It has been just the same with the history of humanity. The splendid civilization of classical antiquity perished because Christianity, with its faith in a loving God and its hope of a better life beyond the grave, gave a fresh, strong impetus to the soaring human mind. The Papal Church quickly degenerated into a pitiful caricature of real Christianity, and ruthlessly scattered the treasures of knowledge which the Hellenic philosophy had gathered; it gained the dominion of the world through the ignorance of the credulous masses. In time the Reformation broke the chains of this mental slavery, and assisted reason to secure its right once more. But in the new, as in the older, period the great struggle for existence went on in its eternal fluctuation, with no trace of a moral order.
And it is just as impossible for the impartial and critical observer to detect a “wise providence” in the fate of individual human beings as a moral order in the history of peoples. Both are determined with iron necessity by a mechanical causality which connects every single phenomenon with one or more antecedent causes. Even the ancient Greeks recognized ananke, the blind heimarmene, the fate “that rules gods and men,” as the supreme principle of the universe. Christianity replaced it by a conscious Providence, which is not blind, but sees, and which governs the world in patriarchal fashion. The anthropomorphic character of this notion, generally closely connected with belief in a personal God, is quite obvious. Belief in a “loving Father,” who unceasingly guides the destinies of one billion five hundred million men on our planet, and is attentive at all times to their millions of contradictory prayers and pious wishes, is absolutely impossible; that is at once perceived on laying aside the colored spectacles of “faith” and reflecting rationally on the subject.
As a rule, this belief in Providence and the tutelage of a “loving Father” is more intense in the modern civilized man—just as in the uncultured savage—when some good fortune has fallen him: an escape from peril of life, recovery from a severe illness, the winning of the first prize in a lottery, the birth of a long-delayed child, and so forth. When, on the other hand, a misfortune is met with, or an ardent wish is not fulfilled, “Providence” is forgotten. The wise ruler of the world slumbered—or refused his blessing.
In the extraordinary development of commerce of the nineteenth century the number of catastrophes and accidents has necessarily increased beyond all imagination; of that the journal is a daily witness. Thousands are killed every year by shipwreck, railway accidents, mine accidents, etc. Thousands slay each other every year in war, and the preparation for this wholesale massacre absorbs much the greater part of the revenue in the highest civilized nations, the chief professors of “Christian charity.” And among these hundreds of thousands of annual victims of modern civilization strong, industrious, courageous workers predominate. Yet the talk of a “moral order” goes on.
Since impartial study of the evolution of the world teaches us that there is no definite aim and no special purpose to be traced in it, there seems to be no alternative but to leave everything to “blind chance.” This reproach has been made to the transformism of Lamarck and Darwin, as it had been to the previous systems of Kant and Laplace; there are a number of dualist philosophers who lay great stress on it. It is, therefore, worth while to make a brief remark upon it.
One group of philosophers affirms, in accordance with its teleological conception, that the whole cosmos is an orderly system, in which every phenomenon has its aim and purpose; there is no such thing as chance. The other group, holding a mechanical theory, expresses itself thus: The development of the universe is a monistic mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose whatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special result of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly bodies nor in that of the crust of our earth do we find any trace of a controlling purpose—all is the result of chance. Each party is right—according to its definition of chance. The general law of causality, taken in conjunction with the law of substance, teaches us that every phenomenon has a mechanical cause; in this sense there is no such thing as chance. Yet it is not only lawful, but necessary, to retain the term for the purpose of expressing the simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena, which are not causally related to each other, but of which each has its own mechanical cause, independent of that of the other. Everybody knows that chance, in its monistic sense, plays an important part in the life of man and in the universe at large. That, however, does not prevent us from recognizing in each “chance” event, as we do in the evolution of the entire cosmos, the universal sovereignty of nature’s supreme law, the law of substance.
CHAPTER XV
GOD AND THE WORLD
The Idea of God in General—Antithesis of God and the World; the Supernatural and Nature—Theism and Pantheism—Chief Forms of Theism—Polytheism—Triplotheism—Amphitheism—Monotheism—Religious Statistics—Naturalistic Monotheism—Solarism—Anthropistic Monotheism—The Three Great Mediterranean Religions—Mosaism—Christianity—The Cult of the Madonna and the Saints—Papal Polytheism—Islam—Mixotheism—Nature of Theism—An Extra-mundane and Anthropomorphic God; a Gaseous Vertebrate—Pantheism—Intramundane God (Nature)—The Hylozoism of the Ionic Monists (Anaximander)—Conflict of Pantheism and Christianity—Spinoza—Modern Monism—Atheism
For thousands of years humanity has placed the last and supreme basis of all phenomena in an efficient cause, to which it gives the title of God (deus, theos). Like all general ideas, this notion of God has undergone a series of remarkable modifications and transformations in the course of the evolution of reason. Indeed, it may be said that no other idea has had so many metamorphoses; for no other belief affects in so high a degree the chief objects of the mind and of rational science, as well as the deepest interests of the emotion and poetic fancy of the believer.
A comparative criticism of the many different forms of the idea of God would be extremely interesting and instructive; but we have not space for it in the present work. We must be content with a passing glance at the most important forms of the belief and their relation to the modern thought that has been evoked by a sound study of nature. For further information on this interesting question the reader would do well to consult the distinguished work of Adalbert Svoboda, Forms of Faith (1897).
When we pass over the finer shades and the variegated clothing of the God-idea and confine our attention to its chief element, we can distribute all the different presentations of it in two groups—the theistic and pantheistic group. The latter is closely connected with the monistic, or rational, view of things, and the former is associated with dualism and mysticism.
I.—THEISM
In this view God is distinct from, and opposed to, the world as its creator, sustainer, and ruler. He is always conceived in a more or less human form, as an organism which thinks and acts like a man—only on a much higher scale. This anthropomorphic God, polyphyletically evolved by the different races, assumes an infinity of shapes in their imagination, from fetichism to the refined monotheistic religions of the present day. The chief forms of theism are polytheism, triplotheism, amphitheism, and monotheism.
The polytheist peoples the world with a variety of gods and goddesses, which enter into its machinery more or less independently. Fetichism sees such subordinate deities in the lifeless body of nature, in rocks, in water, in the air, in human productions of every kind (pictures, statues, etc.). Demonism sees gods in living organisms of every species—trees, animals, and men. This kind of polytheism is found in innumerable forms even in the lowest tribes. It reaches the highest stage in Hellenic polytheism, in the myths of ancient Greece, which still furnish the finest images to the modern poet and artist. At a much lower stage we have Catholic polytheism, in which innumerable “saints” (many of them of very equivocal repute) are venerated as subordinate divinities, and prayed to to exert their mediation with the supreme divinity.
The dogma of the “Trinity,” which still comprises three of the chief articles of faith in the creed of Christian peoples, culminates in the notion that the one God of Christianity is really made up of three different persons: (1) God the Father, the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth (this untenable myth was refuted long ago by scientific cosmogony, astronomy, and geology); (2) Jesus Christ; and (3) the Holy Ghost, a mystical being, over whose incomprehensible relation to the Father and the Son millions of Christian theologians have racked their brains in vain for the last nineteen hundred years. The Gospels, which are the only clear sources of this triplotheism, are very obscure as to the relation of these three persons to each other, and do not give a satisfactory answer to the question of their unity. On the other hand, it must be carefully noted what confusion this obscure and mystic dogma of the Trinity must necessarily cause in the minds of our children even in the earlier years of instruction. One morning they learn (in their religious instruction) that three times one are one, and the very next hour they are told in their arithmetic class that three times one are three. I remember well the reflection that this confusion led me to in my early school-days.
For the rest, the “Trinity” is not an original element in Christianity; like most of the other Christian dogmas, it has been borrowed from earlier religions. Out of the sun-worship of the Chaldean magi was evolved the Trinity of Ilu, the mysterious source of the world; its three manifestations were Anu, primeval chaos; Bel, the architect of the world; and Aa, the heavenly light, the all-enlightening wisdom. In the Brahmanic religion the Trimurti is also conceived as a “divine unity” made up of three persons—Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the sustainer), and Shiva (the destroyer). It would seem that in this and other ideas of a Trinity the “sacred number, three,” as such—as a “symbolical number”—has counted for something. The three first Christian virtues—Faith, Hope, and Charity—form a similar triad.
According to the amphitheists, the world is ruled by two different gods, a good and an evil principle, God and the Devil. They are engaged in a perpetual struggle, like rival emperors, or pope and anti-pope. The condition of the world is the result of this conflict. The loving God, or good principle, is the source of all that is good and beautiful, of joy and of peace. The world would be perfect if His work were not continually thwarted by the evil principle, the Devil; this being is the cause of all that is bad and hateful, of contradiction and of pain.
Amphitheism is undoubtedly the most rational of all forms of belief in God, and the one which is least incompatible with a scientific view of the world. Hence we find it elaborated in many ancient peoples thousands of years before Christ. In ancient India Vishnu, the preserver, struggles with Shiva, the destroyer. In ancient Egypt the good Osiris is opposed by the wicked Typhon. The early Hebrews had a similar dualism of Aschera (or Keturah), the fertile mother-earth, and Elion (Moloch or Sethos), the stern heavenly father. In the Zend religion of the ancient Persians, founded by Zoroaster two thousand years before Christ, there is a perpetual struggle between Ormuzd, the good god of light, and Ahriman, the wicked god of darkness.
In Christian mythology the Devil is scarcely less conspicuous as the adversary of the good deity, the tempter and seducer, the prince of hell, and lord of darkness. A personal devil was still an important element in the belief of most Christians at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Towards the middle of the century he was gradually eliminated by being progressively explained away, or he was restricted to the subordinate rôle he plays as Mephistopheles in Goethe’s great drama. To-day the majority of educated people look upon “belief in a personal devil” as a mediæval superstition, while “belief in God” (that is, the personal, good, and loving God) is retained as an indispensable element of religion. Yet the one belief is just as much (or as little) justified as the other. In any case, the much-lamented “imperfection of our earthly life,” the “struggle for existence,” and all that pertains to it, are explained much more simply and naturally by this struggle of a good and an evil god than by any other form of theism.
The dogma of the unity of God may in some respects be regarded as the simplest and most natural type of theism; it is popularly supposed to be the most widely accepted element of religion, and to predominate in the ecclesiastical systems of civilized countries. In reality, that is not the case, because this alleged “monotheism” usually turns out on closer inquiry to be one of the other forms of theism we have examined, a number of subordinate deities being generally introduced besides the supreme one. Most of the religions which took a purely monotheistic stand-point have become more or less polytheistic in the course of time. Modern statistics assure us that of the one billion five hundred million men who people the earth the great majority are monotheists; of these, nominally, about six hundred millions are Brahma-Buddhists, five hundred millions are called Christians, two hundred millions are heathens (of various types), one hundred and eighty millions are Mohammedans, ten millions are Jews, and ten millions have no religion at all. However, the vast majority of these nominal monotheists have very confused ideas about the deity, or believe in a number of gods and goddesses besides the chief god—angels, devils, etc.
The different forms which monotheism has assumed in the course of its polyphyletic development may be distributed in two groups—those of naturalistic and anthropistic monotheism. Naturalistic monotheism finds the embodiment of the deity in some lofty and dominating natural phenomenon. The sun, the deity of light and warmth, on whose influence all organic life insensibly and directly depends, was taken to be such a phenomenon many thousand years ago. Sun-worship (solarism, or heliotheism) seems to the modern scientist to be the best of all forms of theism, and the one which may be most easily reconciled with modern monism. For modern astrophysics and geogeny have taught us that the earth is a fragment detached from the sun, and that it will eventually return to the bosom of its parent. Modern physiology teaches us that the first source of organic life on the earth is the formation of protoplasm, and that this synthesis of simple inorganic substances, water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, only takes place under the influence of sunlight. On the primary evolution of the plasmodomous plants followed, secondarily, that of the plasmophagous animals, which directly or indirectly depend on them for nourishment; and the origin of the human race itself is only a later stage in the development of the animal kingdom. Indeed, the whole of our bodily and mental life depends, in the last resort, like all other organic life, on the light and heat rays of the sun. Hence in the light of pure reason, sun-worship, as a form of naturalistic monotheism, seems to have a much better foundation than the anthropistic worship of Christians and of other monotheists who conceive their god in human form. As a matter of fact, the sun-worshippers attained, thousands of years ago, a higher intellectual and moral standard than most of the other theists. When I was in Bombay, in 1881, I watched with the greatest sympathy the elevating rites of the pious Parsees, who, standing on the sea-shore, or kneeling on their prayer-rugs, offered their devotion to the sun at its rise and setting.[31]
Moon-worship (lunarism and selenotheism) is of much less importance than sun-worship. There are a few uncivilized races that have adored the moon as their only deity, but it has generally been associated with a worship of the stars and the sun.
The humanization of God, or the idea that the “Supreme Being” feels, thinks, and acts like man (though in a higher degree), has played a most important part, as anthropomorphic monotheism, in the history of civilization. The most prominent in this respect are the three great religions of the Mediterranean peoples—the old Mosaic religion, the intermediate Christian religion, and the younger Mohammedanism. These three great Mediterranean religions, all three arising on the east coast of the most interesting of all seas, and originating in an imaginative enthusiast of the Semitic race, are intimately connected, not only by this external circumstance of an analogous origin, but by many common features of their internal contents. Just as Christianity borrowed a good deal of its mythology directly from ancient Judaism, so Islam has inherited much from both its predecessors. All the three were originally monotheistic; all three were subsequently overlaid with a great variety of polytheistic features, in proportion as they extended, first along the coast of the Mediterranean with its heterogeneous population, and eventually into every part of the world.
The Hebrew monotheism, as it was founded by Moses (about 1600 B.C.), is usually regarded as the ancient faith which has been of the greatest importance in the ethical and religious development of humanity. This high historical appreciation is certainly valid in the sense that the two other world-conquering Mediterranean religions issued from it; Christ was just as truly a pupil of Moses as Mohammed was afterwards of Christ. So also the New Testament, which has become the foundation of the belief of the highest civilized nations in the short space of nineteen hundred years, rests on the venerable basis of the Old Testament. The Bible, which the two compose, has had a greater influence and a wider circulation than any other book in the world. Even to-day the Bible—in spite of its curious mingling of the best and the worst elements—is in a certain sense the “book of books.” Yet when we make an impartial and unprejudiced study of this notable historical source, we find it very different in several important respects from the popular impression. Here again modern criticism and history have come to certain conclusions which destroy the prevalent tradition in its very foundations.
The monotheism which Moses endeavored to establish in the worship of Jehovah, and which the prophets—the philosophers of the Hebrew race—afterwards developed with great success, had at first to sustain a long and severe struggle with the dominant polytheism which was in possession. Jehovah, or Yahveh, was originally derived from the heaven-god, which, under the title of Moloch or Baal, was one of the most popular of the Oriental deities (the Sethos or Typhon of the Egyptians, and the Saturn or Cronos of the Greeks). There were, however, other gods in great favor with the Jewish people, and so the struggle with “idolatry” continued. Still, Jehovah was, in principle, the only God, explicitly claiming, in the first precept of the decalogue: “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other gods beside me.”
Christian monotheism shared the fate of its mother, Mosaism; it was generally only monotheistic in theory, while it degenerated practically into every kind of polytheism. In point of fact, monotheism was logically abandoned in the very dogma of the Trinity, which was adopted as an indispensable foundation of the Christian religion. The three persons, which are distinguished as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are three distinct individuals (and, indeed, anthropomorphic persons), just as truly as the three Indian deities of the Trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) or the Trinity of the ancient Hebrews (Anu, Bel, and Aa). Moreover, in the most widely distributed form of Christianity the “virgin” mother of Christ plays an important part as a fourth deity; in many Catholic countries she is practically taken to be much more powerful and influential than the three male persons of the celestial administration. The cult of the madonna has been developed to such an extent in these countries that we may oppose it to the usual masculine form of monotheism as one of a feminine type. The “Queen of Heaven” becomes so prominent, as is seen in so many pictures and legends of the madonna, that the three male persons practically disappear.
In addition, the imagination of the pious Christian soon came to increase this celestial administration by a numerous company of “saints” of all kinds, and bands of musical angels, who should see that “eternal life” should not prove too dull. The popes—the greatest charlatans that any religion ever produced—have constantly studied to increase this band of celestial satellites by repeated canonizations. This curious company received its most interesting acquisition in 1870, when the Vatican Council pronounced the popes, as the vicars of Christ, to be infallible, and thus raised them to a divine dignity. When we add the “personal Devil” that they acknowledge, and the “bad angels” who form his court, we have in modern Catholicism, still the most extensive branch of Christianity, a rich and variegated polytheism that dwarfs the Olympic family of the Greeks.
Islam, or the Mohammedan monotheism, is the youngest and purest form of monotheism. When the young Mohammed (born 570) learned to despise the polytheistic idolatry of his Arabian compatriots, and became acquainted with Nestorian Christianity, he adopted its chief doctrines in a general way; but he could not bring himself to see anything more than a prophet in Christ, like Moses. He found in the dogma of the Trinity what every emancipated thinker finds on impartial reflection—an absurd legend which is neither reconcilable with the first principles of reason nor of any value whatever for our religious advancement. He justly regarded the worship of the immaculate mother of God as a piece of pure idolatry, like the veneration of pictures and images. The longer he reflected on it, and the more he strove after a purified idea of deity, the clearer did the certitude of his great maxim appear: “God is the only God”—there are no other gods beside him.
Yet Mohammed could not free himself from the anthropomorphism of the God-idea. His one only God was an idealized, almighty man, like the stern, vindictive God of Moses, and the gentle, loving God of Christ. Still, we must admit that the Mohammedan religion has preserved the character of pure monotheism throughout the course of its historical development and its inevitable division much more faithfully than the Mosaic and Christian religions. We see that to-day, even externally, in its forms of prayer and preaching, and in the architecture and adornment of its mosques. When I visited the East for the first time, in 1873, and admired the noble mosques of Cairo, Smyrna, Brussa, and Constantinople, I was inspired with a feeling of real devotion by the simple and tasteful decoration of the interior, and the lofty and beautiful architectural work of the exterior. How noble and inspiring do these mosques appear in comparison with the majority of Catholic churches, which are covered internally with gaudy pictures and gilt, and are outwardly disfigured by an immoderate crowd of human and animal figures! Not less elevated are the silent prayers and the simple devotional acts of the Koran when compared with the loud, unintelligible verbosity of the Catholic Mass and the blatant music of their theatrical processions.
Under the title of mixotheism we may embrace all the forms of theistic belief which contain mixtures of religious notions of different, sometimes contradictory, kinds. In theory this most widely diffused type of religion is not recognized at all; in the concrete it is the most important and most notable of all. The vast majority of men who have religious opinions have always been, and still are, mixotheists; their idea of God is picturesquely compounded from the impressions received in childhood from their own sect, and a number of other impressions which are received later on, from contact with members of other religions, and which modify the earlier notions. In educated people there is also sometimes the modifying influence of philosophic studies in maturer years, and especially the unprejudiced study of natural phenomena, which reveals the futility of the theistic idea. The conflict of these contradictory impressions, which is very painful to a sensitive soul, and which often remains undecided throughout life, clearly shows the immense power of the heredity of ancient myths on the one hand and the early adaptation to erroneous dogmas on the other. The particular faith in which the child has been brought up generally remains in power, unless a “conversion” takes place subsequently, owing to the stronger influence of some other religion. But even in this supersession of one faith by another the new name, like the old one, proves to be merely an outward label covering a mixture of the most diverse opinions and errors. The greater part of those who call themselves Christians are not monotheists (as they think), but amphitheists, triplotheists, or polytheists. And the same must be said of Islam and Mosaism, and other monotheistic religions. Everywhere we find associated with the original idea of a “sole and triune God” later beliefs in a number of subordinate deities—angels, devils, saints, etc.—a picturesque assortment of the most diverse theistic forms.
All the above forms of theism, in the proper sense of the word—whether the belief assumes a naturalistic or an anthropistic form—represent God to be an extramundane or a supernatural being. He is always opposed to the world, or nature, as an independent being; generally as its creator, sustainer, and ruler. In most religions he has the additional character of personality, or, to put it more definitely still, God as a person is likened to man. “In his gods man paints himself.” This anthropomorphic conception of God as one who thinks, feels, and acts like man prevails with the great majority of theists, sometimes in a cruder and more naïve form, sometimes in a more refined and abstract degree. In any case the form of theosophy we have described is sure to affirm that God, the supreme being, is infinite in perfection, and therefore far removed from the imperfection of humanity. Yet, when we examine closely, we always find the same psychic or mental activity in the two. God feels, thinks, and acts as man does, although it be in an infinitely more perfect form.
The personal anthropism of God has become so natural to the majority of believers that they experience no shock when they find God personified in human form in pictures and statues, and in the varied images of the poet, in which God takes human form—that is, is changed into a vertebrate. In some myths, even, God takes the form of other mammals (an ape, lion, bull, etc.), and more rarely of a bird (eagle, dove, or stork), or of some lower vertebrate (serpent, crocodile, dragon, etc.).
In the higher and more abstract forms of religion this idea of bodily appearance is entirely abandoned, and God is adored as a “pure spirit” without a body. “God is a spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” Nevertheless, the psychic activity of this “pure spirit” remains just the same as that of the anthropomorphic God. In reality, even this immaterial spirit is not conceived to be incorporeal, but merely invisible, gaseous. We thus arrive at the paradoxical conception of God as a gaseous vertebrate.
II.—PANTHEISM
Pantheism teaches that God and the world are one. The idea of God is identical with that of nature or substance. This pantheistic view is sharply opposed in principle to all the systems we have described, and to all possible forms of theism although there have been many attempts made from both sides to bridge over the deep chasm that separates the two. There is always this fundamental contradiction between them, that in theism God is opposed to nature as an extramundane being, as creating and sustaining the world, and acting upon it from without, while in pantheism God, as an intramundane being, is everywhere identical with nature itself, and is operative within the world as “force” or “energy.” The latter view alone is compatible with our supreme law—the law of substance. It follows necessarily that pantheism is the world-system of the modern scientist. There are, it is true, still a few men of science who contest this, and think it possible to reconcile the old theistic theory of human nature with the pantheistic truth of the law of substance. All these efforts rest on confusion or sophistry—when they are honest.
As pantheism is a result of an advanced conception of nature in the civilized mind, it is naturally much younger than theism, the crudest forms of which are found in great variety in the uncivilized races of ten thousand years ago. We do, indeed, find the germs of pantheism in different religions at the very dawn of philosophy in the earliest civilized peoples (in India, Egypt, China, and Japan), several thousand years before the time of Christ; still, we do not meet a definite philosophical expression of it until the hylozoism of the Ionic philosophers, in the first half of the sixth century before Christ. All the great thinkers of this flourishing period of Hellenic thought are surpassed by the famous Anaximander, of Miletus, who conceived the essential unity of the infinite universe (apeiron) more profoundly and more clearly than his master, Thales, or his pupil, Anaximenes. Not only the great thought of the original unity of the cosmos and the development of all phenomena out of the all-pervading primitive matter found expression in Anaximander, but he even enunciated the bold idea of countless worlds in a periodic alternation of birth and death.
Many other great philosophers of classical antiquity, especially Democritus, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, had, in the same or an analogous sense, a profound conception of this unity of nature and God, of body and spirit, which has obtained its highest expression in the law of substance of our modern monism. The famous Roman poet and philosopher, Lucretius Carus, has presented it in a highly poetic form in his poem “De Rerum Natura.” However, this true pantheistic monism was soon entirely displaced by the mystic dualism of Plato, and especially by the powerful influence which the idealistic philosophy obtained by its blending with Christian dogmas. When the papacy attained to its spiritual despotism over the world, pantheism was hopelessly crushed; Giordano Bruno, its most gifted defender, was burned alive by the “Vicar of Christ” in the Campo dei Fiori at Rome on February 17, 1600.
It was not until the middle of the seventeenth century that pantheism was exhibited in its purest form by the great Baruch Spinoza; he gave for the totality of things a definition of substance in which God and the world are inseparably united. The clearness, confidence, and consistency of Spinoza’s monistic system are the more remarkable when we remember that this gifted thinker of two hundred and fifty years ago was without the support of all those sound empirical bases which have been obtained in the second half of the nineteenth century. We have already spoken, in the first chapter, of Spinoza’s relation to the materialism of the eighteenth and the monism of the nineteenth century. The propagation of his views, especially in Germany, is due, above all, to the immortal works of our greatest poet and thinker, Wolfgang Goethe. His splendid God and the World, Prometheus, Faust, etc., embody the great thoughts of pantheism in the most perfect poetic creations.
Atheism affirms that there are no gods or goddesses, assuming that god means a personal, extramundane entity. This “godless world-system” substantially agrees with the monism or pantheism of the modern scientist; it is only another expression for it, emphasizing its negative aspect, the non-existence of any supernatural deity. In this sense Schopenhauer justly remarks: “Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism. The truth of pantheism lies in its destruction of the dualist antithesis of God and the world, in its recognition that the world exists in virtue of its own inherent forces. The maxim of the pantheist, ‘God and the world are one,’ is merely a polite way of giving the Lord God his congé.”
During the whole of the Middle Ages, under the bloody despotism of the popes, atheism was persecuted with fire and sword as a most pernicious system. As the “godless” man is plainly identified with the “wicked” in the Gospel, and is threatened—simply on account of his “want of faith”—with the eternal fires of hell, it was very natural that every good Christian should be anxious to avoid the suspicion of atheism. Unfortunately, the idea still prevails very widely. The atheistic scientist who devotes his strength and his life to the search for the truth, is freely credited with all that is evil; the theistic church-goer, who thoughtlessly follows the empty ceremonies of Catholic worship, is at once assumed to be a good citizen, even if there be no meaning whatever in his faith and his morality be deplorable. This error will only be destroyed when, in the twentieth century, the prevalent superstition gives place to rational knowledge and to a monistic conception of the unity of God and the world.
CHAPTER XVI
KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF
The Knowledge of the Truth and Its Sources: the Activity of the Senses and the Association of Presentations—Organs of Sense and Organs of Thought—Sense-Organs and their Specific Energy—Their Evolution—The Philosophy of Sensibility—Inestimable Value of the Senses—Limits of Sensitive Knowledge—Hypothesis and Faith—Theory and Faith—Essential Difference of Scientific (Natural) and Religious (Supernatural) Faith—Superstition of Savage and of Civilized Races—Confessions of Faith—Unsectarian Schools—The Faith of Our Fathers—Spiritism—Revelation
Every effort of genuine science makes for a knowledge of the truth. Our only real and valuable knowledge is a knowledge of nature itself, and consists of presentations which correspond to external things. We are incompetent, it is true, to penetrate into the innermost nature of this real world—the “thing in itself”—but impartial critical observation and comparison inform us that, in the normal action of the brain and the organs of sense, the impressions received by them from the outer world are the same in all rational men, and that in the normal function of the organs of thought certain presentations are formed which are everywhere the same. These presentations we call true, and we are convinced that their content corresponds to the knowable aspect of things. We know that these facts are not imaginary, but real.
All knowledge of the truth depends on two different, but intimately connected, groups of human physiological functions: firstly, on the sense-impressions of the object by means of sense-action, and, secondly, on the combination of these impressions by an association into presentations in the subject. The instruments of sensation are the sense-organs (sensilla or aestheta); the instruments which form and link together the presentations are the organs of thought (phroneta). The latter are part of the central, and the former part of the peripheral, nervous system—that important and elaborate system of organs in the higher animals which alone effects their entire psychic activity.
Man’s sense-activity, which is the starting-point of all knowledge, has been slowly and gradually developed from that of his nearest mammal relatives, the primates. The sense-organs are of substantially the same construction throughout this highest animal group, and their function takes place always according to the same physical and chemical laws. They have had the same historical development in all cases. In the mammals, as in the case of all other animals, the sensilla were originally parts of the skin; the sensitive cells of the epidermis are the sources of all the different sense-organs, which have acquired their specific energy by adaptation to different stimuli (light, heat, sound, chemical action, etc.). The rod-cells in the retina of the eye, the auditory cells in the cochlea of the ear, the olfactory cells in the nose, and the taste-cells on the tongue, are all originally derived from the simple, indifferent cells of the epidermis, which cover the entire surface of the body. This significant fact can be directly proved by observation of the embryonic development of man or any of the higher animals. And from this ontogenetic fact we confidently infer, in virtue of the great biogenetic law, the important phylogenetic proposition, that in the long historical evolution of our ancestors, likewise, the higher sense-organs with their specific energies were originally derived from the epidermis of lower animals, from a simple layer of cells which had no trace of such differentiated sensilla.
A particular importance attaches to the circumstance that different nerves are qualified to perceive different properties of the environment, and these only. The optic nerve accomplishes only the perception of light, the auditory nerve the perception of sound, the olfactory nerve the perception of smell, and so on. No matter what stimuli impinge on and irritate a given sense-organ, its reaction is always of the same character. From this specific energy of the sense-nerves, which was first fully appreciated by Johannes Müller, very erroneous inferences have been drawn, especially in favor of a dualistic and à priori theory of knowledge. It has been affirmed that the brain, or the soul, only perceives a certain condition of the stimulated nerve, and that, consequently, no conclusion can be drawn from the process as to the existence and nature of the stimulating environment. Sceptical philosophy concluded that the very existence of an outer world is doubtful, and extreme idealism went on positively to deny it, contending that things only exist in our impressions of them.
In opposition to these erroneous views, we must recall the fact that the “specific energy” was not originally an innate, special quality of the various nerves, but it has arisen by adaptation to the particular activity of the epidermic cells in which they terminate. In harmony with the great law of “division of labor” the originally indifferent “sense-cells of the skin” undertook different tasks, one group of them taking over the stimulus of the light rays, another the impress of the sound waves, a third the chemical impulse of odorous substances, and so on. In the course of a very long period these external stimuli effected a gradual change in the physiological, and later in the morphological, properties of these parts of the epidermis, and there was a correlative modification of the sensitive nerves which conduct the impressions they receive to the brain. Selection improved, step by step, such particular modifications as proved to be useful, and thus eventually, in the course of many million years, created those wonderful instruments, the eye and the ear, which we prize so highly; their structure is so remarkably purposive that they might well lead to the erroneous assumption of a “creation on a preconceived design.” The peculiar character of each sense-organ and its specific nerve has thus been gradually evolved by use and exercise—that is, by adaptation—and has then been transmitted by heredity from generation to generation. Albrecht Rau has thoroughly established this view in his excellent work on Sensation and Thought, a physiological inquiry into the nature of the human understanding (1896). It points out the correct significance of Müller’s law of specific sense-energies, adding searching investigations into their relation to the brain, and in the last chapter there is an able “philosophy of sensitivity” based on the ideas of Ludwig Feuerbach. I thoroughly agree with his convincing work.
Critical comparison of sense-action in man and the other vertebrates has brought to light a number of extremely important facts, the knowledge of which we owe to the penetrating research of the nineteenth century, especially of the second half of the century. This is particularly true of the two most elaborate “æsthetic” organs, the eye and the ear. They present a different and more complicated structure in the vertebrates than in the other animals, and have also a characteristic development in the embryo. This typical ontogenesis and structure of the sensilla of all the vertebrates is only explained by heredity from a common ancestor. Within the vertebrate group, however, we find a great variety of structure in points of detail, and this is due to adaptation to their manner of life on the part of the various species, to the increasing or diminishing use of various parts.
In respect of the structure of his sense-organs man is by no means the most perfect and most highly-developed vertebrate. The eye of the eagle is much keener, and can distinguish small objects at a distance much more clearly than the human eye. The hearing of many mammals, especially of the carnivora, ungulata, and rodentia of the desert, is much more sensitive than that of man, and perceives slight noises at a much greater distance; that may be seen at a glance by their large and very sensitive cochlea. Singing birds have attained a higher grade of development, even in respect of musical endowment, than the majority of men. The sense of smell is much more developed in most of the mammals, especially in the carnivora and the ungulata, than in man; if the dog could compare his own fine scent with that of man, he would look down on us with compassion. Even with regard to the lower senses—taste, sex-sense, touch, and temperature—man has by no means reached the highest stage in every respect.
We can naturally only pass judgment on the sensations which we ourselves experience. However, anatomy informs us of the presence in the bodies of many animals of other senses than those we are familiar with. Thus fishes and other lower aquatic vertebrates have peculiar sensilla in the skin which are in connection with special sense-nerves. On the right and left sides of the fish’s body there is a long canal, branching into a number of smaller canals at the head. In this “mucous canal” there are nerves with numerous branches, the terminations of which are connected with peculiar nerve-aggregates. This extensive epidermic sense-organ probably serves for the perception of changes in the pressure, or in other properties, of the water. Some groups are distinguished by the possession of other peculiar sensilla, the meaning of which is still unknown to us.
But it is already clear from the above facts that our human sense-activity is limited, not only in quantity, but in quality also. We can thus only perceive with our senses, especially with the eye and the sense of touch, a part of the qualities of the objects in our environment. And even this partial perception is incomplete, in the sense that our organs are imperfect, and our sensory nerves, acting as interpreters, communicate to the brain only a translation of the impressions received.
However, this acknowledged imperfection of our senses should not prevent us from recognizing their instruments, and especially the eye, to be organs of the highest type; together with the thought-organs in the brain, they are nature’s most valuable gift to man. Very truly does Albrecht Rau say: “All science is sensitive knowledge in the ultimate analysis; it does not deny, but interpret, the data of the senses. The senses are our first and best friends. Long before the mind is developed the senses tell man what he must do and avoid. He who makes a general disavowal of the senses in order to meet their dangers acts as thoughtlessly and as foolishly as the man who plucks out his eyes because they once fell on shameful things, or the man who cuts off his hand lest at any time it should reach out to the goods of his neighbor.” Hence Feuerbach is quite right in calling all philosophies, religions, and systems which oppose the principle of sense-action not only erroneous, but really pernicious. Without the senses there is no knowledge—“Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu,” as Locke said. Twenty years ago I pointed out, in my chapter “On the Origin and Development of the Sense-Organs,”[32] the great service of Darwinism in giving us a profounder knowledge and a juster appreciation of the senses.
The thirst for knowledge of the educated mind is not contented with the defective acquaintance with the outer world which is obtained through our imperfect sense-organs. He endeavors to build up the sense-impressions which they have brought him into valuable knowledge. He transforms them into specific sense-perceptions in the sense-centres of the cortex of the brain, and combines them into presentations, by association, in the thought-centres. Finally, by a further concatenation of the groups of presentations he attains to connected knowledge. But this knowledge remains defective and unsatisfactory until the imagination supplements the inadequate power of combination of the intelligence, and, by the association of stored-up images, unites the isolated elements into a connected whole. Thus are produced new general presentative images, and these suffice to interpret the facts perceived and satisfy “reason’s feeling of causality.”
The presentations which fill up the gaps in our knowledge, or take its place, may be called, in a broad sense, “faith.” That is what happens continually in daily life. When we are not sure about a thing we say, I believe it. In this sense we are compelled to make use of faith even in science itself; we conjecture or assume that a certain relation exists between two phenomena, though we do not know it for certain. If it is a question of a cause, we form a hypothesis; though in science only such hypotheses are admitted as lie within the sphere of human cognizance, and do not contradict known facts. Such hypotheses are, for instance—in physics the theory of the vibratory movement of ether, in chemistry the hypothesis of atoms and their affinity, in biology the theory of the molecular structure of living protoplasm, and so forth.
The explanation of a great number of connected phenomena by the assumption of a common cause is called a theory. Both in theory and hypothesis “faith” (in the scientific sense) is indispensable; for here again it is the imagination that fills up the gaps left by the intelligence in our knowledge of the connection of things. A theory, therefore, must always be regarded only as an approximation to the truth; it must be understood that it may be replaced in time by another and better-grounded theory. But, in spite of this admitted uncertainty, theory is indispensable for all true science; it elucidates facts by postulating a cause for them. The man who renounces theory altogether, and seeks to construct a pure science with certain facts alone (as often happens with wrong-headed representatives of our “exact sciences”), must give up the hope of any knowledge of causes, and, consequently, of the satisfaction of reason’s demand for causality.
The theory of gravitation in astronomy (Newton), the nebular theory in cosmogony (Kant and Laplace), the principle of energy in physics (Meyer and Helmholtz), the atomic theory in chemistry (Dalton), the vibratory theory in optics (Huyghens), the cellular theory in histology (Schleiden and Schwann), and the theory of descent in biology (Lamarck and Darwin), are all important theories of the first rank; they explain a whole world of natural phenomena by the assumption of a common cause for all the several facts of their respective provinces, and by showing that all the phenomena thereof are inter-connected and controlled by laws which issue from this common cause. Yet the cause itself may remain obscure in character, or be merely a “provisional hypothesis.” The “force of gravity” in the theory of gravitation and in cosmogony, “energy” itself in its relation to matter, the “ether” of optics and electricity, the “atom” of the chemist, the living “protoplasm” of histology, the “heredity” of the evolutionist—these and similar conceptions of other great theories may be regarded by a sceptical philosophy as “mere hypotheses” and the outcome of scientific “faith,” yet they are indispensable for us, until they are replaced by better hypotheses.
The dogmas which are used for the explanation of phenomena in the various religions, and which go by the name of “faith” (in the narrower sense), are of a very different character from the forms of scientific faith we have enumerated. The two types, however—the “natural” faith of science and the “supernatural” faith of religion—are not infrequently confounded, so that we must point out their fundamental difference. Religious faith means always belief in a miracle, and as such is in hopeless contradiction with the natural faith of reason. In opposition to reason it postulates supernatural agencies, and, therefore, may be justly called superstition. The essential difference of this superstition from rational faith lies in the fact that it assumes supernatural forces and phenomena, which are unknown and inadmissible to science, and which are the outcome of illusion and fancy; moreover, superstition contradicts the well-known laws of nature, and is therefore irrational.
Owing to the great progress of ethnology during the century, we have learned a vast quantity of different kinds and practices of superstition, as they still survive in uncivilized races. When they are compared with each other and with the mythological notion of earlier ages, a manifold analogy is discovered, frequently a common origin, and eventually one simple source for them all. This is found in the “demand of causality in reason,” in the search for an explanation of obscure phenomena by the discovery of a cause. That applies particularly to such phenomena as threaten us with danger and excite fear, like thunder and lightning, earthquakes, eclipses, etc. The demand for a causal explanation of such phenomena is found in uncivilized races of the lowest grade, transmitted from their primate ancestors by heredity. It is even found in many other vertebrates. When a dog barks at the full moon, or at a ringing bell, of which it sees the hammer moving, or at a flag that flutters in the breeze, it expresses not only fear, but also the mysterious impulse to learn the cause of the obscure phenomenon. The crude beginnings of religion among primitive races spring partly from this hereditary superstition of their primate ancestors, and partly from the worship of ancestors, from various emotional impulses, and from habits which have become traditional.
The religious notions of modern civilized peoples, which they esteem so highly, profess to be on a much higher level than the “crude superstition” of the savage; we are told of the great advance which civilization has made in sweeping it aside. That is a great mistake. Impartial comparison and analysis show that they only differ in their special “form of faith” and the outer shell of their creed. In the clear light of reason the refined faith of the most liberal ecclesiastical religion—inasmuch as it contradicts the known and inviolable laws of nature—is no less irrational a superstition than the crude spirit-faith of primitive fetichism on which it looks down with proud disdain.
And if, from this impartial stand-point, we take a critical glance at the kinds of faith that prevail to-day in civilized countries, we find them everywhere saturated with traditional superstition. The Christian belief in Creation, the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception, the Redemption, the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, and so forth, is just as purely imaginative as the belief in the various dogmas of the Mohammedan, Mosaic, Buddhistic, and Brahmanic religions, and is just as incapable of reconciliation with a rational knowledge of nature. Each of these religions is for the sincere believer an indisputable truth, and each regards the other as heresy and damnable error. The more confidently a particular sect considers itself “the only ark of salvation,” and the more ardently this conviction is cherished, the more zealously does it contend against all other sects and give rise to the fearful religious wars that form the saddest pages in the book of history. And all the time the unprejudiced “critique of pure reason” teaches us that all these different forms of faith are equally false and irrational, mere creatures of poetic fancy and uncritical tradition. Rational science must reject them all alike as the outcome of superstition.
The incalculable injury which irrational superstition has done to credulous humanity is conspicuously revealed in the ceaseless conflict of confessions of faith. Of all the wars which nations have waged against each other with fire and sword the religious wars have been the bloodiest; of all the forms of discord that have shattered the happiness of families and of individuals those that arise from religious differences are still the most painful. Think of the millions who have lost their lives in Christian persecutions, in the religious conflicts of Islam and of the Reformation, by the Inquisition, and under the charge of witchcraft. Or think of the still greater number of luckless men who, through religious differences, have been plunged into family troubles, have lost the esteem of their fellow-citizens and their position in the community, or have even been compelled to fly from their country. The official confession of faith becomes most pernicious of all when it is associated with the political aims of a modern state, and is enforced as “religious instruction” in our schools. The child’s mind is thus early diverted from the pursuit of the truth and impregnated with superstition. Every friend of humanity should do all in his power to promote unsectarian schools as one of the most valuable institutions of the modern state.
The great value which is, none the less, still very widely attached to sectarian instruction is not only due to the compulsion of a reactionary state and its dependence on a dominant clericalism, but also to the weight of old traditions and “emotional cravings” of various kinds. One of the strongest of these is the devout reverence which is extended everywhere to sectarian tradition, to the “faith of our fathers.” In thousands of stories and poems fidelity to it is extolled as a spiritual treasure and a sacred duty. Yet a little impartial study of the history of faith suffices to show the absurdity of the notion. The dominant evangelical faith of the second half of the nineteenth century is essentially different from that of the first half, and this again from that of the eighteenth century. The faith of the eighteenth century diverges considerably from the “faith of our fathers” of the seventeenth, and still more from that of the sixteenth, century. The Reformation, releasing enslaved reason from the tyranny of the popes, is naturally regarded by them as darkest heresy; but even the faith of the papacy itself had been completely transformed in the course of a century. And how different is the faith of the Christian from that of his heathen ancestors. Every man with some degree of independent thought frames a more or less personal religion for himself, which is always different from that of his fathers; it depends largely on the general condition of thought in his day. The further we go back in the history of civilization, the more clearly do we find this esteemed “faith of our fathers” to be an indefensible superstition which is undergoing continual transformation.
One of the most remarkable forms of superstition, which still takes a very active part in modern life, is spiritism. It is a surprising and a lamentable fact that millions of educated people are still dominated by this dreary superstition; even distinguished scientists are entangled in it. A number of spiritualist journals spread the faith far and wide, and our “superior circles” do not scruple to hold séances in which “spirits” appear, rapping, writing, giving messages from “the beyond,” and so on. It is a frequent boast of spiritists that even eminent men of science defend their superstition. In Germany, A. Zöllner and Fechner are quoted as instances; in England, Wallace and Crookes. The regrettable circumstance that physicists and biologists of such distinction have been led astray by spiritism is accounted for, partly by their excess of imagination and defect of critical faculty, and partly by the powerful influence of dogmas which a religious education imprinted on the brain in early youth. Moreover, it was precisely through the famous séances at Leipzig, in which the physicists, Zöllner, Fechner, and Wilhelm Weber, were imposed on by the clever American conjuror, Slade, that the fraud of the latter was afterwards fully exposed; he was discovered to be a common impostor. In other cases, too, where the alleged marvels of spiritism have been thoroughly investigated, they have been traced to a more or less clever deception; the mediums (generally of the weaker sex) have been found to be either smart swindlers or nervous persons of abnormal irritability. Their supposed gift of “telepathy” (or “action at a distance of thought without material medium”) has no more existence than the “voices” or the “groans” of spirits, etc. The vivid pictures which Carl du Prel, of Munich, and other spiritists give of their phenomena must be regarded as the outcome of a lively imagination, together with a lack of critical power and of knowledge of physiology.
The majority of religions have, in spite of their great differences, one common feature, which is, at the same time, one of their strongest supports in many quarters. They declare that they can elucidate the problem of existence, the solution of which is beyond the natural power of reason, by the supernatural way of revelation; from that they derive the authority of the dogmas which in the guise of “divine laws” control morality and the practical conduct of life. “Divine” inspirations of that kind form the basis of many myths and legends, the human origin of which is perfectly clear. It is true that the God who reveals himself does not always appear in human shape, but in thunder and lightning, storm and earthquake, fiery bush or menacing cloud. But the revelation which he is supposed to bring to the credulous children of men is always anthropomorphic; it invariably takes the form of a communication of ideas or commands which are formulated and expressed precisely as is done in the normal action of the human brain and larynx. In the Indian and Egyptian religions, in the mythologies of Greece and Rome, in the Old and the New Testaments, the gods think, talk, and act just as men do; the revelations, in which they are supposed to unveil for us the secrets of existence and the solution of the great world-enigma, are creations of the human imagination. The “truth” which the credulous discover in them is a human invention; the “childlike faith” in these irrational revelations is mere superstition.
The true revelation—that is, the true source of rational knowledge—is to be sought in nature alone. The rich heritage of truth which forms the most valuable part of human culture is derived exclusively from the experiences acquired in a searching study of nature, and from the rational conclusions which it has reached by the just association of these empirical presentations. Every intelligent man with normal brain and senses finds this true revelation in nature on impartial study, and thus frees himself from the superstition with which the “revelations” of religion had burdened him.
CHAPTER XVII
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
Increasing Opposition between Modern Science and Christian Theology—The Old and the New Faith—Defence of Rational Science against the Attacks of Christian Superstition, especially against Catholicism—Four Periods in the Evolution of Christianity: I. Primitive Christianity (the First Three Centuries)—The Four Canonical Gospels—The Epistles of Paul—II. The Papacy (Ultramontane Christianity)—Retrogression of Civilization in the Middle Ages—Ultramontane Falsification of History—The Papacy and Science—The Papacy and Christianity—III. The Reformation—Luther and Calvin—The Year of Emancipation—IV. The Pseudo-Christianity of the Nineteenth Century—The Papal Declaration of War against Reason and Science: (a) Infallibility, (b) The Encyclica, (c) The Immaculate Conception
One of the most distinctive features of the expiring century is the increasing vehemence of the opposition between science and Christianity. That is both natural and inevitable. In the same proportion in which the victorious progress of modern science has surpassed all the scientific achievements of earlier ages has the untenability been proved of those mystic views which would subdue reason under the yoke of an alleged revelation; and the Christian religion belongs to that group. The more solidly modern astronomy, physics, and chemistry have established the sole dominion of inflexible natural laws in the universe at large, and modern botany, zoology, and anthropology have proved the validity of those laws in the entire kingdom of organic nature, so much the more strenuously has the Christian religion, in association with dualistic metaphysics, striven to deny the application of these natural laws in the province of the so-called “spiritual life”—that is, in one section of the physiology of the brain.
No one has more clearly, boldly, and unanswerably enunciated this open and irreconcilable opposition between the modern scientific and the outworn Christian view than David Friedrich Strauss, the greatest theologian of the nineteenth century. His last work, The Old Faith and the New, is a magnificent expression of the honest conviction of all educated people of the present day who understand this unavoidable conflict between the discredited, dominant doctrines of Christianity and the illuminating, rational revelation of modern science—all those who have the courage to defend the right of reason against the pretensions of superstition, and who are sensible of the philosophic demand for a unified system of thought. Strauss, as an honorable and courageous free-thinker, has expounded far better than I could the principal points of difference between “the old and the new faith.” The absolute irreconcilability of the opponents and the inevitability of their struggle (“for life or death”) have been ably presented on the philosophic side by E. Hartmann, in his interesting work on The Self-Destruction of Christianity.
When the works of Strauss and Feuerbach and The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science of J. W. Draper have been read, it may seem superfluous for us to devote a special chapter to the subject. Yet we think it useful, and even necessary for our purpose, to cast a critical glance at the historical course of this great struggle; especially seeing that the attacks of the “Church militant” on science in general, and on the theory of evolution in particular, have become extremely bitter and menacing of late years. Unfortunately, the mental relaxation which has lately set in, and the rising flood of reaction in the political, social, and ecclesiastical world, are only too well calculated to give point to those dangers. If any one doubts it, he has only to look over the conduct of Christian synods and of the German Reichstag during the last few years. Quite in harmony are the recent efforts of many secular governments to get on as good a footing as possible with the “spiritual regiment,” their deadly enemy—that is, to submit to its yoke. The two forces find a common aim in the suppression of free thought and free scientific research, for the purpose of thus more easily securing a complete despotism.
Let us first emphatically protest that it is a question for us of the necessary defence of science and reason against the vigorous attacks of the Christian Church and its vast army, not of an unprovoked attack of science on religion. And, in the first place, our defence must be prepared against Romanism or Ultramontanism. This “one ark of salvation,” this Catholic Church “destined for all,” is not only much larger and more powerful than the other Christian sects, but it has the exceptional advantage of a vast, centralized organization and an unrivalled political ability. Men of science are often heard to say that the Catholic superstition is no more astute than the other forms of supernatural faith, and that all these insidious institutions are equally inimical to reason and science. As a matter of general theoretical principle the statement may pass, but it is certainly wrong when we look to its practical side. The deliberate and indiscriminate attacks of the ultramontane Church on science, supported by the apathy and ignorance of the masses, are, on account of its powerful organization, much more severe and dangerous than those of other religions.
In order to appreciate correctly the extreme importance of Christianity in regard to the entire history of civilization, and particularly its fundamental opposition to reason and science, we must briefly run over the principal stages of its historical evolution. It may be divided into four periods: (1) primitive Christianity (the first three centuries), (2) papal Christianity (twelve centuries, from the fourth to the fifteenth), (3) the Reformation (three centuries, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth), and (4) modern pseudo-Christianity.
I.—PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
Primitive Christianity embraces the first three centuries. Christ himself, the noble prophet and enthusiast, so full of the love of humanity, was far below the level of classical culture; he knew nothing beyond the Jewish traditions; he has not left a single line of writing. He had, indeed, no suspicion of the advanced stage to which Greek philosophy and science had progressed five hundred years before.
All that we know of him and of his original teaching is taken from the chief documents of the New Testament—the four gospels and the Pauline epistles. As to the four canonical gospels, we now know that they were selected from a host of contradictory and forged manuscripts of the first three centuries by the three hundred and eighteen bishops who assembled at the Council of Nicæa in 327. The entire list of gospels numbered forty; the canonical list contains four. As the contending and mutually abusive bishops could not agree about the choice, they determined to leave the selection to a miracle. They put all the books (according to the Synodicon of Pappus) together underneath the altar, and prayed that the apocryphal books, of human origin, might remain there, and the genuine, inspired books might be miraculously placed on the table of the Lord. And that, says tradition, really occurred! The three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all written after them, not by them, at the beginning of the second century) and the very different fourth gospel (ostensibly “after” John, written about the middle of the second century) leaped on the table, and were thenceforth recognized as the inspired (with their thousand mutual contradictions) foundations of Christian doctrine. If any modern “unbeliever” finds this story of the “leap of the sacred books” incredible, we must remind him that it is just as credible as the table-turning and spirit-rapping that are believed to take place to-day by millions of educated people; and that hundreds of millions of Christians believe just as implicitly in their personal immortality, their “resurrection from the dead,” and the Trinity of God—dogmas that contradict pure reason no more and no less than that miraculous bound of the gospel manuscripts.
The most important sources after the gospels are the fourteen separate (and generally forged) epistles of Paul. The genuine Pauline epistles (three in number, according to recent criticism—to the Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians) were written before the canonical gospels, and contain less incredible miraculous matter than they. They are also more concerned than the gospels to adjust themselves with a rational view of the world. Hence the advanced theology of modern times constructs its “ideal Christianity” rather on the base of the Pauline epistles than on the gospels, so that it has been called “Paulinism.”
The remarkable personality of Paul, who possessed much more culture and practical sense than Christ, is extremely interesting, from the anthropological point of view, from the fact that the racial origin of the two great religious founders is very much the same. Recent historical investigation teaches that Paul’s father was of Greek nationality, and his mother of Jewish.[33] The half-breeds of these two races, which are so very distant in origin (although they are branches of the same species, the homo mediterraneus), are often distinguished by a happy blending of talents and temperament, as we find in many recent and actual instances. The plastic Oriental imagination and the critical Western reason often admirably combine and complete each other. That is visible in the Pauline teaching, which soon obtained a greater influence than the earliest Christian notions. Hence it is not incorrect to consider Paulinism a new phenomenon, of which the father was the philosophy of the Greeks, and the mother the religion of the Jews. Neoplatonism is an analogous combination.
As to the real teaching and aims of Christ (and as to many important aspects of his life) the views of conflicting theologians diverge more and more, as historical criticism (Strauss, Feuerbach, Baur, Renan, etc.) puts the accessible facts in their true light, and draws impartial conclusions from them. Two things, certainly, remain beyond dispute—the lofty principle of universal charity and the fundamental maxim of ethics, the “golden rule,” that issues therefrom; both, however, existed in theory and in practice centuries before the time of Christ (cf. chap. xix.). For the rest, the Christians of the early centuries were generally pure Communists, sometimes “Social Democrats,” who, according to the prevailing theory in Germany to-day, ought to have been exterminated with fire and sword.