As a matter of fact, we are controlled today by men who do not exist. We are controlled today by phenomena that never did exist. We are controlled by ghosts and dead men, and in the grasp of death is a scepter that controls the living present. I propose that we shall govern ourselves! I propose that we shall let the past go, and let the dead past bury the dead past. I believe the American people have brains enough, and nerve enough, and courage enough, to control and govern themselves, without any assistance from dust or ghosts. That is my doctrine, and I am going to do what I can while I live to increase that feeling of independence and manhood in the American people.—We can control ourselves. I believe in the gospel of this world; I believe in happiness right here; I do not believe in drinking skim milk all my life with the expectation of butter beyond the clouds. I believe in the gospel, I say, in this world. This is a mighty good world. There are plenty of good people in this world. There is lots of happiness in this world and, I say, let us, in every way we can, increase it. I envy every man who is content with his lot, whether he is poor or whether he is rich. I tell you, the man that tries to make somebody else happy, and who owns his own soul, nobody having a mortgage or deed of trust upon his manhood or liberty—this world is a pretty good world for such a man. I do not care: I am going to say my say, whether I make money or grow poor; no matter whether I get high office or walk along the dusty highway of the common. I am going to say my say, and I had rather be a farmer and live on forty acres of land—live in a log cabin that I built myself, and have a little grassy path going down to the spring, so that I can go there and hear the waters gurgling, and know that it is coming out from the lips of the earth, like a poem, whispering to the white pebbles—I would rather live there, and have some hollyhocks at the corner of the house, and the larks singing and swinging in the trees, and some lattice over the window, so that the sunlight can fall checkered on the babe in the cradle. I had rather live there, and have the freedom of my own brain; I had rather do that than live in a palace of gold, and crawl, a slimy hypocrite, through this world. Superstition has done enough harm already; every religion, nearly, suspects everything that is pleasant, everything that is joyous, and they always have a notion that God feels best when we feel worst. They have chained the Andromeda of joy to the cold rock of ignorance and fear, there to be devoured by the dragon of superstition. Church and State are two vultures that have fed upon the heart of chained Prometheus. I say, let the human race have a chance let every man think for himself and express that thought. There is no wrath in the serene heavens; there is no scowl in the blue of the sky. Upon the throne of the universe tyranny does not sit as a king.
The speaker here took from his pocket a pair of spectacles, and adjusted them, saying: I am sorry to admit it; I have got to come to it. I hate to put on a pair of spectacles, but the other day, as I was putting them on, a thought struck me. I see progress in this. To progress is to overcome the obstacles of nature, and in order to overcome this obstacle of the loss of sight man invented spectacles. Spectacles led men to the telescope, with which he read all the starry heavens; and had it not been for the failure of sight we wouldn't have seen a millionth part that we have. In the first place, we owe nothing but truth to the dead. I am going to tell the truth about them. There are three theories by which men account for all phenomena—for everything that happens: First, the supernatural. In the olden time, everything that happened some deity produced, some spirit, some devil, some hobgoblin, some dryad, some fairy, some spook, something except nature. First, then, the supernatural; and a barbarian, looking at the wide, mysterious sea, wandering through the depths of the forest, encountering the wild beasts, troubled by strange dreams, accounted for everything by the action of spirits, good and bad. Second, the supernatural and natural. There is where the religious world is today—a mingling of the supernatural and natural, the idea being that God created the world and imposed upon men certain laws, and then let them run, and if they ever got into any trouble then he would do a miracle, and accomplish any good that he desired to do. Third—and that is the grand theory—the natural. Between these theories there has been from the dawn of civilization a conflict. In this great war nearly all the soldiers have been in the ranks of the supernatural. The believers in the supernatural insist that matter is controlled and directed entirely by powers from without. The naturalists maintain that nature acts from within; that nature is not acted upon; that the universe is all there is; that nature, with infinite arms, embraces everything that exists, and that the supposed powers beyond the limits of the materially real are simply ghosts.
You say, ah! this is materialism! this is the doctrine of matter! What is matter? I take a handful of earth in my hands, and into that dust I put seeds, and arrows from the eternal quiver of the sun smite it, and the seeds grow and bud and blossom, and fill the air with perfume in my sight. Do you understand that? Do you understand how this dust and these seeds and that light and this moisture produced that bud and that flower and that perfume? Do you understand that any better than you do the production of thought? Do you understand that any better than you do a dream? Do you understand that any better than you do the thoughts of love that you see in the eyes of the one you adore? Can you explain it? Can you tell what matter is? Have you the slightest conception? Yet you talk about matter as though you were acquainted with its origin; as though you had compelled, with clenched hands, the very rocks to give up the secret of existence? Do you know what force is? Can you account for molecular action? Are you familiar with chemistry? Can you account for the loves and the hatreds of the atoms? Is there not something in matter that forever excludes you? Can you tell what matter really is? Before you cry materialism, you had better find what matter is. Can you tell of anything without a material basis? Is it possible to imagine the annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible for you to conceive of the creation of a single atom? Can you have a thought that is not suggested to you by what you call matter? Did any man or woman or child ever have a solitary thought, dream or conception, that was not suggested to them by something they had seen in nature? Can you conceive of anything the different parts of which have been suggested to you by nature? You can conceive of an animal with the hoofs of a bison, with the pouch of a kangaroo, with the head of a buffalo, with the tail of a lion, with the scales of a fish, with the wings of a bird, and yet every part of this impossible monster has been suggested to you by nature. You say time, therefore you can think eternity. You say pain, therefore you can think hell. You say strength, therefore you can think omnipotence. You say wisdom, therefore you can think infinite wisdom. Everything you see, everything you can dream of or think of, has been suggested to you by your surroundings, by nature. Man cannot rise above nature; below nature man cannot fall. Imagine, if you please, the creation of a single atom. Can any one here imagine the creation out of nothing of one atom? Can any one here imagine the destruction of one atom? Can you imagine an atom being changed to nothing? Can you imagine nothing being changed to an atom? There is not a solitary person here with an imagination strong enough to think either of the creation of an atom or of the annihilation of an atom.
Matter and the universe are the same yesterday, today and forever. There is just as much matter in the universe today as there ever was, and as there ever will be; there is just as much force and just as much energy as there ever was or ever will be; but it is continually taking different shapes and forms; one day it is a man, another day it is animal, another day it is earth, another day it is metal, another day it is gas, it gains nothing and it loses nothing. Our fathers denounced materialism and accounted for all phenomena how? By the caprice of gods and devils. For thousands of years it was believed that ghosts, good ghosts, bad ghosts, benevolent and malevolent, in some mysterious way produced all phenomena; that disease and health, happiness and misery, fortune and misfortune, peace and war, life and death, success and failure, were but arrows shot by those ghosts or shadowy phantoms, to reward or punish mankind; that they were displeased or pleased by our actions, that they blessed the earth with harvest or cursed it with famine; that they fed or starved the children of men; that they crowned or uncrowned kings; that they controlled war; that they gave prosperous voyages, allowing the brave mariner to meet his wife and children inside the harbor bar, or strewed the sad shore with wrecks of ships and the bodies of men. Formerly these ghosts were believed to be almost innumerable. Earth, air and water were filled with these phantoms, but in modern times they have greatly decreased in number, because the second proposition that I stated, the supernatural and the natural, has generally been adopted, but the remaining ghosts are supposed to perform the same functions as of yore.
Let me say right here that the object of every religion ever made by man has been to get on the good side of supposed powers; has been to petition the gods to stop the earthquakes, to stop famine, to stop pestilence. It has always been something that man should do to prevent being punished by the powers of the air or to get from them some favors. It has always been believed that these ghosts could in some way be appeased; that they could be bettered by sacrifices, by prayer, by fasting, by the building of temples and cathedrals, by shedding the blood of men and beasts, by forms, by ceremonies, by kneelings, by prostrations and flagellations, by living alone in the wild desert, by the practice of celibacy, by inventing instruments of torture, by destroying men, women and children, by covering the earth with dungeons, by burning unbelievers and by putting chains upon the thoughts and manacles upon the lips of men, by believing things without evidence, by believing things against evidence, by disbelieving and denying demonstrations, by despising facts, by hating reason, by discouraging investigation, by making an idiot of yourself—all these have been done to appease the winged monsters of the air.
In the history of our poor world no horror has been omitted, no infamy has been left undone by believers in ghosts, and all the shadows were born of cowardice and malignity; they were painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of ignorance by that artist called Superstition. From these ghosts our fathers received their information. These ghosts were the schoolmasters of our ancestors. They were the scientists, the philosophers, the geologists, the legislators, the astronomers, the physicians, the metaphysicians and historians of the past.
Let me give you my definition of metaphysics, that is to say, the science of the unknown, the science of guessing. Metaphysics is where two fools get together, and each one admits that neither can prove, and both say, "Hence we infer." That is the science of metaphysics. For this these ghosts were supposed to have the only experience and real knowledge; they inspired men to write books, and the books were sacred. If facts were found to be inconsistent with these books, so much the worse for the facts, and especially for the discoverers of these facts. It was then and still is believed that these sacred books are the basis of the idea of immortality, to give up the idea that these books were inspired is and to renounce the idea of immortal life. I deny it! Men existed before books; and all the books that were ever written were written, in my judgment, by men, and the idea of immortality was not born of a book, but was born of the man who wrote the book. The idea of immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, beating its countless waves of hope and joy against the shores of time, and was not born of any book, nor of any religion, nor of any creed; it was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the clouds and mists of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow of hope shining upon the tears of grief. We love, therefore we wish to live, and the foundation of the idea of immortality is human affection and human love, and I have a thousand times more confidence in the affections of the human heart, in the deep and splendid feelings of the human soul than I have in any book that ever was or ever can be written by mortal man.
From the books written by those ghosts we have at least ascertained that they knew nothing whatever of the world in which we live. Did they know anything about any other? Upon every point where contradiction is possible, the ghosts have been contradicted. By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, by this aristocracy of the clouds the affairs of government were administered all authority to govern came from them. The emperors, kings and potentates, every one of them, had the divine petroleum poured upon his head, the kerosene of authority.
The emperors, king and potentates had communications from the phantoms. Man was not considered as the source of power; to rebel against the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and nothing less than the blood of the offenders could appease the invisible phantoms and by the authority of the ghosts man was crushed and slayed and plundered. Many toiled wearily in the sun and storm that a few favorites of the ghosts might live in idleness, and many lived in huts and caves and dens that the few might dwell in palaces, and many clothed themselves with rags that a few might robe themselves in purple and gold, and many crept and cringed and crawled that a few might tread upon their necks with feet of iron. From the ghosts men received not only authority but information. They told us the form of the earth; they informed us that eclipses were caused by the sins of man, especially the failure to pay tithes that the universe was made in six days; that gazing at the sky with a telescope was dangerous; that trying to be wise beyond what they had written was born of a rebellious and irreverent spirit; they told us there was no virtue like belief; no crime like doubt, that investigation was simply impudence, and the punishment therefore violent torment; they not only told us all about this world but about two others, and if their statements about the other two are as true as they were about this, no one can estimate the value of their information.
For countless ages the world was governed by ghosts, and they spared no pains to change the eagle of the human intellect into a bat of darkness. To accomplish this infamous purpose, to drive the love of truth from the human heart; to prevent the advancement of mankind to shut out from the world every ray of intellectual light to pollute every mind with superstition, the power of kings, the cunning and cruelty of priests, and the wealth of nations were used.