[Contents]CHAPTER XV.EDUCATION.[Contents]A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.The doctrine of Pythagoras, the philosophic Messiah of Paganism, included the strange tenet ofmetempsychosis. After death, held the confessors of that dogma, the souls of men and brutes would reappear in new forms, higher or lower, according to the character-traits of the dying individual. Thus the soul of a wealthy glutton might be reborn in a pig-sty, that of a high-minded peasant perhaps on the throne of a king. Death and rebirth are the upper and lower spokes of a wheel that turns and turns forever, and in the persons of their neighbors the Pythagoreans saw wanderers that might have walked this earth thousands of years ago.The strangeness of such a theory is still increased by the circumstance that its teacher was an eminent astronomer, an accomplished mathematician, and the leader of a memorable hygienic reform. Our astonishment[183]is not lessened by the well-established fact that, under some form or other, the doctrine of soul-migration has for ages been the accepted creed of a large plurality of our fellow-men. It is well known, however, that to his trusted disciples Pythagoras imparted anesotericor explanatory version of his dogmas; and if we learn that the great philosopher attached a special importance to the influence of hereditary dispositions, the truth at last dawns upon us that the doctrine of metempsychosis referred to the reappearance of individual types, passions, and dispositions in the bodily and mental characteristics of thenext generation. “Parents live in their children.” The instinctive recognition of that truth reconciles our dumb fellow-creatures to the prospect of death. At the end of summer the night-moth carefully deposits her eggs in a silver cradle, hidden safe in the crevice of some sheltering nook, where they will survive the rigor of the winter and answer the first summons of spring. Having thus, as it were, insured the resurrection of her type, the parent moth quietly resigns herself to the fate of sleeping her own winter-slumber in the arms of death. On the Orinoco wounded river-turtles will use their last strength to climb the slope of some bush-hidden sand-bank, and after intrusting their eggs to the protection of the deep drift sand, will reënter the water and quietly float off with the seaward currents. In the virgin-woods of Southern Mexico, where the harpy-eagle fills the maws of her hungry brood by incessant raids on the small denizens of the tree-tops, the traveler D’Armand once witnessed a curious[184]scene. An eagle had pounced upon a nursing mother monkey, who at first struggled desperately to free herself from the claws of the murderer; but, finding resistance in vain, she loosened her grasp on the branches, and, just as the eagle carried her off, she disengaged the arm of her baby from her neck, and shaking off the little creature with a swing of her arm, she deliberately flung it back into the sheltering foliage of the tree-top, thus taking the last possible chance of surviving in her child.The “dread of annihilation” reveals itself in the instincts of a dying philosopher as plainly as in the instincts of a wounded animal; but, on self-examination, that fear would prove to have but little in common with a special solicitude for the preservation of material forms or combinations—conditions which the process of organic change constantly modifies in the cradle as well as in the grave. It is rather the type of the body and its correlated mental dispositions which the hope of resurrection yearns to preserve, and even childless men have often partly realized that hope by impressing the image of their soul on a younger mind, and transmitting their cherished projects and theories through the medium of education. In the consciousness of that accomplished task Socrates could as calmly die in the arms of his disciples as the Hebrew patriarch in the arms of his children and grandchildren. “You kill a sower,” cried St. Adalbert under the clubs of his assassins, “but the seed he has planted will rise and survive both his love and your hatred.”Even the influence of a great practical example has[185]often impressed the mental type of a reformer or patriot on a series of subsequent generations. The Buddhist Calanus, preaching the doctrine of renunciation to an audience of scoffers, deeply affected the most thoughtless of his witnesses by proving his personal convictions in the flames of a funeral pile. “I leave no sons,” were the last words of Epaminondas, “but two immortal daughters, the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea.” Rousseau smiled when he learned the intrigues of his enemies who were trying their utmost to enlist the coöperation of a violent pulpit-orator. “They are busy recruiting their corps of partisans,” said he, “but Time will raise me an ally in every intelligent reader of the next generation.”[Contents]B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.In the simple lives of the lower animals every day may bring the sufficient reward of its toil; but the problem of progress, even from the first dawn of civilization, involves tasks too apt to extend beyond the span of individual existence. The forest-clearing husbandman, the state-founding patriot, the scientific inquirer, all risk to receive the summons of night before the completion of their labor. Before reaching the goal of their hopes their earthly pilgrimage may end at the brink of the unknown river, and education alone can bridge that gulf, and make every day the way-station, of an unbroken road. Children or children’s children will take up the staff from the last resting-place of their pilgrim father; and, moreover, all progress is cumulative. Every laborer works with the experience of his forefathers, as well as his own;[186]every son stands on the shoulders of his father. Even the failure of individual efforts contributes a helpful lesson to the success of the next attempt:Freedom’s brave battle, once begun,Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,Though often baffled, e’er is won.Persistent adherence to the programme of a traditional policy has often made the work of successive centuries the triumphant execution of a single plan. The empire of Islam sprung from the seed which the prophet of Mecca had planted in the soil of his native land. The storm of the Protestant revolt rose from the anathemas of a poor Wittenberg friar; the unquenchable fire of the French Revolution was kindled by the burning indignation of a Swiss recluse, and his fervid appeals:Those oracles that set the world aflame,Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;and the vast fabric of our republican federation was founded by the poor colonists who sought independence in the freedom of the wilderness, and combined against the power of a selfish despot. Education sows a seed which may sprout even during the life-time of the sower, and bless individual life with the sweets of a guaranteed triumph over the power of death.Resurgam, “I shall live after death,” expresses the significance of that triumph, and of the “esoteric doctrine of Pythagoras.”[Contents]C.—PERVERSION.The Christian church has constantly perverted the purpose of education, but has never yet deserved the[187]reproach of having neglected its means. From the very beginning the sect of the apostle-training Galilean has been a sect of assiduous educators. They were not satisfied with founding schools and opening their doors to all comers, but went forth in quest of new converts, and pursued their aim with a persistence of zeal and a versatility of skill that could not fail to accomplish its purpose. As soon as a sufficient increase of power enabled them to control the institutes of primary instruction they turned their chief attention to the dogmatical education of the young. They derived no aid from the attractiveness and still less from the plausibility of their doctrine, but they realized Schopenhauer’s remark that “there is in childhood a period measured by six, or at most by ten years, when any well-inculcated dogma, no matter how extravagantly absurd, is sure to retain its hold for life.” And though the propagation of an unnatural creed is not favored by natural fertility, the naturally barren doctrine of renunciation was thus successfully propagated by a system of incessant grafting. By the skilful application of that process the most dissimilar plants were made subservient to its purpose. The “Worship of Sorrow” with its whining renunciation of worldly enjoyments, and its indifference to health and physical education, was grafted on the manful naturalism of the Hebrew law-giver. Saint-worship, the veneration of self-torturing fanatics, was grafted on a stem of pagan mythology, and dozens of Christian martyrs have thus usurped the honor and the sacrifices of pagan temples. Christian holidays were grafted on the festivals of[188]the nature-loving Saxons. But persuasion failing, the missionaries of the cross did not hesitate to resort to more conclusive measures. Like refractory children cudgeled along the path of knowledge, the obstinate skeptics of northern Europe were harassed with fire and sword till they could not help admitting the dangers of unbelief. Thegarden-landsof the Albigenses were wasted till they found no difficulty in yearning for the peace of a better world. Philosophers were tortured in the prisons of the Holy Inquisition till the sorrows of life favored the renunciation of its hopes.For thirteen centuries the sunshine of millions of human hearts was ruthlessly sacrificed to promote the task of luring mankind from life to ghost-land, and during all those ages education was systematically turned from a blessing into an earth-blighting curse.[Contents]D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.There is a story of a Portuguese slave-dealer who carried a private chaplain on his pay-roll, and frequently expressed his solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his shackled captives. A very similar kind of spiritual duty has for centuries been made the excuse for an almost total neglect of secular education. Divorced from the control of common sense, religion soon degenerated into mere ceremonialism. A priest who would travel twenty miles through a snow-storm to supply a dying man with a consecrated wafer had no sympathy with the needs of the living. He would extort the last penny of his[189]tithes at the risk of starving a village full of needy parishioners. He would groan at the sight of an unbaptized child, but had not a drop of water to cool the brows of burning Moors or Jews. He would rave about the cruelty of a prince who had deprived the clergy of their mass-shillings, but had no ear for the laments of the exiledMoriscosor the curses of starving serfs.Such was the morality which arrogated the right of suppressing that system of physical and intellectual education which had filled the homes of the Mediterranean nations with all the blessings of health, science, and beauty. Theological training had failed to kindle the dawn of a supernatural millennium, but had thoroughly succeeded in extinguishing the light of human reason. Not absolute ignorance only, but baneful superstition—worse than ignorance by just as much as poison is worse than hunger—was for centuries the inevitable result of all so-called school-training; and the traditions of that age of priest-rule have made religion almost a synonyme of cant. It also gave book-learning its supposed tendency to mental aberration. Can we wonder at that result of an age when the literary products of Christian Europe were confined almost exclusively to ghost-stories and manuals of ceremony? Can we wonder that delusions of the most preposterous kind assumed the virulence of epidemic diseases? Maniacs of self-mutilation, of epileptic contortions, of were-wolf panics, traversed Europe from end to end. Men gloried in ignorance, and boasted their neglect of worldly science till the consequences[190]of that neglect avenged its folly in actual madness.The saddest of all the sad “it might have beens” is, perhaps, a reverie on the probable results of earlier emancipation—of the employment of thirteen worse than wasted centuries in scientific inquiries, agricultural improvements, social and sanitary reforms. We might have failed to enter the portals of the New Jerusalem, but we would probably have regained our earthly paradise.[Contents]E.—REFORM.The days of the Holy Inquisition are past; but the restless propaganda of Jesuitry still shames the inactivity of Rationalism. Our friends sit listless, relying on the theoretical advantages of their cause, while the busy intrigues of our enemies secure them all practical advantages.Even in our model republic only primary education stands neutral, while private enterprise has made nearly every higher college a stronghold of dogmatism. And even the semi-secularism of primary instruction is more than offset by the ultra-orthodoxy of “Sunday-schools.” Millions of factory children have to sacrifice their only day of leisure at the bidding of their dogmatic task-master and with the timid connivance of their parents. “We cannot row against the stream,” I have heard even Freethinkers say. “Let the youngsters join the crowd; if it does them no good, it can do no harm.” But it will do harm, even beyond the waste of time and the wasted opportunities for health-giving exercise. The[191]process of dogmatic inoculation may fail to serve its direct purpose, but the weekly repetition of the experiment is sure to contaminate the moral organism with unsound humors which may become virulent at unexpected times and, likely enough, undermine that very peace of the household which a short-sighted mother hoped to promote by driving her boys to Sunday-school, as she would drive troublesome cattle to a public pasture.The Freethinkers of every community should combine to engage a teacher, or at least facilitate home instruction by collecting text-books of Secularism, such as Voltaire’s “Philosophical Cyclopedia;” Rousseau’s “Emile;” Hallam’s “History of the Middle Ages;” Ingersoll’s pamphlets; Paine’s “Age of Reason;” Lecky’s “History of Rationalism” and “History of Morals;” Lessing’s “Nathan;” Goethe and Schiller’s “Xenions;” Darwin’s “Descent of Man;” Plutarch’s Biographies; Trelawney’s “Last Days of Shelley and Byron;” McDonnell’s Freethought novels; Parker Pillsbury’s “Review of Sabbatarian Legislation;” Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man;” Bennett’s “Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times;” Gibbon’s “History of Christianity;” Keeler’s “Short History of the Bible;” “Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions;” “Supernatural Religion;” Greg’s “Creed of Christendom;” Lord Amberley’s “Analysis of Religious Belief;” “Religion Not History.”We should have Freethought colleges and Secular missions, and even isolated Liberals might do better than “drift with the stream.” They might let their[192]children pass their Sundays in the freedom of the forests and mountains to worship the God of Nature in his own temple, and learn a lesson from the parental devotion of their dumb fellow-creatures. She-wolves, deprived of their whelps, have been known to enter human habitations at night to suckle their young through the bars of a heavy cage. Thrushes and fly-catchers will enter an open window to feed or rescue their captive nestlings, and with a still wider sympathy a Liberal friend of mine tries to aid his neighbors’ children, as well as his own. Renouncing the hope of abolishing Sabbatarianism, he conceived the idea of controlling it, and induced his neighbors to send their children to a “Sunday Garden” with a free museum of pictures and stuffed birds, gymnastic contrivances, and a little restaurant of free temperance refreshments—apples, peanuts, and lemonade. He defrays the expenses of the establishment, which his neighbors consider a sort of modified kindergarten; and under the name of “Sunday books” circulates a private library of purely secular literature.“If life shall have been duly rationalized by science,” says Herbert Spencer, “parents will learn to consider a sound physical constitution as an entailed estate, which should be transmitted unimpaired, if not improved;” and with a similar recognition of social obligations Freethinkers should endeavor to transmit to their children a bequest of unimpaired common sense. Loyalty to their Protestant ancestors, loyalty to posterity, and to the majesty of truth herself, should prompt us to stand[193]bravely by our colors and train our children to continue the struggle for light and independence.By the far-reaching influence of education Secularists should bridge the chasm which orthodoxy hopes to cross on the wings of faith. Secularism shall preach the gospel of immortality on earth.[194]
[Contents]CHAPTER XV.EDUCATION.[Contents]A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.The doctrine of Pythagoras, the philosophic Messiah of Paganism, included the strange tenet ofmetempsychosis. After death, held the confessors of that dogma, the souls of men and brutes would reappear in new forms, higher or lower, according to the character-traits of the dying individual. Thus the soul of a wealthy glutton might be reborn in a pig-sty, that of a high-minded peasant perhaps on the throne of a king. Death and rebirth are the upper and lower spokes of a wheel that turns and turns forever, and in the persons of their neighbors the Pythagoreans saw wanderers that might have walked this earth thousands of years ago.The strangeness of such a theory is still increased by the circumstance that its teacher was an eminent astronomer, an accomplished mathematician, and the leader of a memorable hygienic reform. Our astonishment[183]is not lessened by the well-established fact that, under some form or other, the doctrine of soul-migration has for ages been the accepted creed of a large plurality of our fellow-men. It is well known, however, that to his trusted disciples Pythagoras imparted anesotericor explanatory version of his dogmas; and if we learn that the great philosopher attached a special importance to the influence of hereditary dispositions, the truth at last dawns upon us that the doctrine of metempsychosis referred to the reappearance of individual types, passions, and dispositions in the bodily and mental characteristics of thenext generation. “Parents live in their children.” The instinctive recognition of that truth reconciles our dumb fellow-creatures to the prospect of death. At the end of summer the night-moth carefully deposits her eggs in a silver cradle, hidden safe in the crevice of some sheltering nook, where they will survive the rigor of the winter and answer the first summons of spring. Having thus, as it were, insured the resurrection of her type, the parent moth quietly resigns herself to the fate of sleeping her own winter-slumber in the arms of death. On the Orinoco wounded river-turtles will use their last strength to climb the slope of some bush-hidden sand-bank, and after intrusting their eggs to the protection of the deep drift sand, will reënter the water and quietly float off with the seaward currents. In the virgin-woods of Southern Mexico, where the harpy-eagle fills the maws of her hungry brood by incessant raids on the small denizens of the tree-tops, the traveler D’Armand once witnessed a curious[184]scene. An eagle had pounced upon a nursing mother monkey, who at first struggled desperately to free herself from the claws of the murderer; but, finding resistance in vain, she loosened her grasp on the branches, and, just as the eagle carried her off, she disengaged the arm of her baby from her neck, and shaking off the little creature with a swing of her arm, she deliberately flung it back into the sheltering foliage of the tree-top, thus taking the last possible chance of surviving in her child.The “dread of annihilation” reveals itself in the instincts of a dying philosopher as plainly as in the instincts of a wounded animal; but, on self-examination, that fear would prove to have but little in common with a special solicitude for the preservation of material forms or combinations—conditions which the process of organic change constantly modifies in the cradle as well as in the grave. It is rather the type of the body and its correlated mental dispositions which the hope of resurrection yearns to preserve, and even childless men have often partly realized that hope by impressing the image of their soul on a younger mind, and transmitting their cherished projects and theories through the medium of education. In the consciousness of that accomplished task Socrates could as calmly die in the arms of his disciples as the Hebrew patriarch in the arms of his children and grandchildren. “You kill a sower,” cried St. Adalbert under the clubs of his assassins, “but the seed he has planted will rise and survive both his love and your hatred.”Even the influence of a great practical example has[185]often impressed the mental type of a reformer or patriot on a series of subsequent generations. The Buddhist Calanus, preaching the doctrine of renunciation to an audience of scoffers, deeply affected the most thoughtless of his witnesses by proving his personal convictions in the flames of a funeral pile. “I leave no sons,” were the last words of Epaminondas, “but two immortal daughters, the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea.” Rousseau smiled when he learned the intrigues of his enemies who were trying their utmost to enlist the coöperation of a violent pulpit-orator. “They are busy recruiting their corps of partisans,” said he, “but Time will raise me an ally in every intelligent reader of the next generation.”[Contents]B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.In the simple lives of the lower animals every day may bring the sufficient reward of its toil; but the problem of progress, even from the first dawn of civilization, involves tasks too apt to extend beyond the span of individual existence. The forest-clearing husbandman, the state-founding patriot, the scientific inquirer, all risk to receive the summons of night before the completion of their labor. Before reaching the goal of their hopes their earthly pilgrimage may end at the brink of the unknown river, and education alone can bridge that gulf, and make every day the way-station, of an unbroken road. Children or children’s children will take up the staff from the last resting-place of their pilgrim father; and, moreover, all progress is cumulative. Every laborer works with the experience of his forefathers, as well as his own;[186]every son stands on the shoulders of his father. Even the failure of individual efforts contributes a helpful lesson to the success of the next attempt:Freedom’s brave battle, once begun,Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,Though often baffled, e’er is won.Persistent adherence to the programme of a traditional policy has often made the work of successive centuries the triumphant execution of a single plan. The empire of Islam sprung from the seed which the prophet of Mecca had planted in the soil of his native land. The storm of the Protestant revolt rose from the anathemas of a poor Wittenberg friar; the unquenchable fire of the French Revolution was kindled by the burning indignation of a Swiss recluse, and his fervid appeals:Those oracles that set the world aflame,Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;and the vast fabric of our republican federation was founded by the poor colonists who sought independence in the freedom of the wilderness, and combined against the power of a selfish despot. Education sows a seed which may sprout even during the life-time of the sower, and bless individual life with the sweets of a guaranteed triumph over the power of death.Resurgam, “I shall live after death,” expresses the significance of that triumph, and of the “esoteric doctrine of Pythagoras.”[Contents]C.—PERVERSION.The Christian church has constantly perverted the purpose of education, but has never yet deserved the[187]reproach of having neglected its means. From the very beginning the sect of the apostle-training Galilean has been a sect of assiduous educators. They were not satisfied with founding schools and opening their doors to all comers, but went forth in quest of new converts, and pursued their aim with a persistence of zeal and a versatility of skill that could not fail to accomplish its purpose. As soon as a sufficient increase of power enabled them to control the institutes of primary instruction they turned their chief attention to the dogmatical education of the young. They derived no aid from the attractiveness and still less from the plausibility of their doctrine, but they realized Schopenhauer’s remark that “there is in childhood a period measured by six, or at most by ten years, when any well-inculcated dogma, no matter how extravagantly absurd, is sure to retain its hold for life.” And though the propagation of an unnatural creed is not favored by natural fertility, the naturally barren doctrine of renunciation was thus successfully propagated by a system of incessant grafting. By the skilful application of that process the most dissimilar plants were made subservient to its purpose. The “Worship of Sorrow” with its whining renunciation of worldly enjoyments, and its indifference to health and physical education, was grafted on the manful naturalism of the Hebrew law-giver. Saint-worship, the veneration of self-torturing fanatics, was grafted on a stem of pagan mythology, and dozens of Christian martyrs have thus usurped the honor and the sacrifices of pagan temples. Christian holidays were grafted on the festivals of[188]the nature-loving Saxons. But persuasion failing, the missionaries of the cross did not hesitate to resort to more conclusive measures. Like refractory children cudgeled along the path of knowledge, the obstinate skeptics of northern Europe were harassed with fire and sword till they could not help admitting the dangers of unbelief. Thegarden-landsof the Albigenses were wasted till they found no difficulty in yearning for the peace of a better world. Philosophers were tortured in the prisons of the Holy Inquisition till the sorrows of life favored the renunciation of its hopes.For thirteen centuries the sunshine of millions of human hearts was ruthlessly sacrificed to promote the task of luring mankind from life to ghost-land, and during all those ages education was systematically turned from a blessing into an earth-blighting curse.[Contents]D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.There is a story of a Portuguese slave-dealer who carried a private chaplain on his pay-roll, and frequently expressed his solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his shackled captives. A very similar kind of spiritual duty has for centuries been made the excuse for an almost total neglect of secular education. Divorced from the control of common sense, religion soon degenerated into mere ceremonialism. A priest who would travel twenty miles through a snow-storm to supply a dying man with a consecrated wafer had no sympathy with the needs of the living. He would extort the last penny of his[189]tithes at the risk of starving a village full of needy parishioners. He would groan at the sight of an unbaptized child, but had not a drop of water to cool the brows of burning Moors or Jews. He would rave about the cruelty of a prince who had deprived the clergy of their mass-shillings, but had no ear for the laments of the exiledMoriscosor the curses of starving serfs.Such was the morality which arrogated the right of suppressing that system of physical and intellectual education which had filled the homes of the Mediterranean nations with all the blessings of health, science, and beauty. Theological training had failed to kindle the dawn of a supernatural millennium, but had thoroughly succeeded in extinguishing the light of human reason. Not absolute ignorance only, but baneful superstition—worse than ignorance by just as much as poison is worse than hunger—was for centuries the inevitable result of all so-called school-training; and the traditions of that age of priest-rule have made religion almost a synonyme of cant. It also gave book-learning its supposed tendency to mental aberration. Can we wonder at that result of an age when the literary products of Christian Europe were confined almost exclusively to ghost-stories and manuals of ceremony? Can we wonder that delusions of the most preposterous kind assumed the virulence of epidemic diseases? Maniacs of self-mutilation, of epileptic contortions, of were-wolf panics, traversed Europe from end to end. Men gloried in ignorance, and boasted their neglect of worldly science till the consequences[190]of that neglect avenged its folly in actual madness.The saddest of all the sad “it might have beens” is, perhaps, a reverie on the probable results of earlier emancipation—of the employment of thirteen worse than wasted centuries in scientific inquiries, agricultural improvements, social and sanitary reforms. We might have failed to enter the portals of the New Jerusalem, but we would probably have regained our earthly paradise.[Contents]E.—REFORM.The days of the Holy Inquisition are past; but the restless propaganda of Jesuitry still shames the inactivity of Rationalism. Our friends sit listless, relying on the theoretical advantages of their cause, while the busy intrigues of our enemies secure them all practical advantages.Even in our model republic only primary education stands neutral, while private enterprise has made nearly every higher college a stronghold of dogmatism. And even the semi-secularism of primary instruction is more than offset by the ultra-orthodoxy of “Sunday-schools.” Millions of factory children have to sacrifice their only day of leisure at the bidding of their dogmatic task-master and with the timid connivance of their parents. “We cannot row against the stream,” I have heard even Freethinkers say. “Let the youngsters join the crowd; if it does them no good, it can do no harm.” But it will do harm, even beyond the waste of time and the wasted opportunities for health-giving exercise. The[191]process of dogmatic inoculation may fail to serve its direct purpose, but the weekly repetition of the experiment is sure to contaminate the moral organism with unsound humors which may become virulent at unexpected times and, likely enough, undermine that very peace of the household which a short-sighted mother hoped to promote by driving her boys to Sunday-school, as she would drive troublesome cattle to a public pasture.The Freethinkers of every community should combine to engage a teacher, or at least facilitate home instruction by collecting text-books of Secularism, such as Voltaire’s “Philosophical Cyclopedia;” Rousseau’s “Emile;” Hallam’s “History of the Middle Ages;” Ingersoll’s pamphlets; Paine’s “Age of Reason;” Lecky’s “History of Rationalism” and “History of Morals;” Lessing’s “Nathan;” Goethe and Schiller’s “Xenions;” Darwin’s “Descent of Man;” Plutarch’s Biographies; Trelawney’s “Last Days of Shelley and Byron;” McDonnell’s Freethought novels; Parker Pillsbury’s “Review of Sabbatarian Legislation;” Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man;” Bennett’s “Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times;” Gibbon’s “History of Christianity;” Keeler’s “Short History of the Bible;” “Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions;” “Supernatural Religion;” Greg’s “Creed of Christendom;” Lord Amberley’s “Analysis of Religious Belief;” “Religion Not History.”We should have Freethought colleges and Secular missions, and even isolated Liberals might do better than “drift with the stream.” They might let their[192]children pass their Sundays in the freedom of the forests and mountains to worship the God of Nature in his own temple, and learn a lesson from the parental devotion of their dumb fellow-creatures. She-wolves, deprived of their whelps, have been known to enter human habitations at night to suckle their young through the bars of a heavy cage. Thrushes and fly-catchers will enter an open window to feed or rescue their captive nestlings, and with a still wider sympathy a Liberal friend of mine tries to aid his neighbors’ children, as well as his own. Renouncing the hope of abolishing Sabbatarianism, he conceived the idea of controlling it, and induced his neighbors to send their children to a “Sunday Garden” with a free museum of pictures and stuffed birds, gymnastic contrivances, and a little restaurant of free temperance refreshments—apples, peanuts, and lemonade. He defrays the expenses of the establishment, which his neighbors consider a sort of modified kindergarten; and under the name of “Sunday books” circulates a private library of purely secular literature.“If life shall have been duly rationalized by science,” says Herbert Spencer, “parents will learn to consider a sound physical constitution as an entailed estate, which should be transmitted unimpaired, if not improved;” and with a similar recognition of social obligations Freethinkers should endeavor to transmit to their children a bequest of unimpaired common sense. Loyalty to their Protestant ancestors, loyalty to posterity, and to the majesty of truth herself, should prompt us to stand[193]bravely by our colors and train our children to continue the struggle for light and independence.By the far-reaching influence of education Secularists should bridge the chasm which orthodoxy hopes to cross on the wings of faith. Secularism shall preach the gospel of immortality on earth.[194]
[Contents]CHAPTER XV.EDUCATION.[Contents]A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.The doctrine of Pythagoras, the philosophic Messiah of Paganism, included the strange tenet ofmetempsychosis. After death, held the confessors of that dogma, the souls of men and brutes would reappear in new forms, higher or lower, according to the character-traits of the dying individual. Thus the soul of a wealthy glutton might be reborn in a pig-sty, that of a high-minded peasant perhaps on the throne of a king. Death and rebirth are the upper and lower spokes of a wheel that turns and turns forever, and in the persons of their neighbors the Pythagoreans saw wanderers that might have walked this earth thousands of years ago.The strangeness of such a theory is still increased by the circumstance that its teacher was an eminent astronomer, an accomplished mathematician, and the leader of a memorable hygienic reform. Our astonishment[183]is not lessened by the well-established fact that, under some form or other, the doctrine of soul-migration has for ages been the accepted creed of a large plurality of our fellow-men. It is well known, however, that to his trusted disciples Pythagoras imparted anesotericor explanatory version of his dogmas; and if we learn that the great philosopher attached a special importance to the influence of hereditary dispositions, the truth at last dawns upon us that the doctrine of metempsychosis referred to the reappearance of individual types, passions, and dispositions in the bodily and mental characteristics of thenext generation. “Parents live in their children.” The instinctive recognition of that truth reconciles our dumb fellow-creatures to the prospect of death. At the end of summer the night-moth carefully deposits her eggs in a silver cradle, hidden safe in the crevice of some sheltering nook, where they will survive the rigor of the winter and answer the first summons of spring. Having thus, as it were, insured the resurrection of her type, the parent moth quietly resigns herself to the fate of sleeping her own winter-slumber in the arms of death. On the Orinoco wounded river-turtles will use their last strength to climb the slope of some bush-hidden sand-bank, and after intrusting their eggs to the protection of the deep drift sand, will reënter the water and quietly float off with the seaward currents. In the virgin-woods of Southern Mexico, where the harpy-eagle fills the maws of her hungry brood by incessant raids on the small denizens of the tree-tops, the traveler D’Armand once witnessed a curious[184]scene. An eagle had pounced upon a nursing mother monkey, who at first struggled desperately to free herself from the claws of the murderer; but, finding resistance in vain, she loosened her grasp on the branches, and, just as the eagle carried her off, she disengaged the arm of her baby from her neck, and shaking off the little creature with a swing of her arm, she deliberately flung it back into the sheltering foliage of the tree-top, thus taking the last possible chance of surviving in her child.The “dread of annihilation” reveals itself in the instincts of a dying philosopher as plainly as in the instincts of a wounded animal; but, on self-examination, that fear would prove to have but little in common with a special solicitude for the preservation of material forms or combinations—conditions which the process of organic change constantly modifies in the cradle as well as in the grave. It is rather the type of the body and its correlated mental dispositions which the hope of resurrection yearns to preserve, and even childless men have often partly realized that hope by impressing the image of their soul on a younger mind, and transmitting their cherished projects and theories through the medium of education. In the consciousness of that accomplished task Socrates could as calmly die in the arms of his disciples as the Hebrew patriarch in the arms of his children and grandchildren. “You kill a sower,” cried St. Adalbert under the clubs of his assassins, “but the seed he has planted will rise and survive both his love and your hatred.”Even the influence of a great practical example has[185]often impressed the mental type of a reformer or patriot on a series of subsequent generations. The Buddhist Calanus, preaching the doctrine of renunciation to an audience of scoffers, deeply affected the most thoughtless of his witnesses by proving his personal convictions in the flames of a funeral pile. “I leave no sons,” were the last words of Epaminondas, “but two immortal daughters, the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea.” Rousseau smiled when he learned the intrigues of his enemies who were trying their utmost to enlist the coöperation of a violent pulpit-orator. “They are busy recruiting their corps of partisans,” said he, “but Time will raise me an ally in every intelligent reader of the next generation.”[Contents]B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.In the simple lives of the lower animals every day may bring the sufficient reward of its toil; but the problem of progress, even from the first dawn of civilization, involves tasks too apt to extend beyond the span of individual existence. The forest-clearing husbandman, the state-founding patriot, the scientific inquirer, all risk to receive the summons of night before the completion of their labor. Before reaching the goal of their hopes their earthly pilgrimage may end at the brink of the unknown river, and education alone can bridge that gulf, and make every day the way-station, of an unbroken road. Children or children’s children will take up the staff from the last resting-place of their pilgrim father; and, moreover, all progress is cumulative. Every laborer works with the experience of his forefathers, as well as his own;[186]every son stands on the shoulders of his father. Even the failure of individual efforts contributes a helpful lesson to the success of the next attempt:Freedom’s brave battle, once begun,Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,Though often baffled, e’er is won.Persistent adherence to the programme of a traditional policy has often made the work of successive centuries the triumphant execution of a single plan. The empire of Islam sprung from the seed which the prophet of Mecca had planted in the soil of his native land. The storm of the Protestant revolt rose from the anathemas of a poor Wittenberg friar; the unquenchable fire of the French Revolution was kindled by the burning indignation of a Swiss recluse, and his fervid appeals:Those oracles that set the world aflame,Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;and the vast fabric of our republican federation was founded by the poor colonists who sought independence in the freedom of the wilderness, and combined against the power of a selfish despot. Education sows a seed which may sprout even during the life-time of the sower, and bless individual life with the sweets of a guaranteed triumph over the power of death.Resurgam, “I shall live after death,” expresses the significance of that triumph, and of the “esoteric doctrine of Pythagoras.”[Contents]C.—PERVERSION.The Christian church has constantly perverted the purpose of education, but has never yet deserved the[187]reproach of having neglected its means. From the very beginning the sect of the apostle-training Galilean has been a sect of assiduous educators. They were not satisfied with founding schools and opening their doors to all comers, but went forth in quest of new converts, and pursued their aim with a persistence of zeal and a versatility of skill that could not fail to accomplish its purpose. As soon as a sufficient increase of power enabled them to control the institutes of primary instruction they turned their chief attention to the dogmatical education of the young. They derived no aid from the attractiveness and still less from the plausibility of their doctrine, but they realized Schopenhauer’s remark that “there is in childhood a period measured by six, or at most by ten years, when any well-inculcated dogma, no matter how extravagantly absurd, is sure to retain its hold for life.” And though the propagation of an unnatural creed is not favored by natural fertility, the naturally barren doctrine of renunciation was thus successfully propagated by a system of incessant grafting. By the skilful application of that process the most dissimilar plants were made subservient to its purpose. The “Worship of Sorrow” with its whining renunciation of worldly enjoyments, and its indifference to health and physical education, was grafted on the manful naturalism of the Hebrew law-giver. Saint-worship, the veneration of self-torturing fanatics, was grafted on a stem of pagan mythology, and dozens of Christian martyrs have thus usurped the honor and the sacrifices of pagan temples. Christian holidays were grafted on the festivals of[188]the nature-loving Saxons. But persuasion failing, the missionaries of the cross did not hesitate to resort to more conclusive measures. Like refractory children cudgeled along the path of knowledge, the obstinate skeptics of northern Europe were harassed with fire and sword till they could not help admitting the dangers of unbelief. Thegarden-landsof the Albigenses were wasted till they found no difficulty in yearning for the peace of a better world. Philosophers were tortured in the prisons of the Holy Inquisition till the sorrows of life favored the renunciation of its hopes.For thirteen centuries the sunshine of millions of human hearts was ruthlessly sacrificed to promote the task of luring mankind from life to ghost-land, and during all those ages education was systematically turned from a blessing into an earth-blighting curse.[Contents]D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.There is a story of a Portuguese slave-dealer who carried a private chaplain on his pay-roll, and frequently expressed his solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his shackled captives. A very similar kind of spiritual duty has for centuries been made the excuse for an almost total neglect of secular education. Divorced from the control of common sense, religion soon degenerated into mere ceremonialism. A priest who would travel twenty miles through a snow-storm to supply a dying man with a consecrated wafer had no sympathy with the needs of the living. He would extort the last penny of his[189]tithes at the risk of starving a village full of needy parishioners. He would groan at the sight of an unbaptized child, but had not a drop of water to cool the brows of burning Moors or Jews. He would rave about the cruelty of a prince who had deprived the clergy of their mass-shillings, but had no ear for the laments of the exiledMoriscosor the curses of starving serfs.Such was the morality which arrogated the right of suppressing that system of physical and intellectual education which had filled the homes of the Mediterranean nations with all the blessings of health, science, and beauty. Theological training had failed to kindle the dawn of a supernatural millennium, but had thoroughly succeeded in extinguishing the light of human reason. Not absolute ignorance only, but baneful superstition—worse than ignorance by just as much as poison is worse than hunger—was for centuries the inevitable result of all so-called school-training; and the traditions of that age of priest-rule have made religion almost a synonyme of cant. It also gave book-learning its supposed tendency to mental aberration. Can we wonder at that result of an age when the literary products of Christian Europe were confined almost exclusively to ghost-stories and manuals of ceremony? Can we wonder that delusions of the most preposterous kind assumed the virulence of epidemic diseases? Maniacs of self-mutilation, of epileptic contortions, of were-wolf panics, traversed Europe from end to end. Men gloried in ignorance, and boasted their neglect of worldly science till the consequences[190]of that neglect avenged its folly in actual madness.The saddest of all the sad “it might have beens” is, perhaps, a reverie on the probable results of earlier emancipation—of the employment of thirteen worse than wasted centuries in scientific inquiries, agricultural improvements, social and sanitary reforms. We might have failed to enter the portals of the New Jerusalem, but we would probably have regained our earthly paradise.[Contents]E.—REFORM.The days of the Holy Inquisition are past; but the restless propaganda of Jesuitry still shames the inactivity of Rationalism. Our friends sit listless, relying on the theoretical advantages of their cause, while the busy intrigues of our enemies secure them all practical advantages.Even in our model republic only primary education stands neutral, while private enterprise has made nearly every higher college a stronghold of dogmatism. And even the semi-secularism of primary instruction is more than offset by the ultra-orthodoxy of “Sunday-schools.” Millions of factory children have to sacrifice their only day of leisure at the bidding of their dogmatic task-master and with the timid connivance of their parents. “We cannot row against the stream,” I have heard even Freethinkers say. “Let the youngsters join the crowd; if it does them no good, it can do no harm.” But it will do harm, even beyond the waste of time and the wasted opportunities for health-giving exercise. The[191]process of dogmatic inoculation may fail to serve its direct purpose, but the weekly repetition of the experiment is sure to contaminate the moral organism with unsound humors which may become virulent at unexpected times and, likely enough, undermine that very peace of the household which a short-sighted mother hoped to promote by driving her boys to Sunday-school, as she would drive troublesome cattle to a public pasture.The Freethinkers of every community should combine to engage a teacher, or at least facilitate home instruction by collecting text-books of Secularism, such as Voltaire’s “Philosophical Cyclopedia;” Rousseau’s “Emile;” Hallam’s “History of the Middle Ages;” Ingersoll’s pamphlets; Paine’s “Age of Reason;” Lecky’s “History of Rationalism” and “History of Morals;” Lessing’s “Nathan;” Goethe and Schiller’s “Xenions;” Darwin’s “Descent of Man;” Plutarch’s Biographies; Trelawney’s “Last Days of Shelley and Byron;” McDonnell’s Freethought novels; Parker Pillsbury’s “Review of Sabbatarian Legislation;” Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man;” Bennett’s “Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times;” Gibbon’s “History of Christianity;” Keeler’s “Short History of the Bible;” “Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions;” “Supernatural Religion;” Greg’s “Creed of Christendom;” Lord Amberley’s “Analysis of Religious Belief;” “Religion Not History.”We should have Freethought colleges and Secular missions, and even isolated Liberals might do better than “drift with the stream.” They might let their[192]children pass their Sundays in the freedom of the forests and mountains to worship the God of Nature in his own temple, and learn a lesson from the parental devotion of their dumb fellow-creatures. She-wolves, deprived of their whelps, have been known to enter human habitations at night to suckle their young through the bars of a heavy cage. Thrushes and fly-catchers will enter an open window to feed or rescue their captive nestlings, and with a still wider sympathy a Liberal friend of mine tries to aid his neighbors’ children, as well as his own. Renouncing the hope of abolishing Sabbatarianism, he conceived the idea of controlling it, and induced his neighbors to send their children to a “Sunday Garden” with a free museum of pictures and stuffed birds, gymnastic contrivances, and a little restaurant of free temperance refreshments—apples, peanuts, and lemonade. He defrays the expenses of the establishment, which his neighbors consider a sort of modified kindergarten; and under the name of “Sunday books” circulates a private library of purely secular literature.“If life shall have been duly rationalized by science,” says Herbert Spencer, “parents will learn to consider a sound physical constitution as an entailed estate, which should be transmitted unimpaired, if not improved;” and with a similar recognition of social obligations Freethinkers should endeavor to transmit to their children a bequest of unimpaired common sense. Loyalty to their Protestant ancestors, loyalty to posterity, and to the majesty of truth herself, should prompt us to stand[193]bravely by our colors and train our children to continue the struggle for light and independence.By the far-reaching influence of education Secularists should bridge the chasm which orthodoxy hopes to cross on the wings of faith. Secularism shall preach the gospel of immortality on earth.[194]
CHAPTER XV.EDUCATION.
[Contents]A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.The doctrine of Pythagoras, the philosophic Messiah of Paganism, included the strange tenet ofmetempsychosis. After death, held the confessors of that dogma, the souls of men and brutes would reappear in new forms, higher or lower, according to the character-traits of the dying individual. Thus the soul of a wealthy glutton might be reborn in a pig-sty, that of a high-minded peasant perhaps on the throne of a king. Death and rebirth are the upper and lower spokes of a wheel that turns and turns forever, and in the persons of their neighbors the Pythagoreans saw wanderers that might have walked this earth thousands of years ago.The strangeness of such a theory is still increased by the circumstance that its teacher was an eminent astronomer, an accomplished mathematician, and the leader of a memorable hygienic reform. Our astonishment[183]is not lessened by the well-established fact that, under some form or other, the doctrine of soul-migration has for ages been the accepted creed of a large plurality of our fellow-men. It is well known, however, that to his trusted disciples Pythagoras imparted anesotericor explanatory version of his dogmas; and if we learn that the great philosopher attached a special importance to the influence of hereditary dispositions, the truth at last dawns upon us that the doctrine of metempsychosis referred to the reappearance of individual types, passions, and dispositions in the bodily and mental characteristics of thenext generation. “Parents live in their children.” The instinctive recognition of that truth reconciles our dumb fellow-creatures to the prospect of death. At the end of summer the night-moth carefully deposits her eggs in a silver cradle, hidden safe in the crevice of some sheltering nook, where they will survive the rigor of the winter and answer the first summons of spring. Having thus, as it were, insured the resurrection of her type, the parent moth quietly resigns herself to the fate of sleeping her own winter-slumber in the arms of death. On the Orinoco wounded river-turtles will use their last strength to climb the slope of some bush-hidden sand-bank, and after intrusting their eggs to the protection of the deep drift sand, will reënter the water and quietly float off with the seaward currents. In the virgin-woods of Southern Mexico, where the harpy-eagle fills the maws of her hungry brood by incessant raids on the small denizens of the tree-tops, the traveler D’Armand once witnessed a curious[184]scene. An eagle had pounced upon a nursing mother monkey, who at first struggled desperately to free herself from the claws of the murderer; but, finding resistance in vain, she loosened her grasp on the branches, and, just as the eagle carried her off, she disengaged the arm of her baby from her neck, and shaking off the little creature with a swing of her arm, she deliberately flung it back into the sheltering foliage of the tree-top, thus taking the last possible chance of surviving in her child.The “dread of annihilation” reveals itself in the instincts of a dying philosopher as plainly as in the instincts of a wounded animal; but, on self-examination, that fear would prove to have but little in common with a special solicitude for the preservation of material forms or combinations—conditions which the process of organic change constantly modifies in the cradle as well as in the grave. It is rather the type of the body and its correlated mental dispositions which the hope of resurrection yearns to preserve, and even childless men have often partly realized that hope by impressing the image of their soul on a younger mind, and transmitting their cherished projects and theories through the medium of education. In the consciousness of that accomplished task Socrates could as calmly die in the arms of his disciples as the Hebrew patriarch in the arms of his children and grandchildren. “You kill a sower,” cried St. Adalbert under the clubs of his assassins, “but the seed he has planted will rise and survive both his love and your hatred.”Even the influence of a great practical example has[185]often impressed the mental type of a reformer or patriot on a series of subsequent generations. The Buddhist Calanus, preaching the doctrine of renunciation to an audience of scoffers, deeply affected the most thoughtless of his witnesses by proving his personal convictions in the flames of a funeral pile. “I leave no sons,” were the last words of Epaminondas, “but two immortal daughters, the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea.” Rousseau smiled when he learned the intrigues of his enemies who were trying their utmost to enlist the coöperation of a violent pulpit-orator. “They are busy recruiting their corps of partisans,” said he, “but Time will raise me an ally in every intelligent reader of the next generation.”[Contents]B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.In the simple lives of the lower animals every day may bring the sufficient reward of its toil; but the problem of progress, even from the first dawn of civilization, involves tasks too apt to extend beyond the span of individual existence. The forest-clearing husbandman, the state-founding patriot, the scientific inquirer, all risk to receive the summons of night before the completion of their labor. Before reaching the goal of their hopes their earthly pilgrimage may end at the brink of the unknown river, and education alone can bridge that gulf, and make every day the way-station, of an unbroken road. Children or children’s children will take up the staff from the last resting-place of their pilgrim father; and, moreover, all progress is cumulative. Every laborer works with the experience of his forefathers, as well as his own;[186]every son stands on the shoulders of his father. Even the failure of individual efforts contributes a helpful lesson to the success of the next attempt:Freedom’s brave battle, once begun,Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,Though often baffled, e’er is won.Persistent adherence to the programme of a traditional policy has often made the work of successive centuries the triumphant execution of a single plan. The empire of Islam sprung from the seed which the prophet of Mecca had planted in the soil of his native land. The storm of the Protestant revolt rose from the anathemas of a poor Wittenberg friar; the unquenchable fire of the French Revolution was kindled by the burning indignation of a Swiss recluse, and his fervid appeals:Those oracles that set the world aflame,Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;and the vast fabric of our republican federation was founded by the poor colonists who sought independence in the freedom of the wilderness, and combined against the power of a selfish despot. Education sows a seed which may sprout even during the life-time of the sower, and bless individual life with the sweets of a guaranteed triumph over the power of death.Resurgam, “I shall live after death,” expresses the significance of that triumph, and of the “esoteric doctrine of Pythagoras.”[Contents]C.—PERVERSION.The Christian church has constantly perverted the purpose of education, but has never yet deserved the[187]reproach of having neglected its means. From the very beginning the sect of the apostle-training Galilean has been a sect of assiduous educators. They were not satisfied with founding schools and opening their doors to all comers, but went forth in quest of new converts, and pursued their aim with a persistence of zeal and a versatility of skill that could not fail to accomplish its purpose. As soon as a sufficient increase of power enabled them to control the institutes of primary instruction they turned their chief attention to the dogmatical education of the young. They derived no aid from the attractiveness and still less from the plausibility of their doctrine, but they realized Schopenhauer’s remark that “there is in childhood a period measured by six, or at most by ten years, when any well-inculcated dogma, no matter how extravagantly absurd, is sure to retain its hold for life.” And though the propagation of an unnatural creed is not favored by natural fertility, the naturally barren doctrine of renunciation was thus successfully propagated by a system of incessant grafting. By the skilful application of that process the most dissimilar plants were made subservient to its purpose. The “Worship of Sorrow” with its whining renunciation of worldly enjoyments, and its indifference to health and physical education, was grafted on the manful naturalism of the Hebrew law-giver. Saint-worship, the veneration of self-torturing fanatics, was grafted on a stem of pagan mythology, and dozens of Christian martyrs have thus usurped the honor and the sacrifices of pagan temples. Christian holidays were grafted on the festivals of[188]the nature-loving Saxons. But persuasion failing, the missionaries of the cross did not hesitate to resort to more conclusive measures. Like refractory children cudgeled along the path of knowledge, the obstinate skeptics of northern Europe were harassed with fire and sword till they could not help admitting the dangers of unbelief. Thegarden-landsof the Albigenses were wasted till they found no difficulty in yearning for the peace of a better world. Philosophers were tortured in the prisons of the Holy Inquisition till the sorrows of life favored the renunciation of its hopes.For thirteen centuries the sunshine of millions of human hearts was ruthlessly sacrificed to promote the task of luring mankind from life to ghost-land, and during all those ages education was systematically turned from a blessing into an earth-blighting curse.[Contents]D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.There is a story of a Portuguese slave-dealer who carried a private chaplain on his pay-roll, and frequently expressed his solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his shackled captives. A very similar kind of spiritual duty has for centuries been made the excuse for an almost total neglect of secular education. Divorced from the control of common sense, religion soon degenerated into mere ceremonialism. A priest who would travel twenty miles through a snow-storm to supply a dying man with a consecrated wafer had no sympathy with the needs of the living. He would extort the last penny of his[189]tithes at the risk of starving a village full of needy parishioners. He would groan at the sight of an unbaptized child, but had not a drop of water to cool the brows of burning Moors or Jews. He would rave about the cruelty of a prince who had deprived the clergy of their mass-shillings, but had no ear for the laments of the exiledMoriscosor the curses of starving serfs.Such was the morality which arrogated the right of suppressing that system of physical and intellectual education which had filled the homes of the Mediterranean nations with all the blessings of health, science, and beauty. Theological training had failed to kindle the dawn of a supernatural millennium, but had thoroughly succeeded in extinguishing the light of human reason. Not absolute ignorance only, but baneful superstition—worse than ignorance by just as much as poison is worse than hunger—was for centuries the inevitable result of all so-called school-training; and the traditions of that age of priest-rule have made religion almost a synonyme of cant. It also gave book-learning its supposed tendency to mental aberration. Can we wonder at that result of an age when the literary products of Christian Europe were confined almost exclusively to ghost-stories and manuals of ceremony? Can we wonder that delusions of the most preposterous kind assumed the virulence of epidemic diseases? Maniacs of self-mutilation, of epileptic contortions, of were-wolf panics, traversed Europe from end to end. Men gloried in ignorance, and boasted their neglect of worldly science till the consequences[190]of that neglect avenged its folly in actual madness.The saddest of all the sad “it might have beens” is, perhaps, a reverie on the probable results of earlier emancipation—of the employment of thirteen worse than wasted centuries in scientific inquiries, agricultural improvements, social and sanitary reforms. We might have failed to enter the portals of the New Jerusalem, but we would probably have regained our earthly paradise.[Contents]E.—REFORM.The days of the Holy Inquisition are past; but the restless propaganda of Jesuitry still shames the inactivity of Rationalism. Our friends sit listless, relying on the theoretical advantages of their cause, while the busy intrigues of our enemies secure them all practical advantages.Even in our model republic only primary education stands neutral, while private enterprise has made nearly every higher college a stronghold of dogmatism. And even the semi-secularism of primary instruction is more than offset by the ultra-orthodoxy of “Sunday-schools.” Millions of factory children have to sacrifice their only day of leisure at the bidding of their dogmatic task-master and with the timid connivance of their parents. “We cannot row against the stream,” I have heard even Freethinkers say. “Let the youngsters join the crowd; if it does them no good, it can do no harm.” But it will do harm, even beyond the waste of time and the wasted opportunities for health-giving exercise. The[191]process of dogmatic inoculation may fail to serve its direct purpose, but the weekly repetition of the experiment is sure to contaminate the moral organism with unsound humors which may become virulent at unexpected times and, likely enough, undermine that very peace of the household which a short-sighted mother hoped to promote by driving her boys to Sunday-school, as she would drive troublesome cattle to a public pasture.The Freethinkers of every community should combine to engage a teacher, or at least facilitate home instruction by collecting text-books of Secularism, such as Voltaire’s “Philosophical Cyclopedia;” Rousseau’s “Emile;” Hallam’s “History of the Middle Ages;” Ingersoll’s pamphlets; Paine’s “Age of Reason;” Lecky’s “History of Rationalism” and “History of Morals;” Lessing’s “Nathan;” Goethe and Schiller’s “Xenions;” Darwin’s “Descent of Man;” Plutarch’s Biographies; Trelawney’s “Last Days of Shelley and Byron;” McDonnell’s Freethought novels; Parker Pillsbury’s “Review of Sabbatarian Legislation;” Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man;” Bennett’s “Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times;” Gibbon’s “History of Christianity;” Keeler’s “Short History of the Bible;” “Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions;” “Supernatural Religion;” Greg’s “Creed of Christendom;” Lord Amberley’s “Analysis of Religious Belief;” “Religion Not History.”We should have Freethought colleges and Secular missions, and even isolated Liberals might do better than “drift with the stream.” They might let their[192]children pass their Sundays in the freedom of the forests and mountains to worship the God of Nature in his own temple, and learn a lesson from the parental devotion of their dumb fellow-creatures. She-wolves, deprived of their whelps, have been known to enter human habitations at night to suckle their young through the bars of a heavy cage. Thrushes and fly-catchers will enter an open window to feed or rescue their captive nestlings, and with a still wider sympathy a Liberal friend of mine tries to aid his neighbors’ children, as well as his own. Renouncing the hope of abolishing Sabbatarianism, he conceived the idea of controlling it, and induced his neighbors to send their children to a “Sunday Garden” with a free museum of pictures and stuffed birds, gymnastic contrivances, and a little restaurant of free temperance refreshments—apples, peanuts, and lemonade. He defrays the expenses of the establishment, which his neighbors consider a sort of modified kindergarten; and under the name of “Sunday books” circulates a private library of purely secular literature.“If life shall have been duly rationalized by science,” says Herbert Spencer, “parents will learn to consider a sound physical constitution as an entailed estate, which should be transmitted unimpaired, if not improved;” and with a similar recognition of social obligations Freethinkers should endeavor to transmit to their children a bequest of unimpaired common sense. Loyalty to their Protestant ancestors, loyalty to posterity, and to the majesty of truth herself, should prompt us to stand[193]bravely by our colors and train our children to continue the struggle for light and independence.By the far-reaching influence of education Secularists should bridge the chasm which orthodoxy hopes to cross on the wings of faith. Secularism shall preach the gospel of immortality on earth.[194]
[Contents]A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.The doctrine of Pythagoras, the philosophic Messiah of Paganism, included the strange tenet ofmetempsychosis. After death, held the confessors of that dogma, the souls of men and brutes would reappear in new forms, higher or lower, according to the character-traits of the dying individual. Thus the soul of a wealthy glutton might be reborn in a pig-sty, that of a high-minded peasant perhaps on the throne of a king. Death and rebirth are the upper and lower spokes of a wheel that turns and turns forever, and in the persons of their neighbors the Pythagoreans saw wanderers that might have walked this earth thousands of years ago.The strangeness of such a theory is still increased by the circumstance that its teacher was an eminent astronomer, an accomplished mathematician, and the leader of a memorable hygienic reform. Our astonishment[183]is not lessened by the well-established fact that, under some form or other, the doctrine of soul-migration has for ages been the accepted creed of a large plurality of our fellow-men. It is well known, however, that to his trusted disciples Pythagoras imparted anesotericor explanatory version of his dogmas; and if we learn that the great philosopher attached a special importance to the influence of hereditary dispositions, the truth at last dawns upon us that the doctrine of metempsychosis referred to the reappearance of individual types, passions, and dispositions in the bodily and mental characteristics of thenext generation. “Parents live in their children.” The instinctive recognition of that truth reconciles our dumb fellow-creatures to the prospect of death. At the end of summer the night-moth carefully deposits her eggs in a silver cradle, hidden safe in the crevice of some sheltering nook, where they will survive the rigor of the winter and answer the first summons of spring. Having thus, as it were, insured the resurrection of her type, the parent moth quietly resigns herself to the fate of sleeping her own winter-slumber in the arms of death. On the Orinoco wounded river-turtles will use their last strength to climb the slope of some bush-hidden sand-bank, and after intrusting their eggs to the protection of the deep drift sand, will reënter the water and quietly float off with the seaward currents. In the virgin-woods of Southern Mexico, where the harpy-eagle fills the maws of her hungry brood by incessant raids on the small denizens of the tree-tops, the traveler D’Armand once witnessed a curious[184]scene. An eagle had pounced upon a nursing mother monkey, who at first struggled desperately to free herself from the claws of the murderer; but, finding resistance in vain, she loosened her grasp on the branches, and, just as the eagle carried her off, she disengaged the arm of her baby from her neck, and shaking off the little creature with a swing of her arm, she deliberately flung it back into the sheltering foliage of the tree-top, thus taking the last possible chance of surviving in her child.The “dread of annihilation” reveals itself in the instincts of a dying philosopher as plainly as in the instincts of a wounded animal; but, on self-examination, that fear would prove to have but little in common with a special solicitude for the preservation of material forms or combinations—conditions which the process of organic change constantly modifies in the cradle as well as in the grave. It is rather the type of the body and its correlated mental dispositions which the hope of resurrection yearns to preserve, and even childless men have often partly realized that hope by impressing the image of their soul on a younger mind, and transmitting their cherished projects and theories through the medium of education. In the consciousness of that accomplished task Socrates could as calmly die in the arms of his disciples as the Hebrew patriarch in the arms of his children and grandchildren. “You kill a sower,” cried St. Adalbert under the clubs of his assassins, “but the seed he has planted will rise and survive both his love and your hatred.”Even the influence of a great practical example has[185]often impressed the mental type of a reformer or patriot on a series of subsequent generations. The Buddhist Calanus, preaching the doctrine of renunciation to an audience of scoffers, deeply affected the most thoughtless of his witnesses by proving his personal convictions in the flames of a funeral pile. “I leave no sons,” were the last words of Epaminondas, “but two immortal daughters, the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea.” Rousseau smiled when he learned the intrigues of his enemies who were trying their utmost to enlist the coöperation of a violent pulpit-orator. “They are busy recruiting their corps of partisans,” said he, “but Time will raise me an ally in every intelligent reader of the next generation.”
A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.
The doctrine of Pythagoras, the philosophic Messiah of Paganism, included the strange tenet ofmetempsychosis. After death, held the confessors of that dogma, the souls of men and brutes would reappear in new forms, higher or lower, according to the character-traits of the dying individual. Thus the soul of a wealthy glutton might be reborn in a pig-sty, that of a high-minded peasant perhaps on the throne of a king. Death and rebirth are the upper and lower spokes of a wheel that turns and turns forever, and in the persons of their neighbors the Pythagoreans saw wanderers that might have walked this earth thousands of years ago.The strangeness of such a theory is still increased by the circumstance that its teacher was an eminent astronomer, an accomplished mathematician, and the leader of a memorable hygienic reform. Our astonishment[183]is not lessened by the well-established fact that, under some form or other, the doctrine of soul-migration has for ages been the accepted creed of a large plurality of our fellow-men. It is well known, however, that to his trusted disciples Pythagoras imparted anesotericor explanatory version of his dogmas; and if we learn that the great philosopher attached a special importance to the influence of hereditary dispositions, the truth at last dawns upon us that the doctrine of metempsychosis referred to the reappearance of individual types, passions, and dispositions in the bodily and mental characteristics of thenext generation. “Parents live in their children.” The instinctive recognition of that truth reconciles our dumb fellow-creatures to the prospect of death. At the end of summer the night-moth carefully deposits her eggs in a silver cradle, hidden safe in the crevice of some sheltering nook, where they will survive the rigor of the winter and answer the first summons of spring. Having thus, as it were, insured the resurrection of her type, the parent moth quietly resigns herself to the fate of sleeping her own winter-slumber in the arms of death. On the Orinoco wounded river-turtles will use their last strength to climb the slope of some bush-hidden sand-bank, and after intrusting their eggs to the protection of the deep drift sand, will reënter the water and quietly float off with the seaward currents. In the virgin-woods of Southern Mexico, where the harpy-eagle fills the maws of her hungry brood by incessant raids on the small denizens of the tree-tops, the traveler D’Armand once witnessed a curious[184]scene. An eagle had pounced upon a nursing mother monkey, who at first struggled desperately to free herself from the claws of the murderer; but, finding resistance in vain, she loosened her grasp on the branches, and, just as the eagle carried her off, she disengaged the arm of her baby from her neck, and shaking off the little creature with a swing of her arm, she deliberately flung it back into the sheltering foliage of the tree-top, thus taking the last possible chance of surviving in her child.The “dread of annihilation” reveals itself in the instincts of a dying philosopher as plainly as in the instincts of a wounded animal; but, on self-examination, that fear would prove to have but little in common with a special solicitude for the preservation of material forms or combinations—conditions which the process of organic change constantly modifies in the cradle as well as in the grave. It is rather the type of the body and its correlated mental dispositions which the hope of resurrection yearns to preserve, and even childless men have often partly realized that hope by impressing the image of their soul on a younger mind, and transmitting their cherished projects and theories through the medium of education. In the consciousness of that accomplished task Socrates could as calmly die in the arms of his disciples as the Hebrew patriarch in the arms of his children and grandchildren. “You kill a sower,” cried St. Adalbert under the clubs of his assassins, “but the seed he has planted will rise and survive both his love and your hatred.”Even the influence of a great practical example has[185]often impressed the mental type of a reformer or patriot on a series of subsequent generations. The Buddhist Calanus, preaching the doctrine of renunciation to an audience of scoffers, deeply affected the most thoughtless of his witnesses by proving his personal convictions in the flames of a funeral pile. “I leave no sons,” were the last words of Epaminondas, “but two immortal daughters, the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea.” Rousseau smiled when he learned the intrigues of his enemies who were trying their utmost to enlist the coöperation of a violent pulpit-orator. “They are busy recruiting their corps of partisans,” said he, “but Time will raise me an ally in every intelligent reader of the next generation.”
The doctrine of Pythagoras, the philosophic Messiah of Paganism, included the strange tenet ofmetempsychosis. After death, held the confessors of that dogma, the souls of men and brutes would reappear in new forms, higher or lower, according to the character-traits of the dying individual. Thus the soul of a wealthy glutton might be reborn in a pig-sty, that of a high-minded peasant perhaps on the throne of a king. Death and rebirth are the upper and lower spokes of a wheel that turns and turns forever, and in the persons of their neighbors the Pythagoreans saw wanderers that might have walked this earth thousands of years ago.
The strangeness of such a theory is still increased by the circumstance that its teacher was an eminent astronomer, an accomplished mathematician, and the leader of a memorable hygienic reform. Our astonishment[183]is not lessened by the well-established fact that, under some form or other, the doctrine of soul-migration has for ages been the accepted creed of a large plurality of our fellow-men. It is well known, however, that to his trusted disciples Pythagoras imparted anesotericor explanatory version of his dogmas; and if we learn that the great philosopher attached a special importance to the influence of hereditary dispositions, the truth at last dawns upon us that the doctrine of metempsychosis referred to the reappearance of individual types, passions, and dispositions in the bodily and mental characteristics of thenext generation. “Parents live in their children.” The instinctive recognition of that truth reconciles our dumb fellow-creatures to the prospect of death. At the end of summer the night-moth carefully deposits her eggs in a silver cradle, hidden safe in the crevice of some sheltering nook, where they will survive the rigor of the winter and answer the first summons of spring. Having thus, as it were, insured the resurrection of her type, the parent moth quietly resigns herself to the fate of sleeping her own winter-slumber in the arms of death. On the Orinoco wounded river-turtles will use their last strength to climb the slope of some bush-hidden sand-bank, and after intrusting their eggs to the protection of the deep drift sand, will reënter the water and quietly float off with the seaward currents. In the virgin-woods of Southern Mexico, where the harpy-eagle fills the maws of her hungry brood by incessant raids on the small denizens of the tree-tops, the traveler D’Armand once witnessed a curious[184]scene. An eagle had pounced upon a nursing mother monkey, who at first struggled desperately to free herself from the claws of the murderer; but, finding resistance in vain, she loosened her grasp on the branches, and, just as the eagle carried her off, she disengaged the arm of her baby from her neck, and shaking off the little creature with a swing of her arm, she deliberately flung it back into the sheltering foliage of the tree-top, thus taking the last possible chance of surviving in her child.
The “dread of annihilation” reveals itself in the instincts of a dying philosopher as plainly as in the instincts of a wounded animal; but, on self-examination, that fear would prove to have but little in common with a special solicitude for the preservation of material forms or combinations—conditions which the process of organic change constantly modifies in the cradle as well as in the grave. It is rather the type of the body and its correlated mental dispositions which the hope of resurrection yearns to preserve, and even childless men have often partly realized that hope by impressing the image of their soul on a younger mind, and transmitting their cherished projects and theories through the medium of education. In the consciousness of that accomplished task Socrates could as calmly die in the arms of his disciples as the Hebrew patriarch in the arms of his children and grandchildren. “You kill a sower,” cried St. Adalbert under the clubs of his assassins, “but the seed he has planted will rise and survive both his love and your hatred.”
Even the influence of a great practical example has[185]often impressed the mental type of a reformer or patriot on a series of subsequent generations. The Buddhist Calanus, preaching the doctrine of renunciation to an audience of scoffers, deeply affected the most thoughtless of his witnesses by proving his personal convictions in the flames of a funeral pile. “I leave no sons,” were the last words of Epaminondas, “but two immortal daughters, the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea.” Rousseau smiled when he learned the intrigues of his enemies who were trying their utmost to enlist the coöperation of a violent pulpit-orator. “They are busy recruiting their corps of partisans,” said he, “but Time will raise me an ally in every intelligent reader of the next generation.”
[Contents]B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.In the simple lives of the lower animals every day may bring the sufficient reward of its toil; but the problem of progress, even from the first dawn of civilization, involves tasks too apt to extend beyond the span of individual existence. The forest-clearing husbandman, the state-founding patriot, the scientific inquirer, all risk to receive the summons of night before the completion of their labor. Before reaching the goal of their hopes their earthly pilgrimage may end at the brink of the unknown river, and education alone can bridge that gulf, and make every day the way-station, of an unbroken road. Children or children’s children will take up the staff from the last resting-place of their pilgrim father; and, moreover, all progress is cumulative. Every laborer works with the experience of his forefathers, as well as his own;[186]every son stands on the shoulders of his father. Even the failure of individual efforts contributes a helpful lesson to the success of the next attempt:Freedom’s brave battle, once begun,Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,Though often baffled, e’er is won.Persistent adherence to the programme of a traditional policy has often made the work of successive centuries the triumphant execution of a single plan. The empire of Islam sprung from the seed which the prophet of Mecca had planted in the soil of his native land. The storm of the Protestant revolt rose from the anathemas of a poor Wittenberg friar; the unquenchable fire of the French Revolution was kindled by the burning indignation of a Swiss recluse, and his fervid appeals:Those oracles that set the world aflame,Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;and the vast fabric of our republican federation was founded by the poor colonists who sought independence in the freedom of the wilderness, and combined against the power of a selfish despot. Education sows a seed which may sprout even during the life-time of the sower, and bless individual life with the sweets of a guaranteed triumph over the power of death.Resurgam, “I shall live after death,” expresses the significance of that triumph, and of the “esoteric doctrine of Pythagoras.”
B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
In the simple lives of the lower animals every day may bring the sufficient reward of its toil; but the problem of progress, even from the first dawn of civilization, involves tasks too apt to extend beyond the span of individual existence. The forest-clearing husbandman, the state-founding patriot, the scientific inquirer, all risk to receive the summons of night before the completion of their labor. Before reaching the goal of their hopes their earthly pilgrimage may end at the brink of the unknown river, and education alone can bridge that gulf, and make every day the way-station, of an unbroken road. Children or children’s children will take up the staff from the last resting-place of their pilgrim father; and, moreover, all progress is cumulative. Every laborer works with the experience of his forefathers, as well as his own;[186]every son stands on the shoulders of his father. Even the failure of individual efforts contributes a helpful lesson to the success of the next attempt:Freedom’s brave battle, once begun,Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,Though often baffled, e’er is won.Persistent adherence to the programme of a traditional policy has often made the work of successive centuries the triumphant execution of a single plan. The empire of Islam sprung from the seed which the prophet of Mecca had planted in the soil of his native land. The storm of the Protestant revolt rose from the anathemas of a poor Wittenberg friar; the unquenchable fire of the French Revolution was kindled by the burning indignation of a Swiss recluse, and his fervid appeals:Those oracles that set the world aflame,Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;and the vast fabric of our republican federation was founded by the poor colonists who sought independence in the freedom of the wilderness, and combined against the power of a selfish despot. Education sows a seed which may sprout even during the life-time of the sower, and bless individual life with the sweets of a guaranteed triumph over the power of death.Resurgam, “I shall live after death,” expresses the significance of that triumph, and of the “esoteric doctrine of Pythagoras.”
In the simple lives of the lower animals every day may bring the sufficient reward of its toil; but the problem of progress, even from the first dawn of civilization, involves tasks too apt to extend beyond the span of individual existence. The forest-clearing husbandman, the state-founding patriot, the scientific inquirer, all risk to receive the summons of night before the completion of their labor. Before reaching the goal of their hopes their earthly pilgrimage may end at the brink of the unknown river, and education alone can bridge that gulf, and make every day the way-station, of an unbroken road. Children or children’s children will take up the staff from the last resting-place of their pilgrim father; and, moreover, all progress is cumulative. Every laborer works with the experience of his forefathers, as well as his own;[186]every son stands on the shoulders of his father. Even the failure of individual efforts contributes a helpful lesson to the success of the next attempt:
Freedom’s brave battle, once begun,Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,Though often baffled, e’er is won.
Freedom’s brave battle, once begun,
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Though often baffled, e’er is won.
Persistent adherence to the programme of a traditional policy has often made the work of successive centuries the triumphant execution of a single plan. The empire of Islam sprung from the seed which the prophet of Mecca had planted in the soil of his native land. The storm of the Protestant revolt rose from the anathemas of a poor Wittenberg friar; the unquenchable fire of the French Revolution was kindled by the burning indignation of a Swiss recluse, and his fervid appeals:
Those oracles that set the world aflame,Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;
Those oracles that set the world aflame,
Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more;
and the vast fabric of our republican federation was founded by the poor colonists who sought independence in the freedom of the wilderness, and combined against the power of a selfish despot. Education sows a seed which may sprout even during the life-time of the sower, and bless individual life with the sweets of a guaranteed triumph over the power of death.Resurgam, “I shall live after death,” expresses the significance of that triumph, and of the “esoteric doctrine of Pythagoras.”
[Contents]C.—PERVERSION.The Christian church has constantly perverted the purpose of education, but has never yet deserved the[187]reproach of having neglected its means. From the very beginning the sect of the apostle-training Galilean has been a sect of assiduous educators. They were not satisfied with founding schools and opening their doors to all comers, but went forth in quest of new converts, and pursued their aim with a persistence of zeal and a versatility of skill that could not fail to accomplish its purpose. As soon as a sufficient increase of power enabled them to control the institutes of primary instruction they turned their chief attention to the dogmatical education of the young. They derived no aid from the attractiveness and still less from the plausibility of their doctrine, but they realized Schopenhauer’s remark that “there is in childhood a period measured by six, or at most by ten years, when any well-inculcated dogma, no matter how extravagantly absurd, is sure to retain its hold for life.” And though the propagation of an unnatural creed is not favored by natural fertility, the naturally barren doctrine of renunciation was thus successfully propagated by a system of incessant grafting. By the skilful application of that process the most dissimilar plants were made subservient to its purpose. The “Worship of Sorrow” with its whining renunciation of worldly enjoyments, and its indifference to health and physical education, was grafted on the manful naturalism of the Hebrew law-giver. Saint-worship, the veneration of self-torturing fanatics, was grafted on a stem of pagan mythology, and dozens of Christian martyrs have thus usurped the honor and the sacrifices of pagan temples. Christian holidays were grafted on the festivals of[188]the nature-loving Saxons. But persuasion failing, the missionaries of the cross did not hesitate to resort to more conclusive measures. Like refractory children cudgeled along the path of knowledge, the obstinate skeptics of northern Europe were harassed with fire and sword till they could not help admitting the dangers of unbelief. Thegarden-landsof the Albigenses were wasted till they found no difficulty in yearning for the peace of a better world. Philosophers were tortured in the prisons of the Holy Inquisition till the sorrows of life favored the renunciation of its hopes.For thirteen centuries the sunshine of millions of human hearts was ruthlessly sacrificed to promote the task of luring mankind from life to ghost-land, and during all those ages education was systematically turned from a blessing into an earth-blighting curse.
C.—PERVERSION.
The Christian church has constantly perverted the purpose of education, but has never yet deserved the[187]reproach of having neglected its means. From the very beginning the sect of the apostle-training Galilean has been a sect of assiduous educators. They were not satisfied with founding schools and opening their doors to all comers, but went forth in quest of new converts, and pursued their aim with a persistence of zeal and a versatility of skill that could not fail to accomplish its purpose. As soon as a sufficient increase of power enabled them to control the institutes of primary instruction they turned their chief attention to the dogmatical education of the young. They derived no aid from the attractiveness and still less from the plausibility of their doctrine, but they realized Schopenhauer’s remark that “there is in childhood a period measured by six, or at most by ten years, when any well-inculcated dogma, no matter how extravagantly absurd, is sure to retain its hold for life.” And though the propagation of an unnatural creed is not favored by natural fertility, the naturally barren doctrine of renunciation was thus successfully propagated by a system of incessant grafting. By the skilful application of that process the most dissimilar plants were made subservient to its purpose. The “Worship of Sorrow” with its whining renunciation of worldly enjoyments, and its indifference to health and physical education, was grafted on the manful naturalism of the Hebrew law-giver. Saint-worship, the veneration of self-torturing fanatics, was grafted on a stem of pagan mythology, and dozens of Christian martyrs have thus usurped the honor and the sacrifices of pagan temples. Christian holidays were grafted on the festivals of[188]the nature-loving Saxons. But persuasion failing, the missionaries of the cross did not hesitate to resort to more conclusive measures. Like refractory children cudgeled along the path of knowledge, the obstinate skeptics of northern Europe were harassed with fire and sword till they could not help admitting the dangers of unbelief. Thegarden-landsof the Albigenses were wasted till they found no difficulty in yearning for the peace of a better world. Philosophers were tortured in the prisons of the Holy Inquisition till the sorrows of life favored the renunciation of its hopes.For thirteen centuries the sunshine of millions of human hearts was ruthlessly sacrificed to promote the task of luring mankind from life to ghost-land, and during all those ages education was systematically turned from a blessing into an earth-blighting curse.
The Christian church has constantly perverted the purpose of education, but has never yet deserved the[187]reproach of having neglected its means. From the very beginning the sect of the apostle-training Galilean has been a sect of assiduous educators. They were not satisfied with founding schools and opening their doors to all comers, but went forth in quest of new converts, and pursued their aim with a persistence of zeal and a versatility of skill that could not fail to accomplish its purpose. As soon as a sufficient increase of power enabled them to control the institutes of primary instruction they turned their chief attention to the dogmatical education of the young. They derived no aid from the attractiveness and still less from the plausibility of their doctrine, but they realized Schopenhauer’s remark that “there is in childhood a period measured by six, or at most by ten years, when any well-inculcated dogma, no matter how extravagantly absurd, is sure to retain its hold for life.” And though the propagation of an unnatural creed is not favored by natural fertility, the naturally barren doctrine of renunciation was thus successfully propagated by a system of incessant grafting. By the skilful application of that process the most dissimilar plants were made subservient to its purpose. The “Worship of Sorrow” with its whining renunciation of worldly enjoyments, and its indifference to health and physical education, was grafted on the manful naturalism of the Hebrew law-giver. Saint-worship, the veneration of self-torturing fanatics, was grafted on a stem of pagan mythology, and dozens of Christian martyrs have thus usurped the honor and the sacrifices of pagan temples. Christian holidays were grafted on the festivals of[188]the nature-loving Saxons. But persuasion failing, the missionaries of the cross did not hesitate to resort to more conclusive measures. Like refractory children cudgeled along the path of knowledge, the obstinate skeptics of northern Europe were harassed with fire and sword till they could not help admitting the dangers of unbelief. Thegarden-landsof the Albigenses were wasted till they found no difficulty in yearning for the peace of a better world. Philosophers were tortured in the prisons of the Holy Inquisition till the sorrows of life favored the renunciation of its hopes.
For thirteen centuries the sunshine of millions of human hearts was ruthlessly sacrificed to promote the task of luring mankind from life to ghost-land, and during all those ages education was systematically turned from a blessing into an earth-blighting curse.
[Contents]D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.There is a story of a Portuguese slave-dealer who carried a private chaplain on his pay-roll, and frequently expressed his solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his shackled captives. A very similar kind of spiritual duty has for centuries been made the excuse for an almost total neglect of secular education. Divorced from the control of common sense, religion soon degenerated into mere ceremonialism. A priest who would travel twenty miles through a snow-storm to supply a dying man with a consecrated wafer had no sympathy with the needs of the living. He would extort the last penny of his[189]tithes at the risk of starving a village full of needy parishioners. He would groan at the sight of an unbaptized child, but had not a drop of water to cool the brows of burning Moors or Jews. He would rave about the cruelty of a prince who had deprived the clergy of their mass-shillings, but had no ear for the laments of the exiledMoriscosor the curses of starving serfs.Such was the morality which arrogated the right of suppressing that system of physical and intellectual education which had filled the homes of the Mediterranean nations with all the blessings of health, science, and beauty. Theological training had failed to kindle the dawn of a supernatural millennium, but had thoroughly succeeded in extinguishing the light of human reason. Not absolute ignorance only, but baneful superstition—worse than ignorance by just as much as poison is worse than hunger—was for centuries the inevitable result of all so-called school-training; and the traditions of that age of priest-rule have made religion almost a synonyme of cant. It also gave book-learning its supposed tendency to mental aberration. Can we wonder at that result of an age when the literary products of Christian Europe were confined almost exclusively to ghost-stories and manuals of ceremony? Can we wonder that delusions of the most preposterous kind assumed the virulence of epidemic diseases? Maniacs of self-mutilation, of epileptic contortions, of were-wolf panics, traversed Europe from end to end. Men gloried in ignorance, and boasted their neglect of worldly science till the consequences[190]of that neglect avenged its folly in actual madness.The saddest of all the sad “it might have beens” is, perhaps, a reverie on the probable results of earlier emancipation—of the employment of thirteen worse than wasted centuries in scientific inquiries, agricultural improvements, social and sanitary reforms. We might have failed to enter the portals of the New Jerusalem, but we would probably have regained our earthly paradise.
D.—PENALTIES OF NEGLECT.
There is a story of a Portuguese slave-dealer who carried a private chaplain on his pay-roll, and frequently expressed his solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his shackled captives. A very similar kind of spiritual duty has for centuries been made the excuse for an almost total neglect of secular education. Divorced from the control of common sense, religion soon degenerated into mere ceremonialism. A priest who would travel twenty miles through a snow-storm to supply a dying man with a consecrated wafer had no sympathy with the needs of the living. He would extort the last penny of his[189]tithes at the risk of starving a village full of needy parishioners. He would groan at the sight of an unbaptized child, but had not a drop of water to cool the brows of burning Moors or Jews. He would rave about the cruelty of a prince who had deprived the clergy of their mass-shillings, but had no ear for the laments of the exiledMoriscosor the curses of starving serfs.Such was the morality which arrogated the right of suppressing that system of physical and intellectual education which had filled the homes of the Mediterranean nations with all the blessings of health, science, and beauty. Theological training had failed to kindle the dawn of a supernatural millennium, but had thoroughly succeeded in extinguishing the light of human reason. Not absolute ignorance only, but baneful superstition—worse than ignorance by just as much as poison is worse than hunger—was for centuries the inevitable result of all so-called school-training; and the traditions of that age of priest-rule have made religion almost a synonyme of cant. It also gave book-learning its supposed tendency to mental aberration. Can we wonder at that result of an age when the literary products of Christian Europe were confined almost exclusively to ghost-stories and manuals of ceremony? Can we wonder that delusions of the most preposterous kind assumed the virulence of epidemic diseases? Maniacs of self-mutilation, of epileptic contortions, of were-wolf panics, traversed Europe from end to end. Men gloried in ignorance, and boasted their neglect of worldly science till the consequences[190]of that neglect avenged its folly in actual madness.The saddest of all the sad “it might have beens” is, perhaps, a reverie on the probable results of earlier emancipation—of the employment of thirteen worse than wasted centuries in scientific inquiries, agricultural improvements, social and sanitary reforms. We might have failed to enter the portals of the New Jerusalem, but we would probably have regained our earthly paradise.
There is a story of a Portuguese slave-dealer who carried a private chaplain on his pay-roll, and frequently expressed his solicitude for the spiritual welfare of his shackled captives. A very similar kind of spiritual duty has for centuries been made the excuse for an almost total neglect of secular education. Divorced from the control of common sense, religion soon degenerated into mere ceremonialism. A priest who would travel twenty miles through a snow-storm to supply a dying man with a consecrated wafer had no sympathy with the needs of the living. He would extort the last penny of his[189]tithes at the risk of starving a village full of needy parishioners. He would groan at the sight of an unbaptized child, but had not a drop of water to cool the brows of burning Moors or Jews. He would rave about the cruelty of a prince who had deprived the clergy of their mass-shillings, but had no ear for the laments of the exiledMoriscosor the curses of starving serfs.
Such was the morality which arrogated the right of suppressing that system of physical and intellectual education which had filled the homes of the Mediterranean nations with all the blessings of health, science, and beauty. Theological training had failed to kindle the dawn of a supernatural millennium, but had thoroughly succeeded in extinguishing the light of human reason. Not absolute ignorance only, but baneful superstition—worse than ignorance by just as much as poison is worse than hunger—was for centuries the inevitable result of all so-called school-training; and the traditions of that age of priest-rule have made religion almost a synonyme of cant. It also gave book-learning its supposed tendency to mental aberration. Can we wonder at that result of an age when the literary products of Christian Europe were confined almost exclusively to ghost-stories and manuals of ceremony? Can we wonder that delusions of the most preposterous kind assumed the virulence of epidemic diseases? Maniacs of self-mutilation, of epileptic contortions, of were-wolf panics, traversed Europe from end to end. Men gloried in ignorance, and boasted their neglect of worldly science till the consequences[190]of that neglect avenged its folly in actual madness.
The saddest of all the sad “it might have beens” is, perhaps, a reverie on the probable results of earlier emancipation—of the employment of thirteen worse than wasted centuries in scientific inquiries, agricultural improvements, social and sanitary reforms. We might have failed to enter the portals of the New Jerusalem, but we would probably have regained our earthly paradise.
[Contents]E.—REFORM.The days of the Holy Inquisition are past; but the restless propaganda of Jesuitry still shames the inactivity of Rationalism. Our friends sit listless, relying on the theoretical advantages of their cause, while the busy intrigues of our enemies secure them all practical advantages.Even in our model republic only primary education stands neutral, while private enterprise has made nearly every higher college a stronghold of dogmatism. And even the semi-secularism of primary instruction is more than offset by the ultra-orthodoxy of “Sunday-schools.” Millions of factory children have to sacrifice their only day of leisure at the bidding of their dogmatic task-master and with the timid connivance of their parents. “We cannot row against the stream,” I have heard even Freethinkers say. “Let the youngsters join the crowd; if it does them no good, it can do no harm.” But it will do harm, even beyond the waste of time and the wasted opportunities for health-giving exercise. The[191]process of dogmatic inoculation may fail to serve its direct purpose, but the weekly repetition of the experiment is sure to contaminate the moral organism with unsound humors which may become virulent at unexpected times and, likely enough, undermine that very peace of the household which a short-sighted mother hoped to promote by driving her boys to Sunday-school, as she would drive troublesome cattle to a public pasture.The Freethinkers of every community should combine to engage a teacher, or at least facilitate home instruction by collecting text-books of Secularism, such as Voltaire’s “Philosophical Cyclopedia;” Rousseau’s “Emile;” Hallam’s “History of the Middle Ages;” Ingersoll’s pamphlets; Paine’s “Age of Reason;” Lecky’s “History of Rationalism” and “History of Morals;” Lessing’s “Nathan;” Goethe and Schiller’s “Xenions;” Darwin’s “Descent of Man;” Plutarch’s Biographies; Trelawney’s “Last Days of Shelley and Byron;” McDonnell’s Freethought novels; Parker Pillsbury’s “Review of Sabbatarian Legislation;” Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man;” Bennett’s “Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times;” Gibbon’s “History of Christianity;” Keeler’s “Short History of the Bible;” “Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions;” “Supernatural Religion;” Greg’s “Creed of Christendom;” Lord Amberley’s “Analysis of Religious Belief;” “Religion Not History.”We should have Freethought colleges and Secular missions, and even isolated Liberals might do better than “drift with the stream.” They might let their[192]children pass their Sundays in the freedom of the forests and mountains to worship the God of Nature in his own temple, and learn a lesson from the parental devotion of their dumb fellow-creatures. She-wolves, deprived of their whelps, have been known to enter human habitations at night to suckle their young through the bars of a heavy cage. Thrushes and fly-catchers will enter an open window to feed or rescue their captive nestlings, and with a still wider sympathy a Liberal friend of mine tries to aid his neighbors’ children, as well as his own. Renouncing the hope of abolishing Sabbatarianism, he conceived the idea of controlling it, and induced his neighbors to send their children to a “Sunday Garden” with a free museum of pictures and stuffed birds, gymnastic contrivances, and a little restaurant of free temperance refreshments—apples, peanuts, and lemonade. He defrays the expenses of the establishment, which his neighbors consider a sort of modified kindergarten; and under the name of “Sunday books” circulates a private library of purely secular literature.“If life shall have been duly rationalized by science,” says Herbert Spencer, “parents will learn to consider a sound physical constitution as an entailed estate, which should be transmitted unimpaired, if not improved;” and with a similar recognition of social obligations Freethinkers should endeavor to transmit to their children a bequest of unimpaired common sense. Loyalty to their Protestant ancestors, loyalty to posterity, and to the majesty of truth herself, should prompt us to stand[193]bravely by our colors and train our children to continue the struggle for light and independence.By the far-reaching influence of education Secularists should bridge the chasm which orthodoxy hopes to cross on the wings of faith. Secularism shall preach the gospel of immortality on earth.[194]
E.—REFORM.
The days of the Holy Inquisition are past; but the restless propaganda of Jesuitry still shames the inactivity of Rationalism. Our friends sit listless, relying on the theoretical advantages of their cause, while the busy intrigues of our enemies secure them all practical advantages.Even in our model republic only primary education stands neutral, while private enterprise has made nearly every higher college a stronghold of dogmatism. And even the semi-secularism of primary instruction is more than offset by the ultra-orthodoxy of “Sunday-schools.” Millions of factory children have to sacrifice their only day of leisure at the bidding of their dogmatic task-master and with the timid connivance of their parents. “We cannot row against the stream,” I have heard even Freethinkers say. “Let the youngsters join the crowd; if it does them no good, it can do no harm.” But it will do harm, even beyond the waste of time and the wasted opportunities for health-giving exercise. The[191]process of dogmatic inoculation may fail to serve its direct purpose, but the weekly repetition of the experiment is sure to contaminate the moral organism with unsound humors which may become virulent at unexpected times and, likely enough, undermine that very peace of the household which a short-sighted mother hoped to promote by driving her boys to Sunday-school, as she would drive troublesome cattle to a public pasture.The Freethinkers of every community should combine to engage a teacher, or at least facilitate home instruction by collecting text-books of Secularism, such as Voltaire’s “Philosophical Cyclopedia;” Rousseau’s “Emile;” Hallam’s “History of the Middle Ages;” Ingersoll’s pamphlets; Paine’s “Age of Reason;” Lecky’s “History of Rationalism” and “History of Morals;” Lessing’s “Nathan;” Goethe and Schiller’s “Xenions;” Darwin’s “Descent of Man;” Plutarch’s Biographies; Trelawney’s “Last Days of Shelley and Byron;” McDonnell’s Freethought novels; Parker Pillsbury’s “Review of Sabbatarian Legislation;” Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man;” Bennett’s “Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times;” Gibbon’s “History of Christianity;” Keeler’s “Short History of the Bible;” “Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions;” “Supernatural Religion;” Greg’s “Creed of Christendom;” Lord Amberley’s “Analysis of Religious Belief;” “Religion Not History.”We should have Freethought colleges and Secular missions, and even isolated Liberals might do better than “drift with the stream.” They might let their[192]children pass their Sundays in the freedom of the forests and mountains to worship the God of Nature in his own temple, and learn a lesson from the parental devotion of their dumb fellow-creatures. She-wolves, deprived of their whelps, have been known to enter human habitations at night to suckle their young through the bars of a heavy cage. Thrushes and fly-catchers will enter an open window to feed or rescue their captive nestlings, and with a still wider sympathy a Liberal friend of mine tries to aid his neighbors’ children, as well as his own. Renouncing the hope of abolishing Sabbatarianism, he conceived the idea of controlling it, and induced his neighbors to send their children to a “Sunday Garden” with a free museum of pictures and stuffed birds, gymnastic contrivances, and a little restaurant of free temperance refreshments—apples, peanuts, and lemonade. He defrays the expenses of the establishment, which his neighbors consider a sort of modified kindergarten; and under the name of “Sunday books” circulates a private library of purely secular literature.“If life shall have been duly rationalized by science,” says Herbert Spencer, “parents will learn to consider a sound physical constitution as an entailed estate, which should be transmitted unimpaired, if not improved;” and with a similar recognition of social obligations Freethinkers should endeavor to transmit to their children a bequest of unimpaired common sense. Loyalty to their Protestant ancestors, loyalty to posterity, and to the majesty of truth herself, should prompt us to stand[193]bravely by our colors and train our children to continue the struggle for light and independence.By the far-reaching influence of education Secularists should bridge the chasm which orthodoxy hopes to cross on the wings of faith. Secularism shall preach the gospel of immortality on earth.[194]
The days of the Holy Inquisition are past; but the restless propaganda of Jesuitry still shames the inactivity of Rationalism. Our friends sit listless, relying on the theoretical advantages of their cause, while the busy intrigues of our enemies secure them all practical advantages.
Even in our model republic only primary education stands neutral, while private enterprise has made nearly every higher college a stronghold of dogmatism. And even the semi-secularism of primary instruction is more than offset by the ultra-orthodoxy of “Sunday-schools.” Millions of factory children have to sacrifice their only day of leisure at the bidding of their dogmatic task-master and with the timid connivance of their parents. “We cannot row against the stream,” I have heard even Freethinkers say. “Let the youngsters join the crowd; if it does them no good, it can do no harm.” But it will do harm, even beyond the waste of time and the wasted opportunities for health-giving exercise. The[191]process of dogmatic inoculation may fail to serve its direct purpose, but the weekly repetition of the experiment is sure to contaminate the moral organism with unsound humors which may become virulent at unexpected times and, likely enough, undermine that very peace of the household which a short-sighted mother hoped to promote by driving her boys to Sunday-school, as she would drive troublesome cattle to a public pasture.
The Freethinkers of every community should combine to engage a teacher, or at least facilitate home instruction by collecting text-books of Secularism, such as Voltaire’s “Philosophical Cyclopedia;” Rousseau’s “Emile;” Hallam’s “History of the Middle Ages;” Ingersoll’s pamphlets; Paine’s “Age of Reason;” Lecky’s “History of Rationalism” and “History of Morals;” Lessing’s “Nathan;” Goethe and Schiller’s “Xenions;” Darwin’s “Descent of Man;” Plutarch’s Biographies; Trelawney’s “Last Days of Shelley and Byron;” McDonnell’s Freethought novels; Parker Pillsbury’s “Review of Sabbatarian Legislation;” Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man;” Bennett’s “Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times;” Gibbon’s “History of Christianity;” Keeler’s “Short History of the Bible;” “Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions;” “Supernatural Religion;” Greg’s “Creed of Christendom;” Lord Amberley’s “Analysis of Religious Belief;” “Religion Not History.”
We should have Freethought colleges and Secular missions, and even isolated Liberals might do better than “drift with the stream.” They might let their[192]children pass their Sundays in the freedom of the forests and mountains to worship the God of Nature in his own temple, and learn a lesson from the parental devotion of their dumb fellow-creatures. She-wolves, deprived of their whelps, have been known to enter human habitations at night to suckle their young through the bars of a heavy cage. Thrushes and fly-catchers will enter an open window to feed or rescue their captive nestlings, and with a still wider sympathy a Liberal friend of mine tries to aid his neighbors’ children, as well as his own. Renouncing the hope of abolishing Sabbatarianism, he conceived the idea of controlling it, and induced his neighbors to send their children to a “Sunday Garden” with a free museum of pictures and stuffed birds, gymnastic contrivances, and a little restaurant of free temperance refreshments—apples, peanuts, and lemonade. He defrays the expenses of the establishment, which his neighbors consider a sort of modified kindergarten; and under the name of “Sunday books” circulates a private library of purely secular literature.
“If life shall have been duly rationalized by science,” says Herbert Spencer, “parents will learn to consider a sound physical constitution as an entailed estate, which should be transmitted unimpaired, if not improved;” and with a similar recognition of social obligations Freethinkers should endeavor to transmit to their children a bequest of unimpaired common sense. Loyalty to their Protestant ancestors, loyalty to posterity, and to the majesty of truth herself, should prompt us to stand[193]bravely by our colors and train our children to continue the struggle for light and independence.
By the far-reaching influence of education Secularists should bridge the chasm which orthodoxy hopes to cross on the wings of faith. Secularism shall preach the gospel of immortality on earth.[194]