the scorching heat-in
short, Pain-has wrung out of the flesh the only
answer that has ever come.  Man cannot reason
from actions outside of himself, and deduce a correct theory of morals. Were this so we might say:
Look at the ant, oh! man, and be a slaveholder, a
kidnapper, a sluggard. We might say: Look at the
eagle, and be a robber; the fox, and be a thief; the
rattlesnake, and be a murderer; the alligator, and
be a cannibal. We might say: Look at the beast
of the field, and abolish marriage; or lay not up
for yourselves food and raiment, and thus advise
you to live vagabonds and beggars; asserting, also,




174            SPECIAL EVILS.
that this is the normal condition of man. But this
would be false reasoning; for while this might be
the normal condition of some men, it is by no
means the ideal conception; nor is it the true condition of those who have already risen far beyond
the beast. The time was when kidnapping was
thought no evil by the majority of men in America.
No one would be justified in now arguing in its
favor, and adducing proofs from natural history and
past human conduct. The reason is, the inferior
are no guide or example to the superior.  The
Carib or Osage indian would be no moral criterion
for a Parker or a Frothingham. It is false to suppose that morals are fixed and external, like a
scientific truth.  They must change with the
changing conditions of man; must grow with his
growth; must be a low contingent and necessary to
the individual in growth, but not absolute and
eternal.  They must apply to the individual, not
the race. They are special, not general. The moral'
law which would apply to the individual, Beecher,
and fulfill all the conditions of his life, would not
apply to any other individual living or dead, or who
may live. Those conditions which evolve action,
and which give Henry Ward Beecher happiness,
and do not ]injure any other man, will never be produced again in any other person, and have never
existed before. This is why a perfect moral law
never has been given, and could never be obeyed
if given.




FABLES ARE MORAL AXIOMS.         175
~. 3. If one is blindfolded and put into a strange
house, he can only learn imperfectly what it contains, by stumbling around in ignorance, and then
only conjecturing from the touch. Well, just so it
is with the child; it is taught wisdom from experience; and the world of Mankind is taught wisdom
by stumbling over Blind Conjecture in the night of
its ignorance. Knowledge is the lamp which shines
with increasing brightness as man diligently plods
onward. It is the oil of the head which keeps this
lamp burning. As the child falls in learning to
walk, so mankind falls in learning to live; and the
fall is called Moral Evil. Without the fall there
would be no knowledge from which to construct
the moral of life.  The "how?" could never be
answered. The most vital and self-evident truth of
the whole Bible is the story of Man's Fall. In fact,
the fables of the world are all moral axioms. They
are the first truths of experience; they guide, and
cheer, and shine like stars in the night. Man is
compelled to go forth in action; it is no choice of
his. He is created and set in motion on this globe
by forces far anterior to his life, and without his
knowledge or consent; but the road he is to travel,
be it crooked or straight, is, in a measure, one of
his own choosing. He may shun obstacles, or
stumble over them; step on thorns, or provide
against them; labor, or go hungry. If he acts in
harmony with the law of his own being and the
material world about him, the result will be good to




176            SPECIAL EVILS.
him; if not, the result will be bad. He thus exemplifies a freedom hedged in by necessity.
It is the law of common prudence which always
commands: "Let the actor beware!" This supposes a conscious will-power in the actor, however
high or low the intelligence. It is this which says
to the animal: "There is danger around you."
This is a conscious and intelligent force, which is
to protect the creature against the unconscious and
blind forces around it. Gravity would hurl you to
earth from the top of a tower, did you not consciously, and by force of will through common
prudence, make your footing sure.  The law of
gravity relates to the material world, and is blind;
the law of common prudence relates entirely to the
mind. The one is a material, the other is a mental
force. This mental force is one of knowledge.
Now, there is no force so potent in the world as
this force of the head, called knowledge. What is
knowledge for? Only to enable us to harmonize
the material and mental forces; or to harmonize the
mental, and control or shun the material forces,
would, perhaps, more nearly express it. For example: if a man builds his house near the bank of
a river, below the high-water mark, to be observed
on the trees and by the drift-wood along its course,
then he must expect to be drowned out, or his house
swept off sometime, perhaps by the next spring's
freshet. And if he marry a woman with neither
good sense nor a healthy body, he must expect to




TWO ILL USTRATIONS.           177
have senseless or unhealthy children; or if a woman
marry a man who is a drunkard, and she not very
vigorous in mind, as she must necessarily be to do
so, then she must expect, if she have children, that
the chances will be in favor of idiots. In the first
instance, the state of things was not in harmony
with the law of the freshet, for the man's good;
and in the second place, the state of things was not
in harmony with the laws of reproduction, for the
child's good. Now, this is the very manner in which
Moral law is evolved, which only comes through the
failures of life, or the evils of experience. The
sweeping away of the man's house gives him this
moral command:'"You ought not to build your
house there again." And the idiot children proclaim to the parents, in no unmistakable speech,
that they ought not to build children out of such
materials again.
~. 4. But it is evident man himself may produce evil in two ways: by acting in ignorance,
which may be termed negative evil or error, and
also by acting with the full knowledge that evil is
to be the result, which may be termed positive evil,
or sin. Thus you tell your child to bring you a
piece of iron from the ground, not knowing it is
hot. It picks it up and gets burnt. Now, should
you tell the child with the full knowledge that the
iron is hot, it would be your sin, while in the other
case it would be your error.  But this is by no
M




178             SPECIA L EVILS.
means all of this case.  The child is burnt; not you.
Yet you have committed the error, or sin, while the
child only suffers the evil. The evil is the effect of
fire on the child's hand. True, you may suffer secondarily through sympathy; but the child it is that
suffers the evil primarily through physical pain.
Now the moral law is violated by you, through
willful knowledge or prudential neglect, and is
evolved through the experience of the child. But
this is not all. The child finds that you are primarily the cause of the evil, and an antagonism is
hereby necessitated. If it can distinguish between
knowledge and ignorance, and thinks you knew the
result beforehand, the antagonism produces hatred
towards you from injured self, which is only selflove evolving hatred; or, in the second place, if it
thinks you did not mean it, which conclusion it
could only gather from a belief in your ignorance,
the antagonism  takes the form of a lack of confidence in you. In either case the child is taught
self-reliance. But this is the very soul of Morals.
This evolves the science of individual action. But
again: The cause of the evil, directly, was the fire
which burnt the hand. TLis was unconscious, and
no blame can be attached to it.  It would be
foolish, then, to say: "Fire is a great evil, do not
touch it;" for while it is a great evil, it is also a
great good, and proves good or evil to man just as
he uses it. In fact, this may be said of all the
material forces of the world.




A QUESTION ANA WERED.           179
~. 5. Now Man is a compound of mental and
material forces. The unconscious mental and material forces largely predominate. Man cannot be
blamed for being acted upon. IHe is the percipient
of external and internal truths; which manifest
themselves to him  by their own inherent force.
How  man acquires knowledge is utterly inscrutable; or how he feels pain. He is made -to act,
and then moved by being acted upon.
But what is it that guides him when he asks:
"How shall I act?" To evolve the Science of
Morals we must answer the question: " Why does
he act as ihe does?"  It may be an indefinite answer
to reply: Because of Condcitioms.  Yet this is the
answer, and the only answer possible, which makes
morals undefinable. These conditions, which control the direction in which man acts, are multiple,
varying and conflicting. These necessitate choice,
which is the result of judgment, the product of
number and equality. When one acts thus it may
be called rational action,-an act according to Rteason.  This is different from  those actions which
spring directly from feeling, or intensified sensation; as when the child picked up the hot iron, the
feeling would compel it to instantly drop it; or
when a child falls from a secondl-story window, the
mother rushes to pick it up; or when one assaults
you with a deadly weapon, you instinctively assume
the defensive. In these cases there is no choice of
actions.




180             SPECIA0L EVILS.
Now, the emotional faculties of man are all
great batteries of feeling.  They are the forces
which move him, and are in and of themselves as
blind and irrational as the steam which drives an
engine. Thus his love and hatred he cannot prevent. That is, the feelinq called love and hatred.
In fact, a feeling cannot be prevented; it must precede all prevention. These may not be always
expressed, outwardly; but it is Reason which is
there, controlling the course of action.
Thus, also, of a belief. It is as irresistable as a
feeling, and to be removed you have, as with the
feeling, to remove the cause. It is thus Religion,
Love, and all those feelings which move the man,
to be brought within moralitv, have to be controlled
by Reason; for there is an immoral religion and
love, as well as an immoral hatred and revenge,
when expressed in action.
Now, when man acts blindly, he has nothing to
assure him of the good effects of his action; that
is, if he lets the emotions drive him on without the
control of Reason. In this case he is in the exact
condition of a ship at sea without a rudder. It may
happen that it can be brought safely to land by the
blind forces which move it; but the chances are
largely in favor of its sailing perpendicularly downward to land. It is control, the guidance of Reason,
that man has always lacked. The forces which make
him, and drive him, have but seldom been controlled.  Thus many of the evils to man arise from




SOME PHYSICAL EVILS.            181
the stomach. Too little or too much food,-that
which is poor or improperly eaten. A hungry or
deranged stomach makes an ill temniper; an ill temper brings hasty words; these bring on strife; and
strife has set over against it a long list of evils,murder, robbery, war, and those human deeds of
revenge so often witnessed in the inferior races,
who are at best very poorly fed. It is thus, also,
evil is not always connected with its immediate
cause; as when a son is born and educated to live a
life of theft and dissipation, or a daughter is born
and educated to live a life of prostitution, or is
driven to it from hunger. One is not to blame for
his grandfather having had hungry and bad neighbors; yet the thunder-bolt of wrath which he forged
in revenge, it may be the grandchild's misfortune to
be compelled to pick up, through the command of
inherited defects. Some people feel bad, and "blue,"
and melancholy. They do not know what ails them,
and are in doubt often whether to go to the doctor
or the minister for relief. If to the latter, he is
sure to tell them it is a change of heart -they need;
whereas, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it is
a change of diet they need. Instead of a new heart,
it is often a new liver they need. Instead of mminister's prayers and tears, they absolutely need soap
and warm water. Some earnest enquirers, anxious
about their souls, are only suffering the penalties of
inherited disease. Thus some poor weeping woman,
nervous and troubled about her soul, feeling as




182             SPECIAL EVIL S.
though she had lost the kingdom of heaven and
must find it; feeling as though she were an eternal
bankrupt, is only*a bundle of nerves whose uneasy,
twitching threads run many generations back to the
nervous battery of her disease. She is mistaken in
thinking that her soul needs salvation; it is her
body, which was lost in her mother's womb. It
must be expected, for force ever begets its own like
when not counteracted; that, if a father drinks
whisky, the childl, that is conceived after the draught,
will smell of the bottle, and the sour grapes of dissipation will set the children's teeth on edge.
Now, all this is only to malke people think, and
is the means of compelling people to study the
established laws of pro-creation.  It is Evil, with
fiery tongue and scorpion sting, whose touch is
palsy a(nd whose breath is mental blight, which can,
and only can, and must, some day, evolve the Science
of Pro-creation. For it is a fact of this world, that
man can only be tortured into logical thought andti
moral action. It thus becomes necessary that Evil
must result from the ignorant, innocent, and unintentional error of man, just as certainly and alike
appalling as though from willful and premediated
sin.  Were this not so, Evil would be an incomprehensible tragedy to man. It would be a world with
a Devil and hell, but no God; it would be a world
of feeling, but without science; a world of wild,
erratic action, without a logical thought to govern.
But all these special evils we witness about us,




WISDOM COMES THROUGH EVIL.    183
make up page after page of the Record,-the story
of the bruises, the sores, the pains, the losses, the
wailing and anguish, the diseases of head and
body, —all incident'to weakness and ignorance,
which man is to generalize into the Science of
Living. The "How?" can come in no other way.
It may seem strange to some that wisdom can come
in no other way; but what is stranger still, the head
will not retain wisdom without the touch of Evil
occasionally. After Evil has evolved the Science
of Living, no man would follow it without a little
severe jogging of the understanding. So that Evil
must be a modified yet constant companion of man.
Never let a child walk for fear of falling, which you
can prevent by your own strength, and the child
would not walk when grown.  It is the falling,
incident to walking, which will make it a prudent
walker, not subject to falling, after strength has
been acquired by exercise. It is the tired body that
enjoys repose, also. Without the aches of toil we
would have no joy of rest; without the gnawing of
hunger, no pleasure of the palate. Ague and mosquitos will drive people from  swamps and miasmatic localities to higher and healthier ground;
and the penalties of vice and licentiousness will
drive the poor sin-sick prodigal, who has been
filling himself with husks among human swine,
home to his father's mansion. What the world has
called a devil's malice, is only God's medicine. It
is this which brings its cure some time, and igno



184            SPE CIA L EVILS.
rant man is compelled to drink the cup, though
mingled with gall and wormwood, or though like
liquid fire.
~. 6, Moral Evil, then, means wisdom. It continually cries: "Get knowledge!" and "Let the
actor beware!" It was once thought, in the theologic sense, that God talked audibly to man, in
good Greek and Hebrew, and that he wrote on
parchment and stone his commands to men; but
science reveals no such God. The God of Science
speaks to man with a million tongues. He speaks
in a million ways, silently, audibly, omnipotently,
unmistakably, in the body and mind of man, in the
body and mind of the race. His prophet and priest
is Evil. God did not, in personal shape, speak to
the American people, and say, in good English:
"American slavery is the sum of all villainies."
Yet he spoke it through the mouth of Wesley, who
had learned the science of action. And he spoke
scientifically through those mighty evils which
always accompany slavery. He degraded the slave,
and doubly degraded the master.  He made the
latter weak, overbearing, and aristocratic.  He
wrought foolishness in his brain, put a lie on his
tongue, and made him believe it, that slavery might
be damned. He made him insolent and ill-behaved
towards Freedom. He puffed him up with prmce,
and sowed the seeds of malice and spite in his head,
which drove him on to assault Freedom- in her own




HOW GOD TALIKS.            185
temple. Driven out thence, he wove a net to ensnare her. But the war-god drew over him the
meshes of his own net, and extinguished him by
making him go through the wine-press of outraged
Freedom. It is thus the God of Science talks, and
gives his revelations to man. Oppression gave to
the English people htabeas Corptis, and every Bill
of Rights so proudly esteemed by this people. It
was the Iniquity of England, under an idiotic king,
towards her colonies, which gave to the United
States the Declaration of Independence. It is thus
Freedom and Wisdom are evolved from Tyranny
and Idiocy. God did not say to Moses audibly, nor
write it on parchment in good Hebrew: "If the
children of Israel go four days without food in a
strange land, they will get hungry and steal;" but
he wrote it in the pit of the stomach of mankind,
and so made a law for both Jew and Gentile.
~. 7. The Evil called Theft is one of God's
ministers.  It is prophet, priest, and law-giver.
Wisdom is some day to be enacted out of Theft;
for it holds a part of the great Book of the Law of
God. When a man steals your breadcorn, remember there is a cause somewhere independent of the
theft to account for it. May be, he got hungry and
had to steal. May be, his grandfather's averice blossomed into theft, and thus transmitted theft and
wealth to him as a legacy. Thus vice may be of
slow growth.  It may take several generations,




186             SPE CITAL EV1L S.
through a train of circumstances very slight, ana
apparently not sinful or wrong, to perfect one natural-born thief. Here is a case in point:
A  little girl of very wealthy and  Christian
parents, living in a western city, was found to have
an uncontrolable desire to steal, and often did steal.
She began when quite young to steal her playmate's
pieces of silver coin. She at last stole from a store
in the city, was found out, talked to and punished,
but to no effect. At last, in stealing from a certain
merchant, she was observed, followed to her father's
house, the money seized and the facts brought
directly under the father's eye. IHe was wealthy, a
strict Christian, and a memlber of the church. He
had before talked to her, scolded, expostulated,
whipped, and for hours prayed with his little
thievish daughter. She, in tears, would acknowledge how naughty she was; how wicked it was to
steal; how sure she was of going to hell when she
died; and would, all lacerated and bruised, promise
to never do so again.. Yet, for all this, she would
steal with fear and trembling, even when her father
gave her all the money she wanted.  Once the
father, for two weeks, made a prison of his garret
for her, locked her in, fed her only on bread and
water, prayed and wept with her three times a day.
At last womanhood, pride of position, affluence and
care, suppressed the outward. exhibition of this
abnormal craving for money within her.
A train of circumstances altogether human made




A CASE IN POINT.             187
her a natural-born thief.  IHere they are:  Her
mother, before marrying this child's father, was a
widow. By her former husband she had a son,
whom she gave away before marrying again. Her
two first children from the second marriage were
fine girls. But at this period in life her only son
from  her former marriage unfortunately came to
see his mother. He was then almost a young man.
The lad was poor and his mother living in affluence,
the wife of a millionaire.  The wife and mother
asked her husband for some money for her boy.
She was refused even a dollar. She then went to
work secretly, and under false pretenses, to obtain
it of her husband.  She would often go to the store
and steal small sums at a time. Several months
elapsed in this manner, and having obtained quite a
sum, gave it to her boy and sent him back to his
adopted home.  Not long after this the third
daughter was born, and she grew  up to be the
troublesome little girl who had to be imprisoned
in her father's own house,. unmercifully whipped,
who had the picture of hell presented to her young
imagination, and for years mingled her sobs with
her father's prayers.
The above is one of hundreds of similar cases.
The wisdom which is to be enacted out of Theft
will come some day; and the thief is only a sort of
devilish book which we are compelled to study, for
it is continually kept before our very eyes. The
thief is the product of forces as natural as the earth




188             SPECIAL EVILS.
we tread. There is established in Nature a general
and immutable law: "That like begets like."  This is
the sole characteristic of Force. This moves the
atom, and compels like atoms to assume like motions. In regard to the pro-creation of animals and
plants, under like circumstances, like begets like;
theft begets theft, murder begets murder, lust begets lust, and goodness, piety, love, these beget
their own like. And the parent mother of the
young child unborn, induced within it, or impressed
upon it, then and there, her own strongest feelings
and desires; and when the child was born, the
forces of theft came coiled up within it; and when
it grew up morally distorted, and the mother beheld
the moral ruin and appaling disposition of her child,
she was only looking at her former self, under the
tyranny of her husband. It is thus the God of
Science talks, and holds up the mirror to every
parent. It is thus he opens the eyes and ears, and
drives away the stupidity of man. It is thus he
shows man wherein he has made the failure, and
wherein he can better the abortive work.
Very much of the stealing in the world comes
from poverty, and the tyranny of the rich over the
poor. Society is so organized that the rich man
grows richer and the poor man poorer, which ever
must produce crime. How to remedy this we do
not know; but one thing is evident: Crime will be
kept festering in the flesh of Society till wisdom is
enacted out of it, and the thief becomes unneces



THE THIEF A NECESSITY.          189
sary. At present the thief is a necessity, as much
so as is law and religion. When we can get along
without crime, we can get along without law and
religion, for crime is the parent of both these. It
would not cure the evil of theft to hang the thief
up by the neck till dead; nay, you may kill off all
the thieves in the world to-day, and the next generation, in proportion to its greatly diminished numbers, would doubtless be as rife with theft as this.
The reason is, the seeds of crime are lying dormant
in society, and the very inistitutions which are trying
to destroy crime are producing it. Theft is not an
isolated and indepenilent thing. It is not alone
begotten of theft. But other transactions, which
take the dignified titles of law and reliqion, often
beget it. It is only the ripened fruit of that cunning
which we see in the trades of life, in " sharp dealing," whether in driving a bargain or in getting
souls into a church.
We would refer the reader to a further considation of this subject in a discourse, in this volume,
entitled " Salvation and Damnation Before Birth,"
and we will pass to other considerations of the
subject.
~. 8. Without sorrow the feeling we call happiness would never have had a name. We know
nothing, in fact, of happiness, only as we contrast
it with sorrow.  There is, perhaps, no unalloyed
happiness. The old adage, no rose without a thorn,




190             SPECIAL EVIL S.
seems to hold good always. This fact let that deep
thinker and close reasoner, Jonathan Edwards, to
affirm: "The miseries of hell would augment the
pleasures of heaven." The only fallacy in this is in
localizing hell and heaven.  It is perhaps more
nearly the truth to say heaven and hell are within
and around us always. They are necessary feelings
produced by the conditions of life, and the one implies and necessitates the other. They are the two
poles of one force; and if man is immortal, heaven
and hell are eternal. thow vain it would be to talk
to a person of happiness who had never felt sorrow.
It would be, we imnagine, like expatiating upon the
beauties of the rainbow to a person born blind.
There would be the colors and the happiness, but
no knowledlye of either. Little would we sympathize
with the afflicted, had we not suffered ourselves.
Seldom would we feed the hungry, had we not hungered ourselves. How seldom would we strive to
bind up the broken-hearted, had we ourselves never
had the cords of affection broken. As there is no
night without its day, so there is also no sorrow
without its joy; and as the tree is prepared by the
frosts and storms of winter for the budding springtime and the gorgeous summer, so the cradle of
affliction prepares us for our happiest hours. All
must go through hell to get into heaven.  Materially man is a plant, rooted to earth; he draws his
nourishment therefrom, taking deep root in the soil
out of which he grows. When a tree is well planted




WITHOUT SHADE, NO PICTURE.        191
in good soil, it takes deeper root and a firmer stand
by being rocked in the storms of winter. It is thus
we are rocked in the storms of trouble. We are
cradled in affliction and schooled in sorrow. Experience is our stern and severe teacher, who often
drives us into thought by cruel torture. In this
school we often suffer and despair; but without it
we would never taste the delights of pleasure, nor
behold with an appreciative eye the blending beauties of the rainbow of hope. It is the blending of
light and shade which malkes the picture, either oni
canvas or in character. Without shade there can
be no picture; without Evil no character. It is the
scientific skill of the artist which brings out the
picture through the antagonism of light and darkness; and the scientific skill of the man or woman
which is to bring out the beautiful moral character
through the antagonism of good and evil.
It is thus we find a meaning in all the evils of
the world. Evil brings its revelation of Good, come
from whence it may; and to secure the good, Evil
must come.  And so it drives us over our own
ignorance, stumbling down to error, in all the relations of life, in family, church, and state. Evil also
comes to us which we have had no hand in, given
to us from our ancestors, malny generations back;
handed down from sire to son. These evils blind
us in mental darkness, draw us into errors by phantom follies, or drive us madly on in paths of lust.
Now, were there no meaning in Evil, no good to




192             SPECIAL EVILS.
be evolved therefroml, but that Evil is only Evil, then
indeed would the condition of the world be sad and
deplorable. But we find Evil established and governed by fixed and general laws. We find herein
effect following cause with unerring precision. Law
and penalty are linked together, and the law manifests itself only through the penalty. " Step on this
thorn and suffer, or provide against it;" this is the
admornition of Evil. But that the thorn is an evil
we have no reason to conclude. It is often considered so by the unthinking, because pain arises
from it. It is not the thorn, nor rattlesnake, nor
mlosquito, nor grasslhopper, nor miiasm, which is the
evil; the evil primarily is in us, in the shape of
Ignorance. WVe do not know of the thorn or the
snake, or we would provide against it. It is not
the Alcohol which a man takes into his stomach
that is the evil; it is the drinking of it improperly.
The evil is in the act; not in the thing. Strychnine
is a great good; it does not change its nature at all
if taken into the stomach; it is not rendered any
less good by eating it. The evil is in the use of it.
The bad act, the wrong act, the evil act, always
brings its penalty and its wisdom therewith. It is
thus this whole world is perfectly good in and of
itself; and the law of each thing proclaims itself,
and is true to itself. This is the everlasting law of
beauty, and harmony, and good in the universe.
Each string of a musical instrumlent is true to itself.
If it be made double, as in the piano, and the ten



EVERY.FORCE TR UE TO ITSELF.    193
sion is not alike on each, it proclaims the discord.
The strings talk of their discord and harmony audibly, as though they had tongues; and they talk
with such precision as no tongue can imitate. Now,
the life of man is just like a performance on a
piano. It may be a tune, or jumble of sounds; the
tune may run smoothly without discord; it may be
one of many variations; it may roll in crescendo
and diminuendo like the waves of the ocean, or it
may be a monotonous jingle of a few notes; it may
ascend to the complex and scientific overture of a
Beethoven, or desend to the monotonous drawl and
humdrum of a Chippewa indian; and yet each
one will be true to itself. What would delight
the Indian would kill Beethoven, either in life or
music. Every force of the universe is true to itself.
Now, every wrong act has its penalty. The
penalty proclaims that it is wrong. Were there no
evil effects to follow the drinking of whisky, it
would not be wrong to drink it at any time. Nor
is it the drinking of it that produces evil, for it
may be sometimes taken without injury; but it is
the unwise use of it. No one can justly command
as a law: "Never drink whisky; it is a monstrous
evil," any more than one would be warranted in
saying: "Never eat any food; it is a monstrous
evil;" for whisky may save life in the counteraction
of a poison, and food may be taken to gluttony and
thus destroy life. All that can be said is: Eat and
drink temperately; that is, according to Reason:
N




194              SPECIAL EVILS.
this is the moral of eating and drinking.  But sin
or error can never go unpunished.  The person
who commits the sin or error, however, may not
feel the penalty; it may be reserved for his offspring
to suffer it, who are innocent of guilt. Yet because
persons do not suffer for their error or sin, does not
therefore prove they are forgiven for it. It is perhaps in this way the notion of forgiveness of sins
has come into the world. It would be quite natural
to suppose so, seeing that the penalties of the iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the children,
not only to the fourth generation, but to the fortieth.
In the light of conscious existence hereafter, however, the original evil-doer might be made to suffer
secondarily through sympathy. According to the
old notion of a local heaven and hell, this sympathy
of the righteous would itself turn heaven into a
secondary hell.
It is thus no sin can be forgiven, either in a
theological or scientific sense. In the Christian
theology, Christ is said to suffer for the sills' of the
world; and the righteous are saved, not because
they can sin with impunity, but because Christ
bears their iniquity through sympathy and actual
suffering.  The Christian theology does not hang
by such a rope of sand as to have a scheme of salvation which admits sin, even in those who are
saved, without some one suffering therefor; for sin
without suffering is a contradiction in terns.  The
grand mistake in the Christian scheme of salvation




SIN CANNOT BE FORGIVEN.          195
is to suppose heaven to be a state or condition of
absolute bliss, and that a certain belief is necessary
to produce it. Now, absolute bliss is impossible,
and belief no more depends on the will of man than
does sunlight or the earth's motion. Belief is as
necessitated in man as is spring-time in the year,
and obeys laws as fixed as those which move the
heavenly orbs. There is no such thing as free belief, any more than free love or free hatred. These
are all necessitated, and depend on causes anterior
to and superseding the will. No one can gird himself up and say: "Now I will believe so and so, and
secure this or that blessing;;" for whether he will
or no, the belief is independent of it.:Now let us
take a case in point. We will define a sin to be a
willful violation of a known law of God. You get
drunk knowing that it will injure your offspring;
you fall into the gutter of licentiousness, transmit
the lust of your heart and the smell of the bottle to
your child; he has a mania for liquor all his life,
proves a curse to you, to the mother who bore him,
and to the world. Now, can you believe, by willing
it, in such a manner, that God shall forgive you for
your drunkenness, and prevent the effect on your
child?  HIow can God forgive you?  No one can
imagine. It is beyond the power of man to conceive or guess. Nothing would be so calamitous to
man, were it possible for one such sin to be forgiven.
The forgiveness of one sin. might turn the world
into a hell more literal than the ancients ever pice




196              SPECIAL EVILS.
tured the abode of devils. The forgiveness of one
sin is just as impossible, as the annihilation of one
atom of matter.  Then, again, it is a contradiction
in terms. It is just like saying a force may act
without any effect. It is like affirming an effeect is,
which may be so obliterated that it never was. The
truth is, if an effect is produced, it is an eternal fact
of the universe. Now, a sin is ani effect which has
been produced. As such it is, and always will be,
an eternal fact of the universe. And if it could be
forgiven, it would be so obliterated that it never was.
~. 9. The faculties of man are all necessary and
good. But we have just seen that the improper use
of a thing creates evil, which is true to itself by
bringing its penalty and wisdom. It is thus, also, a
faculty may be perverted in the excessive, abnormal,
or improper action thereof. The love of food may
be perverted into the love of alcohol and tobacco,
and thus produce great evils. The love of property
may push itself forward into theft. Hatred may go
beyond a righteous indignation into savage revenge.
And thus evils come by the legion, with their pains
and penalties; and poor fallen and constantly falling
man, keeping a record of his falls each day, at evening looks over the list, and constructs therefrom a
chart for future guidance.
In this regard let us look at man in his Religious
and Sexual emotions.  He presents in these two
phases the most prominent acts of his life. They




A LUST AFTER GOD.            197
move him, next to hunger, with the greatest violence
and energy. They are two of the mighty forces of
his nature. And first of the Religious faculty. We
have elsewhere defined this to be that which prompts
man to worship. This brings men and women together in the greatest numbers. It has dotted the
world over with churches, cathedrals, temples, pyramids, monuments.  It has its sacred groves, and
caves, and mountains. It has made holy the ground
on which prophets and priests have trod, and the
lands in which peoples have dwelt. But as it is one
of the most powerful, when perverted it has been
one of the most abused; and by pervertion we only
mean its normal action, without the guidance of
Reason. The religious faculty is ever true to itself,
however erratic or intensely it may act. It is in
itself blind and irrational, and Reason is all that
makes it pure, and beautiful, and moral. It has
specially incarnated God in bits of wood; in cats
and dogs; in crocodiles and serpents; in golden
calves and living bulls; in statues of ideal men,
and in the living bodies of strong men. It has
driven men mad in honor of a holy name or thing.
It has whetted the two-eged sword of Revenge
sharper than the Damascus blade, to hew in pieces
the princes of the earth, the people they ruled, and
the children they begat. The holy fanatic has eaten
the flesh and drank the blood of the man who would
not worship his god. The lands of whole nations
have been devasted, devoured by fire and cut down




198            SPECIAL EVILS.
by sword; all that stood or breathed have perished,
to appease the wrath of a hidden god. In this lust
after God the greatest armies have been marshaled,
the longest wars have been waged, the mightiest
battles fought. The earth has drank up rivers of
human blood, shed in the name of Religion. The
genius of men has been called forth to invent
instruments of death, and machines of horrid forture, to rend, rack, behead, crucify, and mangle the
flesh of those who would deny the creed or doubt
the popular religious dogma.  Men and women
have been made to confess themselves guilty of
crimes of which they were entirely innocent; so
that Marquis Beccarria was compelled to submit
this problem to the religious world: "The force of
the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves of an
innocent person being given, it is-required to find
the degree of pain necessary to make him confess
himself guilty of a given crime." Young princes,
as a daily pastime, have learned to hurl the lance at
the hearts of men, as targets, who were imprisoned
for the religion they professed. Men of generous
culture or of great learning, and women of eminent
piety and virtue, from the humble cottage to the
throne, have been led out for matters of conscience
and butchered before a mad rabble lusting after
God. The limbs of men and women have been
torn from their bodies, their eyes gouged out, their
flesh mangled and slowly roasted, their children
barbarously tortured before their eyes, because of




THE RELIGIOUS RIDDLE SOLVED.    199
religious opinion. Woman has been taken from
her dungeon while giving birth to her babe, to
augment the pangs of child-birth by fire at the
stake. Armed men in the priest's employ, with all
the horrid machinery of the Inquisition behind them,
have been organized under a spiritual head, and
called the "Militia of Jesus Christ," to kill heretics.
All this and much more, which even to name would
be barbarous, has been done'for the sake of Religion.
A blind infatuation has possessed the mind of man
like a demon, and fanaticism has driven him on to
the most barbarous and savage acts, in the holy
namle of Religion.  Religion, in thy name what
barbarities have been committed, what hellish deeds
have been done!
But is there no meaning in all this'?  Was the
Sphinx to propound her riddle always, that she
might sacrifice the innocent on the altar of Ignorance? Is there no Edipus to solve this riddle.?
Surely, it can be solved. The meaning is two-fold.
The incentives to scientific pursuits and investigations come from the god-thought. Science must be
born of Theology; must literally come in pain and
agony.  Theology matures when the god-thought
is divided and complex; when theological speculation is diverse. And when Science is given to the
world, Theology expends all her forces in combatting her own self. Thus we have had the holy wars
of the world, which only mean: as Science shall
live and grow, and proclaim her own power, hence



200             SPECIAL EVILS.
forth Theology becomes unnecessary, and must destroy herself. The bloody wars between the Catholics and Protestants are perhaps ended; and they
will now pass away in intellectual combat, because
the Protestant wing, in being so much divided up,
is the true representative of Science. Should the
Protestant Church, however, ever unite under one
banner, with a central god-thought, as the Catholic
Church now is, then there must a bloody and exterminating war ensue. If the scientific world has
anything to be thankful for, it is the division in the
Protestant Church; and that zeal which keeps them
divided is a continual showering' down of God's
blessing upon Science. While the church is divided and distracted, Science is permitted to invoke
the god of fire in the laboratory; the god of the
stars through the telescope; the god of the flesh in
the dissecting room; and the student is permitted
to boldly generalize all the phenomena of Force
into a Science of Evil, which, as it investigates the
causes of all Science, must be itself the Science of
all sciences.
~. 10. But let us now pursue the Sexual emotion. As with the Religious faculty, so also with the
Love of the opposite sex.' There is nothing in this
wrong. It is true to itself. But its course is erratic
when Reason does not guide. This faculty is also
blind. And how truly the ancients reasoned when
they painted the god of Love blind. This is, per



EVILS OF LOVE.                201
haps, to-day the blindest of all man's faculties, if
there can be degrees in blindness. What we mean
is, it is the least controlled by Reason; that is, it
is yet the most shrouded in ignorance, because the
family relations are the most sacred, and the god of
the hearth-stone drives out every scientific intruder.
Without Reason, Love is lust.  This, also, like
the religious faculty, has had its sacred groves, and
caves, and mountains. It has its gods and goddesses,
before whom  mankind bow down in worship.  Its
idols have been made and broken in every land, and
in every city of the world.  Long wars have been
waged, mighty battles have been fought, in behalf
of this god of the heart.  The blind old poet of
"' Scio's rocky isle" has left to the world, in Grecian
song, the sad story of the Trojan war; the story of
fair Hellen lost and won. Rome numbers among
her greatest battles those fought for love. Nothing
is so sad in all history as the story of Virginia, after
Appius Claudius had looked upon her with lustful
eyes. Tears are wont to come when we read how
the father, to preserve his daughter from being a
prey to this vulture of womanly purity, killed her
with his own hand.  And those words of his, as he
raised the knife to strike the death blow, come down
to us from the old Roman Forum, breathing the
spirit of wild, sweet tragedy:
"Farewell, sweet child, farewell. Oh! how I love my darling.
Now clasp me round the neck once more, and give me one more kiss.
And now, my own dear little girl, there is no way but this."




202             SPECIAL EVILS.
How sad the story of Hagar and her little son Ishmael, turned out by husband and father, Israel's
great patriarch and progenitor, to.famish in the
wilderness. How the blood quickens in rage at
the conduct of King David, after he beheld with
lustful eyes Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, fairest
daughter in all Israel, commanding Joab, the great
captain of his armies, to place Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, that he may be slain and
his wife thus made an easy prey. What foul pollution; what blackness of life; what chief sin of all
sins, must follow the life and blast the memory of
that man who cain murder for the sake of adultery.
And so it was with David. What a physical and
moral bliglht rested oil the children he begat.
Father and children were cursed of God in their
own generation; cursed with miseries of mind,
with loathsome disease, with premature decay, and
death. The words were lettered in every muscle
and every faculty of David's children: "It had
been better never to have been born."  The first
child firom  this lustful murder died young; but
another lived to inherit his father's double crime.
Beginning his reign with three horrid murders, he
afterwards eked out a miserable life of satiety and
disgust, with a seraglio of a thousand wives and
concubines. Never so plainly has the law of inherited-like been written in the history of man, as in
the life of Solomon. The son of Lust and Murder,
his after life was enacted long' before he was born.




LOVE SHOULD IHAVE EYES.           203
The meaning of all these evils is not only plain to
be seen, but it is fearfully depicted in the life of
man. Such things show how the holiest emotions
may be turned into damning passions; and that
which would produce the most bliss, may be made
to produce indescribable woe. But from the woe
there must come the science of human reproduction.
Not only does blind love destroy the life of man,
but from it comes domestic scenes of discord and
anger. There is no hate in the world but has a love
basis of some kind. Love precedes all hate, and
hate grows therefrom. Love brings jealousies, and
tears of bitter anguish. It brings demons of madness in many a horrid shape and business.  Sweet
Revenge unsheaths the secret dagger; Incontinence
riots in many a foul deed under cover of night. It
has set over against its name a long list of crimes,
the blackest in all the dark deeds of the race,murder, suicide, infanticide, fceticide, incest, rape,
prostitution. Half the drunkenness of man springs
from  it.  Its patlway is that trod by the blind:
eyes they have, but see not; ears, but hear not;
heads, but think not. They grope in darkness at
noonday, and themselves dig pits and spread snares
which entrap them. All this means Science, —Moral
science; the rational act; the enthronement: of Reason.
These evils are, and ever have been, crying aloud
to man: "Give Love eyes."  The scientific Cupid
must have eyes. As religion without reason is
Superstition, so love without reason is Lust.




CHAPTER  VIII.
THE SOCIAL EVIL.
~. 1. We are now prepared to ask: What does
prostitution meanl?  What is its cause?  How shall
it be remedied?  Can it be cured?
Prostitution comes to mankind as naturally as
sunlight. Itis no more unnatural than eating and
drinking. It obeys the great law of Demand and
Supply. Life and death, vice and virtue, are at
either pole. It by no means arises always from lust
in man, or lust in woman.  The demand is with
man however, which must precede the supply.
In searching for the cause of prostitution, we
are logically compelled to assert it is two-fold in
woman, arising from her religious nature and physical necessity; that is, the supply to man's demand
is granted through this two-fold condition of woman.
It may appear at first difficult to prove this; but we
will lay down the following propositions, and then
adduce such arguments as the facts of the world
will warrant.




PROPOSITIONS TO PRO VE.         205
1. The cause of Prostitution principally arises
in man's lust, desire, or necessity, which demands
prostitution of woman.
2. Woman submits to his authority through
her religious nature and physical necessity.
Of the first proposition we may state, we cannot
conceive of a supply, as such, without some demand
to precede it. Now, the question is one of fact:
Does woman demand prostitution of man, or man
of woman? This can only be determined by finding the strict meaning of prostitution. We will
take the popular meaning, the soul of which is, that
a valuable consideration shall pass between the
parties. In which direction does the consideration
pass? and who submits, the. man or woman? Now,
prostitution involves either or both of these causes:
a sale or compulsory submission; and the distinction between the two is: when it is a sale, the one
who receives the consideration is considered the
guilty party; but when submission is compulsory,
the guilt would rest on the aggressive party. But
who is it that sells, the woman or the man? Surely,
it is the man who purchases, and the consideration
passes to the woman. Scarcely ever do we find a
woman buying the virtue of man. In compulsory
submission, when mental or physical force is used,
it is man who is the aggressor. Scarcely ever do
we find a seduction or a rape of man by woman, or
of money given to man by woman for the purpose
of satisfying sexual desire. It may be laid down,




206            TtHE SOCIAL EVIL.
then, as a conclusion of sound reasoning, that the
demand is with man and the supply with woman.
Now, as.it takes the two parties to complete any act
of prostitution, and the demand arises with man,
we may logically conclude the cause which precedes
is in man, who demands prostitution of woman.
Our first proposition is, therefore, proven.
2. W6moan submits to man through her religious nature, and physical necessity.
Sexual love seems to be different in mankind
from  that in the lower animals, which precludes
any analogy being  drawn therefrom.  But the
roots, as it were, of all human faculties, we may
trace far down into the animal world. Of all man's
mental faculties, the religious faculty is perhaps the
feeblest in all animals below man; yet we sometimes see it exhibited. in the dog and allied species. The females, also, are not dependent on
the males for food, and there is but little tyranny of
the males over the females, and but little lust among
them, till we conie to those animals most resembling man. Now, in most of the lower animals,
what is called love is only sexual desire, and is a
physical necessity,:'a purely reproductive force. But
that which makes one woman love one man, whether
exhibited in polygamy or monogomy, is entirely
different from sexual desire, yet perhaps is nearly
or quite always connected therewith. Sexual desire
makes love between the lower animals; but often
therein we see an incipient cause of a higher and




WHY WOLAN WOLN    RSHIZPS AlAN.    207
more lasting love, such as the female lion exhibits,
who seems to choose the strongest lion for the father
of her offspring. This is only the incipient worship
of Force in the animal, and primarily arises in fear.
It is Force which conquers and creates fear, which
at last ripens into worship.
It is perhaps a universal characteristic of woman
to worship a great man. It is at least a very noticeable one. It seems to be quite inherent in woman
to zealously admire a man of power, either of head
or body. Woman has to have something to admire
of a manly and commanding nature in her husband,
which compels her to respect him  independent of
any love she may feel for him. Love is thus intensified through her religious faculty; and worship is
only expressed in admiration and love. The wonders
of Force in any form compel worship in the reflective creature.  This also creates the feeling of conferred superiority. It is a worship of Force.  The
ancient wife who looked up to, and did the bildling
of her husband, only exhibited the action of her
religious faculty. This compelled her to be faithful; to lie at his feet; to acknowledge him  as her
lord and master; to submit to him  as his slave.
Hence have come the sayings: "Thy desire shall
be unto him, a.nd he sliall rule over thee;" "The
husband is the head wife;" "The wife of Cresar
must be above susl-)icion;" and also the more modern saying: "Husband andl wife are one; and the
husbaud is that one."  Take away this feeling in




208            THE SO CIAL EVIL.
woman which confers superiority on man, and the
institution of marriage becomes one only sustained
by physical necessity. In other words, had the wife
nothing to worship in her husband, the marriage
relation would only depend on tyranny and want.
No sexual love could hold them together. Love is
of such a nature that it can be destroyed by a
word. The castles of bliss which Love builds may
all be shattered by one blow. Love can be produced, intensified, and destroyed, by the actions of
men and women. A person may first hate and
then love another, or first love and then hate. This
is of daily and hourly occurrence.  But what is
more lasting than sexual love, is the religious sentiment, the worshipful feeling, which the world's
history shows to be more intense in woman than in
man. It is this which makes matrimony a success.
It is devotion, and nothing else, which makes it
lasting. It was this feeling of religious submission
to the husband that made divorce almost unknown
until within the last hundred years; and then it was
the husband who always put away his wife for his
lust after other women, or for her faithlessness to
him, caused by the worship for some other man. If
a woman loves a man and nothing more, then any
abuse will destroy that love; but if she can worship
him, no abuse from him will destroy that worship.
Yes, even a woman can hate, but at the same time
admire a man. Love in itself is fickle; it comes
and goes like the winds; but what remains and is




THE CAUSE OF PROSTITUTION.        209
permanent and substantial, comes from the religious
faculty; the admiration of worth; the wTorth-shipful
devotion. This is what produces that confiding
nature in woman; keeping secret all home troubles,
faithful to a fault, and suffering in silence rather
than expose the faults of her husband. This disposition in the wife begets also in her husband that
sympathy and gallantry which is far more powerful
and lasting than any sexual love. This is the cause
of marriage; what produces and perpetuates it.
Produce an exact equality between the sexes in all
things; in feelings, desires, and physical powers;
constitute woman so that she will have as much to
admire and worship in woman as in man; establish in law and society this equality; give her an
equal chance to subsist, hold and acquire property
with man, and you would at once destroy prostitution, but at the same time might destroy marriage.
Men and women would then become like the beasts
of the field, without either prostitution, marriage,
or worship. Marriage and prostitution are the two
poles of a double force- Want and Worship which,
in their action, obey the law of Demand and Supply. It mntst follow, then, as a logical necessity,
the greater the increase of prostitution, the less
marital fidelity; or, in other words, the more prostitution the more tyranny of man over woman,
which the history of the world proves.
It is from this worshipful nature of woman that
men who have the insignia of honor upon them;
o




210           THE SOCIAL EVIL.
who represent any uncommon power,-talented speakers, and especially preachers, princes, and kings,can so easily seduce woman, and what makes "fallen"
women so anxious to boast of the embraces of many
eminent men. It is thus a talented preacher, of
strong sexual instincts, the man who administers to
the religious nature of woman, is of all men the
most dangerous to connubial fidelity. This is the
reason, also, why kings are worshiped and courted
by their subjects, and why, of all mankind, they are
the most licentious. So long as woman worships a
man, that man Can control her; he becomes, in the
strictest sense, her lord and master; "'her divinely
constituted head and authority;" and her marriage
with him is lasting, if not happy.
The rworship of Jesus is far more general among
women than among men. - Perhaps in the Protestant church there are twice as many women as men.
The reason is plain. Jesus is woman's ideal man,
whom she must worship. Woman will always find
some Jesus to worship. The same fact is witnessed
in the Catholic church, as the cause of nunnery.
Whlat awful lessons come from  the convents of
Catholic Europe during the Middle Ages. There
was woman incarcerated voluntarily for life, under
vows the most terrible and binding, eking out a life
set apart to the worship of Jesus in idleness and
prayer. The devout thought herself possessed of
Jesus, who came into her cell at night. Wedded
to Jesus in her phantom love and real worship,




WANT AND WORSHIP PROD UCE IT.   211
the virgin nun thought marriage with man but carnal
lust. To think on man, was horrid; to look on
him, madness; and to wed him, would secure the
eternal frown of Jesus, her ideal man, her lord, and
her husband.
A large class of facts could be generalized under
this head; but the above will suffice. Excessive
sexual love soon begets satiety and disgust; but
there is no reaction in the feeling of admiration.
Worship expends its force in an ideal and infinite
direction; and worship is the secret of a holy and
lasting marriage.
In the inferior races this superiority of man,
acknowledged by woman in want and worship, is
displayed in her abject submission as the slave and
property of man. Woman is bought and beaten
by her husband, and taken to his home to be his
faithful slave and wife. An Indian will trade his
wife for a pony, or swap an old squaw for a young
one, and give a pony into the bargain. But it is
the religions faculty which perpetuates slavery, of
whatever sort. Did not the slave worship his master, there would never be a slave. The worshiper
always submits to the tyranny of the master, whether
man or god. Deductively we are led to this conclusion, from the nature.of Force. It compels its own
worship. But history also affirms. This basis of
slavery is noticed in two remarkable facts in American history. The American indian has never been
successfully enslaved, though often tried. He has




212            THE SOCIAL EVIL.
also but little feeling of devotion. In the Negro it is
intense. The Negro is confiding and faithful; the
Indian suspicious, and of all treacherous beings, the
most treacherous. The Negro worships with a zeal
which no white man can equal.
It seems thus that all forms of slavery arise out
of, and are perpetuated by, the selfish demand, on
the one hand; and, the supply being given, through
Want and Worship on the other. There must be
the actor, and that to be acted upon; the one who
demands, and the one who gives the supply; the
authority, and the submission. Prostitution is the
result of the same force, and obeys the same immutable laws.
In regard to want driving woman to a sale of
her body, this is but too truly proven by constantly
recurring facts, and needs only to be stated to be
admitted by the intelligent reader. Wherever, in
fact, there is an inferior or dependent class, there is
always more want attending it than in a superior
class. The more enslaved, the more degraded will
a class be; and, with degredation, Want runs riot.
Want drives woman not only into dens of vice, but
builds marble halls garnished with licentiousness.
All this comes, then, from  two things: the demand in man, creating slavery and want; and the
supply in woman, in strict accordance therewith.
The foregoing are some of the many facts which
present themselves in support of the second proposition, viz: that woman submits to man's authority




NO LAW OF NATURE VIOLATED.    213
through her religious nature and physical want.
As Force compels its own worship, and m'akes
religion a necessity of man, so Want ever begets
dependence and submission. Riches and poverty
are the two poles of the cumulative force. An excess of one necessitates an excess of the other.
The force which produces a millionaire at one of
its poles, must have twenty people of want at
the other.  Every prince of fortune is complimented by a squad of beggars whom he represents.
Then Hunger will drive man into theft; woman
into a sale of her virtue. There is in this no law
of Nature violated; nay, the prince of fortune and
the beggar, the thief and the prostitute, are the
result of a law as natural and eternal as that which
keeps the earth in its orbit.
~. 2. How, then, shall we remedy-the evil of
Prostitution, and save the institution of marriage?
Surely, not by waging a warfare against the prostitute. She is the result of a cause over which she
had no more control than over her birth, or the
wealth of her neighbor.  She could not help being
a prostitute, any more than the negro could help
being made a slave. To strike at the prostitute,
would be by no means striking at the cause of
Prostitution. This is just like slavery. There is
on the one hand the master, on the other hand the
slave; the demand and the supply, the prostitutor
and the prostitute.  Ioxv did we abolish slavery in




214           THE S 0 CIA L EVIL.
the late war? by striking at the slave, or the master?
How long, think you, would it have taken us to
have ended slavery, by leveling all our guns and
expending all our forces against the negro, instead
of the master? The negros themselves would have
risen up against us, and defended southern slavery,
as a divine institution. What kind of morals would
it have exhibited, if an exterminating warfare had
been begun against the negro for being a slave?
Well, the prostitute occupies in Nature the same
position of the southern slave. She is produced by
the same forces; is governed by the same laws.
To destroy Prostitution, the same course must be
pursued as against slavery. The cause must be
removed, the demand destroyed, or in some manner
counteracted. But in the popular method of warfare against Prostitution, the slave, and not the
master, is the victim; and true to nature and the
eternal laws of God, the prostitute is compelled to
defend Prostitution, when in very truth she despises
it. If in trying to remove a living and growing
effect, the cause be not removed, nothing is effected.
All agitation, cutting and clipping, only aggravates
and intensifies it. If you wished to kill a tree, you
would be called insane to begin by cutting off here
and there a small limb; for many more would
spring out where you had cut off the one.  But
this is the very manner in which Church and State
are pruning away at this evil. We must strike at
the root of the tree; at man more, and woman not




MAN THE CA USE.             215
at all. It would be infinitely better to let Prostitution entirely alone.
It is the man who invests money in Prostitution,
because he demands Prostitution of woman. Without man's demand and money, there would be no
such thing as Prostitution in the world. But the
Church and State cry out: "Abomination! unclean!
the harlot must be put down! whoredom must be
squelched!" leveling the shaft at the harlot, but not
at the men who make, and the institutions which
support her.
As a class, prostitutes have much business tact.
They are by no means devoid of sense. As a class,
they are the most business women of the world.
They know how to defend and advertise their profession. It is notoriety they seek; and while they
know they must advertise, they are willing to pay
for the advertisement. Now, as no proprietor of a
newspaper would be justified in publishing their
cards, giving name and location, and as no minister
would be guilty of announcing them from the pulpit,
they contrive to get published in both paper and
pulpit. The harlot, therefore, manages to get ilto
a police or recorder's court; and. there, before a
crowd of men who have congregated to gain kno-wledge, gives her name and the number of her. house,
unveils her face, answers such questions as are put
to her in such a manner as she thinks will win the
admiration of the men around her, pays her fine
and goes back to her house or rooms, well satisfied.




216           THE SOCIAL EVIL.
The morning paper comes to her hand, and there
she sees her name and location shining out in a
local, as a part of the consideration which the public
return, for what the law had but yesterday taken
from her. If there be anything startling or appalling connected with this, the local contains it, and
the minister takes his text therefrom, and publishes
her loudly and long in the pulpit. If he mentions
no name, his congregation have read the local, and
know whom he means.
It is thus the Law says: "'Put down Prostitution!" then seizes hold of the harlot, who is demanded and -made by man's lust and money, holds
her up to the gaze of hundreds of lustful eyes, and
charges her a small pittance for the advertisement.
In this way the State largely increases prostitution;
not only by increasing the demand, by awakening
the passions of men, but by advertising so thoroughly the harlot. Now, the church is as dumb as
a sepulchre as to the cause of Prostitution. No
word is uttered against the man who demands the
degredation of woman. No word against the institutions, the Church and the State, which support,
publish, and produce Prostitution.  lan is the
cause; but he rules Church and State, and selfishness blinds his eyes. He does not see that it is his
tyranny and lust, and only these, which produce the
evil he so boldly denounces. He looks abroad in
society, and waxes wroth; he would tear down the
evil, and trample it under his heel. He gathers




THE DRAGON'S TEETH.           217
hold of the prostitute and rends her in pieces, and
buries her in dishonor. But from her dead body
arise many to fill her place. From the teeth of
the dragon he thought he had killed and buried,
arise an army to war against him. Society must
strike right, or not strike at all. Prostitution is
true to itself. It has the seeds of death within it.
But if a warfare be waged against it, the battle-ax
must be leveled at the full front of man.  No
woman must be touched, it matters not how vile.
Hew down the man who is patronizing, in any form,
the sale of woman's virtue. Bray him in the mortar
of public condemnation; make him lift the heel of
tyranny from the neck of woman, no matter how
high or how low he may stand in society. The
prostitute is not to blame for being made a prostitute by man; she isborn of society, and may be
the product of either sin or error. The fool is not
to blame for being born a fool; neither is the fool
nor the prostitute lost in the economy of God's
method of teaching the race. God has need of the
fool to teach parents how to make a wise child,
without running risks of idiocy or disease. He has
need of the slave and the prostitute to teach the
world's statesmen wisdom.  He has need of the
thief for a hundred lessons in regard to property.
He has need of the murderer, and every other
abnormal phase of man, to lead the world on to
wisdom and up to virtue.
Go into our cities, and look at the brothels which




218           TIHE SO CIAL EVIL.
stare both Church and State full in the face. Well
may they veil their faces in shame before the bald
front of this polluted monster, bred in the great
black sea of despotism. Society has in it great
rivers of vice, down which often float the noblest
and fairest flowers of our mountains and hillsides,
plucked from  their homes by destroying hands.
They are set afloat on the stream, and their course
must be ever downward, till they are swallowed up
in the mighty maelstrom of our Social Evil. The
State looks on and laughs; the Church scowls and
looks black.at it; folds up its sacerdotal robes, and
often, on tip-toe, passes by on the other side. The
statesman loses his daughter on the dark tide; the
minister another daughter flower, sent down on the
dark river. Fear and pride strike these fair daughters dumb; shame hides them away from the world,
and they go down, in a few short years, to the silent
halls of death, the victims of Church and State.
God has need of the statesman's and minister's
daughters, going thus down to death, joining their
fellow-sisters in the world's great carnival of Lust,
fiom which they never return, to teach the State
and the Church that woman has the same right to
life, liberty and occupation that man has; and it
seems that it is only Prostitution, in the councils of
Almighty God, that will abolish the tyranny of man
over woman. TNo; it is not the slave who must be
killed to abolish slavery, nor the prostitute who
must be harmed to destroy Prostitution. The world




CA USE OF FAILURE.           219
is full of lessons already taught on this subject.
Many times has both Church and State been sunk
in the great black sea of Prostitution, blotting them
out forever.
~. 3. But it matters not how the Law seizes hold
of the slave and victim; whether in ire to crush or
in sympathy to save; the result must ever be failure,
because it aims at the effect, not the cause of the
evil. We submit the following from the New York
Tribune:
"FALLEN WOMEN IN BOSTON.
"BOSTON, June 21, 1870.-The arrest of a large
number of fallen women in Boston created a decided
sensation throughout the country about six weeks
ago. When these women were brought before the
court, many of them were placed upon probation,
through the efforts of Chief Savage. At noon
to-day Chief Savage appeared in the municipal
court, before Chief Justice Bacon, to render an
account of his stewardship. In opening the case,
Chief Savage-made the following address:
"'May it please your Honor: Some six weeks
ago we had the unpleasant duty to present to this
court a large number of complaints of a peculiar
character, which we believe requires peculiar treatment. There are those who seem to think there is
no hope for fallen woman.  The police do not
believe it. While we have little sympathy with the
willful, plotting, hardened criminal, we believe that
in many cases these women are victims rather than
principals in crime; and that wholesome restraint,
useful employment, kind treatment and encouragement will save some of them. Acting upon this
belief, we came here to ask your Honor to pursue




220                     THE SOCIAL EVIL.
an unusual course. We asked you to impose the
restraint by placing before them the gates of a
prison, yet giving them one more chance of escape,
while we would have the opportunity to try the
experiment of kind treatment and encouragement.
And please allow me here the opportunity to thank
you and all good people for the wise, humane course
pursued on that occasion. In entering upon'the
experiment' on that day, we promised you that
such as had homes we would send them there, and
such as had none we would provide them with
homes; and we told you that kind hearts and open
hands would furnish the means.  In this last, I
assure you, we have not been disappointed; and we
are here to-day, your Honor, to render the first
account of our stewardship.  Of the number arrested on that occasion, Fathers Cook, Cullen and
the police took special charge of one hundred and
thirteen.   Twenty-five  were  put on  probation
before the opening of court, and eighty-eight,
pleading guilty, were also bailed for future appearance, giving them all one more opportunity for
reformation.'Up to this time we have sent home to parents and friends living out of the city.. 49
Sent home to parents and friends in the city...............................................    7
To places of respectable employnlent oust of city........................................ fi5
In places of respectable employment in city................................................ 10
Sent to charity home temporarily...............................................................  5
Sent to insane  asylumn........................................................................... 1
Sick at her old abode...';.                                            1
Surrender   by   bail...................................................................................... 5
Wllereabouts unlnoown.................. 22
To  be  accoun ted  for........................................................................   8
Total..............................,........................................113' Your Honor, we have spared no pains in this
work, and good people have come forward with
their aid and  encouragement.  It is not all that
we could wish, yet I trust something has been done
to justify'the experiment.'  If we save but one,
were she my daughter or yours, we would think it
worth all the labor.'
"Chief Justice Bacon replied to these remarks




AN EXPERIMENT.               221
by saying:'that the course taken by the court, in
reference to these cases, appeared to be the best
that could be taken, and gave the best promise of
suppressing this social evil, which is so flagrant. It
was taken with the understanding that each individual case should be looked after, and he should
now inquire if the process of law had been duly
respected.' The individual cases were then called,
as assigned, and reports as to the condition and
prospects of each were given. Some of the women
were present to answer, and others were responded
for by Chief Savage, or some member of the
police force. The several cases were then continued
or defaulted, according to the merits of the cases.
The report of the Chief shows very gratifying success in this noble reformatory work, and all good
citizens will rejoice at the result of the experiment."
The above effort to save through sympathy is
surely commendable in spirit, but it can only be
calamitous in result. Nature has never been known
to heal a great evil in this way. An individual may
be saved, but the evil itself not only remains, but is
intensified.
It is said the above method is one of experiment;
yet it is an experiment as old as the tyranny of man
over woman. A fretful and cross parent has been
known to beat and lacerate a child, and then, in
tears and sympathy, hug and kiss the child, and ask
its forgiveness.  Man himself will ruin womaln,
pollute and curse, and make woman join- him in the
curse he has wrought upon her. He will cast her
into the ruin of bodily pollution, and then, inl tears
of sympathy, try to save her from the death of the




222            THE SOCIAL EVFL.
pit. And he will call this an experiment, which
haply may lead him to wisdom. But no wisdom
will be enacted till he learns that man, and not
woman, is the cause of her ruin. It is pure Reason,
and not emotion, which has led the world on to
wisdom and virtue. It is the emotional nature of
man which has brought prostitution, and keeps it
and propagates it in society. It is sense, not sympathy, man must exhibit in his dealing with woman.
In the above experiment, the Golden Rule is set up
as the law which is to lead to good. But what is
the meaning of the experiment?  What is proclaimed by this course of action?  Why, simply
this: "Let us save one, if by saving her we slay a
thousand who are yet innocent." It would be far
better for the world to take each "fallen" daughter
who is to be thus saved, and substitute in the place
of this sympathetic treatment a public scaffold and
guillotine, ancd before the assembled male prostitutors of Boston, strike off head after head of these
victim-daughters, and, having stuck their heads
upon pikes, place them at each street crossing, and
write thereunder:
THE PROSTITUTE!!
THIS IS THE PRICE OF MAN'S LUST!
THIS IS WHAT MAN DEMANDS OF WOMAN!
Although this would by no means cure the evil, it
might make men think. There is a deadly dearth
of thought on this subject of Prostitution, and until




SYMPA THY CANNOT SAVE.          223
men begin to think, there is no hope for woman.
They are doomed to the blind action of Emotion.
Sympathy, fidelity, religion, are powerless to save.
It is the god of the head, Science, which can only
save.  The Emotions are the blind forces which
drive men to action. They are the steam in the
engine. Reason must evolve from acquired knowledge the science of action, mnark out the way, and
guide therein.  It is not Emotion; it is rational,
logical thought the world lacks. The evil of Prostitution will be kept standing, forever pointing with
finger of Death down to hell; and army after army
of "fallen" women will march thitherward, deaf to
the entreaties and lamentations of fathers, mothers,
husbands, lovers, till mankind thlink. Some terrible
event connected with this evil must occur which
will react against the cause; which will grind man,
not woman, beneath the car of Prostitution.
There is a sublime virtue and manly duty standing out in the act of that old Roman, Virginius,
killing his "own dear little girl" rather than see
her made a prey to the lust of Appius Claudius.
This made Romans think. Appius Claudius went
down. The thought, however, took the direction
of politics; not of the Social Evil. The civilized
world must be made to think in this direction. The
police of Boston may have been actuated by the
highest and purest motives; but for every " fallen"
woman they thus remove fiom Boston Lust, that
insatiable Lust will have its new victim, its fresh




224            THE SOCIAL EVIL.
fallen virgin guilt.  A  hundred other daughter
flowers must be plucked from the New England
hillsides, for each hundred that are withdrawn from
the greedy lust of Boston men. As long as the
mill is grinding, it must be fed. If what comes out
from the bolt is spoilt and damaged, —unfit for the
bread of life, though originally good as it went into
the hopper,-it had better be turned back into the
hopper again and again, rather than have an endless
supply of pure grain spoiled, and then continually
thrown. out as useless. This mill of Prostitution
will grind up ten thousand as readily as ten, and
ten will supply it as easily as ten hundred.
Man must be made to feel the terrible necessity
of self-control; and when Prostitution strikes away
a virgin daughter, the anguish which prostrates
him to earth is only to drive him into thought, and
wring out of the flesh in agony the Science of Life.
He must know-that the cause is in man, not woman.
The disease, the lust, or necessity, is coursing in the
veins of man. The fire of this hell is in his blood.
Here is the sexual waste. HIere is the demand. This
demand is a force which compels its own worship,
and Tyranny riots with his slaves.  IVWat and WVorship are the paths which lead to his embrace.
As selfishness forever blinds, perhaps nothing
will be accomplished in the right direction till
woman, who is the slave and victim, is taught to
see her true condition. Want is now educating her
very fast. She still wants more torture to strengthen




EDUCATE THE FRONTAL LOBES.    225
the frontal lobes. It is through torture she can only
become wise in all the affairs of Church and State.
She must be made to realize the force of an idea; to
fear a cause and profit by an effect. She must be
made to think science. The science of life grows
from within; no process of filling up from without
will answer.  Till one becomes scientific from
within, no experience of others will do him any
good. Not until woman becomes truly scientific,
will she apply the Science of Life to the reproduction
of the race. Not until her front head controls the
emotions, will any permanent good be done towards
her redemption. When woman has learned her
own responsibility as mother, before she is a
mother, then, and not till then, will she be fully prepared to grapple with Prostitution and put it under
her foot.
That Prostitution is now on the increase, we do
not doubt. It must continue to grow and fester in
the flesh of society till the Science of Life has been
evolved from  it. When this science shall crown
the life of woman, then will Prostitution gradually
diminish, and in the course of ages finally disappear. It requires time to improve a generation of
men, because the improvement is to be made only in
the application of the principles of breeding. The
disease is to be bred out, not cut out, nor healed by
soft ointments applied to the living organism. The
world wants wise nlothers, as the true doctors of the
race. But in the mean time let the prostitute alone.
p




226            THE SOCIAL EVIL.
Touch her not as a prostitute, it matters not how vile.
If Prostitution must be struck, strike the man who
patronizes, in any manner, the sale of woman's
virtue.




THREE LECTURES.








LECTURE.
SALVATION AND DAMNATION  BEFORE BIRTH.
People are not made better in a moment of time.
They are not changed in the twinkling of an eye
from corruption to the incorruptible, as declared the
sage of Tarsus. There is no maneuvering of an
unseen hand that can, by magic, turn hatred, lying,
lust and disease of man, into love, truth, purity and
health. According to the world's theology, after
thousands of years, God has not succeeded in reclaiming the Devil. In this is couched a greater
defect than the creeds of Christendom will admit;
for behold! millions of devils might be turned into
millions of saints, by changing the heart of the
Devil.
There is no convertion that can transform a
human-born devil into an angel of purity. You
may put upon him the livery of heaven, but he will
be devil still. You may put the lamb's fleece upon
the wolf's back; nay, you may nurse him from
infancy on sheep's milk, but this will not give him




230               LECTURE.
the lamb's disposition. The lamb's flesh will only
taste the sweeter to him after having been deprived
of it so long. How useless for us to profess other
than we are; our actions will only throw back the
lie into our teeth, and everybody will cry: "You
wear a garment other than your own."
It is, perhaps, because men and women are not
made better in a moment of time, after professing
some doctrine,-Atheism, Spiritualism  or Christianity,-that people who disbelieve in Atheism,
Spiritualism  or Christianity, are apt to cry out:
"What good!" not so much against the people
themselves, as against the doctrine they profess.
Now the mere fact of professing anything, never
makes the person any better. I do not see that a
Methodist is any better than a Campbellite, or Baptist; or Congregationalist, Spiritualist, Atheist, or
Infidel. Honesty and dishonesty are found in and
outside of all church organizations; among believers of creeds, and scoffers at creeds.  Arrogance,
pride, meanness, are found wherever great bodies of
men and women congregate; and -meekness, nobility, and goodness, are also found everywhere
among men and women. Even a life-long profession of any particular faith, creed or dogma, never
makes the person any better; with or without it, the
vile are vile; the pure are pure. The Devil has been
a Christian now these two thousand years, and still
he is prone to the same old tricks of envy, fraud,
deception, war and lust. The Church makes woman




ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.           231
no better as wife and mother; man no better as
husband and father; yet, in the relations of husband and wife, and parent and child, the world must
be redeemed.
How superficial are the religious dogmas of the
world. The creed commands a belief, *not the
righteous act; a doctrine, not a fact of the soul.
The Christian asserts that the children of God are
created by Christ Jesus in the church, not by parents
in holy wedlock; that salvation is by grace alone,
not through God's unalterable laws of pro-creation;
and that instantaneous and miraculous regeneration
is to be forever needed on earth, long after the
person is born; not that a person generated right in
the first place is all sufficient. The fact is, a belief
that an instantaneous conversion will save and regenerate the race, is now what is literally dalmning
it, past the redemption of forty generations of the
wisest and noblest effort.
Great changes in religion and politics are brought
about slowly. Age after age the rights of man
have been taught as expressed by Jefferson; and,
yet, age after age they have been trampled upon by
rulers and people.  The Golden Rule has been
taught by the wisest and greatest men since the
earliest recoric; yet, it is not practiced to-day in
Church and State. HIow long it took America to
abolish slavery, and how bloody the work. It was
an institution deeply rooted in our soil, and fostered
there by Church and State, recognized in the Con



232               LECTURE.
stitution of the nation, and supported by nearly
every Christian denomination. It was founded in,
and defended upon Ancient Authority-Holy Writ.
Polygamy flourishes in American soil to-day; not
extensively among an ignorant and debased people;
not among African importations, nor Asiatic migrations; but among the highest type of man, of Caucasian blood, of Saxon head, of civilized birth and
modern culture, claiming, too, the peculiar and fascinating title of Christian. So you see the world
has not yet got past the example of the patriarch,
and Jewish greatest and wisest rulers. Yet, polygamy is gradually dying out, not through wars of
opposition and force, but silently, through Nature.
Polygamy shows there is something rotten in the
marriage relation, and itself contains some truth,
else it would not be. So of Prostitution, which
vexes and scourges the land. To this foul goddess
are sacrificed, often, the first, the brightest and fairest
sons and daughters of the world's civilization. This
only shows what horrid crimes against Nature and
God's laws are committed under sanction of man's
laws and hoary-headed custom.
Much has been done to better the condition of
man in the world. Revolutions have righted old
and time-honored wrongs. Liberty has been baptized often anew, invoking therein the name of
some new and unpopular god. The genius of man
has brought ease to muscles of toil, through countless labor saving machines. Thought brooding over




ANTE-NAITAL INFLUENCES.        233
the world of matter and force, has produced science,
which now comes with promised healing in its
wings; but it is extremely slow and waits on Evil.
The world now, as of old, is sick and needs a physician. Alas! Jesus has been preached now these
eighteen hundred years, and yet the world is dying
of soul sickness and many a loathsome malady, and
to-day needs a Savior greater than a Jesus. Mankind are daily stumbling into the fiery hells of pollution, and no where to be found is the Christ's
blood that can wash them pure. They are victims
through ignorance, of the "Flesh and the Devil
therein."
To the scientific the reason is quite obvious.
The evils which affect the'world are radical. They
are rooted in the flesh of mankind. They cannot
be pulled out in a moment of time like a decayed
tooth. They are so rooted there, that the best
breeding of forty generations would not remove
them from the world. The diseases of the world
are only healed in the slow processes of Nature,, age
after age improving but slightly on the past.
Now there is but one way to convert the sinner;
there is but one way to reach the greatest possible
good of the race, and save the world, or make of it
what God designs; and that is to improve the child.
This can be done in but one way; understanding
how to produce it. This knowledge will raise marriage to the dignity of a science. It will paint
Cupid with eyes, and not, as now and with the an



234               LECTURE.
cients, blind. That is, our love must look through
reason prospectively to the child long before marriage. In this the sciences of Physiology and Biology,
and a proper knowledge of human temperaments,
will work wonders; for upon these a proper and harmonious marriage must be based. Then, after marriage, the child must be planned long before it is
born. Till this wisdom comes and this care is observed, Nature will torture mankind with crime and.idiocy born into the flesh, which nothing but Death
can eradicate. After birth the child's education is
but a secondary consideration; it is an after thought,
it may be a help if applied rightly, but can never
change the fundamental work which has been done
for the child before birth.. Frompoor materials the
mechanic can only construct a poor work, however
good the design. The parents are the architects and
mechanics of their own children, constructing them
out of their own bodily forces. And the teacher
only develops what is in the child; he produces
nothing. The illy-begotten child can never afterwards be fashioned to act a good life; the wellbegotten child can be guided aright. No one ever
cursed father or mother without just cause, and
thousands there are who have done it, and will colntinue to do it.
To lastingly benefit the world, then, we must go
back of the disease to the cause, and not attempt to
accomplish everything immediately, nor in the first
thousand years. We must act for coming genera



ANTE-NA TAL INEL UENCES.        235
tions in scientific breeding. We must do in this
regard what Jefferson did for politics, what Jesus
did for ethics,-enact a principle into the life of
people.  I sometimes think these two men must
have been born far superior to most men of their
respective ages; made well before birth in body and
mind. These two men will be better understood a
thousand years hence, unless an intellectual and
moral blight seizes upon the race. Doubtless Jesus
whispered into the ear of Jefferson the American
idea. It is God's gospel. applied to politics. And
Thomas Paine was certainly our political "John the
Baptist," who came preaching in the American
wilderness, saying: "Repent, for the Republic is
at hand, and the Kingdom in the world's politics
will soon pass away; for kings and noblemen of
only inherited wealth and position have heard the
crack of doom."  But one kind of nobleman there
is in the world of true sterling worth, and that is
God's nobleman, born sound in mind and body;
born into harmony with the best conditions of life.
But there are degrees of harmony and soundn.ess. These measure the man. Man's nobility can
never be measured in bodily strength and mental
calibre. This is evident when we consider the great
and general laws which govern the race. But one
political law flas God enacted in the constitution of
the race: "The equal right to use normally the
unequal powers of mind and body;" and one moral
law has he enacted, which is virtually the same as




236                LECTURE.
the other: "Do unto others as you would have
them do to you;" and one physical and mental
fact forever comes with stunning effect upon us:
"As a man is made before birth, so is he."  A
bible writer expressed the same thought when he
said: "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he."
As the thief thinketh, so is he; as the profligate
thinketh, so is he; as the idiot thinketh, so is he.
Yet, who made the fool and the villain? This is a
question which ought to make every mother's son
and daughter think many a serious hour. It ought
to trouble them many an hour of many a day.
To understand this question aright, we must
look about us a little, and draw such just conclusions as the facts of Nature will warrant.
If we look abroad, we see imperfection everywhere. Even an oak tree4 cannot grow a perfect
and ideal oak. When yet a little bush it is trod on
by man or animal, and made to grow crooked.
The soil is not deep, and the rocks prevent the
roots from going down deep for nourishment, and
it is dwarfed during life. The winds blow off many
a limb; the prairie fires scorch it often; the freshets
uncover its roots; or the drouth withholds the
nourishment of the skies, and it stands a crooked,
gnarled, and dwarfed tree. The acorn from which
it came might have been of an inferior and dwarfed
kind, and so inferiority of stock added to meanness
of culture. But if the acorn had fallen in richer
soil, in a more congenial spot, where the circum



ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.            237
stances were the most favorable to the growth of
the oak, and it had been of the best variety of seed,
then another and far better tree would have been
the result. Here we say the b6ind forces of Nature
were favorable to its growth, whereas, in the first
instance, they were unfavorable. IHere is only a
play of blind forces, with no special design behind
them, for the good of the coming oak. But man
is a curious force; he is a tabernacle of design,
wherein dwells a god. Now let him take the acorn
from its forest home, where it had fallen, perhaps,
into the crevice of a rock; bear it away to a deep,
rich alluvial soil; plant it therein; fence it away
from the tread of animals; dig about it; guard it
from  fire; water it during drouth, and it grows
rapidly in beauty and grace. Now the winds only
strengthen its body and make it take deeper root,
and all Nature seems to add to its growth, as it goes
on from  day to day,'mid sunshine and storm,
prophesying of good materials to some coming
generation of man.
What is the legitimate conclusion from these
facts?  Why, surely, that God designs the best to
the oak only through the conscious thought of man.
The oak tree can be perfected only through man.
As the acorn fell in the forest by the force of gravity,
so will it lie. It may be removed by the rains, or
carried off by the squirrel, but with no design to
make of it a perfect oak, in accordance with the
informing law of the acorn. Man picks it up with




238                LECTURE.
such a design, and God operating in man, by and
through this mental force, reaches the perfect end in
design. HEere man can overcome gravity through
the force of will, in conscious design. Knowledge
and design are the ideal forces of the universe, which
mould, form and construct in the material world
material things and objects; and must, eventually,
make all material laws, or the blind forces of the
world, subservient to them. It is in man's conscious
thought that the oak tree is perfected. The perfect
oak must take root in the brain before it does in the
earth. It must be transplanted from the head to be
depended upon. This is the highest act of creation;
the creative act. What is creating?  Moving matter into new forms. This may be done blindly in
accordance with Natural law, or through design,
foretelling the result. In this, the highest sense,
man is a creator.
Would you create an oak tree?  You pick up an
acorn which only contains the antecedents of growth;
the pent-up forces of ancestral oaks. You have within
your hand the law, but within your mind the ideal
oak and the conditions of perfect growth. You
may speak life or death to the ideal fact which the
material acorn represents. You may control the
fact of the oak's future existence or non-existence
by planting the acorn in good soil, or by casting it
into the fire and roasting it. Now, if you roast it,
God Almighty could not make an oak tree from
that ascorn. And, why?  Because the force of fire




ANTE-NA TAL INEL TUE NrCES.     239
drove away the living principle of the acorn, destroying the temple in which it dwelt. The angel
of Death drove out the angel of Life. In other words,
the material conditions of the incarnate oak were
destroyed, and conditions always govern growth.
If God could make something from nothing, then
man could make oak trees from roasted acorns, or
potatoes out of mud balls. There is a God's law
governing growth, or all change. This law is unchangeable. Which means that God never works
contrary to his established laws. If he did The would
be inconsistent; and we could count on nothing as
certain in the universe. There would be no Science,
no such thing as Truth. But man often works contrary to God's laws, and in his ignorance, often asks
God to counteract his own commands. But this
may be depended upon; if the whole world of mankind should all get down on bended knee, at one
moment, and ask God to sprout the roasted acorn,
he would continue about his business, regardless of
the united prayers of the world. So much more
value is the law by which he sprouts one little acorn
thanll all the prayers of earth. Nor would he change
the law, that the oakl  when grown will produce after
its kind with a generic likeness, but an individual
variation. No prayer could produce any change
therein. Figs from thorns, and grapes from thistles,
we frequently find expressed in man's laws and
prayers, never in God's laws or actions. In the
rossted acorn the law, by which the oalk tree is pro.




240                LECTURE.
duced from the acorn, had been annulled and it could
never be prayed back to operate in that acorn. The
conditions of the future oak had been destroyed;
no other conditions in the universe would answer.
But suppose, instead of roasting the acorn, you
plant it; it sprouts and grows thriftily for two years,
when you throw upon its tender and frail body a
rail, leaving it bent half-way to earth for two years
more. Yiou then remove the rail and ende'avor to
straighten it. All endeavor, all fervor of prayer is
in vain. It was inconsistent with God to grow a
straight tree with a rail on the slender and frail
twig. And because inconsistent, impossible for him
to do otherwise. The law of perfect growth in the
oak had been violated and it was compelled to grow
crooked. Thus many a person's after life has been
made crooked before birth, and God's laws vindicated therein. Hence, we say; that which is not
consistent with the perfect and infinite Force of the
universe, has not arisen through any design therein.
We say the idiot is not inconsistent with God's laws
of producing mankind, only inconsistent with the
law of producing sound men and women. The
idiot is the slender sprout with a rail on it, bending
its head to earth. Nor does God fail in producing
the idiot; for, from this defect of the head, people
are driven to study God's laws of producing sound
heads, and mankind are benefitted through the
science of Reproduction.
But to return to the chief function of man in the




ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.          241
world. We have said: it is in man's conscious
thought that the oak tree is perfected. In fact,
there can be nothing perfected or made to improve
with a perceptible growth, without man. Take the
fruits of the world. It was in the mind of man that
the Early Harvest, and Golden Pippin, and Russet,
and Belle-flower and Wine-sap, were made. Without man it was only possible for God to grow, in the
long ages, the wild crab-apple and hawthorn. Man
took the wild apple, administered to its growth and
schooled it in the way it should grow, year after
year, and age after age, till he made himself an
article of food, as God designed. How many ages
passed in which God only grew crab-apples, because
no dust quickened by scientific knowledge to perfect
what he had begun, is known only to infinite intelligence. So it is with the berries of the wood or
prairie, they are only perfected by man in the gardens of culture. A few hundred years of culture
by man has raised the potato from an almost unpalatable esculent up to one of the chief supports of
human life. Man took it while yet imperfect, just
where God had left it in the wilds of Peru and the
Carolinas, and went on with what he had begun to
perfect it. Without man on earth, God could not
make a perfect potato.  Neither can God grow
perfect corn nor wheat, nor aught that grows for
man's support or pleasure, without man's implements of sharpened steel, baptized in the sweat of
holy toil. Even the flowers of the field bloom
Q




242               LECTURE.
fresher, with more lively tints, and yield a richer
perfume,'within a few generations, under the perfecting hand of man.
So it is with the animal world. God could not
make a perfect cow or horse, without the result oi
mlan's knowledge, applied with the conscious design
to perfect or improve them through the principles
of good breeding. The Arab is choice of his steed,
given him from the hand of Allah; but he himselt
has added a third to its speed, over that which God
had conferred, by bringing together favorable qualities in mother and sire; bettering the foal in man's
head, through care and thought, and often in experiments which failed. This is only taking hold
of Nature, and making her obedient to the will of
man. And now, so perfect has become the Science
of Breeding, that man takes the powers of creation
in his own hands, and makes a horse to suit his
purpose, whether of strength or speed. So, too, of
the ox kind, he makes an animal to produce the
most beef or milk, or best for the yoke, to suit his
purpose. Without man it is possible for God to
make of the ox kind only the Buffalo,-in all parts
of the world the same in color and disposition, and
almost the same in size and shape. John Sebright
said, with respect to the color and shape of pigeons:
he could produce any given feather in three years,
but it would take him six years to obtain head and
beak. Here man moulds and paints the animal,
in accordance with a pattern prescribed.  The




ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.           243
animal world is plastic in his hands; it is the clay
in the hands of the potter.
The principle upon which man creates and manipulates the world is this: The force which moves
the variable atom is a unit, and ever tends to perpetuate itself, but always varies under new conditions. Like produces like, under like conditions.
Man can control the conditions, and vary the
coming animal, physically and mentally. He thus
improves the animal or plant in design. First it is
made better in the Ideal; then the Ideal is incarnated in flesh. This is the highest form of the
creative act.
So you see that in the organic world God could
not perfect it without man. To state it in another
form, which is perhaps more scientific: It was impossible for God to perfect the work in animal or
plant without incarnating himself in man as Science,
which is the Christ of the world.  So he came
into man, not suddenly, but slowly and insensibly,
in long ages of development, in many a faculty, to
think, to know, to reflect, to plan, to construct, to
improve, to beautify, to love, to hope, and to aspire
after the Ideal. The Ideal is the crowning thought.
It is the image of God in man; the power which
moves matter into human expressions. And there is
now in each reflective mind, held up in the Ideal a
better man or woman than God has yet produced on
earth. It is said God made man in the "beginning," and that he made him perfect. It is, perhaps,




244               LECTURE.
nearer the truth to say: God has not yet finished
making man; the job is not complete. Man is a
growth, not a miraculous and instantaneous creation.
He is not yet born into the Ideal manhood and
womanhood. He is still developing; still growing
day after day, age after age. We see man himself
by and through the laws which govern life and procreation, improving the man, into whom God
breathed the breath of life, and left grossly imperfect. Man surely is his own creator in the highest
and noblest sense of the term. He is made by an
eternal covenant co-partner with God for the finishing and perfecting of earth, plant and animal.
But how shall man act for his own good? The
more knowledge, the higher the life; the better the
action, the greater the good. There never was an
evil or calamity which overtook man but pointed to
wisdom. The pearl of truth is taken from the heart
of Evil. Experience is the school in which the
world learns wisdom. We are herein taught the
science of living; the science of doing. A few
generalizations may not be here amiss.
There are certain principles, the result of subtle
forces in the universe, which we call material laws;
such as gravity, the laws of chemistry, light, heat
and electricity, of birth, growth and decay. These
laws are constant and fixed. They are the result of
a blind force, and as effects of such, are irrevocable.
There is no repeal of, nor appeal from them. These
forces, for the good of plant and animal, have to be




ANTE-NATAL INELUENCES.           245
overcome or their effects prevented, for they often.
conflict or run counter to each other. The man who
picked up the acorn in the forest to plant it in his
field overcame, not the material and fixed law, of
gravity, which made it fall to earth and would keep
it there, but the conditions into which gravity had
forced it. Here a higher force, one of Intelligence
with a future good in design, overcame the effect of
those natural conditions which would dwarf, cripple
or destroy it; these conditions being the result of
blind forces. Man's intelligence must control the
conditions of his birth and growth, or he becomes
the result of conflicting blind forces.
It thus becomes apparent that Harmony is the
word which expresses the law of all good. To live,
to grow, to produce good, we must place ourselves
in harmony with the established laws of the mental
and material world, and control the conditions of
life. This is a conflict of mind with- matter. It is
the mental world subduing the material; it is finding
out the relation of things and adapting them to each
other. It is conscious design controlling blind force.
Gravity has no conscious will-power behind it, for
any special good to man. Gravity would hurl us
to earth from the top of a tower, did we not, consciously, by force of will, through common prudence,
make our footing sure. The former relates to the
material world, the latter to the mind. To produce
harmony, is purely the result of mental force controlling the conditions of life.




246                LECTURE.
In Dr. Howe's report on idiocy, to the Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1848, it is stated that out
of 359 idiots, only about a quarter of them were
found to have had temperate parents. Seventeen of
these were also found to be the children of parents
closely related by blood. "On examinilng into the
history of the seventeen families to which these individuals belonged, it was found they had consisted
in all of ninety-five children; that of these no fewer
than forty-four were idiots. Twelve others were
scrofulous and puny. In one family of eight children, five were idiots."
When an idiot comes into a mother's lap, it
ought to be mourned over as an act of divine providence. Yet no one ought to be foolish enough to
say God created it, and failed. So far as God is
concerned, the idiot is no more a failure than a
Newton. The parents failed, not God. Put a pint
of whisky into almost any man's stomach, and he
is for hours a senseless, blubbering idiot, or a raving,
staggering maniac. A child produced in such a
mental state, ten to one will be a physical or mental
wreck; and almost sure to be, when there is added
the close relationship by blood. Were this not the
case, then surely would God fail. For the drunken
parents, when Reason is dethroned, and Passion hot
as the fires of hell, must set on fire their children,
of their own lusts, or fail to light the lamp of intelligence, because of their own mental darkness, is




ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.          247
as certain as that God has written the law on tablets
of flesh and mind, that Like produces Like.
This is a law of the mental world. Hate begets
hate.  Anger begets anger.  Love begets love.
Jealousy makes the food it feeds on. This is a law
which is irrevocable. You cannot annul it in the
legislatures of State, in the councils of Church, nor
at the family hearthstone. You might as well try
to vote the icy Labrador into eternal summer, or
abolish in the councils of Church the sweet influences of sun and moon, as to try to produce bright
and healthy babes from whisky and folly.
No, God does not make the idiot, nor thief, nor
murderer, nor son of lust, any more than he makes
a reaper, or threshing machine, or steam saw-mill,
or any other work of man. It is only an expression of the established and eternal laws of mind and
body, and of the material world, which govern the
production and operation of steam mill, threshing
machine, reaper, child of lust, drunkard, murderer,
thief, idiot. It is, upon an eternal principle that the
steam saw-mill acts; and it matters not to God,
whether a log or a man is placed in front of the saew;
it would saw both with a full head of steam on.
And if the best man on earth was sitting on the
log, and about to be drawn up to the saw, God
would not miraculously shut off the steam to save
him. In all these things, God works only through
man. He teaches him " How " thorough his failures,
and points out wisdom in the evils which afflict him.




248               LECTURE.
A mother sitting at her chamber window playing with her child, a year old, accidentally lets it
fall out on the stone pavement, twenty feet beneath,
and it is killed by the fall. Who killed this babe,
God or the mother?  Let us see.  Suppose the
mother asks a philosopher: "What made my babe
fall and get killed?"  He wisely answers: "Gravity,
madam, which draws all loose substances to earth.
There is a certain law, madam, governing the falling of bodies."  "Well, but who made Gravity?"
enquires the mother. " Nobody;" responds the philosopher; "it is co-eternal with God. Ask as well
who made God. This for general purposes is a
blind material force. It acts on all objects. It is
as instrumental in giving life as producing death.
It is a blind material force. But mentally you may
know; and you have; maternal love to prompt you
to common prudence, for the care and safety of your
child. Had you obeyed the law of your own being,
you could have saved your child. So you see,
madam, you are punished for your ignorance or
lack of prudence, just the same as though it were
willful, so far as God is concerned in it. Many a
similar sad catastrophe happens to many a mother's
child before it is born, madam."  "I-ow so?" inquires the mother. "You. remember," says the
philosopher, "the little foolish child that was such
an annoyance to its mother, your neighbor, who
long watched it with care, to keep it from falling
into the fire, or death of all kinds which surrounds




ANTE-NATAL INFL UENCES.         249
us; and that at.last it fell from the door-sill, which
was the death of it. There was an accident, madam,
at both ends of its life. It was made by accident,
and wept over; it was born an unwelcome thing,
and wept over; and accidentally went out of life,
and wept over. It was nothing but tears to its
mother. It was a failure from beginning to end,
madam, entirely an accidental thing. God made
that child, madam, just as much and no more than
he kills the man who accidentally blows his own
brains out with powder and ball. It is in accordance with the laws of the material world, but in
violation of the higher law governing human life
and action."
Upon this very principle men and women produce the bodies and form the characters of their
children. The forces are constant which produce the
child, whether healthy or diseased, in body or mind,
just as gravity is constant which killed the child
in falling from the window. And the laws which
are the result of these forces may be studied in the
failures of pro-creation, no less than in falling towers
or moving tempests. By contemplating the fool
and the villain, and by having them thrust upon
parents and society, people may, at last, be tortured
into an investigation of the causes of idiocy and
crime; and this will eventually compel them to study
the laws of pro-creation so as to learn how to make
a sound child.
It is said man is made in the image of God.




250               LECTURE.
This is "begoging the question," and putting effect for
cause. It is, perhaps, true, and the world's history
seems to prove it, that God is made in the exact
image of each person who has power of mind enough
to conceive of a God. Should we place before you
a man who is all diseased without and within,
covered all over with foul, scrofulous sores, crosseyed, hair-lipped, loose-jointed, knock-kneed, hunchbacked; a physical dwarf, whose head comes almost
out of his stomach; who has added to this physical
imperfection that mental blight called idiocy; soulscarred and sin-stained from his mother's womb,
and say to you: Ladies and gentlemen, this is man,
the greatest work of God, made in his own image.
What kind of a conception would you have of God?
What, would you think of the wisdom of God in
creating this imbecile and slobbering idiot? No
doubt the egotism of mankind would be wounded
were we to say: a monkey is made in the exact image of God. Yet there are apes in the world far
superior to some abortions who take the dignified
title of man. Viewed morally, the case is just as
bad. Was Nero, or Vitellius, or Constantine, or
Jeffireys, or Joshua of old, made in the exact image
of God? How, then, about the image of the Devil?
It is to us blasphemy to say that God made the idiot
as an omnipotent work of skill, designing him to be
perfect, and that therein God failed; or, that the
idiot is a "freak of Nature," a curse to parents, a
perfect blot on the human page, produced by causes




ANTE-NATAL INFL UENCES.        251
over which parents had no control, and that thus
they are innocent of the child's idiocy, or that God
intentionally, specially and miraculously made the
murderer, or thief, or child of lust. These are all
made by men and women; all failures in the pro-creation of the race. But after they are made by men
and women, God enacts wisdom therefrom by showing parents wherein they have failed, and wherein
they can better the abortive work. God designs
always to teach wisdom from the failures of man.
The idiot gawks at his mother, while she weeps-over
the intellectual darkness or mental ruin of her child;
and God designs that the idiot shall gawk, writhing
the mother in mental anguish, that women, before
marriage, may study the child's good long before
it is born.
It is an infamous slander on God to say he has
anything to do directly, in special creative acts,
with all this army of murderous, thievish, lying,
lustful, idiotic men and women, whose life germs
have been perhaps mingled with the drunkard's
cup; started for earth in currents red with the
crimes of lust, and spawned into existence in dens
of vice, or in embellished houses of legalized
Prostitution. Do not be mistaken! God has nothing to do with these births of the world. They are
accidental products of creative ignorance.  They
are specimens of man's fall. They are the curse of
his disobedience. They are brought forth in violation of God's laws, which he has writ on tablets of




25 2              LREOCtURE.
flesh, not in harmony with them. And it is the
Word of God, proclaimed in all Nature, that he
intends to have the murderer cut at the throat of
his mother; the thief to steal the trappings from
his father's coffin; the idiot to blubber and talk
gibberish, slavering in the very face of his mother;
and the child of lust to corrupt the currents of
human blood, till mankind shall learn wisdom, and
create the child of good materials, after the ideal
pattern.  This is the cause of the fool and the
villain, and God's design therein.
The general principle upon which God works,
is to suspend no law of Nature for the accommodation of his choicest child. Man has given him the
power to make and improve himself, with the means
of knowledge at his very door. It is for us to do,
to perfect, to complete what, without our own design, could not have been done.. The materials
God furnishes; man fashions them either into a
house or a child. He makes the rude hut or th6
princely palace, the intellectual giant or the idiot.
As the animal and vegetable world could not be
perfected without man, so neither can he himself
be perfected without his own care and culture.
The child illy born is the result of man's ignorance, but from the failure he is to learn wisdom.
This is the order of Nature in all departments of
life. Man is a growth in knowledge as well as
structure. We think the Osage indian holds the
analogous relation to the most civilized man that




ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.          253
the crab-apple does to the standard apple of our
orchards, or that the buffalo does to the Devon or
Durham  of our herds. And as God could only
grow wild crab-apples and wild buffalo without
man's care and culture, so also be could only grow,
wild men without their own care and culture in
their own pro-creation. Nature brings the animal
and vegetable up to a certain point by the law of
natural selection, without any special design. This
is the blind law of the survival of the strongest in
the struggle for life. But there is a point at which
Nature stops, and there rests, till man, with destgn for
the good of himself, controls the conditions of life,
and brings the animal and plant to the crowning
perfection of domestication. Here it is the survival
of the fittest, not always the strongest. The former
is in accordance with the blind law of force —the
survival of the strongest; the latter is in accordance
with the law of design-the survival of the fittest.
We think this fact will be admitted before long
by the religious teachers of the world. Certain we
are, no permanent good can be done towards man's
salvation, till it is admitted, and the old theological
twaddle about binding Satan be stopped. When a
good race of children is produced, then will Satan
be bound; then will be the millennium; then will
the Christ appear. This need not be a thousand
years hence with the most advanced race; but with
the whole world it may be many thousands. But
some families may have the millennium already



254               LECTURE.
doubtless do. A young woman, sound in mind
and body, finding a suitable matrimonial partner,
being joined and living in marriage as God designs,
may bring the millennium within one generation,
and she herself see the infant Jesus, in her own lap.
Verily, this generation would not pass away before
this were fulfilled in that family established under
God's laws of marriage. It is more possible for
heaven and earth to pass away, than for God to deceive the man and woman of sound mind and body,
scientifically married, who understand the laws of
pro-creation, and will live up to them.
Would you know then the prime cause of the
fool and the villain? It is because the child is not
planned before birth. There is no design to make
of it a perfect child antecedent to the creative act,
and without this design in the mind of father and
mother, the blind forces of Nature are ever ready to
turn the child into a physical or mental wreck. I
look upon the perfectly organized child, which is
yet to come, as a work of art; as much so as the
thorough-bred animal which adorns the farmer's
field or stable. The time will come when thoroughbred men and women will be the envied God's
nobility of earth. The adorning with social "manners" amounts to but little. This outward culture
is but the " tinsel and ruffling" which hides all that
is real.
The breeder of thorough-bred cattle or horses,
has a model in the head which he tries to produce




ANTE-NATAL INFL UENCES.          255
in flesh. So, also, there is in man, the ideal man
and woman, better than earth has yet seen, which,
some day the world will produce, through the conscious thought of man. It is only here in the Ideal
world that God has created the better man; yet, by
no means perfect. The Christian world project this
ideal conception back to the time of Jesus, and
worship him as very man, and very God. But they
are mistaken when they make him  a finality of
human perfection. The world is continually producing her Jesuses after the ideal Jesus of the
human soul.
Look at the work of an unknown hand in the
Apollo Belvidere. That master work of art, preserved from the destroying hand of the barbarian,
unable to appreciate its beauty and grandeur, has
come down to us the crowning glory of the Grecian
thought. And yet it must have fallen far short of
the ideal perfection which, alone, the artist built in
his own mind; for there must be added to this, that
mental beauty, power and loveliness, which chisel
cannot carve, and which mind alone can see. When
we add the greatest moral beauty to the best physical form, which mind can fashion in the Ideal,
then we conceive of man, as God is commanding
us to create him; as God is now creating him in us.
Nor can man be bettered save in design; first creating a better man in the head before he is put into
flesh. Suppose you had a hundred thousand dollars to
invest in the erection for yourself of a business house




256               LECTURE.
in some city. You make an estimate that it will
cost one half of this sum for the materials. So you
purchase fifty thousand dollars worth of materials:
so many perches of stone; so many thousand brick;
so much lumber, iron, glass, nails, lime and sand,
and pile them all down on the ground together, and
then set your men to work, to lay stone on stone,
and brick on brick, without a plan and specifications.
You have ignored an architect, and have no design
of your own. Do you think you can construct in
this way a house with any assurance of success? A
million to one it will be a failure. Well, it is just
the same with the human race. A million to one
we are failures. But suppose, on the other hand, you
go to an architect and state your case to him, the
object of your house and the amount you have to
invest in it. There is the architect in his little room
ten by twelve, or less, inside of four bare walls. IHe
closes his eyes and looks within. He seems dreamy
and hates to be disturbed. He locks himself in and
dwells in silence alone in abstract thought. He is
building a house without an atom of matter. It
assumes definite proportions: so many stories high,
so many feet for each story, so many feet at base, so
much depth, so many feet for cornice, frieze and entablature,-the proportions to please the eye, so as
to malke a house of beauty, nay, even imposing and
grand. Then he runs through its different apartments and arranges and economizes space,-to make
it commodious and convenient, airy and light; when




ANTE-NATAL INFL UENCES.          257
lo! he has it constructed there in his own head,-an
edifice far more perfect than you can employ workmen, the most skilled and experienced, to put into
material form; as it is always impossible to put into
material form that surpassing real of the Ideal creation. The architect draws off, as best he can on
paper, the edifice with plan and specifications.
With this your house is no failure, and when finished is a model of beauty and convenience. The
unthinking rabble praise you; for there is your name
carved in large letters on its front; but you alone
know how to appreciate the quiet and obscure architect, who deserves all the praise which the unthinking millions are bestowing on you.
Well, fathers and mothers should be the architects of their own children. The blind forces of
Nature are only the mechanics; the hewers of wood
and drawers of water, to be guided by an architect's
hand. They know nothing of the design; care
nothing about the beauty, the worth, the life of the
child. We think the facts of the world will bear
us out in the assertion, that among the vast millions
of earth's population the child is neither designed,
nor scarcely a thought bestowed upon its construction. All is left to the blind forces of Nature. No
wonder, then, that the word "failure" is set over
against the life of so many-people of the world.
Let us look at the office of the mother. Let us
begin with her before marriage, when she has not
yet doved the partner of ber life's,joys and sorrows,




258               LECTURE.
Within her mind should be the Ideal of the man she
is to wed. This Ideal should be based upon the
scientific fact that like temperaments should never
marry. There is much, however, to be learned
upon the physical and mental adaptation of proper
marital relations. A law must some day be established, inductively from the evils of marriage. Facts
are now beginning to accumulate which promise
great ultimate good. Marriage now stands where
Astronomy stood in the time of Hipparchus, where
Geography stood in the time of Cosmas. As the
Christian god in the time of Copernicus, guarded
with flaming sword the entrance to the starry world,
and frightened'away all who were disposed to investigate, so the god of the hearth-stone drives away
every scientific intruder. But the bonds of marriage
are now becoming like flaxen threads in the fire.
The green withes of early love, dry and rot with age,
and often fall off the yoked pair unconsciously and
without a struggle of discord. There is much to be
learned about proper selections, and much about
preserving the union after the alliance. But when
Marriage is raised to the dignity of a science, there
must be the Ideal of the more perfect pair. This
Ideal will sift, sort, exclude, reject, till the ideal fact
is fully satisfied. Then Love will bow at the feet of
Reason. Woman must know  that Love without
reason is Lust, and is the world's curse from of old.
Love is like the religious faculty; blind and strong
as fblped Samson, and stpanIds in society between the




ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.          259
two pillars of Church and State; and when not
guided by Reason, would tear down the social fabric
on its head, destroying thousands in the fall. This
these two faculties have often done, are still continuing to do.
Oh! young woman, tremble at the first emotion
of Love. Go into your soul's closet, and pray that
Reason, and Knowledge, and firmness, and right,
shall guard you, and guide you into the light which
Science shall shed on your way. Pray with the
head that divinest of all prayers, that Knowledge
may come in there and bless you; pray with the
prospective thought that wife may bring to you joy
or pain untold, and that mother shall be to you
heaven or hell on earth. Be aware of the fact that
in your body shall circulate the materials, sound or
unsound, of your child's mechanism; that your
bodily health and strength shall be imparted to it;
that disease and bodily imperfection may also pass
from your veins into its own structure; that overwork, toil and drudgery will descend in weakness,
also; that the impress of your own soul may be
stamped on the -mind of the child; that goodness,
purity, peace and love, may bring an angel of your
own into your lap; or Murder, which is in your
thought, may wait to strike through the hand of the
child you shall bear; that your dissipation may riot
in debauch long after you are dead, in your own offspring; or the villainy of the man you wed may
image beck his secret social crimes, ihl the Cbild you




260               LECTURE.
long may have to weep over. Oh! mother, thy
office is always the holiest, yet may be the vilest on
earth. Mothers of the world, from thy womb
ascend the angels of heaven or descend the devils
of Hell. Thou art the Savior or the Destroyer of
the children of Time. No power hast thou, like
fabled Chronos, to devour thy own unruly children.
They come back to curse, to fight, to torture you,
and from them you can never flee away; or they
come like a fairy band, wreathing the blessings of
heaven on thy head, and playing sweet melodies on
harps strung with the cords of thy affections.
Man, do you think you understand the duties
of husband and father? Is your wife a slave crouching at your feet? Do you hold that she shall come
and go at your bidding; that she was made to
minister to you, and that this is the sole purpose
for which she was designed? Do you believe that
there was any special curse pronounced upon her,
as that, her desire shall be unto you, and you shall
rule over her? Do you believe that she is only a
necessary appendage to man, a thing by which he
is to people the earth, and which is to satisfy his lusts?
Then woe to the world because of you. From
your loins come Polygamy, Rape, Prostitution.
These image back your own domestic life, and reflect the darkness of your soul. Under your rule
the black artist of hell finds life pictures to paint.
Under your rule Disease, Murder, Lust, leap from
yo.s, own obart into your children's veins d.tcl l1ur




ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.           261
there like robbers of the highway, under cover of
wood or night, to again strike down their victim.
We look upon woman as the equivalent of main,
who as wife has the right to. her own body, and as
mother has the right to dictate terms to the father
of her children, and to resist the unhallowed abuse
which she always receives when a slave to him. In
short, we look upon woman truly enlightened, and
raised to the dignity of a free human being, as the
Savior of the race. We worship at the shrine of
Mother; one who understands the functions of her
office; one who understands the relation she sustains to her child, and the child to the race; one
who fully comprehends the awful consequences of
ignorance, sin or error, when an immortal soul is
charged up to her account. We honor the Emersons, the Parkers, the Davises, the Jesuses of the
race. We admire their genius, their learning, their
inspiration, their bold and pregnant speech, their
pure religious life and manly character, but we
worship at the feet of one such Mother. In her
household you will not see a husband, like the oaktree of unfavorable birth and circumstances, torn
and gnarled by the blind forces of the world,
dwarfed and rotten at the heart. No child of hers
will you find scorched by the fires of Lust, or crouching in spirit, trod on before birth by the heel of a
tyrant. No child blighted or withering for the want
of physical or mental food; but one of design, made for
a purpose, a glory to her, and a blessing to the race.




262                LECTURE.
How useless it is to talk then of regeneration,
saving grace, the blood of Christ, forgiveness of
sins, sanctification, justification, in view of the
appalling fact, that our mothers bore us. In view
of this fact nobody can understand any of these
terms. One word will express them all-mistification.
It is proper generation not regeneration that the
world so much stands in need of. What process of
regeneration will right a physical imperfection,
scrofula or hare-lip? What kind of regeneration
will give a front-head to the idiot, or a top-head to
the malevolent? It is fast being found out that the
fool and the villain cannot be regenerated. They
have been spoilt in the making. They are broken
vessels of flesh and mind, and can never be mended
on earth.
Saving Grace.-What is it?  We would call it
the wisdom of woman as wife and mother.
lForgiveness of Sin.- What is a sin?  A willful
violation of a known law of God. You get drunk,
knowing that it injures you, and you fall into the
gutter of licentiousness. You transmit the lust of
your heart and the smell of the bottle to your child,
and he has a mania for liquor all his life, proves a
curse to you, to the mother who bore him, and to
the world; and God can forgive you for your
drunkenness, can he?  HUow? The forgiveness of
sin is a contradiction in terms. I place my foot
willfilly in your path; you tread on my toe, for
which I suffer, and I cry out, pardon me for your




ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.           263
stepping on my toe; and you say: granted through
the suffering of some one of your relatives. This
is the whole story of all the praying to God to forgive sin, which has ever been prayed in Christendom. There is no forgiveness, no justification in
Nature for sin.  There is no santification for the
sinner.
The Blood of Christ.-Will the blood of Christ
wash out the body's pollution and prevent the transmission of disease?  Will the true and devout
Christian be exempt from the effects of violated
laws of pro-creation, and his children be born pure
and heirs of heaven? No vicarious atonement can
prevent the effects of our sins or errors on the coming generations of man! no blood of Christ will
wash away the diseases of the flesh transmitted to
our children! no holy light of the immaculate Son
of God can illume the dark chambers of the idiot
or the insane! no Holy Ghost will overshadow the
son of man, begotten in drunkenness and lust! The
popular scheme of salvation falls dead at the feet of
Science. People can only be saved at the inner
courts of family, before they are born; designed in
wisdom and begotten in love.
A Change of Heart.-Ministers talk learnedly about
a change of heart; about the, HIoly Spirit striving to
convert some hardened sinner, not of evil deeds and
thoughts, but of unchristian belief. But the minister himself is floundering in the abyss of Ignorance. A pure skin and healthy stomach is of far




264                LECTURE.
more consequence, than a profession of religion.
The Kingdom of Heaven is often lost from the want
of soap and warm water. Inherited disease often
casts people into a hell, from whose fiery flame no
profession of religion and no change of heart can
save. Instead of sinning against God, man is sinning against himself. Men and women are often
thrown out into life, complete failures of creation.
Conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, how
can a change of heart or the prayers of ministers
save them? No prayer of priest can penetrate back
to the cause of the failure. No prayer can cure the
disease, no profession of religion can purify the
fountains of adulterated blood, no rite of church
can give relief.
Ministers urge men and women to prepare for
the next world. Would to God they would spend all
their talent and earnest breath in teaching them to
prepare for this world. It is not an imaginary hell
beyond the grave, that mankind must be saved from;
it is the hell of this world, its fires and its devils. It
is not the soul of man that must be saved so much
after death, it must be saved before birth. It is not
death, it is life which is a fearful thing. It is the
life which the prospective child is to live on earth,
when conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity,
which is most calamitous and fearful. It is a mistake to suppose God can save men and women from
the effects of error or sin. They can only save
themselves. As well say that God can save the




ANTE-NATAL INFLUENCES.           265
child from bodily death, that fell out of the window, twenty feet down, on the stone pavement, its
brains dashing out with the fall.
But wisdom rises out of the follies of life, and
the path to success is pointed out in its failures.
Truth, or the fixed purpose of God, sets over against
the errors and sins of men and women as living rebukes of shame and disgust, the monsters of the
flesh and the idiocy of the mind, to teach virtue
and wisdom. And the villain of the state, the
street, the brothel, or the pulpit, reflects the wisdom of God on the failures of man in the night of
his ignorance, as the moon reflects the glory of the
sun upon the night of earth.








LECTURE.
SUNDA Y,-ITS HISTOR Y; USES, AND AB USES.
In the land of Jefferson and the Declaration of
Independence, a man was fined for working. HIe
paid his fine, and his county and state ought to
have been the richer for it; but that they were, you
may well doubt.
A. man worked, and was fined therefor? Yes;
but it was unlawful labor.
Was it for selling liquor in a dram-shop? No;
that is not work.
Was it for taking corn away from his neighbor's
barn without lawful right? No; that would be
stealing.
Was it for reaping where he had not sown, or
gathering where he had not strewn? No; not at
all; you misunderstand. He was not even tilling
his own soil, for which he had a fee-simple and a
God's patent; but working with implements of
wood and steel, neither stolen, borrowed, nor unpaid for.




268               LECTURE.
What! In brewing corn and rye to make
whisky, to make men drunk; to bring ruin to head
and heart? It were better to raise the bread-corn
for himself and family, and for the stranger that
may come within his gate.
No; you still misunderstand. This man was an
honest man; not a gambler, nor thief; no liquor
dealer or brewer; no city wag, with ill-behaved
mouth or stomach; no profligate country clown;
but a man,-that being who has centered -within
him the attributes of the Universe. Such a man,
in such a country, and for such labor, as you will
see in the sequel, was fined. The result of it was:
an honest man was made poorer, and the State no
better off. But this opens the discussion, in which
grave practical and theological questions arise.
The evil, sin, or misdemeanor, is not in the character of the man, nor in the kind of labor he does,
nor how he does it; nor in the object of such labor,
but in the time in which it is done. That is, there is
time recognized by Church and State called " holy
time," as distinguished from secular or unholy time.
This holy time is considered to be one of the seven
days of the week, and varies with the religious
views and beliefs of widely separated nations.
There is, then, a holy day; for the Grecian, Monday; for the Persian, Tuesday; the Assyrian,
Wednesday; the Turk, Thursday; the Jew, Saturday, and the Christian, Sunday. But with this last
we have only to do in Kansas.




SUNDA Y.               269
This holy day, called Sunday, is the only one
which is to be entirely dedicated to God. Once,
people in this Christian land were commanded, by
statute, what to do, and what only to do on this day.
Then meeting houses were filled with worshipers,
according to!" law and gospel." Those palmy, Puritan days of New England are, perhaps, passed
away forever. Now, the command: "Go thou to
church," is only heard from very few parental lips.
There is no fear of statute, or terror of hell hanging
over it. The statute does not command what shall
be done on Sunday, it only prohibits certain acts
from being done. Happy is that man who sleeps
all day Sunday, rather than use contrary to statute
this day. After the statute had ceased commanding
what to do on Sunday, it was only left -for the
Christian minister and priest to command, and so
long as these were feared they were obeyed. I
have known little boys and girls to run and hide
from the minister when he came to their father's
own house. Such little boys and girls feared the
minister, and would think it very sinful not to go to
meeting on Sunday, if he commanded them to do
so. The world has many such full-grown boys and
girls; full-grown in body, not in Reason, who call
Sunday-worship religion, and this religion a duty
everybody in the world owes to God.
If this holy day means a solar day, then, geographically and astronomically, it is false to teach a.c1imtay obs8erve nee to th e wo rld,  For no one cI




270               LECTURE.
travel around the world from East to West, without
gaining a solar day. The sun will rise upon that
man's life one time less for each time he circumnavigates this globe from East to West. Who is to
correct that man's calendar?  Were it possible for a
person to travel around the world in six days of
twenty-four hours each, starting westward on Monday morning at sunrise, he would travel but- five
solar days, and would get back to worship on the
sixth, instead of on the seventh. The good missionary, who goes from Oberlin or Andover to convert the heathen of China, may be offering up his
Sunday-morning's prayer, while his good Christian
brother at home is doing his Saturday-evening's
work. Thus the sphericity and rotation of the earth,
abolish the notion of a particular day which is
distinguishable the world over, from any other day.
One can even sail away from all solar days of twentyfour hours' duration, and find one day and night a
twelve-month long. Sunday was never meant for
Dr. Kane and his party of Arctic explorers, in their
winter quarters, far this side of the Polar Sea, where
a night of one hundred and forty days enveloped
that latitude; and where, for many a Sunday, its
noonday was the black image of its midnight.
It is not, then, a certain solar day that can be
considered holier than the other six solar days; and
it must, therefore, be asserted that one-seventh of
the time is to be kept holy, in accordance with the
minister's prescription, and the statute's prohibition.




SUNDAY.                 271
What particular seventh part of time? and how
shall this particular seventh part of time be kept?
These are questions which have never been fully
answered. There is a chaos of theological thinking
and legislative action thereon, all arising out of
vague notions of time; false theories in regard to
the earth, as to its origin, shape, position and motion;
false conceptions of God, with all the limitations of
human weakness, working hard, getting tired, and
resting; together with the debased views held in
regard to man.
A moment's thought must set one right in regard
to this notion of holy, or unholy time. Time is the
measure of motion, and is as purely abstract as
number, size and distance. As well say that seven
is holier than five, as that some time is holier than
some other time. Time is relative and applies only
to the finite. We may mark time upon the dial of
a clock or watch. The second, or part of a second,
is struck off by a perceptible movement. We can
see the second hand move directly under the eye;
it takes the closest observation to see the minute
hand move; and look as intently as we may we
cannot see the hour hand move; yet it is in motion,
or time would not be indicated. And thus we only
indicate time relatively, as compared with motion
or change, and call it cycle, year, month, week, day,
hour, minute, second; whereas absolutely there is
no division of time. There is the infinite Abyss,
in which time is swallowed up, To the absolute




272               LECTURE.
and infinite God there is no such thing as time, nor
any such thing as space. God's life is the infinite
Now, and his being the infinite Here. To the Infinite it must be all Now and Here.
Strictly then the word holy, can only be applied
to action, for there can be no such thing as holy
or unholy time. The action may in this way name
the hour, or day, or place; as that was a holy day,
or that is a holy place; because just deeds were
done then and there. And also, that was an unholy
day, or that is an unholy place, because unjust deeds
were done then and there. And thus it has come
about, that worship paid to the gods on a certain
day, and in a particular place, has rendered both the
day and the place holy, because to worship the
gods was deemed the best and holiest deed of men.
But it would be very silly in this age to assert, that
the best deeds of the world are done in a meeting
house on Sunday, and that no worship could be as
good elsewhere, and at other times. We can by no
means say, that Sunday is a holy day because all the
good deeds of Christendom are done on that day,
and that the other six days are unholy time, because
that is the time in which all the unholy deeds of
Christendom are done. This would be ignoring facts.
But why was the man fined for working on
Sunday in the Free State of Kansas? Was it because the Christian bible had it so recorded from
the pen of inspired lawgiver or prophet?  No; not
9 word to tthis effect iin. thie Old Toes'tment,




SUNDA Y.                273
Was it because Jesus of Nazareth, or his
apostles so commanded?  No; not a word in the
New Testament upon the subject of Sunday, or
Sunday-worship. No word about a fine, about attending church, or what is lawful, or unlawful to do
upon the Sunday. The Bible commands nothing;
says nothing upon the subject, and every Christian
says: "I take the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament to be the only infallible rule of faith and
practice."
Then the man was not fined because he violated
anv biblical command, nor because he was not a
Christian? No.
Nor because he violated any physical or mental
law?  No.
Why then? How foolish your question?  It
was because he violated a statute of Kansas, which
says in plain English without obscurity or ambiguity: " Every person who shall labor or perform any
work other than the household offices of daily necessity, or other works of necessity or charity, on
the first day of the week commonly called Sunday,
shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and fined
not exceeding twenty-five dollars."  This is why.
No need of Bible or Christianity to explain that.
This too is the common law of the land, and was
imported in the Mayflower, and in many a ship
besides, from England and still other lands of
Europe. It was not imported from Africa in Christian ships of slave traffic, but was found ready.Q




274               LECTURE.
waiting and in religious use for those dusky sons of
toil as soon as they landed in Georgetown or Puritanic Boston. In the inscrutable providence of
God, it was a jubilee of rest to the black barbarian,
driven to toil early and late, under the lash of
Christian task-masters. And if man neglected to
mention it in his Bible, God did not forget to write it
in the Constitution of Man, so that it might be read
for the good of toiling men and women. Sunday
is founded uponl the same demand of human nature,
which establishes, and has established all days of
rest among different peoples of the world. The
sufferings of man, have long preceded every law
which has been enacted for his good. The overworked or hard-worked man needs rest, whether
driven by a master, his necessities, or his own
greed for worldly gains. Then Tired Nature cries
out: "Give me rest!"  This is how it came in the
statute of Kansas, and English statutes and the Conmmon law. So England said in her fundamental
law in the time of Charles II., (1678,) for Puritanic
comfort: "No tradesman, artificer, workman, laborer,
or other person whatsoever, shall do or exercise
any worldly labor, business, or work of their ordinary callings upon the Lord's Day, or any part
thereof, works of charity and necessity only excepted."  This is the parent of our statute; and at that
time the Sunday rigor culminated in England
among the Puritans. This consummation had been
long in coming. But it was as irresistible as the




SUNDA Y.                275
ocean at its flood. Those things which acted as
causes had been done; they could not be undone,
and the effect was inevitable. It was in vain that
James I., sixty years before, (1618,) proclaimed
against the Judaical observance of Sunday, and encouraged after divine services, all kinds of lawful
games and exercises. For this he must be branded
as impious and profane, and seven years later, under
his successor, a law must be passed to strictly
forbid this ungodly license, and to annul this
ungodly proclamation. How futile were the efforts
of James I. Hle had grappled with the Inevitable.
It was all in vain to try to annul by proclamation,
the long face, and the long prayer, and the long sad
Sunday of the stern Puritan. Why, surely! Was
not Shepherd expelled from the HIouse of Commons
in the Eighteenth of the king's reign, and disgraced
before a whole nation for his biblical arguuent in
favor of less rigor on Sunday, and for saying:
"David danced before the Ark of the Covenant,
which seems to justify sports on that day."
Seventeen years before this, things were running
quite loosely. Sunday was not tied up by statute.
Then sports and recreations were not only justifiable, but recommended on this day. An occasional
stray shot from  Parliament is felt by some tradesman, as for example: "Shoemakers are prohibited
from  exposing for sale shoes on Sunday."  Yet,
labor was partially prohibited in the time of Elizabeth. In time of harvest, however, Tngland was




276                LECTURE.
free to labor in the field, and this strictly in accordanee with Christianity, under the Most Protestant
Queen. It was then thought, this was not at variance with the Bible, nor Nature herself; for what
God had sent, it was not wicked, but wise, on any
day to save. In fact, England had no statutory
respect for Sunday, more than other days, till the
time of Henry VI., (1449,) and then the preference,
it seems, was shown for Easter Sunday. Fairs and
certain feast days were then prohibited on Easter
Sunday, and certain other Sundays.  Upon this
famous Easter Sunday, the little English boys and
girls would run through the streets crying, or
singing:
"Christ is risen, Christ is risen,
All the Jews must go to prison."
It is said that Easter Sunday was kept peculiarly
sacred, because it is the day in the year on which
Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead.  This we
know is not true; for Easter Sunday may come on
any day between the 21st of March and the 26th of
April. Constantine had it established at the Council
of Nice, and it depends on the Moon and the
Vernal equinox, instead of on the resurrection of
Jesus. The word Easter is perhaps derived from
Ostera, the Teutonic goddess of Spring. This goddess was worshiped by our forefathers, the ancient
Saxons, and a festival was held in honor of her,
each returning spring. Here is perhaps the history
of Easter Sunday: The Sun, in passing from the




SUNDAY.                277
Winter solstice, may be said to have risen when he
reaches the Vernal equinox. The earth has passed
from her death of winter to her life of spring.
This came through the direct influence of the Sungod. But the month which immediately followed
the sun-god's resurrection, was named Oster-monat,
or Easter-month, by our Saxon ancestors, in honor
of Ostera the goddess of spring. And the festival of
that month, in honor of this goddess, was perhaps
the origin of our Easter Sunday, which would be
indicated by the first full moon, which followed the
Vernal equinox. It may safely be affirmed, from
all the evidence which the world now has, that
Easter Sunday originated more from the worship
paid to the Sun and Moon, by pagan Saxons, than
from Jesus of Nazareth, or Jewish Passover.
The respect paid to Easter Sunday, by statutory
enactment, was the beginning of all English and
American legislative enactments which have since
followed. And we see from this there is a god-idea
connected with it, as well as a demand in human
nature, when one man is made the slave of another.
From man's necessity came the day of rest, and
from the god-thought it became holy and reverenced.
Slavery in some form has always been connected
with the day of rest. Slaves were imported into
Europe from the western coast of Africa in 1443.
Six years after this' England paid her respects to
Easter Sunday through Parliament. The slave
trade grew in importance and became respectable in




278               LECTURE.
Christian Europe. The Pope patronized it, and
paid his respects in a series of bulls. The Most
Protestant Queen Elizabeth protects John Hawkins
in the Negro slave traffic, and herself shares the
profits. The Sunday, also, grows more respected,
and perhaps reached its highest point of severe and
rigid observance at the time the slave-trade was the
most patronized and respected. Even a member of
the church in Boston, who might be guilty of'IHanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday,"
was one of the first two men in the Colonies to sail
"for Guinea to trade for Negroes."
The Negroes doubtless thought the Sunday observance the best part of Christianity.
From Henry VI., of England, backl to Constantine,
a period of over eleven hundred years, we find no
Sunday superstition coming in the shape of legislative enactment. One ecclesiastical decree did come
from the Council of Orleans against field labor, but
the stomach of man did not heed it. Sunday,
during all this time was the Christian holiday, and
was, perhaps, not kept as sacred and holy as those
days of the week which were not holidays; as days
of festivity are generally days of debauch.
When Constantine gave the Roman religion the
name of Christianity, he adopted the Christian
Lord's day, as then known and observed among
Christians, and thus placed it among the Roman
holidays.  These holidays were quite numerous




SUNDA r.                 279
with the IRomais, and were kept as days of pleasure and recreation. They were days of religious
or patriotic  expression; days of intellectual or
physical feats.  They were considered about as
sacred as our Fourth of July. But as the old Roman religion was at last baptised in the name of
the Triune God, and christened in honor of Christ;
so by adopting the Christian holiday, this must have
special honor, and become the chief of holidays.
After this it came gradually into reverence, as ill
the slow course of years the name of Jesus the
martyr, who had been preached to the world as the
Christ, became more and more reverenced. And
although Constantine gave the Christian holiday a
place in the Roman calendar, it was by no means
kept sacred from labor by even the most zealous of
Christians; for in the year A. D. 321, he ordered
the suspension of all business in courts of law, and
all other business, except the manumission of slaves
and agricultural labor. Thus the Christian farmer,
in the time of Constantine the Great, and long centuries after, thought it no sin to work on Lord's
day, and did work in the most secular manner; and
perhaps never dreamed of a holy day, or' a holy
time. Not even Luther or Calvin thought Sunday
a holy day.
This legislative enactment under Constantine
was the first in regard to Sunday; it was by no
means the last. Sunday through statutory enactment has now become a part of the worship of Jesus.




280               LECTURE.
As the Hebrew Jehovah was a jealous god,
and would allow the worship of- no other; so the
Christian Sunday soon became a jealous day, and
would allow the celebration of no other among all
the festal days of those early times. And it comes
down to us a growth, as a tree grows from the seed
by insensible gradations; it is a growth like the
worship of Jesus. When we go out the Code of
Justinian, and beyond the time of Constantine, we go
into outer darkness to find any authority " sacred or
profane" for the worship of the Christian Sunday.
"We search "Holy Writ" in vain for the name of
that day. What does the name, itself, denote?
Why, surely! the day of the Sun. The day dedicated to the worship of that shining orb; and it is
of very ancient and heathen origin. It was worshiped long before Elegabalis brought it into the
Roman Empire from Emesa on the banks of the
Orontes, which had been honored there in his own
name, in the worship paid to a Stone fallen from
heaven. This, also, was the peculiar object of the
devotion of Constantine the Great. The Christian
Lord's Day, took the name of the Pagan Sunday.
The two are identical. And Sunday means not the
worship paid to Jesus of Nazareth, but to the Sun.
The Jewish Sabbath has a history fully as interesting and quicker told. It belongs to the astronomic history of the week. Quite an advance was
made in astronomical discovery before the week was
established, and to explain the origin of the week,




SUNDA Y.               281
rnot only gives us clear conceptions of the causes of
holy days, but also beautifully shows the origin and
course of thought, and how closely the mind hugs
material forms. The rudest form of the god-thought
is Fetichism, the worship of God in a thing; fire,
sun, moon, or the like. This god is the "Hidden,"
the "Wonder worker."  To give to each department of Nature a presiding god or goddess, with
human attributes, is Polytheism. When the conception of God is purely human with extraordinary
power, it is Hero-worship, or Anthropomorphism;
the worship of a man as God. These gods, it was
once thought, lived upon the earth, but at last
departed, taking up their abode in the heavens
among the stars; so, also, stars were called after
their names. And thus came the notion that the
stars influenced the character and destiny of men.
This has given the world that renowned and
complex system of Astrology so prevalent before
Copernicus.  A  group or constellation  of stars
would represent one god and his labors; another
group would be set off to another god or goddess.
The Sun himself was a god, the Moon a goddess.
But by long observation it was found certain five
stars changed their positions with regard to certain
other stars which did not change their position.
The five were called wandering stars, or planets;
the others fixed stars. These five stars the Grecians
named Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn; and
arranged them in this order from the marked differ



282               LECTURE.
ence in the rapidity of their motions. This is the
true order which they sustain to each other and to
the sun, in regard to position. The Egyptians
arranged them in the same order and gave them
god-names, also.  These wanderers were known
beyond the historic age by Grecian, Egyptian and
Indian astronomers, and arranged in their true order.
Peculiar characteristics were attributed to these
planet gods. Saturn, whose movement was extremely slow, was rightly supposed to be farthest
away, and was considered cold and gelid in nature.
Jupiter, whose motion was a little more rapid, was
at a less distance and temperate. Mars was fiery.
and warlike, as his color indicated. Venus, the
bright beauty of morning and evening, was the
goddess of Love. And Mercury, the nearest to the
Sun, whose motion is so rapid, was the swift-winged
messenger of heaven. These five wanderers, with
the Sun and Moon, became the seven luminaries of
earth and were made to preside in their heavenly
spheres, and to rule over successive days on earth;
and these constitute the seven days of the week.
This is the oldest testimony of man's astronomical
knowledge, which has come down to us. And it
comes from all nations of the East. The Jewish
account of creation makes it date back to the beginning of man's existence. The Brahmins, of India,
whose history dates back of Buddhism, and back
of Egyptian, Assyrian, Jewish and Grecian history,
had, also, the week of seven days, and these days




SUNDA Y.               283
presided over by the heavenly bodies. And says
Whewel, in his able history of the Inductive Sciences: "It has been ascertained that the same day
has, in that country, the name corresponding with
its designation in other countries."
Now let us take the names of these seven luminaries, and we have for the names of the seven days
of the week, Saturn's day, or Saturday; Sun's day,
or Sunday; Moon's day, or Monday. But at this
point we find the wedding of Eastern and Western
mythologies. We have discarded the old names of
Mars, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus, which ought to
follow, and have adopted the names of the Teutonic
deities.. We have, therefore, Tuesday, from the
Latin Tuisco, the name of the Saxon god of battle,
instead of the Grecian Mars. This is the Tig or
Tyr of Northern Mythology. Hence, with our incestor's Tuesday, was court-day. And why courtday? Simply because our ancestors appealed to the
god of Battle to settle their disputes, instead of to
lawyers, as now. The battle was fought on Tuesday, and one day ended it. Then we have Odin's
day, or Wednesday.  Thor's day, or Thursday.
Frigga's day, or Friday. It will be here noticed
that, in the Teutonic version, there is but one goddess to figure in the week. She names the unlucky
day, Friday. There is a superstitious notion to-day,
running throughout Chlistendom, that it is best not
to begin any new undertaking -on Friday; and in
Law it is the custom to execute the sentence of




284               LECTURE.
death upon a felon on Friday. No man under judicial sentence, in all Christendom, can hang by the
neck till dead, on any day except Friday. The
reason is, in all early mythologies, woman was considered the cause of all Evil in the world; and,
hence, her day of the week is the only unlucky
one. Thus Custom and Law honor her curse. It
is said no nation in the world deems this a holy day.
Now let it be noted that these last deities, of
Teutonic mythology, corresponded in character exactly with the Grecian deities, whose names were
given to the wandering stars; save, perhaps, Odin,
whose history is quite limited, confused and conflicting. It thus becomes apparent that we have a
week whose very history is a record of vast eras in
thought, wherein the story of the stars has come
down to us with their god-names and god-histories.
This will explain many historic allusions, many
mythologic conclusions, not otherwise understood.
Thus the Jewish Sabbath is our Saturday. This is
Saturn's day. Saturn was a Roman deity. The
name is synonymous with the Chronos of the
Greeks. His chief characteristic is retributive justice, who is said to have devoured his own unruly
offspring for the evil they had done; as time may be
said to devour all things. In Egypt we find the goddess Nemesis, whose characteristic is retributive justice, presiding over the day, and naming the wandering star. But the history of Jehovah, the God of
Israel, in bringing his people out from the land of




SUNDA Y.               285
bondage, is simply the story of the great and godlike work of retributive justice. This Egyptian and
Grecian characteristic is confirmed and proven in
the fact, that Jehovah had the same day made holy,
upon which he would neither work nor suffer his
chosen people to work.  Hence, Saturday has a
history which penetrates Saxon, Roman, Grecian,
Egyptian and Jewish times; and like Sunday, when
considered more sacred thain other days, must be
referred back to the mythology of the world's ignorance.
It is well to trace the history of these two days,
that we may see by what authority they are pronounced holy; by what authority they shall be held
as holy; and by whom they ought to be reverenced
as holy. We can now understand why the Bible
says nothing about Sunday.  The Bible writers
doubtless knew nothing about it. And why the
Sabbath is considered holy by the Old Testament
writers, and considered of but little consequence by
the New Testament writers.
But says the Christian:'; The bible commands
a Sabbath observance, which has been changed to
Sunday." Let us see! By whose authority was it
changed? Not by Jewish prophet, nor Christian
apostle.  Not by the authority of Jesus or Paul.
Not by any word of the "' Holy text."  The Sabbath was never changed into Sunday, for the Sabbath and Sunday both exist. The Sunday is not
founded upon biblical ground; it has not even the




286               LECTURE.
Rock of Saint Peter on which to rest. The Jewish
Sabbath was meant only for the Jews, as the Bible
fully proves. It has no identity with the Christian
Sunday. It is the peculiar day upon which to pay
worship to the god Jehovah. Speaking through
Ezekiel, he says.: "I gave them  my Sabbaths to be
a sign between me and them." And through Moses,
he is recorded as saying: " Wherefore the children
of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the
Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the
children of Israel forever."  The Bible writers
never said it is a sign between any other god and
his children, nor between Jehovah and any other of
God's children outside of the Jewish nation.
The Sabbath is declared in Deuteronomy to
have been ordained because of slavery:  " That
thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as
well as thou."  "And remember that thou wast a
servant in the land of Egypt; and that the Lord thy
God brought thee out thence through a mighty
hand and by a stretched out arm. Therefore, the
Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath." This is the work of retributive justice, and goes
far to strengthen the history of Saturday, as being
the day of the cold and gelid Saturn, whose movement is so slow in the heavens.
But that the Jewish Sabbath was not meant for
the Christian Sunday is quite obvious in the popular observance of Sunday. The strictness of the




SUNDA Y.                287
Sabbatical law is nowhere enforced, and has never
been enforced among Christians. Even the rigid
Puritan came far short of it. And though the
Puritan, when we look at his mental characteristics,
gives us the clearest conception of the aficient
Jewish god, we by no means can give the Puritan
credit for living up to the biblical commands. But
as he was of all Christians on earth, both before
and since his day, the nearest like the Jewish
Jehovah, so also he came the nearest of all Christians, to living up to the commands of Jehovah.
But if the biblical commrand in regard to the Sabbath must be taken as applicable to Sunday, then:
"Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon Sunday," and death must be the penalty
if you do: " For whosoever doeth any work thetrein
shall be put to death."  Suppose that to-day, " an
holy day," a Sunday of rest unto the Lord, while
walking just outside the limits of town, your attention is attracted by much noise, as of many talking,
and the cries and groans of a man, as in dying agonies. You look up and behold a great crowd of
men, and in front of that crowd a man tied to a
tree. You stop in amazement to see this defenceless man pelted with stones. If you have a heart of
granite you may stay and witness the closing scene.
The victim is pelted till he has not a whole bone in
his body; till his eyes burst out of their sockets,
and his brains are dropping down to the ground.
The crowd cease; the man is dead, and you ap



288               LECTURE.
proach with a timid step of distrust. Of a man
who seems to be a commander of men, venerable
and bearded to the girdle, you inquire what this
is all about, who he is, and what the authority for
so dreadful an occurrence. He tells you, he is a
high priest, a minister of the true God; that this
vain fellow who had just been killed had gathered
sticks yesterday, on Saturday; and furthermore,
that this is just the manner in which God has commanded us to deal with these Sabbath-breakers.
You, though believing in the Bible as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, had never before
seen a practical illustration of its teaching, and
being unable to master the situation, shake your
head thoughtfully and rather instinctively.
"Don't you believe it?" asks the priest. "What
says our law? We have not only Moses as authority, but an example."
" But I never read Bible that way before!" say
you, pointing to the murdered man.
"Listen," says the high priest of God, "and I
will read what you hold to be infallible, and the
word of God."  And he reads from the fifteenth
chapter of Numbers, as follows:
"'And while the children of Israel were in the
wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks
on the Sabbath day; and they that found him gathing sticks, brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and
unto all the congregation. And they put him in
ward, because it was not declared what should be




SUNDAY.                289
done with him. And the Lord said unto Moses: The
man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.
And all the congregation brought him without the
camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died, as
the Lord commanded Moses."
"There, Mr. Caviler," says the priest, "what
do you think of that? There is your infallible Scripture for you.'And the Lord said unto Moses.' Do
you believe the Lord said that unto Moses?'And
he died as the Lord commanded Moses.' Do you
believe this?"
You, though a Christian, shake your head instinctively, and stammer out: "Yes, but those
ancient times are not these times; our humane
Sunday takes the place of that barbarous Sabbath."
"Barbarous! Hypocrite!" says the priest. "You
claim a Sunday observance founded on our Sabbath,
yet no where and at no time do you follow the teachings of the Bible thereon.  You ought to follow
the Law in regard to the Sabbath, and take the Bible
as your guide, or else acknowledge yourself an
infidel. When you condemn this act of mine, you
condemn Moses and the Prophets; you deny the
Word of the Most High God, and to escape from
the word kfidel you cover yourself with hypocrisy."
The priest argues well. Now let us test the
matter and see whether or not the Christian really
believes the Jewish Sabbath is pushed one dlay
ahead into his Sunday. This can be decided by
T




290               LECTURE.
asking: Will the Christian' take the Bible as
authority, and apply its Sabbath injunctions to his
Sunday?  To make it true, this must be done.
Then, gather no sticks, and kindle no fires on Sunday, and kill everybody who takes the name of
Christian, who does so. There is no civilized Christian to-day on the face of this earth, who believes
that any body of men would be justifiable in putting
a man to death for picking up sticks on Sunday.
There is no civilized Christian, surely, who would
do such wickedness. Christian, do you believe God
commanded that a man should be killed by slow
and cruel, nay, savage torture, simply for gathering
sticks on Saturday? Surely, there is no one so debased as to believe it; many may be weak enough
to assert it, never having witnessed such barbarity
enforced. If it be Christianity to believe it, you
insult God and defame mankind, by calling any one
a Christian. How much less, then, is it religion to
believe it? Truth, when wilt thou unveil Falsehood? Hypocrisy, when wilt thou begone?
Well, we can sympathize now with Jesus when
he said to those old orthodox Jews in regard to the
strict observance of the letter of the Law: "'IIypocrites! ye have omitted the weightier matters of the
Law; Judgment, Mercy and Faith." We can also
sympathize with Paul when he says: "The letter
killeth, but the spirit giveth life." I think the
great religious heart outside of the Christian church,
in Europe, and especially in America, think too




SUNDA Y.               291
little of Jesus; but little appreciate his work, and
understand but poorly, the terrible times of his
age. What severe trials that bold heart passed
through to give example to the precepts he taught.
When he said: " The Sabbath was made for man,
not man for the Sabbath," it was in defense of havingviolated it. Jesus was a Sabbath-breaker; not
because he thought thus to annoy the Jews, but because not consistent with any moral Law that it
should be deemed sacred. Such a precept by the
great Teacher, could only be enforced by example.
He, therefore, commands the person he has healed
to carry his bed on the Sabbath day; an act strictly
forbidden in the Old Testament. The devout Jews
thought, therefore, his doctrine was not sound, that
it could have no force of truth or divinity in it; and
they exclaimed: "This man is not of God because
he keepeth not the Sabbath."  But Jesus argued:
If the Sabbath was made for man then it is lawful
to do well on the Sabbath days, and man is lord,
also, of the Sabbath. Jesus thought that day was
like any other day. Work may be done if work is
needed; man may rest if he is tired. This is the
undisguised doctrine of Jesus. The author of the
Fourth gospel even makes Jesus deny the authority
on which the Sabbath, as a day of rest, is founded.
John makes Jesus deny the Fourth commandment.
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."  That
is: God at no time ever ceased working. Surely
this is the doctrine of Reason,  and it would be




292               LECTURE.
strictly in accordance with a brave religious reformer to say so. And the argument was: If God
had never ceased working, then Jesus, himself,
would not. The time of labor and rest for man is
established in each revolving day.
The special day is added for the slave. But
God rests not. We see no rest in Nature. The
Sun rises each Sunday and Sabbath morn; at eve
the stars, in their silent courses, look down and
"have us to bed."  On those holy days the corn
will grow, and the wheat ripen, bidding man save
what God hath sent. Truly, God worketh hitherto,
and still works.
It was Paul who took up the doctrine of Jesus,
and preached it to Jew and Gentile in downright
earnestness.  He even did more than this: he
preached Jesus and the Holy Ghost to "' Disciples"
who had no knowledge of either. To a Christianity
without either, he gave both. He preached, not so
much Jesus Christ, as that Jesus was, or is the
Christ; and baptized, not in the name of John the
Baptist, as those Christians who knew not Jesus
were in the habit of doing, but in the name of the
Holy Ghost. (See Acts, xviii: 5, 25-28; also, xix:
1-3.)   Surely, then, the doctrine of the great
Teacher in regard to the Sabbath he also must
teach; and he accordingly says: "Let no man
judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a
holy clay, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadlow
of things to coine; but the body is of Christ."




SUNDA Y.              293
That is, coming events cast their shadows before.
The Sabbath with Paul was merely the intangible
shadow of the Christ, whose body was Jesus of
Nazareth. He thus blotted out the hand-writing of
ordinances, which was against mankind, and nailed
it to the cross of Jesus. In strict accordance with
this, he says to the Romans: " One man esteemeth
one day above another; another esteemeth every
day alike; let every man be fully persuaded in his
own mind."  This was entire freedom; "the glorious liberty of the children of God;" positive,
natural, and true to the spirit of Jesus. The old
ordinances are no longer binding; they were made
for a past and dead age, and must pass away. Those
"beggarly elements" of day and time-worship must
be buried.  The Christian must no longer be in
bondage to these; and he cries out to those Gallatians who are about to backslide: "Ye observe cays,
and months, and times, and years; I am afraid of
you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain."
If Paul could look now upon the Christianity he
gave to the world, he might be tempted to cry out:
" I never preached that Jesus was the Christ, that it
should come to this Sunday worship; this shadow
of Sun, and Moon, and Star worship. Verily, ye
are reposing in ignorance and illiterate preaching,
and would reject me and Jesus also. I am afraid
lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." All
this is sorry comfort to the worshipers of Sunday
or Saturday, who are compelled to acknowledge,




294               LECTURE.
they are no more sacred than other days of the
week, or else reject all these weighty matters of
history which are here adduced.
Let us now look at its philosophy and meaning,
and point out some of the best uses to which the
Sunday can be put.
Sunday is one of the effects of man's development. It came primarily through the god-thought,
and was one of the results of Superstition, which
may be defined to be religion without science; and
secondarily through man's necessity. These are
the two causes which have given us the holy day as
a day of rest. It became needed as Oppression
warred against the body. Tyranny, slavery, greed
of gain, driving the human beast.of burden to inhuman toil, made "Tired Nature" cry out for rest.
And the holy day of the god-thought came as a
jubilee to master and servant. To the slave under
the Hebrew hand it was a jubilee of rest. And the
Sabbath of seven weeks of years was a high day to
the slave of Hebrew blood. With the black slave of
Europe and America, the Sunday must have been
a joyful day. Nothing could make him believe it
was not writ in the ordinances of God. And so it
was, though not found in the Christian master's
Bible. To the tired laborer who toils from ten to
fourteen hours each day, crowded by an employer's
avarice, it must be a welcome day. To the New
England farmer who toils late and early, year after
year, in a rocky soil, it is a day most devoutly wel



SUNDA Y.               295
cormed by the tired flesh of man and beast. And
may it in mercy be continued in use, so long as the
sewing girls of Boston and other cities of the Christian world, are ground beneath the heel of avarice.
Here is a picture of slavery to-day which the Sunday of our Christian superstition cannot cure, and
whicih it can but slightly alleviate. In one of the
best clothing establishments in Boston over one
hundred girls are employed to sew. The work
they do soon kills them. Sitting week after week
at a sewing machine, their backs give out, and
work to them is gone) forever. Thus testifies Dr.
Dio Lewis, of Boston: "One hundred American
girls, such as our sisters, cousins and daughters, if
we have them, are taken into that great establishment, one of the very best in Boston, and in a year
or two are spoiled forever; unfit to do anything
more but to illustrate how much a woman may
suffer, without complaining and without dying;
ground up in such a mill in one or two years, and
then thrown out to pick up what they can, till God
in his mercy shall take them where the weary are
at rest."
This will illustrate not only the need of a day
of rest, but the dreadful abuse of Sunday. I would
remove the dreadful superstition which hangs over
it, and make of it a fit day of rest for the weary, or
recreation, rejoicing, social enjoyment, instruction,
or labor, suited to the condition of each human
being, as his own bodily and mental wants de



296                  LECTURE.
mand. How much could be made of the Sunday
were it not enfolded in the black pall of Superstition. The scientific lecture might profitably be
made to take the place of the popular sermon, and
people who toil in the shop or in the soil be made
better and wiser. In this way thousands could be
instructed, by the diligence and mental labor of one
man. But to the man of health, who has his affairs
well ordered, all days are holy alike. Each day
brings its blessed labor and rest. Each day its intellectual and moral instruction.  To this man, a
Sabbath or Sunday is as superfluous as a sick day, or
a day in prison. The man who is not a slave to his
passions or to another, has no need of the Christian
Sunday or the Jewish Sabbath; God never meant
it for him.
Labor must be reclaimed from the curse of Avarice, the curse of the Law, and the curse of the
Bible.  This three-headed monster is eating up,
before their time, the best and the purest of the
land. The " Eight Hour Systemn" will help a little,
but we will have to look to the common Free
schools, and to the Free Press for a wider distribution of knowledge, and to bold patriotic preachers,
who will face old Superstition, and drive him from
the pulpit, and give to the world Natural Religion.
It is strange to see with what wickedness Christians
will charge their god. Making him the cruel taskmaster of a cursed and doomed race. It is not God
who has cursed labor. He never cursed the ground




SUNDAY.                297
for man's sake; but he has blessed it, and continually blesses it. He has made labor the greatest
blessing to man which has come from infinite wisdom. Without labor, surely the world would be,cursed, and no Sabbath or Sunday could save it
from irretrievable doom. It is man who has cursed
labor. Avarice steals the wages of the Poor. The
Strong eat up the substance of the Weak. Cupidity
harnesses slave muscles to the plow.  Cupidity
drives man to toil under the lash. Cupidity drives
defenseless women into garrets of want and unceasing labor; into dens of vice and into garnished halls
of licentiousness. The beggar, in rags, asking a
pittance at the rich man's door, is the effigy of
cursed labor; nay, is the literal fact standing there.
God will always keep him standing there till mankind remove the curse, which they, themselves,
have made. The Sunday of rest cannot clothe or
feed him. The Sunday sermon from costly pulpit,
preached to costly pews, cannot reach him.  The
Sunday prayer cannot save him. He is doomed
under the curse of labor. Christian! do you believe
that God robs the poor man and gives his substance
to the rich? Then think not that he has cursed
labor. Oh! man, remove this curse you have placed
upon labor, and sanctify honest toil with the laying
on of holy hands, and baptize it with the sweat of
your face. The holiest hours of the life of mortal
man are his laboring hours, when he is free and the
reward of these are his own. A man who idles on




298               LECTURE.
week-day, might redeem himself in some small
degree by working on Sunday, and so not curse
that day also in idleness.
Here is the theological mistake of Christendom.
One day is taught to be more holy than other six
days, and that no unholy thing must be done on the
holy day. 1But labor is unholy according to the
Curse." It is the direct result of the "  Fall " and the
"Curse," and therefore man is not allowed to do the
cursed thing on the holy day. This mistake has
wrought much mischief in the world, and will ever
work mischief till untaught the world. If the
honest labor of man be in itself not evil, but good
and holy, then why not labor on the "holy day?"
But, no! labor is, in the Christian theology, considered a " cursed thing," and would defile the Lord's
day. Not even in this Republic will Christians
celebrate Washington's birth-day, should it come on
Sunday. No one thinks the Fourth of July holy.
Yet the holiest act of the centuries was done on
that day, 1776. Some years the Fourth of July
comes on Sunday. It is the Tyranny of superstition
and priestcraft which say: "It must stand aside for
Sunday." What! must the Declaration of Independence bow to a Roman decree? Must it skulk
aside at the bidding of an English statute made
hundreds of years ago?  Must the signers of the
Declaration of Independence be thought less worthy
of our esteem than a body of wrangling bishops at
the Council of Nice, who thought they could vote




SUNDAY.                299
divinity into and out of certain bible manuscripts?
Must Jefferson be made to bow at the feet of the
most corrupt and licentious of Roman emperors?
Must civil liberty in America be thought less holy
than pagan worship? If there be aught of divinity
in respect paid to great deeds and noble sentiments,
it is in our civic honors paid to these on the Fourth
of July. Yet some "dry-as-dust" statute or decree
of a dead age, which statute or decree ought to have
been long ago forgotten for not having the breath of
divinity in it, will make a whole nation of men, in
sham and mock attitude before high heaven, and in
scorn of common sense, go out and play Fourth on
some day which is not the Fourth of July, as recorded in a Nation's heart. A nation of men must
not only declare Hypocrisy to be legitimate, but they
must go out on parade and make Hypocrisy keep
step to the music; they must harangue it, and sing
it, and pray it, in sham celebration. But it is said
we celebrate the act, not the time. True. But if
God rested on the Sabbath, and it is celebrated
therefor, then it is worship paid to rest, inaction,
idleness, weakness. But Jesus rebuked this by
saying: " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."
And if Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday, and
Christians celebrate it therefor, it is worship paid to
the active, worlking Son of Man who worked every
day of the week, and they ought to heed his counsels and put away this Sunday superstition, which
never belonged to Jesus or Paul.




30'0              LECTURE.
The fact is, this Age is the child of the Past.
This Age partakes of the Past through the law of
inheritance. The Mind of the Past though not
alive and active now, has many monuments of
thought standing to-day. Like an extinct volcano,
though the fire be no longer seen, the mountain of
lava is left. So we have our high and low days,
our feast and fast days, our saint and secular days,
our holy and profane days, all descended friom the
Past, with its star, and hero, and fire-worship. But
these days mnust be all alike to God. The revolution of the Earth on its axis is no more to him
than the tick of a watch in a farmer's pocket. It is
not the seventh part of a man's life that can be
taken as holy, because he pays respect to some day
therein. It is the holy life, which makes worthy
the man. It is the aggregate of life which writes
Holy or IJnholy across the dial plate of Time. We
reverence the Past more than we respect the
Present. This is why our blind and foolish worship of a day, is thought of more vital importance
than a whole life of noble deeds, holy thoughts, and
manly and womanly aspirations. This is Religion
without Reason; nay, it is worse; it is a solemn
sham which we are forbidden to laugh at. It has
no authority which this Age is bound to respect.
It has for a foundation only the statutes of men,
arising from the profound ignorance of the world.
The Sunday religion will not do to live by; it is a
Phantom which imposes on the mental vision.  Be




SUNDAY.                301
not deceived; the righteous act will always be rewarded of God; the unholy act always be punished.
It is yourduty to act so well always, that a Jewish
Sabbath or Christian Sunday, might blush of its
own shame to look over the days of your life.
That which thou findest good to do, do quickly and
well; and this will make the hour or the day holy
to you, be it Saturday or Sunday. All time should
be holy to man, as it is to God. Man should pronounce upon each day, " Well done, thou good and
faithful servant, enter thou unto the joy of thy
Lord."  Each day man should labor, live temperately, and rest. Each day feed body and mind,
and when from the diversity of employments he is
made to neglect some part of the man, body or
brain, the day of rest which custom brings should
be devoted to restoring as much as possible the lost
equilibrium, and thus the day will be honored in
mending the man.
In that little cottage, beyond the way, a poor
farmuer is mending his wife's shoes, on Sunday night.
He is not old in years. He was a poor boy, and at
twenty-one was set adrift without a dollar, to buffet
the world. To share his toils, privations and joys,
some kind companion in marriage, such a man
nearly always finds. "By the sweat of thy face thou
shalt earn thy bread," was lettered all over that face,
and blistered into callous hands. Hie had served
his country in the war, saved the remnant of his
private's pay, bought him some land, built a little




302               LECTURE.
house of his own; and there his early and late hours
he consecrated to toil. Necessity, cold and stern,
rather than see his little farm mortgaged for taxes,
compels him to adopt the old adage of Poor Richard: "A penny saved, is worth two earned."  So
he devotes the odd hours of rainy days and Sundays
to rest, by doing the saving chores about the house.
If he has saved a dollar by patching or half-soling
his wife's shoes, in a few hour's time, on Sunday
eve, how much is God injured thereby? The man
and the wife are certainly benefitted; besides, it is
a holy and comforting.rest to muscles inured to
heavier toil. And the good wife shares in the religious exercise of her husband, with a thankful
heart, and pays him with a kiss. Where is the injury to God or his government in this? Where is
the law of the Almighty and Allwise, that this man
has violated? It is not recorded. We find it not
in the Flesh or Spirit of man, where God's ordinances are writ. We find it not in the Christian
Bible, nor even in the Code of Justinian. IHe has
violated no law of God, it is only a statute of Kansas.
He has outraged no divine principle, no holy law,
no holy day nor hour. It is only the most debased
Superstition, worthy of a dead and heathen age
which says: "' this man sinned."
Hard by this poor man's house, in a grove, on
that same Sunday night, rainy and damp, a meeting
of much noise and tumult, of loud preaching, loud
praying, of shouting and singing, was protracted




SUNDA Y.               303
into midnight. At a distance, or close approach,
one would be reminded of the history of bacchanal
revelry among ancient pagans. A curious and enquiring man is always attracted by a great noise or
a large multitude; much more so when the noise
proceeds from the multitude.  Many respectable
people are ashamed to be seen at such a meeting in
open day.  Half covered by the night, curiosity
may take them there. What vast themes of speculation and thought are presented to the philosopher,
on Man, Monkey, Animal; Reason, Instinct, Sensation, as he looks in upon that herd of bellowing
men and women, mingling their groans of devotion
with the shouts of gladness, the screeching of frenzy
with the songs of praise, and the prayers of the
"'vile sinner" with the outside curses of hucksters
and hack-drivers. What wonder, also, must transfix
the philosopher, as he beholds a heaving mass of
men and women, in a sort of human pen, promiscuously mixed, —standing up, lying down, falling
prone, being held and bound, carried out as though
dead, frothing at the mouth, muttering, babbling,
uttering extravagant and foolish sentences, striking.
attitudes of devotion, with eyes uprolling, exhausting breath and body in a wild frenzy! He might
pray for some. Jesus to come back and cast the
devils out of these men and women; foi their name
is surely Legion here.  He would invoke some
Power to abolish this relic of barbarism, which is
thrown athwart our civilization, in spite of. the




304               LECTURE.
culture of this age.  Shade of Cotytto, with thy
followers, come back to us! In thy name, how
many deeds are done at camp-meetings, which
bring shame in days that follow? And yet, this
is called Religion, and a sacred and wise use of this
"holy day."
The poor farmer, with his waxed ends and bits
of leather, on Sunday night, stitches holy time into
his life, because it benefits him and his dear one.
And his duty done puts to shame this misguided
popular Superstition which wastes the precious
hours of human life in that which makes the body
worse and the soul no purer.
We have one more scene to present. It may be
quickly told, and vividly imagined. On Monday
morning, the poor farmer for his evening's labor, is
summoned before the "squire" of the township.
A camp-meeting " worshipere" had spied this wicked
and vain fellow stitching away in good earnest.
Christian spite, it was said, wrankled in the complainant's breast, but the farmer is not the victim of
that alone. The Religion of the great State of
Kansas has been disturbed. He comes in fresh
from the prairie with the smell of new mown hay
upon him. He had been baptised with the dew of
the morning at God's baptismal font, and he feels at
peace with God and himself. But the holy rites of
labor and love were not sufficient to shield him from
man's law, which he had violated. He acknowledges his guilt; he scorns to tell a lie, and Chris



SUNDA Y.               305
tianity is there vindicated in a fine which the poor
man sells his only cow to pay. Christianity, where
is thy blush? The world demands a new Religion
commensurate to its present growth, and highest
civilization. That it will come, and that right soon,
is inevitable.
U








LE C TUR E.
PRA YERj, —TR UE AND FALSE METHODS COMPARED.
It is said: "Christ was eternally begotten of
God," and the religion which took the name of
Christ, is "the everlasting and true religion."  It is
also said, that " Jehovah is the father of Christ,"
and " prayer to the Father is prayer to Christ; and,
conversely, prayer to Christ is prayer to Jehovah,
God, and the Father."  It follows legitimately, then,
that the Jewish religion was Christianity, and prayer
to Jehovah by a Jew, was the same as prayer to
Christ by a Christian. Save, perhaps, that the Jew
must have lived and said his prayer a day, year, or
century before Jesus of Nazareth was born. "Since
that period, any prayer," says the Christian, " of ered
by a Jew, as such, is an abomination in the ear of
Jehovah." I-Iowever this may be, I leave for those
who think, to determine.
There is a very ancient story which, perhaps,
some Christians have not read. This story I will
give, for it contains a moral as well, as shows the
ancient method of revenge in prayer. A  certain
ancient king, ruled over a people at the eastern




308                LECTURE.
end of the Mediterranean. He was a great warrior,
and enriched himself by pillaging the surrounding
tribes, less strong in arms than his own people.
This made him enemies at home and abroad. Besides he did some foolish things, as well as very
wicked things, which brought upon him derision
and contempt. For example, he danced naked before a great multitude of men and women, upon a
celebrated religious occasion, and, because upbraided
by the queen, his wife, debauched himself, so that
he even became base in his own sight. life afterwards murdered a man for the sake of adultery.
It was therefore quite natural that this king should
have enemies, and when he could not sufficiently
punish them for their hatred, and satisfy his own
revenge; when no word or act of his own would
suffice, he goes down in prayer to his god, as follows: " Set thou a wicked man over him; and let
Satan stand at his right hand. When he shall be
judged let him be condemned, and let his prayer
become sin. Let his days be few; and let another
take his office. Let his children be fatherless, and
his wife a widow. Let his children be continually
vagabonds and beg; let them seek their bread also
out of their desolate places. Let the extortioner
catch all that he hath; and let the stranger spoil
his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy unto
him; neither let there be any to favor his fatherless
children. Let his posterity be cut off; and in the
generation following let their name be blotted out.




PRA YER.                309
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with
the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be
blotted out.   *    *   *   *   Let this be
the reward of mine adversaries from the Lord, and
of them that speak evil against my soul. But do
thou for me, O God, the Lord for thy name's sake;
because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me."
According to the popular rendering of the word
Christian, this man was a Christian. Not only this,
but he was the great progenitor of the god-man Jesus
Christ, from  his lustful and murderous wedlock
with Uriah's wife, according to Saint Matthew.
There are some who would be ashamed of such
a genealogy. This arises from ignorance. Jesus of
Nazareth need not be ashamedl, for doubtless we all
have sprung from beings as low in moral type as
David, and David from still lower than himself. I
think, however, the step is too short in time to
develop so good a man as Jesus out of' so base a
man as David. It could only have been by the
" saving grace" of several generations of mothers.
The contrast in the two men is brought out most
strikingly in comparing this prayer of David with
what Jesus said. Here it is: "Ye have heard that
it hath been said: Thou shalt love thy neighbor and
hate thine enemy. But I say unto you: Love your
enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to
them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may
be the children of your Father which is in heaven;




310                LECTURE.
for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.  *  *  * And when thou prayest, thou shalt
not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray
standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of
the -streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily
I say unto you: They have their reward. But thou,
when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when
thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which
is ill secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret,
shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use
not vain repetitions, as the heathen do; for they
think they shall be heard for their much speaking.
Be not ye, therefore, like unto them; for your
Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before
ye ask him."  The contrast is so great, that the one
is the contradictory of the other. The one says:'"Love your enemies," and "pray for them which
despitefully use you and persecute you;" the other
prays to his god not only to curse his personal
enemy, but to make the curse extend back to his
mother, and forward to his children yet unborn.
This is a curse with roots, trunk, and branches, and
is the outgrowth of barbarism;  whereas, Jesus
expresses a high degree of moral attainment and
philanthropic culture.  The one makes his god a
partaker and an assistant in his crimes, curses, and
follies; the other says:
" He prayeth best who loveth best
All thiiigs, both great and small."




PRA YER.                 311
It has been argued in favor of prayer, that' "It
was and is; therefore, means something."  True.
Just so war, theft, murder, slavery, lust, were and
are; therefore, mean something. There is a terrible
meaning to them all. They mean undeveloped manhood.  Some day we will outgrow them.  The fact
is, we are all dependent beings. We are immediately
dependent on all nature about us: the air we breathe,
the earth we tread, the sun that shines. We are
dependent on each other, but mostly on ourselves,
for immediate aid.
And ill acknowledgment of this dependence, man
has to look two ways from; the conscious self, outwardly or distributively into Nature, and centrally
inward through the conscious self upon infinite
Mind.
In this dependence we are not unlike many of the
lower animals. Birds congregate in flocks, fishes
in shoals, cattle and horses in herds. These animals and also the lower types of mankind are all
gregarious by instinct. I do not affirm they congregate for the sole purpose of protection, having
the idea or conscious knowledge of self-defense as a
formative cause for this gregariousness; yet selfdefense, no doubt, is one of the principles whether
conscious or instinctive, lying at the base of all
associations, both of man and lower animals. The
grazier of our Western prairies must have noticed,
that a herd of cattle, if attacked by a dog, will often
stand a wall of horns about the young of the herd,




312               LECTURE.
to protect them  from harm. There is, also, much
intelligence or intellect, if you please, exhibited in
the animal creation below man; especially in those
animals, the companions of man; the horse, the ox,
the dog. We have the experience of man, and also,
the Bible for authority, that " The ox knoweth his
owner and the ass his master's crib.-"  These animals, the associates of man, daily ask of him their
daily bread. If fed they follow him, and abide by
him, - and cheerfully return the thanks of labor therefor; if not, they go elsewhere, and depend on their
own art, or cunning, or knowledge for their daily
support. It is much the same with rude, savage
man. The Indian comes to the white man, and
asks for bread. If fed, he comes again. The lazy,
the weak-minded, the helpless; made so before birth
through the ignorance of parents, or after it, by
false education, unjust laws, or oppression, form an
army of beggars in the world. These pray daily for
bread, shelter and clothing; pray to man and pray
to God.
For the purpose of this discussion, Prayer may
be divided into three classes: 1. Petitioning God
to give, or do something. 2. The striving to get,
or do something legitimately ourselves. 3. The
silent communion with God.
1. Petitioning God to give or do something.
This form of prayer is that which now generally
prevails throughout the world. In this regard, there
is no difference between the American.Indian, the




PR-AYER.               212
New-Zealander, the Hottentot, Greek, Jew or Christian; they all beg God for something, or to do
something for them. There is a seeming difference
in the character of the gods they worship, and in
the manner of petitioning for divine acts and gifts;
but the form of the prayer is the same, and the supposed relation of man to God is the same.
It may be laid down as a proposition: The less
the mind's capacity, or the more ignorant the person,
the more debased will be the conception of God.
From this we conclude the more fervent and frequent the prayer, the lower the development will be.
If you look at the history of those people who
think God embodied in a stick, or stone, or animal;
who observe a fetich worship, they are of all. people
the -most constant in prayer, the most devout in
worship, the most aggrieved and exasperated when
their object of worship is taken away or destroyed.
Their history seems to be summed up in that wail of
holy agony which has come down to us, and which
is yet heard among the most debased of earth:
"Verily, ye have taken away our gods."  The Roman soldier who, through ignorance, or willful folly,
killed an Egyptian cat, was quickly dispatched, in
the people's fierce fury. He had destroyed a god in
this consecrated cat, or at least the abode of a god.
In this low stage of human development, people
prayed to what they supposed contained, or concealed a god, who must be thus present to hear their
petitions. This gone, there was nothing to pray to.




314               LECTURE.
Whom would those rude Egyptians ask, with face
bowed down to earth in holy reverence, to bring
back the great waters of the Nile to water the
land and sprout the seed-corn? Whom would they
implore to save them from pestilence or visit vengeance on their enemies?  Verily, their prayers
would be wasted in empty sound; their loud wailing and fervor of words would echo over plain, in
palm grove, and grotto, all in vain. How often and
how fervently these fetich worshipers pray aloud,
wailing and agonizing to God.
So also from mental darkness, not comprehending the physical and warring forces of Nature,
which produce their varied manifestations to eye
and ear, often bringing pain and death to man, he
has learned to worship what he fears. Thus the
tiger is worshiped by many tribes, and its nose
used as a charm. In Abyssinia the hyena's skin is
prayed over, and exorcised by a priest, before the
inhabitants dare touch it. In Siberia great and
reverential respect is paid to bears. Snakes have
been worshipped from the earliest historic period.
The Hindus worship Siva, the, Destroyer, who is
represented with a deadly serpent hanging over his
left shoulder. Allied to this was the worship of the
Esculapian serpent of the Greeks, and the Brazen
serpent of Moses. Even the Devil, in our popular
mythology, is worshiped by some as the Old Serpent. In this worship, prayer may be addressed to
the god incarnated in these animals; or who is exte



I'I5A YER.               315
rior to them, and using them  as instruments of
punishment.
The American indian has a great Indian Spirit
to worship. To this Spirit he often prays long, and
loud, and earnestly. A few years ago, a few companies of Osage indians were enlisted for the war.
For two months I studied their character and habits
of worship. An aged Indian, I soon found, they had
as a spiritual adviser, or priest. Every morning, at
about four o'clock, he would begin his divine ejaculations, making the whole camp ring. No bugler
need sound the reveille while he was with us. I had
recourse to an interpreter, who translated, on several occasions, the prayer of this Indian priest; and
it is curious to know how earnestly he besought
God to discover to him, and his Indian associates,
the place of very many, "heap" ponies, and to aid
-them to steal them, and to steal them easy; which
prayers were literally fulfilled on two occasions.
The last time they all deserted in a body, taking
with them about five hundred stolen horses. Nothing could make the Indian believe the divine agency
was not the ruling cause of this success. Such is
their faith in prayer, I was assured by the half-breed
interpreter, they would never engage in any hazardous undertaking, in any great thefts, without
imploring divine aid. Now, it is a fact, that Christianity has tried in vain to teach these savage people
any higher conception of God, any more Christian
form of prayer.




316               LECTtRRP.
For the last thirty years has the Government,
through schools and missions, tried in vain to convert a single Osage indian to Christianity, or to
civilized life. Half-breed Christians we sometimes
find. So that Christianity may be promulgated,
among them, only by infusion of Christian blood.
Their religion, their prayer, is a part of their rude
spiritual development.  They believe that God is
fond of bear-meat, as the ancient Hebrew believed
Jehovah loved the smell of the burnt flesh and blood
of bulls and goats; and they ask with child-like confidence any favor their hearts desire.
One-third of the praying population of the world
bows down to images of Buddha. Those people have
lived and died for ages, without any knowledge of
the Christian god; without any knowledge of the
practical workings of Christianity; and so they still
live, standing amongst the most devout and prayerful
people on the face of the globe. At this day one
hundred and sixty million Mahometans profess the
Islam, and worship (to them) the only true God.
Five times each day they turn their faces towards
Mecca, and offer up prayer. The most noticeable
feature in their worship is prayer. In this their
zeal is unbounded; no impending crisis in their
affairs, neither death of friends, fire, pestilence,
famine; nothing but the fierce heat of a holy battle,
can withdraw the devout Moslem from prayer. "In
every town a public crier awakes the inhabitants,
and calls the faithful to prayer." As the sun begins




PRA YER.               317
to streak the eastern horizon, awakening the world
from slumber, the faithful crier is heard to sound
forth: "Prayer is better than sleep;" or: "Awake
to the best work."  And then these children of
Islam, to whom the only true prophet had given
the hope of Paradise, pray, as with one voice, to the
god who has chosen them a special people. Thus,
at daylight, at noon, in the afternoon, at sunset,.and
one hour and a quarter after sunset, their voice may
be heard imploring God to give divine aid, and to
answer prayer.
The Hebrews were very earnest in prayer. The
twentieth chapter of Genesis shows how Abraham,
a prophet, leagued with Jehovah to impose on
Abimelech, to defraud and fleece a man of better
integrity than the prophet or his god. Moses, in
the thirty-second chapter of Exodus, is recorded as
standing in the breach between the children of Israel
and Jehovah, to turn away his fierce wrath and prevent a total destruction; which is accomplished by
appeals to his vanity and pride; working a positive
change in the designs of Jehovah. Only a man like
David, with a rude spiritual nature, living in low,
animal gratification, who could murder for the sake
of adultery, would be found guilty of praying the
prayer of the one hundred and ninth psalm.
The Feejees pray that God will deliver the
bodies of their enemies into their hands, that they
may feast on them. They pray with more fervor
for the wives of their enemies; for the Feejee epi



318               LECTURE.
cures prefer to eat the flesh of women to that of
men. There is but a short step, in spiritual development, from the Feejee, asking God to deliver his
enemy's wife into his hands, that he may have a
feast of good things, to that of David, who prays
against his personal enemy, as follows: "Let Satan
stand at his right hand; when he shall be judged let
hinm be condemned, and let his prayer become sin.
Let his children be continually vagabonds and beg;
neither let there be any to favor them."
David stands in much closer relationship, spiritually, to the Feejee than to Jesus of Nazareth.
The Osage indial, who asked his god to help him
steal ponies, and the Jewish king, who asked his
god to help him curse his personal enemy, stand on
the same religious plane.
Now God, in his own good way, permits all these
prayers of the heathen.  He permitted the very
wicked prayer of David, no less than he permits the
prayer of the blind fetich worshiper, who bows down
to "stock and stones." He also permits worshiping,
praying cannibals to exist; and hears every utterance, and every heart-felt emotion. He has his own
good way in developing the race. There is an infancy of religion and worship as well as an infancy
of intellect and good manners. The form of prayer
serves to express the soul's development. In prayer
we see the spirit of man revolving about the axis
of his own selfishness, not God, who swings round
daily to be advised about matters and things in the




PRA YER.                319
world. I do not say the Feejee-Islander sins in
prayer, though rude and barbarous, praying to gratify a desire for human flesh; neither do I say David
sinned in the curse of his prayer. He knew no better. He told to the world the degree. of his own
spiritual development. There is no fact so plainly
stamped on the face of the world's history, as this
constant, ever progressive change of the world's
worship. The religious faculty of man is not undergoing any change, but Reason is guiding it
onward to Truth and Knowledge. In the lower
orders of mankind how rude and selfish are their
prayers; how vain their appeals must be; praying
for the basest gratifications; praying through the
spirit of revenge, jealousy, appetite, lust.  We need
not go out of our own age to find every possible
form of prayer that ever mouth uttered; the prayer
of the cannibal, the pirate, the thief; the prayer of
David and the hypocrite; the prayer of the slave
for freedom, and the prayer of the master; the
prayer of Pagan, and Jew, and Christian, to the god
of Mahomet, and Moses, and Jesus. Yes, all are
going up this very hour, and all are earnest and
honest, except that of the hypocrite; and God hears
them all. Omnipresence can not turn a deaf ear;
besides he would be unfaithful to the race if he did;
notthat God answers every fool's babbling that is
heard in prayer, yet the pirate's prayer does not
grieve him. Once a child three years old, cried and
prayed his father to go and bring the new moon to




320               LECTURE.
him, he wanted it for a cart-wheel. This prayer of
the child did not grieve the father; he rejoiced at the
genius of the child. Uneducated brains prayed for
the moon; educated brains might laugh at the folly.
In my early religious reading, a copy of the
Spectator fell into my hands, and I never shall forget the impression which the following fable made
upon my mind. I transcribe it, because the Spectator is now so seldom read. The beauty of the
fable is, the name of any other great national god
will answer just as well as Jupiter:
"' Menippus, the philosopher, was a second time
taken up into heaven by Jupiter; when, for his entertainment, he lifted up a trap-door that was placed
by his footstool. At its rising there issued through
it such a din of cries as astonished the philosopher.
Upon his asking what they meant, Jupiter told him
they were the prayers that were sent up to him
from the earth. Menippus, amidst the confusion of
voices, which were so great that nothing less than
the ear of Jove could distinguish them, heard the
words:'riches,''honor,' and'long life' repeated
in several different tones and languages. When the
first hubbub of sounds was over, the trap-door being
left open, the voices came up more separate and
distinct. The first prayer was a very odd one. It
came from Athens, and desired Jupiter to increase
the wisdom and the beard of his humble supplicant.
Menippus knew it, by the voice, to be the prayer of
his friend Licander, the philosopher. This was suc



PRA YER.                321
ceeded by the petition of one who had just laden a
ship, and promised Jupiter, if he took care of it,
and returned it home again full of riches, he would
make him  an offering of a silver cup.  Jupiter
thanked him for nothing; and bending down his
ear more attentively than ordinary, heard a voice
complaining to him of the cruelty of an Ephesian
widow, and begging him to breed compassion in
her heart.'This,' says Jupiter,'is a very honest
fellow; I will not be so cruel to him as not to hear
his prayers.' He was then interrupted by a whole
volley of vows, which were made for the health of
a tyrannical prince, by his subjects, who prayed for
him in his presence. Menippus was surprised, after
hearing prayers offered up with so much ardor and
devotion, to hear low whispers from  the same
assembly, expostulating with Jove for suffering
such a tyrant to live, and asking him how his thunder could lie idle. Jupiter was so offended at these
prevaricating rascals, that he took down the first
vows, and puffed away the last. The philosopher,
seeing a great cloud mounting upwards, and making
its way directly to the trap-door, inquired of Jupiter
what it meant.'This,' says Jupiter,'is a whole
hecatomb that is offered me by the general of an
army, who is very importunate with me to let him
cut off a hundred thousand men that are drawn up
in array against him.  What does the impudent
wretch think I see in him, to believe that I will
make a sacrifice of so many mortals as good as
V




322                LECTURE.
himself; and all this to his glory, forsooth?  But
hark,' says Jupiter,'there is a voice I never heard,
but in time of danger. It is a rogue that is shipwrecked in the Ionian sea: I saved him on a plank
but three days ago, upon his promise to mend his
manners.  The scoundrel is not worth a groat, and
yet has the impudence to offer me a temple if I will
keep him  from sinking. But yonder,' says he,'is
a special youth for you. He desires me to take his
father,'who keeps a great estate from him, out of
the miseries of human life. The old fellow shall
live till he makes his heart ache; I can tell him that
for his pains.' This was followed up by the soft
voice of a pious lady, desiring Jupiter that she
might appear amiable and charming in the sight of
her emperor. As the philosopher was reflecting on
this extraordinary petition, there blew a gentle wind
through the trap-door, which he at first mistook for
a gale of zephyrs; but afterwards found it to be a
breeze of sighs. They smelt strong of flowers and
incense, and were succeeded by most passionate
complaints, of wounds and torments, fire and arrows, cruelty, despair; and death. Menippus fancied
that such lamentable cries arose from some general
execution, or from wretches lying under the torture;
but Jupiter told him that they came up to him from
the isle of Paphos, and that he every clday received
complaints of the same nature from that whimsical
tribe of mortals who are called lovers.'I am so
trifled with,' says he,'by this generation'of both




PRA YER                  323
sexes that I find it impossible to please them,
whether I grant or refuse their petitions, that I shall
order a western wind, for the future, to intercept
them'in their passage and blow them  at ranldom
uponI the earth.' The last petition I heard was from
a very aged man of near a hundred years old, begging but for one year more of life and then promising to die contented.' This is the rarest old fellow,'
says Jupiter.' He has made this prayer to me for
albove twenty years together. When he.was but
fifty years old, he desired only that he might live to
see his son settled in the world; I granted it. Ile
then begged the same favor for his daughter and
afterwards, that he might see the' education of a
grandson; when all this was brought about, he puts
up a petition that he might live to finish a house he
was building. In short, he is an unreasonable old
cur, and never wants an excuse. I will hear no
more of him.' Upon which he flung down the
trap-door in a passion, and was resolved to give no
more audiences that day."
It is, perhaps, useless to say, the above fable is
the short history of'.the praying world to-day, and
it matters not whether the petitions are sent up to
"Jehovah, Jove or Lord."  But "prayer was and
is; therefore means something."  Who shall answer
what it means?
To-day let us listen a moment to the prayers
which are ascending and descending from the great
throat of mankind, all over the earth.  Imagine




324               LECTURE.
one-third of the praying population asking Buddha
for bread. Many million Mahometans bowing towards Mecca, asking Allah to extend their holy
ieligion over the heathen Christian lands. Imagine
the Christians imploring God, as with one voice,
to extend Christianity over the heathen Mahometan land, each professing to worship the true God
and in the true spirit. See the Catholic, with
earnest fervor, praying some soul out of purgatory;
pleading with Christ to overcome God, and make
his wrath relax. See the Protestant asking god to
open the poor Catholic's eyes, and show him the
true Christianity. See the Baptist and Campbellite praying in the wintry water waist deep, in the
name of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. See
the more comfortable Congregationalist, sprinkling
his prayer in the face of Heaven. Hear all the denominations of the popular faith in America, teasing
God to "s come down and show his great power in
converting sinners; to come miraculously, and
make his power felt, for his glory, and for Christ's
sake."  Hear the teasing for rain, for large crops,
for temporal and spiritual prosperity; begging God
to do the work he designed man to do, both of hand
and head. Hear the teasing to save from the perils
of storm and pestilence; to save from their enemies; and to miraculously save the souls of sinners,
by getting them into the Church. Go back a few
years, and hear the earnest petitioners of the North,
praying the " God of mighty battle" to give victory




PRA YER.                325
to the boys in blue; and also the' earnest petitioners of the South praying the same god to give victory to the boys in grey. See with what bloody
sweat the prayers ascended from many a battle
field to the " God who heard and answered prayer."
The one prayer the very opposite of the other. Not,
however, would he answer, till fiery words of
prayer from the cannon's throat had sent thousands to their graves; and the steady tramp of boys
a-marching four long years,'mid the rattle of musketry and the clashing of sabres brought victory to
our arms. Then he deigned to answer.
It is said, Jefferson Davis is a Christian, and a
praying man. Certain we are that many a Christian, under him, in the Rebel army, prayed to the
Christian's godl to destroy the Union, and especially,
to remove Abraham Lincoln. Did the Christian's
god kill Lincoln by the hand of Booth?  Was it
done in answer to prayer? or was it. done in vengeance, because he was not a Christian, nor believed
in the Christian's god? Let Christianity, both South
and North, answer.  These are questions which
Christians have already discussed.
One fact well understood'would put an end to
all the special prayers of Christendomn, viz: God is
no respecter of persons. The rain will fall upon
the farm of the infidel as well as on that of the
Christian. The atheist, even, who believes in blind
fate, and the fortuitous occurrence of things, if he
plant his corn in as good soil in the spring time and




326                   LECTURE.
not ill August; if he plant the best varieties of
seed; if he till the ground as well, and obey the
natural laws of the corn and seasons, will raise just
as good corn on a Kansas prairie as the Christian
deacon will. The material universe is arranged to
accommodate all God's children alike. There is no
such difference in the physical structure of men,
that a doctor, in dissecting the body or brain of an
infidel, could distinguish him firom a church deacon,
and point out the peculiar theological tenets of each.
Both are made on a general plan.. The one feels
pain and pleasure, loves food and society, property
and children, laughs and weeps, walks and tallis,
the same as tile other; is born the sanle, grows the
same, lives on the same air and substance as the
other, coils up his feet in death and goes back to his
God the same, "the dust to dust and spirit to spirit."
God watches over and provides for the Christian,
Greek, and Jew, the Pagan, Atheist, and Infidel, all
the same. We are all children of the same inlpartial God, brothers and sisters to Mary, and Judas,
and Jesus. Lobelia will vomit, and strychnine will
poison the devout Christian, asi.Well.- as the devout
Moslem, or Infidel.'  Fire will. burn, water drown,
and lightning kill; the one as readily as the other.
The Sun does not withhold his light and heat, the
Moon does not veil her face, the Rain does not fail
to fall, the Night to distill her dew, the Corn to grow,
the Flower to bloom, because a devout Christian
and a bigoted Infidel disagree about the nature of




PRA YER.,               327
God, nor because a devout Infidel and a bigoted
Christian fail to agree about miracles. Nothing is
withheld or given to one of God's children, because
of any special reverence one may have for him, more
than another; nor because of any special prayer put
up by saint or sinner. He is unchangeably the same
irrpartial God, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, developing Earth, plant and animal, by and
through general Laws. Hence, when a rock is
loosened from the mountain top, by the denuding
action of a storm, and is hurled down by the force
of gravity, it may tear off the limb of a tree, and a,
man, in its course, for which cause the tree is rendered imperfect, and the man goes limp the rest of
his days. In order to save the man's limb, God
would have to suspend the force of Gravity, whereby
he sustains a universe of worlds, and whereby he
gives sure footing to whole races of men. So, also,
hard by, in the same storm which loosened the rock
from the mountain's peak, a man and tree were
felled by the lightning's stroke. In order to save the
man and tree, God would have to suspend the electric force, which, doubtless, is of much more value
than the lives of whole nations of men. Nor does
it make any difference whether the nlan be very
pious or wicked, still, the lightning would strike the
one as readily as the other.
A man of much nobility of life and religion was
killed by lightning in the harvest field; while his
neighbor, an impious man, cursed god for sending




328               LECTURE.
the rain on his unstacked grain and was spared;
whereupon the wife of the deceased, in her prayer,
said, God was unjust, for "he should have'stricken
down the wicked and spared the good mlan."  No
doubt, God looks alike upon the pious scolding of
the wife, for her husband's sake, and the impious
zeal of her neighbor, for his harvest's sake. They
both mistook the Perfect and Absolute God for a
partial and capricious person who dealt out the
thunderbolt to suit his fancy.
A mother got angry at her mischievous child;
she raised her hand and struck it; whereupon the
mother was hurt as badly as the child. This exasperated the mother still more, and she exclaimed.
"I wish to God my hands were iron that I might
crush you!"  Suppose God had granted her prayer;
iron hands would have annoyed her more than the
mischief of her child. This prayer was foolish,
thoughtless and selfish. So, also, have been nearly
all the prayers of the world from Joshua down to
Brigham Young, and would never have been offered
up, had not the petitioner projected, in conception
his own image on the infinite back-ground, and
worshiped that as his god; who is supposed to
nod assent to man's spiritual yearning, which revolves about the axis of his own selfishness.
The Christian, whether Catholic, Protestant or
Mormon, beholds God and heavenly visions through
the mental lenses of small or great magnifying
power, as they have been given him, or he has made




PRA YER.              329
them. Hlie may be deceived as he looks through his
little spy-glass, because ignorant of phenomena and
the laws relating thereto; false notions may obscure
his object glass; it may be covered with dust, incident
to thJe material world,  it may be warped by passion, or dimmed by lust; it may be darkly spotted
by crime; it may be dwarfed and narrow, unfitted
to take in a large scope of earth, much less to sweep
the heavens. All these things incident to the finite
man, limited and controlled by time and circumstan-.
ces, will warp his judgment and obscure the mental
vision. Thus, God shines in through the imperfect
mental spy-glass, and he is dwarfed and distorted
into a partial and selfish creature.  We forget
that man was not born into the world like fabled
Minerva, fnlly armed and equipped from the brain of
Jove, but was born a great babe and made to grow.
We forget that in his growth the Unseen Force,
in a wide, wise, and universal providence has
brought him up from a low estate, gradually on to
higher and holier life, step by step, in mighty
human heart-throbs of improvement; one great
movement of reform succeeding another, like the
waves of ocean breaking on the shores of Time; the
ocean now ebbing, to be followed by the rising
tide, and the waves rolling upward.and onward forever.
In all this onward movement, the vision of man
is limited by the horizon of his own ignorance, and
when his corn-crop suffers from the drouth, and his




330               LECTURE.
potatoes are eaten up by the rot, or his winter
wheat by the grasshoppers, he thinks the machinery
of this world quite imperfect and worn out; so he
goes down in prayer to his god, asking him to send
the rain, and heal the potato and sweep out the
grasshopper. Not long since, in Kansas, we had
grasshoppers. Special petitions were sent up for
the squelching or driving out of these little pests;
as much as to say: " God, you don't know your
own business, let us teach you."  Even a pressure
(though failing in its object) was made by godly
men, on the Governor, for a general day of prayer,
when all voices could concentrate at one hour and
moment, and so as by much noise, storm the citadel
of God's throne, and strike the great tympanum of
his ear in one vast spasmodic effort; compel him to
hear, and order him down with his besom to sweep
out the grasshoppers. But the little grasshoppers
hatched out, and millions of them died of the uncongenial clime; many were eaten up by birds, and
consumed by parasites; and at last when God had
completed their mission, he led the remainder back
through the air on their own wings. The reason
why God would not answer all these pious prayers
against the grasshopper, is because he is the God of
the grasshopper as well as the Christian. When
the Irish were starving from the potato rot, what
thousands of prayers were sent up for the potato
and the Irish. Yet this was the only method God
had of teaching men how to raise potatoes, and to




PRZA YER.               831
improve the seed. God has appointed the rain its
season, has made the plant to grow, and improve, and
die by fixed laws, has produced each animal for the
sphere of its own operations, and when man complains at the annoyance of insect, animal, flood,
drouth, he only scolds because of his own ignorance.
And his prayer to God, because of these, is no more
answered than the prayer of a mosquito, thirsting
for blood. The good housewife, at her pastry cooking, in the summer time, is tormented and nearly
provoked to swearing by flies, which are preying
on her sweetmeats.  She wishes to God flies had
never been made. Itow thoughtless is her prayer!
Those little scavengers are connected with the causes
of the bloom of health on her cheek; while she is
fietting and scolding, and charging God with foolishness, he is watching over the health of a whole
people, by sending these countless insects to eat up
the pestilence which is breeding around her. Suppose it were possible for the fly and mosquito to
pray, the fly would pray for sugar, the mosquito for
blood. Not one in a hundred million, of these,
get what they would pray for; and thus it is of all
the prayers that are offered up; perhaps not one in
a hundred million is answered. The reason is plain.
God knows best how to take care of and develop
the race. Could he be importuned by man, in his
finite weakness and blindness, very soon the great
harmony of creation would be repealed at the altar
of prayer. Men would pray for what they supposed




332               LECTURE.
great blessings to mankind, but only the worst results would follow. God would kill at one fell-blow
the great Doubting Heart, which goes out in unbeaten paths, searching after Truth. The pioneers
in religious and political reform would be cut down
as vile cumberers of the ground. Many a bold
tongue, uttering God's oracles, would be silenced,
ancd many an ear deafened.
We have fast and prayer days for the whole land,
or for whole communities, when men congregate to
pray at a mark; so as to direct the divine arrow in a
centre shot, to knock the heart out of some real or
imaginary evil. Prayers are offered up for rulers,
and legislators, and "all others in authority," as
though praying for men who are in authority, will
do the whole business, and make them wise, efficient and honest. Wisdom, however, comes by the
prayers of birth and education, and many a toilsome
hour in study and discussion, and inward thought
and outward act. If this is to be obtained by some
minister praying wisdom into these rulers and men
in authority, we had better elect the softest and
most passive pieces of human flesh and spirit possible, and set them up at a'certain time and place for
everybody to centre the prayerful shot at them; so
that they may be imbued with knowledge, by a sort
of super-induction, miraculously through prayer,
moving God to do something for them he had failed
to do. If this method of prayer is at all efficacious
and not blasphemous, we ought to dispense with our




PRAYER.                 333
school-houses and colleges, and only have recourse
to the pulpit and prayer-meeting. Now, praying
for a ruler does not make him better, wiser or
worthier. Unless he prays himself, and strives to
reach the good, and to be wise by a daily and hourly
striving of labor and industry, in the practice of
righteousness, the devoutest prayer for him is only
empty noise. As well pray to raise the dead.
Then, also, to pray in the popular method, and
keep truth within the prayer, either the minister
offend's his hearers, or asks God to do what he must
know he never will do. Hence, he babbles to God
rather than offend his hearers; e. g.: I pray that God
will "bless my whole congregation," or "bless a
dying world."  Now, suppose in my congregation
there are women with deformed waists from tight
lacing; others with dyspeptic stomachs from intemperate eating; others with nervous affections from
the use of narcotics and living an improper life; as
many men who are intemperate in various habits;
use tobacco, get drunk, lie and cheat; and without
singling out the good, and specifying those whom
God would naturally bless, because they had lived
in harmony with his laws, I indiscriminately say:
"Oh! God, bless this entire congregation;" and I
send the petition up with earnestness and closed
eyes. Imagine a spiritual finger tenderly tapping
my shoulder in the midst of my devotional exercise,
and a voice, audible to my spirit, saying: "Stop!
unfaithful servant; not so fast. Have you taken a




334                LECTURE.
list of your congregation, and an inventory of their
sills, errors, and follies? Stop a little; you are
goilng it blind. Open your eyes, and see the ruin
and curse many of these people have brought on
themselves by not harmonizing their life with
my holy and unalterable laws. These I never repeal, to accommodate the most favored child of.
Earth or Heaven. No prayer can annul the effect
of violated law. I can not, and will not, bless these
deformed and sickly bodies. I will not send blessings upon intemperance, fashionable folly; and
sinful manners.  This is contrary to my way of
doing business; always and forever. Your prayer
is useless; your words are nonsense, if you did but
know it, spoken in dreadful ignorance of my modes
of operation; or else meant only to tickle the ear,
and please the vanity of your hearers. Either unfits
you for my ministry. Stop your babbling; go, seek
other labor. I have never'called' you to teach,
when you ask me to violate my own laws, while
you make an eloquent prayer to please your congregation." These are reflections which must naturally
arise before the honest expounder of God's laws,
when he thinks of petitioning God to do something
for some particular people, at some particular time
and place.
Then the effect on the minister must be bad. It
makes a praying machine of him, which on certain
days of the week, at fixed hour and minute, repeats,
year in and year out, the same petition, to the same




IRA YER                 335
God, for the same purpose, without ever being answered. Like a clock, made to strike the hour of
the day, he strikes off the daily or weekly prayer.
IIypocrisy must only be the result to the human
soul from such a practice.
And thus it has come to be a fact. The Church
hides, unwittingly perhaps, all the vices, tyrannies,
~wrongs of the world behind the pulpit. Suppose
the whole Christian world would now stop praying
in the pulpit, what would be the result?  Instead
of asking God to cure these vices, destroy these
tyrannies and right these wrongs, the praying
world would set about the work itself, and more
would be accomplished in a twelve-month than now
can be done in twelve centuries.
Now, I do not mention these special pralyers to
bring ridicule upon them. Far be it from me to
speak lightly of any form of devotional exercise;
but only to let you see the foolishness of these old
Metllods, and lead you out to a higher, and wiser,
and saner worship. Far be it from me to deride;
I would only be mocking at the child that cried to
have the moon for a cart wheel. I would not laugh
at, nor scold the babe that fell more times than it
had fingers, in walking the first time from father to
mother; no more would I throw stones at the oldest
orthodox child that ever stumbled over Trinity or the
Devil. The savage who bows down to wood and
stone, and devoutly prays, I would not deride. He
is full a step lower than the Mahometan and Chris



336               LECTURE.
tian, and is fully as sincere as they. tie is feeling
out, in prayer, after God, and the weakness of his
intellect, and his meager knowledge, make his
mouth to utter folly. Yet, the Father of the savage
and Jesus looks the same upon the prayer of each.
II. The striving to get or do something legitimately ourselves.
I, also, believe in prayer. Not asking God to
come clown from Heaven, or striving to conjure him
up from the earth, for he is already here, close to us
all. He needs no prayer, uttered or voiceless. We
need not call aloud, for he hears the silent murmurings of the life rushing in our bodies. HIe hears its
stillest thought-whisper. I do not believe in prayer,
asking or imploring God to do something for us.
He has done already all that is needful, and the
work to be done is on our part. When God formed
us in his all comprehending wisdom, every want of
man he took into consideration, and provided for it
in act and knowledge, far back in the lap of Time.
The mysteries of our life, the development of our
bodies, the secret workings of our spirit, he smiled
upon, away back in the thoughtless ages. I-He knew
every stumble of the world's children in stepping
towards the spiritual light. He knew all the pains,
the sorrows, and sufferings, of the mortal life of ages
of people. He counted all the happiness, and numbered all the holy and unholy prayers and oaths,
that should come from the lip of mankind. He was
not taken by surprise when David murdered Uriah




PRAYER.                337
for the [sake of adultery, and prayed the wicked
prayer against his enemy, and asked God to curse
innocent children. And he knew long ages ago,
when the world was unborn in time, that Jesus, who
had the true idea of prayer, would teach a higher
conception of God, and a holier religion than modern Christian has yet found. But there is a practical
prayer we all need. We want to pray with muscular energy; with axes and saws; with plows and
hoes; with reapers and mowers; with horses and
cattle; with steam and lightning, for the salvation
of the bodies and souls of men. Ministers pray for
the salvation of souls, in the pulpit. How vain the
petition! The soul's development is its salvation.
Its development is a growth from an inward force,
a continual prayer of upward striving. Praying for
rain, for dear life, for health, for harvests, for souls,
by word of mouth, is all the weakness of undeveloped brains. Such prayers are never answered.
But if the sturdy farmer goes forth in the springtime, planting the seed-corn, even though it be in
toilsome and prayerful sweat, he anticipates the rain
which the good God- sends on the just and the unjust; and thus, at length, his prayer is answered in
developed muscles and ripened harvests.  This
prayer puts to shame the most fervent petitioner
doing lip service to God, asking for temporal blessings. Temporal blessings are ours only through
the prayer of head and hand. They come by
obeying God's laws, never by verbal praying. So,
V




338               LECTURE.
also, if the father and mother pray for sound children, in mind and body, they search out God's laws
of pro-creation, in severe and arduous study, and
apply wisdom to themselves, with wise intent and
hopeful trust, long before the child is born. God
never fails to answer such people's prayers, in hale
and happy children; who are born heirs of God,
and joint heirs with Jesus, and every other god-like
soul that has come into the world to adorn and
bless it.
The attention of the masses must be directed to
the facts of Science: life, thought, being; the body,
and its development; the mind, and its unfolding.
2Public prayer, whether at church or camp-meeting,
never saved a soul before or after it was born. To
this end people must pray at the family altar of a
holy marriage, whose inner courts are sacred to God
and man.
III. The silent Communion with God.
Let us look at the teaching of Jesus in regard to
prayer. The more I study the character, teachings,
and times of that noble Nazarene, the more I admire him. Even encrusted with- the teachings of
the churches of to-day, falsified and abused in many
a creed; yet if we read with a half-eye open to
truth, we can find more than all the churches contain. Here is what he says about prayer: "And
when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the
synagogue, and in the corners of the streets, that




PRA YER.               339
they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you,
they have their reward.  But thou, when thou
prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast
shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret,
and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward
thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetition as the heathen do; for they think they shall be
heard for their much speaking. Be not ye, therefore, like unto them; for your Father knoweth
what things ye have need of, before ye ask him."
This is the whole story. Volumes could not make
it plainer. True prayer is the secret, silent cornmunion with God. It is so secret, that it is best
and sincerest when alone. No hypocrite goes into
his soul's closet to pray. You want to go away
alone, lock out the world, turn the eyes within,
commune with God; who knows better than you
what you want; who knows your most secret
thought.  Ifow useless are words, then.  This
prayer will make you pure in spirit; and the pure
in spirit shall see God. I have often thought, if
Jesus were here on earth, he would cry out: " Stop
this begging in public; away with your hypocritical
nonsense; enter your soul's closet; there you will
find God."
If we cast aside the spurious Fourth gospel, and
take Matthew's account of Jesus, we find he never
prayed in. public. He would not even let Peter,
and James, and John, when alone with them, agonizing in Gethsemane, hear him pray. Three times




340               LECTURE.
he went away, alone, to pray; and then he asked
nothing which was not in accordance with the
Father's will.
In this sense all things pray, and God always
answers. Man feels hunger; he desires food; he
reaches forth his hand and partakes. This is the
fact in regard to God's providence; he does not feed
his grown-up babes with a spoon. They must themselves not only handle, but make the spoon. They
must make their clothing and shelter, and gather
the fuel for warmth. There is not a beast of the
field, or bird of the air, but prays; not a tree, or
flower, or blade of grass, but prays; nay, old earth
itself prays, and the Sun responds with the coloring,
warming, and vivifying ray. But this only means:
God answers prayer.
People go to prayer-meeting as though God
would be easier moved by a concert of verbal action.
Such prayer never reaches beyond the church door;
never gets behind the counter; never takes hold of
the plow handles, looking not back; never carries
the hod of mortar up the mason's ladder, even while
erecting churches to God. If such prayers are
merely a social repast, they may be well with some,
but to me as with Jesus of Nazareth, it would be
better in silence and alone. The sweet hour of
prayer comes silently, cheerfully, hopefully, like
the sun rising out of the ocean, bringing the dayspring from ion high to the mariner on life's sea.
So prayer may become the -outpouring of a thank



PRA YER.                        341
ful heart, the psalm of praise to the Giver of life
and light, and the earnest endeavor by head and
hand force, to develop the outer and inner man, so
as to live wisely and act righteously, growing up to
the  full stature of noble men  and  women.  Thus
the spirit developed into the higher man, puts away
the begging prayer and communes with God.
"As down in the sunless retreats of the ocean,
Sweet flowers are springing no mortal can see;
So deep in my soula the still prayer of devotion
Unheard by the world, rises silent to Thee,
My God! Silent to Thee. Pure, warm, silent to Thee."
"As still to the star of its worship tkough clouded,'The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea;
So dark, when I roam in this wintry world shrouded,
The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee,
My God! Trembling to Thee. True, sure, trembling to Thee."
This communion with God, the best and truest
prayer, is the unutterable. We feel it; words can
not express it. It breathes forth in pure emotions; in godlike aspirations.  Our spirits flee away
from this body of earth, and are born children of
heaven  and  heirs of God.  It  is  when  the soul
rushes out to meet the Infinite, that true prayer
passes over the face of the Spirit. We seem to
enter within the vail and tread the confines of other
worlds. It is a realm of feeling and thought, which
words have no power to portray.'  It is a  realm
where  presumptuous  man  had  better  not take
plumb lines and levels."   An ocean, he is foolish to
attempt to fathom. In contemplating the Infinite,




342                    LECTURE.
the soul is soon lost in the inner depths of conscious
existence, and the mightiest thought is soon spent
in the feeble effort to comprehend either the power
that sustains us, or the thought itself that adorns.
Like some rocket at night sent up from  earth, it
soon vanishes in mid-air.
But the communion of the spirit with God, is
the true prayer; the highest and  noblest thought.
Man stands alone with God, and the sunlight of the
Infinite shines in upon his little bodily garden, and
unfolds the petals of many a spiritual flower.  His
mind revels in ideas in scientific and spiritual
truths, and the vain babbling of words is dropped
for an ineffable experience.
Not in words or rapturous shout,
But voiceless and joyous, the spirit goes out,
And stands in the presence of God
A child of heaven, new born;
Like some flower opening out of the sod,
Greeting the sunlightof morn.