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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that it conducts us to absurdity, as we shall very quickly
prove.
The souls of idiots not being responsible for their sins will
go to heaven; the souls of such men as Goethe and Rousseau are
in danger of hell-fire. Therefore it is better to be born an
idiot than to be born a Goethe or a Rousseau; and that is
altogether absurd.
It is asserted that the doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, and of happiness in a future state, gives us a solution
of that distressing problem, the misery of the innocent on
earth. But in reality it does nothing of the kind, It does not
explain the origin of evil, and it does not justify the
existence of evil. A poor helpless infant is thrust into the
world by a higher force; it has done no one any harm, yet it is
tortured in the most dreadful manner; it is nourished in vice,
and crime, and disease; it is allowed to suffer a certain time
and then it is murdered. It is all very well to say that
afterwards it was taken to everlasting bliss; but why was it
not taken there direct? If a man has a child and beats that
child for no reason whatever, is it any palliation of the crime
to say that he afterwards gave it cake and wine?
This brings us to the character of the Creator. We must beg to
observe again that we describe, not the actual Creator, but the
popular idea of the Creator. It is said that the Supreme Power
has a mind; this we deny, and to show that our reasons for
denying it are good, we shall proceed to criticise this
imaginary mind.
In the first place, we shall state as an incontrovertible maxim
in morality that a god has no right to create men except for
their own good. This may appear to the reader an extraordinary
statement; but had he lived in France at the time of Louis XIV,
he would also have thought it an extraordinary statement that
kings existed for the good of the people and not people for the
good of kings. When the Duke of Burgundy first propounded that
axiom, St. Simon, by no means a servile courtier, and an
enlightened man for his age, was βdelighted with the
benevolence of the saying, but startled by its novelty and
terrified by its boldness.β Our proposition may appear very
strange, but it certainly cannot be refuted; for if it is said
that the Creator is so great that he is placed above our laws
of morality, then what is that but placing Might above Right?
And if the maxim be admitted as correct, then how can the
phenomena of life be justified?
It is said that the Creator is omnipotent, and also that he is
benevolent. But one proposition contradicts the other. It is
said that he is perfect in power, and that he is also perfect
in purity. We shall show that he cannot possibly be both.
The conduct of a father towards his child appears to be cruel,
but it is not cruel in reality. He beats the child, but he does
it for the childβs own good; he is not omnipotent; he is
therefore obliged to choose between two evils. But the Creator
is omnipotent; he therefore chooses cruelty as a means of
education or development; he therefore has a preference for
cruelty or he would not choose it; he is therefore fond of
cruelty or he would not prefer it; he is therefore cruel, which
is absurd.
Again, either sin entered the world against the will of the
Creator, in which case he is not omnipotent, or it entered with
his permission, in which case it is his agent, in which case he
selects sin, in which case he has a preference for sin, in
which case he is fond of sin, in which case he is sinful, which
is an absurdity again.
The good in this world predominates over the bad; the good is
ever increasing, the bad is ever diminishing. But if God is
Love why is there any bad at all? Is the world like a novel in
which the villains are put in to make it more dramatic, and in
which virtue only triumphs in the third volume? It is certain
that the feelings of the created have in no way been
considered. If indeed there were a judgment-day it would be for
man to appear at the bar not as criminal but as an accuser.
What has he done that he should be subjected to a life of
torture and temptation? God might have made us all happy, and
he has made us all miserable. Is that benevolence? God might
have made us all pure, and he has made us all sinful. Is that
the perfection of morality? If I believed in the existence of
this man-created God, of this divine Nebuchadnezzar, I would
say, βYou can make me live in your world, O Creator, but you
cannot make me admire it; you can load me with chains, but you
cannot make me flatter you; you can send me to hell-fire, but
you can not obtain my esteem. And if you condemn me, you
condemn yourself. If I have committed sins, you invented them,
which is worse. If the watch you have made does not go well,
whose fault is that? Is it rational to damn the wheels and the
springs?β
But it is when we open the Book of Nature, that book inscribed
in blood and tears; it is when we study the laws regulating
life, the laws productive of development, that we see plainly
how illusive is this theory that God is Love. In all things
there is cruel, profligate, and abandoned waste. Of all the
animals that are born a few only can survive; and it is owing
to this law that development takes place. The law of Murder is
the law of Growth. Life is one long tragedy; creation is one
great crime. And not only is there waste in animal and human
life, there is also waste in moral life. The instinct of love
is planted in the human breast, and that which to some is a
solace is to others a torture. How many hearts yearning for
affection are blighted in solitude and coldness! How many women
seated by their lonely firesides are musing of the days that
might have been! How many eyes when they meet these words which
remind them of their sorrows will be filled with tears! O cold,
cruel, miserable life, how long are your pains, how brief are
your delights! What are joys but pretty children that grow into
regrets? What is happiness but a passing dream in which we seem
to be asleep, and which we know only to have been when it is
past? Pain, grief, disease, and deathβare these the inventions
of a loving God? That no animal shall rise to excellence except
by being fatal to the life of othersβis this the law of a kind
Creator? It is useless to say that pain has its benevolence,
that massacre has its mercy. Why is it so ordained that bad
should be the raw material of good? Pain is not less pain
because it is useful; murder is not less murder because it is
conducive to development. Here is blood upon the hand still,
and all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten it.
To this then we are brought with the much-belauded theory of a
semi-human Providence, an anthropoid Deity, a Constructive
Mind, a Deus Paleyensis, a God created in the image of a
watchmaker. What then are we to infer? Why, simply this, that
the current theory is false; that all attempts to define the
Creator bring us only to ridiculous conclusions; that the
Supreme Power is not a Mind, but something higher than a Mind;
not a Force, but something higher than a Force; not a Being,
but something higher than a Being; something for which we have
no words, something for which we have no ideas. We are to infer
that Man is not made in the image of his Maker, and that Man
can no more understand his Maker than the beetles and the worms
can understand him. As men in the days of ignorance endeavoured
to discover perpetual motion and the philosopherβs stone, so
now they endeavour to define God. But in time also they will
learn that the nature of the Deity is beyond the powers of the
human intellect to solve. The universe is anonymous; it is
published under secondary laws; these at least we are able to
investigate, and in these perhaps we may find a partial
solution of the great problem. The origin of evil cannot be
explained, for we cannot explain the origin of matter. But a
careful and unprejudiced study of Nature reveals an interesting
fact and one that will be of value to mankind.
The earth resembles a picture, of which we, like insects which
crawl upon its surface, can form but a faint and incoherent
idea. We see here and there a glorious flash of colour; we have
a dim conception that there is union in all its parts; yet to
us, because we are so near, the tints appear to be blurred and
confused. But let us expand our wings and flutter off into the
air; let us fly some distance backwards into Space until we
have reached the right point of view. And now the colours blend
and harmonise together, and we see that the picture represents
One Man.
The body of a human individual is composed of cell-like bodies
which are called βphysiological units.β Each cell or atom has
its own individuality; it grows, it is nurtured, it brings
forth young, and it dies. It is in fact an animalcule. It has
its own body and its own mind. As the atoms are to the human
unit, so the human units are to the human whole. There is only
One Man upon the earth; what we call men are not individuals
but components; what we call, death is merely the bursting of a
cell; wars and epidemics are merely inflammatory phenomena
incident on certain stages of growth. There is no such thing as
a ghost or soul; the intellects of men resemble those instincts
which inhabit the corpuscules, and which are dispersed when the
corpuscule dies. Yet they are not lost, they are preserved
within the body and enter other forms. Men therefore have no
connection with Nature, except through the organism to which
they belong. Nature does not recognise their individual
existence. But each atom is conscious of its life; each atom
can improve itself in beauty and in strength; each atom can
therefore, in an infinitesimal degree, assist the development
of the Human Mind. If we take the life of a single atom, that
is to say of a single man, or if we look only at a single
group, all appears to be cruelty and confusion; but when we
survey mankind as One, we find it becoming more and more noble,
more and more divine, slowly ripening towards perfection. We
belong to the minutiae of Nature, we are in her sight, as the
rain-drop in the sky; whether a man lives, or whether he dies,
is as much a matter of indifference to Nature as whether a
rain-drop falls upon the field and feeds a blade of grass, or
falls upon a stone and is dried to death. She does not
supervise these small details. This discovery is by no means
flattering, but it enlarges our idea of the scheme of creation.
That universe must indeed be great in which human beings
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