Communism and Christianism
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Title: Communism and Christianism
Author: William Montgomery Brown
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Language: English
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COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
* * * * * *
TO THE PURCHASER:
Lying Supernaturalism is going; robbing Capitalism is falling; saving
Laborism is rising, and leveling Unionism is coming.
This booklet, Communism and Christianism, is a contribution by Bishop
and Mrs. Wm. M. Brown, of Galion, Ohio, towards the furtherance of these
downward, upward and forward movements, the most fortunate events in the
whole history of mankind. We hope that you will read, mark, learn and
inwardly digest its extremely revolutionary, comprehensive and salutary
teachings concerning both religion and politics with the happy result of
becoming an apostle of its illuminating and inspiring interpretation of
the scientific gospel of Marx and Engels to wage slaves, the only gospel
which points the way to redemption from their body and soul destroying
slavery.
You may become a missionary of this gospel in your neighborhood, and as
such do more good than all its orthodox preachers, teachers, editors and
politicians together at no financial cost to yourself by ordering
booklets at our special rates: six copies, $1.00; twenty-five copies,
$3.00, prepaid, and selling them to workers at our retail price, 25
cents for one copy. As we make no profit and do no bookkeeping, cash
should accompany all orders.
To organizations working for bail, defense, liberation or unemployment
funds, Bishop and Mrs. Brown donate twenty-five copies for each
twenty-five ordered with remittance.
The Bradford-Brown Educational Company, Inc. Publishers--Galion, Ohio
Editions and Their Dates.
First Edition, 10,000 copies, October 11th, 1920.
Second Edition, 10,000 copies, revised and enlarged from 184 to 204
pages, February 15th, 1921.
Third Edition, 10,000 copies, March 2nd, 1921.
Fourth Edition, 10,000 copies (2,000 in cloth binding), revised and
enlarged from 204 to 224 pages, April 9, 1921.
[Illustration: Rt. Rev. William Montgomery Brown, D. D.
Fifth Bishop of Arkansas, Resigned; Member House of Bishops Protestant
Episcopal Church; Sometime Archdeacon of Ohio and Special Lecturer at
Bexley Hall, the Theological Seminary of Kenyon College. Now Episcopos
in partibus Bolshevikium et Infidelium.]
* * * * * *
COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View
by
WILLIAM MONTGOMERY BROWN
Banish the Gods from the Skies and Capitalists from the Earth and make
the world safe for Industrial Communism.
The Bradford-Brown Educational Company, Inc. Publishers ... Galion, Ohio
Fortieth Thousand
DEDICATION
This booklet is gratefully dedicated to the Proletariat from whom Bishop
and Mrs. Brown are sprung, and to whose unrequited labors (not to the
good providence of a divinity) they owe their wealth, leisure and
opportunities.
PROLEGOMENA[A]
Religion is the opium of the people. The suppression of religion as
the happiness of the people is the revindication of its real
happiness. The invitation to abandon illusions regarding its
situation is an invitation to abandon a situation which has need of
illusions. Criticism of religion is therefore the germ of a
criticism of the vale of tears, of which religion is the holy
aspect.
--Marx.
Not only, indeed, is the struggle against religion intellectually
useful, but it cannot conscientiously be avoided, for religion is used
against the Socialist movement by the possessing class in every country.
But to abolish religion is not to abolish exploitation, because only one
of the enemy's guns will have been silenced. The workers have, above
all, to dislodge the capitalist class from power. The religious
question, and indeed all else, is secondary to this.
The test of admission to a Socialist Party must be neither more nor less
than acceptance of the following seven working principles and the policy
of Socialism as a class movement:
1. Society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of
the means of living (i. e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the
capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the
working class, by whose labor alone wealth is produced.
2. In society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests,
manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess
but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.
3. This antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the
working class from the domination of the master class by the
conversion into the common property of society of the means of
production and distribution, and their democratic control by the
whole people.
4. As in the order of social evolution the working class is the
last to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class
will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of
race or sex.
5. This emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6. As the machinery of capitalist government, including the armed
forces of the nation, conserves the monopoly by the capitalist
class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must
organize consciously and politically for acquiring the powers of
government, national and local, in order that this machinery,
including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of
oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of
privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.[B]
7. As all political parties are but the expression of class
interests, and as the interest of the working class is
diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the
master-class, the party seeking working-class emancipation must be
hostile to every other party.
If a man supports the church, or in any respect allows religious ideas
to stand in the way of the foregoing seven essential principles of
socialism or the activity of a Party, he proves thereby that he does not
accept Socialism as fundamentally true and of the first importance, and
his place is outside.
No man can be consistently both a Socialist and a Christian. It must be
either the socialist or the religious principle that is supreme, for the
attempt to couple them equally betrays charlatanism or lack of thought.
There is, therefore, no need for a specifically anti-religious test.
So surely does the acceptance of Socialism lead to the exclusion of the
supernatural, that the Socialist has little need for such terms as
Atheist, Free-thinker, or even Materialist; for the word Socialist,
rightly understood, implies one who, on all such questions, takes his
stand on positive science, explaining all things by purely natural
causation, Socialism being not merely a politico-economic creed, but
also an integral part of a consistent world philosophy.
So long as the anarchy of modern competitive society exists, the
accompanying obscurity and confusion in social life will continue to
shelter superstition. This point is illustrated in the following
reference by Marx to the United States:
When we see in the very country of complete political emancipation
not only that religion exists, but retains its vigour, there is no
need, I hope, for other proofs in order to show that the existence
of religion is not incompatible with the full political maturity of
the State. But if religion exists it is because of a defective
social organization, of which it is necessary to seek the cause in
the very essence of the State.
Class domination is the essence of the modern State. It is based on
competitive anarchy and parasitism--the evidences of a defective social
organization. It still leaves room for religion, because it maintains
ignorance and confusion by its structure and contradictions, and because
religion is fostered as a handmaiden of class rule.
Nevertheless, the growth of the social forces of production within
modern society, and the better knowledge the workers obtain of their
true relations to each other and to Nature, loosen the chains of ghost
worship and mysticism from their limbs and lessen the power of religion
as a political weapon in the hands of the ruling class, while they form,
at the same time, the material and intellectual preparation for an
intelligently organized society. The matter has been put in a nutshell
by Marx in the chapter on "Commodities" in "Capital," volume I.
The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then
finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life
offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable
relations with regard to his fellow men and to nature.
The life process of society, which is based on the process of
material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it
is treated as production by freely associated men, and is
consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.
This, however, demands for society a certain material groundwork or
set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the
spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.
It is, therefore, a profound truth that Socialism is the natural enemy
of religion. Through Socialism alone will the relations between men in
society, and their relations to Nature, become reasonable, orderly, and
completely intelligible, leaving no nook or cranny for superstition. The
entry of Socialism is, consequently, the exodus of religion.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
[B] This section has been slightly changed to make sure of guarding
against the advocacy of armed insurrection. Socialists throughout the
world want a peaceful evolution from capitalism into socialism; but
whether or not it will be so in the case of any country is, as Lenin
prophesies, to be determined by the dealings of its capitalists with its
laborers. In reply to an inquiry on this vexed subject by an English
author, Lenin said, in effect, that in England, as elsewhere, the
tactics of the capitalist class will determine the program of the labor
class.
THE INTERNATIONAL PARTY.
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world's in birth.
No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
Arise, ye slaves! no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations,
We have been naught, we shall be all.
We want no condescending saviors.
To rule us from a judgment hall.
We workers ask not for their favors,
Let us consult for all.
To make the thief disgorge his booty,
To free the spirit from its cell,
We must ourselves decide our duty,
We must decide and do it well.
The law oppresses us and tricks us,
Taxation drains the victim's blood;
The rich are free from obligations,
The laws the poor delude.
Too long we've languished in subjection,
Equality has other laws:
"No rights," says she, "without their duties.
No claims on equals without cause."
Toilers from shops and fields united,
The party we of all who work;
The earth belongs to us, the people,
No room here for the shirk.
How many on our flesh have fattened!
But if the noisome birds of prey
Shall vanish from the sky some morning,
The blessed sunlight still will stay.
CONTENTS
Page
PROLEGOMENA 5
PART I.
COMMUNISM: THE NATURALISTIC THIS-WORLDLY
GOSPEL FOR THE COMING AGE OF CLASSLESS EQUALITY
AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM 13
PART II.
CHRISTIANISM: A SUPERNATURALISTIC OTHER-WORLDLY
GOSPEL FOR THE PASSING AGE OF CLASS INEQUALITY
AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY 85
APPENDIX 157
Hitherto, every form of society has been based on the antagonism of
oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class,
certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at
least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of
serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the
petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to
develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary,
instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and
deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He
becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than
population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the
bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society,
and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an
over-riding law. It is unfit to rule, because it is incompetent to
assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it
cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed
him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under
this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer
compatible with society.--Marx and Engels.
COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW
PART I.
Communism: The Naturalistic This-worldly Gospel for the Coming Age of
Classless Equality and Economic Freedom--An Open Letter to a Brother
Bishop and a Christian Socialist Comrade.
Come over and help us. Abandon Christian Socialism for Marxian
Communism.
FOREWORD[C]
The concept of God, as an explanation of the Universe, is becoming
entirely untenable in this age of scientific inquiry. The laws of the
persistence of force and the indestructibility of matter, and the
unending interplay of cause and effect, make the attempt to trace the
origin of things to an anthropomorphic God who had no cause, as futile
as is the Oriental cosmology which holds that the world rests on an
elephant, and, as an afterthought, that the elephant stands on a
tortoise.
The inflexible laws of the known universe cannot logically be held to
cease where our immediate experience ends, to make way for an
unscientific concept of an uncaused and creating being. The Creation
idea is unsupported by evidence, and is in conflict with every
scientific law.
Socialism is consistent only with that monistic view which regards all
phenomena as expressions of the underlying matter-force reality and as
parts of the unity of Nature which interact according to inviolable
laws.
Socialism is the application of science, the archenemy of religion, to
human social relationships; and just as the basic principle of the
philosophy of Socialism finds itself in conflict with religion, so does
it, as a propagandist movement, find religion acting against it.
FOOTNOTES:
[C] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
COMMUNISM: THE NATURALISTIC THIS-WORLDLY GOSPEL FOR THE COMING AGE OF
CLASSLESS EQUALITY AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM.
Make the World safe for Industrialism by turning it upside down
with Workers above and Owners below.
My dear Brother and Comrade:
Your letter of June 13th[D] relative to the meeting called for the 27th,
in the interest of a more radical socialist movement in our church, came
duly to hand, and its invitation to attend, or at least write, was
highly appreciated.
My days for attending things are, I fear, past. I did not feel able to
go to the Annual Convention of the Socialist Party of Ohio, which met
much nearer here on the same date, June 27th, and ended on the 29th with
a great picnic--a communion, as real and holy, as was ever celebrated. I
cannot even be sure of being with you in the House of Bishops during the
meeting of the General Convention in October.
However, I intended you to have a letter and set the 26th aside for the
writing of it, but I work slowly now and its hours slipped away while I
was making notes until only one was left. It was spent in trying to
condense all I wanted to say in the letter into a telegram. What I
regard as the best of these efforts was taken to the office at seven
p. m. on that day:
Make world safe for democracy by banishing Gods from sky, and
capitalists from earth.
Here are four of the many other efforts: (1) Come over and help us.
Abandon Christian Socialism for Marxian Communism; (2) Make world safe
for democracy by turning it upside down with workers above and owners
below; (3) Revolutionize capitalism out of state and orthodoxy out of
church; (4) Come over and help us. Abandon reformatory for revolutionary
socialism.
What I wanted you to understand is that, in my judgment, there can be no
deliverance for the world from the troubles by which it is overwhelmed
so long as theism holds the religious field and capitalism the political
field.
I.
Religion and politics are the two halves of the sphere in which humanity
lives, moves and has its social being. Religion is the ideal and
politics the practical half of this sphere. Both halves naturally exist
as the result of the same natural law of necessity: the matter-force law
which makes it necessary for a man to feed, clothe and shelter his body
in order to preserve it and its life.
Marxian socialism is at once this religion and politics, all there is of
both of them which is for the good of the world as a whole.
Marxian socialism is a revolutionary movement towards doing away with
the existing competitive system for producing and distributing the basic
necessities of life (foods, clothes and houses) for the profit of a few
parasites, and substituting a system for making and distributing them
for the use of all workers.
So far some competing, lying, robbing, enslaving system for the
production and distribution of these necessities has been the basis of
every religion and politics--of none more than the Christian and
American, and they with the rest have been tried in the balance of
experience and found utterly wanting. Indeed, they are making a hell,
not a heaven, of the earth in general and of our country in particular.
Christianism as a religion has collapsed. It promised to secure to the
world peace and good will, but it has never had more of strife and hate.
The tremendous English-German (or if you prefer German-English) war was
a conflict at arms between the most outstanding among Christian nations
and it was solemnly alleged to have been fought for the high purpose of
ending such conflicts; but in reality it scattered the hot coals of war
throughout the world, several of which were fanned into blazing by its
so-called peace conference and others are ominously smouldering.
Americanism as a politics has collapsed. It promised a classless
government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people, but
has instead given a government of a class, by a class, for a class. This
class, comprising not more than one out of every ten of the population,
is the capitalist class, which owns the means and machines for the
production of the necessities of life and for their distribution, a
class which, as such, though bearing no necessary relationship to either
one of the branches of this business, yet realizes enormous profits from
both, profits which are wholly at the expense of the large class, at
least nine out of every ten, which does all the work connected with the
making of the machines and the operating of them.
This government was to make the country safe for democracy by securing
to it the privilege of free speech and free assemblage, the existence of
an independent press and the right of appeal for the redress of
grievances; but our fathers did not have any too much of these
liberties, we have had less and, if the competitive system for the
production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the small
owning class is to continue, our children are to have none.
Indeed, this is already true of the overwhelming majority, the working
class. Its representatives have little if any real part in the
government. They are completely subjected to the rule of the owning
class. There never has been a body, mind and soul destroying slavery
which equaled theirs, either as to the number of men, women and children
involved in it, or as to the degrees of misery to which it doomed its
victims.
Nor is the end yet. The world war certainly has taken American slavery
out of the frying pan into the fire rather than into the water.
American slaves appeal to their government as Jewish slaves appealed to
one of their kings for relief and receive the same answer, not in words
but in deeds which speak louder:
Thy father made our yoke grievous; now therefore make thou the
grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put
upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee. And he said unto them,
Depart yet for three days, then come again to me. And the people
departed. So all the people came the third day as the king had
appointed and the king answered them roughly, saying: My father
made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke: My father also
chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.
So when all Israel saw that the king harkened not unto them, the
people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David?
As to details history does not exactly repeat itself and, therefore, I
do not believe that the other planets of the universe, of which no doubt
there are many billions, are inhabited by human beings of the same type
as those of the earth, nor that its men, women and children are to have
their bodies reconstructed and resurrected, after they have been
disintegrated by death. Such beings on other planets and such
reconstructions on this planet would in every case involve a detailed
repetition of infinitely numerous processes of evolution which had
extended through an eternal past.
Yet in every part of the universe and throughout all eternity, like
causes ever have produced and ever shall produce like effect. If,
therefore, the course of the Judean masters towards their slaves led to
a successful revolt of ten out of twelve tribes, there is every reason
for believing that the parallel course which the American masters are
pursuing against their slaves will sooner or later issue in a
revolution--a revolution which shall do away with both masters and
slaves, leaving us with a classless America and a government concerned
with the making of provisions for enabling all the people who are able
and willing to work to supply themselves in abundance with the
necessities of life and with the most desirable among the luxuries,
rather than a government which provides that they who produce nothing
shall have the cream and top milk of every necessity and the whole
bottle of every luxury, leaving of the necessities only the blue milk
for the producers of them and of the luxuries, not even the dregs.
Under this government those who can but will not work will be allowed to
starve themselves into a better mind and out of their laziness. The
young and the old, the sick and crippled will have their rightful
maintenance from the state and out of the best of everything.
The deliverance of the world from commercial imperialism and the making
of it safe for industrial democracy would prevent most of its
unnecessary suffering and this great salvation is above all else
dependent upon a knowledge of the truth. "Ye shall know the truth and
the truth shall make you free"--free from all the avoidable ills of
life, among them the diabolical trinity of evils, war, poverty and
slavery.
The happiness of the world will be promoted in extent and degree in
proportion as the knowledge of the truth is disseminated by a twofold
revelation: (1) the truth as it is revealed by history according to the
Marxian interpretation thereof, a revelation of the truth which is
saving the world from the robbing impositions of the capitalistic
interpretation of politics, and (2) the truth as it is revealed by
nature, according to the Darwinian interpretation thereof, a revelation
which is saving the world from the robbing impositions of the
supernaturalistic interpretations of religion.
Man has always had as a basis for his thought, belief and action, a
system for the production and distribution of the necessities of life.
This is the discovery of Karl Marx which is known as the scientific or
materialistic interpretation of history.
According to the scientific interpretation of history which is taught by
naturalistic socialism, man is what he is, and his institutions are what
they are, because he has fed, clothed and housed himself as he has.
According to the traditional interpretation of history, which is taught
by supernaturalistic Christianism, man is what he is because of his
thinking, believing and acting with reference to a revelation of a god,
as it has been interpreted by his inspired representatives, the great
prophets and statesmen, like Isaiah and Luther, Moses and Washington.
Perhaps the best proof of the correctness of the scientific or
naturalistic explanation of the career of man and of the incorrectness
of the traditional or supernaturalistic one is afforded by the history
of morals, the soul of both religion and politics, without which neither
could have any existence.
Before the discovery of the art of agriculture, man was dependent for
his food upon fruits and nuts, game and fish. When these sources of
sustenance failed, the tribes living in the same neighborhood fought
with each other in order that the victorious might eat the vanquished.
During this period cannibalism was morally right, and it probably
extended through at least two hundred thousand years, even into the Old
Testament times. So righteous and holy was it that, in the course of
time, the victims were recognized as saviour gods and the drinking of
their blood and eating of their flesh constituted a Lord's Supper in
which the god was eaten.
Cannibalism is the basis of our sacrament of the holy communion of bread
and wine. As a connecting link between these extremes there was the form
of communion which consisted in the eating of animal sacrifices.
By a sacrament with such an origin, you and I render our highest act of
worship, though yours is still directed towards one among the
supernaturalistic divinities and mine is now directed towards humanity.
You say of a divinity: Thou, Lord, hast made me after thine own image
and my heart cannot be at rest until I find rest in thee. I say of
humanity: Thou, Lord, hast made me after thine own image and my heart
cannot be at rest until it find rest in thee.
Within the social realm humanity is my new divinity, and your divinity
(my old one) is a symbol of it, or else, so I think, he is at best a
fiction and at worst a superstition.
You will be surprised, and I do not expect you to understand me, when I
tell you that by translating the services and hymns from the language of
my old literalism into that of my new symbolism, I am getting as much
good out of them as ever and indeed more. I love the services,
especially that great one, the Holy Communion, and the hymns, especially
those great ones, Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah; Lead, Kindly Light;
Abide With Me; and Jesus, Lover of My Soul.
My experience has convinced me that the sentimental and poetical
elements in religion, to which I attach as much importance as ever, are
as readily excited and securely sustained by fixing thought and sympathy
upon the martyred human savior, the working class, as upon a crucified
divine saviour, who after all, as the suffering son of God, is but a
symbol of the suffering sons and daughters of man, the workers, from
whom all good things come.
If grace at dinner means anything, it is addressed to a god who is the
symbol of the many workers who did the innumerable things necessary to
the producing and serving of it, without whom there would be nothing of
all the good things on the table.
In the representation about my pleasure in the services of the church
and their value to me, and in many representations scattered throughout
this letter, I have in mind the question of an unanswered letter of
yours, bearing date, February 25th, 1919, the one in which you ask, in
effect, by what right a man can remain in an institution after he has,
as I have, abandoned its chief doctrines and aims as they are
authoritatively interpreted.
The right of revolution is the one by which I justify my course, and
surely no consistent Protestant Christian or American citizen will doubt
the solidity of this ground; for Protestantism and Americanism had their
origin in revolutions.
Our national declaration of independence contains this famous
justification of political revolutions, and it is equally applicable to
religious ones, for religion and politics are but the ideal and
practical halves of the same social reality:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed: that, whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter
or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its
foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long
established, should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute despotism, it is their right--and it is their duty--to
throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their
security.
Jesus was nothing if he was not a revolutionist. Anyhow, his alleged
mother is authoritatively represented as believing him to have been
foreordained as one, for this song is put into her mouth:
He hath showed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud
in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the
humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath
sent empty away.
This Christian socialism, like Bolshevik socialism, turns the idle rich
empty away; but, whereas the Christian gives them no chance to get
anything to eat, the Bolshevik allows them to have as much as the poor,
if they will work as hard.
Assuming for the sake of argument, that there may have been an
historical Jesus who taught some of the doctrines, in accordance with
the representations of the gospel, which are attributed to him, I am
nevertheless justified in claiming that he was quite as heretical
touching the faith of orthodox Judaism as I am touching that of orthodox
Christianism.
As to the Jewish faith he said, in effect, of himself what I say of
myself: I have all of the potentialities of my own life within myself. I
and my god are one. He dwells in me and I in him, and we are on the
earth, not in the sky.
As to the Jewish church and state, Jesus taught that they had become
utterly antiquated and that it was the mission of himself and disciples
to establish a new heaven, that is to remodel the church; and a new
earth, that is, to remodel the state; both remodelings being with
reference to the service of humanity by enlightening its darkness and
alleviating its misery here and now, rather than teaching it to look for
light and happiness elsewhere and elsewhen.[E]
As for the faith and church of orthodox Christianism there is no reason
for believing that he would be any more loyal to either than am I. His
loyalty was to the truth and to the proletarian, and they (this faith
and church) are disloyal to both, being ever on the side of tradition
against science, and on the side of the owner against the worker.
Jesus remained in the Jewish church, in spite of his many and great
heresies, until he was put out by death.
My contention is that in view of this example, whether it be, as you
think, of an historical or, as I think, of a dramatic character, there
is no reason why I should voluntarily go out of the Christian church.
Religion in general and Christianity in particular are nothing unless
they are embodiments of morality, and morality does not consist in
professions of belief in a god and his revelations as they are recorded
in a bible and condensed in a creed, but in a desire and effort to
acquire a knowledge of the laws of nature in order that, by conformity
to them, life may be made longer and happier.
When this desire exists and this effort is made with reference to one's
own self, they constitute morality; when with reference to one's own
family and associates, they constitute religion, and when with reference
to all others of contemporary and future generations, they constitute
Christianity.
But in making such distinctions the fact should not be lost sight of
that at bottom there is no difference between morality, religion and
Christianity. They are synonyms for the same virtues, the desire and
effort to know and live the truth as it is revealed in the doings of
nature. There are no other revelations of the truth, nor is there any
other morality, religion or Christianity.
Socialism is for me the one comprehensive term which is a synonym at
once of morality, religion and Christianity. Marxian and Bolshevikian
socialism are two halves of one thing, the theoretical half and the
practical half. Marxism is socialism in theory. Bolshevism is (perhaps
imperfectly as yet) socialism in practice.
As long as gods dominate the sky and capitalists prevail upon the earth,
the world will be safe for commercial imperialism, having a small heaven
for the few rich masters and a large hell for the many poor slaves.
Come over and help us make the world safe for industrial democracy by
banishing the personal, conscious gods from the sky and the lying,
robbing capitalists from the earth.
But in coming there is no need for leaving your church any more than
there is for leaving your state. During the short time which is for me,
before the night cometh in which no man can work, I shall remain in both
as long as the powers that be allow it, and do what little I can to
revolutionize them--revolutionize the church into a school for the
teaching of truth instead of lies, and revolutionize the state into a
hive for the making of commodities for the use of all instead of for the
profit of a few. In doing this I shall be following in the very
footsteps of the human Jesus.
After it was discovered that the ground, by planting and cultivating,
would produce the necessities of life, when a tribe found that it had
too little of it for its growing population, it would go to war with the
weaker among adjacent tribes for the purpose of securing its territory;
but from this on the vanquished were not eaten, and it was morally wrong
to eat them. They were kept alive and put to work at raising harvests
for their conquerors, hence arose the institution of slavery, and hence
its moral rightness even in this country of the free, down to the
beginning of the generation to which I belong.
However, human slavery has never ended, nor will it ever end while the
competitive system for the production of the necessities of life for
profit rather than use continues. Human slavery is, so to speak, the
basic ingredient of this system.
Speaking broadly, there have been three forms of human slavery--the
chattel, feudal and wage slaveries--the third much worse than the first,
and the second intermediary between them.
The chattel slave, as the adjective signifies, was the property of his
master, as much so as were the horse or the mule with which he worked,
and he was cared for in much the same way and for about the same reason.
The feudal slave was as really a chattel as was his predecessor, only he
had to look out for himself to a greater extent; and, more was expected
from him of accomplishment for the opulence and glory of the master,
especially insofar as these depended upon the success of his wars.
The wage slave is, likewise, as really owned by his master as was the
chattel or the feudal slave; but, if the master has no need for his
service, he is altogether down and out, as the feudal slave was not and
still less the chattel, and he has accomplished at least ten times more
for his master than did either of his predecessors.
So far man has produced and distributed the necessities of life by a
competitive system. The existing form of this competition is known as
capitalism. It has supplanted, or at least overshadowed, every other
form and is, so to speak, monarch of all it surveys.
The system as it now stands divides the world into two spheres--a small
one, in which a few live surfeitingly by owning, and a large one, in
which the many live starvingly by working; and, yet, ultimately,
absolutely everything for both depends upon the worker and nothing at
all on the owner.
Yes, the worker is indispensable to the owner, as much so as (to use the
classical illustration) the dog to the flea; but the owner is no more
indispensable to the worker than a flea to a dog. As dogs would be much
better off without fleas, so would workers without owners.
The discovery that the itch is caused by a parasite was of an epoch
making character because it led to the discovery that many, if not most
of the diseases by which mankind and also animal kind are afflicted are
of a parasitical character. This is as true of the social organism as of
the physical. Capitalism is the tape worm of society.
The existence of the master and slave classes inevitably gives rise to
four struggles: (1) the struggle of the slaves with the master for
better conditions, issuing in rebellions; (2) the struggle between
masters for advantages in markets, issuing in wars; (3) the struggle
between the slaves for jobs, issuing in a body and soul destroying
poverty; and (4) the struggle of the slaves with the master for a
reversal of conditions, issuing in revolutions.
All this struggling between the classes and within them tends towards
two results with both classes.
In the case of the master class, these results are the making of the
rich fewer and the remaining few richer.
In the case of the slave class, these results are the making of the
miserable poor more numerous and all less happy.
While capitalism stands, all talk about peace on earth and good will
among men will be so much hypocrisy; for, until it falls, the world will
be divided into the slave and master classes and these four contentions
with these results will continue to fill it with hatred and strife.
II.
The overthrow of capitalism in Russia is the greatest event in the
history of the world and it has converted International Socialism (the
Marxian revolutionary kind) from a theory into a condition.
Theories come and go. Conditions remain and work. From this on
revolutionary socialism will be working, night and day, with might and
main, here and there, everywhen and everywhere, and its three herculean
tasks are: (1) to dethrone the great imperialist, competitive
capitalism; (2) to enthrone the great democrat, co-operative
industrialism; and (3) to make the world safe for an industrial
classless democracy.
In less than three years revolutionary socialism in Russia has
accomplished more of these three tasks for the world, than all the
states and all the churches with all their wars have done in the whole
course of man's career, extending through at least two hundred thousand
years. Indeed they never did anything to these ends. On the contrary,
what progress has been made towards them was made in spite of their
strenuous opposition at every step.
Revolutionary socialism is a world movement towards the deliverance of
the producing slave from the non-producing master who has robbed him of
the fruits of his toil and left him half dead on the wayside--the only
effective movement to this humanitarian end.
Revolutionary socialism is the Good Samaritan of the despoiled and
wounded laborer. The reformatory kinds of socialism are so many priests
and Levites who pass by on the other side.
Of no reformatory socialism is this more true than of the Christian
kind. Christian socialism is absolutely worthless, and its utter
worthlessness is due to the essentially parasitic character of
supernaturalistic or orthodox Christianity.
Until the reformation, Christianity was dominated by monks--parasites
who lived by begging, lying, and persecuting; and since then by
capitalists--parasites who live by robbing, lying and warring.
Monks and capitalists have this in common, that they are natives of the
realm of parasitism.
We shall never have peace on earth and good will among men until we have
a parasiteless humanity, and we must wait for this until we have a
classless world. Parasitism is a boon companion of classism.
Nor can the earth ever be rid of its parasites until the celestial world
is rid of the class gods which capitalists have made in their own image
and likeness, nor until the terrestrial world is rid of the class states
and codes, churches and gospels which their respective class kings or
presidents and their class priests or preachers have had the gods of
their making impose upon this world, in accordance with their interests
and in the furtherance of their lying, robbing, warring schemes for the
promotion of them.
Neither capitalism nor Christianism is anything except insofar as it is
a system of parasitism and as parasitic systems they have striking
resemblances, nearly as many and close as indistinguishable twins.
Both have gods, churches and priesthoods and these are in each case
nothing but symbols.
However, the god of capitalism, though only a symbol, is nevertheless
real gold, below a real vault, and nearly all the world sincerely
worships it.
But the god of Christianism, though none the less symbolic, but rather
more so, is an unreal imaginary spirit, a magnified man without a body,
above an imaginary vault, and only a very small part of the world
sincerely worships him.
International socialism of the Marxian or Russian type, is for those who
starvingly live by working, the most uplifting thing in the world, and
for those who surfeitingly live by owning, it is the most depressing
thing in the world.
Wise people consider theories without losing too much, if any, sleep on
their account, but they study conditions and lie awake nights over them.
Millions of wise Americans have, in the past, been studying socialism as
a theory but, in the future, they will study it as a condition, in the
only way by which it can rightly and adequately be studied--the way of
reading its official documents, accredited periodicals and books. Of all
such, the most notable is the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.
This Manifesto is the Marxian gospel. I read two pages in it every day
as faithfully as ever I read a chapter in the Jesuine gospel, and with
much greater profit; for, whereas the gospel of Marx is exclusively
concerned with this terrestrial world, about which I know much and for
which I can do a little, the gospel of Jesus is as exclusively concerned
with a celestial world, about which I know nothing and for which I
cannot do the least. Here, as a sample of this gospel, I give half of
yesterday's reading and most of today's:
The immediate aim of the Communists (Socialists) is the same as
that of all the other proletarian parties; formation of the
proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy,
conquest of political power by the proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based
on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by
this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing
from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going
on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property
relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.
All property relations in the past have continually been subject to
historical change consequent upon the change in historical
conditions.
The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in
favor of bourgeois property.
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of
property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But
modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete
expression of the system of producing and appropriating products,
that is based on class antagonism, on the exploitation of the many
by the few.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: Abolition of private property.
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing
the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's
own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all
personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the
property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of
property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to
abolish that; the development of industry has, to a great extent,
already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?
But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit.
It creates capital, i. e., that kind of property which exploits
wage-labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of
getting a new supply of wage-labor for fresh exploitation.
Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of
capital and wage-labor. Let us examine both sides of this
antagonism.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a
social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and
only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort,
only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set
in motion.
Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power.
When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into
the property of all members of society, personal property is not
thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social
character of the property that is changed. It loses its
class-character.
Let us now take wage-labor:
The average price of wage-labor is the minimum wage, i. e., that
quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite
to keep the laborer in bare existence, as his labor merely suffices
to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to
abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labor, an
appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of
human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the
labor of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable
character of this appropriation, under which the laborer lives
merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only insofar as
the interest of the ruling class requires it.
In bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase
accumulated labor. In Communist society, accumulated labor is but a
means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in
Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois
society capital is independent and has individuality, while the
living person is dependent and has no individuality.
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the
bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so.
The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence,
and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
The version of the Marxian gospel which we have in the Manifesto is
among the first of its versions. It was published about the middle of
the last century. Within the short period which has intervened, it has
changed nearly all of the ideas of a large and rapidly growing part of
every nation about almost everything social; and before the middle of
the present century, it will revolutionize all nations as it has Russia.
Ludendorff, the greatest among the military authorities in Germany, saw
and terribly feared this, and called Europe to arms to prevent it. In
his almost frantic appeal he said:
Bolshevism is advancing now and in a gradual progress from east to
west and is crushing everything between the midland sea and the
Atlantic ocean. It was easy to foresee that the Bolshevist armies
would attack toward the middle of May and defeat the Poles, as they
have now done. The world at large must, therefore, figure with a
Bolshevist advance in Poland toward Berlin and Prague.
Poland's fall will entail the fall of Germany and Czecho-Slovakia.
Their neighbors to the north and south will follow. Fate steps
along with elementary force. Let no one believe it will come to a
stand without enveloping Italy, France and England. Not even the
Seven Seas can stop it.
Under the capitalist system most people are and must continue to be
slaves. If you are a slave (all wage earners, as such, are slaves) the
socialist literature, the greatest of all literatures, will thrill you
with the hope of liberty. Read, note and inwardly digest it. No wage
earner who does this will ever again vote either the Democratic or the
Republican ticket. As a whole this literature is a brilliantly
illuminating and almost resistlessly persuasive explanation of the most
sane, the most salutary and withal the most promising movement towards
the freeing of all toiling men, women and children (nine of every ten)
from their body and soul destroying slavery.
Both Socrates and Jesus are recorded as teaching that the saviour of the
world is truth. Among saving truths (there is no truth without some
saving efficacy) the greatest is the one which was discovered and
formulated concurrently by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and it is in
substance this: all which makes for the good of mankind ultimately
depends wholly upon the laborious constructors and operators of the
machines for the cultivation, production and distribution of the
necessities of life, not at all upon the owners of these machines, who
at best are idlers and at worst schemers, and in any case parasites.
In the beginning was Work. All things were made by it; and without
it was not anything made that was made. In it was life; and the
life was the light of men.
The opening verses of the gospel according to John have been thus
interpreted. The commentator acknowledges that they do not read so now,
but contends for good and sufficient reasons, that, if there ever was
any truth in them, something to this effect must have been their
original reading. Certainly there is no truth in them as they have come
down to us.
This representation to the effect that productive labor is the saviour
of the world, its real god, the divinity in which we live, move and have
our being, is the great truth, the gospel of International Socialism,
the greatest of all movements, the movement which carries the only
rational hope for the freeing of mankind from all its unnecessary
suffering--and the most poignant sufferings, those imposed by the great
trinity of evils: (war, poverty and slavery) are not necessary.
Capitalism and Christianism are alike not only in having gods which are
symbols, but also in having great buildings set apart for the
worshipping of them.
The representatives of the god below the vault worship him in banks
under the leadership of a threefold ministry: presidents, cashiers and
bookkeepers.
The representatives of the god above the vault worship him in churches
under the leadership of a threefold ministry: bishops, priests and
deacons.
Speaking particularly of Christianity and America the trouble is not at
all with our Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam divinities, but wholly with
what they symbolize, capitalism--the god of liars, robbers and
warriors.
What our Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam should alike symbolize are the
classless divinities: (1) law, the king of the physical realm, and (2)
truth, the queen of the moral realm.
Law is what nature does. There is no other law, and this law is the god
of the physical realm. The gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations
of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, and all the rest) are
personifications, or symbols, of this god, or else they are
superstitions.
This representation is proved in practice to be true, on the one hand,
by the fact that no one needs to live with reference to any among those
gods, not even the god, Jesus; and, on the other hand, by the fact that
none who fail to live with reference to this god, law, lives at all.
Every act of nature, that is, every physical and psychical phenomenon
which enters into the constitution of the universe, is a word of the
revelation of this god, and there is no other revelation. All men must
constantly live with reference to it or else immediately die.
Truth is the interpretation of this law in the light of human
experience, reason and investigation with the view of making human life,
that of self and of all who come or can be brought within the range of
one's influence, as long and happy as possible.
Any one who desires and endeavors rightly to learn, interpret and live
this law to these ends is moral. In everything is he wholly good and in
nothing at all bad.
Religion is not anything good, except only as it is a synonym of such
morality, and this is equally true of politics.
War shortens much life and fills more with misery, hence it is utterly
immoral, and this is equally true of poverty and slavery.
In what I say here and in some other places about war being essentially
evil, the wars referred to are those by which the world has been cursed
through all the ages--wars between different groups of owners with
conflicting interests, not the war between owners and workers which is
now on. This war will bless, not curse, the world, because it is for the
emancipation of the slave class, not for the enrichment of one group of
the masters at the expense of another group, at the cost of increased
misery to all the slaves on both sides.
If there is any truth in the representation that real religion and real
politics alike consist in desiring and endeavoring to make terrestrial
life (there is no celestial life of which aught is known) long and
happy, the advocate of war is the worst of heretics against Christianism
and the worst of traitors against Americanism.
War is a necessary characteristic of vegetables and animals, because
they cannot make and operate machines for the supplying of their needs.
Peace is the necessary characteristic of humans, because they can make
and operate machines for the supplying of their needs.
Wars between capitalists are inevitabilities, as much so as the wars
between two hungry dogs, when one has a bone upon which the lives of
both depend. The only difference between capitalists and dogs is, that
dogs do their own fighting, whereas capitalists first rob the laborers
who produce their commodities, and then persuade or compel them to fight
their battles with fellow capitalists in their competitive efforts to
distribute them.
On the one hand it is true that a few capitalists do lose money in wars,
and still fewer their lives, but on the other hand it is equally true
that the majority of them are made richer and that producing and
distributing laborers ultimately bear every cent of the enormous
financial burden, and that for every machine owning master who is killed
or wounded there are a hundred wage earning slaves.
Yet neither the making nor operating of machines constitutes a man a
human. It is co-operation which does this. Nor will co-operation in
itself suffice. Bees and ants co-operate and even capitalists do so, yet
with all their co-operating bees and ants remain animals and so do
capitalists. The co-operation which converts animals into humans is the
one which is purposely inaugurated and sustained with the view of
securing to each one the fruits of his labor while at the same time
increasing them for all--that deliberate co-operation which consists in
conscious living, letting live and helping to live.
It is this co-operation which constitutes the most essential difference
between the animal and the human. Only animalism can exist and flourish
on a competitive basis, yet this is the basis upon which men who falsely
claim to be humans are living.
Until mankind begins the construction of a civilization on a foundation
of co-operation in the production and distribution of the necessities of
life, it should not set up a claim to humanism for itself, because
meantime it cannot sustain such a claim.
It is perfectly natural and absolutely necessary for dogs to have
belligerent contentions for bones, because they cannot peacefully
co-operate in the making of them; and yet men who can do this are more
fierce by far in their competitive struggles for the bones which are
necessities to their lives.
Revolutionary socialists of the Marxian or Bolshevikian type offer the
only solution of the two great questions of the world at this time: (1)
how to save it from its intermittent and lesser hell of suffering by the
bloody wars between rival sets of capitalists, and (2) how to save it
from its perpetual and greater hell of suffering by the bloodless wars
between the machine owning masters and the machine operating slaves,
which wars, if less excruciating, are yet more destructive of both life
and happiness.
1. As to the bloody wars, a league of nations could prevent them only
while the dogs are sleeping off their exhaustion.
Nor could government ownership be depended upon for protection. It would
increase the armies and navies, making it next to impossible that more
than a decade or two should pass before our children must suffer as much
as, or more than, we have by the recent war between the bull dog and the
blood hound.
We are not at all indebted to the victory of the bull dog (England) over
the blood hound (Germany) for what we have in the way of a guarantee
against future wars, but wholly to the presumption of the Newfoundland
dog (Russia) which has quietly walked off with the bone of contention
while the belligerents were scrapping over it.
Notwithstanding all appearances and impressions to the contrary, this
bone never was really Paris or Berlin, but first one and then another
country--the Balkan States, Mexico, Persia, Morocco and Russia.
Of late Russia has been the chief bone of contention. Hence all the
snarling against Russian Bolshevism, one of a large litter of puppies
born to the Newfoundland since the beginning of the war, representatives
of which have already made their way to several countries of Europe, and
the prospects are that they or their offspring will soon be in evidence
everywhere throughout the world.
When all these Bolsheviki are grown-ups, they will make the world safe
for democracy sure enough--not the competitive democracy of the bull
dogs and blood hounds, but the co-operative democracy of the
Newfoundland dog. Then, and not before, will the world be safe against
war.
Since the beginning of the armistice there has been, every now and then,
a widespread fear that it might not be permanent, because of a
successful effort on the part of the bull dog to put over another war on
account of the Russian bone; but for many this fear has now been almost
quieted by the total collapse of the Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich and
Wrangel uprisings from within, which were strongly supported by the
Allies; and by the repulsion of the Polish invasion which had England,
France and the United States behind it.
An astonishing illustration of the truth of the Marxian theory
concerning the materialistic or economic determination of history, is
furnished by the melancholy fact that the representatives of big
business in the allied countries would gladly respond to Gen.
Ludendorff's call to join the junkers, against whom they so recently
fought, in a war against Russia, of which war Germany would be the
battle field. A concerted effort was made to organize such a war, but
the wisdom learned in the school of the world war by the working-men of
all the countries to which the call was made and their consequent
opposition to the effort caused it to fail.
2. But great as the suffering of the world is on account of the bloody
wars of capitalists with each other, it is but a drop in the bucket of
sorrow as compared with its suffering on account of the bloodless wars
between masters and slaves--between the machine owners and operators.
When this bloodless war ceases, as it will with the triumph of
international socialism, the bloody wars will cease and not until then.
Under the capitalist system every institution (state, church, school,
legislature, court, business, yes, even charity) is necessarily a
robbing instrumentality by which a small class of non-producers, fat
masters, rob a large class of producers, lean slaves, and rob them
twice, each time thrice:
1. The master non-producers rob the slave producers of the three great
necessities of physical (body) life--food, clothing and houses.
Even in the United States of America, "the land of plenty," at this time
and at all times, seventy-five out of every one hundred are
insufficiently fed, clothed and housed.
2. The master non-producers rob the slave producers of the necessities
of psychical (soul) life--the liberty to learn the facts of nature, the
liberty to humanly interpret and live them and the liberty to teach
their discoveries and interpretations.
Even in the United States of America, "the home of political and
religious freedom," there is not one who can learn, live and teach the
truth without danger of being put out of a synagogue and into a
penitentiary; and this will continue until imperialistic capitalism and
supernaturalistic Christianism, the father and mother of the whole brood
of robbers, liars, persecutors and warriors, have been dethroned.
The gods of the capitalistic interpretations of politics and the gods of
the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, symbolize the same
reality, parasitic robbery.
Yet within the religious realm the trouble is not with the Jehovahs any
more than within the political realm it is with the Sams, but only with
what they symbolize.
For one I should feel that both the religious and political realms,
which are but halves of the same realm--religion the ideal half, and
politics the practical half--would be poorer without their respective
Jehovahs and Sams, even as the realm of childhood would be without its
Santa Claus.
If symbols are not absolute necessities to the religious and political
realms, nevertheless they always have been, now are and probably ever
shall be ornaments of them; I hope for their continuance, but as
subjectivities, not objectivities.
All the imperialistic interpretations of politics and all the
supernaturalistic interpretations of religion must be overthrown, else
the world will be lost. The omnipotent, omnipresent saviour who can and
will deliver us from them is already in the world. His name is
International Communism, the greatest and holiest name which has ever
been framed and pronounced; and the gospel of this saviour as it is
translated by Thomas Carlyle is written on every wall so that it may be
read by all:
Understand that well, it is the deep commandment, dimmer or
clearer, of our whole being, to be freed. Freedom is the one
purpose, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's struggles,
toilings, and sufferings, on this earth.
Morality is the greatest thing in the world because without it human
life would not be worth the living, or even possible; but, paradoxical
as the assertion may seem, freedom or liberty is greater because without
it morality would be an impossibility.
One can attain to the very highest standard of morality, religion and
sainthood without the least necessity of the slightest reference to what
the gods of the supernaturalistic religions said or did, and this is
quite as true of Jesus as of any other among such gods, but no man can
reach even the lowest standard of morality, and so of course not of
religion or sainthood, without constant reference to the god of truth.
Yet there is a difference between a law and a truth. The law is a doing
or act of nature, and as such it is a fact or revelation. There are no
other facts or revelations.
According to the traditional superstitious conception, a truth is the
revelation of the will of a god, involving a service to be rendered
directly or indirectly to him, and morality consists in a fulfillment of
it.
According to the modern scientific conception, a truth is the
interpretation of a fact involving a service to be rendered to men. On
the scientific theory each man must have what truth he has, either by
his own interpretation or by the adoption for himself of another's
interpretation.
No man can live the moral part of his psychical (soul) life on the truth
of another any more than he can live his physical (body) life on the
meals of another. Every one must have his own truths, even as he must
have his own meals.
Hence the necessity of freedom to morality. Hence, too, the
impossibility of the moral life under restraint, such as is imposed by
orthodox churches in their official dogmas, and such as is imposed by
belligerent states in their espionage laws.
Capitalism is essentially competitive and therefore necessarily
belligerent in character: hence a complete, an ideal moral life is an
utter impossibility under it, but even the little of moral life which
otherwise might be possible is lessened to one-half by official dogmas
and espionage laws; if, then, the governments of churches and nations
have any regard for the morality of their memberships and citizenships
they will at once repeal them, and never enact others.
The democracy which means freedom to learn the laws of the physical
realm of nature and to interpret them into laws for the regulation of
human life (a democracy which will secure to each one the longest and
happiest life which, under the most favorable of conditions, would be
within the range of possibilities for him) must wait until the
competitive system of capitalism for the production and distribution of
the necessities has been universally and completely supplanted by the
co-operative system of socialism.
The conclusion of the whole matter, as it is well put by an able
contributor to the excellent Proletarian, is this:
What is needed is a complete revolution of the economic system.
Private ownership of the tools of wealth production stands in the
way of further peaceful social development and private ownership
must be eliminated. The capitalists themselves will not eliminate
it. That is certain. It remains for the working class to do so. In
order to accomplish this task it will be necessary for the workers
to take control of the institution by which the capitalists
maintain their ownership of the tools of production--the political
state. That is the historic mission of the working class. The
mission of the Socialist is to organize and train the workers for
this "conquest of political power."
Among the signs of the times which unmistakably point to the great day
of the happy consummation of the movement towards the proletarian
revolution, and the glorious sky is full of them, is the fact that the
world has recently learned from the great war that man must work out his
own salvation without the least help from the gods of the
supernaturalistic interpretations of religion:
And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help--for It
As impotently moves as you or I.
--Omar.
Yes, and a god moves more impotently than a man; for, whereas the god is
driven hither and thither by the laws of matter and force, according to
which they co-exist and co-operate through evolutionary processes to the
making of the universe what it is, and the god cannot help himself by
making it or conditioning himself otherwise, the man, if only he will
learn those laws, may combine, guide and ride them to almost any
predetermined destination, even out of the class hell of competitive
capitalism to the classless heaven of co-operative socialism.
III.
The salvation of the world from its unnecessary sufferings is dependent
upon such an equitable sharing of the labor involved in the making and
operating of the machines of production and distribution, and upon such
an equitable sharing of the products as shall issue in a classless
mankind by doing away, through a revolution, with the class which lives
by owning the means and machines of production and distribution.
It is this advocacy of classless levelism which constitutes the
theoretical core of revolutionary socialism. Those who oppose this
socialism proceed upon the assumption of the permanency of existing
religious and political institutions, the most ruinous of all heresies.
What this heresy is and the fatal policy to which it gives rise has its
classic expression, so far as religion is concerned, in the
exhortation--"earnestly contend for the faith once for all delivered to
the saints"--and, so far as politics is concerned, in the
representation--"the laws of the Medes and Persians which altereth not."
There is no such faith in religion, and cannot be, for as a creed
becomes stereotyped it loses the religious character and degenerates
into superstition.
There are no such laws in politics, and cannot be, for as a law becomes
stereotyped it loses the political character and degenerates into
tyranny.
Religion, which is the ideal half, and politics, which is the practical
half, of the same reality, human socialism, are like all else in the
universe, constantly changing, and necessarily so, because life and
progress are dependent upon change.
Orthodoxy in religion and politics is the blight of the ages, because of
its assumption that the great institutions, the family, state and church
with their customs, laws and doctrines, as they exist for the time
being, constitute the foundation of society, without which it could not
exist; that these institutions are almost if not altogether what they
should be, and that, therefore, the welfare of society, if not indeed
its existence, is dependent upon their continuance with but little if
any change.
But the foundation of society always has been a system for the
production and distribution of the necessities of life, and hence social
institutions, customs, laws and creeds are what they are at any time
because an economic system is what it is.
If we compare an economic system for the production of the primary
necessities of life (foods, clothes and houses) to a king or bishop (we
may well do so, for in all ages such systems have been the power behind
every regal and episcopal throne) we shall see that states, with their
rulers, codes and police, armies and jails; and churches, with their
gods, revelations, heavens and hells, are but so many expediencies for
the protection of the system from change.
What is true in this respect of the state and church is equally so of
the family, the school, the press, the lodge, the club, the library, the
theater, the chautauqua and, in short, every institution.
Why all these age-long safeguards against change? Because, so far, every
economic system has divided society into two classes, a comparatively
small class who own things and a large one who make things, and if the
few honest owners are to hold their own as divinely favored
"grab-it-alls," they must be protected at every point against the many
dishonest makers who are diabolically tempted to be "keep-somes!"
These rounded out children of god have nothing in common with these
caved in imps of the devil, no more than the flea and the dog, or the
tapeworm and the man.
David hastily said: All men are liars. He might leisurely have said this
of every representative of any religious or political orthodoxy, for
they insist that their religion and politics are the permanent elements
in social truth which remain unchanged from generation to generation
through all ages, whereas no religion or politics continues the same
during one decade, nor even a single year.
Orthodox Christians say that Jesus founded their sectarian churches,
though each sect insists that he had to do with only one church, theirs.
I doubt that he lived. In any case, I am certain that if he did live and
founded a church in the first century and were to come to earth again in
this twentieth century, he could not if he would and would not if he
could become a member of it, because of its changes.
Our own country is different by the width of the whole space of the
heavens from what it was before the war, and it is destined to a much
wider change.
So far are churches with their doctrines, and states with their laws
from being changeless, that they are more or less modified by every
development in the economic system to which they owe their existence
and of which they are servants.
In the case of every nation its king, the economic system, has always
been a robber and enslaver of the overwhelming majority of the people,
and the church and state have been the hands by which he accomplished
the robbing and enslaving.
Insofar as they differ, Roman orthodoxy is what it is because of its
starting out as the religious product of the feudal system of economics;
and Protestant orthodoxy is what it is because of its starting out as
the religious product of the capitalistic system of economics.
Protestantism is preferred before Romanism by most of the leading people
in the financial world, because it is the child of capitalism, their
sister, so to speak, whereas its rival is only a cousin.
As to the Roman and Protestant orthodoxies they are on the same footing.
I would not turn my hand over for the difference between them. If
literally interpreted in the light of modern science, both are utterly
antiquated and irrational.
Orthodox Romanists and Protestants have essentially the same bible and
creed. In my opinion, as in that of all Marxian and Darwinian
socialists, every supernaturalistic representation in both must be
regarded as having either a figurative or a superstitious character, for
there is not one among them which can endure a scientific and rational
analysis; yet, this is an age of science and reason.
The difference between Romanism and Protestantism is not at all a
question of relative supernaturalism, nor of rightness and wrongness,
but wholly one of the difference between the systems of economics which
gave them birth.
If you ask, is not this difference at least partly a question of the age
in which they took their rise, I reply, yes; but the age itself depends
upon the system.
However, it is a fact that while an economic system does constitute the
foundation of every religious and political superstructure, yet below
the foundation itself there is always a bed rock upon which it
ultimately rests, and this is a question of machinery by which the
necessities of life are produced and distributed.
The age of feudalism was essentially traditional or theoretical in its
character.
The age of capitalism is essentially scientific or experimental in its
character.
This difference between these ages is due to the fact that during the
earlier age things were made with hand tools, and during the later one
with machine tools.
Machinery in a theoretical or traditional age would be an anachronism.
It must have an experimental or scientific age for its development, and,
paradoxical as it may seem, this the machinery must make for itself.
Every period in human history has had its determining character from the
tools which brought it into being.
Supernaturalism has no place in the observations, investigations or
experimentations which are necessary to the invention, construction and
operation of a great machine and, hence, the machines have banished the
gods from the roof of the earth and the devils from its cellar, leaving
it to us to make of it what we please, a heaven or a hell without
reference to them. In his brilliant work entitled "Social and
Philosophical Studies", translated by Charles H. Kerr, Paul Lafargue
writes:
The labour of the mechanical factory puts the wage-worker in touch
with terrible natural forces unknown to the peasant, but instead of
being mastered by them he controls them. The gigantic mechanism of
iron and steel which fills the factory, which makes him move like
an automaton, which sometimes clutches him, bruises him, mutilates
him, does not engender in him a superstitious terror as the thunder
does in the peasant, but leaves him unmoved, for he knows that the
limbs of the mechanical monster were fashioned and mounted by his
comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion
or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and
productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the
electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send
miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city,
has but to say, like the God of Genesis, "let there be light," and
there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for
him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He would be greatly
surprised if one were to come and tell him that a certain god
might, if he chose, stop the machines and extinguish the lights
when the electricity had been turned on; he would reply that this
anarchistic god would be simply a misplaced gearing or a broken
wire, and that it would be easy for him to seek and find this
disturbing god. The practice of the modern factory teaches
scientific determinism to the wage-worker, without it being
necessary for him to pass through the theoretic study of the
sciences.
Earth must be a hell as long as we allow the capitalist system to
continue on it and to enslave the vast majority of its inhabitants.
Marxian socialism will ring out the old era with its hell of human
slavery and ring in the new era with its heaven of machine slavery.
One point must be grasped and held by all who would understand the
changes which take place within the social realm and it is this: they
are due to the differences in the instrumentalities or machines by which
the necessities of life are produced.
Man has risen above the lower animals which have common ancestors with
his own, because of the superiority of the hand by which he does things
to the hands by which they do things. If a man's body in general and
hand in particular were not a great improvement over the bodies and
hands of the apes, his mind and morality would differ but little from
theirs.
The superiority of the civilization of this age over its predecessors is
a question of instrumentalities by which the efficiency of the hand is
increased.
If all the modern machinery were taken from this generation and replaced
by the implements of the stone age the civilization of the next
generation would begin to sink, and within a century it would reach the
ancient level.
Strong expression is also given to the great truth upon which we are
here dwelling by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in its noteworthy
Manifesto:
Obviously, in order that there may be ideas and human history, two
material things must first be present: human beings, and food and
shelter for them. And the fundamental fact that is so seldom
realized is, that where, by what means, and how much, food and
shelter can be obtained, determines if, where, and how, man shall
live, and the forms his social institutions and ideas shall take.
It is, indeed, the very basis of Socialist philosophy that, in the
words of Frederick Engels:
"In every historical epoch the prevailing mode of economic
production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily
following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from
which, alone can be explained, the political and intellectual
history of that epoch."
This materialist concept is the Socialist key to history. It is the
first principle of a science of society, and, being directly
antagonistic to all religious philosophy, it is destined to drive
this "philosophy" and all its superstitions from their last ditch.
Civilization will not die with the death of the capitalist system of
production any more than it did with the feudal system. It improved
under capitalism, because of the improvement in the machinery of
production, and it is destined to continue its progress so long as new
and better machines are made and this will be to the end.
Marxian socialism is a machine optimism. Under this socialism the number
and efficiency of machines would increase more rapidly than they have
under capitalism and feudalism, because its aim will be the production
of commodities for use within the shortest time by the least exertion at
the slightest risk of injury.
Up to the point of over production, that is, of glutting the markets, it
is to the interest of capitalism to encourage improvements in machinery,
but the ability to do this has been reached, as is evident from what we
hear at increasingly frequent intervals about an over production of
commodities.
What machinery we now have renders it possible to produce more
commodities than can be sold without employing all the labor power. But
the idle, starving slave is a danger to the idle, surfeiting master.
Hence, under capitalism there can be no further development of
machinery, at least not on a large scale.
An industrial government would have for its aim to produce enough of
everything for all with the least expenditure of energy and time. Hence,
the greatest benefactors and heroes under socialism would be the
inventors of labor saving, leisure giving machinery.
We hear much about the mental superiority of the representatives of the
master class over those of the slave class, but there is little or no
truth in it.
On the contrary, it can be shown that the invention of a great labor
saving, rapid-producing machine is, upon the whole, the greatest triumph
of the human mind and that nearly all among such machines are invented,
made, operated, kept in order and improved by the laborer.
Masters may be more cunning than slaves, but cunningness is not an
evidence of a high order of intellectual power. Many of the lower
animals are quite the equals, if not indeed the superiors, of
capitalists in this quality, but no animal is the equal of any man, not
to speak of the exceptionally skilled laborer, in the power to produce
efficient machines for the production and distribution of the
necessities of life.
Romanism began its career as a child of the feudal system for the
production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the owners
of the land and the means for its cultivation. The mission to which it
was born was the assistance of its father, feudalism, in robbing and
enslaving the workers who tilled the soil, and never did a servant more
faithfully or efficiently perform a task during a longer period.
Protestantism began its career as a child of the capitalistic system for
the production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the
owners of the means and machines for their manufacturing. The mission to
which it was born was the assistance of its father, capitalism, in
robbing and enslaving the workers, who make and operate the machines,
and never did a servant more faithfully and efficiently perform a task
in a larger or more fruitful field.
Hitherto all systems of economics have had the same soul, competition;
and, because of it, every one among them has been a diabolical trinity
of which lying is the father; robbing is the son, who proceeds from the
father; and murder is the spirit, who proceeds from the father and the
son.
Labor, "the certain man" of every nation, is half dead lying in the
ditch by the wayside, despoiled and wounded, the victim of capitalism,
the greatest liar, robber and murderer of all the ages.
The church is the archangel or prime minister through which this
Beelzebub, capitalism, has done most of his lying, though within the
last hundred years the business has become so great that the office of
coadjutor to this archangel was created, and the press appointed to it.
The state is the archangel or prime minister through which this prince
of devils, capitalism, has done most of his robbing and killing, though
the church has often taken a helpful hand in these departments of the
devil's work, the great work of converting earth into a hell.
Nearly all of the backwardness of the world and more than half of its
unnecessary sufferings have been due to efforts to prevent changes in
religion and politics. Our nation is passing through the darkest period
of its history because of such efforts on the part of the powers which
be in the state, and they are supported by those in the church.
Speaking of the change with which we are here especially concerned, the
one involved in the supplanting of an old economic system by a new,
there have been several revolutions due to such changes, and another is
inevitable and imminent.
When an economic system fails, as the capitalistic one is failing, to
feed, clothe and house the workers of the world who produce all foods,
clothes and houses, the time when it must give place to another is
manifestly near at hand.
Capitalism is failing in this, the only legitimate mission of an
economic system. It has indeed over-supplied the needs of about one in
ten, but in doing this it has shown partiality, for the remaining nine
are left more or less foodless, clotheless and houseless, and this
notwithstanding they have done all the feeding, clothing and housing.
Those favored by the system will not be able to prevent its overthrow by
those who are wronged.
With our materials, factories, railroads and skill, all should have
enough and to spare of every necessity, but so far is this from being
the case that millions are insufficiently fed, clothed, housed and
warmed, and are doomed to a perpetual and exhaustive drudgery which
leaves neither leisure nor energy for the cultivation of their soul
life.
The economical and statistical experts of our government's Department of
Labor represent that the bare necessities of a comfortable and efficient
life for a family of five require an annual income of $1,500, and that
the simple luxuries, which are next to being indispensable, require an
additional $1,000, in all $2,500, per year.
How many American families of five have even the smaller of these sums
at their disposal? The overwhelming majority have less than $1,000. Let
us be honest with the peoples of other nations by ceasing to speak of
our country as "the land of plenty and the home of the free," until
there is a great change for the better.
Wage slavery may be prolonged by a military coercion but it cannot have
a successor in any other form of human slavery. Military coercion
prolonged chattel slavery, and by so doing brought what is known as the
dark ages upon the world. If wage slavery is to be prolonged by military
coercion the world must pass through a second dark age. The league of
nations is fixing for this; but let us hope that this coalition will not
stand and that wage slavery will soon be followed by machine slavery,
the form of slavery which will end human slavery; not until then shall
we have peace on earth and good will among men.
Then they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither
shall they learn war any more.
Do you not now see with me that the christ of the world is not a
conscious, personal god, but an unconscious, impersonal machine? It is
the machine of man, not a lamb of god, to which we may hopefully look
for the taking away of the sins of the world.
Ignorance is the great misfortune of the world, its devil, and slavery
is his hell. The machine is the redeemer who shall save man from this
devil and hell.
Yes, strange, even blasphemous, as the representation may seem, it is
nevertheless true, the machine is the only name given under heaven
whereby the world can be saved.
Civilization is salvation. The civilization which is salvation depends
on leisure and it on slavery, but so long as leisure is dependent upon
the slavery of man, civilization must be limited to a diminishing few.
Marxian socialism is a movement towards the equalization and
universalization of leisure by doing away with the master and slave
classes, through transference of slavery from man to machine.
If there is any truth in my naturalistic representation about the
dependence of morality upon a system for the production of the
necessities of life, there is none in the supernaturalistic one, which
makes it dependent on any among the gods; and, what is true of the realm
of morality is equally so of the realm of history, and this whether it
be the history of the universe in general or man in particular.
Lavoisier and Mayer showed that no god (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha)
created the universe out of nothing, for the matter and force which
enter into its constitution are eternalities and universalities.
Kant and Laplace showed that the earth and the heavenly bodies were not
created by any god at all, but evolved from gaseous nebulae.
Kepler and Newton showed that these bodies were not governed in their
motions by a god but by the law of gravitation.
Darwin and Wallace showed that the species of animal and vegetable life
were not created by any among the gods, but evolved from a common
protoplasm.
Marx and Engels showed that man's career has not been determined by any
among the gods, but by his systems for producing and distributing the
necessities of life.
These ten men are the greatest teachers the world has had, and this is
the sum of all their great teachings: The universe is self-existing,
self-sustaining and self-governing, having all the potentialities of its
own life within itself, and what is true of it in general is equally so
of all the phenomena which enter into its constitution, including man;
who, though he is the highest among them, is only a phenomenon, on a
level with all the rest, not excepting the lowest. A microbe and a man
are on the same footing, both as to their origin and destiny, and as to
their having within themselves all power which is available for making
the most of their respective lives.
"We are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us,
And one with what we kill."
Darwinism and Marxism constitute one gospel, the only true,
comprehensive and sufficient gospel which the world has ever had or can
have, and there is no hope for the future of mankind except in it. If it
fails the world is lost, but it shall not and indeed cannot fail, for
its words are so many acts or facts of nature.
There is no fact which is not such an act, and every such fact is a part
of the one only law upon the knowing and doing of which terrestrial life
and its happiness are wholly and solely dependent.
Yes, life, long life, happy life, all there is of such human life, or
divine life, (if there be any), depends entirely upon a knowledge of and
conformity to this law which is the doing of nature, and not at all upon
any law which is the willing of a god, if indeed there is such a law.
Neither the religion nor the politics which enters into the constitution
of Marxian or proletarian socialism is at all concerned about the heaven
above or the hell below the earth, if there are such places: but the
concern of both is wholly to ring out a hell from the earth and to ring
in a heaven upon it.
Nor have the religion and politics which constitute this socialism the
least concern about the service of a celestial divinity (Jesus, Jehovah,
Allah, Buddha or any other) by doing his will; but both are much
concerned with the service of humanity, which consists in rightly
learning, interpreting and using the laws of nature, wholly for the
purpose of making the terrestrial lives of men, women and children as
long and happy as possible, and with absolutely no reference to any
celestial life which may be either above or below the earth.
Religion and politics are the complementary and inseparable halves of
the social sphere, religion being its idealism and politics its
practicalism.
Religious idealism is a social soul of which the church should be the
embodiment.
Political practicalism is a social soul of which the state should be the
embodiment.
Contrary to the representations of orthodox Christianism it is
impossible for any soul to exist without an embodiment.
In truth the body produces the soul, not the soul the body. We must have
the church and state in order that we may have their souls, idealism and
practicalism.
Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were't not a Shame--were't not a Shame for him
In this clay carcass crippled to abide?
--Omar.
IV.
The church and the state are on the same level as to their origin and
importance. Both are human institutions and each is indispensable to the
other. It is not at all desirable or possible to rid the world of
either, but it is absolutely necessary that both should be
revolutionized, the church by having its bible and creed rewritten or at
least reinterpreted, on the basis of truth as it is revealed by nature,
and the state by having its institutions reorganized on the basis of
service to all instead of only to those of a small class, the owner or
master class.
All the idealistic aims of churches and all the practical undertakings
of states should be directly concerned with the answer to three
questions: (1) the question as to how to reach the goal where
terrestrial life shall in the case of each man, woman and child be as
long and happy as it is within the range of possibilities to make it, by
the fullest of attainable knowledge concerning the laws of nature; (2)
the question as to how to make the most successful endeavor universally
to disseminate such knowledge, and (3) the question as to how
resistlessly to persuade to the living of it.
These are the only concerns and aims of Marxian socialism and they
cannot be promoted or even avowed by Christian socialists.
The great crime of the ages is the robbing of the producer of the basic
necessities of human life by the non-producer.
Capitalism is the robber, and the politics and religion of the old
states and churches are the right and left hands by which he has been
and is doing the robbing.
Marxian socialism is an undertaking which has for its task the overthrow
of the system which makes it possible for those who produce nothing to
live surfeitingly, and renders it necessary for those who produce
everything to live starvingly.
Poverty is a disease caused by the unjust wage system of competitive
capitalism for producing and distributing the necessities of life (food,
clothing and shelter) for the profit of capitalists, the few who live by
owning the materials and machines of production and distribution; and
this blighting malady cannot be cured by charity, but it will spread
until this system is supplanted by the just one of co-operative
industrialism, a system by which these necessities shall be produced
and distributed for the use of laborers, those who live by making and
operating the machines.
Every gift to charity by a rich man is a robbery of a poor man. You will
not see this at once, if ever, and I shall not blame you for the failure
to do so. It was not seen by me until I was much older than you; but I
am now seeing it as clearly as I ever saw the sun on a cloudless
noonday, and this is true of rapidly growing millions who are resolutely
resolved to do away with the prevailing conception of charity, according
to which capitalists may rob laborers of the fruit of their toil, giving
them of it barely enough to keep body and soul together and to raise up
children who are doomed to follow in their footsteps; and then, when the
strength of their victim fails, to make amends for the robberies, by
giving the most highly favored among them beds in hospitals, poor-houses
in which to die prematurely, and nameless graves in potter's fields in
which to await hopefully a resurrection and ascension to an inheritance
of happiness in a sky, which was denied them on the earth.
The time is at hand when everywhere the unemployed and the underpaid
shall begin a resistless march towards the goal of economic levelism
under a banner containing this slogan: We want no charity but the right
to work and the fruits of our labors that we and our helpless dependents
may have every necessity to the fullest life for body and soul.
During more than a whole generation Mrs. Brown and I have not produced a
spoonful of any food, a thread of any garment or a shingle of any house;
and yet we have had foods, garments and houses in abundance with some to
spare, while their producers have had them in scarcity with much to
want.
While the world war was on, an ill wind for the producers blew a
thousand dollars to us and an ill wind for us blew it into the hands of
a committee, ostensibly for investment on behalf of a hospital of which
we approved, but really for the purchase of a bond in the interest of a
war of which we disapproved.
The fathers of the present generation of producers and distributors of
the necessities of life were robbed in order that we might inherit the
property from which our income is derived; the sons and daughters are
being robbed over and over again and again, year after year, in order
that the property may continue to yield this income to us.
We therefore paid nothing of our own for this bond. What we gave for it
was of the spoils which the great robber, capitalism, has bestowed upon
us, its favorite children, from what it has taken from its unfortunate
victims.
The same persons or their children and successors were or shall be
robbed first to create our property, then to pay the income of it, next
to buy the bond, and now they are being robbed to meet the interest on
it and finally they will be robbed to pay its face value. If capitalism
stands, of course the victims of the last of these robberies will
belong, probably, to a remote generation; but this delay is a misfortune
in store for many of all intervening generations.
If the robbery connected with this bond were limited to its original
cost, one thousand dollars, and to its accruing interest, which is
likely in time to aggregate several thousand dollars, it would indeed
be bad enough, yet not nearly as much so as it is under the melancholy
circumstances; for the money paid on account of the bond goes towards
killing or wrecking its producers, if not those who produced this
particular thousand dollars, yet others of their class to whom the world
owes all of its wealth; therefore the thousand dollars which went into
this bond has been devoted to the robbery of those who were robbed of it
and of the most precious of all things: life and limb.
You will ask: how can you and Mrs Brown, in the face of your theory,
according to which all who live by owning are robbers of those who live
by working, consistently receive and expend the income of your
inheritance?
The answer was given to a friend who asked us why we did not follow the
heroic example of a young American who had recently renounced what had
been inherited by him, and this is, in effect, what we said:
As we look at the question, our course is more rational than his,
because the wealth which he renounces may go to some one who is without
his sympathy for the proletariat. We prefer to receive our inheritance
and use it to overthrow the economic system which makes it possible for
us to do nothing and have everything, and for those who do everything to
have nothing.
Capitalists, as such, people who live by the owning of the machines of
production and distribution, instead of by the making and operating of
them, have much to say against the alleged anarchism of socialists and
yet they are necessarily what they accuse anarchism of being, robbers
and murderers. Every cent of profit, interest and rent is so much
robbing, and all wars are so many conflicts between the capitalistic
bandits or robbers in the countries involved, and the peace conferences,
which follow them, are so many attempts of the bandits on the successful
side to have the spoils as large as possible, and to satisfactorily
divide them.
It is Holy Week 1921. The week in which during all the years of many and
long ages benighted people sacrificed their Christs to Shylock gods. If
Jesus lived and was a Christ, unhappily He was neither the first nor the
last, for there were many both before and after Him. Were they who
superstitiously led these victims to their Golgothas greater sinners
against humanity than those who did avariciously during the war drive
large armies of young men to the terrible trenches, a wholesale
sacrifice of the lords of power and wealth and who do now drive the vast
majority of the nations involved in that war to a terrible body and soul
destroying poverty and slavery? No. The modern robbers even more than
the ancient ones are in need of the prayer: Forgive them for they know
not what they do.
Communism and Christianism have, indeed, this in common, that their
object is to promote life, long life, and happy life, both lives in a
large and full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.
Yet, with this sameness in the gospels of Communism and Christianism
there is this difference in the aims of the christs who preached them,
which separate them as widely as the east is from the west, leaving a
great and impassable gulf between them.
Marx, the christ of the Communist gospel, said: I am come that the
world might have terrestrial life for body, mind and soul, and have it
for each in the fullest of possible measures by co-operation with each
other in the discovery of the laws of nature and in making them serve
men, women and children by securing for them food, clothing, shelter,
health and comfort for the body, and leisure for the mind to think and
for the soul to grow.
Jesus, the christ of the Christian gospel, according to orthodoxy, said:
I am come that ye might have celestial life for mind, body and soul and
have it for each in the largest and fullest possible measure by
co-operation in persuading each other in particular and the world in
general to receive a revelation of the will of a conscious, personal
God, made through prophets, preserved in the bible and interpreted by
the church.
With me it is a melancholy but resistless and deepening conviction,
that, if orthodox Christianism should become associated with Marxian
socialism, as Kingsley and you would associate them, we should soon have
a glaring illustration of the truth of two proverbs: a house divided
against itself cannot stand; and no man can serve two masters.
Moreover, I believe that if Christian socialism were to become a door to
Marxian socialism, through which orthodox Christianism could enter and
make itself at home, the revolutionary aims of the slave class would be
thwarted and the world would enter upon a new dark age, as it did when
Constantine was converted to Christianity and Christians became the most
loyal citizens and valiant soldiers of the Empire.
At that time chattel slavery had run its course as wage slavery has
now; and, if it had not been prolonged by a military despotism, as I
fear this may be, the world would have had something of the feudal
slavery, but nothing of the dark age. This age was the baneful fruit of
Christianism. Christianity has held the world back from civilization
instead of advancing it towards civilization.
The Christianization of Marxian communism, in accordance with the
program of Kingsley and our Church Socialist League, would spell another
military despotism for the prolongation of a second system of slavery,
which has run its course and is in a fair way of being overthrown; but
if the revolutionists fail, as the result of being trampled under the
iron heel, we are at the threshold of a second dark age and shall soon
be passing through all the miseries of it.
My interest in the movement within our church looking towards a
Christian socialism of a more radical and revolutionary type would be
great, if only I could feel as I should so much like, that the Christian
socialism to which you have consecrated the whole prime of your life,
and the Marxian socialism, to which I have consecrated all of the little
that remains of mine, the fag-end, are not utter incompatibilities, so
much so that it is absolutely impossible that they can co-exist and
co-operate to any good purpose.
The irreconcilable incompatibility of Christian socialism and Marxian
socialism is due to the fact that, whereas the Christian is essentially
imperialistic in its character, the Marxian is as essentially
democratic. The reason for this fundamental and ineradicable difference,
and the consequent incompatibleness, is the fact that orthodoxism,
whether Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic, is nothing unless
it is supernaturalistic and traditional; and Marxism is nothing unless
it is naturalistic and scientific, as much so as is Darwinism.
In order that you may see the reason, as I understand it, for this wide,
deep and bridgeless difference, I draw the following contrasts between
the essential beliefs of Marxian socialists and orthodox Christians:
1. Marxian socialism is essentially naturalistic. Orthodox Christianism
is essentially supernaturalistic. The consistent socialist says: I have
all the potentialities of my own life within myself. The consistent
Christian says: My strength is from God.
2. Marxian socialism is essentially classless. Orthodox Christianism is
essentially a class system by which the world is divided into two
classes, saints and sinners. The consistent socialist says: Every man is
my brother. The consistent Christian (like the theist of every
name--Jew, Mohammedan, Buddhist and the rest) says: Every true believer
is my brother, but those who are not are only potential brethren.
3. Marxian socialism is essentially terrestrial. Orthodox Christianism
is essentially celestial. The consistent socialist says: Earth is my
home. The consistent Christian says: Heaven is my home.
4. Marxian socialism is essentially materialistic. Orthodox Christianism
is essentially spiritualistic. The consistent socialist says: The basic
necessities of life, and therefore its first concern, are foods,
raiments, shelters, comfort and leisure. The consistent Christian says:
Take no primary thought for these, but only for faith in and obedience
to God, regarding all else of secondary importance.
5. Marxian socialism is essentially proletarian. Orthodox Christianism
is essentially bourgeois. The consistent socialist says: I am, by reason
of my antecedents, a man, a woman, a child of nature on an essential
level as to my origin and destiny with every other representative of
humanity and indeed animality. The consistent Christian, like the theist
of every name, says: I am (by reason of my faith, baptism or conversion)
a prince or princess, the son or daughter of a king, God.
6. Marxian socialism is essentially democratic. Orthodox Christianism is
essentially imperialistic. The consistent socialist says: I live with
reference to the will of the majority. The consistent Christian says: I
live with reference to the will of a God.
7. Marxian socialism is essentially pacific.[F] Orthodox Christianism is
essentially belligerent. The consistent socialist says: Since you are a
man, I co-operate with you. The consistent Christian says: Since you
are not a believer, I contend with you.
8. Marxian socialism is essentially non-sectarian. The consistent
socialist says: All the world is my home and the desire and effort to
render service to men, women and children is my religion. The consistent
Christian says: Only Christendom is my home and the desire and effort to
serve a God is my religion.
9. Marxian socialism is, as to the source of knowledge and the means of
attaining it, essentially scientific. Orthodox Christianism is
essentially traditional. The consistent socialist says: The salvation of
the world is dependent upon what is learned by natural experience,
observation and investigation about the doings of a matter-force-law,
nature. The consistent Christian says: This salvation depends upon what
is learned by revelation, tradition and inspiration about the willings
of a father-son-spirit, God.
10. Marxian socialism explains the history of mankind on the
naturalistic theory that it has been determined during every period by
the existing system for supplying the materialistic necessities of life.
Orthodox Christianism explains this history on the supernaturalistic
theory that it is determined by the providential directions of a triune
divinity. The consistent socialist says: If you will tell me of the
economic system by which a people have fed, clothed and housed
themselves, I will tell you, at least in general outline, what has been
their history. The consistent Christian says: If you will tell me what
the providences of my God have been towards a people, I will tell you
their history.
11. Marxian socialism has inscribed on one of its banners: Liberty.
Orthodox Christianism has this inscription on its corresponding banner:
Obedience. The consistent socialist says: This Liberty-banner is the
symbol of my freedom as a son of man to be progressively learning,
living and teaching the unfolding revelations of nature--to know and to
live which is to have life, terrestrial life in an ever increasing
measure, all the life there is here and now or elsewhere and elsewhen,
if there is to be a conscious, personal life anywhere or anywhen else.
The consistent Christian says: This Obedience-banner is a symbol of my
slavery as a son of God by which I am bound to receive, live and teach
the faith once for all delivered to the saints in the Old and New
Testaments or else lose the permanent life in the sky which is to follow
this temporary one on the earth.
12. Marxian socialism has inscribed on another of its banners: Justice
to Man. Orthodox Christianism has on its corresponding banner: Love to
God. The consistent socialist says: It is my aim to do unto others as I
would have them do unto me if our circumstances were reversed. The
consistent Christian says: It is my aim to love God with all my heart,
mind and soul.
And if there be any further contrast between this Christianism and
Socialism, it is briefly comprehended in these three statements,--in
themselves sufficient to show how absolutely impossible it is for a
consistent Jesuine Christian to be a consistent Marxian Socialist:
1. Marx seeks to save by doing away with both the master and slave
classes--Jesus by exalting the slave class above the master class.
2. Marx exhorts the slave class to look to itself for
deliverance--Jesus taught it to look to a God for this.
3. Marx promises salvation for this world here and now, a world about
which everybody knows much--Jesus promised it for another world
elsewhere and elsewhen, a world about which nobody knows anything.
The world has never had a gospel which is at all comparable in its
excellency to that of Marxian Socialism. The gospel of Jesuine
Christianism, according to the orthodox interpretation of it, is no
exception; for, granting it to be superior to the Mosaic, Buddhistic,
Mohammedan and other gospels, it is, nevertheless, almost infinitely
inferior to the Marxian gospel. Gospels are for the purpose of saving
the world from its suffering. The Jesuine and Marxian gospels are alike
in having for their object the salvation of the proletarian world.
V.
About three years ago I discovered that I had spent a long, strenuous
and open-handed ministry in preaching lies to the permanent ruin of my
health and the temporary embarrassment of my purse; therefore I had the
unhappy experience of being forced to see that all this part of my life,
its prime, had been mostly, if not wholly wasted and worse. What was to
be done?
My friends told me as plainly as they could, and some succeeded in
making it brutally plain, that in losing my faith in the
supernaturalistic dogmas of traditional Christianism, as they are
literally interpreted in the doctrinal standards of the orthodox
churches, I had lost the pearl of great price.
My soul told me that I had never possessed this jewel, but that, even
with the little time and enfeebled strength that remained to me, I might
yet find it, if only I should cease looking for it in the field of
supernaturalism, under the direction of divine authority, and begin
looking for it in the field of naturalism, under the direction of human
reason.
Happily, where faith went out courage came in, and it increased with my
desperation until (though standing on the shore of death where the deep
and unknown stream lies darkly between the present and future) I could
and I did undertake the supreme task of my life--the breaking of the
chains by which I was bound as a slave to the degrading superstition
that I was, both by an inherited and cultivated disposition, a doomed
man, and by an inherent weakness, a helpless one with no power to
emancipate myself.
Of such enslaving chains I mention three among the strongest, the
severed parts of which, with those of all the rest, now lie scattered
about me: (1) the chain of the fear of God; (2) the chain of the fear of
the devil, and (3) the chain of the fear of man.
Hitherto I had been a child, thinking as a child, understanding as a
child and speaking as a child.
Henceforth I was to be a man, the greatest, conscious, personal being
who has anything to do with this world; and as a man, I put away the
things of a child, especially the most childish of all things, fear, the
fear of God, the fear of devil and the fear of man.
Preachers of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion say that
the fear of God is salvation. It is damnation. No one who has fear of
any conscious, personal master whomsoever or wheresoever, God in heaven,
devil in hell or man on earth, is free or other than a slave. Nor has
any such attained to the full stature of manhood.
There is only one fear which saves and that is the fear of ignorance.
The world's destroyer-god is ignorance. There is no other devil on earth
or in hell below it, and this one lives, moves and has his being in the
fear of knowledge.
The world's saviour-god is knowledge. There is no other Christ on earth
or in any heaven above it, and this one lives, moves and has his being
in the fear of ignorance.
Happily, I listened to my soul and I have found the pearl of great
price, yes, a whole bed of them, so that I am now in position to
substitute in my preaching a truth for every lie I used to preach, and
thus save myself; but woe unto me unless I make the substitution by
ringing out the lie and ringing in the truth.
Within the last three years I have learned that, as I have not been,
since the beginning of my Christian ministry, more than a generation
ago, a producer, I have nothing of my own to give to charity, and what
is true of me is true of Mrs. Brown.
No one is a producer who does not grow things on the farm, make things
in a shop, discover things in a laboratory or render some necessary or
helpful service to those who do such things. I have done nothing of the
kind. If I had been preaching truths I might have rendered such
service, but I preached lies.
Every possession rightfully belongs to the productive worker and nothing
to the unproductive idler. This is one of the two greatest and most
salutary among all the truths known to mankind. Recently I made
acknowledgment of it on the pledges to a good cause, that of the Red
Cross, by writing on their upper left hand corners: "The gift of Unknown
Laborers through Bishop and Mrs. Brown, whose possessions are the fruits
of their enforced toil and sacrifices."
By this acknowledgment I rang out a great lie--the lie which makes the
salvation of the world depend upon the capitalists with their servants,
the preachers on the right and the politicians on the left hand.
Salvation or, what is the same reality, civilization, always has been
and always will be dependent upon the producer. It will never be
attained until the laboring class has done away with the capitalist
class. The ideal civilization (which is the salvation of the world from
its unnecessary sufferings, especially the overwhelming ones due to the
great trinity of evils, war, poverty and slavery) is in the very nature
of things an impossibility on the basis of class sectarianism, such as
we have even in our Anglo-American Christianity, the best interpretation
of traditional religion, and in our American democracy, the best
interpretation of traditional politics.
Among the pathetic things about war, there is this, the laboring class
makes by far the greater sacrifices, not only of life and limb, but also
of money.
Quite contrary to the general impression, capitalists, as such, pay no
part of the enormous and ruinous pecuniary cost of war. When Mr.
Rockefeller pays out three million dollars in war taxes he is disposing
of what rightfully belongs to laborers, because they, not he, earned it.
Capitalists, as such, neither earn nor pay anything, in time of either
war or peace.
So much for one of the two great truths. The other, which is the greater
because it includes its companion, is this: Man has within himself all
the potentialities of his own life. This is true of the universe as a
whole, and, therefore, necessarily so of all that therein is.
The sum of both truths is that the salvation of the world is wholly
dependent upon productive laborers and that they must look individually
only to the exertion of their own mental and physical powers and
collectively to co-operation with each other for the accomplishment of
their mission.
Through the whole of my past ministry in the field I rang out these
great truths and rang a great lie in by representing that the salvation
of the world depends upon a potentiality which is in the sky and not in
man, that heaven is above the earth and hell below it, not on it.
When I commenced my present ministry in the study,
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell;
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd 'I Myself am Heaven and Hell!'
Omar, the poetic astronomer, might have added a stanza which would have
closed. "I myself am God." This is, in effect, what Jesus did say: "I
and my Father are one." This is as true of you and me and of every man,
woman and child as it was of Jesus.
And Jesus represented that God, both as Father and Son, dwells in the
hearts of believers. But every relevant fact which has been
scientifically established as such (and there is a whole mountain of
such facts) points to the conclusion that Christians are no more divine
than other people, and that, as to his essential nature, no man would be
less divine than he is if Jesus had never been born.
Gods in the skies (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) are all right as
subjective symbols of human potentialities and attributes and of natural
laws, even as the Stars and Stripes on a pole, Uncle Sam in the capitol
and Santa Claus in a sleigh are all right as such symbols; but such gods
are all wrong, if regarded as objective realities existing independently
of those who created them as divinities and placed them in celestial
habitations.
What is true of the gods is equally so of all the supernaturalistic
dogmas of the several traditional interpretations of religion. Insofar
as they are not pure superstitions they are symbols of imaginary events
which people think should or must have occurred in the past or should or
must occur in the future; not statements of historical events which have
occurred or are to occur.
So far I have not found it necessary to renounce the Christian God or
any of the things which go with him and I have no idea of doing this,
any more than I have of renouncing the American Uncle Sam and the things
which go with him, but I place the Brother Jesus of the Christian
religion and the Uncle Sam of the American politics on the same footing
with each other and with others of their kind as subjective realities. I
could be a Jew and an Englishman as conscientiously as a Christian and
an American. Many of the early Christians were also Pagans, worshippers
of other Gods than Jesus.
Nor is this all or even much more than half of my religious and
political levelism.
On the one hand as a religionist I can be any and everything but an
orthodox sectarian. This orthodoxy is a libel against humanity. The
world owes to it a great part of all its unnecessary troubles--those
which are brought about by the triune devil of persecution, ignorance
and superstition.
On the other hand as a politician I can be any and everything but a
nationalistic sectarian. This nationalism is a libel against humanity.
The world owes to it a great part of all its unnecessary troubles--those
which are brought upon it by the triune devil of war, poverty and
slavery.
Hoping that you will abandon Jesuine socialism for Marxian communism and
join me in an effort to banish the fictitious, superstitious gods from
the skies and the lying, robbing capitalists from the earth, I am with
every good wish,
Very cordially yours,
WM. M. BROWN.
Brownella Cottage,
Galion, Ohio.
FOOTNOTES:
[D] This letter was written in July, 1919, and sent to the press in
September, 1920. In the interim several of its representations and
arguments were made more complete: therefore, some among the additions
bear the marks of dates belonging to later months.
[E] According to the showing of the science of biblical criticism there
is more than one Jesus of whom we have an account in the New Testament:
(1) a naturalistic, this-worldly, pacific, human Jesus, and (2) a
supernaturalistic, other-worldly, belligerent, divine Jesus, the Jesus
of orthodox Christians.
[F] This shall be true of Marxian socialism when it is triumphant, but
it will not be so while it is persecuted. Socialist Russia has asked for
peace after every war which the capitalist nations (England, France,
Italy and America) have waged against her, not because she could no
longer defend herself, but for the reason that her socialism, being
co-operative in its character, necessarily imposes humaneness; yet they
could not grant it, because their capitalism, being competitive in its
character, as necessarily imposes inhumaneness. The hand of the
capitalist world is aggressively against socialist Russia, and must be,
because the life of capitalism depends upon her death: and her hand is
defensively against all the capitalist nations. Capitalism and socialism
cannot occupy the earth together. Either the one or the other must have
all of it. Mankind in general is illustrating the truth of the proverb
which has been illustrated by so many families in particular--a house
divided against itself cannot stand.
THE GRAND MARCH
By Helen Keller
The hour has struck for the Grand March! Onward, Comrades, all together!
Fall in line! Start the New Year with a cheer! Let us join the world's
procession marching toward a glad tomorrow. Strong of hope and brave in
heart the West shall meet the East! March with us, brothers every one!
March with us to all things new! Climb with us the hills of God to a
wider, holier life. Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to meet the
Dawn!
Leave behind you doubts and fears! What need have we for "ifs" and
"buts"? Away with parties, schools and leagues! Get together, keep in
step, shoulder to shoulder, hearts throbbing as one! Face the future,
out-daring all you have dared! March on, O Comrades, strong and free,
out of darkness, out of silence, out of hate and custom's deadening
sway! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to the wind-blown Dawn!
With us shall go the New Day, shining behind the dark. With us shall go
Power, Knowledge, Justice, Truth. The time is full! A new world awaits
us. Its fruits, its joys, its opportunities are ours for the taking!
Fear not the hardships of the road--the storm, the parching heat or
winter's cold, hunger or thirst or ambushed foe! There are bright lights
ahead of us, leave the shadows behind! In the East a new star is risen!
With pain and anguish the Old Order has given birth to the New, and
behold, in the East a man-child is born! Onward, Comrades, all together!
Onward to the camp-fires of Russia! Onward to the coming Dawn!
Through the night of our despair rings the keen call of the New Day. All
the powers of darkness could not still that shout of joy in far-away
Moscow! Meteor-like through the heavens flashed the golden words of
light, "Soviet Republic of Russia". Words sun-like piercing the dark,
joyous radiant love-words banishing hate, bidding the teeming world of
men to wake and live! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to the
bright, redeeming Dawn!
With peace and brotherhood make sweet the bitter way of men! Today, and
all the days to come, repeat the Word of Him who said, "Thou shall not
kill". Send on psalming winds the angel-chorus, "Peace on earth,
good-will to men". Onward march, and keep on marching until His Will on
earth is done! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to the life-giving
fountain of Dawn!
All along the road beside us throng the peoples sad and broken, weeping
women, children hungry, homeless like little birds cast out of their
nest. With their hearts aflame, untamed, glorying in martyrdom they hail
us passing quickly, "Halt not, O Comrades, yonder glimmers the star of
our hope, the red-centered dawn in the East! Halt not, lest you perish
ere you reach the Land of Promise". Onward, Comrades, all together,
onward to the sun-red Dawn!
[Illustration: KARL MARX]
[Illustration: CHARLES DARWIN]
COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW
PART II.
Christianism: A Supernaturalistic Other-worldly Gospel for the Passing
Age of Class Inequality and Economic Slavery--An Open Letter to a
Christian Theologian and Brother Churchman.
Revolutionize capitalism out of state and orthodoxy out of church.
FOREWORD[G]
The contradiction in terms known as the Christian Socialist is
inevitably antagonistic to working-class interests and the waging of the
class struggle. His policy (that of the Christian Socialist) is the
conciliation of classes, the fraternity of robber and robbed, not the
end of classes. His avowed object, indeed, is usually to purge the
Socialist movement of its materialism, and this means to purge it of its
Socialism and to divert it from its material aims to the fruitless
chasing of spiritual will-o'-the-wisps. A Christian Socialist is, in
fact, an anti-Socialist.
Clearly, then, the basis of Socialist philosophy is utterly incompatible
with religious ideas; indeed, the latter have been reduced to their
logical absurdity in what is called "Christian Science."
Moreover, the consistent Christian, if such exists, could look upon the
existing world only as an essential part of God's plan, to be accounted
for only through God, and modified at God's pleasure. He could regard
those who sought the explanation of social conditions in purely natural
causes, and who also sought to take advantage of economic development in
order to turn this vale of tears into a pleasant garden, only as men who
denied by their acts the very basis of his faith.
FOOTNOTES:
[G] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
CHRISTIANISM: A SUPERNATURALISTIC OTHER-WORLDLY GOSPEL FOR THE PASSING
AGE OF CLASS INEQUALITY AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY.
Come over and help us. Abandon Reformatory for Revolutionary
Socialism.
My Dear Brother:
Your letter (April 1st, 1920) enclosing an essay, entitled, Is There a
God, came duly to hand and I thank you warmly for it. The essay is a
masterpiece and I hope you can let me keep this copy, or make another
for myself, for reference when I am writing or conversing on its lines,
as is frequently the case.
I.
In the dispute between yourself and friend of which you speak, you are
altogether right and he is entirely wrong. In the last analysis it is a
disputation as to whether or not the Jewish-Christian bible contains an
infallible revelation from an omniscient being, a triune god, Father,
Son and Spirit. It does not.
As an objectivity there is no such divinity. He is a subjectivity
existing in the imagination of orthodox Christians. You do not agree
with me in this, but every day of thought and study deepens the
conviction that it is true. None among the gods of the supernaturalistic
interpretations of religion are objectivities. The lesser ones are
generally ghosts of dead men, and the greater ones are as generally
versions of the sun-myth.
The one god of the Jews and the triune god of the Christians, if taken
seriously, are superstitions; and the bible revelations of their
willings and records of their doings, if taken literally, are lies.
Both the Old and New Testaments are utterly worthless as history. The
twelve patriarchs of the Jewish God, Jehovah, are not historical
personages, but myths, and this is true of the twelve apostles of the
Christian God, Jesus.
Yes, the Old Testament is the Jewish version of the immemorial and
universal sun-myth, rewritten several times for the purpose, not of
telling any truth, but of imposing the fiction that Jehovah and his
people constitute the greatest procession that ever came down the pike
of supernaturalism. The New Testament is the Christian version of the
same myth, only with the view of showing that Jehovah and the Jews were
not, but Jesus and Christians are, this procession.
In itself, the sun-myth, as symbolism, is not only poetically beautiful,
but also scientifically true; yet, as literalism, it is in the case of
the ignorant, superstition, and in the case of the educated,
self-deception.
The sun is, in a very literal and real sense, the creator-god in whom
this world lives, moves and has its being; and he is the saviour-god who
was born of a virgin nebula, and every winter descends into hell and
rises from the dead (the southern solstice) by a new birth and ascends
into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the father (the sky) at
the northern solstice, and finally he is the illuminator god who
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
And the apostles who preached the gospel of the redemption of the world
are the twelve signs of the zodiac through which the sun apparently
passes in its annual ascension to the summer solstice and descension to
the winter solstice.
Nor is this all: "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the
world" is the sign of the zodiac, Aries (sheep, ram) through which the
sun passes towards the end of March, when all the saviour-gods annually
died and rose again. The rising symbolizes the return of the sun towards
the northern solstice from the southern one, upon which return seed-time
and harvest are dependent, without which the world would perish, not
indeed by sin but by starvation.
Jehovah is the sun-myth rewritten to fit in with the ideals and hopes of
the owning, master class of the Jews.
Jesus is the sun-myth rewritten to fit in with the ideals and hopes of
the owning master class of the Christians.
The Christian god, Jesus, is an improvement upon the Jewish god,
Jehovah, because of the division of labor. The task of the owning master
class is a twofold one, the robbing of the weak owners by the strong
ones in wars, and the robbing of the slaves by the masters which under
the capitalist system is done in surplus profits.
Jehovah serves Christians as the god of war. In his name they wage wars,
either as groups within a nation having different commercial interests,
as in the case of the Civil War of the United States, or as nations
against nations with different commercial interests, as in the case of
the Revolutionary war of the Colonies with England, or the World War of
the Allied countries with the Central ones.
Jesus serves Christians as the god of slavery. When they have
successfully waged a war of conquest, as the Pilgrim Fathers did against
the Indians of America, or when they have appropriated all the means and
machines of production, as the capitalists have everywhere, they
reconcile the propertyless to a terrestrial hell of toil, want, sorrow
and slavery by preaching the Jesuine gospel of hope for a celestial
heaven of eternal rest, joy, plenty and freedom.
"Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum."
In remaking the Jewish god to suit their purposes of robbing and
enslaving, the Christian owning master class provided for a further
division of his work by creating the Holy Ghost, who devotes himself to
the giving of new revelations of the will of Jehovah and interpreting
the earlier ones as they are recorded in the bible.
It is generally supposed that the masters are the strong people of the
world, but they are not. Labor is really the giant, the Samson, and it
would be impossible for the pigmy, capital, to rob him, but for his lack
of knowledge. The Holy Ghost sees to it that the slave class is kept in
ignorance.
The English-German, or if you prefer, the German-English war has been an
eye-opener to the giant, labor, and capital is ruined unless he can get
him to sleep again.
Capital knows that Marx was right in characterizing the orthodox
interpretations of religion, including the Christian one, and especially
it, as a sleeping potion.
The churches were the dormitories in which the slaves slept through the
night of the dark ages of traditionalism, but the light of the age of
scientism is breaking upon the world and most of the slaves have left
the churches and are now beyond the reach of their care-takers, the
preachers.
When I wrote the Level Plan for Church Union, I believed that the coming
together of the churches would prove to be a blessing to the world, but
I am now persuaded that it would be a curse, because the league of
churches would co-operate with the league of nations in its robbing and
enslaving schemes, the churches doing the lying and the nations the
coercing.
We are living in the age of scientism and, in the case of its true sons
and daughters, only scientifically demonstrated facts count in any
argumentation.
From the scientific point of view it is seen that there is but one
universal Kingdom of Life, Nature. This kingdom may be divided into
three, perhaps four, states constituting the United States of Life: the
mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human.
Beginning with the highest, each of these states, except the lowest, is
dependent upon the next lower. The only independent autonomous state in
the kingdom is the mineral. This is the greatest both as to its extent
and importance. It is the common source of every supply of all the
states of life, and the seat of each of their governments.
All theologians and some metaphysicians postulate a fifth state of
life, the divine, placing it above the rest as their source.
Comte, who preceded Marx as a social philosopher, and who is the founder
of modern socialism of the reformatory type, as Marx is of the
revolutionary one, had this to say about the theologians, metaphysicians
and scientists, and he was right:
From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all
directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great
fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has
a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts of our organization
and in our historical experience. This law is this: that each of
our leading conceptions--each branch of our knowledge--passes
successively through three different theoretical conditions: the
theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the
scientific, or positive. In other words, the human mind, by its
nature, employs in its progress three methods of philosophizing,
the character of which is essentially different and radically
opposed: viz., the theological method, the metaphysical and the
positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general systems of
conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes
the others. The first is the necessary point of departure of the
human understanding; the third is its fixed and definite state. The
second is merely a state of transition.
In order for a man who has reached the scientific stage in his
intellectual development to make anything out of the reasonings of those
who are still in the stage of theological childhood or in that of
metaphysical adolescence, it is necessary for him to use their
insubstantialities as symbols of his substantialities.
The only difference that I can see between a theologian and a
metaphysician is that, whereas the former personifies a generality
which is the creation of his imagination, calling it a god, the latter
objectifies a particularity which is the creation of his imagination
calling it an entity; but all such personifications and objectifications
(gods, things-in-themselves, vital entities, souls) are alike
fictitious, because the childish theologians and metaphysicians proceed
on the basis of philosophically assumed realities, not on scientifically
established facts which pave the way on which an adult proceeds.
Comte analyzes the difference between the intellectuality of theological
children, metaphysical youths and scientific adults as follows:
In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential
nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin and
purpose) of all effects--in short, absolute knowledge--supposes all
phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural
beings.
In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the
first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract
forces, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions)
inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena.
What is called the explanation of phenomena is, in this stage, a
mere reference of each to its proper entity.
In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vain
search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the
universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the
study of their laws--that is, their invariable relations of
succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly
combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood
when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the
establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some
general facts the number of which continually diminishes with the
progress of science.
There is no science which, having attained the positive stage, does
not bear the marks of having passed through the others. Some time
since it was (whatever it might be now) composed, as we can now
perceive, of metaphysical abstractions: and, further back in the
course of time, it took its form from theological conceptions. Our
most advanced sciences still bear very evident marks of the two
earlier periods through which they passed.
The progress of the individual mind is not only an illustration,
but an indirect evidence of that of the general mind. The point of
departure of the individual and the race being the same, the phases
of the mind of men correspond to the epochs of the mind of the
race. How each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own
history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a metaphysician
in his youth and a natural philosopher in his manhood. All men who
are up to their age can verify this for themselves.
According to the scientific classification, there are only three
kingdoms or states of life, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal.
The life of the vegetable kingdom has arisen out of the life of the
mineral kingdom and is sustained by it.
The distinguished scientist, Professor Lowell, says, "there is now no
more reason to doubt that plants grew out of chemical affinity than to
doubt that stones did," and nearly all outstanding zoologists would say
as much of animals.
Sir J. Burdon Sanderson, one of the most eminent among biologists,
insists that "in physiology the word life is understood to mean the
chemical and physical activities of the parts of which the organism
consists." The renowned Sir Ray Lankester strenuously holds that
"zoology is the science which seeks to arrange and discuss the phenomena
of animal life and form, as the outcome of the operation of the laws of
physics and chemistry," and goes so far as to say that he knows of no
leading biologist who is of a different opinion. The prince of
biologists, the late Professor Haeckel, occupied this position and
impregnably fortified it in several great books, especially in his
"Riddle of the Universe."
There is no force that is not life, nor life which is not force; and
there is no life or force, about which we know anything, without a body
or chemical laboratory.
So far as is known, there is only one life--force. The difference
between lives is a question of the organism, the laboratory, which gives
embodiment to force.
The life that enables the wheels of a locomotive to go, the sap of a
tree to flow, the heart of an animal to beat and the brain of a man to
think is the same chemical potentiality differently organized.
During all historical time and over all the earth, under one name or
another, the whole world has kept days of rejoicing for life, especially
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and Easter.
Nothing is so wonderful as life and perhaps the greatest of its wonders
is that all of it is of the same kind.
Everything and every being is alive with the same life. The Thanksgiving
day sheaf of wheat, the Christmas day Son of Man and the Easter day Son
of God (if there are conscious, personal gods and they have sons) are
alive and their life is the same, the difference being wholly in the
form and degree, not at all in kind.
A proof of the oneness and sameness of all life, notwithstanding its
widely different forms and degrees, is the fact that a bar of iron, a
stick of wood, a piece of flesh and a section of brain respond alike to
the same electrical stimulus, and all may be poisoned or otherwise
killed so that they will make no response to it. Perhaps even a more
conclusive evidence is that the eggs (every form of both vegetable and
animal life develops from an egg) of some animals rather high in the one
tree of mundane life, which has a common root and a stump, but two
stems, the vegetable and the animal, can be mechanically fertilized by
chemical processes.
Even Sir Oliver Lodge, the most conspicuous among the comparatively few
men of science who hold to the theory that life comes to the earth as
vital entities of celestial origin and destination, makes this fatal
admission: "There is plenty of physics and chemistry and mechanics about
every vital action." On the theory of traditional Christianity there was
no physics, chemistry or mechanics connected with the vital actions
which originally brought the universe and all that therein was,
including the earth with its vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, into
existence.
Every representative of each form of life in these kingdoms (in the
vegetable: a grass blade, a wheat stalk, an oak tree; or in the animal:
an insect, a horse, a man) is a chemical laboratory for the production,
sustentation, advancement and procreation of a particular type of one
universal life. These laboratories have all the potentialities of their
respective lives within themselves,--no laboratory, no chemistry; no
chemistry, no life.
What life is, both as to its manifestation and character, is determined
by the form of organization through which force, all there is of life,
becomes a particular and differentiated vital phenomenon. This is as
true of states and churches as it is of trees and men, for a church or a
state is a vital phenomenon as really so as a tree or a man.
The trouble with every reformatory socialism of modern times is that it
undertakes the impossibility of changing the fruit of the capitalistic
state into that of the communistic one, without changing the political
organism; but to do that is as impossible as to gather grapes from
thorns or figs from thistles. Hence an uprooting and replanting are
necessary (a revolution not a reformation) which will give the world a
new tree of state.
Capitalism no longer grows the fruits (foods, clothes and houses) which
are necessary to the sustenance of the world. Hence it encumbers the
ground and must be dug up by the roots in order that a tree which is so
organized that it will bear these necessities may be planted in its
place.
The people of Russia have accomplished this uprooting and replanting
(this revolution) in the case of their state, and those of every nation
are destined to do the same in one way or another, each according to its
historical and economic development, some perhaps with violence, most, I
hope, peaceably. The Russian Bolsheviki occupy the highest peak in man's
history; and while they stand, the world will be safe for industrial
democracy. This democracy is the tree of life whose fruits are for the
sustenance of the nations and whose very leaves are for their healing.
The only lives of which we need know aught are those that we shall live
in our bodies by chemical processes and in the race by conscious or
unconscious influences; for, if there is another, it will take care of
itself, if we take care of these.
Since, therefore, all life is on a level and since morality, religion
and Christianity are but manifestations of it, do you not see how
profoundly and incontrovertibly true is my levelism?
According to this levelism all interpretations of Christianity
(protestant and catholic--congregational, presbyterian, episcopalian and
papal) and all the interpretations of religion (Christian, Jewish,
Mohammedan, Buddhistic and the rest) are essentially on the same
footing, the difference between them being wholly a question of natural
excellencies, not at all of supernatural uniqueness.
The science of biology establishes my levelism by proving that animal
and human life are on a level as to their origin, character and destiny.
The science of sociology establishes my levelism by proving that animal
and human institutions are on a level, and that therefore, there is
nothing more supernatural about a human state or church than about an
ant hill or a bee hive.
The science of literary criticism establishes my levelism by proving
that the bibles of the several interpretations of religion are on a
level as to their entirely human origin and authority.
The science of the comparative interpretations of religion establishes
my levelism by proving that all the conscious, personal creator-gods,
destroyer-gods, saviour-gods and illuminator-gods, with all their
angels, heavens and hells, are so many myths--creations of the human
imagination, subjective fictions, not objective realities.
Until comparatively recent times, through all the theological history of
mankind, the sun was almost universally regarded as a god. Manifestly
without it there could be no life on earth, and its annually recurring
motions are such as to give the impression of birth and death--of birth
by ascension into the heaven of the summer solstice--of death by
descension into the hell or grave of the winter solstice. Not only is
the sun the giver and sustainer of life, but it is also the light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
Modern science justifies this ancient conception as to the dependence of
the earth, and all that thereon is, upon the sun for its being. By a
slight adaptation men of science and scientific philosophers could use
the very words of the apostle John at the opening of his version of the
Christian gospel, where he says of Jesus, what they say of the sun:
All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that
was made. In him is life; and the life is the light of men.
The birth, death, descension, resurrection and ascension of all the
Saviour-gods, not excepting Jesus, are versions of the sun-myth.
Yet the naturalness, the universalness, the beautifulness and withal the
profound truthfulness of this myth are such as to render it almost as
undesirable as it is next to impossible to relegate it to the realm of
superstition, to which it should undoubtedly be assigned if a literal
interpretation is a necessity.
The more science advances, the more of precious poetry and pathos, and
of deep verity, too, is seen in the Saviour-gods, who are essentially
the same mythical personifications of the glorious sun and of the happy
events of its annual career, because from it the earth with its brother
and sister planets had their origin, and because from it the earth, not
to speak of the other planets, has the heat, light and force which make
its life a possibility.
There is no reason for believing that any one among the gods of the four
old supernaturalistic interpretations of religion (Jehovah, Jesus,
Allah, Buddha) or that either of the gods of the two new interpretations
by the renowned physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge, and the distinguished
sociologist, Mr. H. G. Wells, has had more to do in creating, sustaining
and governing this world than another, that is to say, there is no
ground for believing that the personal, conscious gods in the skies
either individually or collectively have had anything at all to do with
it.
Science, as it is understood by the great majority of its exponents,
teaches that the earth (with all things, physical and psychical, which
contribute to make its world what it has been, is, and is to be) was
originally in the sun, and would quickly disappear into its original,
unorganized elements but for the sun.
This is as true of man as of all else. He with his brain and its
thought, with his hand and its skill; with his homes, farms, cities,
mines, shops, stores, trains, ships, schools, hospitals and churches;
with his hate, bestiality and barbarism, and with his love, humaneness
and civilization, was in the sun, billions of years before his
appearance on the earth.
Speaking of things appertaining to the world war: there in the sun,
before it had thrown off the earth, were the kaiser on the throne, the
president in the white house, the millions of soldiers, the uniforms,
the rations, the forts, the cannons, guns, powder and shot, the
trenches, the barbed wire, the dreadnoughts, the submarines, the
aeroplanes, the wireless telegraph stations, the wounded, their
sufferings and groans, the doctors and nurses, the corpses, the
cripples, the broken hearts; yes, and all the things connected with that
terrible war; the bereaved mothers, the widowed wives, the outraged
girls, the ruined country, the wrecked cities, were in the sun from its
beginning, indeed while it was yet a nebula, many thousands of millions
of years previous to the birth of the earth.
If we except intruders into our solar system, such as comets and their
comparatively inconsiderable effects, we may say that every physical or
psychical reality which at any time has entered into the history of this
planet and that of its brothers and sisters was in that vast flowing,
swirling, revolving globe of gases which is known to have been at one
time at least five billion miles in diameter, or fifteen billions in
circumference.
Of course no phenomenon, such as Jesus hanging on the cross, if He lived
and was crucified, was in the sun as an actuality, but only as a
potentiality. Nevertheless He, with His doctrine and His suffering, was
there, else He would never have been anywhere, not in the realm of
history, not even in the realm of imagination.
The universe is ever all that it can be, and every potentiality which
contributes to make it so is within itself. What is true in this respect
of the universe as a whole is equally so of every part of it, including
man, and especially him, because he is exceptionally capable of
controlling his own destiny, being able not only to preserve life by a
discovery of and conformity to the laws upon which it is dependent, but
also to enlarge and enrich its content by making these laws co-operative
servants.
The time cannot be far off when it will be seen by all educated,
thoughtful men and women that if the traditional, supernaturalistic
interpretation of Christianity is the only possible one, its message is
not a gospel, because its teaching touching three fundamentals is, in
each case, contrary to that of three relevant sciences:
1. The sciences of astronomy, geology and biology teach that the
representation of traditional supernaturalistic interpretation of
Christianity to the effect that the universe, including the earth with
its physical and psychical life, was supernaturally created out of
nothing by a conscious, personal god is not true and therefore can be no
part of any gospel; for, according to the teaching of these three
sciences, the truth is: the universe with all that therein is, not
excepting mankind and civilization, was naturally evolved out of a
self-existing matter by a self-existing force co-operating in accordance
with the necessity of their nature.
2. The sciences of biology, physiology and embryology teach that the
representation of the traditional, supernaturalistic interpretation of
Christianity to the effect that man and woman are unique beings, who
have supernaturally derived their physical form, vital and psychical
potentialities directly from a conscious, personal creator with whom are
their natural affiliations, is not true, and therefore can be no part of
any gospel; for, according to the teaching of these three sciences, the
truth is: man and woman as to their whole beings (body and mind, life
and soul) were naturally evolved from pre-existing animal life, not
supernaturally created respectively out of the dust and a rib, so that
they owe their existence to and natural affinities with a terrestrial
and bestial parentage, not a celestial and divine one.
3. The sciences of anthropology, sociology and comparative
interpretations of religion teach that the representation of the
traditional, supernaturalistic interpretation of Christianity to the
effect that man and woman were supernaturally created in the image and
likeness of a conscious, personal god, sinless and deathless beings with
ideal environments, but that they fell from this happy estate, through a
serpentine incarnation of a supernatural devil, and are being restored
to it, through a human incarnation of a supernatural saviour, is not
true, and therefore can be no part of any gospel; for, according to the
teaching of these three sciences, the truth is: during many ages man and
woman, in both appearance and predilection, were much more animal than
divine and that gradually, without any supernatural assistance, they
have worked themselves out of a state of bestial barbarism into one of
human civilization.
It follows therefore that the representations of both the Old and New
Testaments, concerning the origin and history of man are largely
fictitious impositions, not historical compositions, so much so, that no
confidence can safely be reposed in any of them.
There is no rational doubt about the fictitious character of the divine
Jesus. Some think that the human Jesus may have been an historical
personage; but, none among outstanding scholars believes that we have a
connected account of his life and work, and most of them insist that we
do not certainly know any saying or doing of his.
No religious doctrine or institution of which we have an account in the
New Testament is peculiar to Christianity and this is equally true of
moral precepts.
The gods of all the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are so
many creations of the dominant or master class, and their revelations
were put into their mouths by the makers for the purpose of keeping the
slave class ignorant and contented.
Orthodox Christians earnestly contend that this naturalistic doctrine
makes for immorality. Heretical socialists rationally answer that the
life which men, women and children live with reference to their
terrestrial influence, rather than to celestial rewards or punishments,
is the only one which is lived to any moral purpose.
According to socialism, morality, religion and Christianity are but
synonyms of one and the same reality, which consists wholly in the
desire and effort of a man to learn the laws or doings of nature, and to
conform his thoughts and words to them, in order to make his present
life on earth, and that of others, as long and happy as possible, and
not at all in a desire and effort to learn what the will of a conscious,
personal god is and to conform to it, in order to avoid a hell and gain
a heaven for a future life in the sky.
O threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.
If you object that this is a representation of a sceptical poet, I reply
that it is in alignment with a representation of a scriptural preacher:
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts;
Even one thing befalleth them;
As the one dieth, so dieth the other;
Yea, they have all one breath;
So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast;
For all is vanity.
All go unto one place;
All are of the dust,
And all turn to dust again.
Darwin showed that each man in his physical development from the
embryonic cell to birth passes through, by short cuts, the different
forms of life from say, the worm, fish and lemur with all that went
before, intervened between and followed after, and Romanes showed that
this is as true of the mind as of the body; that, in fact, all the
representatives of the animal kingdom are physically and psychically
related, and therefore on the same level as to their origin and destiny.
In his illuminating book entitled, "The Universal Kinship," Professor
Moore says:
The embryonic development of a human being is no different from the
embryonic development of any other animal. Every human being at the
beginning of his organic existence is a protozoan, about 1-125
inch in diameter; at another stage of development he is a tiny
sac-shaped mass of cells without blood or nerves, the gastrula; at
another stage he is a worm, with a pulsating tube instead of a
heart, and without a head, neck, spinal column, or limbs; at
another stage he has as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending
along the back, and a faint nerve cord, as in the amphioxus, the
lowest of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a
two-chambered heart, mesonephric kidneys, and gill-slits, with gill
arteries leading to them, just as in fishes; at another stage he is
a reptile with a three-chambered heart, and voiding his excreta
through a cloaca like other reptiles; and finally, when he enters
upon post-natal sins and actualities, he is a sprawling, squalling,
unreasoning quadruped. The human larva from the fifth to the
seventh month of development is covered with a thick growth of hair
and has a true caudal (tail) appendage, like the monkey. At this
stage the embryo has in all thirty-eight vertebrae, nine of which
are caudal, and the great toe extends at right angles to the other
toes, and is not longer than the other toes, but shorter, as in the
ape.
Surely no argument is needed to convince you that Darwinism corroborates
the representation of our ancient heretical poet and scriptural preacher
concerning a life beyond the grave rather than the representations of
modern orthodox theologians.
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel, too.
--Omar.
II.
In history slavery stands out as a huge mountain range traversing the
whole of a continent. During long ages it was supposed that these
phenomena of the human and physical worlds were due to the will of a god
(Jesus, Jehovah, Allah or Buddha) but the vanguard of humanity has now
reached a viewpoint from which it sees that both are alike due to a law,
that a law is what nature does, not what a god has willed, and that a
system of slavery and a range of mountains are due to the same law.
The matter-force law is everywhere the same, and it is as omnipotent and
immutable in a social order as in a solar system.
"The very law that moulds a tear,
And bids it trickle from its source,
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course."
Most of the time, and especially just now, our world is very full of
tears, almost as much so as space is full of spheres, but there would
not be half so many tears at any time, if the laws of states were so
many correct interpretations of the laws of nature.
In every age, nearly all the hot tears which deluge the world flow, like
streams of springs, from their deep sources as the result of unnecessary
suffering by grinding poverty, by hopeless slavery, by avoidable
diseases and by premature deaths; and by far the most of these and of
all sufferings may be traced to man-made laws which not only have no
correspondence with those of nature but are contrary to them--laws of
which both the civil codes and religious bibles are too full.
You will agree with me that society should punish none of its members by
the slightest fine or shortest imprisonment, not to speak of death,
except on the basis of justice. So far, and it is a long way, we
certainly walk together. We part company, if at all, on the question as
to the basis of justice, but come together again in the conclusion that
it is right, not might.
What, then, is this right? If you answer: the law of the state as it is
interpreted by a competent court, I reply: no legal enactment, and so,
of course, no interpretation of one, can really constitute a right,
unless it is an embodiment of a truth containing an indispensable stone
in the foundation which is necessary to the superstructure of the ideal
civilization, under the roof of which every man, woman and child shall
possess the greatest of possible opportunities to make life for self as
long and happy as it can be, and to help others in an ever widening
circle to do this for themselves.
Laws are not made. All social laws (domestic, civil, commercial, yes,
even the moral and religious ones) are matter-force realities, as much
so as is any other among all the physical or psychical realities
entering into the constitution of the universe; which realities are but
the expressions of the processes necessarily resulting from the
necessary co-existence and co-operation of this matter and force;
therefore, laws are so many eternal necessities and, this being the
case, it is not possible that men in states or churches should make
them, no, not even gods in heavens.
Man would, then, have progressed much further with the superstructure of
an ideal civilization, if only in his efforts to rightly regulate his
life, he had happily searched out the laws of nature as they are
revealed through its phenomena and interpreted by experience and reason,
instead of looking for direction to the laws of the gods (Jehovah,
Allah, Buddha or even Jesus) as they are revealed through prophets and
interpreted by kings or presidents, by priests or preachers and by other
"powers that be of God" in states and churches--institutions which exist
in the interest of the capitalist class and against that of the labor
class. The world owes by far the greater part of its most poignant
sufferings to this fatal mistake of looking to gods in heavens and their
representatives on earth for direction instead of to nature and reason.
Life in the physical realm is dependent upon living in harmony with the
matter-force law. The representative of any form of life (mineral,
vegetable, animal, human) which either through ignorance, accident or
willfulness does not conform to it, is destroyed or at least injured.
Life in the moral part of the psychical realm consists in a disposition
and effort to learn the matter-force law, and to fulfill in thought,
word and deed the individual obligations to self and the social
obligations to others imposed by it when it has been humanely
interpreted by a man for himself.
Religion and Christianity are but wider extensions of one and the same
great all-inclusive virtue, morality, without which human life would not
be worth living, indeed not even a possibility, for without morality a
man is a beast, not a human.
Morality is the greatest thing in the world. Yet, paradoxical as the
representation may seem, there is one greater thing, freedom--the
liberty to think, speak and act in accordance with one's own convictions
as to what is the law and as to what are its requirements. Without this
liberty there could be no morality, and therefore, freedom is greater
than the greatest thing in the world, morality.
But liberty, the greatest and most indispensable necessity to morality,
religion and Christianity, indeed, to the existence of a human being, is
manifestly impossible on the theory that a man must be guided by the
will of a conscious, personal God in the sky as it is interpreted by the
kings and priests, presidents and preachers on earth.
You will note that I am not contending for the liberty to live without
reference to an external authority. If this were my contention you would
rightly insist (as some among my friends do) that I am an atheist in
religion and an anarchist in politics; but I am neither, for I recognize
the fact that I must live with reference to the existence of an external
authority, matter-force law, and there is no other, upon which anything
good in religion or politics is dependent.
No one is an atheist in religion, an anarchist in politics or anything
bad, who, in the physical realm of life, tries to live with reference to
the law of nature, and who, in the moral realm of life, tries to live
with reference to a truth which is that law humanely interpreted by
himself in accordance with his own experience, observation,
investigation and reason. In the nature of things, the interpretation
cannot be by some one else, because one man cannot live the moral life
on another's ideals any more than he can live the physical life on
another's meals.
Since this is the case, it follows that the whole conception of a law
which is willed by a god and revealed or formulated by his
representatives (prophets, kings, priests, legislators) to which a man
must have reference, if he would live the moral life, is, at best, a
harmless fiction and at worst a hurtful superstition.
There is no one (man or god) with whom people can stand in the moral
realm except themselves alone, and if they are not within this realm
they are not men and women.
Manhood is dependent upon standing alone with matter-force nature and
with human reason, and it is manhood which really counts everywhere in
the social realm, for without manhood one is nothing anywhere in that
realm.
Nature is my God. The gods of the several supernaturalistic
interpretations of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) are so many
symbols of this divinity. The words of this God are the facts of nature.
My religion and politics, worship and patriotism consist in a desire and
effort to discover these facts and to interpret and live them humanely.
My God, Nature, is a triune divinity--matter being the Father, force the
Son, and law the Spirit.
Nature is the sum of the matter-force-law phenomena of which the
universe is constituted. Man with his barbarism and civilization is but
one among such phenomena, on a level with the rest, as to his beginning
and ending, and as to the dependence of his life and its fullness upon
conformity to the matter-force law, without necessary or, indeed,
possible reference to any divine-human system of laws as set forth by a
catholic or protestant church or by an imperialistic or democratic
state.
Unless states and churches persuade, encourage and help man to more
fully discover, more correctly interpret and more perfectly live the
matter-force law they are worthless; and indeed worse, if in the long
run and on the whole they hinder him; and undoubtedly they have done
this in the case of the slave class--a class which, ever since the rise
of private property in the means of producing the necessities of life,
has comprehended the vast majority of the human race.
Whether then man is barbarous or civilized is really and truly, wholly
and entirely a question of the knowledge of and conformity to the
matter-force law, that is, of whether or not the articles of his
religious creed and political code are so many ideal embodiments and
practical interpretations of facts or realities as they are revealed by
the doings of my god, Nature.
There is no other creed, belief in the articles of which, and there is
no other code, obedience to the articles of which, will advance mankind,
individually or collectively, so much as one step in the long, rugged
and steep way towards the goal of a perfect civilization--a civilization
which will secure to every man, woman and child the greatest of possible
opportunities to make the most of life that is within the range of
possibilities.
My god, Nature (the triune divinity, matter-force-motion) the doings of
which god are so many words of the only gospel upon which the salvation
of the world is to any degree dependent, is an impersonal, unconscious,
non-moral being.
For me, this god, Nature, rises into personality, consciousness and
morality in myself, and in no other does nature do this for me, though
what is true of me is of course equally so of every representative of
mankind.
Jesus (either as an historical or dramatic personage, and it does not
matter which he was) said, "I and my Father (god) are one," and in
saying this he gave expression in one form to the most revolutionary and
salutary of all truths. The other form of the same truth as taught by
Darwin and Marx is: man has all the potentialities of his own life
within himself. Every representative of the human race can and should
say with Jesus, "I and my Father, God, are one."
Stop man! where dost thou run?
Heav'n lies within thy heart,
If thou seek'st God elsewhere
Misled, in truth, thou art.
--Angelus Silensius.
This truth constitutes the most ennobling and inspiring part of man's
knowledge, and it was naturally discovered by him, not supernaturally
revealed to him. It is the foundation of socialism and the justification
of optimism.
The universe moves, with all that therein is. The vanguard of mankind is
moving to a viewpoint from which rapidly increasing numbers will see
that a revolution which is necessary on the part of a slave to free
himself from a master is not only justified but required by the great,
first law of the biological realm, the law of self-preservation--a
nature-made law on behalf of freedom. This nature-made law will
ultimately nullify all class laws, every law which is in favor of the
enslaving capitalist class and against the enslaved labor class.
Every state with its executive, legislative, judiciary, military and
educative systems is founded on capitalism. Since this is the case and
since human nature is what it is, all political institutions, the
American with the rest, are of the capitalist, by the capitalist, for
the capitalist, and each to the end that the capitalist may keep the
laborer in poverty and slavery.
Every modern church with its ministry, bible, creed, heaven and hell is
founded on capitalism. Since this is the case, and since human nature is
what it is, all religious institutions, the Christian with the rest, are
of the capitalist, by the capitalist, for the capitalist and each to the
end that the capitalist may keep the laborer in ignorance and slavery.
Whether Jesus was an historical or a dramatic person, the morality
involved in his trial, condemnation and execution is the same. Assuming
the historicity, he was put to death by Pilate because a class of the
people said: We have a law and by it, according to its official
interpretation, he should die. The Governor, finding that the legal
enactment and the judicial decision were in accordance with the
representation of the Jews, turned Jesus over to the executioners for
crucifixion, and the world condemns him because he knew that the law was
the embodiment of a fiction instead of a truth, because he interpreted
it in the interest of a sect instead of a people, and because he basely
acted with reference to his own political interests without regard to
justice for an heroic but helpless champion of slaves in their struggle
against the masters.
Philosophic anarchy differs by the space of the whole heavens from
practical anarchy, and it is the latter that I always have in mind. The
great essential of philosophic anarchy is individualistic freedom. The
great essential of practical anarchy is imperialistic slavery.
Capitalism is the outstanding, overshadowing imperialist, the father of
all the kaisers by which the world has been cursed, not only of the
terrestrial ones such as Wilhelm II, Nicholas II, Woodrow I, but also of
the celestial ones such as Jehovah, Allah, Buddha.
The occupants of regal thrones have no more responsibility for the
existence of imperialism than those of presidential chairs, nor they any
more than I, and I have none. The truth is that the responsibility for
this blight of all the ages is now at last, if indeed it has not always
been, wholly with the representatives of the working class. They have
the great majority in numbers and all of the revolutionary incentives
and power; therefore they, and only they can do away with imperialism,
and they can rid themselves of it whenever they choose. Prince
Kropotkin, the philosophic anarchist, a great soul, would agree to this
representation, for he says:
The working men of the civilized world and their friends in the
other classes ought to induce their Governments entirely to abandon
the idea of armed intervention in the affairs of Russia--whether
open or disguised, whether military or in the shape of subventions
to different nations.
Russia is now living through a revolution of the same depth and the
same importance as the British nation underwent in 1639-1648 and
France in 1789-1794; and every nation should refuse to play the
shameful part that Great Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia
played during the French Revolution.
Since death ends all of consciousness, the most inhuman of all
inhumanities and the most immoral of all immoralities is the shortening
of human life; and next to it is the diminishing of its happiness.
War shortens many lives and fills more with misery; hence its essential
inhumanity and immorality.
A large part of the world has just passed through the furnace of war--a
war between the German and English nations with their respective
national allies. All international wars are contests for supremacy in
the markets of the world, or at least for advantage in some among them.
This one was no exception.
The furnace of this war was seven times larger and seven times hotter
than any other has been. According to the latest estimates (September,
1920) its fierce flames directly and indirectly killed thirty million
young men and wrecked totally twice and partially thrice as many more.
Yet the fire by which the world upon the whole and in the long run
suffers most is not the intermittent, flaming one of the hell of
international war, which is always kindled and sustained by the
capitalists of the belligerent nations for the purpose solely of
securing commercial advantages over each other; but the greater
suffering is by the permanent, smoking fire of the hell of the
inter-class war which is always kindled and sustained by the capitalist
class in each nation for the purpose solely of robbing the labor class
of the fruit of their toil.
These national and class wars (hells, flaming and smouldering) are due
to the same matter-force law, the law of self-preservation, and,
paradoxical as it may seem, this law is equally operative on both sides
in each war.
Both hells exist as the result of the working out of the same law of
animal preservation by competition--the law of capitalism, and both
hells will be done away with as the result of the working out of the
same law of human preservation by co-operation--the law of socialism.
One proof of the rightness of the co-operative system is the fact that
it necessarily operates for the whole people and not for a class,
whereas the competitive system as necessarily operates for a class and
not for the whole people.
Still another proof, and it is in itself almost if not quite conclusive,
of the rightness of the co-operative system is the fact that its
competitive rival breaks down in every great emergency. It broke down
completely in all the belligerent countries (in none more than the
United States) immediately upon their entrance into the world war. Our
government was obliged to assume control of the railroads, coal mines
and food products.
If a class government, such as ours is, can provide during a war by the
co-operative system, and only by it, for the wants of a country, and
better, too, than during the time of peace, what may we expect in the
way of plenty, comfort and leisure, when under the classless
administration there shall be no more war with its wholesale waste, and
when there shall be one vast army of producers?
All the days which the fifty millions of soldiers spent in idleness will
then be so many holidays for toilers who are in need of them for rest
and self-improvement; and every dollar which is now wasted will then be
two dollars saved, so that the pecuniary prosperity of war times will be
increased, rather than diminished, and made continuous. Under a
classless administration the world would soon become comparatively rich
and happy.[H]
Representatives of the capitalist class are trying to create the
impression that the co-operative system which our government temporarily
established as a military necessity is socialism, and that the labor
class should seek no more than its restoration and continuance: but this
system is the same old wolf in sheep's clothing.
The rickety house in which we are living is a competitive structure and
it cannot be made into a co-operative one, at least not upon its present
foundation, the sand of capitalistic classism. Industrialism must take
it down and rebuild it upon the rock of classless labor. Neither this
demolition nor this reconstruction constitutes any part of the
government program. Its socialism is a mirage, not a reality, and the
matter-force law renders it necessarily so.
Marxian socialism is simplicity itself. It requires only three
conditions, each of which is perfectly intelligible; but no one of them
ever has existed or could exist under any capitalist government, because
all such governments, not excepting our own, especially not it, are
organized in the interest of parasitic profiteers, not productive
laborers. The three indispensable yet simple prerequisites to this real
socialism or communism are:
First, that the people within a municipality, either town or city,
own and control the utilities within the area occupied by that
municipality, which have to do with the immediate comfort of the
people who live there.
Second, that the people in each state own and control the utilities
that come in contact with the people on a state-wide scale.
Third, that the people within the nation own collectively and
control democratically the utilities which affect us on a national
scale.
Should we desire to go into more detail, we might say that the
things necessary to the individual be owned and controlled by the
individual, that the home be controlled by the family, and so on.
To go into the question on an international scale we might also add
that utilities mutually necessary to all the nations be owned by
the nations, as the Panama Canal, for instance.--Higgins.
Prince Kropotkin, though not a bolshevik, says approvingly of the
Russian revolution that it is trying to build up a society where the
whole produce of the joint efforts of labor by technical skill and
scientific knowledge should go entirely to the commonwealth; and he
declares that for the unavoidable reconstruction of society, by pacific
or any other revolutionary means, there must be a union of all the trade
unions of the world to free the production of the world from its present
enslavement to capitalism.
Higgins and Kropotkin have here put co-operative socialism or communism
in a nutshell both as to its aim and program.
The law of self-preservation is ever the same, but whether its salvation
is for a part of the people by competition--capitalist salvation, or for
the whole people by co-operation--socialist salvation, depends upon
whether it rides or is ridden.
So long as the law of self-preservation was supposed to be the will of a
conscious, personal god whose earthly representatives were kings and
priests or presidents and preachers, the law did the riding within the
large domain of animal competition--the domain of capitalism. War is the
normal, indeed necessary evil of this domain, and hence the world must
have wars so long as it remains within it, and it will remain there so
long as it has celestial divinities with terrestrial representatives in
states and churches for its governors.
Now that the law is known to be a matter-force necessity, not a divine
decree, the time may rationally be hoped for when the people will do the
riding within the small domain of human co-operation--the domain of
socialism. Peace is the normal, indeed necessary, state of this domain,
and hence the world must cease to have war when it enters it, and is
governed by itself instead of by a god and the powers of state and
church alleged to have been ordained by him.
Capital punishment should not be administered, if at all, except to a
murderer whose guilt has been established to the satisfaction of the
great majority of the people in the community to which he belongs, and
never in the case of a suspected murderer of whom this is not true.
If William II were really the devil behind the European war by which
many millions of the young men of the world have lost their lives, and
if Thomas Mooney were really the devil behind the San Francisco
explosion by which ten citizens of California lost their lives, their
punishment by death might be urged with much show of reason as a social
necessity. But if both were hung on the same gallows the world would go
on suffering by the ever recurring and closely related misfortunes of
war and riot as if nothing had happened. The real devil behind all wars
and riots is the capitalist system. There will never be an end of wars
and riots until this devil is overthrown.
The so-called Kaiser-war and the so-called Mooney riot are on the same
footing, both having the character of an insurrection and both having
the aim of self-preservation. The insurrection of the Kaiser was a riot
on behalf of the capitalist class of Germany and for the purpose of
protecting it against the capitalist class of England. The insurrection
of Mooney (assuming his guilt, merely for illustration) was a riot on
behalf of the labor class of California and for the purpose of
protecting it against the capitalist class of that state.
Incidentally, both riots have secondary aims of world-wide extent. The
Kaiser had two of these: to overthrow the commercial supremacy of
England that Germany might have it, and to overthrow industrial
republicanism (socialism) everywhere. Mooney had this: the overthrow of
commercial imperialism (capitalism) everywhere.
As rioters, there is this in common between Kaiser William and Thomas
Mooney, that though moving in opposite directions, they are nevertheless
carried by the same matter-force law which manifests itself in the same
riotous system, capitalism--a system which, under one form or another,
has ever produced international wars and class revolutions; and, so long
as it is allowed to exist, never will cease the production of them.
Hence the interests of the world require not that these rioters, Kaiser
William and Thomas Mooney, should be hung, but that the capitalist
system, which by the operation of the law of self-preservation by animal
competitions, produced both of the riots with which they are
respectively credited, should be overthrown by the labor system, which,
by the operation of the same law of self-preservation by human
co-operation, will put an end to all bloody conflicts.
But taking the popular view concerning the responsibility for this
commercial war and labor riot and assuming that they should be charged
respectively to Kaiser William and Thomas Mooney, why should the
promoter of the little riot die, or worse, suffer imprisonment during
life, and the promoter of the big war live?
Yet, if the Kaiser were captured even by England there is no probability
that he would be turned over to a court constituted of representatives
of the allied nations, tried, found guilty and put to death. Why not?
Because, like all wars, his war, no matter which side won the victory,
has been upon the whole, or will be in the long run, in the interest of
the capitalists of every nation on both sides, at least of the great
ones.
If Kaiser William would not be sent to the gallows by such a court why
should the court which tried Thomas Mooney be allowed to send him to it;
and, especially why, since California is part of a republic, and the
Kaiser's war was on behalf of imperialism and a small minority, while
Mooney's riot was on behalf of republicanism and the overwhelming
majority?
Just now the human part of the world is especially afflicted by
unnecessary and therefore unjustifiable deaths. The Governor of
California has the opportunity to prevent one such death. I say to him,
do it. In the name of Justice and in the name of Humanity, I with
millions of others solemnly call upon him to save Mooney, the
revolutionist, as Pilate, the Governor of Judea, according to the
verdict of all right-thinking men and women, should have saved Jesus,
the revolutionist.
III.
You say in effect that we must postulate a divine consciousness to
account for human consciousness; but, on your theory, how could human
consciousness come out of a divine consciousness; and, anyhow, contrary
to your implication, we know of no consciousness which has come, except
by inheritance, from another consciousness, but only of consciousnesses
which have come from unconsciousnesses.
Your contention, in this connection, is to the effect that nothing can
come out of nothing, and this is the core of a book, "A Short Apology
for Being a Christian in the Twentieth Century," by the learned
ex-president of Trinity College, Hartford, Dr. Williamson Smith, with
whom you have had, I think, some correspondence.
This Apology was written against a letter of mine to the House of
Bishops, entitled, "A Natural Gospel for a Scientific Age," which has
never seen the light, partly because the ex-President convinced me that
if I must give up the orthodox conception of God, I could not hold to
the one which I had worked out in the letter.
If you have not seen the ex-President's book, you will, I am sure, enjoy
it more than I did, but I doubt whether you will profit as much by it,
for it verges towards your lines and away from mine; and so it set me to
studying as it will not you, with the result of rejecting the new
conception of God which I had worked out for myself, but with it I threw
over the old one and ceased to believe in the existence of a conscious,
personal divinity. Of course, my faith in the existence of a spiritual
world and hope for a future life in it went with the god.
Dr. Williamson Smith and you are entirely correct in the contention that
something cannot come out of nothing: but I no longer pretend that it
can and I now see that the stones which have been thrown at me by you
both and others have come from glass houses; for this is really the
pretension of orthodox theologians. They affirm that the universe was
created by God out of nothing, but produce no scrap of evidence for His
existence, and even if they could prove that He exists, they would have
to admit that He came out of nothing, or at least from something which
did so.
It is indeed true that I am unable to tell what matter, force and motion
came from, or if I agree with most physicists that they arose from
ether, I cannot give its derivative; but, granting that I am as
incapable of proving their existence as you are of proving the existence
of the Christian trinity, nevertheless I have this immense advantage
over you, that I can prove that everything both physical and psychical
(including man and his civilization) entering into the constitution of
the universe, lives, moves and has its being in my divine
trinity--matter, force and motion: whereas you cannot prove that
anything is indebted for what it is to your divine trinity--Father, Son
and Spirit: therefore I insist that your trinity is a symbol of mine.
What is true of the Christian trinity is true of all the divinities of
the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion. The Jews live with no
reference to the Christian God, or at least not with any to his second
and third persons, and neither Christians nor Jews do so in the case of
either the Mohammedan or Buddhistic divinity, and so on, all around the
whole circle of gods.
But no representative of any god lives without constant reference to
mine, of which yours and all the others are, as I think, symbols, if
they are anything better than fetishes.
If you and ex-President Smith mean by your fundamental thesis, that a
thing which is essentially different from that from which it came is an
impossibility, you are certainly wrong, for the world is full of such
things. In the tree of life there are millions of examples, since (using
language in its general significance) everything above the amoeba must
be regarded as essentially different from it, though all, including man,
came out of it.
Going back as far as we safely can on solid ground, we come to the
nebulae from which the solar systems of the universe have evolved, and
surely a solar system is as essentially different from the nebula as a
man is from an amoeba. Coming to our earth when its primeval, flaming,
swirling gases had been condensed into inorganic matter, the protoplasm
which is organic matter, arose from it, and so something which grows
from within out, comes from something which grows from without in.
The large hoofed horse came from a small five-toed animal, not much
larger than a rabbit. The piano and the gun are brother and sister, born
of the bow and arrow, yet how different the children from the parent.
An infant is unconscious at birth and what it has of consciousness as a
child and an adult is dependent upon the development of its body.
Moreover, as the human body is a development through animal bodies, we
may logically conclude that human consciousness is ultimately dependent
upon and inherited from animal consciousness rather than a divine one.
Jesus is represented as saying that God is a spirit; and the fathers of
the English part of the Christian reformation said that there is but one
living and true God without body, parts or passions. This is their
explanation of his conception of God.
When the Jesuine definition of God and the Anglican explanation of it
were framed, the Divine Spirit was supposed to be an objective
personality.
Modern psychology teaches that no spirit, divine, human or otherwise, is
a personality. According to this science, spirit and soul are synonyms
for the subjective content of a conscious life, which content consists
of feelings, aspirations, ideals, convictions and determinations.
Psychologists know of no spirit or soul without a body constituted of
parts any more than physicists know of a force without matter
constituted of molecules, atoms, electrons and ions.
Gods represent the religious ideals of people and are symbols of what
they think they should be as religionists. They are symbolic,
emblematic, parabolic, allegoric devices of the imagination, and contain
nothing but the ideal, imaginary things which are put into them by
people for themselves, and they do nothing except what the people
perform through them in their names for themselves.
Matter and force constitute a machine, an automatic one, which produces
things, everything which enters into the constitution of the cosmos, by
evolutionary processes, or rather all such things, and there are no
others, are the result of one universal and eternal process of
evolution.
What is known as nature is the aggregation of the products of this
machine by this process. The machine is unconscious and its workings are
mechanical, yet some of its products rise into self-consciousness with
the power of self-determination, but both the consciousness and the
determination are limited. The infinite consciousness, personality and
determination which are postulated of gods are contradictions.
Of all beings man possesses most of consciousness, personality and
determination. What he has of these is not dependent upon gods, but all
they have of them is dependent upon him. Divine beings are, as to their
self-consciousness, personality and determination, human beings
personified and placed in the sky. Man does everything for gods. They do
nothing for him.
Such are the facts and arguments based upon them, which have forced me
step by step over the long way from the position of supernaturalistic
traditionalism in its Christian form, still occupied by you, to that of
naturalistic scientism in its socialist form which I am now occupying,
as tentatively as possible, pending further study in the light of
additional facts, for which (some six years ago, when I was desperately
battling to prevent the shipwreck of my faith in the god and heaven of
orthodox Christianity) I appealed to about 800 outstanding theologians,
among them yourself, representing all parts of christendom and every
great church, including of course all our bishops among the theologians,
and the Anglican communion among the churches.
You may remember how much of correspondence we had at that time, though
neither you nor any one who kindly tried to reach me with the rope of
the new scientific apologetics for which I appealed, can realize how
eagerly I looked for the replies to my questions, nor the sickness of
heart which I experienced when I saw that, in spite of every possible
effort of my own and help of others, I was slowly but surely drifting
towards what I then thought to be the fatal whirlpools and rocks, but
what I now regard as a sheltered port--the golden gate of that
delectable country, Marxian socialism, the only heaven that I am now
hoping to behold.
You earnestly contend that I am wrong in representing that the majority
of outstanding men of science and scientific philosophers do not believe
in the existence of a conscious, personal divinity, who created,
sustains and governs the universe, or in a conscious, personal life for
man beyond the grave, and that none among such scientists and
philosophers are orthodox Christians.
Prof. Leuba, the Bryn Mawr psychologist, is one among my authorities for
these representations. In his "Belief in God and Immortality" (1916) he
exhibits the results of a recent and thorough-going investigation in a
chart from which it appears that, taking the greater and lesser
representatives of the scientists together, they fall below 50 per cent
as to their belief in God, and be
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