The Creation of God, Jacob Hartmann [e manga reader TXT] 📗

The most primitive rules were instinctively adopted in the lower order of animal life, the laws of self-preservation and mutual protection.

The individual conduct, in either family or community life, is governed accordingly. That is very evident, and requires but little observation to find the secret spring that explains the necessity for its existence.

If a community, whether animals or men, are favorably located, have ample provision and comfort, they will live in peace and contentment, thrive, develop, without friction or trouble. Let a lack of food arise, or let the numbers increase and produce a scarcity, strife is inevitable. New, other than peaceful, methods are adopted. Either they quarrel and battle among themselves, or they go in search of food elsewhere—emigrate, in part or as a whole. If they meet with opposition, they will fight—the strongest takes possession, might asserts its right, and the conquerer becomes the ruling power.

In the early stages of human civilization, thousands of years ago, the simplest primitive rules were established for the conduct and guidance of the individual living in the community—for, of course, mutual protection and self-preservation. Humanity in a barbarous state adopted these rules, and handed them down from generation to generation until at length they were codified into laws. What are they?

Honor thy parents.

Do not commit murder.

Do not take another man’s wife.

Do not bear false witness.

Do not take anything belonging to another.

These are laws for self-preservation and mutual protection! If such simple rules were not recognized and established, neither life nor property would be safe. Destruction of life and forcible possession of property would naturally lead to extermination.

The family union is instinctive. The father, like the leader of a flock, is in authority. He is feared, therefore honored.

A community soon learns from experience that “in union is strength.” Herds of cattle seem to know this, and are ever ready to protect and defend themselves collectively.

The lowest savages, barbarians, observe among themselves the first, yes, primitive rules to govern them in community, in family.

These rules arose from necessity. It was for each individual’s interest, for family interest, and for the interest of the community at large, to adopt these rules, obey them and have them obeyed. These rules were for individual welfare, and for the common welfare of the community at large, the preservation of their lives and the protection of their life and property.

So long as any community of human beings, whatever be their condition, have ample provision to satisfy their wants, and are secure from depredations from without, there will be no trouble. Happiness and contentment, as well as peace and prosperity, will characterize their state.

As to the relation between males and females, that regulates itself. All communities, barbarians and savages, have always some general recognized rule to guide them. Female chastity is secure among all nations, high and low, civilized and uncivilized, whether they are decorated in a complete suit of nudity, a gauze covering, or a ball-room dress. There is no necessity of going back four or five thousand years. Cæsar relates (Lib. vi, 21) that the Germans were in complete undress costume when bathing promiscuously; yet they had their customs of marriage and marriage ceremonies. In this country we have had the same customs and may have again. When Columbus arrived at one of the islands of the Caribs, 1494, a cacique and his family paid him a visit. This family consisted of two daughters, five sons, and five brothers. “One of the daughters was eighteen years of age, beautiful in form and countenance; her sister somewhat younger; both were naked, according to the custom of these islands, but were of modest demeanor” (Irving).

As a further illustration I quote from Irving’s description of the people that Peter Martyr met with. He relates: “It is certain that the land among the people is as common as the sun and water; and that ‘mine and thine,’ the seed of all mischief, have no place with them. They are content with so little, that in so large a country they have rather superfluity than scarceness; so they seem to live in the golden world, without toil, living in open gardens; not intrenched with dykes, divided with hedges, or defended with walls. They deal truly one with another, without laws, without books, without judges. They take him for an evil and mischievous man who taketh pleasure in doing hurt to another; and albeit they delight not in superfluities, yet they make provision for the increase of such roots whereof they make their bread, content with such simple diet, whereby health is preserved and disease avoided.”

Possibly somewhere on the African continent there may still exist a people that live a life as simple and as happy as those in the time of Columbus. But everything must yield before northern energy and Christian greed; besides, the new-comers need the land for their surplus population.

May we not ask, Is not our present high state of civilization the natural outcome of our necessities in the struggle to exist? Is not our high state of nervous development largely due to that struggle?

Indolence and inactivity produce nothing. Activity and diligence produce and invent all things.

All wrongful acts committed are either injuries done to ourselves, or injuries inflicted upon others.

Injuries done to ourselves are not necessarily sins. Onanism, for example, is unquestionably injurious, yet is not recognized as a sin. It leads to the insane asylum, and in many instances underlies religious insanity.

There are other disgusting practices that are neither injurious nor recognized as sins.

The stomach commits no sin, but leads nevertheless to many wrongs, to one’s self.

All crimes are sins, but all sins are not crimes. And all injuries done to others are accounted both sins and crimes.

What seems very strange yet is wonderfully true is that all sins and crimes against others find their origin in the indulgence of either stomach or sexual organs.

Starvation may lead to crime. Hunger often drives to theft. Extravagance, lust, and luxury lead to any variety of crime, from forgery to appropriating another man’s wife.

In the gratification of those two organs, passions, we find the cradle of all crime.

And what we call morality means the proper regulation of these passions, of these organs.

The church occasionally takes cognizance of sins, when discovered, that do not come within the category of crime, as was seen recently in the case of a Major Theobald who seduced his niece while nursing his invalid wife; he was suspended for one year, but saved his soul!

All our civil justices in the city of New York are kept busy to regulate and to punish overindulgences of the stomach and some other petty wrongs. Our criminal courts are kept busy in punishing those who have wrongfully appropriated other people’s property, or injured or killed another.

The superior civil courts attend to the disputes about property.

Why do those who adopt for their mode of livelihood the profession of theology want to exercise salvation? What have they to save?

Let us examine for what sins the Deluge was brought, Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, and Christ was crucified.

The principal scriptural sins:

Cain commits murder, from jealousy, because God preferred meat to vegetables (Gen. iv, 8).

Gen. vi, 5: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” The contents of this sentence is absurd. The heart cannot imagine, or think. The function of the heart is the circulation of the blood.

What this wickedness consisted of, we do not know.

History has no record exactly where this Flood or Deluge took place. That it was localized is certain. It was in all probability nothing more than an overflow of the river Euphrates—that is joined by the river Tigris, and terminates in the Gulf of Persia—in consequence of a series of consecutive rainstorms, etc., and God had as much to do with this supposed deluge as he has to do with any deluge in the Mississippi valley when that river overflows.

Gen. vi, 6: “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him at his heart.” Now we are getting at God’s anatomy!

Man may labor under delusions—hear voices, etc. All those extravagant statements are perfectly excusable from our modern standpoint.

All this wickedness is supposed to have taken place 2348 before the Christian era, and we have still the same sort of wickedness on earth as there was then. Barbarians inhabited that region—rude, crude, half-civilized herdsmen, not much superior to our Indians. Minding their flocks and increasing their families was their main occupation. Abraham made no scruples in cohabiting with Miss Hagar, Sarah’s maid; nor had Jacob any objections to Miss Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, nor did he scruple to accommodate Miss Zilpha, Leah’s maid, and later we read how Reuben lay with Bilhah, Jacob’s mistress. Shechem seduced Dina, Jacob’s daughter. Her brothers Simon and Levi killed all the males, etc. At this time, we learn, harlots were in fashion.

We have it recited, crime after crime—according to our modern notions—yet these barbarians were God’s own people! After killing Shechem, and Hamor his father, and all the rest of the males, they took possession of their property. Lot and his daughters is another instance of biblical ethics.

This barbarian family, these shepherds, had their first experience in civilization when they reached Egypt, and whatever they practiced later was adopted from that nation. They had received some training under Egyptian rule for nearly four hundred and thirty years. During this period we hear nothing of sin or transgression. No sooner were they organized as a community than the sins, transgressions, and wickedness broke out anew, and continued right along in a greater or lesser degree through the patriarchal period, theocratic period, and monarchial period. During the entire national existence of nearly one thousand years to their captivity, we have recited sins, transgressions, and crime, crime, transgressions, and sin; and all are perfectly human, perfectly natural among barbarians, savages, half-civilized, and even civilized people. Whether David lusts after a nude woman, or Amnon forces his own sister, it reveals the weakness of animal human nature, and is a breach of the recognized laws, and a lack of discipline.

All through the Old Testament the same story is repeated—sensuality, cruelty, and crime; and rebellion against the established laws. It is the burden of song and of prophecy—greed and scramble for power, the cause of continual dissension. The only time the Jews were reasonably quiet was when they were exterminating other nations, plundering and taking forcible possession of their women and female children as well as their property. The great burden of sin throughout the Old Testament consists in the infringement of the law established by Moses, to worship no other god except the one he manufactured—that is, a God endowed with all brutality and sensuality, without a representative form, a God that had all the senses and could utilize them. The wooden idol had these organs but could not use them, while the Mosaic God had them not but could exercise all the functions of animal life. In the light of history, all ages display the same process in the human mind—the same passions and the same tendencies, held more or less under restraint, according to the laws, customs, and habits of the people. The Jews during their whole career were more or less idolators, and were continually relapsing into the idolatry, of some one kind or another, of dead men, which was practiced under different celestial or animal emblems in the neighboring countries. And it