2 "I OD, RELIGION, AND IMMORTALITY: 
 
 4 " 
 
 5 
 
 AN ORATION, 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE PAINE CELEBRATION IN CINCINNATI, 
 
 SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 1860. 
 
 < - 
 V 
 
 BY JOSEPH TREAT. 
 
 Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. 
 Then all things are at risk EMEKSON. 
 
 CINCINNATI, O. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE. 
 
 CENTRAL PRINTING OFFICE, COUNER FIFTH SXUEET AND CENTRAL AVENUE. 
 
 1860.
 
 UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 GOD, RELIGION, AND IMMORTALITY 
 
 AN ORATION, 
 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE PAINE CELEBRATION IN CINCINNATI, 
 
 SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 1860. 
 
 BY JOSEPH TREAT. 
 
 " Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. 
 Then all things are at risk." EMERSON. 
 
 CINCINNATI, O. 
 
 PTBLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE. 
 
 CENTRAL PRINTING OFFICE, CORNER FIFTH STREET AND CENTRAL AVENUE. 
 
 1860.

 
 ORA/ITO!^. 
 
 MY BROTHERS, I am afraid you will be disappointed. I have not come 
 to praise Thomas Paine, but to be Thomas Paine to go as far beyond 
 this age, as he went beyond his age and then to go as much beyond 
 him, as he did beyond others. I have come to be Thomas Paine to 
 Thomas Paine. I have come to supersede the Age of Reason ! 
 
 Be brave enough to hear me. No man has business here to-day cele- 
 brating Thomas Paine, whose heart does not leap to make this Com- 
 memoration a Funeral the Funeral of Superstition : both the Supersti- 
 tion Thomas Paine exploded, and as much, the other that he left. Even 
 if you cannot accept what I utter, yet at least, let it pass in at one ear 
 and out at the other. Dare to allow free discussion in America one hour ! 
 
 Be as brave as Thomas Paine ! He threw down his gauntlet to the 
 world. I but take it up. He accepted no quarter. Then ask me to 
 give him none. No more bid me cease combating him, than he ever 
 ceased combating others. But follow on, while I make a full end of the 
 work he commenced the Superstition he spared ! Let two wrestle to- 
 gether with none to stop but the final Truth ! 
 
 Be as brave as I am. Dare to hear, what I dare to speak ; and dare 
 to let me speak, what I dare to think. Expect what I say to shock you, 
 subvert you, overwhelm you but let me say it. Hate what I say, ab- 
 hor it, trample it but give me that right to say it. This country is not 
 worth a song, if a man may not utter his thought ! Once and for all, I 
 challenge you, Let a man say what he thinks ! 
 
 THERE is NO GOD ! God is the first, great, eternal mistake of the Age 
 of Reason ! God is the grand, pivotal mistake of all systems ! God is 
 the great central Superstition, round which all other Superstitions cling ! 
 God is the sole foundation of Bibles, Sabbaths, Churches, Priesthoods, 
 Religions, Resurrections, Judgments, Heavens, Hells, Spirits, Spirit- 
 Worlds, all ! I strike home at this root ! 
 
 If there is a God, men can know it; but nobody does know it. If 
 there is a God, there must be proof of the fact ; but there is no proof. 
 If there is a God, there is a thing ; but there is no thing, and there is 
 nothing. If there is a God, what he is makes men see that he is ; but 
 they never see anything, but always take everything for granted. If 
 there is a God, somebody must have produced some argument for him ; 
 but nobody has ever produced one. And, if there is a God, there must 
 be somebody willing to appear as his champion, to defend and substan-
 
 date his existence ; but there is not one man in the whole world who 
 dare do it ! There is not one man in the world who dare undertake to 
 prove the existence of any such thing as God ! I defy contradiction 
 to any of the statements I have made. 
 
 God, God, God there is no God till we know what God is. There 
 is no proof of a God till we know what God is. It is only what God is 
 that shows he is, or that there is a God. God is nothing or something ; 
 if nothing, that settles the whole <juestion, he does not exist, there is no 
 God. If he is nothing, why, then, he is nothing ! If something, be- 
 liever in the God, tell us what that something is ! You cannot ; you do 
 not pretend to ; you never, even thought ; you only talk about htm forever; 
 without thinking at all for all you can say, he is not anything. And 
 so, no man has ever proved that he is anything. Not one argument 
 that is an argument in favor of a God, has ever been framed ; and 
 not one can be. Nobody has ever proved a thing, a substance, a reality 
 something that is something. Nobody has ever proved a he. God-he, 
 and God-hint, and God-his but there cannot be any he, till we know what 
 God is. There cannot be anything till we know what God is. And God 
 is not anything. There is no God ! 
 
 There is no need of a God ! There is nothing for a God to do. There 
 is no use to put him, or it, or nothing, to. There is no Universe for him 
 ever to create I Talk about the Universe being created ! As if every- 
 thing started up out of nothing ! As if it was not always everything ! And 
 talk about a thing creating the Universe ! Much more, what is not a 
 thing ! As if the something or nothing did not need creating itself, as 
 much as the Universe ! This Universe is Eternal. It existed away 
 back, Always. There never was a time when it could have been created. 
 It always was, Already. It never had a beginning. It always was, 
 Beforehand. It never came. It still, always Was, and did not have to 
 come ! It eternally had the Start of all need to help it. " Call for a 
 God when there is Occasion for a God" but the Eternal Universe has 
 none ! And what there is no occasion for, does not exist and God 
 does not exist ! 
 
 There is no room for a God ! There is no place where a God could be. 
 People say God is everywhere, but that is false ; there is hut one thing 
 that is everywhere, and that is the Universe. And that is made up of 
 all things, but all things are not God ! And there is no place for God in 
 the Universe, for the Universe Jills that place, and nothing else can be 
 there with it. Two things cannot occupy the same place at the same ' 
 time ; and the Universe is everywhere, and then God must be somewhere 
 else. But there is nowhere else nothing but nowhere ! And then he 
 must be there ! This Universe is Infinite. There is no such thing as 
 
 etting beyond it ; it knows no stop ; it is as large as Space, and it is 
 pace ; and then there is equally, no room for God in it, nor outside of 
 it there is no Outside, to it ! The Universe is everywhere, and God is 
 nowhere not at all ! 
 
 There is something better than a God! Something is better than 
 nothing. A mote that is, is more than a God that is not. Swap God 
 for the Universe, and you would have made an infinite gain. But even, 
 call God something say that there is a God but yet, he cannot be any-
 
 thing to the Universe. Call him a person, he but yet, he is finite. 
 There is no such thing as an infinite person. An infinite God, or being, 
 or person, is a contradiction ! A he that is not just so large, and no 
 larger, is an impossibility. And then your God, give him whatever size 
 you will even expand him to fill a whole solar system is yet, no larger 
 than that. He is not in any other solar system. And then he is no 
 more to this infinite Universe, than his own solar system is he is noth- 
 ing to it ! The Universe is an Infinite : God, even if he existed, would 
 be an infinitesimal ! 
 
 Men have never believed in a God ! But they have believed in Gods 
 as many as there were men believing ! No two men ever believed in the 
 same God ; for no two men ever made the same God. It is the men that 
 make the Gods, and not the Gods that make the men ; and then the Gods 
 differ as much as the men making them. Every man makes his God in 
 his own image, and then there is nothing but what he makes nothing 
 but the image ; and so men are simply, and truly enough, worshipers of 
 images ! But all their images, singly or together, do not amount, to a Gad ; 
 but on the contrary, God has gone out in their images. And men have 
 believed in the images, and in nothing else. If no two men ever be- 
 lieved in the same God, then have they not in any God ; for what they 
 believed in was not a God. Men have accepted innumerable idols, but 
 they have never believed in a God. 
 
 God is an Evil ! He is the Evil under wLich Earth has always been 
 groaning ! He is mystery and terror, gall and wormwood, hell and 
 devil, to the Children of Men ! He is the grand Central Horror, round 
 which all other horrors cling ! A Good God is a contradiction. Any 
 God dwarfs, enslaves, dehumanizes. A Man and a God cannot live 
 in the same Universe ! There cannot be a Universe with a God ; for 
 God must be everything, and everything else, nothing ! God is the An- 
 nihilation of Existence ! God is the Curse of Curses ! 
 
 God will be blotted out ! It is written in the book of fate ! It is the 
 future of this Planet ! Over the whole extent of this wide, wide world 
 among all its unnumbered millions of inhabitants and during almost 
 endless ages that shall roll there will be no God ! God will be lost out 
 of the history of the Race. Eternal generations will come and go, and 
 never hear of a God : nor know that ever, preceding generations talked 
 about one ! God will be swallowed up in an Infinite Oblivion! His 
 very name will die out of human language ! 
 
 No- God will be the world's Millennium ! Earth will be Heaven, when 
 men no longer have something to call them off from making it so. The 
 Golden Age will be born, when human beings can be themselves. The 
 Reign of Peace will commence with the Reign of Reason ! Then will 
 indeed be proclaimed that everlasting Gospel, "Peace on earth, good- 
 will to men," when all the dwellers of earth shall lift up their voice to- 
 gether, and say with a shout, " God is dead, and we are glad of it ! ' 
 
 Call all I have yet said, but the programme of what I am about to 
 say the bald proposition of what I am now-to rationalize and illuminate. 
 I wished to rouse your attention ; give you the whole length and breadth 
 of the subject ; and lift you to the hight of this grand Argument !
 
 6 
 
 There is such a thing- as Matter. People do not know it. It is Matter 
 which disproves and annihilates a God. When men get their eyes open, 
 they will see that the whole issue has always been, God versus Matter ! 
 
 Matter is Everything. There is nothing but something, substance. 
 Whatever exists, truly and solidly, exists as a material thing. The 
 whole Universe is Matter, and everything in the Universe. 
 
 Matter is Infinite. It is everywhere, as well as everything. There is 
 the same reason for its being Infinite, there is for its being at all for its 
 existing in all places, there is for ifls existing in any place. The universal 
 reason must give a universal result. Why Matter is anywhere, is why 
 it is everywhere. 
 
 Matter is Eternal. It has always existed. There is the same reason 
 for its being Eternal, there is for its being at all 'for its existing always, 
 there is for its existing now. The eternal reason must give an eternal 
 result. Why Matter is now, is why it was always. 
 
 I forewarn you, Infidel, beware ! You have already, fatally committed 
 yourself! Even now, you have lost your God! A God' any kind of 
 a God is forever disposed of, by that admission that Matter is Eternal. 
 Once grant that, and you give up all ! 
 
 And you, Andrew Jackson Davis, with all your boasted powers of 
 Clairvoyance, here is the rock on which you split ! You, and your whole 
 church of Spiritual Believers, teach Matter, Eternal ; and yet, cling to 
 the old God of Matter, Created ! You tear down with one hand, what 
 you build up with the other ! 
 
 For, to say that Matter is Eternal, is the same as to say that it is Self- 
 Existent and that is to say everything ! For Self-Existent Matter can 
 be and do, everything a Self-Existent God can ; and it is and does every- 
 thing it can be and do ; and then it is and does everything that is and 
 that is done ; and then God is perfectly headed off the track of being 
 and doing anything at all header/ off the track of existing ! The simple 
 Self-Existence of Matter tells the whole! I challenge the world to the issue! 
 
 For, what can be plainer or more apodictic than that statement : The 
 Self-Existence of Matter is the Self-Existence of the 'Universe, and the 
 Self-Existence of the Universe is the Non-Existence of a God ! The Self- 
 Existence of Matter is the Self- Existence of the Universe, because it 
 is the Self-Existence of Matter to tin/old into the Universe it is the 
 Matter itself to be and to make the Universe ! Dispute every inch of this 
 ground if you are able ! 
 
 Matter, Self-Existent, is entirely another thing ! infinitely different 
 from what it would be if it were not Self-Existent ! It has all the Attri- 
 butes your God had. It was his Self-Existence made him what he was. 
 It was his Self-Existence made him Infinite and Matter is Infinite. His 
 Self-Existence made him Eternal and Matter is Eternal. His Self- 
 Exislence made him Omnipotent and Matter is Omnipotent. It made 
 him Omniscient and Matter is Omniscient. It made him Unchange- 
 able, " the same yesterday, to-day, and forever" and Matter is Un- 
 changeable, the same immutable thing from and to Eternity. It made 
 him Perfect and Matter is Perfect. Sell-Existence made God, God; 
 and Self-Existence makes Matter, Matter! ^SPAbsolutely it is the real- 
 ization and insurance of everything ! I told you, people did not know 
 there was such a thing as Matter !
 
 Matter is Life. If some God had created it, it would be dead j and 
 would need the same God to give it Life. But now, its very existing is 
 Life for Self-Existence and Life are one. Talk about Matter being dead ! 
 It is not even the truth that it is Alive ! It is Life itself ; all the Life there 
 is Infinite Life ! 
 
 Matter is Power. It is and cannot be prevented. And it is what it 
 is and nothing can prevent that. Self-Existence is Omnipotence, and 
 all the Omnipotence there is or can be. Matter is the only power there 
 is in the Universe, for it is the Universe. Every Atom is an Eternal 
 Force ; Every Monad, an infinite Energy ! 
 
 Matter is Motion. It has power to move, and it does move, and it 
 moves forever. Nothing can stop it. Talk about " inertia !" All the 
 power in the Universe can't keep Matter still ; for all the power in the 
 Universe is to move ! All Matter is " Perpetual Motion." Not an Atom 
 but works out that problem in its own very Existence ! Self-Existence 
 and Motion are the same thing. For Matter not. to move, would be not 
 to be itself, nor anything not to be at all ! 
 
 Matter is Intelligence. It knows what it is about. It knows when to 
 move, and how to move. It knows what to do, and how to do it. It 
 knows enough to develop the Universe, and how to do that. Talk about 
 Matter being a senseless clod ! It knows everything, for it does every- 
 thing. It is all the knowledge there is, for it is everything there is. In- 
 stead of an Omniscient God, who don't exist, nor do anything, it is Om- 
 niscient Matter, that does exist, and do all things ! Self-Existence is 
 itself Infinite Intelligence ! 
 
 Matter is Will. It does not what it does, by chance, nor at hap-haz- 
 ard, as if perhaps, it might not do it, or might do it some other Avay. 
 But it means to do everything ; it wills to unfold the Universe ! That is 
 the very thing it self-exists for ; that is its nature. And its nature is its 
 intention, its volition. So Matter is Will universal, eternal, infinite Will. 
 
 But, how does Matter go to work to develop the Universe ? It does 
 not go to work to do it. That is nothing but the God over again going 
 to work to develop the Universe ! He Averit to work to develop the Uni- 
 verse, because it was not in existence he went to Avork to create it ! But 
 the Universe is in existence, and it always was in existence, for Matter 
 always Avas ; and it was the Matter itself to be the Universe, and then the 
 Universe was as soon as the Matter. So, Matter never iccnt to Avork to 
 develop the Universe, because the Universe always, was already devel- 
 oped Matter could not exist without developing it, and then it Avas the 
 Matter to be the Universe already deA r eloped, and then the Universe al- 
 ready developed was as soon as the Matter. The Universe always Avas 
 developed just as much as it is now. And it always was developed in 
 the same manner it is now. What Matter does noAv, it always did the 
 eternal reason must giA r e an eternal result. Then, if we know how Mattel- 
 develops the Universe now, we shall know how it developed it always. 
 What are Matter's transcendent processes, in working out the stupendous 
 Universe of to-day ? 
 
 All Matter contributes to the result. There is not an Atom in existence, 
 which is not needed to organize to-day's Universe, and which is not 
 actually concerned in organizing it. There is no such thing as reserve
 
 8 
 
 Matter, not now in use, but waiting to be used hereafter. Every part of 
 Matter is equally doing the work. The universal reason must give a 
 universal result. 
 
 Matter unfolds the Universe in a perpetual ground-work and grand 
 filling-up of Stars. A picture of the Universe you see every night. 
 Matter, rarified everywhere, and yet concentrated in innumerable Suns ! 
 This Universe is one of Stars. The same Firmament we see, they see 
 everywhere. The same reason gives the same result. 
 
 Space is full. The Stars have no end. In every direction, forever, 
 still the Stars keep on ! Go as long as you will, but still, there are as 
 many before you, as you have left behind. Above, beneath, to right, to 
 left, there is no place where you can stand on the last Star, and throw a 
 stone out into nothing ! There is no last Star ; but there are ever so 
 many more beyond it. There is no outside. There is no grand Center 
 of the Universe, round which all the Stars revolve. That would give a 
 circumference, and then the Stars would end. Even if our Stars revolve 
 around some center, yet they are not the Universe. But the Universe 
 comprehends an infinity of just such centers ; and then, a whole infinity 
 of times the number of all our Stars. There is but one Definition, but 
 that is absolute : A Universe, with its center everywhere, and its circum- 
 ference nowhere ! Matter is an Eternal Infinite ; and then, so is the 
 Universe of Stars it makes. Space is a forever Infinite ; but the Universe 
 of Stars is as Infinite as the Infinity of Space itself! Talk about ajinite 
 Universe, with a JSTJumping-off place and then " where would you 
 go to ? " Talk about an infinite God, and a finite Universe infinite 
 Nothing, and finite Everything ! 
 
 But these Stars of to-day have not always existed. Their Matter has, 
 but they have not. No Star is Eternal, even if each one lives on through 
 billions of ages. And these Stars have not all been developed into ex- 
 istence at once. All the trees in a wood are not of the same age : but 
 some are just springing up ; some are saplings ; some are in middle life ; 
 some are old ; others are dead, though, still standing ; and others have 
 fallen logs on the ground ; while yet others, that were trees, now are 
 not, but are only soil, to which they have mouldered back. So, there 
 are Stars that are now being developed, out of Matter that was in Stars 
 before ; and there are Stars that are now young ; and Stars that are now 
 old ; and Stars that are now being decomposed; and there is now what 
 was Stars, and equally, what will be again at present a mere chaos of 
 their elements : there are all these things among the Stars to-day. But, 
 no matter how many Stars are going out at any one time, or are out, they 
 are as nothing to those that are at the same time left there is a perfect 
 infinity remaining. Matter still preserves the Universe the amazing 
 and transcendent complement is forever full. But thus, the Stars are 
 all the time coming and going, in their various places in immensity 
 growing, whether to their greatness or decline. Matter's process is long 
 and slow, whether in developing, or extinguishing, a Star ; but there is 
 an Eternity to do the work in. 
 
 But now, it is very simple and easy, how Matter develops all these Stars. 
 To develop a Star, is to grow into one. So the Matter in one place, yrows 
 into a Star there ; and the Matter in another place, grows into a Star there ;
 
 9 
 
 and thus on, until Matter in all places, grows into all the Stars. All 
 Stars are not developed by the same Matter ; but each Star is developed 
 by its own Matter that which it grew out of. And all Matter has noth- 
 ing to do with developing any one Star, but only, that particular Matter 
 which grew into that Star. Each particular Matter is a thing by itself, 
 and it does its own work grows into its own Star ; and when each Matter 
 has done this, you have the whole Universe of Stars ! And each Mattel- 
 grows into its Star because it is its nature to it is the very nature of that 
 collection of Matter to form that Star it is that Matter to be that Star. 
 That Matter, at that time, and under those circumstances, can't be nay- 
 thing but that Star. It is the nature of Matter to be and to do, whatever 
 it is and does ; and then it is the nature of that Matter to be a chaos at 
 one time, and a Star at another, and still afterward, to be that chaos 
 again. The Matter wants to change to be all this, and wills to and 
 does it ! 
 
 And now, the road is open to see how Matter does all other things. 
 For it is not that Matter develops Stars, alone; but indeed, it exists to 
 develop the Universe. And so it is the nature of the Matter that, lias 
 formed a Star, from that Star to form something else, to perfect that 
 other design. It is the nature of a Sun to produce Planets ; and then 
 it is the nature of the Planets to revolve round their Sun. And it is the 
 nature of the Planets to produce Moons ; and of Moons to revolve round 
 Planets. Stars form Planets, and Planets form Moons, for the same 
 reason that Matter before formed Stars it is nature, it is necessity, it is 
 what all things self-exist for. It can't be helped ; the thing cannot be 
 any other way. It is the very Matter of a Planet to be that Planet, or 
 of a Moon to be that Moon ; not to be that Planet or Moon would be not 
 to be Matter, nor anything else not to exist ; and that is infinitely im- 
 possible, and then it is equally or infinitely impossible the Matter should 
 not be Planet or Moon. If it was impossible the Matter should not before 
 be a Star, equally impossible is it, it should not now be Planet or Moon. 
 And equally impossible is it, it should not be and do, all the Planet or 
 Moon is and does. It is the very nature of the Matter of the Moon to 
 be a globe, and to turn on its axis, and then to move in an orbit round 
 the Planet ; and likewise it is the nature of the Matter of the Planet to be 
 a globe, and to turn on its axis, and then to move, together with the Moon, 
 in an orbit round the Sun. It is as much the nature of the new Matter, 
 (that in the Planet or Moon,) to do the new work, (perform all these 
 revolutions,) as it was that of the old Matter, (that in the Star,) to do the 
 old work form and be the Star. The whole work is Nature, what Mattel- 
 wants to be and do, and then what Matter is it is Matter itself to be and 
 do it all. It is all part of Matter's Self-Existence to work out the Uni- 
 verse ; and then it is just as impossible it should not all be, as that the 
 Universe should not be. 
 
 And then it is the nature of the Planets, which are at first liquid fire, 
 (the occasion of their being round,) to cool off, and crust over with 
 granite ; and afterward, from the granite as a base, to develop the Mineral 
 Kingdom ; and from that, the Vegetable Kingdom ; and from that, the 
 Animal ; and then the Human Races, on the top of all : and the Planets 
 will still go on developing this their final fruit of Human Beings till
 
 they have cooled to the center, and their own infernal fires are quenched ; 
 and then the Planets themselves will die, and go back to their Sun, and 
 in time, the whole return to that original chaos, afterward to be repro- 
 duced, and to run the same mighty round again ! It is still the nature 
 of Matter to be and do all this, just as it was, first to be the Sun, or 
 afterward the Planet. It is the very Matter itself, now to be stones, soil, 
 vegetables, animals, men, all things ; just as much as before, it was to be 
 the Planet which grew into all these. Men are as natural as grass, and 
 as impossible not to exist. Matter at a certain stage, would not be Matter 
 if it did not become men it can't help becoming men, for that is its very 
 existence. It is as impossible there should not be men, as it is there 
 should not be Stars ; for that is what the Stars are for to produce the 
 men. The Stars are to make Planets, and the PJanets to make men. It 
 is all that same Self-Existence of Matter, to develop the Universe, and 
 everything in the Universe ; and most of all, Man, the greatest thing in 
 the Universe. 
 
 And now that great secret is unraveled, Whence and how comes In- 
 telligence? Matter develops Intelligence, in developing the Universe. 
 Matter itself is Intelligence ; but all Matter is yet, not equally so. A 
 stone is not Mind ; and the dust in the street does not know so much as 
 the flesh of my cheek, though the flesh was once that dust, and it will be 
 again. All Matter knows enough to do its work develop the Universe , 
 but one part of Matter has to do a higher work than another, and there- 
 fore has to know more ; and the same part has to do a higher work at 
 one time, than another, and therefore at that time, has to know more. 
 Lowest Matter, or that in chaos, has sense, consciousness, thought, voli- 
 tion, or it could not go to work to become a Star ; but the Star, being 
 made, knows more than the Matter that made it it develops higher 
 powers than the chaos. So the granite of a Planet knows enough to de- 
 compose, and grow into soil ; but the soil knows more yet, for it moves 
 faster, and changes into something else more quickly vegetation ; but 
 that has still greater power and motion, and yet higher knowledge, so 
 that it straightway gives birth to the Animal ; but that as much trans- 
 cends the Vegetable, and presently flowers into Man. It is simply, that 
 Matter in organisms, possesses Intelligence which other Matter does not ; 
 and high organisms develop Intelligence which low ones do not ; and 
 then the highest organisms of all, develop the final and perfect Intelli- 
 gence which we call Mind. Mind and Matter are one ; only, it must be 
 the Matter of a human organism of a man and not a stone, nor a tree, 
 nor at last, even the highest animal. It must be the highest of all, the 
 brain of a man ; and then it is true Mind, Soul, Spirit. And it is the 
 nature of that Matter to be Mind, as before, if was the nature of other 
 Mattf r to be all other things. It is the very organization of a man's 
 br&ir tf develop Mind, and then it is itself the Matter of his brain 
 to be Mind. It, is as much the new Matter to be Mind, as it was the 
 old Matter to be a Star, or a Planet it is but the continuation and com- 
 pletion of the same growth. It is as much the Matter of a man's brain 
 to be Mind, as it is the Matter of his foot to be his foot, and to be gov- 
 erned by that Mind. Not to be Mind would be not to be Brain, but only 
 some other Matter, as a stone, unorganized earth, or some organization
 
 11 
 
 that is only low, as an oyster, a snail, or the low, imperfect brain of any 
 brute. Not to be Mind would be to throw away all the work Matter had 
 done before ; for that is precisely what Matter has gone through this long 
 process from chaos for to develop Mind. It is all a part, and now the 
 finishing part, of that same Self-Existence of Matter to develop the Uni- 
 verse.; and last and most of all, to develop Mind, as the perfection of this 
 Universe. It is that same Self-Existence of Matter to develop this Uni- 
 verse, and Intelligence, in one ! 
 
 And this is the Universe of to*day ! All developed by Matter ; and 
 by Matter so naturally, easily, and necessarily ! One part of Matter de- 
 veloping one thing, and another part, another ; and the same part devel- 
 oping one thing at one time, and another at another time ; but eacli part 
 thus doing its own work in its own time, and then all parts doing the 
 whole all parts developing the Universe ! Matter not so much doing 
 all this, as being it not so much developing the Universe, as exiztiny it ! 
 Not so much, any such thing as Matter ; but rather, after all, only the 
 Universe ! No such thing as abstract, mere Matter ; but on the contrary, 
 everywhere, actual, even-now-existing, Universe ! Even if, here and 
 there, Matter existing abstractly, or in chaos, yet everywhere else through- 
 out a perfect infinity, it existing only as Stars, Stars, Stars ! And even 
 that one chaos, once a Star, and at once to be again ! And then, though 
 possible for Matter thus to develop a Star, yet impossible for it to develop 
 the Universe infinitely already-developed! Matter and Universe only 
 other words Matter and Universe one and the same thing ! Matter only 
 existing as it is Universe, and forever impossible to exist any olhcr way ! 
 Universe ! Universe ! 
 
 And this Universe of to-day, is the Universe of Always ! Always is 
 as great and good as Now ; and then it fares as well. There is the same 
 power, the same need, the same reason and then the same result. Mat- 
 ter is now ; and Matter was then. Matter is Universe now ; and Mattel- 
 was Universe then. Matter can't exist without being the Universe now ; 
 and it could not exist without being the Universe then. Matter can't be 
 abstract now ; and it could not be abstract then : it has to be an already- 
 developed Universe now, and it had to be an already-developed Universe 
 then. The Universe existed always, for Matter did and this Universe 
 existed always ! 
 
 And it is easy to see how the Universe existed always, and existed 
 always the same that it is to-day. Before our sky and Stars, there were 
 others, but out of the same Matter ; and before those there were others ; 
 and before those, still others ; and before these last, still others yet ; and 
 so on, Star before Star, away back forever ! There never was a time 
 when there were no Stars ; but there were always as many as there are 
 now a perfect infinity. Space^was* always full of Stars. There never 
 was a time when it was all one grand Chaos ; but on the contrary, it was 
 always, this one grand and infinite Universe, with only here and there 
 the little chaoses, where some Star had just now disappeared, but where 
 it was equally, just now coming again. There never was any frst Star ; 
 but whole infinities of Stars went before it, and even its own Matter had
 
 12 
 
 been a Star in6nite times before. So, there were other Planets and Moons 
 before ours were ; and before these there were others, and before these, 
 still others, in this same literally-endless succession ! There never was 
 any first Planet nor Moon ; but verily, Moons and Planets run back, 
 back, always, in likeness as did the Stars. And then, before the stones 
 and trees and men of to-day, there were others ; and before those, still 
 others, running back in the same manner, till there is no stopping al- 
 ways and always ! All things have been always, just as they are now 
 not the same ones, but others just like them, and before them, in this 
 Universe. There never was any first man ; but there had always been 
 men before him, and as many more before those, and still as many more 
 before those, even forever ! There was a first man on any one Planet ; 
 (or might have been,) but there were other Planets before that one, and 
 they had men, too. There never was any first not any first anything. 
 But ail things always were stones, trees, lakes, rivers, men, births, 
 deaths, years, days, hours, minutes, seconds, meteors, comets, auroras, 
 rainbows, thunder, lightning the Universe ! Every'hlng always was, 
 just as it is now. Everything cuuld be, for it was just as easy. Every- 
 thing was, for there was the same reason. JJ^~When you know what is 
 now, yon know what was always ! 
 
 So the Universe had no beginning. A Universe that is Self-Existent, 
 is a Universe without a beginning. Self- Existence already and eternally 
 is. If there can be first years in Eternity, then may there be first years 
 in the Universe the beginning of the Universe, and the beginning of 
 Eternity are one ! It is only the Universe that made Eternity. Eternity 
 is not a thing, but only an Attribute ; and then to exist, that must exist, 
 of which it is the Attribute. Had there been no Universe there could 
 have been no Eternity ; and then the Universe is as soon as the Eternity, 
 and it no more has a beginning than the Eternity. And if ever there was 
 a beginning of the Universe, then that was a jumping -off place, was it not ? 
 And what was there when you got to it, and how did things look in 
 those days ? What was there to make days ? You cannot conceive any 
 such thing ! Instead of not being able to conceive that the Universe 
 had nut a beginning, you cannot begin to conceive that it had one you 
 cannot possibly conceive of any such thing as nothing ! And then you 
 cannot conceive of a time when it all was nothing ! If ever there was a 
 time when the Universe began, then before that it was all nothing and 
 you cannot begin to form any such conception ! And if you say that 
 though there was no Universe, yet it was all Matter, nevertheless, why 
 did not that Matter actualize the Universe ? It does so now ; and why 
 did it not then ? What new thing has set it to work ? There is no new 
 thing ; but it actualizes the Universe now, because it is its nature ; and 
 it had the same nature then ; and therefore it must have actualized the 
 Universe then ! You cannot conceive why it should not have existed the 
 Universe then, as much as it does now ; and then you cannot conceive 
 that it did not exist the Universe then you cannot conceive that the 
 Universe did not exist you cannot conceive that the Universe had a be- 
 ginning ! But all things existed on, one befoie one, and another before 
 another, away back, literally, forever and forever !
 
 13 
 
 And this Universe of to-day, as it is thus the Universe'of the Eternal 
 Past, so it is equally, the Universe of the Eternal Future ! What Matter 
 does now, it will always do. This Universe that is now, in like manner 
 as it is now, and for the same reason, will be always. It will no more, ever 
 cease hereafter, than it ever began heretofore. But, after the Suns and 
 Planets and men and all things, of to-day, there will be others ; and after 
 those, still others, on, on, on, without any end. There will be no last 
 man, nor world, nor anything ; any more than before, there was ever any 
 first one. Not the fame things will be always, but just like things not 
 the same things, but the same Universe. It will be forever, for it will 
 make forever. Forever will be the Attribute of the Universe in the future, 
 as Eternity was its Attribute in the past. Matter will be forever, and then 
 the Universe will. When you know what is now, you know what will be 
 always, just as you equally, know what has been always: know both 
 what has been, and what loUl be, in one ! 
 
 Then this is the Universe ! Present, gone, to come still the same ! 
 Matter unfolding it from and to Eternity ! Matter existing it from and to 
 Eternity! Matter, Infinite, Eternal, Self-Existent, Omnipotent, Immuta- 
 ble, the Universe, Infinite, Eternal, Self-Existent, Omnipotent, Immutable! 
 The one, the other the two, one ! The Universe only another name for 
 that which Matter must everywhere and forever be, and Matter only another 
 name for that which the Universe everywhere and forever is ! Illimitable 
 and perpetual Matter, and illimitable and perpetual Universe 1 Imposible 
 not to be the one, and impossible not to be the other ! Self-Existent one, 
 and Self-Existent other ! jBiT'A Universe that is Matter, and Matter that 
 is a Universe ! 
 
 Can any man furnish such a Rationale of the Universe as this ? Has 
 any man ever furnished such a Rationale of the Universe as this ? So 
 simple, so easy, so perfectly transparent, so absolutely ablaze with self- 
 evidence? I challenge the Human Race for another ! 
 
 And now, Where is your God? What kind of a rationale does he fur- 
 nish ? And what beccmes of him, now that this Rationale supersedes him . 
 Who will save God from the overpowering and annihilation of an infinite 
 Universe ? W T ho will hold him back from the inevitable and pursuing 
 doom of Self-Existent Matter? Davis, Spiritualist, Infidel all who be- 
 lieve in Matter come and rescue your God from the slaying of-that very 
 Matter ! 
 
 If you say that I have" given Matter all the Attributes of a" God, and 
 therefore I still have a God, only that I make Matter that God, indeed I do 
 give Matter all the Attributes of a God, and well I may for the Matter 
 exists, and verily, it has the Attributes ! But that does not prove a God, 
 but disproves one for it proves no need of one. Matter that exists, and 
 that can work out the Universe, does not prove a God that does not exist, 
 and that cannot work out anything ! Instead of Matter being a God, that 
 is the precise reason why there is no God, because there is Matter ! Talk 
 about Mailer being a God, when it is the infinite annihilation of God ! 
 
 If you say that, though there is indeed Matter, and it is truly Self- 
 Existent, yet God existed from eternity along with it, tiro things instead
 
 14 
 
 of one, or two things that were one Matter the Body, and God the Soul 
 nevertheless, what have I all the while been telling you ? For this is 
 nothing but that same old inconsistency with which 1 have so many times 
 charged you that impossibility of accepting Self-Existent Matter, and 
 yet getting in a God, too ! For Self-Existent Matter is precisely what 
 excludes a God there can be but one Infinite, Omnipotent, Supreme ! 
 And likewise this is that same He, that Self Existent Matter needs a Soul 
 as if it was not Soul itself, all the Soul there is, infinite Soul ! As if 
 Self-Existence and Soul were not the same thing! 
 
 And if you say that Matter is Negative, and then it must co-exist with 
 some Positive, and that Positive is God, yet what are you thinking about 
 to say so ? For that is the very same lie, and almost in the same words ! 
 Talk about what is Self-Existent being Negative ! The doctrine of Matter, 
 Negative, is the perfect doctrine of Matter, Dead and that is nothing 
 but the old dogma of Matter, Created 1 Self-Existent Matter is the infi- 
 nite and eternal opposite of Negative Matter ! You only show that you 
 don't know what you are talking about, all this while admitting Matter, 
 Self-Existent ! not even, after I have so many times told you ! Once 
 and for all, "Self-Existent Matter is Alive ; and it don't need anything 
 but itself; and it won't have anything but itself! It don't need any kind 
 of a God ; and it won't have any kind of a God ! It don't need any- 
 thing Positive ; for it is Positive, and the only thing Positive there is ! 
 Let it never again need to be repeated among men : Self-Existent Matter 
 itself is everything that any God could be, and therefore it makes any 
 and every God impossible and that is all there is of it ! 
 
 And if you ,=ay that for all, Matter cannot thus work out the Universe, 
 yet, why can it not ? Why can it not, as well as God can ? If God is not 
 nothing, then he is substance, he is Matter ; and then, why cannot this Mat- 
 ter work out the Universe, as well as the Matter you say he is? What 
 advantage has your Matter over mine ? If your Matter is finite, then assur- 
 edly it cannot work out the. Universe, while mine can for the Universe is 
 infinite. But, if your Matter is infinite, then the only way it can work out 
 the Universe, is to do as I said mine did one part of it work out one part 
 of the Universe, and another, another part ; and the some part work out one 
 thing at one time, and another one at another time ; and thus all the parts 
 work out the whole. But if your Matter can do all this, why cannot 
 mine ? And if mine can, then yours becomes the perfect "fifth wheel 
 to a coach," and is not wanted ! 
 
 And if you say that Matter cannot know enough, thus to develop the 
 Universe, yet, how can the Matter of your God know any more, or better ? 
 If his Matter is finite, then certainly, it cannot know, for it cannot be it 
 cannot be, everywhere, nor then, know, everywhere. But, if his Matter, 
 is infinite, then, why cannot my infinite Matter know what to do, and how 
 to do it, as well as yours and in the same way ? And if it can, then 
 again is yours superfluous we can get along without it ! It is as long 
 as it is broad : one Matter cannot get ahead of another God cannot get 
 ahead of Matter ! And then God can be spared ; for Matter we already 
 have, and we cannot get rid of it if we try ! 
 
 And if you say that there is Design manifest in the workings of Matter, 
 and then there must be a Designer, for Matter itself is not equal to De-
 
 15 
 
 sign, yet, how is the Matter of your God any more equal to it ? How 
 and why, can your Matter, spread out "jover all creation," design any 
 better than mine can? Your God is infinite Matter ; and Matter is Mat- 
 ter, and nothing but Matter ; and then what is there to make out Ms Mattel- 
 capable of Design, any more than this Matter of the Universe ? And if there 
 is nothing, then, still again is your Matter only an impertinence ; and the 
 sooner you get it out of the way of the Matter that is first on the track, the 
 better ! There is no such Design in the operations of Matter. Things can't 
 be any other way. Matter can't help doing just what it does. It is Matter 
 itself to do just what it does. And then, if you think things must be 
 designed, so they are Matter designs them, and then God don't ! Mat- 
 ter designs them, because it wills them. But that is not Design in them, 
 as if there was somebody back of them, making them so-and-so , but 
 Matter makes them so-and-so, and it cannot make them anything else. 
 Matter exists them so-and-so, and then they can't ie any thing else ! There 
 is a fitness in things, an adaptedness, a philosophy ; but, instead of De- 
 sign, it might as well be called Necessity, for it is a Necessity. It is the 
 very nature of the things ! Though, if you will have it otherwise, then 
 answer me to that : Who designed God ? If this Universe had to be 
 designed, then, Who designed its Designer ? For he needed to be de- 
 signed as much as it ! And more, if he is enough greater than it, to 
 design it ! Bid me know who designed him! The Self-Existence of the 
 Universe is itself Infinite Design infinite Will to be ! 
 
 And thus, if you must have a God to make the Universe, then, Who 
 made Qod? Who made the Being who made the Universe ? If an in- 
 finite Universe cannot get along without being made, then, no more can 
 an infinite God ! Bid me know then, who made him! And if he made 
 the Universe, did he make it out of his own Matter out of himself? 
 And then was he as large after he made it, as he was before ? Or did 
 he make the whole of himself into it ? And then what became of him ? 
 Or, was he, it; and was it, he? And then did he make himself? But, 
 if you say he did not make himself, any more than Matter makes itself, 
 yet Mailer does not make the Universe it self-exists it, and then the 
 Universe self-exists. And if God self-existed it, and therefore it self- 
 existed, then it was not made and God did not make it ! If God made 
 it, he made himself : if he did not make it, it is Self-Existent and the 
 question, Who made him ? is answered ! 
 
 All this talk about Matter not being able, and not knowing how, to 
 work out the Universe it is not one whit other than that old doctrine of 
 Matter, Created ! It is simply the old story of dead Matter, unable to do 
 anything except as it is made to ! It is still, the immemorial and world- 
 baptized "inertia" that darling tenet of philosophy ! A fig for your 
 books of philosophy, to teach that exploded lie of theology ! Talk about 
 a cannon-ball always remaining in the same place unless moved by some- 
 thing else J^~absolutely it will walk off so that nobody can find it ! 
 Granite is older than cannon-balls ; but granite has grown into earth and 
 plants and animals and men and cannon-bails will! A boy shall hide 
 away his play-ball in the garret, on the solid stone wall, just under the 
 eaves of his father's stone mansion, thinking that, there it shall lie forever , 
 but the ages shall roll on, till the mansion itself shall disappear, mingled
 
 16 
 
 with all elements ; and the yarn and leather of the ball shall have become 
 grass, and sheep, and cows, and human brains ! " Soldiers ! forty cen- 
 turies are looking down upon you," said Napoleon to his troops, 
 standing beneath the shadow of the Pyramids. But those Collossal Mon- 
 uments, of four thousand years, are not the same they were at first ; but 
 tons upon tons of their stupendous masonry have been given off, and 
 borne every whither ; and in time the whole will crumble and be dissi- 
 pated, and the once mighty Pyramids will have added themselves to the 
 Earth's great world of material, and walked off to become the substance 
 of organized bodies and living forms all over the globe ! The very moun- 
 tains of the Earth's ancient crust are washing away, and wearing down, 
 and decomposing growing into soil, and flowers, and trees, and all 
 things ! There are mountains in the Moon, twenty-two miles high ; and 
 the Earth's mountains were once as high, or a great deal higher ; but 
 they have wasted to what they are now, and they will waste, till the 
 world shall be one plain of vegetation and life, unless its future crust, 
 shrinking to its dying fires, shall have power to open and throw up more ! 
 And they will be brought low, for the destiny must be reached. Not an 
 Atom on the Earth's extended surface, but is on its way to become a 
 cabbage, an animal, and at last a human brain and nothing can stop it ! 
 You may bottle up the Atom : but you will die ; the bottle itself will 
 evaporate ; and the freed Particle, strong in an omnipotence which all 
 the Gods cannot overcome, will re-speed on its journey to work out this 
 great fate of an infinite Universe! "Inertia" it is the Lie of lies ! 
 Even a man's dead body is not dead ; but it picks itself to piece?, and 
 goes to work to make another man. Oxygen, the great solvent of Nature, 
 is dissolving everything, to build it up into a perpetually-new world ! 
 
 But what a fool you are, in all this long talk about your God, to be 
 prating, he, and him, and his ! What is there in the Matter which makes 
 your God, to make, he, and him, and his? Here is your Matter, and 
 there it is, and everywhere it is ; it is infinite : and yet, it is all he ! This 
 part of it is he, and that part of it it he, and the whole of it is he ! This 
 part of it does one thing, and he does it ; that part of it does something else, 
 and he does that ; and all parts of it do all things, and he does them all ! 
 It takes an organized being to be he ; but your Matter is all unorganized, 
 lying around loose everywhere, strung from one end of immensity to 
 where there is no other end and yet you make just as good a he of it 
 all ! It takes a brain to think ; but you spill over your God's brain, till 
 you don't know where it begins nor ends, and till it absolutely don't begin 
 nor end ^ou spread it all out, till, if it is not nothing and nowhere, il is 
 at least, everything and everywhere but still, it all makes just as good 
 a brain! And then think what is inevitably, and all the time, happening 
 to this he, scattered about in this manner ! Everything that is done, is 
 done in him and to him. So, hailstones pelt him, fires burn him, knives 
 cut him, axes chop him, saws tear him, pitchforks prick him, hammers 
 pound him, bullets shoot him, cannon-balls crash through his brains, gun- 
 powder blows him up, lightning rives him limb from limb, volcanoes pour 
 their lava-streams all through his body, earthquakes hold his legs in an 
 inexorable vice all, all done every day to this he! A he must have a 
 body ; and this he must have an infinite one. Pray tell me, if he has an
 
 17 
 
 infinite head? If he has, then he has no foot, for there is noplace for a foot; 
 and if he has a foot, then he has no head, for there is no place for that. 
 But if he has a finite head, in order that he may have a foot, then, both 
 foot, head, body and all, are finite and in saving his foot, you have 
 lost his infinity ! If his foot is finite, then he is finite to his knee ; and 
 then to his thigh, and then to his arms, and then he is finite the whole 
 length of him ! So that your he that you talk so much about, is either 
 an infinite foot and no head, or else he is infinitely and contemptibly 
 finite, and unable to create any Universe ! An infinite he is so much 
 stultification. There is no such thing as a being who is everywhere ; for 
 the very idea of a being, is that of limitation, and distinction ; and then 
 the being must be one where, and not some other where much less all 
 where ! Every way, all talk about God as a beiny all prating, God-he, 
 and him, and his is worse than silliness ! 
 
 But, if you call God a Principle, instead of a Person it instead of 
 he the Life of the Universe, and of all things in the Universe, instead 
 of somebody who made the Universe even a .Self-Existng Life, instead 
 of an All-Creating one yet what I have already said has cut you oft' 
 from this, too. This is your last hiding-place the slronghold of all 
 but it shall not save you ! Pantheism is as false as the other thing. The 
 Life of the Universe is the Universe, and not something in addition to 
 it, or other than it. It is the Universe itself to be Life ; not to be Life 
 would be not to exist not to be, a Universe. That is what makes it a 
 Universe, because it is Life : that is why it is a Universe, because it is 
 Life. It is not the Universe and Life two things ; but it is the Uni- 
 verse, a Life one thing : the Life and the Universe are the same. There 
 could not be the Life without the Universe, and there could not be the 
 Universe without the Life. Self-Existence is Life ; but the only reason 
 why it is, is beceuse it is SW/'-Life : if it was not Self, it would not be 
 Life, but on the contrary, Life would have to be given! And then, if 
 the Universe is Self-Existent, its Life must be Self; or else, Life would 
 have to be given to it. And if its Life is Self, then it is //self, and that 
 tells the whole story ! There is nothing beside, or but, the Universe ; 
 and then there is no Life beside the Universe ; and then there is no Life 
 that is a God, nor any kind of a God ! And men could not thus talk 
 about a Life of the Universe, if they did not after all, feel that the Uni- 
 verse was dead, and needed a Life, instead of being one ! It is because 
 they have not grown out of that same old doctrine of Matter, Created ; 
 and because they do not know what comes of growing out of it ! It is a 
 small thing to say that Matter is Self Existent, but absolutely, the Uni- 
 verse is ; and then to talk about a Life- Principle of the Universe, is 
 absurd ; and men only do it, because they do not know that the Self- 
 Existence of Matter thus means and is the Self-Existence of the Universe ! 
 There is no more a //(/e-Principle of the Universe, than there is a Form- 
 Principle of it ; or a Weight-Principle, or a Size-Principle, or a Color- 
 Principle ; and the only reason people have not insisted that there were 
 these other Principles, but have so obstinately persisted in asserting that 
 there must be that Life-one, is because they have thus taken the Universe 
 to be without Life, instead of saying that its Life is itself, as its Form is 
 itself, its Weight is itself, its Size is itself, its Color is itself, and as all its 
 2
 
 18 
 
 Attributes are only itself The life of a tree is as much a part of that 
 tree is as much that tree as its shape is, as its weight in avoirdupois, 
 as its entire measure : it would not be the tree without the shape, weight, 
 and measure ; nor any more would it be, without the life. It may be a 
 tree without one kind of life the power of budding and putting forth 
 but it will not be the same tree ; it will still have a life, but it will be the 
 life, now that its own true work is done, slowly but surely to grow into 
 something else, and thus to do another work. But its first life was simply, 
 what the tree was then ; and its present life is simpty what it is now 
 in neither case is there anything but the actual tree. And even if the * 
 tree differs at the two times, (as of course it does differ,) yet what the 
 tree is at one time, just that it is, and nothing more ; and what it is at 
 the other time, just that it is, and nothing less there is still, nothing at 
 either time, other than the tree there is no life beside the tree ! At 
 each time 'it is the tree to have life not to have it would be not to be the 
 tree. The tree and life are one : the tree is life, and life is the tree ! 
 Three are as many kinds of life as there are separate things in existence; 
 for all organized things and beings die : and then they lose the lives 
 they had, but still, .they all have another : they lose their lives as organ- 
 isms, but still they live on to decay, and become something else they 
 live on to continue the Universe ; and this is the kind of life the Universe 
 has this is' its Life to live on, to continue, to exist ! But how many 
 soever kinds of life there are, and how many soever lives the same thing 
 may have at different times, still there are but the things with the different 
 kinds of life still there is but the thing that has the different lives, one 
 thing at one time, and another at another, but each time, the thing it is 
 then, and nothing more ! Still there are never any lives beside the things 
 still there is no life beside the one thing that thus changes its life no life 
 beside itself at one time nor then any life beside itself at another time 
 never any life beside itself at that time when it has the life ! But in every 
 case of a life, of whatever kind, and at whatever time, it is the very 
 thing itself to be life not to be life would be not to be the thing. The 
 thing could never exist without life, and life could never exist without 
 the tiling ; and then the thing is life, and life is the thing. It is the thing 
 to have life, it is its existence to be life, and then there is nothing but the 
 thing that is life ! So that our analysis of the Universe gives absolutely 
 it, and nothing after all, but it all things, and nothing but all things 
 and then there is no place to get in a great Life of the Universe, nor any 
 little life of anything and you are cornered at last ! 
 
 Now, more than ever, no need of a God ! Not even, of a Life-Prin- 
 ciple ! And no room for a God ! Not even, for the same Life-Principle ! 
 But all things so compacted, solid, one, that if you could get a Principle 
 in, they would instantly come together and crush it out again ! No Prin- 
 ciple could be introduced that was not against all things ; and then they 
 must put their heel on it ! For this very Life of all things, you plead for, 
 is in the way ; for it must be something, and not nothing ; and if it is some- 
 thing, it is substance ; and then it is nothing but this same Matter you 
 have been all the while talking about your GW- Matter and then the 
 Universe is already full of another Matter ! This Matter of the Uni- 
 verse is everywhere, and everything ; and then, where can your Matter
 
 19 
 
 be ? And if you say that God Is a Spirit not the Spirit of the Ortho- 
 dox, an immateriality, a nothing, but the Spirit of Spiritualists and Infi- 
 dels, true Matter, but fine Matter, so fine that it can co-exist with this 
 other Matter nevertheless, what do you know about any such line Mat- 
 ter ? Put your finger on it ! You can't put your finger on ncthin<j. ! 
 The whole thinar is a fabrication, outright-created, and violently begotten, 
 
 O O / O 
 
 just to save your God ! There is no need of any such fine Matter, and 
 then there is none you only make it all ! There is simply this Matter 
 of actualness and realness and there is nothing more ! Air is air, and gas 
 is gas, and all the elements are the elements ; and there is nothing in all 
 these which is not these ! Grass is grass, trees are trees, the Universe is 
 the Universe, all things are all things and that's the whole ! There is 
 nothing in a tree that is not the tree, nor in the Universe that is -not the 
 Universe. Show us your fine, unsearchable mystery-Matter scattered 
 through all these things ! your fine, ubiquitous, Spirit-Matter, so full of 
 Midnight as to be everywhere and nowhere all the samel It is all stuff, 
 but you don't stuff us with it ! There is no place for it ; but Matter has 
 already taken that place, and filled it to infinity ! Omnipotence ex- 
 cludes your Spirit that Omnipotence of the Matter that is everywhere, 
 and that makes all things ! 
 
 And now, more than ever, see how infinitely letter something is than 
 a God even, than that same Life-Principle ! For indeed, you made a 
 great mistake when you put in your plea for a Life of the Universe, in 
 calling it a Self-Existing Life, instead of an All-Creating one ! You 
 wanted it to be the Life of all things, and yet you meant that all things 
 should self-exist ! You instinctively felt that if all things could not self- 
 exist, the glory of your Universe was ended ! But that is the very fate 
 which now, you have brought upon yourself ! For on the very face of 
 it, a Life-Principle is All-Creating, and it must be it gives Life to the 
 Universe ; that is the only thing you want it for ! Say that there is ro 
 Life-Principle say that there is no need of any, because the Universe 
 itself is Life and then the Universe self-exists ; but say that there is a 
 Life-Principle, which gives Life, and then infallibly, the Universe does no! 
 self-exist ; but on the contrary, .Life or existence is bestowed upon it it 
 is brought into Life or existence it is created! You cannot avoid the 
 result. Matter is the Universe ; but a Life-Principle creates it, for it 
 creates its Life or existence, and that is creating it. And then see what 
 you have lost by your Life-Principle ! You have lost your Universe 
 during that whole Eternity before it was created ! You know the Ortho- 
 dox God spent a whole eternity doing nothing, and only made the Uni- 
 verse a little while ago, so that his Universe lost all the existence it would 
 have had in that illimitable duration before ; and now your Life-Principle 
 does the same thing, and loses the Universe in the same way ! It creates 
 the Universe ; and then the Universe begins ; and then, before i; begin* 
 there is a whole Eternity ! No matter how long ago, it created it even 
 forever, if you would say so yet, before that time there was a literal 
 forever ! Even if the Life-Principle itself existed forever, yet it could 
 not create the Universe forever it had to exist first, and create after- 
 ward ! And no matter how soon afterward for still there was a whole 
 Eternity before, for Time never began. Matter can be the Universe, as
 
 20 
 
 soon as it exists even forever because it exists the Unirerse : Matter 
 is the Universe, and then when it is, that is. But a Life-Principle does 
 not exist the Universe, but creates it; and then itself has to exist first 
 and then that whole Eternity has to go by first, or go beforehand ! So 
 that, say what you will, your Universe has lost an Eternity at the other 
 end of it it is finite in Time. And then it is finite in Space, too ; for 
 what is finite in Time, must be in Space. A Life-Principle could never 
 make the Universe as large as it would be if it had always been larger 
 JSPit could never catch up ! And then your Universe is finite all round, 
 and nothing to what it might have been and isn't any Universe ! Any- 
 thing that is finite, don't deserve to be called a Universe ! And so, your 
 Life- Principle has cost you your Universe! Better let God go even 
 God, under the name of the Life of the Universe and have a Universe, 
 than keep God and have nojie ! This Universe is more than that other 
 abortion, and its Life thrown in to boot ! You can think to the end of 
 any God in two seconds. And you can think to the end of any Universe 
 creafed by a God, in two seconds. But you can't think to the end of this 
 Universe, forever for there is no end to think to ! 
 
 A God is simply impossible, and there's no use talking about it ! And 
 a God is perfectly and infinitely impossible, and that's the end of it I 
 No man can hold an argument on God two minutes. I can knock over 
 all the arguments in favor of a God, faster than any man can get them 
 out of his mouth. There is nothing to be an argument in favor of! 
 Everything proclaims it ; the evidence overwhelms you ! Self-Existent 
 Universe is Non-Existent God ! And there is nothing in the Universe 
 but the Universe ; and there is nothing outside of the Universe, for there 
 is no Outside, to it : and then there is nothing but the sheer Universe 
 itself! And God can't make things any different from what they are; 
 but everything must do just what it does, and take its own time for doing 
 it, and God can neither change nor hasten, but "the laws of Nature" 
 must have their way and then Nature is all, and God is only something 
 they're talking about! [Not even, the "laws" of Nature, but only Na- 
 ture !] And a God only makes two Infinites to account for ; or if he, or it, 
 is not an Infinite, that's worse yet ! Every way, a God is impossible ! 
 
 There is no more a God than there is a Devil, and there never was a 
 God any more than there was a Devil ! How have men grown out of 
 devils and witches and imps and ghosts ? By having to put their finger 
 on them, and point them out ! They couldn't point out nothing] Put 
 your finger on God," and point him or it out ! If the God is infinite, 
 tell us, What ? if the God is finite, tell us, Where? Here you have had 
 the whole Universe dissected, and everything in it, so that you could see 
 just what it was, and how it was, and all about it and now, Where is your 
 God? Nowhere, there is no God ! 
 
 " Then the Universe is God." Well, at last anchor you there, that the 
 Universe is all. Though, what could be plainer, or more apodictic : 
 Nothing but the Universe nothing buteverything and then nothing but 
 the Everything that everything makes ! And then, what more tell-tale, or 
 self-same, than this same statement with regard to God : Nothing but 
 everything ! and then of course no God for everything is not a God ! 
 But then, equally, what more imperative than the same statement with
 
 21 
 
 regard to calling God ? using the word God : Nothing but everything ! 
 but everything is not God! everything is everything, and God is Goo I; 
 and then, if there isn't any God, why, there isn't any ! 
 
 No ! call the Universe itself, and let God go where the Devil 1ms gone ! 
 The Universe is no more God than it is the Devil ! God came from the 
 heathen ; and if you mean no more by it than the Universe, then don'i 
 steal it from the heathen ! They meant by it, a being, who made the 
 world, and did up things generally ; and if you don't believe in the, 
 being, then hand them back the God ! Now that you have given up 
 what the word stood for, give up the word. Don't go on making God, 
 not only, when there is none, but when the one there tised to be haw 
 . ceased to exist i "Let the dead bury their dead" and God .go, and 
 done with it I 
 
 For all the Gods that have ever been, men have made. And it is time 
 to have done with that manufacture ! Men making a God to be afraid 
 of, and then being afraid of him afcer they have got him made ! Day 
 and night shrinking from him in terror, quaking like an aspen at the 
 mere mention of his name, and driven to madness through tear of his 
 hell and yet, all the while making him! Almost dying in their fright, 
 and yet keeping up the Bugaboo that scares them ! And men making a, 
 God to be a mystery, and then bothering their brains everlastingly, to 
 see into that mystery] Making something they can't know anything 
 about, because it is all nothing, and then giving themselves up from earn- 
 ing their bread, and unable to sleep nights, for trying to study it out ! 
 Making what is incomprehensible, because it don't exist to be compre- 
 hended, and then wearing the flesh off their bones, and wasting them- 
 selves into their graves, in seeing if they can't understand it I Like on*-: 
 in a deep pit, exerting himself to the utmost to see straining his eye- 
 to look through a hole in a stone, when there is no hole, nor stone to 
 have a hole in ! And now, Spiritualists and Infidels trying to get up \\ 
 better God somehow rational, and decent, and even good and then strut- 
 ting around as if they had done some great thing 1 Like a whelp with it-- 
 eyes not yet open, moving about, not knowing but it is as large as it 
 dam 1 A? if the mistake did not lie in having any God ! As if, even ;i 
 good God did not open the door to all the bad ones ! As if there could 
 be any God that was not a bad one ! As if, even the goad God was no: 
 after all, made ! And at last Andrew Jackson Davis, forever ringing 
 the changes on that eternally-reiterated stupidity of his own brain, 
 "Father-God and Mother-Nature"! Continually talking something 
 which he knows nothing about, and which he never can know anything 
 about, because there is nothing to know anything about! Equally veri- 
 fying the Orthodox in, "Something out of Nothing ;" and Shakspeare 
 in, " Muck Ado about Nothing!" Making a God, for thousands of de- 
 luded victims to run after, and hunt, and dream they have found, when 
 after all, they have found only a shadow ; but a shadow that has cheated 
 out of life, and themselves, and true happiness ! 
 
 But these days of God-making are yet to be overpast. A change is 
 coming, though distant, far, in the ages. There will grow a Time when 
 men shall be greater, braver, wiser ; when they shall dare to seek 
 Truth, and they shall find it; wheu. the) 7 shall grope out of the dark-
 
 22 
 
 ness of this long Midnight, and emerge into the brightening and glorious 
 light of a New World ! In that day, the good, and the beautiful, and 
 the holy, now saved into the present, but looking back on all the past, 
 and tracing the lootsteps of the Race through the hoary centuries, will 
 say, as the prompting of their development, and the outflow of their 
 perfection, and as the only divine utterance left to them the good, and 
 the beautiful, and the holy, will say, Damn any God ! And God will 
 be damned the name, and the nothing the word, and what it stands 
 for to everlasting forgetfulness ! 
 
 But that will be a great day when the world comes together to bury 
 God L Then the long account of Humanity against this its direst and its 
 deadliest foe, will be settled. Then this great Woe which has so long- 
 brooded the nations, hanging like a pall of night over earth's fair face, to 
 shroud all in gloom, and wrap all in sorrow, will be forever dissipated, 
 that the sun of joy and gladness may shine through ! Then this infinite 
 Incubus which has bestrode the earth like some grisly but invisible Hor- 
 ror, darting death before him, and filling men's hearts with fear and fore- 
 boding of what should be after death wrath and judgment shall be 
 laid to a sleep that knows no waking, and safely and surely made over to 
 the dust forever ! Old men and matrons, young men and maidens, the 
 lately born, the soon to die, the bridegroom and the bride all will look 
 into the grave- together, and feel that now, at last, there is an end of the 
 great and terrible curse ! And the world will breathe freer ! 
 
 THERE is so RELIGION ! It is nothing but Superstition 1 Religion is 
 the second great mistake of the Age of Reason ! There is no God ; and 
 then the Religion which has grown out of God, is all a manufactured 
 sham, a silly invention ! It is a Godless thing ; but yet, it is nothing but 
 God and then the sooner we have done with it, and send it along after 
 God, the better ! 
 
 There is nothing for a man but to be a man. Nothing for him to be- 
 lieve, but to be a man for him to do, but to be a man. All doctrines but 
 to be a man, are fables all deeds but to be a man, tomfooleries ! 
 
 There is nothing for a man but to be himself, and do himself. It is 
 all he exists for. He is his own Universe ! 
 
 There is nothing for a man but to be Happy. This is all he exists 
 for. Hupplness is his Universe. Happiness is his own very existence ! 
 
 There is no such thing to Man as Duty. There is nothing above Man 
 to make Duty. But there is simply Happiness, Man's own Pleasure ! 
 
 There is no such thing to Man as Law. But he is Law. It is still, 
 nothing but his own Happiness ! 
 
 There is no such thing to AJan as Right or Wrong. There is nothing 
 to make Right or Wrong. It is still, only that same Happiness ! 
 
 There is no such thing to Man as Sin. There is nothing to make Sin. 
 Had there never been, any God, the word Sin, never would have been 
 uttered there never would have been anything for it to stand for. Tho 
 whole story is still told in that same Happiness. It is only that Man 
 mistakes in being Happy ; he does what at last cannot make him Happy
 
 23 
 
 and then he must mend his mistake. JSPNot having Happiness, is all 
 that is out of the way ; and then getting true Happiness, is being in 
 the way ! 
 
 There is no such thing to Man as Punishment. It is only, less Hap- 
 piness, from making that mistake. There is nothing to create Punish- 
 ment. The old God used to punish, but he was a tyrant in doing so 
 he simply injured. 
 
 There is no such thing to Man as Repentance. Let him mend his 
 mistake, but not sorrow over it. He cannot afford to be sorry, for he 
 exists to be Happy ! 
 
 There is no other Gospel to Man, than that of doing the best thing he 
 can. And it must be the best thing he can do now, under these circum- 
 stances. And no odds what it is, so it is the best thing. For it is noth- 
 ing but Happiness, after all it is simply, what will truly make him 
 Happy. What is Best, is what is Happiness ! 
 
 And then there is no such thing in Man, as Conscience. But indeed, 
 it is Circumspection, or Watchfulness really to see and do what is 
 Best. To-day I change the name of that organ, and my changing will 
 stand for all Time ! 
 
 Every man must be his own judge, what is best. And then he must 
 allow every -other man to be his own judge, just as well. And then 
 every man must allow every other to do what to him is best. Each has 
 equal claim, because to each it is Happiness. But, if the claims of two 
 conflict if what is best to one, is the reverse of best to another 
 then let them mutually harmonize the difference, if they can one or 
 both give way. And if they cannot, then let them do as they must but 
 I am not responsible. Such things always have been, and they still will 
 be but the principle must yet be announced. The evil is not in the 
 principle, but in the low development of the race. And Time will heal 
 that. And then all will be Harmony. 
 
 There is no such thing to a man, as Accountability, in what he does. 
 He is not accountable to himself, for that is not Accountability. And ! it- 
 is not accountable to others, nor to any others ; because at last, he is 
 only himself, and equally they are themselves: and then each one must 
 stand out alone, to be his own being, and do his own doing exist for 
 himself and not for another. And even if one does what you do not call, 
 Well, but on the contrary, 111, yet, you must bear it; as he also, has to 
 bear what you do, that is not Well, but 111, to him. And if neither you 
 nor he can bear it, yet that is not my matter I have but uttered a truth. 
 Forevermore, Accountability is dead: every man is his utter self; and 
 if 'every man is, then every man is and all are provided for ! 
 
 There is no such thing to a man, as Freedom, in what he does. Bui 
 he does what he has to do. He does what he is organized, educated, 
 and situated, to do and there is no help for it. He acts out his inev- 
 itable nature, under the circumstances. Be sure, he always does as he 
 pleases, but that is precisely it he lias to please : he never can please 
 to do anything else, than just what he does ! And then, if he does not 
 please to do what we call, Well, the remedy is to give him a chance to be 
 more and other, than he is now. That will create him to be mure 
 and other !
 
 24 
 
 Knowledge is the grand insurance ! Next after Happiness, there is no 
 good but Knowledge ; and next after t/rahappiness, no evil but Ignorance. 
 All men do as well as they know. All do as well as they know for Hap- 
 piness. The mistakes they make in being Happy, are all because they 
 do not know. Give men Knowledge, and they will be Happy for they 
 will know how to be. Give them Knowledge, and they will help others 
 to be Happy for that will in turn help them to be. No fear that men 
 will ever injure each other, when they have Knowledge. No fear, they 
 will not benefit each other. No fear, they will not always act nobly, 
 beautifully, gloriously, to each other ! No fear, they will not dry up 
 every tear, and make this world a paradise ! Knowledge will bring all 
 this, and nothing but Knowledge will ! 
 
 There is no such thing as Goodness ! But there is that Happiness 
 and that is all ! It is not Goodness, but Good ; but at last, there is no 
 other Good than that same Happiness ! Happiness is everything ; every- 
 thing else is nothing ! Sin, Law, and Duty, no more drop out of exist- 
 ence in the presence of Happiness, than does Goodness ; and they who 
 believe in Goodness must open their eyes to see that there is a higher 
 development, and a wider generalization, and that, in the final analysis, 
 everything is swallowed up and lost in that same everlasting Happiness ! 
 Call Goodness as good and beautiful and holy as we ever -have called it, 
 yet it has grown only, out of God and Religion ; and then they who 
 have thrown off those old clogs, and launched forth to be themselves, 
 and to live themselves, must away with whatever would still enslave them, 
 and resolve everything into their own Happiness Happiness to each, 
 and Happiness to all ! Had there never been any God, there would 
 always have been, only men ; and then there would have been only men's 
 things : not Duty, and Doing Right, first, Loving God, and then, Loving 
 Man, and so, Doing Good, and then, Being Good, or, Possessing Good- 
 ness not any of these things, but only men's things : Doing as they 
 pleased, Acting out their natures, Making their lives a bliss, Riling up 
 the cup of their existence in one word, men's Happiness, and how to 
 get it ! But now, you will say the Goodness still exists, even in these 
 men's things ; for the men all want this Happiness, and 'then they ought 
 to help each other to get it ; and likewise, they ought not to hinder each 
 other to get it and then the Goodness consists equally, in the helping, 
 and not hindering. It is very easy for you to say this now, after you 
 have bad the God, and have thus gotten the idea of Gcodness in the 
 first place ! Starting with that Goodness as Duty to God, and then 
 making it $3Tjump over to Duty to Man, you can now, with all ease, 
 make it continue Duty to Man, even after entirely giving up the God 
 with which it started ! Whereas, if there had never been a God, but 
 only, these men, they would never have thought of such a thing as Good- 
 ness, but only of that Happiness, and how to get it ! All men, and then 
 the Happiness of'all men, that of one as much as of another ! And all 
 men, and then the Happiness of all men and then each mnn to look out 
 for Happiness, as much as every other ! And then, no thought of such 
 a thing as Duty possible to interlope, and mix with that simple matter of 
 Happiness some obligation laid on them with respect to it and espe- 
 cially an obligation laid on them by something that didn't exist ! No
 
 25 
 
 dream of such a thing as Goodness, nor anything else, but that one sim- 
 ple thing of themselves Happiness, and how to get it ! If you had said, 
 Goodness, to them, the answer would have been, "Goodness? what? 
 Happiness is all we know anything about ! " And so the man is no phi- 
 losopher, whose crucible-fires do not evaporate Goodness, and distill it to 
 perfect gas ; leaving only in his vessel, as the grand residuum of all 
 things, to himself and his race Happiness of Happiness ! 
 
 There is no Brotherhood of Man ! There is no Fatherhood of God ; 
 and the Brotherhood of Man springs, immediately, out of the Fatherhood 
 of God ! " Let no one call God his Father, who calls not Man his 
 Brother," is the perpetual refrain of Andrew Jackson Davis ; and, 
 "Divine Fatherhood and Universal Brotherhood," is the continual 
 lifting-up everywhere. The only reason why all men have been ac- 
 counted Brothers, is because they have been held to be Children of one 
 common God, possessed of his divinity, inheriting his spark ! True, 
 they are all men, and not brutes ; and they all constitute a family of 
 men, and not of less, or other than, men a family of friends, to wish 
 each other well, and help, not hinder, that mutual Happiness, But, for 
 ail this, they are not Brothers, equals, other selves, one but only, just 
 such friends. " All men are created equal" enough to be mm ; enough, 
 then, to be friends, and that one may say to every other, Do well, be 
 Happy, climb up, I encourage you, I sympathize with you, I will aid you 
 if 1 can ! But only those can be Brothers who stand on the same plane ; 
 who have an equal nature and development ; who feel, each the other, in 
 himself; who are at last, fused and welded into one congeniality! Hu- 
 man Brotherhood has been in the right, in basing itself in the oneness of 
 the race ; but that oneness is false and then the Brotherhood is ! The 
 Eace have grown from a million original parents, and they have a million 
 different natures, from next-door to brutality, up to the realization of 
 human-born Philosophy ! The mighty mass of men have their choicest 
 fellowship with the animals ; and then they do not lack being mated, but 
 verily, they are all Brothers in that low relationship ; while, at the other 
 extremity of the chain, there are some who have almost no Brothers ; but 
 there they are, standing out, and looming up, alone ! The Brotherhood 
 of Man call it a beautiful doctrine, kind, benevolent literally, broth- 
 erly : but wish that it were true ! And since it is not true, call it an ig- 
 norant doctrine, silly, superstitious ! And call it a better doctrine, to be 
 all of a man you can be, even if it leaves you not one Brother ! There 
 is no Brotherhood of Man ! 
 
 There is no such thing as treating men alike. But the thing is, to 
 treat them as they are treat them as men, and then as the men they are. 
 Treat them all well, and beautifully, and for friends Brothers if they 
 are such. But if not, cast not your pearls before swine throw not 
 yourself away. Take every man for what he is, and not for what he is 
 not. And then treat not all men as equals, for they are not. 
 
 There is no such thing as " Loving our neighbors as ourselves." That 
 is making all men equals to ourselves ; but much more, to each other. 
 " Things that are equal to the same thing, are equal to each other." To 
 love our neighbors as ourselves is to make them our equals ; and to make 
 them all such, is to make all equal to each other. We love what we
 
 26 
 
 can, and what we must ; and then happy is it for us if we have grown 
 to that stature, that we can love all men as men, and then as the men they 
 are. More, is unreasonable, and silly. 
 
 There is no such thing as " Doing to others as we would have others 
 do to us." That, too, is making all men equals. It is classing them all 
 together, and applying the same rale to them all. It is saying, Do to 
 him who is only your friend, as you would to him who is your perfect 
 Brother, if they are in the same circumstances. It is saying, Do for one 
 who is of no use in the world, what you would for another, who is of 
 most use in it. We do to every man, what he and his circumstances 
 attract us to do. And then, if he and his circumstances do not attract 
 us to do this, that, or the other, to him, why, that is the end of it there 
 is no help for it ! And we do to every man, what our own natures, under 
 all the circumstances, prompt us to do. And then, it is a beautiful develop- 
 ment to which we have attained, if we are prompted to do to every man, 
 what seems the mutual asking of his state, our state, and all states the 
 mutual fitness of things ! It is the same statement we had before treat 
 all things as they are, and not as they are not Do to others as you can, 
 in fitness to yourself and no less to themselves. More, is an absurdity 
 and ridiculous, even taking themselves for the standard. For, what are 
 they? So much. Then do for them so much no more ! Once and 
 for all, don't make a fool of yourself, and of another man, too, by treat- 
 ing him as he isn't /" 
 
 There is no such thing as Living to do good, and Giving ourselves up 
 to save the world. It is all "vicarious atonement." Instead of saving 
 the world, we exist to save ourselves ; and instead of living to do good, 
 we exist to be Happy ! But we shall do good and at last, all the good 
 we ever can do by being Happy : we shall save others, by saving our- 
 selves. Our Example is our Sermon, and our Charity. We shall ben- 
 efit others most, when we are ourselves what we wish them to become. 
 To make ourselves great, and strong, and perfect, and Happy, is to do all 
 we can ever do to make all others so. For if, thinking to do more for the 
 race, than simply to round ourselves out to fullness, and thus present an 
 example of perfection, we suffer ourselves to go beyond our true harmony 
 in any direction, at once we violate the. harmony, and sacrifice the whole 
 example J^"overdoing is undoing ! Self-blessing is the only blessing ; 
 for self-neglecting-or-injuring, will not only incapacitate us to help others, 
 but also, and equally, teach them to neglect or injure themselves ! [Like 
 Theodore Parker.] There h no philosophy in martyrdom ; but on the 
 contrary, Philosophy will say that all the martyrs have been fools. 
 Though, if they found their Happiness in being martyrs, then there is 
 nothing more to say ; for that is the philosophy to be Happy ! We 
 cannot call any man a fool, let him do what he will because it is his 
 Happiness to do it; we can only say that we should be fools to do the 
 same thing, and that we think he would have been one, if we could only 
 have told him so, and set him to thinking ! But naturally, we must say, 
 that it is not the fitness of things to be a martyr. For, why should one 
 man die, to save another from dying ? or suffer, to prevent another's 
 suffering? or do himself ill, to do some other man, good ? It is not 
 what we exist for, thus to waste and despite ourselves. But we exist to 

 
 27 
 
 build ourselves up make all we can of ourselves. And others exist i. 
 do the some for themselves ; but if they will not " Let every man hoe 
 his own row ! " Every man must. It is his individuality, his selfhood, 
 his own very existence ! And where the same fate is 10 all, the same 
 good must in the end be to all and the Eternal Harmony must be worked 
 out. Though, even if not, still that other must hold that atonement 
 for others is damned ! ^3T"Let all other men be unhappy, but 7 am noi 
 to be unhappy : let the world go to the bottomless, but every man exists 
 to save himself ! 
 
 The whole and the solemn truth has not been told till we go still fur- 
 ther. There is no such thing as " Circumstances altering cases ! " Cir- 
 cumstances make cases ! Circumstances are cases ! Happiness is the 
 All ; and what, at the time, in the place, and as things are at that time, 
 and in that place, will yield the Happiness if they were the last words 1 
 should ever speak that is the thing to be done ! No matter wln.t, if it 
 be only that! You shall see for yourselves in a moment. 
 
 And, ! I only utter a truth which should come home to your hearts 
 like tire, and which men everywhere must believe before they can work 
 out their own redemption, when I make another statement. " The end 
 does justify the means !" ' Tis a bad word "justify" smacking of 
 Religion ; but the end makes needful, beautiful, blissful, the means ! 
 Happiness is It ; and, "justify' 1 or no ' justify," it inevitatcs, lhsn.es, and 
 seals, what will yield it ! You shall know what 1 mean, and how I 
 mean, in still a moment. 
 
 And yet once more, I will try to make the statement still stronger. ! 
 will try to couch it in a phrase, which shall be as instantaneous and irre- 
 sistible as the electric spark ! The only gospel is, Will it pay ? That 
 is all a man exists for, Will it pay? It is Happiness again, and then that 
 is it. Will it pay ? It never pays to be Unhappy ! And what yields Hap- 
 piness, is pay against the Universe ! Wait, still that moment. 
 
 And at last, I will not be cowardly, nor shrink from speaking a still 
 more unpalatable truth, in making, yet for the fourth time, a statement 
 the premise-of-all. Self, self, self, is ail ! There is nothing but sell'; our 
 selfhood is our own very existence ! Not selfishness ; but still, and only, 
 self ! Self-upbuilding, self- perfecting, self- perpetuating, self-happifying ! 
 Self, everything ; and everything else, nothing but to bless self I Self, 
 the Universe ; because every man to himself is the Universe ! For that: 
 is still it, that Happiness is All ; and Happiness is self, and self is all ! 
 Happiness is the heart's core of the heart's core of every man ! And now 
 for the vindication. 
 
 Behold, how there is no limit to a man in the matter of his own Individ- 
 ualness ! A thousand millions of inhabitants on Earth, but each one, 
 Individual each one, the man I am going to describe ! But he stands 
 out alone ! He is himself, and not anybody else ; and then he will ac! 
 himself, and not anybody else. It is not what others want done, but 
 what he wants , not what they think, but what himself thinks. What if 
 the thing was never done before, and somebody else never thought of 
 doing it? he docs think of it, and it/is his to make the experiment ! 
 What if the thing has been done before, and somebody else don't like 
 it ? the not liking it, is somebody eke' business : the doing it, is his bu-
 
 28 
 
 siness ! And so it is his to do new things, and leave everybody else to 
 go behind ; or to do old things, and let everybody else go before just 
 as he likes. It is as long as it is broad : doing what he does, would not 
 make others Happy ; and doing what others do, would not make him 
 Happy ! And so it is for him to act out his nature, and learn others to act 
 out theirs. It is not even for him to act out human nature ; but only, and 
 always, his own. Prove to him that all men, in all ages, have been against 
 him that verily, he is running counter to the united voice of humanity 
 everywhere and what is it to him, so long as he only obeys the instinct 
 of his own nature ? If his nature is human, it is well ; but if not, it is yet 
 his. Prove to him that what will be human nature in the future, when 
 men shall have been made perfect in that great Progression, is against 
 him ; and what have you done, any more ? For that future nature still is 
 not his ; and to himself, his must forever be higher than that ! It is for 
 him to do now, what men will not do in the future ; and it is. for him to do 
 now, what he would not do then ! He don't live in the future, and then it 
 is not for him to do in the future : lie lives now, and then it is for him to do 
 now ! It is for him to act out the nature he has, and the mind he is in. If 
 he is in the mood to sit idle an hour, and do what men would call, icaste. so 
 much of his life, it is his to do it that is what he exists for ; it is himself 
 to do that. And unheard-of tilings, and things that other men dare not do, if 
 he is in the mood, it is his to do them, because it is still himself. He is not 
 to allow anything to come between him and that. He is to know nothing 
 above him ; but to put all men, and all things, even Truth, and the 
 very Universe, under him be himself over all things, and any way be 
 himself! He is not to do a thing at one time, because he would approve 
 it at another; nor refrain from doing it at one time, because he would dis- 
 
 
 
 approve it at another. j3F~He is not to be consistent his only consistency 
 is always to be himself, and his only approval always to be himself; and 
 his only ^approval, not to be himself ! 
 
 At any one time, he will do the best thing. If not what might be the 
 best, yet at last, what is the best. And there is absolutely nothing no 
 act which may not be best. The best thing is to be Happy ! The best 
 thing is to live save life to be Happy ! The best thing is to save life 
 and be Happy ! And then he will do it. He will never commit mur- 
 der, because that other man is to live and be Happy, equally with him- 
 self. He cannot kill him, because that would be against himself ; as 
 being against one who is so far, part of himself. But, if he or another 
 must die, he will not say that it shall be he. Though it be the one who 
 has lain in his bosom, dearest to him, of all the world, he will not say 
 that it shall be he. And the other will not say that it shall be she. Each 
 will live as long as there is power. Cast them into the jaws of death 
 together, with escape for but one, and he will save himself if he can, though 
 compelled to leave the other to her fate ! But let him by set upon by any 
 one who, for any cause, will kill him, and if he will kill him when 
 worst comes to worst, if it ever can come to that, yet he will live ! He 
 will do aU else but still he will live ! He will take a life, or a thousand 
 of them, if it is the best thing he can do. If men will kill him if he 
 tells the truth, he will not tell it he will say nothing. If they will kill 
 him if he does not deny the truth, he will not deny himself ; but, he will
 
 29 
 
 say that he is more than all the truth in the Universe ! He will say that 
 the truth is for him, and not he for the truth ! He will tell a lie it' it is 
 all there is for him ; for he will still live the truth, and the only thing 1 
 that can be truth to him. If he will deceive a tiger that will kill him, 
 then will he deceive a man that will do the same thing. He will never 
 ravish one, for that would be against himself, as being against the one 
 he ravished ; and he will never have sensual union with any, even the 
 one he is joined to for that, too, would be against himself, as being an 
 animal. But, if men could have the power, and would kill him, if he 
 had not union with some one who could be persuaded to his need, as it' 
 she was saving her own life in saving his, both he and she would do so 
 and then they would look up to the Stars and feel that they were noble ! 
 And should offspring come from their meeting, it would be holy ! If 
 men will kill him, if he does not kill himself, like Socrates, or John 
 Brown, he will still live they must do the killing ! They shall never 
 deprive him of his life, till they require him to do something against 
 himself. To live and be Happy, he will dare and do everything even to 
 what may make a whole world of common mortals shrink back and 
 shudder short of himself sacrificing that very Happiness ! That Hap- 
 piness is all that is sacred to him in the Universe ! That is all he exists 
 for ! And then, when he can possess that no longer, he will no longer 
 wish to exist ! It will then be as much himself to cease from suffering, 
 as before, it was to go on in enjoying. And so, when he is slowly dying 
 of cancer, or some other incurable and torturing malady, he will be 
 brave, and patient, and Happy, as long as he can : he will long enjoy, 
 from his greatness of soul, in spite of his body [that is, his pain'] : but, 
 when his courage becomes exhausted, that he can bear no more, but at 
 last it does not pay, but costs more than it comes to then he will take a 
 cordial, and go to sleep ! And the poison-draught shall be to him the 
 Elixir of Life ! He will die to be Happy, as he lived to be die to be; 
 still himself ! And what he is, every man is : the Individuality of one, 
 is the Individuality of all and the Happiness of each, is the rounded 
 Harmony of the VVhole ! 
 
 [Or, equally, should his body be paralyzed, to utter helplessness 
 rather than drag .out long years, of no use to himself, and continual 
 trouble to others, he would have recourse to the same sure deliverance, 
 through the gateway of death ! Or, if age was superinducing total decay 
 of his faculties, rather than reach the final result, he would choose this 
 same more speedy relief the oblivion of the grave rather than that of 
 his faculties ! Or, if the dreadful horrors of hydrophobia were on him, 
 he would bless the pistol that in his own hand should put an instant end 
 to them ! He would not suffer agony, when he could sleep ! And, if 
 he must die at any rate, no matter when or where or how, if he cared, he 
 would choose his death ! So also, if he owed debts, ever so honestly ; 
 though he would pay them if he could, yet if he could not, he would not 
 distress himself on that account neither injuring himself to pay them, 
 nor suffering unhappiness because he could not. If he owed one who 
 did not need however he might want he would make his own Absolute 
 need his only consideration ; for he would say he had a right to live, 
 and not be sacrificed, even if the other went without his due, which he
 
 did not need ! But even, if be owed one who did need, ever so sorely, stili 
 he would preserve his soul in that perfect Happiness; for he would say, 
 " If I wreck another, it yet is not I that wreck him, but the Universe that 
 first wrecks met ' Necessity knows no law,' and I still exist to be Happy ! 
 The other must do as / have to do he must do as he must ! But Jet 
 him be Happy in doing it ; or, if he can't, yet I can and that, in a lower 
 must than his ! " If he owed letters, that indeed ivere owed, and that all 
 men would blame him for not writing even letters to the narrowest and 
 most sacred circle of those that had claims on him yet if he could not 
 write them, without injustice to himself, he would not ; but he would 
 still brave all, in being a philosopher ! [Not as Humboldt, who answered 
 4,000 letters a year.] As also, he would do, at one. time from lo-ng- 
 unsatisfied and continually-increasing demand of some passion of his 
 soul something utterly opposed to all he had done in his whole life be- 
 fore ! He would act in direct contradiction to his record of so many 
 years ! For he would still, only be doing what it was his nature to do 
 his nature to do then : as before, he had only, always done what it was 
 his nature to do before. And then he would still be consistent, in being 
 kimaelf as consistent now, as he ever was. And all men yet will thus 
 be them selves, and nothing else ; and that is what the world has yet to 
 learn, that this is all that men exist for !] 
 
 And now, we are coming to the end. It is, that, so far from a man 
 existing to have anything to do with such a thing as Religion, his only 
 business in this world is to take his comfort. Next after existing because 
 he must because it is the Universe he should he exists alone for 
 Pleasure ! He is here to put his foot on doctrines, and creeds, and du- 
 ties, and ceremonies ; and to give himself up to drinking in Delight ! 
 He is here to enjoy himself'; to gratify his nature ; to satisfy its craving ; 
 to fill himself with good. It is all he has to do, to do what will 
 please him ! It is all he has to fear, to fear that he shall not be pleased 
 enough ! Instead of weeping and crying for his " sins," he is not to 
 weep nor cry for anything. Instead of mourning and heaviness, he is 
 to put on laughter and mirth ! He is to be, always and only, cheerful 
 and light-hearted and joyous. He is never to be in .trouble, and he is 
 never to know sorrow. That is not what he exists for ! When his 
 friends die, or any blow falls, he is not to sink and suffer, for he cannot 
 afford to still it is not what he exists for ! But he is to be glad and 
 Happy then surely he does not exist to grieve a moment ! If ever his 
 heart melts, and his eyes fill, though it must be for emotion, yet it must 
 be only for joy for he is born to be the Child of Joy ! He is born to 
 be the Child of Blessing, and not of Cursing, every day of his existence ! 
 
 That very existence is to be a Bliss, a Rapture ! At last, his destiny 
 rises to perpetual Transport ! Religion for such a being as he ! 
 
 And the end is, that, instead of having anything to do with the God 
 of Religion looking to him, leaning on him, giving up life to him a 
 man should declare independence, and set up for himself ! This is what 
 he exists to be, this is what he is himself. And then let him be him- 
 self. God is dea 1 ; he is the Universe and now let him launch out ! 
 
 Let him dare ; let him soar ; let him mine ! Let him be infinitely more
 
 31 
 
 than all the Gods men ever heard of ! Let him indeed be his own Uni- 
 verse, his own Omnipotence, his own Sufficiency, his own Satisfying ! 
 Ii3t him make his own decrees, and fate things as he will have them, 
 and fashion them after his pleasure ! Let him lay his hand on the Earth, 
 and extort from it its secret ; let him reach forth to the Stars, and master 
 all their mysteries let him bring to light the things that have been 
 hidden in the depths since the Universe was ! Let the eternities be his 
 home ; let him be lord of all that is in immensity let him be king in 
 his own realm, and that realm the infinite ! Let him be what I cannot 
 speak him, but what my soul knows he will yet become ! And then, is 
 it such a being you would have come down to the little bit of a nothing 
 called a God the phantom-God of Religion and dwarf himself to stii! 
 lower than the God, and then look up, and stand in awe, and accept the 
 chains of a slave, forever sacrificed, and there on that altar ? No man 
 can be a man who has a God ; no man can be a man who has any Reli- 
 gion ! ! man, whoever thou art, that confessest to God and Religion, 
 thou art nothing but a miserable slave! Spiritualist, Infidel, 1 must 
 speak the truth ! 
 
 " Be free, ! Man, be FREE ! " 
 
 But the ages roll on, and the Race will yet try what they can do without 
 Religion ! They will grow to be themselves, and to look after themselves. 
 They will live to do themselves good, and make themselves Happy. 
 They will deck life with joy, and existence with sunshine ! They will 
 fill up the cup ! They will make earth, Heaven ! 
 
 THERE is NO ETERNAL WORLD ! It is nothing but a myth of men's 
 brains ! An Eternal World is the third and last great mistake of the 
 Age of Reason ! God has gone, and the Eternal World goes with him, 
 for the Eternal World grew only, out of him ! 
 
 It is apodictic. There has been an Eternal God, and then there has 
 been an Eternal World for him to be in : 'he has eternally existed in that 
 World, and then there has eternally been the World wherdn he has ex- 
 isted : he will eternally exist in that World, and then there will eternally 
 be the World wherein he wi/l exist ! That is the argument. But now, 
 there has been no Eternal God, and then there has been no Eternal World 
 for him to be in : he has not eternally existed in that World, and then 
 there has not eternally been the World wherein lie has existed : he will not 
 eternally exist in that World, and then there will not eternally be the 
 World wherein he will exist ! The God is not, and then the World is 
 not; the God has not been, and then the World has not been ; the God 
 will not be, and then the World will not be ! Eternal God and Eternal 
 World came together, but neither, ever came at all : Eternal God and 
 Eternal World are one, but both are nothing ! There is no Eternal God : 
 the Eternal World is an appendage of the Eternal God, and then there is 
 no Eternal World when the Eternal God goes, the Eternal World goes 
 with him ! 
 
 It is only the fact of a God, that ever made an Eternal World. But 
 when they made their God, they had to make a World for him to be in ;
 
 32 
 
 and if the God was Eternal, so, likewise, had the World to be. The 
 fact that the God had always existed, was the proof that the World had 
 always existed : the fact that the God always would exist, was the proof 
 that the World always would exist. They could not have the God, with- 
 out having him exist in the future, as well as the past ; and then they 
 had to have the World exist in the future, as well as the past : they 
 could not have the God without having him Immortal, and then they 
 had to have the World, Immortal the Immortal God is the sole source 
 of the Immortal World ! There is no Immortal God ; and then there is no 
 Immortal World Immortal God and Immortal World are one ! When 
 goes Immortal God, Immortal World goes with him ! 
 
 1 give you warning ! Beware for your dear Immortality, for it is 
 going to be taken away from you ! Brave men do not care, for they are 
 great and strong ; but you who quake and fear, as if the breath of anni- 
 hilation was already passing by, rouse you, and ward off the threatened 
 doom ! Spiritualists, Infidels, all come forth from your hiding-places, 
 and meet this grand battle of the wurld ! Let the infinite generations be 
 summoned to the conflict. Immortality is now to do or die ! 
 
 It is the Eternal God that makes the Eternal World ; and it is the Im- 
 mortal God that makes the Immortal World and then if there is no Im- 
 mortal God, there is no Immortal World. And if there is no Immortal 
 World, then there is nothing Immortal in that World ! It is only the 
 fact of a God existing in an Immortal VVorld, that ever made anything 
 else exist in it. But, when they made God exist in it, then they had to 
 make themselves and all other things exist in it, with him ! The ration- 
 ale is perfect. It stares you in the face. I challenge you to meet it ! 
 
 You and all things, Immortal, just because God was ! You and all 
 things, existing in an Immortal World, just because he did ! Existing 
 with a being that didn't exist ! And existing with him in a World that 
 didn't exist ! And then nothing existing with him in a World that didn't 
 exist ! Nothing existing with nothing, nowhere! Or, if you will have it 
 reduced to still lower terms. Keeping company with nothing i And 
 nothing keeping company with nothing ! And nothing keeping company 
 with nothing, nowhere! But this is the sole source of Immortality! 
 Resist it if you can ! 
 
 Everything has come from the God, that now, you yourself have dis- 
 carded ; and then everything must go with the God. There is no salvation 
 for Immortality, without reviving the old God of the heathen ! It is not 
 one or the other ; it is both or neither. And it is not both and then it 
 is not one ! 
 
 But there is a Universe ; and what says that about an Eternal World ? 
 The Universe is Eternal ; and then it is made up of everla-ting succession, 
 and not everlasting continuance : it is endless change, and not endless 
 vow. eness ; endless many, and not endless one : and at once, it is not an 
 Eternal World, or number of Eiernal Worlds, but an Eternal Series of 
 Worlds. Instead of always, any one VVorld, it is always, continually- 
 new Worlds, coming and going, one after another, forever. So that there 
 is no one World in the Universe that is Eternal, and then there is no 
 Eternal Wurld; but all the Worlds, and all the States, and all the 
 things, to absolute everything, are temporal and changing, existing for
 
 33 
 
 but a brief space themselves, and then followed by others. The Uni* 
 verse is Eternal, and then nothing else is i 
 
 And so is the Universe Immortal, (for that is the same thing,) and 
 then nothing else is. There is no Immortal World in it, nor Immortal tiling 
 in it. There is no Immortal State, nor Immortal being. The Immortality 
 of the Universe rules out all other Immortality, as its Eternity does all 
 other Eternity. And then the Immortality of the Universe rules out 
 Immortality ! 
 
 If there is a Universe, there must be Material ; and if there is an 
 Eternal Universe, there must be Eternal Material. There must always 
 be Matter; and then the Matter of each thing or being, must always </o 
 back to its condition before it was that thing or being. If it does not go 
 back, the Material will become exhausted there will not always be Mat- 
 ter. So that the Matter of every World and being, goes back ; and then 
 there is no Eternal World, nor eternal being. And likewise, the Matter 
 of every World and being goes back, and then there is no Immortal 
 World, nor Immortal being. Call it Eternity, or Immortality, it is 
 equally impossible it is the very destruction of the Universe ! 
 
 So does the Universe demonstrate Immortality impossible, in that 
 grand demonstration of the soul of man what it is, whence it comes, 
 and whither it goes ! It is the soul that is to be Immortal ; but the Uni- 
 verse steps in, and says, / claim this soul ; I made it ; it is part of my 
 Matter ; and then it must come back to me, like all other Matter ! .Mind, 
 Soul, Spirit, it is all one, and it is all one with Intelligence ; and Intelli- 
 gence is sheer and absolute Matter. All Matter is Intelligence ; but, as 
 it ascends to higher and higher organisms, it develops higher and higher 
 Intelligence, and is it; until, in Man's organism, it is Thought, Sensa- 
 tion, Volition, Intellection, Love, Joy, Hope, Fear the whole of this 
 which we call Mind, Soul, Spirit ! It is the very organization of Man to 
 organize all this ; and then it is the very Matter of Man to be all this ! 
 Not to be all this, would be not to be this organism we all are. It is as 
 much this organism to be all this, as it is the organism of a tree to be a 
 tree, or that of a cabbage to be a cabbage. It is just as much this organ- 
 ism to do all that Man does j^~even to those very things claimed to 
 constitute him an Immortal being as ?t is that of the tree to shoot out 
 branches and put forth leaves, or that of the cabbage to head up, or that 
 of every plant to suck up water through its root's, or that of a flower to 
 bloom, or that of grass to grow in blades, or that of anything to do any- 
 thing. And then, when this organism dies, dissolves, goes back Where 
 will the soul be ? and Echo says, Where ? and the Universe, that commands 
 all men's organisms back, says, Where ? and what, do you say ? Tell 
 me where goes the soul when the organism goes ? Tell me where is 
 the soul when the organism goe ? Where is the soul when there is no 
 organism because it has already gone ? When what was the organism 
 is nothing and nowhere, or scattered over ten thousand miles, then what 
 has become of that " immortal soul?" It is immortal in those ele- 
 ments scattered over a thousand leagues ! It has gone back ! It is 
 now, no more ! It died when live organism died ; it dissolved when 
 it dissolved ; it was scattered when it was scattered ! It is now growing 
 into other organisms ; into a tree, into a cabbage, into a man ! It is be- 
 3
 
 34 
 
 coming a part of other souls, to live and die and do as it has done ! And 
 so it is becoming part of a greater and more glorious Immortality that 
 of the Universe ! 
 
 So that a man has a soul, if you please to call it so ; only, it is not 
 Immortal ! But on the contrary, all organisms die ; and then man's 
 organism does. And when man's organism dies, his soul dies it is all 
 one death. So that his soul is as Immortal as his organism ; but not as 
 Immortal as the Universe, which swallows up, and dissipates, and re- 
 comprehends, all organisms ! And then, forever, there is no Immortal 
 World, nor Immortal being dwelling in one ! The Universe has set that 
 at rest, by its own fundamental fact of developing Intelligence ! 
 
 [And then all the trouble in talking about the soul, is calling it an im- 
 mortal and not a mortal one !] 
 
 There is no such thing as a great haystack of fine Matter, nor a moun- 
 tain of it, somewhere in the Universe, all " salted down" and ready, 
 where they can go and cut off a slice, every time they want to make a 
 spirit every time a child is to be born. There was no such fine Matter 
 to make the God out of; and now, there is none to make a spirit out of. 
 But spirits are made out of the universal Matter, like everything else. It 
 is not the matter which constitutes the Intelligence, but it is the organiza- 
 tion. The same clay of the street, which bears the tramp of a horse, in 
 my cheek would feel the touch of a finger, or the point of a pin. The 
 same iron that a sledge cannot dent, in my nose would be sensitive to 
 the aroma of flowers ; and in my brain, to the thought of another brain ! 
 Organization creates the human soul ; and then equally, disorganization 
 will destroy it. 
 
 And even, if there was fine Matter, it must have grown into your 
 " spirits," ahoays ; for there is the same reason. And then, because 
 your spirits cannot go back, the Mailer must have become exhausted ; so 
 that, even if there was some, once, yet there is none, now. And if you 
 say that verily, the spirits have been in existence always, how, where, and 
 what doing? and what do you know about any such thing? It is all 
 nonsense, stuff, imposition ! 
 
 But even, if your spirits have been in existence always, yet they have 
 always, and just as much, been unconscious ; and then it has been noth- 
 ing to them that they were in existence ! They might as well have 
 waited and been manufactured out of the haystack ! The whole thing- 
 is so much moonshine ; and you are driven to it, only to uphold Immor- 
 tality ! It is a bad cause, which needs such help ! 
 
 Parents are the generators of spirits ! Parents give existence to human 
 souls, as well as bodies ; for soul and body are all one. If men are not 
 the creators of their children's soul*, then there is no truth in Hereditary 
 Descent. It is impossible that one man should stamp his qualities on 
 another man's mind, unless he creates that mind ! But human beings 
 do not create each other, until they themselves first exist ; nor until they 
 come together, two-and-two, in the great Sacrament of Parentage. And 
 then spirits are only man-made institutions ; as a babe is after all, nothing 
 but ' a great institution ! " 
 
 What has a beginning, must have an end. And then a man's exist- 
 ence must have an end, because it had a beginning. The eternities must
 
 35 
 
 balance : what is forever, one way, must be, the other way ; and what is 
 not forever, both ways, cannot be, either way. What has one end, has 
 two ends : if your existence had an end in one direction, it will have in 
 the other : if you have not been Eternal, you will not be Immortal ! 
 
 Though, if you have been Eternal, yet you do not know it you were 
 unconscious. And then, if you will be Immortal, you Avill not know 
 that ; for equally, you will be unconscious. What has one end has two 
 ends: if your consciousness began, it will cease; if it has not been 
 Eternal, then it will not be Immortal ! And that is the same as to say 
 that you will not, be ; for it is your consciousness that makes you Immor- 
 tal ! Not to be conscious, is not to exist at all ! 
 
 Elements are Eternal ; Forms are not. Forms come and go ; Elements 
 remain the same. It is what makes an Element, that it is always the 
 same ; it is what makes a form, that it comes and goes. And then Ele- 
 ments are Immortal, and Forms are not ; and then a man is not, for he is 
 only a Form ; but all that composes his Form will be dissipated, and 
 then all that is his Form will be the whole of him will be. His Ele- 
 ments will continue, but he will disappear he will go, as ho came ! 
 
 At last, Immortality is nothing but Natural Philosophy the question 
 of Matter the question of the Universe ! It is not Logic, but Mathe- 
 matics ; not metaphysics, but solid, absolute Physics ; not what men say, 
 but what the Universe says, and what it will have true, in order to be 
 the Universe : and then, unless men can successfully cope with the Uni- 
 verse, they can never lay claim to live forever ! It is the Immortality of 
 the Universe, and not the Immortality of men ! 
 
 But now, this very Immortality of the Universe, not only prevents the 
 Immortality of men, but it is precisely what gets the start of that, to 
 make it not needed, as itself creating something to be its perfect and 
 eternal equivalent ! Men cannot be Immortal ; but yet. Immortally there 
 are men both Eternally and Immortally, there are men ! Remember, 
 that the Universe which made the God unnecessary, was a Universe, for- 
 ever and forever, of men; and now the Universe which makes Immor- 
 tality unnecessary, is forever and forever, a Universe of men ! The Uni- 
 verse exists for men, and to unfold them to exist that is Avhat the mighty 
 Infinite is for ! Men make Man, and Man makes the Universe, and I:-, 
 the Universe. The Eternity of the Universe is his Eternity ; and its Im- 
 mortality, his Immortality. So that if men are not Eternal, yet Man is ; 
 if they are not Immortal, yet equally, he is there always were men, and 
 there always ivill be men ! 
 
 Men have to go back, but Man has not ; for Men are Earths, and 
 Earths are men ; and then men have to go back with the Eatths. an 1 to 
 be the Earths, for the Earths have to go back to be the Universe the 
 Earths are the Universe : but Man is the Universe, for it takes the Earths 
 to make Man, for it takes men to make Man. The Earth and men are 
 one, and the Universe and Man are one, which the Earths and men make. 
 And then the Earths and men are not Eternal, nor Immortal ; but the 
 Universe and Man, are both ! ^ 
 
 So that Man exists everywhere and forever! and what can there be 
 more ? So that the perfect Universe is one of men, the highest and 
 noblest thing in the Universe, and all the thing it exists for as well as.
 
 36 
 
 all the thing erer worth its existing ! So that there are human beings on 
 every world, to grow into the perfect destiny of human beings, and thus 
 work out that only possible sum of existence, a continual good, running 
 both ways forever ! I tell thee, thou brother ! if this is not the Immor- 
 tality thou hast dreamed of, thou shajt yet confess it is an Immortality, 
 for which a Universe might well sighi 
 
 And it is more than thine ! An Immortality of men coming and going, 
 is more than an Immortality of men always remaining, even if they could 
 remain ; changing men are more than same ones ; always new ones, than 
 forever old ones. It is eternally, a new Universe to enjoy, and then, 
 beings to enjoy it ; instead of an old Universe, and beings who have al- 
 ready, always enjoyed it ! 
 
 And if men had known of tkis Immortality, they would never have 
 dreamed of the other ! If they had known there had been men forever, 
 they would never have dreamed of themselves living forever ! For they 
 would have seen that those men forever, needed to live forever, as 
 much as themselves ; and then they would see that Living Forever was 
 not the Economy of all things was not the Universe ! And likewise, 
 they would see that if those men forever, had lived forever, they them- 
 selves could not have lived they would not now be alive ! For those 
 men would have all the Matter in them ; and then there would be none 
 left to make themselves out of ! A pretty predicament they would be 
 in with no Matter to make them ! As also, and equally, if they were 
 to live forever, the folks that were to come after, would have no Matter 
 to make them! But, if the world had only existed a few thousand years, 
 as everybody used to think, why, then, men could get up just such an 
 Immortality as they pleased; for here was all the Matter, and here al- 
 ready, they were, and there was nothing to hinder their living on till the 
 day of doom ! And as to their living-on, making it impossible for every- 
 body else to do so, or even to live at all, they had not brains enough to 
 think of that ! So that Immortality goes right back to the idea of a 
 beginning of things ; that old lie, which men ought now to be willing to 
 put under their feet, and explode forever ! 
 
 There is no Immortality of individual men! The whole Universe 
 proves it. This great rationale, of Immortality for Man, proves it. That 
 is the true and only Doctrine of Immortality Humanity forever in this 
 Universe 1 That is the true and only Statement Men forever, and Men 
 but making Man ! Man is the one true and grand Immortality ; for He, 
 only, runs parallel with the Universe, and is the. Universe and then 
 He, only, can be Immortal as the Universe He, only, can have as his, 
 that very Immortality which the Universe has as its ! 
 
 All things prove this Immortality ; nothing proves any other. What- 
 ever seems to prove any other, after all, proves only this. All evidence 
 is resolved into the need that there should be men that the Universe 
 should exist for humanity. All your statements melt down into the 
 simple proposition, that Man is more than everything else, and therefore he 
 shof$d be Immortal. But for individual Immortality, there is no statement. 
 
 All men have not believed in Immortality. Nobody knows what the 
 first men believed, nor whether they believed anything ! But afterward, 
 they believed in Transmigration ; but that was not Immortality, but its
 
 37 
 
 perfect annihilation ! It was one man living on in another man ; and then 
 it was still but one man and then the other was blotted out ! And even, 
 when they came to believe in all living on, still they didn't believe so. 
 but they only thought they did. As men all thought they believed in ;, 
 God, when they did not, but only, each man believed in his own idol, so 
 each man believed in his idea of living-on, but that differed from every 
 other man's idea they all believed against each other, and believed ic 
 nothing! If one of ^hem believed in living-on, all the rest didn't ; for 
 they didn't believe what he did ! They all believed in their own ideas ; 
 and then there were as many ideas as folks ; and then there was nothing 
 but their ideas ! But even, if they all had believed in living on, it would 
 only go to prove it a lie ; for almost all, men have ever believed yet, has 
 Iteen a lie ! It is high time for the world to grow out of all these old lies. 
 
 And there is no analogy for Immortality. But verily, the universal 
 and infinite analogy is against it. Everything else goes back. Man die? 
 and seems to does he 1 Everything looks like it, just as much as in the 
 case of everything else. Everything does just as in the case of every- 
 thing else not a particle of difference not a thing lo show the odds. 
 There lies the man, dead ; he cannot stir ; for all the world, he is pre- 
 cisely like a dead ox or a dead stone, if you say that the ox, too, is Im- 
 mortal : presently the body rots down, and becomes manure, and nothing 
 is left but the bones ; in time they, too, rot, and the whole body disap- 
 pears there is not one particle of it left and now, where* s the main ? 
 
 There isn't foundation for a dream, that he isn't dead and used up, ju.-t 
 as he looks to be ! If other things are dead, that act in the same way, //< 
 is. But other things all do go back, and have to, to carry on the Urn- 
 verse ; and then he has to he has he is dead ! 
 
 What and where is the evidence that this man is now alive ; that nnv 
 part of him is alive ? What and where is this spirit which you say has 
 left him ? Where was it before it left him, while it was yet in his body 
 and what was there beside his body ? And where is it now, after it h;i? 
 left ? Point out this spirit, and show us what it had to do with the man'? 
 living, and then with his dying, so that we can see through this great 
 mystery of a man dying who don't die ! But, 1 can point out the 
 spirit; I can lay my finger on the soul; I can demonstrate the soul. 
 though it be Immortal, and if it be Immortal ! It is all in the brain 
 here is where your spirit is. It is this organism, which you call man ; 
 it is greatly, in every part of this organism, down to the very toes ; 
 but it is specially and absolutely, in this "capital seat of government," 
 the brain: not after ^ you have killed the man, for then the organism 
 is dead, and the brain is dead ; but now, while the man is alive. Not 
 all of the brain is most strictly soul ; though all is indivisibly con- 
 nected with it, and the absolute condition oJ it. Not its innumerable 
 and minute blood-vessels, with the blood they circulate ; though the 
 part which is true soul is directly manufactured from that blood, and 
 therefore the vessels and blood, are -all over and through, the brain, 
 and make up a great part of the whole. Not the countless nerves, 
 equally, all over it ; some of them radiating from it, to all parts of 
 the body ; and some of them through it, from the animal brain, back 
 of it and belo'w it. Not the fluids in these nerves ; still more neavlv
 
 38 
 
 one with the true matter of the brain, and serving to transmit its mes- 
 sages to the body, or those of the other brain to this. Nor yet, the 
 white part, or medullary substance, of the brain ; something like the 
 spinal cord which ends there, and serving as a center and kind of frame- 
 work, around and on -which, to build up the brain. But the gray, cin- 
 eriiious matter this is the brain-of-all this is the final soul itself. This 
 is it that thinks. This it is that loves, hopes, joys, fears, plumes itself 
 on being Immortal ! And this is the very, ' precious and Immortal 
 soul," all men have always been talking about ! 
 
 But so, this brain is all one, each part essential to every other, and the 
 whole necessary to the one grand result, the full and perfect soul. And 
 this brain is all being wasted and renewed, every day of our lives. It is 
 wasted by every thought, for thought is still brain. Every time ATC 
 think, or will, or feel, or do whatever, a portion of the brain is given off, 
 and we call it thought. Our thought goes forth into the air, and then, 
 so much of our brain is in the air ; and other men taste it, and know 
 what we are thinking of. They know the brain that is left, by that in 
 the air. And the brain is renewed, by everything we eat, and drink, and 
 inhale. So a man's soul is daily manufactured for him, out of food he can 
 weigh in the scales bread, pork, potatoes, or whatever liquid, from 
 tumbler, cup, or jug and air, gas 1 , electricity, and all elements. All 
 these make blood, and blood makes the brain. And then the brain, being 
 made, though out of such gross substances, is yet the highest and finest 
 organism in the world ; and therefore it is and does, what no other organ- 
 ism can be nor do, and all itself need be and do, to make it all the soul or 
 spirit is. Be it or not, that it is the highest and finest Matter, it yet, is 
 transceadently superior to all other organizations of Matter. Say that 
 electricity is finer, but it is not organized, and it cannot be ; and there- 
 fore, the brain can infinitely outdo it. If electricity can thunder once, 
 the brain can, ten thousand times, and ten thousand more on the end 
 it is a perpetual battery of electricity ! Though, since the brain is the 
 highest organism, it must equally, while it is the organism, be the high- 
 est Matter highest, but not finest. It is higher than electricity, in that 
 it is more than that. It is higher than any Matter, because it is more. 
 It is now, being organized, being brain, immeasurably above what even 
 itself was, before it was brain. Then it was corn ; and before that, earth ; 
 and before that, stone or mineral ; and at first, it was the universal gran- 
 ite of the Earth's primeval crust. Now, it is the absolute thing men call 
 Mind. For, precisely that is the difference between brain and all other 
 Matter. Other Matter is anything and everything : this Matter is Mind. 
 If you want to touch Soul, you can this Matter is Soul. If you 
 want to see Spirit, you can this Matter is Spirit. Phrenology has 
 hit it, that Brain shows Mind. But, just as much, it has missed if, that 
 Brain is organ to Mind. Brain shows Mind because it is Mind itself. 
 
 So, put an end to this brain, and you have forever told the story 
 of the soul. Because brain is soul, therefore, when Brain dies. Mind 
 dies, Soul dies, Spirit dies. Destroy man's organism, and you destroy 
 its properties ; kill him, and you kill his thought ; as, when you kill 
 a tree, you kill its leaves ; or a rose-bush, its roses. Preserve the 
 brain, after you have killed a man, but still it is dead, it is a dead soul ;
 
 39 
 
 it can no more do the work of a soul, than that rose-bush cut down, 
 can bear roses. And let it alone, and it will speedily moulder, and be- 
 come no soul at all. 
 
 Absolutely, the soul is annihilated every night, for it goes to sleep 
 every night because the brain does ; and then it is, for the time being, 
 dead : and it would be dead, if the animal brain, which never sleeps, did 
 not carry on the organism, and rest it, and thus wake this brain up again. 
 People say their souls don't sleep, but they do ; their very spirit does ; it 
 has to : for that is the whole philosophy of resting and restoring the 
 body, that the spirit must sleep, to let the body rest. If the spirit worked 
 on incessantly, it would wear the body out. Call the spirit what you 
 will, and the body what you will, yet, till one sleeps, the other can't. 
 People say they dream when they sleep, and so they are not asleep ; but 
 they never dream except when they are waking, or at least, when a part 
 of them is awake they never dream and sleep together. They say they 
 dream all night ; then they don't sleep any all night they are only half 
 asleep. They don't dream all night ; dreams seem very long, and all the 
 dreams they have, don't take up five minutes. So it is the spirit that 
 sleeps, after all ; and the whole man sleeps, except this animal brain, 
 which works the heart, and lungs, and a-11 the involuntary organs. And 
 no man has ever yet, been able to answer this argument from Sleep. No 
 man can possibly explain Sleep, on the hypothesis of Immortality. It is 
 an everlasting and infinite obstacle. If the soul goes out into utter noth- 
 ingness, every night even so that, if the man could be killed without 
 waking him, it would never know what hurt it, nor so much as, that it 
 was hurt then, infallibly, it will go out into the same nothingness at 
 death ! If the sleep of a few hours is the spirit's oblivion, depend upon 
 it, that will be perpetual Oblivion when it lays itself down to the sleep 
 of the grave ! Tremble when you give yourself up to rest, at the thought 
 that you are about to sink into the arms of annihilation ! / lie down 
 every night, with the consciousness that I am going to be annihilated ! 
 [But going to sleep is perfect bliss, and so will be that last annihilation, 
 when it comes !] 
 
 So that this is the whole philosophy of the soul ; this is all there is ef 
 the spirit they tell so much about. There is no spirit-organism in the 
 other organism, one man inside of another ; for that can't be the thing 
 is impossible. What is in that man, is that man, and there is no place 
 for anything else. A spirit inside of a man, is all one with a devil inside 
 of him ; he can no more be possessed with a spirit, than he can be pos- 
 sessed with a devil ! There is nothing in a tree that is not the tree ; and 
 so there is nothing in a man that is not the man. There is nothing in 
 anything, that is not that thing no invisible, intangible something, in 
 things, and common to things, and yet not things. If there is electricity 
 in all things, yet in them, it is a part of them ; or, if you will not have it 
 part of them, then, instead of all things, it is all things and electricity 
 beside ; and then there is nothing but all things and electricity ! There 
 is not, yet, something else, still that same invisible, intangible something ; 
 but infallibly, there are only, precisely those things. There is no such 
 thing as something pervading things ; but either, in those things, it is 
 those things ; or, there are both the things, and it : and it in one of the
 
 40 
 
 things, is not the same with it in another, but there are as many it's as 
 thera are things with it in them ; and by this time, there are all the Jirst 
 things, and all these other things to be added to them there are so many 
 things, -and then there is nothing but the things at last ! And then there 
 is still, nothing in a man; neither this invisible, intangible something, 
 nor yet any other something ; but there is, after all, only the man. And 
 there is not something that leaves him at death ; but the whole man is 
 right there, dying. There is nothing that leaves a tree when it dies ; or 
 if there is, what goes, absolutely was the tree, and now it will equally, 
 become something else it will not be tree any more. So there is noth- 
 ing that leaves a man ; or if there is, yet, both it was the man, and also, 
 hereafter it will not be either way, there is still nothing but the man. 
 But nobody can show that one particle does leave him. Weigh him, dy- 
 ing, in the most delicate balance, and it will not tremble a hair when his 
 life goes out ; and then it does not go out, but only, we say it does. In- 
 stead of his life going out, or anything going out, it is simply, that he 
 dies. His life as much stays in, because it can't get out, as it does the 
 other thing. It does neither, it does nothing there is no life. The 
 very phrase still deceives us, so that, when we speak of his life going 
 out, or even his life, we repeat to ourselves that old lie, of something 
 beside himself something that is not he. But, if we will say, his life, it 
 is simply that his life ceases he ceases the organism ceases. If the 
 man was killed, the organism was at once destroyed : the bullet, the axe, 
 the tree, or whatever, violently violated the organism, that it could no 
 longer preserve its integrity remain what it was. If the man died, 
 whether from age, sickness, or any or all reasons, then the organism was 
 worn out, and it stopped like a clock run down, it had no more power 
 to go But in either case, the very instant the organism stopped, strictly 
 it ceased to exist ; for that is what makes an organism its being a thing 
 that will go. An organism is that which, out of materials, builds itself 
 up something else, and preserves itself that something else ; and then it 
 must continue to build itself up ; and the moment it does not, it ceases 
 to be an organism not only, the one it was, but any organism. A dead 
 organism is not an organism ; but only, it was one, and it has not yet had 
 time to be dissipated the Matter is still there, but is on\y\organic ; in- 
 stead of an organism, organic remains. And then what the man's organ- 
 ism was, afier it stopped, was verily, not an organism, but only what had 
 been one, now going to decay for it commenced going, the instant it 
 stopped. A tree begins to go to pieces the very year it dies, though it 
 may still stand, for a hundred ; so a man's organism starts for the ground 
 the minute it dies, even if it don't get there for as long a time as the tree. 
 A man's organism, and a man, are the same ; and dying and ceasing are 
 the same ; and then a man's dying, is simply his organism ceasing. And 
 living, and being an organism or a man, are the same ; and then the 
 whole thing about any li/e of the man, is simply that same we had be- 
 fore there was an organism, but it has ceased once there was a man, 
 *but now there is none. And then, forever, there is still nothing but the 
 man JSTnot even any life to go out of him ! 
 
 And, if there is no spirit in man before his death, then there is no 
 spirit of him, after his death. As nothing went out of him, there
 
 was nothing of him after it went out ! Though, if something did go 
 out of him, yet it will not make a spirit, for it weighed nothing 
 there is not enough of it ! A spirit must be an organism ; but 
 there is not Matter enough to make an organism out of ! The particles 
 are not thick enough together, that they can reach across from one to his 
 neighbor, to organize ! There is no such thing as these fine, impalpable, 
 airy nothings floating about, everywhere and nowhere all the same, which 
 a Fly might fly right through, or the least breath dissipate ; but, to be 
 anj- thing that shall not instantly be wasted, there must be solid, actual, 
 absolute Matter. If a thundeibolt wields a terrible and resistless power, 
 yet it is but one flash, and then all is over; and the very flash could 
 never come, till the electricity had been condensed from far and near in 
 the clouds. Even if there is sufficient electricity in a single drop of water, 
 to kill a man, yet while it is water there is not you have to retort the 
 Avater, and develop the electricity. You but resolve solid into something 
 else ; and then that is your confession that you had to have solid ! 
 Though, once again, if there could be spirit-organisms, yet they could 
 not be Immortal ; but, infallibly, they must all go out like every other 
 organism : for that is the very nature of an organism, to come and yo 
 that is precisely what makes it an organism ; and then, if there couL.l be 
 a Spiritual one, it would make no difference ! Those who are making 
 all this perpetual noise about an organism existing forever yes, a Spir- 
 itual organism, for that is the very organism I am speaking of don't 
 know what they are talking about ! The thing is a contradiction ! 
 
 Point out these spirits in which you believe ! Tell us whereabouts in 
 the Universe they dwell, and what at last they are ! But I can tell you 
 where they came from that God ! He was a spirit ; and human beings 
 were going to live on with him, and so they had to be spirits ! With one 
 such great spirit, it was a thing of course to have ever so many little ones ! 
 And then there is no more proof of the little ones, than of the graat one ; 
 but the great one has gone, and the little ones go, too. There is no more, 
 one of these spirits you talk about, than there is that God. And there is 
 no more, a heaven, a happy Immortality, than there is a hell, a miserable 
 Immortality each is the same superstition ; there is the same founda- 
 tion for one there is for the other. And there are no more, any angels, than 
 devils ; and no more, any human spirits, than either. There are no more, 
 any invisible spirits, than there are witches, fairies, ghosts, spooks, or 
 good and evil genii. People can't point out these things : you can't 
 point out your nothings. And then they are nothings, and there are no 
 spirits. But it is my conviction that when men die, they don't live, and 
 when they are dead, they're dead and not that we have only been talking! 
 
 But you appeal to facts ; and J appeal to facts most of all I appeal to 
 them! That is the only thing I have been doing! That is exactly 
 it, that it is the facts of this Universe which prove no Immortality, 
 which make Immortality impossible ! You appeal to facts, but I ap- 
 peal to the facts, the facts of all ages. 1 appeal to the fact that all 
 your facts (pretended, then,) are only exceptional ones, here and there 
 something picked out from the history of the race during all these 
 centuries, and most of all, just now, after so long a time, which you 
 think you can construe into proof of the existence of spirits two or
 
 42 
 
 three pretended facts in the midst of this continuous experience of a mil- 
 lion of years ! Who are you to talk about facts, when all the facts of the 
 perfect world are against you ? Where are all these spirits of such thou- 
 sands of generations ? Where have they been ? W T hat are they doing, 
 and where do they keep themselves, that we have never known anything 
 about them ? The bnre fact of such a question, is its own overwhelming 
 answer ! The bare fact that there is a doubt, that there has ever been a 
 doubt, is the certainty of demonstration ! If there were any spirits, the 
 whole world, as one man, would know it ! If all these men who have ever 
 existed on the Earth, in all times and all lands, had lived on till now, such 
 an innumerable company of mighty, moving beings somewhere, and their 
 natures still joined to ours, and ours to theirs, and with all their power to 
 traverse Space, and revisit this world, and here to reveal themselves to mor- 
 tals the very power of spirits of the air if all this were so, every man 
 and woman and child on the globe, would know it ! And every man 
 and woman and child on the globe, always would have known it ! Think 
 of a soul, what it is that it is thunder, it is lightning, it is omnipotence : 
 think what innumerable multitudes of such souls there are that are dead, 
 even all these same ones that have gone before : think of these dead souls 
 as after all, not dead, but, yet alive, their true and natural selves, stronger 
 than before, even every one of them able to be and do and then think of 
 a whole world of mortals asking the question together, Where all those 
 innumerable dead souls are ! The very question overturns the whole 
 supposition, and thunders back the answer to every one of the universal 
 millions asking it, Nowhere ! the dead souls are nowhere ! If there had 
 ever been any such beings real, the world could never have called them 
 spirits the very name is the most perfect reductio ad absurdum ! In- 
 visible, impalpable, impossible beings NOTHINGS ! And, if there had 
 
 ever been any such existences real, the world could never have called 
 their home, The Great Unknown, The Undiscovered Country, The Silent 
 Laud, The Bourn whence no traveler returns ! The very names prove 
 no such Place, and then, no such beings in it ! The whole thing is 
 an infinite impossibility ! 
 
 jJST'And all that you say about "certain conditions being requisite to 
 the manifestation of spirits," only makes the matter so much the worse ! 
 For it is a palpable, and at last a transparent, confession that after all, 
 there are no spirits, or they would not need " conditions ! " Why don't 
 spirits create " conditions ? " That is precisely it, that there is not 
 enough of them to do it there is nothing of them, and so they can't 
 do anything there is nothing of them, and so they don't exist ! Why 
 don't you talk about " conditions" to a real, live man ? And then, why 
 do you talk about them to a man's spirit, which is so much more real and 
 live than the man possibly can be ? j5T'The real fact of a true human 
 spirit makes all such " conditions" as you talk about impossible ! 
 
 For myself, I know there are no spirits. Not for you, nor for any others, 
 but for myself, I know that the dead have no existence. There are no such 
 beings to-day, as Plato, and Jesus, and Bacon, even if there ever was any 
 Jesus ! There is no Humboldt now, nor Owen, nor Paine, nor Shakspeare. 
 John Brown has gone out, and Washington Irving, and Washington him- 
 self, and Cromwell, and Napoleon. [And now, Theodore Parker.] The
 
 43 
 
 dead are not alive to me, and I know they could not be alive and I not 
 know it ! The great masters of the world's thought, the intellects th;it 
 have ruled the ages, would flow into their own, and have fellowship with 
 their brother ! But they all sleep, and I know it as I know Existence ! 
 
 But you appeal to Spiritualism ; and I appeal to Spiritualism. .1 appeal 
 to it, as perfectly impossible to prove anything opposed to all this proof 
 the other ivay so many thousands of years, and as, on the very face r of 
 things, only able to furnish proof confirmatory of all this that has been be- 
 fore ! Spiritualism all finds its easy solution in living men ; and if you did 
 not first ignore living men, and assume this long and superstitious faith, of 
 the existence of dead ones, you would never think of making Spiritualism 
 Spiritual ! Men's brains are the only spirits ; and live brains, and not dead 
 ones, are the only authors of Spiritualism ! As the bruin is equal to, and 
 is, all this on earth, which you call a human soul, even so it is equal to, and 
 is, all this, somewhere, which you call a departed spirit. Men's brains are 
 not now, all they will be ; and some men's brains are not now, what other 
 men's brains are ; and the same men's biains are not at one time, all they 
 are at another and then Spiritualism resolves directly into what some of 
 these brains now are and do. Clairvoyance is nothing but some of these 
 brains, either in their natural or abnormal state; it is no more, anything 
 above these brains, than Somnambulism is, for it is precisely the same thing 
 with Somnambulism. And all men will yet be Clairvoyant, even in their 
 natural state ; and then there will be a transparent, road for all that is real in 
 Spiritualism, and infinitely more ! Spiritualism that is real, is all reducible 
 to Sympathy, somehow, somewhere, Bomewhen whether we can tell tiie 
 precise, facts, no matter : rapport with Nature, sympathy with Existence ! 
 A Clairvoyant is only in sympathy ; he does not if<?,because his spirit leaves 
 his body, and goes to see for his spirit is his body; and one part of his 
 body never goes without the other parts his spirit never goes without his 
 legs ! And neither does he see because some other spiiit, that dun';, rxini 
 if it is out of the body, and that, if it is in some body is that body he does 
 not see because such a spirit comes and tells him ; but on the contrary, lie 
 is at home, and everybody else is at home ! But, he is in such sympathy 
 with something, even though a thousand miles off : ho is in such direct 
 and intimate rapport with it, that he becomes sensitive to it, and that is to 
 be sensible o/it, to feel it, to know it as existing, and the kind of thing it is 
 that exists : and by this time, he sees it, and you have reached the end of 
 all a man at home, and yet seeing ! And all men will yet grow into this 
 great and perfect Sympathy, with each other, and with all things. And 
 then there Avill be no Spiritualism ; but it will be Menism the simple, and 
 easy, but wonderful, being and doing of Men ! JSTSo that Spiritualism 
 builds itself outright, on this ignoring the nobility and progression of the 
 human Soul ! 
 
 " But we see spirits." So you do, and everybody sees everything. 
 But now, nobody sees anything but only, all men see pictures of 
 things ! And you only see pictures of what are not things pictures 
 of nothing ! Your own minds make the pictures you see ! Clairvoy- 
 ants make a great many of the things they see ; they don't see them, 
 but only, they think they do : and so you make all the pictures yuv. 
 see ; you don't see them, but only, you think you do. All spirit-
 
 44 
 
 seeing is Clairvoyance ; and as all Clairvoyants see other things when 
 they don't, so they all see spirits when they don't. And so there was 
 never a spirit seen, only when there was nothing there to see ! No man 
 ever saw a spirit. But you have been psychologized by your own ideas, 
 and then you have seen your own thoughts nothing more ! Spirits there 
 are not to see ! 
 
 " But we cannot account for a great many things that are done, if there 
 are not spirits." And can you account for them any better, if there are ? 
 Can't live brains do things better than dead ones or than no brains at 
 all ? Is it half so hard to account for the things, as to admit the very 
 spirits who are to account for them ? Beings made out of nothing, and 
 that are nothing ! Beings in existence all these thousands of years, and 
 yet nobody ever knowing anything about it ! Beings that have done 
 nothing for half an eternity not so much as to peep and now. all at 
 once, starting up and doing all these great wonders ! I declare that the 
 things done, and for which you wish to account, are a perfect blaze of 
 suns/tine, by the side of such spirits ! Nothing is so impossible to be 
 accounted for, as they are ; and anything so impossible to be accounted 
 for, don't exist and they don't exist ! There are no Spirits ! - 
 
 And, once for all, you will never be such a spirit, and you may as Avell 
 give it up first as last. For that is what you have got to make up your 
 mind to, that absolutely, and beyond any peradventure, there is no Im- 
 mortality, and that, that is the "end of it ! 1 may as well tell you, as I did 
 with respect to the God that Immortality is simply impossible, and 
 there's no use talking ! It is peifectly physically impossible, and there 
 is no getting away from thai. Between you and the possibility of Im- 
 mortality, stands this whole infinite physical Universe, with every atom 
 of its Matter. Every atom of it is here now : not one atom of it would 
 be, could be, if you were Immortal ! If all men away back forever, had 
 lived on, they would have taken all the Matter of the Universe with them ; 
 for they would have taken all the Matter of the Universe to make them : 
 if not all those existing at any one time would have taken it all, yet those 
 existing after them would have taken more, and those after them, more, 
 and so on, till infallibly, all of them would have taken it all all of them 
 would have taken all the Matter of the Universe to make them, and then 
 would have brought all the Matter of the Universe along with them, -as 
 they came down the Immortal road ! If they had lived on as spirits as 
 you say you will live on a spirit, and as we know they could not have lived 
 on in any other manner [though, just as if that manner was not the most 
 ridiculous and impossible of all !\ then, when they had converted all 
 the Matter of the Universe into themselves, they would equally, have 
 converted it all into spirits, and then there would have been nothing but 
 spirits : there would not have been one thing physical : not a stone, nor 
 a tree, nor a man, nor a Planet, nor a Sun no, nor any physical Uni- 
 verse at all : the perfect Universe would have been blotted out, and noth- 
 ing left, save only these spirits, traveling clown the Immortal road, and 
 bringing what was the Universe along with them ! For if there ever 
 could be any spirits, [just as if there could be such an absurdity!] 
 infallibly they must be made out of just such Matter as this which makes 
 all other things refined, by organization, to a truly spiritual form ; for
 
 45 
 
 there is no other Matter no fine Matter to make them out of: so that, 
 if all men had thus lived on as spirits, inevitably they must have changed 
 all this very Matter we see to-day, and thus, left that only and insured 
 result no Universe! But, if they had lived on as men, and not as spir- 
 its, equally, but all the sooner, they would have converted all the Matter 
 of the Universe into themselves, and started it on that Immortal journey ; 
 leaving nothing but themselves so many men, but not a Universe or if 
 a Universe, yet certainly, not this Universe not these Suns, and Planets, 
 and all things physical, no, nor these men, if even, there were men ! So 
 that \h.z perfect Universe stands between you and your living- on in one 
 case, the perfect physical Universe ; in the other, this whole Universe you 
 see to-day ! Aye, and both these Universes stand between you and 
 existence ! 
 
 Though, if there had been this fine Matter in the Universe, to make ih: 
 spirits out of, yet all that would equally, have been converted into Im- 
 mortals ; the one would have been exhausted as surely as the other : and 
 not one nor both, could have saved you from that alternative at last not 
 an alternative no Universe, or not this Universe ; and in either case, an 
 Infinity of Existence between you and the object of your desire ! 
 
 And if you say that all this could not be, because the Matter of the 
 Universe is infinite, so it is ; but, so is the Space of the Universe infinite ' 
 And then if you would have said, that therefore the Matter of the Uni- 
 verse cannot be exhausted, yet now, you are check-mated, and prevented 
 saying it ; for it is almost saying the sam, thing, to s<iy that even infinite 
 Matter can be exhausted, in infinite places : for if it can be exhausted i:i 
 one place, so it can be, in another ; and when it is exhausted in each 
 place, it will be, in all places and then it will be all exhausted ! The 
 Matter of the Universe is distributed in an infinite number of Solar Sys- 
 tems ; and then, if one Solar System could be exhausted, by all its human 
 beings living on, another could be, just as easily ; and if the process of 
 exhaustion was going on in all the Systems, at the same time, then, when 
 one was exhausted, another would be, and they all would be ! True, we 
 could never get to the end of them, to say, all ; but yet, there would le 
 all, and all would be exhausted, one as much as another those we could 
 never get to, as well as those we could ; for the same reason must work 
 the same result. Because there is no end of the Planets, it no more 
 follows that they could not all be converted into spirits, or into live men, 
 than, because the atoms of Matter are infinite, it follows that they cannot 
 all change : they do all change, even every single instant ; for every atom 
 is perpetual motion it is the very Self-Existence of the Matter ! Since 
 I have been saying this, every atom of Matter in the Universe has 
 changed absolutely -infinite atoms have changed ; and then, absolutely- 
 infinite Matter has become what it was not before it has ceased to be in 
 one relation, and come to be in another relation : and then, absolutely - 
 infinite Solar Systems can change, and become what they were not be- 
 fore ; and the absolutely-infinite Matter in them, can cease to be Matter, 
 and come to be spirits, or men. So that it still remains, that if all men 
 had lived on, away back always, all those Solar Systems, with the Matter 
 they contained the perfect Matter of the Universe easily could, and 
 infallibly would, have been used up, and run out and there is no help
 
 46 
 
 for it ! No matter how long the process might have been ; for there was 
 a perfect Eternity back there ! Instead of the result not being reached 
 in an Eternity, it would have been, from Eternity, and might have been 
 repeated an infinity of times between ! Even for a whole Eternity past, 
 that would have been the record no Universe, or not this Universe, and 
 an infinity of being cutting you off from your Goal ! 
 
 Then you cannot be Immortal ; but it remains this perfect physical 
 impossibility. It is not a question; everything has already answered it: 
 the Universe has answered it, for then, there would not be the Universe ; 
 Eternity has answered it, for then, the Universe would not have made 
 Eternity and at last, you have answered it ! You will not live forever, 
 and you may know it as you know your own existence, for if Immortality 
 were true, you would not be in existence ! If you are Immortal, all men 
 are ; and if all men are, all men have been ; and if all men have been, 
 all Matter was long ago used up : and then there was no Matter left to 
 make you out of; and then you were not made out of anything ; and 
 then you don't exist ; and 1 don't exist, and nobody exists, and the Uni- 
 verse don't exist and nothing exists ! ! there is nothing so infinitely 
 impossible, and then so infinitely unreal, as Immortality ! There is no 
 Immortality ! 
 
 A whole Universe, with (then) Eternity and Infinity, stood between 
 God and the possibility of his existing ; and a perfect Universe, with 
 (then) the same Eternity and infinity, stands between you and the pos- 
 sibility of existing always. God had to succumb, and not exist at all ; and 
 you will have to succumb, and not exist always ! God and you must go 
 together, here ; and even if you have the start of existing now, yet infal- 
 libly, you would not have even thai gain, if there were Immortality ! 
 
 " But we can't bear not to be Immortal ; we shrink back from the 
 thought of going ouf so ! " But jSST'you can't bear to be afraid of not 
 being Immortal ; you can't bear to shrink from going out so ! You can't 
 bear to &~dvffM that is not what you exist lor ! But you exist to be 
 great, and brave, and strong, and equal ! to be yourself against any- 
 thing and everything ! You exist to be above being enslaved to fear, or 
 unhappiness, even by the infinite Universe! 
 
 " But certainly, we don't want to live if we are not to live forever ; 
 and we wish we never had lived !" But that is an infinite weakness. 
 What will Forever be, as long as it lasts, only now, now, now? And 
 then this now, is as great, and as much, as any now in Forever ! You 
 might as well, if you could live on, not call half your Eternity anything, 
 only because you were sure you were going to have the other half ! All 
 the enjoyment you could take in that half Eternity, would not be enjoy- 
 ment, if you could only suppose it possible that, a great way ahead, you 
 couldn t take any more ! If Now is worth nothing, for all its uses 
 nothing, to be glorious and perfect and Happy in then a whole Forever 
 is worth nothing ; for nothing, multiplied by Forever, is still nothing ! 
 
 It is because you want Happiness, that you want Immortality. Your 
 soul craves Happiness, and it will not be denied it ; and then, because 
 you possess it not now, you feel you must possess it hereafter ! JEST And 
 you will possess it assuredly that yearning of your heart will be an- 
 swered ! There is no other Rationale than Happiness ; for at last, there
 
 47 
 
 is nothing but Happiness ! If I made not provision for Happiness 
 jJSTeven for your Happiness infallibly you must reject my Statement. 
 And if I do not, then reject ! Is it not honest putting you on your 
 guard ? Be all care, and see that you are not cheated! 
 
 But first, know that others are Happy, even if you are not. Know that 
 the wide Universe to-day, is only a Universe of Happiness ! Know that 
 all planets, not only, of our solar system, but of all solar systems, pro- 
 gress with their human beings, to perfect ripeness and Happiness ! And 
 then there are perfectly-innumerable planets to-day, that are already 
 ripe ; and whose infinite populations are therefore, even now, only 
 Happy ! And though there are other planets, even to being likeieise in- 
 numerable, that are not now ripe and Happy, because they are not yet 
 o/o? enough to be, still there is an incalculably larger number of human 
 beings on the ripe and Happy planets, than on these others ; and that is 
 to say, that there is an incalculably larger number of human beings now 
 Happy, than of those not yet Happy Happiness incalculably and infin- 
 itely preponderates! For, as every planet has to be old passed from 
 infancy, mature, ripe before it can be Happy, so it bears human beings 
 all the time it /* old, or ripe ; and that time is as much longer than the 
 time of its infancy, or unripeness, as the maturity of a man is longer 
 than his infancy, or that of a tree is longer than its : so that every planet 
 bears incomparably more beings after it is ripe, than before bears incom- 
 parably move' Sappy beings, than it ever does Unhappy ones ! And 
 also, in every solar system, the outer planets, are not only, the oldest, as 
 given off from the Sun first, but equally, they live on longest, as going 
 back to the Sun last ; so that their whole cereer is transcendently longest, 
 as thus over-running at both ends ! And likewise, the outer planets are 
 greatly largest, [as a comprehending statement,] as running this so-much- 
 longer career ; and both, as being thus larger, and also, as existing thus 
 longer, they have ever so many times the greatest number of human be- 
 ings and then all this while, these outer planets, only Happy, and the 
 beings they bear, only Happy ! So that there are these so-great, pop- 
 ulous, Happy planets, existing in every solar system, through an 
 immensely long duration when there are no others in that system 
 either, the others have not yet been born, or, they have already 
 died ; and then all their duration is between the two parts of the 
 solitary duration of these outer ones ! So that every solar system, of no 
 matter how many planets, during most of its continuance has only Happy 
 planets in it ; and when it has some that are not Happy, yet during most 
 of that time, it has most that are Happy ; and during all its time, it has 
 none but what will be Happy seeing every planet finally becomes so ! 
 And then so that, the same thing is true of the Universe, made up of 
 infinite solar systems : That all the time of its continuance, even from 
 Eternity to Eternity, it has inconceivably and infinitely more Happy planets 
 in it than any others, and inconceivably and infinitely more Happy beings 
 in it than any others ; and then in the last analysis, it is nothing but a 
 Universe of Happy Planets nothing but a Universe of Happy Beings ! 
 So, you are unhappy, but the Universe is not and then you are only an 
 infinitesimal exception ! And you are an exception even to your own 
 world ; for this whole world will be Happy, during more ages than you
 
 48 
 
 have known woes during Millenniums that shall swallow up your 
 record, and blot out the memory of your unhappiness forever ! 
 
 Human beings will yet become utterly Happy in this world ! They 
 will attain to the highest perfection of which even their exalted natures 
 are capable, and still be Mortals ! They will all be Clairvoyant the 
 children will be born Clairvoyant ! And they will all live Jong, as" the Race 
 have never yet had any experience, seeing there has never been one healthy 
 man on the earth. And then they will come to knoio everything, even the 
 very Universe ! For the whole Universe is but Solar Systems, each 
 System with its great History first, its growth from Matter into a Sun, 
 and then into Planets, and Moons, and Comets, and Meteors, and all 
 things Celestial ; as also, into granite, and air. and water, and earth, and 
 vegetables, and animals, and men, and all things Terrestrial then, its 
 continuance in all this mig'nty unfolding, during all the amazing ages 
 constituting its true life, and till it can no longer usher its great fruit of 
 human beings, into existence and now, its decay, and return, through 
 all the long processes of death and decomposition, till the whole of it 
 becomes resolved again into that great Matter in Space ! This is the 
 History of the Universe : and when human beings know this, they will 
 know all ! And the human beings who shall be hereafter, will know 
 this : they will know their own Solar System, and then they will know all 
 Systems they will read the perfect riddle of Existence! Then they will 
 be Happy, then they will be satisfied ! You want to be Immortal, to be 
 Happy ; but these will already be Happy, even so that they will not need 
 to be Immortal they will already be as Happy as they can be, they will 
 be drinking in their perfect fill! There will be nothing- more possible, 
 and so they will desire nothing more ! So that after all, you are only an 
 exception, even among your own race, in wanting Immortality ! The ripe 
 world of mankind will not ask to be Immortal ; and you, and the few 
 with you who ask to be, do so, only because you live before the world is 
 ripe ! The Happy world of mankind will not need to be Immortal ; and 
 you do, only because you live before the world is Happy ! But somebody 
 had to live first : the ripe world could not be, till after the world that 
 was not ripe ; nor the Happy world, till after the Unhappy one and 
 then it fell to your lot to be born now, and not in the Good Time Com- 
 ing ! The statement is perfect ; only, that you have as much need to be 
 Happy, as any of those who shall come after and I am yet to show 
 you, that verily, you shall be ! 
 
 So that there is nothing out of joint, if there is no Immortality ! The 
 Race is not a failure, but a success ; and you and all others living now, 
 are only the exceptions before the success is finally inaugurated step- 
 ping-stones to the success, essential to it, parts of it ! Still the Race 
 have a destiny ! Still is Man more than the brute ! Still is he all we 
 have ever pictured him and more ; for one day he will be Perfect .' 
 He will be all one with the Infinite, for he will be master of the Infinite ! 
 And this is what no Immortality has ever made him, nor allowed him to 
 become ! But every Immortality has kept him longing, unsatisfied, un- 
 happy still far, and forever far, from his Goal ! But now, he will scale 
 the topmost hight ! 
 
 For those who will live after, even if they could be Immortal, yet
 
 49 
 
 would not be willing to be ! Bid them live foreverbut at last, they 
 would want to die ! There would be nothing new, and nothing /o, 
 and then nothing to live for ! The old enjoyment would tire ; the Hap- 
 piness that had been perfect, would become imperfection, through mo- 
 notony ; they would become surfeited with it, sick of it, unable to l-'.ir 
 it : they would long for a change, and as the only change, they svould 
 long to go to sleep ! Even now, men could not live, if they could r.o 1 
 daily lie down and iorget themselves ; but sleep annihilates them and nil 
 their states, and they wake up to a continually new world ! And s. 
 when these could no longer break up the monotony, even by sleep wheu 
 each waking but brought to their realization the same work! then they 
 would long to sleep the sleep of ages ! So far from not being able :o 
 reach perfection, they would pass it, and sigh to be delivered from 
 And even if there could be spirits anywhere in the Universe, [that im- 
 possible supposition, again !] yet the same thing would have to be true 
 of them. There would be nothing more for them to know, than for men 
 nothing but their own Solar System ; [of course including (as in the 
 of men,) all Astronomy ; but men would master, by means of Telesco;:/ s, 
 Clairvoyance, and Intuition, all the Astronomy of their heavens, an 1 
 would be a picture of the Universal Heavens !] and they would k:;.,\v 
 that, and then know all. And all other spirits could tell them no rn ; 
 for they would know only the same. So that at last, infallibly, they, too. 
 would long to lie down, and go to sleep ! And all this is only in accord- 
 ance' with, and a part of. that great Economy of the Universe, that .!! 
 things should forever come and go all things come and go, and nothing 
 forever remain! They may not remain, because they cannot forev- : 
 enjoy ! and then they must go, and others come and enjoy in their s.'ea i 
 So that they, in their several coming and going, yet make the E'er. 1 .-.I 
 Universe,; and equally, in their several enjoyiny, make the E/ernct J-J/t- 
 joyment of the Universe ! There could be no Economy equal to this 
 All things existing in cycles, but each cycle proportionate to (lie il/'n'-.j j 
 and the endless succession of cycles, the endless Duration of tut: 
 Universe ! 
 
 So that now, Immortality becomes more preposterous than ever ; foi 
 instead of anything existing forever, it is truly, that a whole Forev-; 
 exists after everything! Instead of being the Eternal World, ^t5'"'-i e 
 Eternal World winds up, and a whole Eternity comes after it ! 
 thing that exists, is only one of this infinite succession of tilings, all of 
 which, make the Universe; and then, long after it has ceased to exVi, 
 that Universe will exist, and exist forever ; its Eternity will roll on, :;-:cl 
 on, and still on, and forever on, swallowing up all these things that ever 
 helped make it, in absolutely an infinite Oblivion ! 
 
 And, so that Eternal Progression, is not only, the same ridiculous im- 
 possibility of an Eternal World Eternal Progression, with a wh> .!<; 
 Eternity after it Eternal Progression, with a whole Eternity after the 
 Progression must infallibly have ceased, and the being making the Pro- 
 gression, and now finishing and passing it, must have wished to cease 
 but also, even if it could exist, yet in being Eternal Progression, it would 
 be an Eternal Curse ; for it would be the eternal prevention of Happi- 
 ness ! jj^jKEternal Progression toward Perfection, is the eternal den'<;l 
 4
 
 50 
 
 of Perfection and that is the eternal denial of Satisfying! Eternal 
 approach to Happiness, is eternal lack to lay hold of that Happiness ! 
 
 And as thus, this Earth is no failure, without Immortality, even so 
 the Universe is none. Not, that it resolves into that great good, of hu- 
 man beings everywhere and forever, but verily, that it develops all those 
 human beings into utterness, and destiny, even as the Earth develops all 
 its human beings. For the same thing that is true on our Planet, is true 
 on every other Planet in the Universe, that at last, its inhabitants are 
 complete without Immortality, so that they do not need it, and even so 
 that, absolutely, they wonld reject it ! And then the Universe is com- 
 plete without it ! Instead of that Eternal Progression, it is all Eternal 
 Perfection and it is Perfection to-day ! An infinite infinity of its Plan- 
 ets, are already unfolded into this final ripeness of their Races, and all 
 the rest of the Planets yet will unfold into it ! On everv Planet, all are 
 a part of the result ; for nearly all are it, and the rest are a necessity and 
 part of those ! Every one human being in the Universe takes his place, 
 is even a part of this to-day's Perfection ! The Universe exists to develop 
 the Grand Man, made up of men jtST'and the Grand Man is Perfect 
 every moment of the Eternities ! 
 
 Think what is going on in the Universe, to-day ! There are all these 
 innumerable Planets that are ripe and then picture what is taking place 
 on them ! Each of these Planets is the seat of a bliss, greater than you 
 ever dreamed of in any heaven ; greater, inconceivably, than any heaven 
 could ever give ! The unnumbered populations of all these worlds, are 
 rejoicing in a Happiness Ineffable ! They do not suffer, they do not 
 weep, they know no longing, their cup is full they are all one infinite 
 delight ! Not one is left, not one that does not drink in dear and sweet 
 and satisfying, till his heart runs over ! It would make your heart break, 
 and become like water, to take in half the measure of their joy ! And 
 this is everywhere, this is the Universe ! There are unspeakably more 
 suck Planets than any others, and all the rest are growing to be like 
 them ! 
 
 Old hymns that we have heard and sung, and that our blessed mothers 
 taught us when we were young and tender but hymns which were only 
 superstitions, as voicing what had no existence yet become impeccable 
 and immaculate truth, when translated into the history of the Universe ! 
 
 Beyond this vale of tears, 
 
 There is a life above, 
 Unmeasured by the flight of years, 
 
 And all that life is love ! 
 
 There is such a life, beyond this Earth above it, superior to it on these 
 innumerable ripe Planets of the Universe ! It is the life all these Happy 
 beings are living to-day ! 
 
 There is a land of pure delight, 
 
 Where saints immortal reign ; 
 Eternal day excludes the night, 
 
 And pleasures banish pain ! 
 
 It is in the Universe, that land is the Universe ! Men are the " saints" 
 that "immortal reign ;" but if to be beatified is to be a saint, then the
 
 51 
 
 men are saints, too ! And they reign " immortal," because it is an 
 eternal land, and eternally there are men dwelling there ! 
 
 Sorrow shall forever fly, 
 
 Sin shall never enter there, 
 Tears be wiped from every eye, 
 
 Pain in endless bliss expire ! 
 
 It is all in the Universe, it is all in the Universe, to-day ! 
 
 In heaven alone no sin is found, ' 
 And there's no weeping there ! 
 
 'Tis the very record on all these innumerable Worlds, this moment ! 
 
 There shall I bathe my weary soul, 
 
 In seas of heavenly rest ; 
 And not a wave of trouble roll, 
 
 Across my peaceful breast ! 
 
 This already is on all these glorious Worlds ! Only, that the souls of 
 the dwellers there, were never weary ! But, they are all Happy, and 
 they always were ! 
 
 There everlasting spring abides, 
 
 And never-fading flowers ; 
 Death, like a narrow sea, divides, 
 This heavenly land from ours ! 
 
 Not "death, "but only, want of progression, " divides this land from 
 ours ! " And ours will yet progress, to be a part of that land ! 
 
 the transporting, rapturous scene, 
 
 That rises to my sight ! 
 Sweet fields/arrayed in living green, 
 
 And rivers of delight ! 
 
 There generous fruits that never fail, 
 
 On trees immortal grow ; 
 There rocks and hills and brooks and vales, 
 
 With milk and honey flow ! 
 
 N"o chilling winds nor poisonous breath, 
 
 Can reach that healthful shore ; 
 Sorrow and sickness, pain and death, 
 
 Are felt and feared no more ! 
 
 And " death" is not " felt" nor " feared" there ! But at last, it is itself 
 life to die ! [And one day, it will be, here ; and even now, it is if men 
 only knew it !] And leave out God and Immortality, and all these 
 hymns, of all ages, have an infinite ground-work of reality, as shadows and 
 prophesies of this dear, dear Bliss existing everywhere, and on which 
 the heart of man has so loved to dwell ! But new Poets will arise, and 
 sing these glories of the Universe free from those superstitions, and in 
 loftier strains than men ever sang the praises of that old heaven ! 
 
 Then the Universe is this Infinite Success ! At last, all that is possi- 
 ble all that we can ever conceive of Good, and Perfection, and Hap- 
 piness, is already real ! So that, if a man would think of a heaven, yet he 
 cannot it is all heaven : the Universe is nothing but one Infinite, and 
 Eternal Heaven! As likewise, if a man would dream of a God, because 
 he must organize his idea of the Holy, the Perfect, the Ineffable, yet 
 equally, he cannot for all of Holy and Perfect and Ineffable is already
 
 52 
 
 here! By an infinite- infinite difference, there is more of Glory and Bles- 
 sedness and Perfection, and all that men haye called Holiness and Di- 
 vinity, in the Universe to-day, than could ever be embodied in all the 
 Gods men ever created ! 
 
 jtgrSo that, when you leave your own little world, and launch out 
 into the illimitable ocean of being, and reach the great Existence-of-all, 
 the Universe is Happiness, the Universe is Heaven ! 
 
 But now. see how this same Universe would become an Infinite Fail- 
 ure, with Immortality ! Remember, that men have believed in Immor- 
 tality because they did not know that the Universe was Eternal, and that 
 it could not be Eternal if there was Immortality ! They have believed 
 in Immortality, because they have believed in a beginning of the Uni- 
 verse ; and Immortality does root in a beginning. And then your Uni- 
 verse, if you are going to have Immortality in it, had to have a begin- 
 ning and at once, it has lost that whole Eternity, beforehand ! it is Finite 
 in Time ! And then it is Finite in Space for what is created, must be 
 Finite and so it is oil nothing to what it might have been ! And also, 
 it might not have existed at all : for it did not exist, that whole Eternity ; 
 and there was no more reason for its existing when it did, than for its ex- 
 isting before and so there was no reason for its ever existing ! And so 
 your whole Universe might have been literal nothing ! And again, your 
 Universe may at any time cease to exist ! even now, while I am speak- 
 ing it may cease ! For it did not need to exist that whole Eternity ; and 
 no more does it need to exist now and then it may cease to exist now ! 
 And once more, it will cease to exist infallibly and inevitably, Avill ! 
 Not only, because it did not need to exist forever, therefore it will not 
 need to ; but also, and especially, because it did not exist forever, there- 
 fore it will not exist forever because it began, it will end ! What has 
 one end has two ends and then your Universe has two ! So, here is 
 your whole Universe, begun, carried through, and ended, in less time 
 than it would take to sing a song ! It was nothing at both ends, and 
 still liked to be the same all the way through the middle ! But then, 
 once more, and now to finish the picture : Your very Immortality will 
 cease : when all other things go out, this will ! J^~So that you are 
 going to have no Immortality, have it all your own way ; and then it is / 
 who believe in a future- state of existence, and not you, who do not ! 
 Your Immortality, in eating all other things up, eats itself up ! 
 
 So that, with Immortality, the Universe disappears ! This that is, is 
 no Universe ; but only a liitle bit of a nothing, almost as small as that 
 God, and soon to be quite ! ^JST'Andrew Jackson Davis, and all these 
 Spiritualists, and the comprehending fraternity of Immortalists, have no 
 Universe ! All they ever dreamed of, dwindles to this pitiful pretext, 
 less than the shadow of a shade ! And even this will not stay for their 
 asking; but will presently wind itself up, and go out in Annihilation ! 
 Minus one Eternity, it will soon be minus the other ! 
 
 So that, with any kind of a God there is no Universe, and with any 
 Immortality there is no Universe ! What any kind of a God is needed 
 for, is to create a Universe, and then there is none ; and Immortality makes 
 the Universe both begin, and so end, and then there is no Universe ! 
 
 Then, JVcm-Immortality is infinitely better than Immortality ! It gives
 
 53 
 
 a whole infinity more of Good, and Perfection, and Happiness, because 
 it gives a whole infinity more of Existence ! There is no more any 
 question of choice, between the two, than between Everything and 
 Nothing ! 
 
 But so, that is indeed true, in perfect despite, that this very tiling men 
 have always been clamoring for, is after all, a contradiction it subvert* 
 itself!' Even give it to those asking for it, but yet, it wouldn't be: it 
 won't be absolutely, of its o^n self it WON'T be ! Make men Im- 
 mortal, but yet, they would go out, because the Universe would go out ! 
 
 And, if Immortality thus resolves the Universe into failure, equally, 
 and more, has it thus far condemned this world to be only a failute ! 
 Men could not put this existence to its 'uses, because they must be Lav- 
 ing to do with another one : they could not work out the Happiness for 
 which only, they had existence, because they must be continually and 
 only, preparing for Happiness : they could not at last be we/i, because 
 they were one day going to be something else ! I declare that the whole 
 Human Race up to this hour, has been thrown away on the future ; Im- 
 mortality has defeated Life ; Heaven has swallowed up Earth ! And 
 then Immortality is Evil ; it is Curse ; it is Damnation ; it is Hell ! And 
 then men will blot it out and then that will be Salvation ! Instead of 
 Immortality saving men, giving them heaven, the heaven will be 3'o.'?- 
 Immortality ! 
 
 Next to that God, Immortality has been the Evil and it is still part 
 of the 6W-Evil ! It has cursed like Religion, and it is still on . \\ith 
 that! J3?Mt is all Earth's woes together, for it alone is enough to create 
 them all ! 
 
 But now, after so long a time, the final link is to be added to (his won- 
 derful chain of argument. All other things have given their voice in 
 favor of no Immortality, and now you are to give yours ! The Universe, 
 with its Eternity and Infinity of Men ; the innumerable Happy Planets, 
 with their already Perfect Races ; and even the future Race that shrill be 
 on Earth, together with the sore need of the Race that is now all these 
 have declared for the result, and now you are to do the same ! Everything 
 else has been gained over, and at last you are to be ! For it is natural 
 for man not to be Immortal ; it is natural for him to go out when the 
 time comes ! It is natural for him to go to sleep at night ; (and when 
 he is asleep he w out !) and the fact that he does not want to go to sleep 
 during the day, is no proof that he will not want to, then. He may be 
 ever so wakeful now ; but in a few hours he will feel he must go 10 sleep, 
 it will be his bliss to go to sleep. So it is natural for all men to die 
 not natural before, but just as certainly when the time comes. Now it 
 is a man's nature to live, but presently, it will be just as much his nature 
 not to live ; he will reach a point when he can do nothing but die, and 
 then it will be his nature to die. Kill a man in a minute : one moment 
 ago, he was all strength and vigor he was infinitely averse to dying ; 
 but during those sixty seconds, his strength has all gone, his vigor has 
 become utterly exhausted, and now he wants to die it is tho only thing- 
 there is left ! Kill him instantly ; and instantly he wants to die, for in- 
 stantly you have killed his desire to live instantly you have put it out 
 of his power to do anything but die ! Bring water to a level, and it will
 
 54 
 
 "flow to water : bring man to a level with death, and he must flow to 
 death ! Absolutely, every man dies when he wants to, and wants to die 
 when he dies ! So, it is natural for a man to go out ; not now, when he 
 shrinks from it, but still just as surely, when the moment arrives. Now 
 it is his nature to continue, because he has power to continue ; but let his 
 power ebb away, and his whole being run down to that zero, of ceasing, 
 and at once it is his perfect nature to cease ! He can do nothing but 
 cease, and therefore he wishes to do nothing but cease ! He has no power 
 to continue, and therefore he does not want to continue he has no 
 power to want to continue ! A moment before, one second before, since 
 then he could continue, it was his nature to, his desire to ; but now, 
 since he can not, it is his nature and desire no longer ! Now it is his na- 
 ture to cease, because that is all that is left ; he is brought to a level with 
 soul-death, and he must flow to soul-death ! And when thus, it is his 
 nature to go out, then it is his harmony, his Happiness, his bliss, his 
 heaven to go out then he wants to go out ! 
 
 Here is a man dying. His body is utterly wasted, his strength is all 
 gone, the pulse has left his wrist, every breath they expect to be his last. 
 But his soul is as strong as ever ! His eyes open, beaming more than their 
 former intelligence ; a glow lights up his features ; the muscles of his 
 mouth contract ; " I know that I am Immortal ! " breaks from his lips 
 and he is dead. And that very instant he did die go out ! While he 
 was uttering those words, he was not yet ready to go out, he had so 
 much strength left ; but it was an expiring effort, that made a full end 
 of his strength, and then he was ready and then he went ! And the 
 reason why his soul was thus strong to the last instant, though his body 
 was not, was because, in his case; the brain (for that is the soul,) drew 
 off, and appropriated to itself, more of the now-exhausted vital force, than 
 the rest of the body did. First, when a man is dying, he has but little 
 life, strength, or vital force left, to be distributed to the different parts of 
 his system. Secondly, those parts are not all equally strong, and there- 
 fore they do not all receive equal or proportionate supplies of that little 
 life remaining. It is in dying, as it is in health. In health, the head 
 sometimes robs the body of blood the head is hot, and the feet and 
 hands are cold ; or, the muscles rob the brain of vital force the man is 
 physically, but not mentally developed. So, in dying, sometimes the 
 vital force is almost entirely concentrated in the brain ; and then it or the 
 soul is strong to think and will and be its utter self, perhaps for whole 
 hours after the body is as good as dead, and a large part of it is dead, 
 and already decomposing : but at other times, the body exhausts the vi- 
 tality, and the brain is left to die first. And it actually does die first it 
 dies though the rest of the man is alive. The man is unconscious for 
 hours, perhaps for days, before he dies : his mind, his soul, has already 
 fallen into its oblivion ! His soul has now gone to its last sleep, just as 
 before, it used to go to its nightly sleep. And as, when the man used to 
 sleep, his soul was for the time being, dead, only it could be waked again, 
 so now it is dead, only it cannot be waked again. For, thirdly, it is the 
 animal brain that generates the vital force in a man, equally, whether he 
 is living, or dying : it is the animal brain that underlies his whole life 
 it is this that is the last seat of life. The animal brain is the perfect
 
 55 
 
 main-spring of all. So, as long as it lives, the man lives, for it sap- 
 plies life to the man, whether body, or other brain ; but when at last, it 
 gives out, there is an instant and utter end of everything. So that, in 
 the case of this man who died proclaiming himself Immortal, the soul- 
 brain absorbed all the life generated by the animal brain ; and therefore 
 the soul was strong and perfect, even to the last. It was strong and 
 perfect as long as the animal brain held out, because all the life that man- 
 ufactured, this had. So it was strong enough to say, " I know that I am 
 Immortal ! " but that very instant the animal brain gave out and the sou! 
 went out ! The main-spring failed, and ail the works stopped. The sun 
 grew dark, and it was total eclipse the light of that soul was obscured 
 forever ! There was no longer any fountain, there was no longer any 
 stream ! The source was cut'off, and nothing (;ouldy?ow> from the source ! 
 The brain that supplied life died, (from final and absolute exhaustion,) 
 and the brain that received it, received no more ! The animal brain, a* 
 last utterly spent, died instantly ; and the soul died instantly, even with 
 those words upon its lips ! And as to the man believing himself Im- 
 mortal, even in the very article of death, he believed so before, and then 
 he believed so to the last ; but in one instant more, he didn't believe so, 
 for he didn't exist to believe ! And of course, he idshed'to be Immortal 
 to the last ; but equally, in one instant more, he didn't wish so, for he 
 didn't exist to wish so ! 
 
 [And right here, one word more, about the brain, and its being the 
 soul, and then that soul dying instead of being Immortal. It is time 
 now, once for all, to dear up the whole thing, and make it so infinitely 
 plain that even a fool can see ! The brain is at last the thing the be>t 
 part of the body, the crown and perfection of the whole, and in a true 
 sense, the great sum and substance of the whole but yet, it is depend- 
 ent. It is not the original thing, but on the contrary, it is derived ; it is 
 not back of all, but something is back of it. It is worth ten thousand 
 animal brains, but yet, it absolutely depends on the animal brain, hangs 
 on it, lives on it, could not exist but for it. The animal brain existed 
 first, and created the brain ; and it perpetually supports it, vitalizes it, 
 and keeps it going. So the soul-brain, though it is the best brain, is yet 
 eternally in the power, and at the mercy, of the animal brain ; and the 
 animal brain is the poorest brain, that is, is the brain it is, for the very 
 purpose of developing the other brain the animal brain is the mean?, to 
 the other brain as the end. The use of the animal brain is to develop 
 the other ; and in that sense, the animal brain is more useful than the 
 other: as, in a true sense, the means are always more useful than even 
 the end, seeing it is the means that give the end ! So also, the soid is 
 body ; and being such, it is incomparably the best part of the body : but 
 still, it is dependent on the rest of the body, which yet is not so yciod as 
 it. The soul is worth ever so many times more than all the rest of the 
 body, and yet it could not exist but for the rest; and then, though 
 worth more, it is still in the power and at the mercy of the rest ! And 
 the rest of the body is comparatively worthless, that is, is just what it i?, 
 simply for the sake of the soul that it may unfold it: the use of Hit- 
 rest of the body is to unfold the soul ; and in that sense, it is the most 
 useful, that is, worth most. The body is the means of the soul, and the
 
 56 
 
 soul is the end of the body. But the very fact of the soul being thus the 
 end of the body, though it makes it transcendently better than the body, 
 yet inevitably makes it hang utterly helpless on the body because it 
 thus makes the body the means of it ! So now, comes death, and then 
 what ? Why, simply this, clearer than the noonday sun, that everything 
 dies, brain, soul, body and all, in one ! Though the brain is worth moie 
 than all animal brains together, yet when the animal brain dies, the 
 brain has to die, because after all, it depends on the animal brain ! 
 Though the soul is so infinitely better than the rest of the body, yet when 
 the rest of the body dies, the soul dies, because it is the rest of the body 
 that makes the soul ! And though the soul is the absolute end of the 
 body, yet when the body dies, the soul dies, for that very reason, that it 
 is the end when the means go, the end must of course go ! The very 
 fact that the soul is better than the body, that the body is nothing to it, 
 and is fit only to be its humble means that very fact, so far from prov- 
 ing the soul Immortal, is precisely what does prove and must prove, and 
 infallibly and overwhelmingly prove, it mortal and the man is stone- 
 blind that can't see it ! It is a contradiction to talk about the body being 
 the means, and yet the soul living on if the soul lives on, the body is 
 not the means, for when the means are no more, the end is no more ! 
 You yourself suy that the body dies, and then you yourself say that the 
 soul must; for you sny that the body makes the soul, and even that it 
 exists to ! Beyond all cavil, if the soul is made, it dies with what makes 
 it, or two and two are not four ! And then that settles the question, and 
 forever, there is nothing more to say !] 
 
 Yes, it is true of going out as it is of dying, that absolutely, every man 
 goes out when he wants to go cut, and wants to go out when he does go 
 out dying and going out are one ! Every man lives as long as he 
 want? to, for he lives as long as he lives to want to, and then he lives as 
 long as he does live ! And every man exists as long as he wants to, for 
 he exists as long as he exists to want to, and then he exists as long as 
 lie does exist! First, it is a man's harmony to exist; but afterward, it 
 is his harmony not to exist in either case, he is in harmony. If he did 
 not cease to exist, he would not be in harmony ! It is the very Universe 
 to man to go out ; and what is the Universe is his own nature, and want. 
 I: has been the Universe to all men to go out ; they have lived not to, 
 an 1 died not to ; but at last, when they have died, it has been the whole 
 Infinite Existence for them to cease not to exist, instead of to exist ! 
 Mature has laid them all quietly to sleep ; and it has been their nature 
 to go to sleep, and so all who have ever lived now do sleep ! So will 
 Mature lay all now alive, asleep, and they will be glad to go to sleep it 
 will be to them the Universe ! 
 
 And so it will be with you. At last you will loant to go out, and be 
 glad to ; and the very Happiness you have always been fearing you 
 would lose by going out, that very Happiness you will at last find in 
 going out ! JfST'The summed-up Happiness of your whole Immortality, 
 crowded into one, will consist in JVon -Immortality ! So you will have 
 what you always wanted, and the question is answered and what can you 
 ever say more ? 
 
 ! man, know that the ages have in store for you the eternal fruition
 
 o/ 
 
 of all yonr hopes ! You will yet be Happy, even to the whole fill of 
 your nature ! You wanted Happiness, and you will have it ; you u-cuittd 
 to be Happy, and you will be ! And then le Happy ! Be Happy as t'hc(/ 
 are on those Worlds, and as these in this shall yet become ! Be Happy 
 now, and not pine away your life in longing for an Immortality to he 
 Happy in ! Be Happy now, and you will not need an Immortality to be 
 Happy in ! 
 
 Now you see your life-long mistake, the perfect secret of all your 
 misery at the thought of not being Immortal ! You have wanted to lx- 
 Happy ; and because now, your Happiness consisted in existing and being 
 Happy, therefore you have thought it always would consist in existing 
 and being Happy you have thought if you did riot exist, you of course 
 could not be Happy ! But you have forgotten, both that if you did no:. 
 exist, you would not then wish to be Happy, and therefore would not b> 
 7/ihappy in not existing, (as you now are, in the prospect of not exist- 
 ing,) and also, that the very act of ceasing to exist, would le your Hap- 
 piness, because at last you would ivish to cease to ex'usi ! First, whuu 
 you no longer exist, it will be all over ! It will be as if you never had 
 existed ! 80 it will be as if you now did not wish to exist as if you 
 never had so wished ! So you will be no more Unhappy in not existing 
 than if you did not now wish to exist than if you never had so wish.!-/'! ! 
 So you will not be Unhappy at all you will not be sujferiny anything ! 
 And neither will you be so much as losing anything ! For you will nut 
 be in existence to lose anything ! It \\ill be as long as it is broad, that, 
 you will not suffer, nor wish, nor lose, nor do anything else, nor will 
 anything else be true of you, nor will even anything b>- trm- of you 
 JKP~because there will be no you! The simple fact of non-existence will 
 square and balance everything. AH will be straightened out, perfectly 
 right then. But also, sinking in'.o this non-existence, will be your abso- 
 lute and true Happiness! Precisely that is what will cintstdu'e your 
 Happiness. You would not at last be Happy without becoming non- 
 existent ! For you will want to become non-existent, it will be}<uir 
 nature to become so. You will not be able to do anything else, and so 
 you will not wish to do anything else ! But your whole being will sink 
 to the level of doing that, and so you will wish to do that ! And then it 
 will gratify you to do it, satisfy you to do it ! Truly it \\i\\Jill you to do 
 it be just all you long for be your very bliss be your perfect heaven ! 
 So that, instead of non-existence depriving you of Happiness, as you 
 have always supposed, it will be the very thing that will give you Hap- 
 piness, and all that then could be Happiness to you ! iSo far from deny- 
 ing you Happiness, it will complete your Happiness it will make you as 
 Happy as you can be ! For that is absolutely it, against the world, that 
 at last every one human being every man and woman and child on the 
 
 flobe is as Happy as he can be ; enjoys all that is possible to him ; 
 rinks in all he is capable of; equals the perfect want of his nature, see- 
 ing he thus does the only thing that is his nature ! Every man has in 
 the end, all he can have ; and then what more could there be for him ? 
 And every man has in the end, all he even desires ; and then what more- 
 could there be for him ? But you have never thought uf all this, and 
 even now it may seem nothing to you. Even now you may think it but
 
 58 
 
 a quibble to say that if a man goes out, he will be Happy in going out 
 even as Happy as he can be simply because he has to go, because he 
 can't do anything else ! But indeed, that is the very point; and pre- 
 cisely there is where you are mistaken, and where you have always been 
 mistaken : and precisely that mistake has always underlain your insisting 
 on the doctrine of Immortality, and it underlies the whole world's insist- 
 ing on that doctrine to-day ! The whole demand for Immortality is based 
 on Happiness ; and Happiness is but the gratification of man's nature 
 not his nature now, but his nature at the time it is to be gratified ; and 
 then when man comes to die, if it is his nature to go out, it will be the 
 gratification of his nature to go out, and then it will be his Happiness to 
 go out his perfect Happiness, all the Happiness possible to him, all the 
 Happiness he then desires : and if all this is so, then there is no more talk 
 of Immortality, because you already have the Happiness! What you 
 wanted, you have, and then you don't want anything more ! And what 
 you did want, seeing there is no longer any reason for it, you now don't 
 want ! The Happiness is already real, insured to every man and woman 
 and child on the globe and that answers all objections, and settles the 
 whole question ! 
 
 And then all you can say is, that even allowing all this, still there 
 could be more Happiness if a man did not go out, for then he would exist 
 to be capable of more. But that is the very thing, that he can't exist, 
 but he must go out ! That is just what this whole argument against Im- 
 mortality has been to prove, and has proved ! And then, if you think it 
 at least a pity that a man cannot thus have more Happiness, by living on 
 instead of going out, yet remember that I have shown you that almost 
 all men will enjoy more, even to a Happiness that shall be perfect while 
 they are yet in existence ; (instead of only a Happiness made perfect by 
 ceasing from existence,) and that you and all those living now are only 
 exceptions in having to go out without enjoying more. Hereafter, men 
 will enjoy all the Happiness they can while they are yet alive ; and you 
 and we all, now, do not, only because this is yet the infancy of the 
 world all we are the few and not the many, the exception and not the 
 rule. And also remember, that in that future they will enjoy so much 
 Happiness, that instead of wanting more, they would at last want to go 
 out, with even a different desire from that with which we shall in the end 
 want to ! We shall all want to, because there is nothing else for us ; but 
 they would want to, because they had already enjoyed all Happiness not 
 only could there be no more to them, but the monotonous possession of 
 what they had would become intolerable ! You do not think so now, but 
 if you could try it once, you would find that Eternity Avas " almighty" 
 long ! Though, if still you find fault with the fate which thus cuts you 
 off from more Happiness, yet your quarrel is with the Universe, and not 
 with me ! And likewise, if you will have it that you ought to live on 
 forever, and thus be strictly Immortal, yet why do you not equally de- 
 mand that you already should have lived forever that you should be 
 Eternal as well as Immortal ? If you will lose all the future, so you 
 have lost all the past ; and if in the past, you did not know what you 
 were losing, so in the future you will not know ; and if now you know 
 what you will lose, so you now know what you have lost the cases are the
 
 59 
 
 same, and you ought to be praying to be Eternal, as well as sighing to be 
 Immortal ! As also, if thus it is proved that as a matter of fact, simple 
 non-existence will in the end be perfect Happiness to you if, when you 
 come to die (and then go out,) you will be as Happy as you can be 
 then if you want more Happiness, there is a plain and open road to find 
 it ! jJ5?"It is at once to throw up this whole thing of Immortality ! As 
 you live, Immortality is the only trouble ! For perfect Happiness at 
 last, and yet more Happiness, must necessitate more Happiness between 
 now and at last ! And then the way to have more Happiness, is to have 
 more now, and all along ! Seeing the Happiness will be perfect at death, 
 the way is to make it perfect while you live ! But the very thing which 
 most of all keeps you from making it perfect while you live, is this self- 
 same longing and striving to be Immortal this eternally hunting and 
 chasing after Happiness in the future, and so, utterly neglecting Happi- 
 ness now and then after all, and absolutely, this wasting your perfect 
 life and throwing your entire self away on something beside Happiness ! 
 Still once more, and now with an infinite emphasis, it is Immortality that 
 stands in your way ! Then give that up, and devote yourself to no-w, to 
 life and to being Happy in life ! You will be Happy in death ; then be 
 Happy in life, and you will be all Happy ! You will have perfect Hap- 
 piness in death ; then have Happiness till then, and you will have mure 
 Happiness ! j3 r lnsane to cling to Immortality for more the very thing 
 that prevents more ! 
 
 For indeed, however you may have heretofore, placed all your Happi- 
 ness in Immortality, your now knowing that you are not Immortal, will 
 not at all lessen that Happiness, but on the contrary, increase it as has 
 just appeared. If you are not Immortal, it is because it will not be your 
 nature to be ; and if it will not be your nature to be, then it will not be 
 your want to be, nor then your harmony, nor your Happiness, to be : just 
 as, if you were Immortal, it would be because it would be your nature to be, 
 and then your want and harmony and Happiness, to be. So that you 
 are still going to be in harmony, just as much as if you were Immortal ; 
 and then it will make no difference ! Or rather, it will make a difference ; 
 for then, to be Immortal, against this great fate, would be not to be in 
 harmony ! And if you are not Immortal, it is because it is the Universe 
 that you are not ; and what is the Universe, is all that can be nature to 
 you the harmony of the Universe must be your harmony ! And then 
 again, not being Immortal will make no difference, for still you will be 
 in harmony ! And then knowing yourself not Immortal can make no 
 difference ; for it will still be knowing yourself in harmony ! Or if you 
 have doub's on this whole subject if you are neither assured that you 
 are Immortal, nor yet that you are not if you know not for yourself 
 what is true nevertheless, that shall not occasion you any Unhappiness, 
 for it will still make no difference ! It will be alike well to you, whether 
 you are, or are not, Immortal ; for equally, you will be in harmony ! ., Or 
 if you still and longingly hope that you are Immortal, yet even then, all 
 that I have said, need not and should not give you the least uneasiness ; 
 for all I have said don't alter the case any, all I have said don't change 
 the fact ! Believing oneself Immortal will not make him so, and believ- 
 ing the opposite will not make him not so ; and then, no more does dis-
 
 60 
 
 proving Immortality make it not so ! What is, is, irrespective of even its 
 proof; the proof shows it, but does not make it. So my proving you 
 not Immortal does not make it so, but still it is all as if I had not proved 
 it ! And then it should not distress you ; much more, if you are not 
 satisfied that I have proved it ! Or if, once more, you still feel that you 
 know that you are Immortal, then certainly I have not harmed you, and 
 you will be as Happy as before ! So that all those now living, Avill not be 
 injured by this proclamation of Non-Immortality not be made Unhappy 
 by it be they those who are convinced by the demonstration, be they 
 those who doubt, be they those who anxiously and painfully long, or be 
 they those who claim that they know the opposite. And the proclama- 
 tion will not be ungrateful to those in the future, but on the contrary, 
 welcome and joyful ; for they will all know it to be truth, and be 
 willing it should be truth, and glad it should be for they will know that 
 what is truth is what is best ! So that everyway, everything is right, 
 and nothing is wrong, and nobody has anything to do but to be Happy 
 nobody has anything to stand in the way of his being Happy ! 
 
 Then I will once more enforce consolation and relief upon you. ! 
 lonely, sorrow-stricken soul, pining under all woes here, and fearing no 
 Future to give you joy and rest hereafter ! sad and sinking one, 
 thus daily dying to be Happy, but daily mocked in that dying listen to 
 this voice which comes to infuse into your bosom courage and hope, this 
 voice which comes, to pour into your heart healing and balm ! You will 
 yet be Happy, even as Happy as you ever sighed to be 1 All you desire 
 will yet come to you, all of which you are at last capable shall be yours ! 
 Nature will end all your sorrow with an infinite joy, the joy of entering 
 into rest ! Heaven will come to you, the very heaven you have always 
 longed for, the heaven of being met and filled ! It will be perfect eostacy, 
 to melt away into that great and everlasting Satisfying ! Then you will 
 be Happy, even so that you can ask no more, nor hold any more ! And 
 then be Happy now. Dry up your tears, and henceforth only rejoice, 
 for you are saved ! As, when one is exhausted, it is sweet for him to 
 sink into the embrace of sleep, and go back to unconsciousness ; and 
 as, at the close of life, it is sweet for a man to lie down to his last sleep, 
 and give his body back to the elements ; so, when the end comes to you, 
 it will be sweet tor you to lie down to an eternal sleep, and give your soul 
 back to the Universe ! It will be sweet, and then it will be all you want, 
 and then all is well ! The agony is over, for the redemption has come ! 
 
 ! then forever, soul, weep no more ! 
 
 And, ! world, groaning and despairing to be Immortal, and through 
 all these long centuries refusing tobe comforted except in that pros- 
 pect ! world, weep no more ! 
 
 [Though really, it is preposterously unreasonable, and perfectly insane, 
 all this great fear of going out ! Why, you do go out, every night ! 
 And does it hurt you any ! Isn't it the very thing you want to do ? 
 And you were out, that whole Eternity ! You never were in ! And did 
 it make a bit of difference ? Why don't you mourn and cry over that ? 
 And then hereafter, when you are out, what difference will it make ? 
 You want to exist now, and so now, you do exist ! And you will want to 
 exist as long as you live, and so as long as you live you will exist ! And
 
 61 
 
 after that, you won't want to, and so you won't! And the ceasing :o 
 live will be natural to you, and the only thing that will be natural ! Jt-'o 
 that going out won't hurt you' beforehand, nor afterward, nor oven at the 
 time and then it is just the thing all round, and the only thing ! TK-ie 
 is not a shadow of foundation for being afraid of it ! It is nothing hut n, 
 silly whim, of folks who have never used their brains ! It is as perfect 
 a bugbear, as the old Hell itself! Then come to your senses, and av,-tv 
 wirh it.] 
 
 But so, the argument is at length complete; for that was the only 
 thing to be done, to show that all would be finally and perfectly Happy 
 that was all there was need to provide for, your Happiness and that of 
 the rest living before the Good Time Coming ! jSSTJSo that now there is 
 even a perfect rationale for Tern-Immortality, and then there cannot pos- 
 sibly be any for Immortality not one argument for it, not one even seem- 
 ing in its favor ! And then the Race, who have sought their good t/.'/'/cr- 
 where, and hereafter, must come to find it now, and here. 
 
 This World is our Home. " Here we have our abiding-place, and this 
 is our continuing city." We are not " pilgrims and sojourners, as ail 
 our fathers were;" but we have come in time to know, that vriilv 
 we are the Earth's, and that the Earth is ours ! We are its Childivn, 
 and then its true Citizens ; and our perpetual inheritance is in it, and 
 not in " the skies." Our Heaven is here, our Eternity is now, our 
 utter All is life. Then let us live, and do nothing else live use, 
 beauty, enjoyment, Happiness live greatness, nobleness, perfection, 
 destiny ! And let us make the Earth, Home as Immortalitv lir.s 
 never allowed it to be Home to us yet ! Then men can be Happy, 
 when they ratify Great Nature's decree giving them this smiiiii"* 
 Planet ! 
 
 But time fails to say all, or half, that still presses, though the ra- 
 tionale is already perfect; but everything will yet be made transparent to 
 man, and Nature does forever make it so to all in the final result ! 
 
 And nothing c? n possibly account for men's ever having believed hi 
 this so-impossible doctrine believed in Immortality in the face of all this 
 evidence except the fact that this has always been, and it is yet, a baby- 
 world ! For that is indeed it, that on every Planet in the infinite Uni- 
 verse, at first men believe in Gods, and Religions, and Immortalities : but 
 afterward, equally on every Planet, they grow out of these old faiths, 
 into the true light of Reason and Nature ! The bali/-n\en believe in 
 fables, but the progressed men believe in facts. 
 
 [And then God, Religion and Immortality are nothing but ' institu- 
 itons," and I denounce the " institutions !"] 
 
 And so, (and now at last,) men will one day grow out of Immortality, 
 into something higher, Now and then Happiness now, and not in it 
 and themselves, and they sufficient for themselves, and not having to run 
 off to it for succor and strengthening and satisfying : for Immortality is 
 still Reliyion, that same running away from earth and men and things of 
 men, after phantoms and spirits and fancies and all fooleries it is still 
 the same silliness and superstition, even up to Spiritualists and Infidels ! 
 But all shall cease ; and men, henceforth only earthly, shall ripen into 
 such excelling Happiness and glory and perfection, as we have no power
 
 62 
 
 to express, but which when we would feebly set forth, we can only say 
 heaven, first borrowed from that old lie, indeed, but still coming home to 
 the heart as touching and even beautiful, though those who come after 
 us, may give it up also, and blot it out forever ! [Like soul, spirit, holy, 
 salvation, redemption, and all the rest.] 
 
 And when thus, the world shall give up Immortality, to know it no 
 more, but shall hide it away with those two others that have gone before 
 God and Religion and Eternal World together to perish out of mind : 
 when all the ravening wolves that have wasted the Earth's fair heritage, 
 shall be destroyed in one then will men lift up their voice and say, that 
 now the World's redemption has indeed fully come ! 
 
 What a Rationale ! And of All-things ! Equally taking in all Past, 
 all Present, all To-Come ! Weaving Eternity and Infinity into one trans- 
 parent web of Truth ! A work done for the Race, that shall never need 
 to be done again ! Everything cleared up, and written out for all com- 
 ing Time ! 
 
 ! World, World, World ! here is thy work. It is the deed that 
 calls to-day ! Wait not for the world that is to follow, [this same human 
 world in after generations,] but thou for thyself arise, and accept this 
 Truth ! Throw away thy old follies ; bury all thy dead ; give thy hand 
 to what will make thy mortals blessed, and usher in this true Age of 
 Reason ! 
 
 So, farewell, Thomas Paine ! Not all thy burning words to the world 
 can avail, till men go beyond, and strike down this Holy Trinity, God, 
 Religion, and Immortality ! But thou hast done thy part to bring even 
 all ! Thou hast led the way, and another has but followed thee !
 
 63 
 
 Only a part of the foregoing Oration could be delivered, on the special occasion ; 
 and even the purpose of continuing and finishing the delivery afterward, by adjourn- 
 ment, was frustrated. 
 
 Though the preceding Rationale may be said to involve everything, it is infinitely 
 far from containing it. Even necessary justice to a Superstition which lias ruled tin- 
 world through so many thousand years, cannot be done in a tract it requires a 
 Volume. Such a Volume, therefore, will be issued, as soon as lean find time to 
 complete it. It will embody what is given here, though serving little more than 
 the purpose of introduction and proposition ; and likewise, as much more i< already 
 prepared. The Work will embrace, among other special features, a demonstration 
 of what the human soul is, having nothing in common with anything in this Ora- 
 tion, and even superseding the strict letter of this text in three or four instances. It 
 will be an attempt to reduce the whole question of the soul to absolute science, and 
 will be illustrated with nearly a hundred engravings, to demonstrate the actual truth 
 to the eye as giving the fact, the proof, and the explanation, all in one. The Work 
 will also. contain a Reply to the argument of Andrew Jackson Davis in support of 
 Immortality, in the last Volume of the Great Harmonia ; ' as well as, in general' 
 a Reply to all that Mr. Davis has ever written. Spiritualism will also come in, 
 for a distinct and comprehensive refutation. 
 
 Till this future publication, I must leave what is presented here, open to objections 
 from both friends and foes. In particular, I must leave that hypothesis, of the outer 
 Planets being given off from the Sun first, to whatever exceptions any may choose to 
 take to it. There is something to be said on that subject, different from what has 
 ever yet been said. But even allowing that hypothesis to be incorrect, it will not 
 diminish, in hardly an appreciable degree, the force of the argument proving that as 
 a whole the Universe is Happy : for all Planets must yet be Happy longer than they 
 are Unhappy their age being longer than their infancy besides that the Suns are 
 themselves nothing but Planets, (even according to the most eminent Astronomers,) 
 and therefore their long and inconceivable Happiness is to be added to that of all 
 the others ! Once grant Progression and Destiny, for the Earth, and then admit 
 Universal Analogy, and nothing can prevent the conclusion I have reached that, 
 the Universe is all one Infinite Perfection !
 
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