The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

self-denial, which like all habits can become a

pleasure to the mind, and can be transmitted as a tendency or

instinct from generation to generation. They were ordered to

abstain from certain kinds of food; to abstain from fishing and

working in the fields on days sacred to the gods of the waters

and the earth; they were taught to give with generosity not

only in fear, but also in thanksgiving. Even the human

sacrifices which they made were sometimes acts of filial piety

and of tender love. They gave up the slaves whom they valued

most to attend their fathers in the Underworld; or sent their

souls as presents to the gods.

 

But the chief benefit which religionconferred upon mankind,

whether in ancient or in modern times, was undoubtedly the oath.

The priests taught that if a promise was made in the name of the gods,

and that promise was broken, the gods would kill those who took their

name in vain. Such is the true meaning of the Third Commandment.

Before that time treaties of peace and contracts of every kind in

which mutual confidence was required could only be effected by

the interchange of hostages. But now by means of this purely

theological device a verbal form became itself a sacred pledge:

men could at all times confide in one another; and foreign

tribes met freely together beneath the shelter of this useful

superstition which yet survives in our courts of law. In those

days, however, the oath required no law of perjury to sustain

its terrors: as Xenophon wrote, “He who breaks an oath defies

the gods”; and it was believed that the gods never failed

sooner or later to take their revenge.

 

The priests, in order to increase their power, studied the

properties of plants, the movements of the stars; they

cultivated music and the imitative arts; reserving their

knowledge to their own caste, they soon surpassed in mental

capacity the people whom they ruled. And being more

intelligent, they became also more moral, for the conscience is

an organ of the mind; it is strengthened and refined by the

education of the intellect. They learnt from Nature that there

is unity in all her parts; hence they believed that one god or

man-like being had made the heavens and the earth. At first

this god was a despotic tithe-taker like themselves; but as

their own minds became more noble, and more pure; as they began

to feel towards the people a sentiment of paternity and love,

so God, the reflected image of their minds, rose into a

majestic and benignant being, and this idea reacted on their

minds, as the imagination of the artist is inspired by the

masterpiece which he himself has wrought. And, as the Venus of

Milo and the Apollo Belvedere have been endowed by man with a

beauty more exquisite than can be found on earth; a beauty that

may well be termed divine; so the God who is worshipped by

elevated minds is a mental form endowed with power, love, and

virtue in perfection. The Venus and the Apollo are ideals of

the body; God is an ideal of the mind. Both are made by men;

both are superhuman in their beauty; both are human in their

form. To worship the image made of stone is to worship the work

of the human hand. To worship the image made of ideas is to

worship the work of the human brain. God-worship, therefore, is

idolatry; but in the early ages of mankind how fruitful of good

was that error, how ennobling was that chimera of the brain!

For when the priests had sufficiently progressed in the wisdom

of morality to discover that men should act to others, as they

would have others act to them; and that they should never do in

thought what they would not do in deed; then these priests, the

shepherds of the people, desired to punish those who did evil,

and to reward those who did good to their fellow-men; and thus,

always transferring their ideas to the imaginary being whom

they had created, and whom they adored, they believed and they

taught that God punished the guilty, that God rewarded the

good; and when they perceived that men are not requited in this

world according to their deeds, they believed and they taught

that this brief life is merely a preparation for another world;

and that the souls or ghosts will be condemned to eternal

misery, or exalted to everlasting bliss, according to the lives

which they have led within the garment of the flesh.

 

This belief, though not less erroneous than that on which the

terrors of the oath were based; this belief, though not less a

delusion than the faith in ghosts, of which, in fact, it is

merely an extension; this belief, though it will some day

become pernicious to intellectual and moral life, and has

already plundered mankind of thousands and thousands of

valuable minds, exiling earnest and ardent beings from the

main-stream of humanity, entombing them in hermitage or cell,

teaching them to despise the gifts of the intellect which

nature has bestowed, teaching them to waste the precious years

in barren contemplations and in selfish prayers; this belief

has yet undoubtedly assisted the progress of the human race. In

ancient life it exalted the imagination, it purified the heart,

it encouraged to virtue, it deterred from crime. At the present

day a tender sympathy for the unfortunate, a jealous care for

the principles of freedom, a severe public opinion, and a law

difficult to escape are the safeguards of society but there

have been periods in the history of man when the fear of hell

was the only restriction on the pleasure of the rulers; when

the hope of heaven was the only consolation in the misery of

the ruled.

 

The doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future state is

comparatively modern; the authors of the Iliad, the authors of

the Pentateuch, had no conception of a heaven or a hell; they

knew only Hades or Scheol, where men dwelt as shadows, without

pain, without joy; where the wicked ceased from troubling and

the weary were at rest. The sublime conception of a single God

was slowly and painfully attained by a few civilised people in

ancient times. The idea that God is a being of virtue and of

love has not been attained even in the present day except by a

cultivated few. Such is the frailty of the human heart that

men, even when they strive to imagine a perfect being, stain

him with their passions, and raise up an idol which is

defective as a moral form. The God of this country is called a

God of love; but it is said that he punishes the crimes and

even the errors of a short and troubled life with torture which

will have no end. It is not even a man which theologians

create; for no man is quite without pity; no man, however cruel

he might he, could bear to gaze for ever on the horrors of the

fire and the rack; no man could listen for ever to voices

shrieking with pain, and ever crying out for mercy and

forgiveness. And if such is the character of the Christian God,

if such is the idea which is worshipped by compassionate and

cultivated men, what are we to expect in a barbarous age? The

God of Job was a sultan of the skies, who, for a kind of wager,

allowed a faithful servant to be tortured, like that man who

performed vivisection on a favourite dog which licked his hand

throughout the operation. The Jehovah of the Pentateuch was a

murderer and bandit; he rejoiced in offerings of human flesh

The gods of Homer were lascivious and depraved. The gods of

savages are merely savage chiefs.

 

God, therefore, is an image of the mind, and that image is ennobled

and purified from generation to generation, as the mind becomes

more noble and more pure. Europeans believe in eternal punishment,

partly because it has been taught them in their childhood and because

they have never considered what it means; partly because their

imaginations are sluggish, and they are unable to realise its

cruelty; and partly also, it must be feared, because they have

still the spirit of revenge and persecution in their hearts.

The author of Job created God in the image of an Oriental king,

and in the East it is believed that all men by nature belong to

the king, and that he can do no wrong. The Bedouins of the

desert abhorred incontinence as a deadly sin; but brigandage

and murder were not by them considered crimes. In the Homeric

period, piracy was a profession, and vices were the customs of

the land. The character of a god is that of the people who have

made him. When, therefore, I expose the crimes of Jehovah, I

expose the defective morality of Israel; and when I criticise

the God of modern Europe, I criticise the defective intellects

of Europeans. The reader must endeavour to bear this in mind,

for, though he may think that his idea of the creator is

actually the Creator, that belief is not shared by me.

 

We shall now return to the forest and investigate the origin of

intellect; we shall first explain how the aptitude for science

and for art arose; and next how man first became gifted with

the moral sense.

 

The desire to obtain food induces the animal to examine

everything of novel appearance which comes within its range of

observation. The habit is inherited and becomes an instinct,

irrespective of utility. This instinct is curiosity, which in

many animals is so urgent a desire that they will encounter

danger rather than forego the examination of any object which

is new and strange. This propensity is inherited by man, and

again passes through a period of utility. When fire is first

discovered, experiments are made on all kinds of plants, with

the view of ascertaining what their qualities may be. The

remarkable knowledge of herbs which savages possess; their

skill in preparing decoctions which can act as medicines or as

poisons, which can attract or repel wild animals, is not the

result of instinct but of experience; and, as with the lower

animals, the habit of food-seeking is developed into curiosity,

so the habit of searching for edibles, medicine, and poison

becomes the experimental spirit, the passion of inquiry which

animates the lifetime of the scientific man, and which makes

him, even in his last hours, observe his own symptoms with

interest, and take notes on death as it draws near. It has been

said that genius is curiosity. That instinct is at least an

element of genius; it is the chief stimulant of labour; it

keeps the mind alive.

 

The artistic spirit is, in the same manner, developed from the

imitative instinct, the origin of which is more obscure than

that of the inquisitive propensity. However, its purpose is

clear enough; the young animal learns from its parent, by means

of imitation, to feed, to arrange its toilet with beak or

tongue, and to perform all the other offices of life. The hen,

for instance, when she discovers food, pecks the ground, not to

eat, but to show her chickens how to eat, and they follow her

example. The young birds do not sing entirely by instinct, they

receive lessons from their parents. The instinct of imitation,

so essential to the young, remains more or less with the adult,

and outlives its original intent. Animals imitate one another,

and with the monkeys this propensity becomes a mania. It is

inherited by men, with whom even yet it is half an instinct, as

is shown by the fact that all persons, and especially the

young, reflect, in spite