We cannot conclude this lecture without making the important observation, that, while the instruction of youth continues to be founded upon these Jew books, which hold forth such barbarous and vicious men as patterns of humanity, virtue, and sound morality, no material improvement can ever be made in the moral condition of society. These books are imposed upon the mind as the one thing needful in education, because they divert from the study of the useful and salutary truths of Nature (the knowledge of which is the bane of the priest), which stand in direct opposition to the fabulous absurdities of Jewish theology;* and, therefore, our hireling priests, who dread nothing so much as the development of these truths, use their utmost energies in suppressing all such investigation; whilst they instil such reveries only as promote ignorance, and keep the mind in childhood through life. When the fogs of religious stupidity have thus mentally moulded the audience, the pulpit becomes a fountain of the most unqualified nonsense, which is safely showered down in torrents without any danger of detection, on the part of "the long-ear'd rout," who, being taught to spurn the evidence of their senses, when put in competition with faith, are prepared to swallow the grossest impossibilities:—
"For zeal, fanatic zeal, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last."
* The caricatures (they do not deserve a better name) which
the Jews followed by the Christians have drawn of the
Supreme Power, are extremely disgusting to rational piety;
they make their deity command theft and murder: he avowedly
breaks his promise (Numb, xiv., 34). He grieves and repents
of his past conduct (Gen. vi., 6). He prompts his prophets
to lying (1 Kings xxii., 22).
The theology of the present day, says D'Holbach, is a
subtile venom, calculated, through the importance attached
to it, to infect everyone. By dint of metaphysics, modern
theologians have become systematically absurd and wicked, in
teaching the odious ideas they entertain of the deity.
The imagination of the bewildered bigot fears a mysterious phantom which acts on none of his senses; and he fears nothing so much as to have nothing to fear. If his religion was clear to human intellect, it would have no attractions for his ignorance; there must be obscurity, incredible prodigies, fables, sorceries, and terrors, to keep his perverted brain in perpetual dread and agitation. By such chimerical apparatus, the priest can reduce the mental faculties of man almost to annihilation, and hence it is that the great herd of human beings have hitherto been mere congregated masses of variously compounded folly, knavery, and credulity; where ignorance is prized and cherished as the sole medium through which clerical and secular oppressors can ride over the necks of the multitude;* while the spider's web of superstition confines their intellects as it were within the bounds of a nutshell. In this way are the whole nations of human beings educated under traditional and legendary lies and fables; yet so firmly does the false impressions instilled in childhood rivet them upon the mind, that myriads have died for them, as the highest service to their "God!" This is a species of devotion which the theologues most willingly perform by deputy.
* "In every age, and in every country of the world, the
religions that have been invented by impostors and priests,
and sanctioned by rulers, have been put forth with no other
intention than that of deceiving the people; whilst the
distinguishing characteristic of all religious professors
has been to profess one thing and mean another."
Under such abject and debasing circumstances have the intellectual powers of the bulk of mankind been crushed and smothered throughout Europe by the juggle of church and state collusion, until about the middle of last century, when a ray of mental light burst forth from a constellation of exalted minds, headed by that most enlightened of philosophers, Voltaire, who shook to its very foundation the whole fabric of Christian priestcraft. In the present century, that light, guarded by the true emancipating Savior of the human race, the printing press,* is now becoming more widely diffused and clear, through the erudite minds of a Brougham, an Owen, a Hume, and many other advocates of education; but still the truths of Nature are so obscured by the dense fogs of priest-fostered ignorance, that no efficient political relief need be expected for Christendom, until the people reform themselves by abandoning the evils which cause their physical and mental intoxication; these are inebriating liquors, and grovelling superstition.
* Though the art of printing, so as to multiply the copies
of a document to any extent, was known in Europe in the year
1444, yet the control and fear of priestly vengeance,
prevented its being extensively useful for two centuries
afterwards. This art, nevertheless, had been known and
practised from time immemorial by the priests of Buddha,
throughout the immense empire of Thibet, though confined by
them exclusively to the purposes which promoted the
interests of their religion. Oh, how rejoiced the priests of
Christianity would be at this day, were it in their power to
establish a similar monopoly of the printing press!—See
Higgins' Anacalypsis.
When our present ultra-Reformers, who call themselves Chartists, prate of church-going, and offering up prayers and religious hymns, previous to their vain consultations, our political rulers pass the wink to their clerical confederates, conveying as much as to say, this is all very well; for while these men continue under the thumb of any sect of theologians, or suffer their minds to be deluded and debauched by any scheme of supematuralism whatsoever, real knowledge and sound judgment must be strangers to their meetings; whilst the animosities of sectarism must ever prevent unanimity, without which they never can be formidable to the powers that be, however corrupt. When the education of mankind shall be so salutary as to teach them what they are in reality, the reform necessarily springing from it would quickly dissipate ignorance, conquer superstition and its priests; and, in place of pretending to look beyond Nature, whose surface alone man is hardly capable of perceiving, he would, through the evidence of his senses, follow that unerring power as the only polestar of his happiness. For the great majority of human beings thus to reform themselves, "they have but to will it;" if they will not, they deserve to continue what they ever have been—degraded outcasts and aliens from their nature.
Thus with strong speech I tore the veil that hid
NATURE, and TRUTH, and LIBERTY.—Shelley.
END OF LECTURE SIXTH. [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]