The old God, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection, promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man—man is entertaining.... But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he forthwith created other animals besides. The first mistake of God: man did not find the animals entertaining—he ruled over them, but did not even want to be an "animal"—God consequently created woman. And, in fact, there was now an end of tedium—but of other things also! Woman was the second mistake of God.—"Woman is in her essence a serpent, Hera"—every priest knows that: "from woman comes all the mischief in the world"—every priest knows that likewise. Consequently, science also comes from her.... Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.—What had happened? The old God was seized by a mortal terror. Man himself had become his greatest mistake, he had created a rival, science makes godlike; it is at an end with priests and Gods, if man becomes scientific!—Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself—it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alone is morality.—"Thou shalt not know:"—the rest follows therefrom.—By his mortal terror God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one defend one's self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer: away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to thoughts,—all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man shall not think—and the "priest in himself" contrives distress, death, the danger of life in pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all sickness,—nothing but expedients in the struggle against science! Distress does not permit man to think.... And nevertheless! frightful! the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the Gods,—what to do!—The old God contrives war, he separates the peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another (the priests have always had need of war ...). War, among other things, a great disturber of science!—Incredible! Knowledge, the emancipation from the priest, augments even in spite of wars.—And a final resolution is arrived at by the old God: "man has become scientific,—there is no help for it, he must be drowned!" ...
—I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the entire psychology of the priest.—The priest knows only one great danger: that is science,—the sound concept of cause and effect. But science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,—one must have superfluous time, one must have superfluous intellect in order to "perceive" ... Consequently man must be made unfortunate,—this has at all times been the logic of the priest.—One makes out what has only thereby come into the world in accordance with this logic:—"sin".... The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," have been devised in opposition to science,—in opposition to a severance of man from the priest.... Man is not to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is not to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is not to look at all, he is to suffer.... And he is so to suffer as to need the priest always. A Saviour is needed.—The concepts of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," and of "forgiveness"—lies through and through, and without any psychological reality—have been contrived to destroy the causal sense in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!—And not an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ignoble instincts! A priest's attack! A parasite's attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be brought about by the conceptual spectres of superstition, by "God," by "spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward, punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of perception has been destroyed—the greatest crime against mankind has been committed. Sin, repeated once more, this form of human self-violation par excellence, has been invented for the purpose of making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man; the priest rules by the invention of sin.—
I condemn Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To do away with any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest expediency, it lived by states of distress, it created states of distress in order to perpetuate itself eternally.... The worm of sin for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this state of distress!— ...."Humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of Christianity!—Parasitism as the sole praxis of the Church; drinking out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anæmic ideal of holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality; the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that has ever existed,—against healthiness, beauty, well-constitutedness, courage, intellect, benevolence of soul, against life itself....
This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls, wherever there are walls,—I have letters for making even the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, mean,—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind!
BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.
By Peter Kropotkin.
IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnæus became a botanist while helping his father—a practical gardener—in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches—it rather favored them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family could "idle" at a wheelwright's shop, so as to become later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.