The next is Benedict Spinoza, a Jew, born at Amsterdam in 1768. He studied theology, and asked the rabbis too many questions, and talked too much about what he called reason, and finally he was excommunicated from the synagogue, and became an outcast at the age of twenty-four, without friends. Cursed, anathematized, bearing upon his forehead the mark of Cain, he undertook to solve the problem of the universe. To him the universe was one. The infinite embraced the all. That all was God. He was right; the universe is all there is, and if God does not exist in the universe He exists nowhere. The idea of putting some little Jewish jehovah outside the universe, as if to say that from an eternity of idleness he woke up one morning and thought he would make something.
The propositions of Spinoza are as luminous as the stars, and his demonstrations, each one of them, is a Gibraltar, behind which logic sits laughing at all the sophistries of theological thought. In every relation of life he was just, true, gentle, patient, loving, affectionate. He died in 1812. In his life of forty-four years he had climbed to the very highest alpine of human thought. He was a great and splendid man, an intellectual hero, one of the benefactors, one of the Titans of our race.
And now I will say a few words about our infidels. We had three, to say the least of them—Paine, Franklin and Jefferson. In their day the colonies were filled with superstition, and the Puritans with the spirit of persecution. Law, savage, ignorant and malignant, had been passed in every colony for the purpose of destroying intellectual liberty. Manly freedom was unknown. The toleration act of Maryland tolerated only chickens, not thinkers, not investigators. It tolerated faith, not brains. The charity of Roger Williams was not extended to one who denied the bible. Let me show you how we have advanced. Suppose you took every man and woman out of the Penitentiary in New England and shipped them to a new country where man before had never trod, and told them to make a government, and constitution, and a code of laws for themselves. I say tonight that they would make a better constitution and a better code of laws than any that were made in any of the original thirteen colonies of the United States.
Not that they are better men, not that they are more honest, but that they have got more sense. They have been touched with the dawn of the eternal day of liberty that will finally come to this world. They would have more respect for others' rights than they had at that time. But the churches were jealous of each other, and we got a constitution without religion in it from the mutual jealousies of the church, and from the genius of men like Paine, Franklin and Jefferson. We are indebted to them for a constitution without a God in it. They knew that if you put God in there, an infinite God, there wouldn't be any room for the people. Our fathers retired Jehovah from politics. Our fathers, under the directions and leadership of those infidels, said, "All power comes from the consent of the governed." George Washington wanted to establish a church by law in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson prevented it. Under the guaranty of liberty of conscience which was given, our legislation has improved, and it will not be many years before all laws touching liberty of conscience, excepting it may be in the State of Delaware, will be blotted out, and when that time comes we or our children may thank the infidels of 1776. The church never pretended that Franklin died in fear. Franklin wrote no books against the bible. He thought it useless to cast the pearls of thought before the swine of his generation.
Jefferson was a statesman. He was the author of the Declaration of Independence, founder of a university, father of a political body, president of the United States, a statesman, and a philosopher. He was too powerful for the churches of his day. Paine attacked the Trinity and the bible both. He had done these things openly—His arguments were so good that his reputation got bad. I want you to recollect tonight that he was the first man who wrote these words: "The United States of America." I want you to know tonight that he was the first man who suggested the Federal Constitution. I want you to know that he did more for the actual separation from Great Britain than any man that ever lived. I want you to know that he did as much for liberty with his pen as any soldier did with his sword. I want you to know that during the Revolution his "Crisis" was the pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day. I want you to know that his "Common Sense" was the one star in the horizon of despotism. I want you to know that he did as much as any living man to give our free flag to the free air. He was not content to waste all his energies here. When the volcano covered Europe with the shreds of robes and the broken fragments of thrones, Paine went to France. He was elected by four constituencies. He had the courage to vote against the death of Louis, and was imprisoned. He wrote to Washington, the president, and asked him to interfere. Washington threw the letter in the wastebasket of forgetfulness. When Paine was finally released he gave his opinion of George Washington, and, under such circumstances, I say a man can be pardoned for having said even unjust things. The eighteenth century was crowning its gray hairs with the wreaths of progress, and Thomas Paine said: "I will do something to liberate mankind from superstition." He wrote the "Age of Reason." For his good, he wrote it too soon; for ours, not a day too quick. From that moment he was a despised and calumniated man. When he came back to this country he could not safely walk the streets for fear of being mobbed. Under the Constitution he had suggested, his rights were not safe; under the flag that he had helped give to heaven, with which he had enriched the air, his liberty was not safe. Is it not a disgrace to us that all the lies that have been told about him, and will be told about him, are a perpetual disgrace? I tell you that upon the grave of Thomas Paine the churches of America have sacrificed their reputation for veracity. Who can hate a man with a creed:
"I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for immortality; I believe in the equality of man, and that religious duty consists in doing justice, in doing mercy, and in endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be faithful to himself. One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests. Man has no property in man, and the key of heaven is in the keeping of no saint."
Grand, splendid, brave man!—with some faults, with many virtues; the world is better because he lived; and if Thomas Paine had not lived I could not have delivered this lecture here tonight.
Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a work for the civilization of this world as Diderot and Voltaire? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to the sum of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes from the day of Pentecost to the last election done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine? What would the world be now if infidels had never been? Infidels have been the flower of all this world. Recollect, by infidels I mean every man who has made an intellectual advance. By orthodox I mean a gentleman who is petrified in his mind, whopping around intellectually, simply to save the funeral expenses of his soul. Infidels are the creditors of all the years to come. They have made this world fit to live in, and without them the human brain would be as empty as the Chronicles soon will be. Unless they preach something that the people want to hear, it is not a crime to benefit our fellow-man intellectually. The churches point to their decayed saints and their crumbled popes and say, "Do you know more than all the ministers that ever lived?" And, without the slightest egotism or blush, I say, "Yes; and the name of Humboldt outweighs them all." The men who stand in the front rank, the men who know most of the secrets of nature, the men who know most are today the advanced infidels of this world. I have lived long enough to see the brand of intellectual inferiority on every orthodox brain.