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

place, I admit that the worship and contemplation

of a man-like but ideal Being must have, through the law of

imitation, an ennobling effect on the mind of the idolater, but

only so long as the belief in such a Being harmonises with the

intellect. It has been shown that this theory of a benignant

God is contradicted by the laws of Nature. We must judge of the

tree by its fruits; we must judge of the maker by that which he

has made. The Author of the world invented not only the good

but also the evil in the world; he invented cruelty; he

invented sin. If he invented sin how can he be otherwise than

sinful? And if he invented cruelty how can he be otherwise than

cruel? From this inexorable logic we can only escape by giving

up the hypothesis of a personal Creator. Those who believe in a

God of Love must close their eyes to the phenomena of life, or

garble the universe to suit their theory. This, it is needless

to say, is injurious to the intellect; whatever is injurious to

the intellect is injurious to morality; and, therefore, the

belief in a God of Love is injurious to morality. God-worship

must be classed with those provisional expedients, Famine, War,

Slavery, the Inequality of Conditions, the Desire of Gain,

which Nature employs for the development of man, and which she

throws aside when they have served her turn, as a carpenter

changes his tools at the various stages of his work.

 

The abolition of this ancient and elevated faith; the

dethronement of God; the extinction of piety as a personal

feeling; the destruction of an Image made of golden thoughts in

the exquisite form of an Ideal Man, and tenderly enshrined in

the human heart — these appear to be evils, and such

undoubtedly they are. But the conduct of life is a choice of

evils. We can do nothing that is exclusively and absolutely

good. Le genre humain n’est pas place entre le bien et le mal,

mais entre le mal et le pire. No useful inventions can be

introduced without some branch of industry being killed and

hundreds of worthy men being cast, without an occupation, on

the world. All mental revolutions are attended by catastrophe.

The mummeries and massacres of the German Reformation, though

known only to scholars, were scarcely less horrible than those

of Paris in 1793, and both periods illustrate the same law. I

have facts in my possession which would enable me to show that

the abolition of the slave-trade, that immortal and glorious

event, caused the death of many thousand slaves, who were

therefore actually killed by Sharp, Clarkson, Wilberforce, and

their adherents. But by means of abolition millions of lives

have since been saved. The first generation suffered; prisoners

were captured to be sold, and the market having been

suppressed, were killed. This was undoubtedly an evil. But then

the slave-making wars came to an end, and there was peace. In

the same manner I maintain that even should the present

generation be injured by the abolition of existing faiths, yet

abolition would be justified. Succeeding generations would

breathe an atmosphere of truth instead of being reared in an

atmosphere of falsehood, and we who are so deeply indebted to

our ancestors have incurred obligations towards our posterity.

Let us therefore purify the air, and if the light kills a few

sickly plants which have become acclimatised to impurity and

darkness, we must console ourselves with the reflection that in

Nature it is always so, and that of two evils we have chosen

that which is the least.

 

But the dangers of the Truth are not so great as is commonly

supposed. It is often said that if the fears of hell-fire were suddenly

removed men would abandon themselves with out restraint to their

propensities and appetites; that recklessness and despair would take

possession of the human race, and society would be dissolved. But I

believe that the fears of hell-fire have scarcely any power upon earth at

all, and that when they do act upon the human mind it is to

make it pious, not to make it good. A metaphysical theory

cannot restrain the fury of the passions: as well attempt to

bind a lion with a cobweb. Prevention of crime it is well known

depends not on the severity but on the certainty of

retribution. Just as a criminal is often acquitted by the jury

because the penalties of the law are disproportione to the

magnitude of the offence, so the diabolic laws which inflict an

eternal punishment for transitory sins have been tempered by a

system of free pardons which deprive them of any efficiency

they might have once possessed. What would be the use of laws

against murder if the condemned criminal could obtain his

liberty by apologising to the Queen? Yet such is the Christian

system, which, though in one sense beautiful on account of its

mercy, is also immoral on account of its indulgence. The

supposition that the terrors of hell-fire are essential or even

conducive to good morals is contradicted by the facts of

history. In the Dark Ages there was not a man or a woman, from

Scotland to Naples, who doubted that sinners were sent to hell.

The religion which they had was the same as ours, with this

exception, that everyone believed in it. The state of Europe in

that pious epoch need not be described.

 

Society is not maintained by the conjectures of theology, but by those

moral sentiments, those gregarious virtues, which elevated men above

the animals, which are now instinctive in our natures, and to

which intellectual culture is propitious. For, as we become

more and more enlightened, we perceive more and more clearly

that it is with the whole human population as it was with the

primeval clan; the welfare of every individual is dependent on

the welfare of the community, and the welfare of the community

depends on the welfare of every individual. Our conscience

teaches us it is right, our reason teaches us it is useful,

that men should live according to the Golden Rule. This conduct

of life is therefore enjoined upon every man by his own

instincts, and also by the voice of popular opinion. Those

cannot be happy who are detested and despised by their fellow-men; and as for those, the outlaws of society, who, like

domestic animals run wild, herd together in secret places, and,

faithful only to their own gang, make war upon mankind, the

Law, which is seldom evaded, the Law, which never forgives,

chases them from den to den, and makes their lives as full of

misery as they are full of crime.

 

The current religion is indirectly adverse to morals, because

it is adverse to the freedom of the intellect. But it is also

directly adverse to morals by inventing spurious and bastard

virtues. One fact must be familiar to all those who have any

experience of human nature—a sincerely religious man is often

an exceedingly bad man. Piety and vice frequently live together

in the same dwelling, occupying different chambers, but

remaining always on the most amicable terms. Nor is there

anything remarkable in this. Religion is merely loyalty: it is

just as irrational to expect a man to be virtuous because he

goes to church, as it would be to expect him to be virtuous

because he went to court. His king, it is true, forbids

immorality and fraud. But the chief virtues required are of the

lickspittle denomination — what is called “a humble and a

contrite heart.” When a Christian sins as a man, he makes

compensation as a courtier. When he has injured a fellow-creature, he goes to church with more regularity, he offers up

more prayers, he reads a great number of chapters in the Bible,

and so he believes that he has cleared off the sins that are

laid to his account. This, then, is the immorality of religion

as it now exists. It creates artificial virtues and sets them

off against actual vices. Children are taught to do this and

that, not because it is good, but to please the king. When

Christians are informed that not only our physical but our

moral actions are governed by unchangeable law, and that the

evil treatment of the mind, like the evil treatment of the

body, is punished by a loss of happiness and health, they cry

out against a doctrine which is so just and so severe. They are

like the young Roman nobles who complained when the Tarquins

were expelled, saying, that a king was a human being, that he

could be angry and forgive, that there was room for favour and

kindness, but that the law was a deaf and inexorable thing —

leges rem surdam inexorabilem esse; that it allowed of no

relaxation and indulgence — nihil laxa-menti nec veniae

habere, and that it was a dangerous thing for weak and erring

men to live by their integrity alone — periculosum esse in tot

humanis erroribus sola innocentia vivere. Christians believe

themselves to be the aristocracy of heaven upon earth; they are

admitted to the spiritual court, while millions of men in

foreign lands have never been presented. They bow their knees

and say that they are miserable sinners, and their hearts

rankle with abominable pride. Poor infatuated fools! Their

servility is real, and their insolence is real, but their king

is a phantom and their palace is a dream.

 

Even with Christians of comparatively blameless lives their

religion is injurious. It causes a waste of moral force. There

are passionate desires of virtue, yearnings for the good, which

descend from time to time like a holy spirit upon all

cultivated minds, and from which, strange as it may seem, not

even freethinkers are excluded. When such an impulse animates

the godless man he expends it in the service of mankind; the

Christian wastes it on the air; he fasts, he watches, and he

prays. And what is the object of all his petitions and salaams?

He will tell you that he is trying to save his soul. But the

strangest feature in the case is this. He not only thinks that

it is prudent and wise on his part to improve his prospects of

happiness in a future state; he considers it the noblest of all

virtues. But there is no great merit in taking care of one’s

own interests whether it be in this world or the next. The man

who leads a truly religious life in order to go to heaven is

not more to be admired than the man who leads a regular and

industrious life in order to make a fortune in the city; and

the man who endeavours to secure a celestial inheritance by

going to church, and by reading chapters in the Bible, and by

having family prayers, and by saying grace in falsetto with

eyes hypocritically closed, is not above the level of those who

fawn and flatter at Oriental courts in order to obtain a

monopoly or an appointment.

 

The old proverb holds good in religious as in ordinary life,

that self-preservation is the first law of Nature. As long as

men believe that there is a god or king who will listen to

their prayers and who will change his mind at their request; as

long as they believe that they can obtain a mansion in the

heavenly Belgravia, so long they will place the duties of the

courtier above the duties of the man, so long they will believe

that flattery is pleasing to the Most High, so long they will

believe that they can offend against the law and escape the

penalties of the law, so long they will believe that acts of

devotion may be balanced against acts of immorality, so long