The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) π
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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away. Blessed be the name of the king!β The man who lives in a distant
province, who knows the king only by means of the taxes which are
collected in his name, will snatch up his arms if he hears that his sacred
person is in danger, and will defend him as he defends his children and
his home. He will sacrifice his life for one whom he has never seen, and
who has never done him anything but harm.
This kind of devotion is called loyalty when exhibited towards a king,
piety when exhibited towards a god. But in either case the sentiment is
precisely the same. It cannot be too often repeated that god is only a
special name for king; that religion is a form of government, its precepts a
code of laws; that priests are gatherers of divine taxes, officers of divine
police; that men resort to churches to fall on their knees and to sing
hymns from the same servile propensity which makes the Oriental delight
in prostrating himself before the throne; that the noble enthusiasm which
inspires men to devote themselves to the service of their god, and to
suffer death rather than deny his name, is identical with the devotion of
the faithful subject who, to serve his royal master, gives up his fortune or
his life without the faintest prospect of reward. The religious sentiment,
about which so much has been said, has nothing distinctive in itself.
Love and fear, self-denial and devotion, existed before those phantoms
were created which men call gods, and men have merely applied to
invisible kings the sentiments which they had previously felt towards
their earthly kings. If they are a people in a savage state they hate both
kings and gods within their hearts, and obey them only out of fear. If
they are a people in a higher state love is mingled with their fear,
producing an affectionate awe which in itself is pleasing to the mind.
That the worship of the unseen king should survive the worship of the
earthly king is natural enough, but even that will not endure for ever; the
time is coming when the crowned idea will be cast aside and the despotic
shadow disappear.
By thus translating, or by re-translating, god into king, piety into loyalty,
and so on; by bearing in mind that the gods were not abstract ideas to our
ancestors as they are to us, but bona fide men differing only from men on
earth in their invisibility and other magic powers; by noting that the moral
disposition of a god is an image of the moral sense of those who worship
himβtheir beau-ideal of what a king should be; by observing that the
number and arrangement of the gods depend exclusively on the
intellectual faculties of the people concerned, on their knowledge of
nature, and perhaps to some extent on the political forms of government
under which they live: above all by remembering that there is a gradual
development in supernatural ideas, the student of comparative religion
will be able to sift and classify with ease and clearness dense masses of
mythology. But he must understand that the various stages overlap. Just
as sailing vessels and four-horse coaches are still used in this age of
steam, and as stone implements were still to be found in use long after the
age of iron had set in, so in the early period of god-belief thing-worship
still to a certain extent endured. In a treaty between Hannibal and Philip
of Macedonia which Polybius preserved, the contracting parties take oath
with one another βn the presence of Jupiter, Juno, and Apollo; in the
presence of the deity of the Carthaginians and of Hercules and of Iolaus;
in the presence of Mars, Triton, and Neptune; in the presence of all the
gods who are with us in the camp; and of the sun, the moon, and the
earth; the rivers, the lakes, and the waters.β In the time of Socrates the
Athenians regarded the sun as an individual. Alexander, according to
Arian, sacrificed not only to the gods of the sea but βthe sea itself was
honoured with is munificence.β Even in Job, the purest of all
monotheistic works, the stars are supposed to be live creatures which sing
around the heavenly throne.
Again, in those countries where two distinct classes of men exist, the one
intellectual and learned, the other illiterate and degraded, there will be in
reality two religions, though nominally there may be only one. Among
the ancient Sabaeans the one class adored spirits who inhabited the stars,
the other class adored the stars themselves. Among the worshippers of
fire that element to one class was merely an emblem, to the other an
actual person. Wherever idols or images are used the same phenomenon
occurs. These idols are intended by the priests as aids to devotion, as
books for those who cannot read. But the savage believes that his god
inhabits the image, or even regards the image as itself a god. His feelings
towards it are those of a child towards her doll. She knows that it is filled
with sawdust and made of painted wood, and yet she loves it as if it were
alive. Such is precisely the illusion of the savage, for he possesses the
imagination of a child. He talks to his idol fondly and washes its face
with oil or rum, beats it if it will not give him what he asks, and hides it in
his waistcloth if he is going to do something which he does not wish it to
see.
There is one other point which it is necessary to observe. A godΒ΄s moral
disposition, his ideas of right and wrong, are those of the people by whom
he is created. Wandering tribes do not as a rule consider it wrong to rob
outside the circle of their clan: their god is therefore a robber like
themselves. If they settle in a fertile country, pass into the agricultural
state, build towns, and become peaceful citizens with property of their
own they change their views respecting theft, and accordingly their god
forbids it in his laws. But it sometimes happens that the sayings and
doings of the tent-god are preserved in writings which are accepted as
revelation by the people of a later and better age. Then may be observed
the curious and by no means pleasing spectacle of a people outgrowing
their religion, and believing that their god performed actions which would
be punished with the gallows if they were done by men.
The mind of an ordinary man is in so imperfect a condition that it requires
a creedβthat is to say, a theory concerning the unknown and the
unknowable in which it may place its deluded faith and be at rest. But
whatever the creed may be, it should be one which is on a level with the
intellect, and which inquiry will strengthen not destroy.
As for minds of the highest order, they must ever remain in suspension of
judgement and in doubt. Not only do they reflect the absurd traditions of
the Jews, but also the most ingenious attempts which have been made to
explain on rational and moral grounds the origine and purpose of the
universe. Intense and long-continued labour reveals to them this alone,
that there are regions of thought so subtle and so sublime that the human
mine is unable therein to expand its wings, to exercise its strength. But
there is a wide speculative field in which man is permitted to toil with the
hope of rich reward, in which observation and experience can supply
materials to his imagination and his reason. In this field two great
discoveries have been already made. First, that there is a unity of plan in
nature, that the universe resembles a body in which all the limbs and
organs are connected with one another; and second, that all phenomena,
physical and moral, are subject to laws as invariable as those which
regulate the rising and setting of the sun. It is in reality as foolish to pray
for rain or a fair wind as it would be to pray that the sun should set in the
middle of the day. It is as foolish to pray for the healing of a disease or
for daily bread as it is to pray for rain or a fair wind. It is as foolish to
pray for a pure heart or for mental repose as it is to pray for help in
sickness or misfortune. All the events which occur upon the earth result
from law: even those actions which are entirely dependent on the caprices
of the memory or the impulse of the passions are shown by statistics to
be, when taken in the gross entirely independent of the human will. As a
single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem.
As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity.
The unity of the universe is a scientific fact. To assert that it is the
operation of a single mind is a conjecture based upon analogy, and
analogy may be a deceptive guide. It is the most reasonable guess that
can be made, but still it is no more than a guess, and it is one by which
nothing after all is really gained. It tells us that the earth rests upon the
tortoise: it does not tell us on what the tortoise rests. God issued the laws
which manufactured the universe and which rule it in its growth. But
who made God? Theologians declare that he made himself, materialists
declare that matter made itself, and both utter barren phrases, idle words.
The whole subject is beyond the powers of the human intellect in its
present state. All that we can ascertain is this: that we are governed by
physical laws which it is our duty as scholars of Nature to investigate, and
by moral laws which it is our duty as citizens of Nature to obey.
The dogma of a single deity who created the heavens and the earth may
therefore be regarded as an imperfect method of expressing an undoubted
truth. Of all religious creeds it is the least objectionable from a scientific
point of view. Yet it was not a Greek who first discovered or invented
the one god, but the wild Bedouin of the desert. At first sight this appears
a very extraordinary fact. How, in a matter which depended entirely upon
the intellect, could these barbarians have preceded the Greeks, so far their
superiors in every other respect? The anomaly, however, can be easily
explained. In the first theological epoch every object and every
phenomenon of Nature was supposed to be a creature, in the second
epoch the dwelling or expression of a god. It is evident that the more
numerous the objects and phenomena, the more numerous would be the
gods, the more difficult it would be to unravel Nature, to detect the
connection between phenomena, to discover the unity which underlies
them all. In Greece there is a remarkable variety of climate and contour;
hills, groves, and streams diversify the scene; rugged, snow-covered
peaks and warm coast lands with waving palms lie side by side. But in
the land of the Bedouins Nature may be seen in the nude. The sky is
uncovered; the earth is stripped and bare. It is as difficult for the
inhabitants of such a country to believe that there are many gods as for
the people of such a land as Greece to believe that there is only one. The
earth and the wells and some uncouth stones, the sun, the moon, and the
stars are almost the only materials of superstition that the Bedouin can
employ; and
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