Part 11 (2/2)

Man would, then, have progressed much further with the superstructure of an ideal civilization, if only in his efforts to rightly regulate his life, he had happily searched out the laws of nature as they are revealed through its phenomena and interpreted by experience and reason, instead of looking for direction to the laws of the G.o.ds (Jehovah, Allah, Buddha or even Jesus) as they are revealed through prophets and interpreted by kings or presidents, by priests or preachers and by other ”powers that be of G.o.d” in states and churches--inst.i.tutions which exist in the interest of the capitalist cla.s.s and against that of the labor cla.s.s. The world owes by far the greater part of its most poignant sufferings to this fatal mistake of looking to G.o.ds in heavens and their representatives on earth for direction instead of to nature and reason.

Life in the physical realm is dependent upon living in harmony with the matter-force law. The representative of any form of life (mineral, vegetable, animal, human) which either through ignorance, accident or willfulness does not conform to it, is destroyed or at least injured.

Life in the moral part of the psychical realm consists in a disposition and effort to learn the matter-force law, and to fulfill in thought, word and deed the individual obligations to self and the social obligations to others imposed by it when it has been humanely interpreted by a man for himself.

Religion and Christianity are but wider extensions of one and the same great all-inclusive virtue, morality, without which human life would not be worth living, indeed not even a possibility, for without morality a man is a beast, not a human.

Morality is the greatest thing in the world. Yet, paradoxical as the representation may seem, there is one greater thing, freedom--the liberty to think, speak and act in accordance with one's own convictions as to what is the law and as to what are its requirements. Without this liberty there could be no morality, and therefore, freedom is greater than the greatest thing in the world, morality.

But liberty, the greatest and most indispensable necessity to morality, religion and Christianity, indeed, to the existence of a human being, is manifestly impossible on the theory that a man must be guided by the will of a conscious, personal G.o.d in the sky as it is interpreted by the kings and priests, presidents and preachers on earth.

You will note that I am not contending for the liberty to live without reference to an external authority. If this were my contention you would rightly insist (as some among my friends do) that I am an atheist in religion and an anarchist in politics; but I am neither, for I recognize the fact that I must live with reference to the existence of an external authority, matter-force law, and there is no other, upon which anything good in religion or politics is dependent.

No one is an atheist in religion, an anarchist in politics or anything bad, who, in the physical realm of life, tries to live with reference to the law of nature, and who, in the moral realm of life, tries to live with reference to a truth which is that law humanely interpreted by himself in accordance with his own experience, observation, investigation and reason. In the nature of things, the interpretation cannot be by some one else, because one man cannot live the moral life on another's ideals any more than he can live the physical life on another's meals.

Since this is the case, it follows that the whole conception of a law which is willed by a G.o.d and revealed or formulated by his representatives (prophets, kings, priests, legislators) to which a man must have reference, if he would live the moral life, is, at best, a harmless fiction and at worst a hurtful superst.i.tion.

There is no one (man or G.o.d) with whom people can stand in the moral realm except themselves alone, and if they are not within this realm they are not men and women.

Manhood is dependent upon standing alone with matter-force nature and with human reason, and it is manhood which really counts everywhere in the social realm, for without manhood one is nothing anywhere in that realm.

Nature is my G.o.d. The G.o.ds of the several supernaturalistic interpretations of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) are so many symbols of this divinity. The words of this G.o.d are the facts of nature.

My religion and politics, wors.h.i.+p and patriotism consist in a desire and effort to discover these facts and to interpret and live them humanely.

My G.o.d, Nature, is a triune divinity--matter being the Father, force the Son, and law the Spirit.

Nature is the sum of the matter-force-law phenomena of which the universe is const.i.tuted. Man with his barbarism and civilization is but one among such phenomena, on a level with the rest, as to his beginning and ending, and as to the dependence of his life and its fullness upon conformity to the matter-force law, without necessary or, indeed, possible reference to any divine-human system of laws as set forth by a catholic or protestant church or by an imperialistic or democratic state.

Unless states and churches persuade, encourage and help man to more fully discover, more correctly interpret and more perfectly live the matter-force law they are worthless; and indeed worse, if in the long run and on the whole they hinder him; and undoubtedly they have done this in the case of the slave cla.s.s--a cla.s.s which, ever since the rise of private property in the means of producing the necessities of life, has comprehended the vast majority of the human race.

Whether then man is barbarous or civilized is really and truly, wholly and entirely a question of the knowledge of and conformity to the matter-force law, that is, of whether or not the articles of his religious creed and political code are so many ideal embodiments and practical interpretations of facts or realities as they are revealed by the doings of my G.o.d, Nature.

There is no other creed, belief in the articles of which, and there is no other code, obedience to the articles of which, will advance mankind, individually or collectively, so much as one step in the long, rugged and steep way towards the goal of a perfect civilization--a civilization which will secure to every man, woman and child the greatest of possible opportunities to make the most of life that is within the range of possibilities.

My G.o.d, Nature (the triune divinity, matter-force-motion) the doings of which G.o.d are so many words of the only gospel upon which the salvation of the world is to any degree dependent, is an impersonal, unconscious, non-moral being.

For me, this G.o.d, Nature, rises into personality, consciousness and morality in myself, and in no other does nature do this for me, though what is true of me is of course equally so of every representative of mankind.

Jesus (either as an historical or dramatic personage, and it does not matter which he was) said, ”I and my Father (G.o.d) are one,” and in saying this he gave expression in one form to the most revolutionary and salutary of all truths. The other form of the same truth as taught by Darwin and Marx is: man has all the potentialities of his own life within himself. Every representative of the human race can and should say with Jesus, ”I and my Father, G.o.d, are one.”

Stop man! where dost thou run?

Heav'n lies within thy heart, If thou seek'st G.o.d elsewhere Misled, in truth, thou art.

--Angelus Silensius.

This truth const.i.tutes the most enn.o.bling and inspiring part of man's knowledge, and it was naturally discovered by him, not supernaturally revealed to him. It is the foundation of socialism and the justification of optimism.

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