Thus with strong speech I tore the veil that hidNATURE, and TRUTH, and LIBERTY.—Shelley.
END OF LECTURE SIXTH.
Thou, Nature, art my goddess: to thy law my services are bound.—Shakspere."Philosophy teaches us to seek in Nature, and the knowledgeof her laws, for the cause of every event; when thisknowledge shall become universal, man will relinquish, withelevated satisfaction, his attachment to supernatural andvindictive theology." It is this theology that has destroyedthe harmony of Nature, and demoralised the intelligentworld.
LUCIAN AND MODERATUS.
MODERATUS.—In all ages of the world, the tide of human affairs hath shown that reigning opinion, however ill-founded and absurd, is always queen of the nations; and, since a man's interest and general good footing in society, are, to a great extent, involved in his acquiescence in these opinions, it is strange that you, Lucian, should venture to entertain heresies so much at variance with everything that is called orthodox. But as it is only upon hearsay that I judge of your opinions, pray let me know from yourself your notions respecting the deity?
LUCIAN.—You must first define precisely and intelligibly, what you mean by the terms deity or god: do you mean by either of them to designate a fanciful personification of the physical powers of universal matter or nature?
Mod.—No; I mean that infinite, eternal, incorporeal body in the human form*—the creator of the universe out of nothing, that is, out of himself, he being nothing, according to Christian orthodoxy.
* Zenophanes observed, that if the ox or the elephantunderstood sculpture or painting, they would not fail torepresent the Deity under their own peculiar figure. In thisthey would have as much reason at the Jews and Christians,who gave him the human form."And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faithNurs'd by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon."
LUCIAN.—I can form no conception of such a being as you describe; but such a phantasm may be very suitable for, as it is quite of a piece with, a religion that is made up of chimeras. If your term nothing has any meaning, it is the negation of matter, which is nonsense, because the mind can form no conception of immaterial existence. By the same rule, reason and common sense reject the word spiritual, because it is a term absolutely without meaning, and represents no existing thing of which the mind can possibly form any idea.* All these words have been coined in the mint of theology for the purpose of deception; and, together with the principal tool of priestcraft, called soul, make up the machinery of delusion. Everything rational is foresworn by a set of mystagogues, when they declare that their God was engendered before his mother, and is of the same age as his father!
MOD.—But laying aside these foolish inventions, which could only be imposed upon ignorance; and allowing that, to the question, "what is god," no proper answer can be given, but that "we do not know;" still, if all, or universal matter was created, it must have had a creator; and there being no materials to work with, this creator, being himself immaterial, must of necessity have created matter out of himself, that is, out of nothing.
"These were Jehovah's words:From an eternity of idleness,I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earthFrom nothing; rested, and created man;I placed him in a paradise, therePlanted the tree of evil; so that heMight eat and perish."And so says the church.* Spirit is literally air, and air is matter in a gaseous orfluid form; but this is not the sense in which the word isused by the theologian.
LUCIAN.—That is going still deeper into theological absurdity. No axiom can be clearer than this,—"out of nothing cometh nothing." There could be no creation of that which necessarily and eternally exists in and of itself There can be but one infinite being, one nature, i.e. the boundless universe, (call it god, or by any other name you please) and this all-in-all self-existent being, produces in itself, by an internal or innate action, whatever changes matter undergoes by this essential action or motion; whether in the production of living creatures, or inanimate forms: thus universal matter is at once both agent and patient—efficient cause and subject; it produces nothing but what is its own modification. Spiritualism is supported only by fraud, and ignorance of materialism.
MOD.—Are not the words creator and creation used in the Bible? what do they mean?
LUCIAN.—The learned confess that we have a very false translation of that book. In the Talmud of Jerusalem, creator and creation merely signify the giver, and the act of giving forms to matter* There is not one word in the Bible about a creation from nothing; this notion, according to Mosheim,** was the invention of the Christians. All identities of matter arise from motion alone; and as no portion of it can ever cease to be in motion, that motion is perpetually destroying existing forms, and out of these producing fresh identities of matter; but this is change of form alone, and chemistry has proved the self-existence of the material principle, in the demonstration that no particle of it can be annihilated.
* The word Tsour has been adopted in Genesis, where it is,say the learned, falsely translated creator, though itmerely signifies, "the giver of forms." According to Volney,that name is also one of the definitions of Osiris.** Appendix to Cudworth.
MOD.—In our Bible account of the creation, there are certainly some apparent contradictions, or incongruities, such as the getting up of three whole days before the sun was "made and set in the firmament;" now it appears to us that, as the sun is the sole source of day, they were a little preposterous in forgetting to make him first.
LUCIAN.—It must appear plain to every one not blinded by his slavish fears and prejudices, that the writer of Genesis (the cosmographical part) was entirely ignorant even of the rudiments of natural science. The god he set up, and the handiwork he makes him perform, are proofs of this. The Jupiter of the pretty and lively mythology of the Pagans, was frequently engaged in ludicrous amours;* but in general he preserved an awful dignity, and was never represented in the discharge of those mean and servile offices, which the Jews depict their Jehovah as performing; though these were nothing to the ferocious, cruel, and disgusting caricatures which are everywhere drawn of him in their books. Allowing for a moment the possibility that poor deluded man can be guilty of impiety towards the all-ruling Power, certainly his mind could not devise anything more blasphemous than to personify that power into such a deity as that set up by Moses. Ignorance of the operations of matter or Nature, has made man invent deities as causes of the effects he sees produced; these deities were so many chimeras, and these chimeras have been the basis of all religions.
* When Diagoras of Melos declared that there were no suchbeings in existence as Jupiter, Neptune, Apollo, etc., theirpriests offered a talent for his head, or two talents iftaken alive. In the latter case, the higher sum was probablyoffered, that they might have the pleasure of torturing him.In the 15th century what would Christian priests have doneto the "blasphemer," who would haye been so impiously wickedas to assert, that the above gods did still exist in fullpower? Priests are ever the same; but gods change names andwills, going in and out of power, like Whigs and Tories.
MOD.—I confess that in the all-important matters of morality, the Bible presents exceeding great difficulties. Truth, justice, and mercy are immutable principles, and must not be subverted to uphold any system of religion whatsoever. That which is cruel and wicked in a man, cannot be admitted or defended in a god; and every moral feeling of the virtuous mind must be discarded ere we cease to doubt the truth of a religion based upon the desecration of these principles. Besides, it is repugnant, if not impossible to reconcile the god of Moses with the reverential and sublime idea, which superior minds are capable of forming of the almighty power.
LUCIAN.—As the man who takes a priest for his guide will be led astray; so, if the Bible has been his sole instructor, he is likely ever to remain in ignorance; the first will not teach him anything useful—the latter cannot. Previous to the time when it is said the Bible lawgiver entered upon his murderous invasion of the Canaanitish countries, each of them had its local god or goddess, some of whom we have elsewhere mentioned; these were so many personifications of the sun, moon, stars, elements, and seasons, and served as objects of adoration amongst the ignorant. As a priest of Heliopolis, Moses must have known all this, and wishing to be like his new neighbors, he set up his barbarous deity in imitation, changing his Theban name of Jahouh into Jehovah (see Strabo's Geography), charging his followers not to represent it by any emblem, as he was in vain wishful of preserving the Egyptian unity of the Supreme Power. But as the sun was then in Taurus, or the Bull, the Egyptian priests had taught the illiterate Israelites to worship a calf; and as they were desirous of clinging to their calf adoration, Aaron, as every other priest would have done, took advantage of this religious folly, to despoil them of the gold ornaments, which, by Jahouh's command, they had swindled from the Egyptians. In this affair Moses and his brother, no doubt, understood each other well. To rob upon religious pretences, is not altogether a modern invention.
MOD.—In the supposed time of Moses, the religion of Egypt being polytheistic, Jahouh must have been one amongst many deities that were worshipped by the Egyptians; so that if Moses borrowed that deity of the Thebans, he could not at the same time borrow his doctrine of the unity of god.
LUCIAN.—The learned Egyptian priests appear to have been decidedly Materialists. Infinitely above the minor deities which they invented for the ignorant populace, they believed in the great material principle,* acting by self-existing energies and properties; infinite, therefore causeless; and constituting the unity of the Supreme Power. They represent this power by no emblem, conceiving that to be impossible; but the Greeks personified it in the god Pan. Thus the unity of the Supreme Power was the basis of the hierarchical religion of Egypt, as is acknowledged by the learned Hyde, and also by Cudworth. As an Egyptian priest, Moses (admitting his existence) must have known this, and was therefore wishful of preserving this unity in his Theban deity; though that availed nothing when neutralised by the discordant and inconsistent qualities attributed to him. In order to be justified as an invader and plunderer of peaceful countries, Moses was under the necessity of endowing his god with fierce and barbarous passions, which on most occasions led him to be cruel and unjust; as when he issued his ferocious and bloody mandate to his priests, the sons of Levi, (Exod. xxxii., 27) to sacrifice about three thousand "Brothers, companions, and neighbors," in cold blood,* You say, "materiality cannot think—do you know of any thinking without it? Pray how does immateriality think?"
* See also the inhuman mandate issued in Deut. xiii., 6thto 10th. This has justified every refinement in the crueltyof persecution throughout Christendom for more than fifteenhundred years.
MOD.—That massacre was caused by the idolatry of the people, in setting up and worshipping the golden calf.
LUCIAN.—Priest Aaron was herein the principal actor; yet he and his tribe not only go unpunished, but are employed to commit the shocking murders.
MOD.—But theologists assure us that what is justice with god is injustice with man. Christians have ever drawn a line of distinction between divine and human justice: proving that what appears to man cruel, partial, and unjust, in the works of god, are, in reality, justice, impartiality, and mercy towards man.
LUCIAN.—Robbery and murder are strange ways of showing mercy. It is by the hideous and pernicious dogmas you mention, that pretended supernatural revelations have poisoned the pure stream of morality; they utterly confound every idea or perception we can have of the natural principles of right and wrong; and have sanctioned or justified the foulest enormities throughout Christendom. The principles of truth, justice, and morality, are ever the same, and immutable from whatever source they emanate.
MOD.—It is true that the Supreme Being is, upon the whole, not much beholden to the Jewish priests for the sketches of character in which he is portrayed in the Bible. But this is speaking according to human reason.
LUCIAN.—The capricious and cruel character of this theological creation, as set forth in the Jew books, is generally so demoralising as to be altogether unworthy of imitation in human conduct, The cruelty ascribed to it, is the shield behind which priestcraft has sheltered itself in all its bloody persecutions. In other respects the various menial, or bad offices and functions which it is made to perform, are truly ludicrous when said to be executed by the all-ruling power; such as, a god-midwife (a), a nightly assassin (b), a butcher (c), a barber (d) a slave-dealer (e), a murderer (f), a fool (g), a deceiver (h), a promise breaker (i),* a deluder (j ), a tailor (k), a shoemaker (l). Such was the deity who the Jewish priests impiously and blasphemously called the Supreme Power of the universe, though guised by them in the form and likeness, having all the appendages and members physical, of the human body; and possessing many, if not all the worst passions incident to human nature. And such is the deity adopted by Christianity, after undergoing such modifications, and receiving into partnership such colleagues as suited the interests of his priests. These things, in a mental point of view, have degraded man below the more rational animals of the field.
* The Jewish god never gave his chosen people anythingbetter than promises.—Vide Acts vii., 5; and Heb. xi., 39.In the reign of Ahab, a lying angel, or spirit, offers hisservices as a deceiver, which services were very acceptableto the "Lord." Here we have a lying angel, and the supremebeing endeavoring to deceive by prompting to a falsehood.The belief of such impious absurdities shows that theunbounded credulity of man is the safety of the priest.
MOD.—You have evinced a strong partiality for what you call the pretty and lively mythology of the Gentiles, consisting of the numerous fabled gods and goddesses of antiquity, which, you say, the lower orders of the people were taught to consider as so many real personages, though, in the esoteric doctrines of the initiated, they were merely so many emblems of the "host of heaven," the elements and seasons.
LUCIAN.—Precisely so; and such is the origin of the Christian scheme also, springing as it does out of the Egyptian and Zoroastrian systems; for as the epithet Christ physically signifies the sun, so, in like manner, has it been made to represent a fabled personage; whilst the true revelation of this prosopopoeia (the figure by which things are made persons) is now suppressed or lost through priestcraft, or its foster-child, ignorance.
MOD.—In modelling his deity it was evidently the intention of Moses to preserve his unity; but his followers being the most barbarous of human beings, he was under the necessity of adapting his god to their ignorant and rude notions of things; and, therefore, not blameable for the tricks and deceptions he used, since these were the only means of governing them. Why, then, should not similar means be used in the nineteenth century to answer the same purpose? The ignorance and credulity of the mass of mankind are at all times the sufficient warrant of theological frauds. It is not at all necessary that men of learning, and the rulers of nations, should believe in the irrational fictions of any scheme of supematuralism; but experience seems to point out the utility of their yielding thema pretended belief, and a real support, for the sake of governing the multitude.
LUCIAN.—As an initiated Pagan priest, the conduct of Moses towards his followers was quite in character; and the religion which he manufactured was, no doubt, well suited to the extreme savageness of the Jews.* But it is wonderful that this religion, blasphemous and absurd in the highest degree, and contrived solely for the purpose of over-awing and governing a horde of plundering banditti, should maintain a sacred influence over nations where history and science abound. The grovelling credulity of uninstructed man is such, that all despotic rulers, aided by their iniquitous connexion with subservient priesthoods, have during centuries of darkness, shackled the necks of mankind with great success in the way you mention. But the wicked stratagem of keeping men in ignorance, in order that they may be misgoverned by theological fables, is now meeting a stumbling-block in the increasing light of reason and useful knowledge among the people. This wretched policy has already produced revolutions; and others of yet brighter aspect seem rising on the political horizon, still farther to weaken, and ultimately to overthrow, the church-contaminated governments of Europe. Superstition, though still leagued with political rule, is utterly unable to be its mainstay any longer, because of the reasonable hostility of the people whose eyes begin to be opened to the evil tendency in regard to morality, as well as to the prodigious expense entailed upon industry, in support of the voracious hydra of superstition.
"An inhuman and uncultured race, whoHowl'd hideous praises to their 'jealous God'."* To establish a religion upon the wild reveries of anignorant people, whose legends are in all cases filled withmiraculous events against the order of Nature, and bearingon their very front the most glaring marks of imposture, isthe very acme of human folly—the pestilent mania which hasconvulsed nations, and deluged the world with blood.
MOD.—That all rational and unprejudiced minds find an insuperable repugnance at the idea of reconciling, or identifying the Supreme power, with the deity of Moses, as depicted in the Bible, is a point which I readily concede. When the man of free reflection meditates on a boundless universe, governed in the most consummate order and harmony, nothing appears to him so shocking as the impious comparison of the incomprehensible Being, the creator and ruler of millions of worlds, with the impotent, puerile, and inconsistent deity of the Jews—the contrast is, beyond all expression, revolting and abhorrent. This immutable order of all things (we are forced to the conclusion) could not exist without the guidance of an infinite Being who is not only independent of matter, or Nature, but regulates that principle.
LUCIAN.—Matter and motion alone constitute what we call Nature, which, you allow, is the essential principle, therefore, there is no room left for supposing any anterior existence; because, as the essential principle, it could have no antecedent—no cause; and must in consequence be self-existent and eternal. If invariable order and harmony evince the design of an artificer, surely the transcendent intellect of your supreme artificer (the demiourgos) evinces still more the necessity of a greater designer, in his production. We know that harmony and adaptation exist in the energies of matter, from which spring all animal organization; is it not then quite as satisfactory, and far more easy, to suppose that Nature—her harmony and intelligence—have existed eternally, than it is to suppose a time when boundless matter was not in being; and that it derived its existence from an immaterial personage, of whom the mind cannot form the slightest conception? As material Nature is the infinite Being, it cannot be an effect; it is the principle of principles, whose innate energies produce within itself the eternal routine of cause and effect.* Of this necessitated process ad infinitum, man cannot know or describe even the surface; yet has the folly to pretend to look beyond the boundless plenum!
* To become a Materialist under existing modes of education,is no easy attainment; it is the fruit of much impartialresearch and knowledge, arising from independent andfearless thought.
MOD.—But may not such an infinite spiritual power as the Platonists, and after them the Christians, figured to themselves, exist and rule the universe, although the mind of man can form no definite idea of this Being?
LUCIAN.—Man has nothing to do with that which he can neither know nor comprehend;* and it is impossible for him to believe in that which is beyond his comprehension. Materialists maintain the existence of an all-ruling POWER; but every attempt to personify that Power,—and all pretensions to any knowledge of it beyond that which is gathered from the process of Nature, in her works, they hold as deceitful and pernicious; regarding all pretended revelations said to be supernaturally made to man, as the work of the most dangerous and wicked impostors: and their revelations as the direst curses that were ever entailed upon mankind. It would be a perversion of terms to speak of more than one infinite Being: whether then is it most rational to suppose it to be that which we know to exist, or that which we do not know** to exist? So far is it from being difficult to suppose the eternity of matter, it is hardly possible to imagine anything but its eternity. Previous to what you call its creation by your immaterial artificer, was he a vacuum living in a vacuum?*** As the Christian's definition of his deity confounds all language, it is its own best refutation. With a face of gravity, he talks of his body spiritual that has no body; an incorporeal something that is essentially nothing; an immaterial substance that is non-substantial; and though this body is immaterial, it possesses the form and likeness, together with the bodily members, of a man! These are the pestilent offspring of theology—your distracting chimeras, which
"Turns them to a shape, and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name."* Man neither can nor ought to have anything to do with thatwhich is confessedly inconceivable; if he pretends to knowor say anything of such a being, he immediately falls intocontradictions. When did a theologian understand himselfwhen speaking of his deity or deities?—Never.** We have five witnesses in favor of the existence ofmatter, viz., seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, andtasting; but where is the proof of the existence of anythingthat is immaterial? It is fancy alone that creates such achimera.*** The old fact that nature abhors a vacuum is stillunrefuted; we may indeed go farther and say that she willnot allow it, for the art of man has never produced a spacewhere there was nothing."Your imagination bodies forthIn forms of things unknown;—"
Amongst the initiated in the mysteries of antiquity, the term God was used only as being expressive of an effect, whose cause is Nature.
MOD.—Men are so accustomed to trace and find the origin of artificial objects, that a supposed analogy readily presents itself, that matter must have had an origin also; and, backed by superstition, they will not give up their "Great First Cause."
LUCIAN.—Forgetting that their "Great First Cause" stands equally in need of a cause. None of the phænomena of Nature prove, but all disclaim a first cause. Causes and effects have ever moved in an eternal circle; and that which is an effect at one time becomes a cause at another, and vice versa. Theology has taught man to reject that which is easy and rational, and blinded him to the thousand-fold difficulty of supposing a time when neither time* nor matter existed, contrasted with the simple truth that matter is self-existent. This is a proposition too plain and reasonable to answer the deceptive ends of the traders in that pseudo science.
MOD.—If, as you say, no power ever did, or can create matter, there are at least an endless series of changes—of new modes or forms of beings which it unceasingly assumes, having the appearance of creation. All this seems to require intelligence and a directing hand.
LUCIAN.—Why may not this directing hand be the essential energies of matter alone, of which motion is the chief; for without it no change whatever can take place? The word creation has no proper meaning except when applied to these new combinations, and ever-varying forms. The universe consists of infinitely-derived, and dependent modes of beings; each of which owes its existence to the power and efficacy of the one that immediately preceded it, in an infinite series of successions, without a beginning, or original.**
* The theologist makes god say, "before time was, I was."** According to Hobbes, "God is almighty matter."Existence still maintains existences,And nought begins where no existence is.
MOD.—The intercirculation* of the parts of matter, and its unceasing changes into new states of being, in form and substance, seem to reveal the mystery of transubstantiation, which, if I mistake not, was one of the attributes ascribed to deity, long before it was adopted as a dogma of Christianity.
LUCIAN.—Like everything else in our Christian fabrication, transubstantiation was taken from the esoteric doctrines of the Gentiles, where it was allegorised in the person of Proteus, who, according to the poets, was Neptune's herdsman; and whose name properly signifies primary, or oldest, meaning that he represented the eternal nature of matter; and his changeableness was expressive of the endless operations, new modes and combinations thereof, wrought chiefly in a fluid state by the perpetual motion** of the sea (Neptune), and the other elements. He was said to take all kinds of shapes and disguises, turning himself into monstrous animals, fire, water, etc., denoting that in him were personified the continually varying forms of matter.*** He was called the servant of Neptune, and said to reside in a cave, meaning the apparent concavity of the heavens. Time, matter and motion form the only eternal Trinity and Unity.
* The perpetual change of form produced by thisintercirculation in the elements of matter, was called bythe Greeks Omoosia or Omousia. This mutual action isuniversal; and is proved even in "the interchange of thematerial of light between globe and globe in the solarsystem; and from the fixed stars, through the medium of somegaseous principle of matter, in the highest state ofrarefaction." All is matter, and matter is all.** It is only by motion that we exist, or even known that weexist. A dead animal begets motion of itself.*** Empedocles says:—"Those are infants or short-sightedpersons with very contracted understandings, who imaginethat anything is born which did not exist before; or thatanything can be totally annihilated."
MOD.—The learned amongst the Christian priesthood, against their private convictions, are under the necessity of supporting the dogma of creation; because the giving up of that point would destroy the foundation of their system; but many of them have no objection to allow the eternity of time.
LUCIAN.—During which time, as has already been observed, their god, being immaterial, was the vacuum inhabitant of a vacuum! Another plunge into absurdity. The pretended creations and false revelations inculcated by theology, have invariably operated to suppress or cripple the sciences; particularly those of astronomy and geology. Sacerdotal deception un-blushingly tells us that, something less than six thousand years ago, there was no sun, no moon, no stars, no earth, no matter of any kind! By the invention of this tremendous absurdity, priestcraft has had the audacity to circumscribe within the comparative period of a moment, the existence of even Nature herself; and as nothing is too gross for unthinking ignorance, even this greatest of all monstrosities goes down with the credulous herd of mankind, who dare to look at nothing but through the spectacles of this "science of god."
MOD.—What proof have we that this globe has been in being longer than the period assigned for it by the Jewish and Christian priesthoods?
LUCIAN.—There are innumerable astronomical and geological facts which prove the existence of this earth for millions of years.* By a change so wonderfully slow as to require perhaps thousands of centuries to bring it round, the surface of this globe is so completely altered towards the sun, that the frigid zones become the torrid, andvice versa, in succession. The remains of tropical animals have been found at the estuaries of the Oby and Lena, and even in more northern latitudes. Petrified crocodiles have been found in Derbyshire, at the depth of eighty-five fathoms; which proves that the land called England enjoyed a tropical sun, in antiquity so remote as to show in a striking light, the moment sand-glass—or, if you please, the perfect nothingness—of all human chronology.
MOD.—It must be allowed that the Bible cosmogony and its stories about deity, origin of man, etc., appear puerile, contradictory, and irrational, unless they can be resolved into planetary allegories. But in regard to the creation of matter, these Jew books are not so absurd as to affirm that it was done out of nothing; that was a discovery made by Christianity. The Jewish creation is a mere copy of cosmogonies of eastern countries, all of whom, China excepted, pretend to account for the origin of things.
LUCIAN.—We had everything from the east.* The Bible makers compiled out of any oriental legends, or shreds of Pagan writings they could find; and from ignorance, turned the sublime allegories having allusion to the planets, into vague unmeaning narrative and anecdote. Even Druidism, which, like primitive Christianity, was concealed sun worship,** travelled to us from the east; and there is abundant reason to believe that priestcraft had reached the highest perfection in India, some fifty thousand years before the Jewish superstition existed. In western Asia and Europe, the usual combination of crafts had robbed man of his natural liberty, enslaved his mind, and eaten up the fruits of his industry; but in Hindustan, the consummate subtlety, and all-subduing art of the priest, has, by an utter annihilation of mind, reduced certain castes of the Hindus far below the condition of the vilest animal on earth, and with a fiendish influence, the most astonishing, it stimulates other castes to actions at which Nature stands horrified.
* Christianism stole its materials in the east—deceived thewest, and now, in its purloined robes and oriental missions,"it would retrace its steps, and deceive the world."** "In Druidism, as in the most ancient religions, themythos in all being perfectly the same, it was required ofthe votaries, that all prayers for good, as well asinvocations of curses, should be addressed to the sun, underthe name of Jupiter. In praying for blessings, they wentround the stone, or other object, according to the course ofthe sun; and vice versa in the invocation of curses. Theseimprecations are very numerous in those solar hymns, calledthe psalms of David."
The Christian priestcraft, even in the eleventh century, when ignorance and tyranny had raised it to its zenith of power and glory, was but a novice compared with the subtle perfection of that of India. And it was no doubt the complete success of this mind-enslaving delusion in the east, which recommended and caused its adoption in the west; for with a variation in names, it is identically the same astro-fable everywhere.*
* Most of the old churches on the continent, as haselsewhere been observed, show that both the virgin and herson were introduced into Europe, as black Gentoos.
MOD.—The absolute sway which Brahminism has over the mind of the Hindus, is perhaps attributable to its being the oldest of all known religions? its priests have the advantage of a prodigious antiquity, through which they have matured it to serve their own ends, and established a despotic power over their debased votaries.
LUCIAN.—No conceivable power over the mind can exceed that refined delusion which causes millions of human beings voluntarily to throw themselves under the wheels of the Juggernaut car, to be crushed to death on earth, in order to attain some one of those heavens which their villainous priests have invented. This astonishing power is perhaps shown still more in the effects of that religious rite, which makes it incumbent on widows to burn themselves alive on the death of their husbands. The horrible wickedness of this sacerdotal injunction requires that these victims must sacrifice themselves by this excruciating death, dressed out in all the jewels and precious stones they are possessed of; and after the dreadful immolation, these valuables become the perquisite of the priests, whose emissaries carefully sift the ashes of the funeral pile where all the gold and gems are found, with little or no injury done them by the fire. This is either the usage now, or was so in former times, and seems to be the acme of priestcraft.
MOD.—Whether the belief in supernatural powers, which, in all ages and countries, a certain order of men has been maintained to inculcate and enforce, has contributed most to human happiness or misery, is not for me to decide; but while a vast majority of mankind are unfitted to think for themselves, advantage will be taken of that ignorance, and combinations formed between the rulers of states and churches for the more effectual government of the many, who, if oppressed on earth by supporting these institutions, will be remunerated by a supernatural promotion in heaven.
LUCIAN,—Just so; under such governments, man is a mere puppet moved at the pleasures of his oppressors, who keep him ignorant, and work him thoroughly: promising him a post mortem happiness in another life, provided he bears the yoke of misery quietly in this:—
"Then the mind's independence insensibly sinksThe taint of one portion enfeebling the whole,Till oppression, preparing the doubled-twined links,King and priests draw their victim down—body and soul."
But you forget the immensely different degrees of evil occasioned by the inventions of theology; in England, Ireland, and Wales,* alone, the enormous sum of nine millions nine hundred and twenty thousand pounds is annually squandered in pampering and enriching the dignitaries, and maintaining the rest of a body of ecclesiastics, about thirty thousand in number. This sum is considerably more than half of all the clerical revenues of Christendom; and cannot possibly have any other source than the industry of the people, who, in return for their toil and starvation, are robbed of their senses, their judgments, and their liberties. That religion which attempts, through the aid of civil tyranny, to enforce the belief or acquiescence in the truth of its dogmas, virtually gives a premium to falsehood—renders truth injurious in society, and, by these very actions, proves itself false.
MOD.—The religions of antiquity must have been a down-draught upon industry also, and were used wholly for the purpose of deception. The dominant superstition of a country will always be taken into partnership by the political rulers; not because they think it true,** but as an auxiliary and pillar of government, which confers upon the professors thereof many privileges and immunities, in return for their support.
* To these countries nothing has been more burdensome andruinous than the expense of worshipping their gods.** Wherever truth is compelled to hide her head, there isnecessarily a vicious order of things, both political andmoral. If instructors and governors were themselvespossessed of knowledge and virtue they would govern men moreeasily, and much better, by realities than by fables.
LUCIAN.—The Athenians never had an established priesthood, that overwhelming master-curse of modern times; and as for that of the Romans, it did not, from the Pontifex Maximus, down to the lowest priest, exceed from fifty to sixty persons; and as the dignitaries at the head of these were always amongst the first men of the state, their offices were purely honorary. Under these circumstances it was quite impossible that the whole institution could be either oppressive upon industry or dangerous to liberty. As the Roman superstition was supported by the state for no other purpose than that of deception, to serve the ends of political jugglery, or as a means of enabling generals of armies to restrain the rashness of their troops, or excite them to fight with enthusiasm when required; so, in like manner, are the more recently-invented deceptions of theology supported, and from the same motive, by the different nations of Europe, but in a degree, and with effects infinitely more degrading and oppressive to all the real wealth-producers.Of all deceivers who have plagued the worlds none are so deeply ruinous to human happiness, or so deserving of universal execration, as those impostors who pretend to lead men by a light above Nature.
MOD.—The ignorant fears and inquisitiveness of mankind seems to require such leaders; they cannot account for the phænomena of Nature, and therefore they keep a class of men in pay who pretend to explain to them certain personified existences superior to Nature, who work the machinery behind the scenes; and in whom is inherent, they say, the sole power to cause and control all such phænomena. But if the hopes and fears of an ignorant populace impel them to keep such teachers, it is true that those alone who require their services should contribute to their support; yet as riches is power, confederate political rulers make their adopted priesthoods wealthy, by the exaction of tithes and other imposts upon industry; in all of which they are borne out and justified by god's old will.
LUCIAN.—That was one of the reasons why Jahouh, when he ceased to be a Jew, was not made to revoke his old will, which, like his new one, was the word and will of his priests, who were not likely to permit him to forget tithes. The present condition of the English and Irish churches shows that the legal robbery of this exaction has been sadly aggravated since its first introduction into Christianity. For the first eight hundred years of our era tithes were given as alms. We are informed by Sts. Jerome, Bernard, Chrysostom, Wickliffe, Huss, and many other writers who uniformly agree, that tithes were purely voluntary. St. Augustine says: "If we (the priests) do possess anything privately which doth suffice us, the tithes, or alms, are not ours, but the goods of the poor, whose stewards we are;except we do challenge to ourselves a property by some damnable usurpation." Blackstone says that at first tithes were distributed in a fourfold division; one for the share of the Bishop, another for maintaining the fabric of the church, a third for the poor, and a fourth to provide for the incumbent. When the sees of the bishops became otherwise amply endowed, they were prohibited from demanding their usual share; so that the poor became entitled to one-third. As the clergy now eat up the whole, the "usurpation" of St, Augustine has grown more and more "damnable." St. Jerome asserted that, according to St. Paul, it was "by the instigation of the devil" that distinctions of rank in religion were made, by the creation of bishops and other dignitaries.
MOD.—All this serves only to show that human beings, so far as we know their history, have always paid priests to lead or mislead them, through the medium of supematurals, whether these be real or fanciful. In denying any first cause, or creation of matter, I suppose you must allow that man cannot be a spontaneous production of the earth, and therefore the admission of his origin is unavoidable.
LUCIAN.—It is in vain that we see the human species propagated exactly as are all the mammalia classes:—theology prevents a correct view of everything; and it is its business to trample upon analogy and experience, and to feed man with fables about his first production. You ask, how came man into existence? But it would be quite as philosophical to ask how the first tree, worm, or oyster, came into being.* All organised life arises from some energy in the affinities and motions of matter, that is altogether unknown to us, and which gives rise to vegetable and animal life; so that the production of man is nothing more wonderful than that of any shell fish. All generation is motion. But the rational probability is, that the various species of homo found on this globe, were always upon it; Nature propagating each upon that part of its surface that is congenial to the particular species; and that in the almost inconceivably slow process of the change, by which portions of the globe's surface become alternately sea and land, they migrated in succession, as old lands were wasted by the sea, and as new lands afforded asylums.
* "Let us view man when within the shell, and when out ofit; let us take a microscope and examine the youngestembryos, those of the growth of four, six, eight, or fifteendays; after this age we may discover them with our nakedeyes. Then we can perceive the head only, a round egg withtwo blackish specks, which represent the eyes. Before thistime, all being unformed, we can see nothing but a pulp ofmarrow, which is the brain, where the original of the nervesis first formed, where the principle of feeling is firstseated, and the heart, which begins already to beat in thissoft pulp; this is the punctum saliens of Malpighi, part ofthe liveliness of which does, perhaps, already proceed fromthe influence of the nerves. Then we see the head by degreestretch for the neck, which being widened, first forms thethorax, where the heart immediately descends, and takes upits situation. The belly is framed next, which is dividedinto two parts by a partition, called by anatomists thediaphragm. These parts being expanded, furnish the arms, thehands, the fingers, the nails, and the hair; the other givesthe thighs, the legs, the feet, etc., which form the supportand balance of the body. All this is surprising, but notmore so in man than in any other animal, or even invegetation; the same luxury of Nature shines throughout."
MOD.—Divines have long settled the question against you, that there is no specific difference in the human race, though they allow a great manyaccidentalvarieties; but they declare upon Bible authority, that all these varieties sprung from a single pair—one original stock of mankind.
LUCIAN.—The absurd side of a question is the indisputable right of theology.* Wilful blindness or ignorant prejudice alone can raise a doubt, that the Whites, the Negroes, the Albinos, the Hottentots, the Chinese, and the native Americans, are altogether different species, under the genus homo. The white-skinned, bearded native of Northern Asia, could no more beget the copper-colored, beardless native of America, than a bull-dog could beget a f ox; the Negro of Africa, the Laplander; the leopard, the lion; the European, the Ethiopian; the ass, the horse; or an Esquimaux, & Hottentot. Therefore, when theology asserts that America must have been peopled from Asia, it is quite consistent with itself, that is, a tissue of glaring contradictions. When divines can show us how the oak and the ash got to America, and who carried over the dogs, cats, and hogs, the difficulty as to how man got there will be easily solved. Nature did there, as she has done everywhere else, in producing that species of the genus that is proper for the climate. But theology, in its disinterested cares for man, whose folly supports it, shows no kind regard about the migration of other animals, but is, on the contrary, their most deadly enemy; inasmuch as the abominable doctrine that all of them were created solely for his use, has authorised those atrocious cruelties which we daily see exercised upon them.