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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Communism and Christianism, by William
+Montgomery Brown
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Communism and Christianism
+       Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View
+
+
+Author: William Montgomery Brown
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 25, 2009  [eBook #30758]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Peter Vachuska, Matt Whittaker, Chuck Greif, and the
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+(http://www.pgdp.net)
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+
+
+
+
+
+COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+TO THE PURCHASER:
+
+Lying Supernaturalism is going; robbing Capitalism is falling; saving
+Laborism is rising, and leveling Unionism is coming.
+
+This booklet, Communism and Christianism, is a contribution by Bishop
+and Mrs. Wm. M. Brown, of Galion, Ohio, towards the furtherance of these
+downward, upward and forward movements, the most fortunate events in the
+whole history of mankind. We hope that you will read, mark, learn and
+inwardly digest its extremely revolutionary, comprehensive and salutary
+teachings concerning both religion and politics with the happy result of
+becoming an apostle of its illuminating and inspiring interpretation of
+the scientific gospel of Marx and Engels to wage slaves, the only gospel
+which points the way to redemption from their body and soul destroying
+slavery.
+
+You may become a missionary of this gospel in your neighborhood, and as
+such do more good than all its orthodox preachers, teachers, editors and
+politicians together at no financial cost to yourself by ordering
+booklets at our special rates: six copies, $1.00; twenty-five copies,
+$3.00, prepaid, and selling them to workers at our retail price, 25
+cents for one copy. As we make no profit and do no bookkeeping, cash
+should accompany all orders.
+
+To organizations working for bail, defense, liberation or unemployment
+funds, Bishop and Mrs. Brown donate twenty-five copies for each
+twenty-five ordered with remittance.
+
+The Bradford-Brown Educational Company, Inc. Publishers--Galion, Ohio
+
+
+
+Editions and Their Dates.
+
+First Edition, 10,000 copies, October 11th, 1920.
+
+Second Edition, 10,000 copies, revised and enlarged from 184 to 204
+pages, February 15th, 1921.
+
+Third Edition, 10,000 copies, March 2nd, 1921.
+
+Fourth Edition, 10,000 copies (2,000 in cloth binding), revised and
+enlarged from 204 to 224 pages, April 9, 1921.
+
+[Illustration: Rt. Rev. William Montgomery Brown, D. D.
+
+Fifth Bishop of Arkansas, Resigned; Member House of Bishops Protestant
+Episcopal Church; Sometime Archdeacon of Ohio and Special Lecturer at
+Bexley Hall, the Theological Seminary of Kenyon College. Now Episcopos
+in partibus Bolshevikium et Infidelium.]
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
+
+Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM MONTGOMERY BROWN
+
+Banish the Gods from the Skies and Capitalists from the Earth and make
+the world safe for Industrial Communism.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Bradford-Brown Educational Company, Inc. Publishers ... Galion, Ohio
+
+Fortieth Thousand
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+This booklet is gratefully dedicated to the Proletariat from whom Bishop
+and Mrs. Brown are sprung, and to whose unrequited labors (not to the
+good providence of a divinity) they owe their wealth, leisure and
+opportunities.
+
+
+
+
+PROLEGOMENA[A]
+
+     Religion is the opium of the people. The suppression of religion as
+     the happiness of the people is the revindication of its real
+     happiness. The invitation to abandon illusions regarding its
+     situation is an invitation to abandon a situation which has need of
+     illusions. Criticism of religion is therefore the germ of a
+     criticism of the vale of tears, of which religion is the holy
+     aspect.
+
+     --Marx.
+
+
+Not only, indeed, is the struggle against religion intellectually
+useful, but it cannot conscientiously be avoided, for religion is used
+against the Socialist movement by the possessing class in every country.
+
+But to abolish religion is not to abolish exploitation, because only one
+of the enemy's guns will have been silenced. The workers have, above
+all, to dislodge the capitalist class from power. The religious
+question, and indeed all else, is secondary to this.
+
+The test of admission to a Socialist Party must be neither more nor less
+than acceptance of the following seven working principles and the policy
+of Socialism as a class movement:
+
+     1. Society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of
+     the means of living (i. e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the
+     capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the
+     working class, by whose labor alone wealth is produced.
+
+     2. In society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests,
+     manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess
+     but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.
+
+     3. This antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the
+     working class from the domination of the master class by the
+     conversion into the common property of society of the means of
+     production and distribution, and their democratic control by the
+     whole people.
+
+     4. As in the order of social evolution the working class is the
+     last to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class
+     will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of
+     race or sex.
+
+     5. This emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
+
+     6. As the machinery of capitalist government, including the armed
+     forces of the nation, conserves the monopoly by the capitalist
+     class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must
+     organize consciously and politically for acquiring the powers of
+     government, national and local, in order that this machinery,
+     including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of
+     oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of
+     privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.[B]
+
+     7. As all political parties are but the expression of class
+     interests, and as the interest of the working class is
+     diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the
+     master-class, the party seeking working-class emancipation must be
+     hostile to every other party.
+
+If a man supports the church, or in any respect allows religious ideas
+to stand in the way of the foregoing seven essential principles of
+socialism or the activity of a Party, he proves thereby that he does not
+accept Socialism as fundamentally true and of the first importance, and
+his place is outside.
+
+No man can be consistently both a Socialist and a Christian. It must be
+either the socialist or the religious principle that is supreme, for the
+attempt to couple them equally betrays charlatanism or lack of thought.
+There is, therefore, no need for a specifically anti-religious test.
+
+So surely does the acceptance of Socialism lead to the exclusion of the
+supernatural, that the Socialist has little need for such terms as
+Atheist, Free-thinker, or even Materialist; for the word Socialist,
+rightly understood, implies one who, on all such questions, takes his
+stand on positive science, explaining all things by purely natural
+causation, Socialism being not merely a politico-economic creed, but
+also an integral part of a consistent world philosophy.
+
+So long as the anarchy of modern competitive society exists, the
+accompanying obscurity and confusion in social life will continue to
+shelter superstition. This point is illustrated in the following
+reference by Marx to the United States:
+
+     When we see in the very country of complete political emancipation
+     not only that religion exists, but retains its vigour, there is no
+     need, I hope, for other proofs in order to show that the existence
+     of religion is not incompatible with the full political maturity of
+     the State. But if religion exists it is because of a defective
+     social organization, of which it is necessary to seek the cause in
+     the very essence of the State.
+
+Class domination is the essence of the modern State. It is based on
+competitive anarchy and parasitism--the evidences of a defective social
+organization. It still leaves room for religion, because it maintains
+ignorance and confusion by its structure and contradictions, and because
+religion is fostered as a handmaiden of class rule.
+
+Nevertheless, the growth of the social forces of production within
+modern society, and the better knowledge the workers obtain of their
+true relations to each other and to Nature, loosen the chains of ghost
+worship and mysticism from their limbs and lessen the power of religion
+as a political weapon in the hands of the ruling class, while they form,
+at the same time, the material and intellectual preparation for an
+intelligently organized society. The matter has been put in a nutshell
+by Marx in the chapter on "Commodities" in "Capital," volume I.
+
+     The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then
+     finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life
+     offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable
+     relations with regard to his fellow men and to nature.
+
+     The life process of society, which is based on the process of
+     material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it
+     is treated as production by freely associated men, and is
+     consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.
+
+     This, however, demands for society a certain material groundwork or
+     set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the
+     spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.
+
+It is, therefore, a profound truth that Socialism is the natural enemy
+of religion. Through Socialism alone will the relations between men in
+society, and their relations to Nature, become reasonable, orderly, and
+completely intelligible, leaving no nook or cranny for superstition. The
+entry of Socialism is, consequently, the exodus of religion.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
+showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
+
+[B] This section has been slightly changed to make sure of guarding
+against the advocacy of armed insurrection. Socialists throughout the
+world want a peaceful evolution from capitalism into socialism; but
+whether or not it will be so in the case of any country is, as Lenin
+prophesies, to be determined by the dealings of its capitalists with its
+laborers. In reply to an inquiry on this vexed subject by an English
+author, Lenin said, in effect, that in England, as elsewhere, the
+tactics of the capitalist class will determine the program of the labor
+class.
+
+
+
+
+THE INTERNATIONAL PARTY.
+
+
+  Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
+      Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
+  For justice thunders condemnation,
+      A better world's in birth.
+  No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
+      Arise, ye slaves! no more in thrall!
+  The earth shall rise on new foundations,
+      We have been naught, we shall be all.
+
+  We want no condescending saviors.
+      To rule us from a judgment hall.
+  We workers ask not for their favors,
+      Let us consult for all.
+  To make the thief disgorge his booty,
+      To free the spirit from its cell,
+  We must ourselves decide our duty,
+      We must decide and do it well.
+
+  The law oppresses us and tricks us,
+      Taxation drains the victim's blood;
+  The rich are free from obligations,
+      The laws the poor delude.
+  Too long we've languished in subjection,
+      Equality has other laws:
+  "No rights," says she, "without their duties.
+      No claims on equals without cause."
+
+  Toilers from shops and fields united,
+      The party we of all who work;
+  The earth belongs to us, the people,
+      No room here for the shirk.
+  How many on our flesh have fattened!
+      But if the noisome birds of prey
+  Shall vanish from the sky some morning,
+      The blessed sunlight still will stay.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                       Page
+PROLEGOMENA                                               5
+
+PART I.
+
+COMMUNISM: THE NATURALISTIC THIS-WORLDLY
+GOSPEL FOR THE COMING AGE OF CLASSLESS EQUALITY
+AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM                                     13
+
+
+PART II.
+
+CHRISTIANISM: A SUPERNATURALISTIC OTHER-WORLDLY
+GOSPEL FOR THE PASSING AGE OF CLASS INEQUALITY
+AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY                                     85
+
+APPENDIX                                                157
+
+
+
+
+     Hitherto, every form of society has been based on the antagonism of
+     oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class,
+     certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at
+     least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of
+     serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the
+     petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to
+     develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary,
+     instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and
+     deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He
+     becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than
+     population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the
+     bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society,
+     and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an
+     over-riding law. It is unfit to rule, because it is incompetent to
+     assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it
+     cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed
+     him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under
+     this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer
+     compatible with society.--Marx and Engels.
+
+
+
+
+COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
+
+ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+Communism: The Naturalistic This-worldly Gospel for the Coming Age of
+Classless Equality and Economic Freedom--An Open Letter to a Brother
+Bishop and a Christian Socialist Comrade.
+
+     Come over and help us. Abandon Christian Socialism for Marxian
+     Communism.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD[C]
+
+
+The concept of God, as an explanation of the Universe, is becoming
+entirely untenable in this age of scientific inquiry. The laws of the
+persistence of force and the indestructibility of matter, and the
+unending interplay of cause and effect, make the attempt to trace the
+origin of things to an anthropomorphic God who had no cause, as futile
+as is the Oriental cosmology which holds that the world rests on an
+elephant, and, as an afterthought, that the elephant stands on a
+tortoise.
+
+The inflexible laws of the known universe cannot logically be held to
+cease where our immediate experience ends, to make way for an
+unscientific concept of an uncaused and creating being. The Creation
+idea is unsupported by evidence, and is in conflict with every
+scientific law.
+
+Socialism is consistent only with that monistic view which regards all
+phenomena as expressions of the underlying matter-force reality and as
+parts of the unity of Nature which interact according to inviolable
+laws.
+
+Socialism is the application of science, the archenemy of religion, to
+human social relationships; and just as the basic principle of the
+philosophy of Socialism finds itself in conflict with religion, so does
+it, as a propagandist movement, find religion acting against it.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
+showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
+
+
+
+
+COMMUNISM: THE NATURALISTIC THIS-WORLDLY GOSPEL FOR THE COMING AGE OF
+CLASSLESS EQUALITY AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM.
+
+     Make the World safe for Industrialism by turning it upside down
+     with Workers above and Owners below.
+
+
+My dear Brother and Comrade:
+
+Your letter of June 13th[D] relative to the meeting called for the 27th,
+in the interest of a more radical socialist movement in our church, came
+duly to hand, and its invitation to attend, or at least write, was
+highly appreciated.
+
+My days for attending things are, I fear, past. I did not feel able to
+go to the Annual Convention of the Socialist Party of Ohio, which met
+much nearer here on the same date, June 27th, and ended on the 29th with
+a great picnic--a communion, as real and holy, as was ever celebrated. I
+cannot even be sure of being with you in the House of Bishops during the
+meeting of the General Convention in October.
+
+However, I intended you to have a letter and set the 26th aside for the
+writing of it, but I work slowly now and its hours slipped away while I
+was making notes until only one was left. It was spent in trying to
+condense all I wanted to say in the letter into a telegram. What I
+regard as the best of these efforts was taken to the office at seven
+p. m. on that day:
+
+Make world safe for democracy by banishing Gods from sky, and
+capitalists from earth.
+
+Here are four of the many other efforts: (1) Come over and help us.
+Abandon Christian Socialism for Marxian Communism; (2) Make world safe
+for democracy by turning it upside down with workers above and owners
+below; (3) Revolutionize capitalism out of state and orthodoxy out of
+church; (4) Come over and help us. Abandon reformatory for revolutionary
+socialism.
+
+What I wanted you to understand is that, in my judgment, there can be no
+deliverance for the world from the troubles by which it is overwhelmed
+so long as theism holds the religious field and capitalism the political
+field.
+
+
+I.
+
+Religion and politics are the two halves of the sphere in which humanity
+lives, moves and has its social being. Religion is the ideal and
+politics the practical half of this sphere. Both halves naturally exist
+as the result of the same natural law of necessity: the matter-force law
+which makes it necessary for a man to feed, clothe and shelter his body
+in order to preserve it and its life.
+
+Marxian socialism is at once this religion and politics, all there is of
+both of them which is for the good of the world as a whole.
+
+Marxian socialism is a revolutionary movement towards doing away with
+the existing competitive system for producing and distributing the basic
+necessities of life (foods, clothes and houses) for the profit of a few
+parasites, and substituting a system for making and distributing them
+for the use of all workers.
+
+So far some competing, lying, robbing, enslaving system for the
+production and distribution of these necessities has been the basis of
+every religion and politics--of none more than the Christian and
+American, and they with the rest have been tried in the balance of
+experience and found utterly wanting. Indeed, they are making a hell,
+not a heaven, of the earth in general and of our country in particular.
+
+Christianism as a religion has collapsed. It promised to secure to the
+world peace and good will, but it has never had more of strife and hate.
+The tremendous English-German (or if you prefer German-English) war was
+a conflict at arms between the most outstanding among Christian nations
+and it was solemnly alleged to have been fought for the high purpose of
+ending such conflicts; but in reality it scattered the hot coals of war
+throughout the world, several of which were fanned into blazing by its
+so-called peace conference and others are ominously smouldering.
+
+Americanism as a politics has collapsed. It promised a classless
+government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people, but
+has instead given a government of a class, by a class, for a class. This
+class, comprising not more than one out of every ten of the population,
+is the capitalist class, which owns the means and machines for the
+production of the necessities of life and for their distribution, a
+class which, as such, though bearing no necessary relationship to either
+one of the branches of this business, yet realizes enormous profits from
+both, profits which are wholly at the expense of the large class, at
+least nine out of every ten, which does all the work connected with the
+making of the machines and the operating of them.
+
+This government was to make the country safe for democracy by securing
+to it the privilege of free speech and free assemblage, the existence of
+an independent press and the right of appeal for the redress of
+grievances; but our fathers did not have any too much of these
+liberties, we have had less and, if the competitive system for the
+production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the small
+owning class is to continue, our children are to have none.
+
+Indeed, this is already true of the overwhelming majority, the working
+class. Its representatives have little if any real part in the
+government. They are completely subjected to the rule of the owning
+class. There never has been a body, mind and soul destroying slavery
+which equaled theirs, either as to the number of men, women and children
+involved in it, or as to the degrees of misery to which it doomed its
+victims.
+
+Nor is the end yet. The world war certainly has taken American slavery
+out of the frying pan into the fire rather than into the water.
+
+American slaves appeal to their government as Jewish slaves appealed to
+one of their kings for relief and receive the same answer, not in words
+but in deeds which speak louder:
+
+     Thy father made our yoke grievous; now therefore make thou the
+     grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put
+     upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee. And he said unto them,
+     Depart yet for three days, then come again to me. And the people
+     departed. So all the people came the third day as the king had
+     appointed and the king answered them roughly, saying: My father
+     made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke: My father also
+     chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.
+     So when all Israel saw that the king harkened not unto them, the
+     people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David?
+
+As to details history does not exactly repeat itself and, therefore, I
+do not believe that the other planets of the universe, of which no doubt
+there are many billions, are inhabited by human beings of the same type
+as those of the earth, nor that its men, women and children are to have
+their bodies reconstructed and resurrected, after they have been
+disintegrated by death. Such beings on other planets and such
+reconstructions on this planet would in every case involve a detailed
+repetition of infinitely numerous processes of evolution which had
+extended through an eternal past.
+
+Yet in every part of the universe and throughout all eternity, like
+causes ever have produced and ever shall produce like effect. If,
+therefore, the course of the Judean masters towards their slaves led to
+a successful revolt of ten out of twelve tribes, there is every reason
+for believing that the parallel course which the American masters are
+pursuing against their slaves will sooner or later issue in a
+revolution--a revolution which shall do away with both masters and
+slaves, leaving us with a classless America and a government concerned
+with the making of provisions for enabling all the people who are able
+and willing to work to supply themselves in abundance with the
+necessities of life and with the most desirable among the luxuries,
+rather than a government which provides that they who produce nothing
+shall have the cream and top milk of every necessity and the whole
+bottle of every luxury, leaving of the necessities only the blue milk
+for the producers of them and of the luxuries, not even the dregs.
+
+Under this government those who can but will not work will be allowed to
+starve themselves into a better mind and out of their laziness. The
+young and the old, the sick and crippled will have their rightful
+maintenance from the state and out of the best of everything.
+
+The deliverance of the world from commercial imperialism and the making
+of it safe for industrial democracy would prevent most of its
+unnecessary suffering and this great salvation is above all else
+dependent upon a knowledge of the truth. "Ye shall know the truth and
+the truth shall make you free"--free from all the avoidable ills of
+life, among them the diabolical trinity of evils, war, poverty and
+slavery.
+
+The happiness of the world will be promoted in extent and degree in
+proportion as the knowledge of the truth is disseminated by a twofold
+revelation: (1) the truth as it is revealed by history according to the
+Marxian interpretation thereof, a revelation of the truth which is
+saving the world from the robbing impositions of the capitalistic
+interpretation of politics, and (2) the truth as it is revealed by
+nature, according to the Darwinian interpretation thereof, a revelation
+which is saving the world from the robbing impositions of the
+supernaturalistic interpretations of religion.
+
+Man has always had as a basis for his thought, belief and action, a
+system for the production and distribution of the necessities of life.
+This is the discovery of Karl Marx which is known as the scientific or
+materialistic interpretation of history.
+
+According to the scientific interpretation of history which is taught by
+naturalistic socialism, man is what he is, and his institutions are what
+they are, because he has fed, clothed and housed himself as he has.
+
+According to the traditional interpretation of history, which is taught
+by supernaturalistic Christianism, man is what he is because of his
+thinking, believing and acting with reference to a revelation of a god,
+as it has been interpreted by his inspired representatives, the great
+prophets and statesmen, like Isaiah and Luther, Moses and Washington.
+
+Perhaps the best proof of the correctness of the scientific or
+naturalistic explanation of the career of man and of the incorrectness
+of the traditional or supernaturalistic one is afforded by the history
+of morals, the soul of both religion and politics, without which neither
+could have any existence.
+
+Before the discovery of the art of agriculture, man was dependent for
+his food upon fruits and nuts, game and fish. When these sources of
+sustenance failed, the tribes living in the same neighborhood fought
+with each other in order that the victorious might eat the vanquished.
+
+During this period cannibalism was morally right, and it probably
+extended through at least two hundred thousand years, even into the Old
+Testament times. So righteous and holy was it that, in the course of
+time, the victims were recognized as saviour gods and the drinking of
+their blood and eating of their flesh constituted a Lord's Supper in
+which the god was eaten.
+
+Cannibalism is the basis of our sacrament of the holy communion of bread
+and wine. As a connecting link between these extremes there was the form
+of communion which consisted in the eating of animal sacrifices.
+
+By a sacrament with such an origin, you and I render our highest act of
+worship, though yours is still directed towards one among the
+supernaturalistic divinities and mine is now directed towards humanity.
+You say of a divinity: Thou, Lord, hast made me after thine own image
+and my heart cannot be at rest until I find rest in thee. I say of
+humanity: Thou, Lord, hast made me after thine own image and my heart
+cannot be at rest until it find rest in thee.
+
+Within the social realm humanity is my new divinity, and your divinity
+(my old one) is a symbol of it, or else, so I think, he is at best a
+fiction and at worst a superstition.
+
+You will be surprised, and I do not expect you to understand me, when I
+tell you that by translating the services and hymns from the language of
+my old literalism into that of my new symbolism, I am getting as much
+good out of them as ever and indeed more. I love the services,
+especially that great one, the Holy Communion, and the hymns, especially
+those great ones, Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah; Lead, Kindly Light;
+Abide With Me; and Jesus, Lover of My Soul.
+
+My experience has convinced me that the sentimental and poetical
+elements in religion, to which I attach as much importance as ever, are
+as readily excited and securely sustained by fixing thought and sympathy
+upon the martyred human savior, the working class, as upon a crucified
+divine saviour, who after all, as the suffering son of God, is but a
+symbol of the suffering sons and daughters of man, the workers, from
+whom all good things come.
+
+If grace at dinner means anything, it is addressed to a god who is the
+symbol of the many workers who did the innumerable things necessary to
+the producing and serving of it, without whom there would be nothing of
+all the good things on the table.
+
+In the representation about my pleasure in the services of the church
+and their value to me, and in many representations scattered throughout
+this letter, I have in mind the question of an unanswered letter of
+yours, bearing date, February 25th, 1919, the one in which you ask, in
+effect, by what right a man can remain in an institution after he has,
+as I have, abandoned its chief doctrines and aims as they are
+authoritatively interpreted.
+
+The right of revolution is the one by which I justify my course, and
+surely no consistent Protestant Christian or American citizen will doubt
+the solidity of this ground; for Protestantism and Americanism had their
+origin in revolutions.
+
+Our national declaration of independence contains this famous
+justification of political revolutions, and it is equally applicable to
+religious ones, for religion and politics are but the ideal and
+practical halves of the same social reality:
+
+     We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
+     equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
+     inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the
+     pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are
+     instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent
+     of the governed: that, whenever any form of government becomes
+     destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter
+     or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its
+     foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such
+     form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
+     happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long
+     established, should not be changed for light and transient causes;
+     and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more
+     disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
+     themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
+     But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
+     invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under
+     absolute despotism, it is their right--and it is their duty--to
+     throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their
+     security.
+
+Jesus was nothing if he was not a revolutionist. Anyhow, his alleged
+mother is authoritatively represented as believing him to have been
+foreordained as one, for this song is put into her mouth:
+
+     He hath showed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud
+     in the imagination of their hearts.
+
+     He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the
+     humble and meek.
+
+     He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath
+     sent empty away.
+
+This Christian socialism, like Bolshevik socialism, turns the idle rich
+empty away; but, whereas the Christian gives them no chance to get
+anything to eat, the Bolshevik allows them to have as much as the poor,
+if they will work as hard.
+
+Assuming for the sake of argument, that there may have been an
+historical Jesus who taught some of the doctrines, in accordance with
+the representations of the gospel, which are attributed to him, I am
+nevertheless justified in claiming that he was quite as heretical
+touching the faith of orthodox Judaism as I am touching that of orthodox
+Christianism.
+
+As to the Jewish faith he said, in effect, of himself what I say of
+myself: I have all of the potentialities of my own life within myself. I
+and my god are one. He dwells in me and I in him, and we are on the
+earth, not in the sky.
+
+As to the Jewish church and state, Jesus taught that they had become
+utterly antiquated and that it was the mission of himself and disciples
+to establish a new heaven, that is to remodel the church; and a new
+earth, that is, to remodel the state; both remodelings being with
+reference to the service of humanity by enlightening its darkness and
+alleviating its misery here and now, rather than teaching it to look for
+light and happiness elsewhere and elsewhen.[E]
+
+As for the faith and church of orthodox Christianism there is no reason
+for believing that he would be any more loyal to either than am I. His
+loyalty was to the truth and to the proletarian, and they (this faith
+and church) are disloyal to both, being ever on the side of tradition
+against science, and on the side of the owner against the worker.
+
+Jesus remained in the Jewish church, in spite of his many and great
+heresies, until he was put out by death.
+
+My contention is that in view of this example, whether it be, as you
+think, of an historical or, as I think, of a dramatic character, there
+is no reason why I should voluntarily go out of the Christian church.
+
+Religion in general and Christianity in particular are nothing unless
+they are embodiments of morality, and morality does not consist in
+professions of belief in a god and his revelations as they are recorded
+in a bible and condensed in a creed, but in a desire and effort to
+acquire a knowledge of the laws of nature in order that, by conformity
+to them, life may be made longer and happier.
+
+When this desire exists and this effort is made with reference to one's
+own self, they constitute morality; when with reference to one's own
+family and associates, they constitute religion, and when with reference
+to all others of contemporary and future generations, they constitute
+Christianity.
+
+But in making such distinctions the fact should not be lost sight of
+that at bottom there is no difference between morality, religion and
+Christianity. They are synonyms for the same virtues, the desire and
+effort to know and live the truth as it is revealed in the doings of
+nature. There are no other revelations of the truth, nor is there any
+other morality, religion or Christianity.
+
+Socialism is for me the one comprehensive term which is a synonym at
+once of morality, religion and Christianity. Marxian and Bolshevikian
+socialism are two halves of one thing, the theoretical half and the
+practical half. Marxism is socialism in theory. Bolshevism is (perhaps
+imperfectly as yet) socialism in practice.
+
+As long as gods dominate the sky and capitalists prevail upon the earth,
+the world will be safe for commercial imperialism, having a small heaven
+for the few rich masters and a large hell for the many poor slaves.
+
+Come over and help us make the world safe for industrial democracy by
+banishing the personal, conscious gods from the sky and the lying,
+robbing capitalists from the earth.
+
+But in coming there is no need for leaving your church any more than
+there is for leaving your state. During the short time which is for me,
+before the night cometh in which no man can work, I shall remain in both
+as long as the powers that be allow it, and do what little I can to
+revolutionize them--revolutionize the church into a school for the
+teaching of truth instead of lies, and revolutionize the state into a
+hive for the making of commodities for the use of all instead of for the
+profit of a few. In doing this I shall be following in the very
+footsteps of the human Jesus.
+
+After it was discovered that the ground, by planting and cultivating,
+would produce the necessities of life, when a tribe found that it had
+too little of it for its growing population, it would go to war with the
+weaker among adjacent tribes for the purpose of securing its territory;
+but from this on the vanquished were not eaten, and it was morally wrong
+to eat them. They were kept alive and put to work at raising harvests
+for their conquerors, hence arose the institution of slavery, and hence
+its moral rightness even in this country of the free, down to the
+beginning of the generation to which I belong.
+
+However, human slavery has never ended, nor will it ever end while the
+competitive system for the production of the necessities of life for
+profit rather than use continues. Human slavery is, so to speak, the
+basic ingredient of this system.
+
+Speaking broadly, there have been three forms of human slavery--the
+chattel, feudal and wage slaveries--the third much worse than the first,
+and the second intermediary between them.
+
+The chattel slave, as the adjective signifies, was the property of his
+master, as much so as were the horse or the mule with which he worked,
+and he was cared for in much the same way and for about the same reason.
+
+The feudal slave was as really a chattel as was his predecessor, only he
+had to look out for himself to a greater extent; and, more was expected
+from him of accomplishment for the opulence and glory of the master,
+especially insofar as these depended upon the success of his wars.
+
+The wage slave is, likewise, as really owned by his master as was the
+chattel or the feudal slave; but, if the master has no need for his
+service, he is altogether down and out, as the feudal slave was not and
+still less the chattel, and he has accomplished at least ten times more
+for his master than did either of his predecessors.
+
+So far man has produced and distributed the necessities of life by a
+competitive system. The existing form of this competition is known as
+capitalism. It has supplanted, or at least overshadowed, every other
+form and is, so to speak, monarch of all it surveys.
+
+The system as it now stands divides the world into two spheres--a small
+one, in which a few live surfeitingly by owning, and a large one, in
+which the many live starvingly by working; and, yet, ultimately,
+absolutely everything for both depends upon the worker and nothing at
+all on the owner.
+
+Yes, the worker is indispensable to the owner, as much so as (to use the
+classical illustration) the dog to the flea; but the owner is no more
+indispensable to the worker than a flea to a dog. As dogs would be much
+better off without fleas, so would workers without owners.
+
+The discovery that the itch is caused by a parasite was of an epoch
+making character because it led to the discovery that many, if not most
+of the diseases by which mankind and also animal kind are afflicted are
+of a parasitical character. This is as true of the social organism as of
+the physical. Capitalism is the tape worm of society.
+
+The existence of the master and slave classes inevitably gives rise to
+four struggles: (1) the struggle of the slaves with the master for
+better conditions, issuing in rebellions; (2) the struggle between
+masters for advantages in markets, issuing in wars; (3) the struggle
+between the slaves for jobs, issuing in a body and soul destroying
+poverty; and (4) the struggle of the slaves with the master for a
+reversal of conditions, issuing in revolutions.
+
+All this struggling between the classes and within them tends towards
+two results with both classes.
+
+In the case of the master class, these results are the making of the
+rich fewer and the remaining few richer.
+
+In the case of the slave class, these results are the making of the
+miserable poor more numerous and all less happy.
+
+While capitalism stands, all talk about peace on earth and good will
+among men will be so much hypocrisy; for, until it falls, the world will
+be divided into the slave and master classes and these four contentions
+with these results will continue to fill it with hatred and strife.
+
+
+II.
+
+The overthrow of capitalism in Russia is the greatest event in the
+history of the world and it has converted International Socialism (the
+Marxian revolutionary kind) from a theory into a condition.
+
+Theories come and go. Conditions remain and work. From this on
+revolutionary socialism will be working, night and day, with might and
+main, here and there, everywhen and everywhere, and its three herculean
+tasks are: (1) to dethrone the great imperialist, competitive
+capitalism; (2) to enthrone the great democrat, co-operative
+industrialism; and (3) to make the world safe for an industrial
+classless democracy.
+
+In less than three years revolutionary socialism in Russia has
+accomplished more of these three tasks for the world, than all the
+states and all the churches with all their wars have done in the whole
+course of man's career, extending through at least two hundred thousand
+years. Indeed they never did anything to these ends. On the contrary,
+what progress has been made towards them was made in spite of their
+strenuous opposition at every step.
+
+Revolutionary socialism is a world movement towards the deliverance of
+the producing slave from the non-producing master who has robbed him of
+the fruits of his toil and left him half dead on the wayside--the only
+effective movement to this humanitarian end.
+
+Revolutionary socialism is the Good Samaritan of the despoiled and
+wounded laborer. The reformatory kinds of socialism are so many priests
+and Levites who pass by on the other side.
+
+Of no reformatory socialism is this more true than of the Christian
+kind. Christian socialism is absolutely worthless, and its utter
+worthlessness is due to the essentially parasitic character of
+supernaturalistic or orthodox Christianity.
+
+Until the reformation, Christianity was dominated by monks--parasites
+who lived by begging, lying, and persecuting; and since then by
+capitalists--parasites who live by robbing, lying and warring.
+
+Monks and capitalists have this in common, that they are natives of the
+realm of parasitism.
+
+We shall never have peace on earth and good will among men until we have
+a parasiteless humanity, and we must wait for this until we have a
+classless world. Parasitism is a boon companion of classism.
+
+Nor can the earth ever be rid of its parasites until the celestial world
+is rid of the class gods which capitalists have made in their own image
+and likeness, nor until the terrestrial world is rid of the class states
+and codes, churches and gospels which their respective class kings or
+presidents and their class priests or preachers have had the gods of
+their making impose upon this world, in accordance with their interests
+and in the furtherance of their lying, robbing, warring schemes for the
+promotion of them.
+
+Neither capitalism nor Christianism is anything except insofar as it is
+a system of parasitism and as parasitic systems they have striking
+resemblances, nearly as many and close as indistinguishable twins.
+
+Both have gods, churches and priesthoods and these are in each case
+nothing but symbols.
+
+However, the god of capitalism, though only a symbol, is nevertheless
+real gold, below a real vault, and nearly all the world sincerely
+worships it.
+
+But the god of Christianism, though none the less symbolic, but rather
+more so, is an unreal imaginary spirit, a magnified man without a body,
+above an imaginary vault, and only a very small part of the world
+sincerely worships him.
+
+International socialism of the Marxian or Russian type, is for those who
+starvingly live by working, the most uplifting thing in the world, and
+for those who surfeitingly live by owning, it is the most depressing
+thing in the world.
+
+Wise people consider theories without losing too much, if any, sleep on
+their account, but they study conditions and lie awake nights over them.
+
+Millions of wise Americans have, in the past, been studying socialism as
+a theory but, in the future, they will study it as a condition, in the
+only way by which it can rightly and adequately be studied--the way of
+reading its official documents, accredited periodicals and books. Of all
+such, the most notable is the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.
+
+This Manifesto is the Marxian gospel. I read two pages in it every day
+as faithfully as ever I read a chapter in the Jesuine gospel, and with
+much greater profit; for, whereas the gospel of Marx is exclusively
+concerned with this terrestrial world, about which I know much and for
+which I can do a little, the gospel of Jesus is as exclusively concerned
+with a celestial world, about which I know nothing and for which I
+cannot do the least. Here, as a sample of this gospel, I give half of
+yesterday's reading and most of today's:
+
+     The immediate aim of the Communists (Socialists) is the same as
+     that of all the other proletarian parties; formation of the
+     proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy,
+     conquest of political power by the proletariat.
+
+     The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based
+     on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by
+     this or that would-be universal reformer.
+
+     They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing
+     from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going
+     on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property
+     relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.
+
+     All property relations in the past have continually been subject to
+     historical change consequent upon the change in historical
+     conditions.
+
+     The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in
+     favor of bourgeois property.
+
+     The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of
+     property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But
+     modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete
+     expression of the system of producing and appropriating products,
+     that is based on class antagonism, on the exploitation of the many
+     by the few.
+
+     In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
+     single sentence: Abolition of private property.
+
+     We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing
+     the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's
+     own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all
+     personal freedom, activity and independence.
+
+     Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the
+     property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of
+     property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to
+     abolish that; the development of industry has, to a great extent,
+     already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
+
+     Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?
+
+     But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit.
+     It creates capital, i. e., that kind of property which exploits
+     wage-labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of
+     getting a new supply of wage-labor for fresh exploitation.
+     Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of
+     capital and wage-labor. Let us examine both sides of this
+     antagonism.
+
+     To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a
+     social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and
+     only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort,
+     only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set
+     in motion.
+
+     Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power.
+
+     When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into
+     the property of all members of society, personal property is not
+     thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social
+     character of the property that is changed. It loses its
+     class-character.
+
+     Let us now take wage-labor:
+
+     The average price of wage-labor is the minimum wage, i. e., that
+     quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite
+     to keep the laborer in bare existence, as his labor merely suffices
+     to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to
+     abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labor, an
+     appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of
+     human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the
+     labor of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable
+     character of this appropriation, under which the laborer lives
+     merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only insofar as
+     the interest of the ruling class requires it.
+
+     In bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase
+     accumulated labor. In Communist society, accumulated labor is but a
+     means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.
+
+     In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in
+     Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois
+     society capital is independent and has individuality, while the
+     living person is dependent and has no individuality.
+
+     And the abolition of this state of things is called by the
+     bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so.
+     The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence,
+     and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
+
+The version of the Marxian gospel which we have in the Manifesto is
+among the first of its versions. It was published about the middle of
+the last century. Within the short period which has intervened, it has
+changed nearly all of the ideas of a large and rapidly growing part of
+every nation about almost everything social; and before the middle of
+the present century, it will revolutionize all nations as it has Russia.
+
+Ludendorff, the greatest among the military authorities in Germany, saw
+and terribly feared this, and called Europe to arms to prevent it. In
+his almost frantic appeal he said:
+
+     Bolshevism is advancing now and in a gradual progress from east to
+     west and is crushing everything between the midland sea and the
+     Atlantic ocean. It was easy to foresee that the Bolshevist armies
+     would attack toward the middle of May and defeat the Poles, as they
+     have now done. The world at large must, therefore, figure with a
+     Bolshevist advance in Poland toward Berlin and Prague.
+
+     Poland's fall will entail the fall of Germany and Czecho-Slovakia.
+     Their neighbors to the north and south will follow. Fate steps
+     along with elementary force. Let no one believe it will come to a
+     stand without enveloping Italy, France and England. Not even the
+     Seven Seas can stop it.
+
+Under the capitalist system most people are and must continue to be
+slaves. If you are a slave (all wage earners, as such, are slaves) the
+socialist literature, the greatest of all literatures, will thrill you
+with the hope of liberty. Read, note and inwardly digest it. No wage
+earner who does this will ever again vote either the Democratic or the
+Republican ticket. As a whole this literature is a brilliantly
+illuminating and almost resistlessly persuasive explanation of the most
+sane, the most salutary and withal the most promising movement towards
+the freeing of all toiling men, women and children (nine of every ten)
+from their body and soul destroying slavery.
+
+Both Socrates and Jesus are recorded as teaching that the saviour of the
+world is truth. Among saving truths (there is no truth without some
+saving efficacy) the greatest is the one which was discovered and
+formulated concurrently by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and it is in
+substance this: all which makes for the good of mankind ultimately
+depends wholly upon the laborious constructors and operators of the
+machines for the cultivation, production and distribution of the
+necessities of life, not at all upon the owners of these machines, who
+at best are idlers and at worst schemers, and in any case parasites.
+
+     In the beginning was Work. All things were made by it; and without
+     it was not anything made that was made. In it was life; and the
+     life was the light of men.
+
+The opening verses of the gospel according to John have been thus
+interpreted. The commentator acknowledges that they do not read so now,
+but contends for good and sufficient reasons, that, if there ever was
+any truth in them, something to this effect must have been their
+original reading. Certainly there is no truth in them as they have come
+down to us.
+
+This representation to the effect that productive labor is the saviour
+of the world, its real god, the divinity in which we live, move and have
+our being, is the great truth, the gospel of International Socialism,
+the greatest of all movements, the movement which carries the only
+rational hope for the freeing of mankind from all its unnecessary
+suffering--and the most poignant sufferings, those imposed by the great
+trinity of evils: (war, poverty and slavery) are not necessary.
+
+Capitalism and Christianism are alike not only in having gods which are
+symbols, but also in having great buildings set apart for the
+worshipping of them.
+
+The representatives of the god below the vault worship him in banks
+under the leadership of a threefold ministry: presidents, cashiers and
+bookkeepers.
+
+The representatives of the god above the vault worship him in churches
+under the leadership of a threefold ministry: bishops, priests and
+deacons.
+
+Speaking particularly of Christianity and America the trouble is not at
+all with our Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam divinities, but wholly with
+what they symbolize, capitalism--the god of liars, robbers and
+warriors.
+
+What our Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam should alike symbolize are the
+classless divinities: (1) law, the king of the physical realm, and (2)
+truth, the queen of the moral realm.
+
+Law is what nature does. There is no other law, and this law is the god
+of the physical realm. The gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations
+of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, and all the rest) are
+personifications, or symbols, of this god, or else they are
+superstitions.
+
+This representation is proved in practice to be true, on the one hand,
+by the fact that no one needs to live with reference to any among those
+gods, not even the god, Jesus; and, on the other hand, by the fact that
+none who fail to live with reference to this god, law, lives at all.
+
+Every act of nature, that is, every physical and psychical phenomenon
+which enters into the constitution of the universe, is a word of the
+revelation of this god, and there is no other revelation. All men must
+constantly live with reference to it or else immediately die.
+
+Truth is the interpretation of this law in the light of human
+experience, reason and investigation with the view of making human life,
+that of self and of all who come or can be brought within the range of
+one's influence, as long and happy as possible.
+
+Any one who desires and endeavors rightly to learn, interpret and live
+this law to these ends is moral. In everything is he wholly good and in
+nothing at all bad.
+
+Religion is not anything good, except only as it is a synonym of such
+morality, and this is equally true of politics.
+
+War shortens much life and fills more with misery, hence it is utterly
+immoral, and this is equally true of poverty and slavery.
+
+In what I say here and in some other places about war being essentially
+evil, the wars referred to are those by which the world has been cursed
+through all the ages--wars between different groups of owners with
+conflicting interests, not the war between owners and workers which is
+now on. This war will bless, not curse, the world, because it is for the
+emancipation of the slave class, not for the enrichment of one group of
+the masters at the expense of another group, at the cost of increased
+misery to all the slaves on both sides.
+
+If there is any truth in the representation that real religion and real
+politics alike consist in desiring and endeavoring to make terrestrial
+life (there is no celestial life of which aught is known) long and
+happy, the advocate of war is the worst of heretics against Christianism
+and the worst of traitors against Americanism.
+
+War is a necessary characteristic of vegetables and animals, because
+they cannot make and operate machines for the supplying of their needs.
+
+Peace is the necessary characteristic of humans, because they can make
+and operate machines for the supplying of their needs.
+
+Wars between capitalists are inevitabilities, as much so as the wars
+between two hungry dogs, when one has a bone upon which the lives of
+both depend. The only difference between capitalists and dogs is, that
+dogs do their own fighting, whereas capitalists first rob the laborers
+who produce their commodities, and then persuade or compel them to fight
+their battles with fellow capitalists in their competitive efforts to
+distribute them.
+
+On the one hand it is true that a few capitalists do lose money in wars,
+and still fewer their lives, but on the other hand it is equally true
+that the majority of them are made richer and that producing and
+distributing laborers ultimately bear every cent of the enormous
+financial burden, and that for every machine owning master who is killed
+or wounded there are a hundred wage earning slaves.
+
+Yet neither the making nor operating of machines constitutes a man a
+human. It is co-operation which does this. Nor will co-operation in
+itself suffice. Bees and ants co-operate and even capitalists do so, yet
+with all their co-operating bees and ants remain animals and so do
+capitalists. The co-operation which converts animals into humans is the
+one which is purposely inaugurated and sustained with the view of
+securing to each one the fruits of his labor while at the same time
+increasing them for all--that deliberate co-operation which consists in
+conscious living, letting live and helping to live.
+
+It is this co-operation which constitutes the most essential difference
+between the animal and the human. Only animalism can exist and flourish
+on a competitive basis, yet this is the basis upon which men who falsely
+claim to be humans are living.
+
+Until mankind begins the construction of a civilization on a foundation
+of co-operation in the production and distribution of the necessities of
+life, it should not set up a claim to humanism for itself, because
+meantime it cannot sustain such a claim.
+
+It is perfectly natural and absolutely necessary for dogs to have
+belligerent contentions for bones, because they cannot peacefully
+co-operate in the making of them; and yet men who can do this are more
+fierce by far in their competitive struggles for the bones which are
+necessities to their lives.
+
+Revolutionary socialists of the Marxian or Bolshevikian type offer the
+only solution of the two great questions of the world at this time: (1)
+how to save it from its intermittent and lesser hell of suffering by the
+bloody wars between rival sets of capitalists, and (2) how to save it
+from its perpetual and greater hell of suffering by the bloodless wars
+between the machine owning masters and the machine operating slaves,
+which wars, if less excruciating, are yet more destructive of both life
+and happiness.
+
+1. As to the bloody wars, a league of nations could prevent them only
+while the dogs are sleeping off their exhaustion.
+
+Nor could government ownership be depended upon for protection. It would
+increase the armies and navies, making it next to impossible that more
+than a decade or two should pass before our children must suffer as much
+as, or more than, we have by the recent war between the bull dog and the
+blood hound.
+
+We are not at all indebted to the victory of the bull dog (England) over
+the blood hound (Germany) for what we have in the way of a guarantee
+against future wars, but wholly to the presumption of the Newfoundland
+dog (Russia) which has quietly walked off with the bone of contention
+while the belligerents were scrapping over it.
+
+Notwithstanding all appearances and impressions to the contrary, this
+bone never was really Paris or Berlin, but first one and then another
+country--the Balkan States, Mexico, Persia, Morocco and Russia.
+
+Of late Russia has been the chief bone of contention. Hence all the
+snarling against Russian Bolshevism, one of a large litter of puppies
+born to the Newfoundland since the beginning of the war, representatives
+of which have already made their way to several countries of Europe, and
+the prospects are that they or their offspring will soon be in evidence
+everywhere throughout the world.
+
+When all these Bolsheviki are grown-ups, they will make the world safe
+for democracy sure enough--not the competitive democracy of the bull
+dogs and blood hounds, but the co-operative democracy of the
+Newfoundland dog. Then, and not before, will the world be safe against
+war.
+
+Since the beginning of the armistice there has been, every now and then,
+a widespread fear that it might not be permanent, because of a
+successful effort on the part of the bull dog to put over another war on
+account of the Russian bone; but for many this fear has now been almost
+quieted by the total collapse of the Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich and
+Wrangel uprisings from within, which were strongly supported by the
+Allies; and by the repulsion of the Polish invasion which had England,
+France and the United States behind it.
+
+An astonishing illustration of the truth of the Marxian theory
+concerning the materialistic or economic determination of history, is
+furnished by the melancholy fact that the representatives of big
+business in the allied countries would gladly respond to Gen.
+Ludendorff's call to join the junkers, against whom they so recently
+fought, in a war against Russia, of which war Germany would be the
+battle field. A concerted effort was made to organize such a war, but
+the wisdom learned in the school of the world war by the working-men of
+all the countries to which the call was made and their consequent
+opposition to the effort caused it to fail.
+
+2. But great as the suffering of the world is on account of the bloody
+wars of capitalists with each other, it is but a drop in the bucket of
+sorrow as compared with its suffering on account of the bloodless wars
+between masters and slaves--between the machine owners and operators.
+When this bloodless war ceases, as it will with the triumph of
+international socialism, the bloody wars will cease and not until then.
+
+Under the capitalist system every institution (state, church, school,
+legislature, court, business, yes, even charity) is necessarily a
+robbing instrumentality by which a small class of non-producers, fat
+masters, rob a large class of producers, lean slaves, and rob them
+twice, each time thrice:
+
+1. The master non-producers rob the slave producers of the three great
+necessities of physical (body) life--food, clothing and houses.
+
+Even in the United States of America, "the land of plenty," at this time
+and at all times, seventy-five out of every one hundred are
+insufficiently fed, clothed and housed.
+
+2. The master non-producers rob the slave producers of the necessities
+of psychical (soul) life--the liberty to learn the facts of nature, the
+liberty to humanly interpret and live them and the liberty to teach
+their discoveries and interpretations.
+
+Even in the United States of America, "the home of political and
+religious freedom," there is not one who can learn, live and teach the
+truth without danger of being put out of a synagogue and into a
+penitentiary; and this will continue until imperialistic capitalism and
+supernaturalistic Christianism, the father and mother of the whole brood
+of robbers, liars, persecutors and warriors, have been dethroned.
+
+The gods of the capitalistic interpretations of politics and the gods of
+the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, symbolize the same
+reality, parasitic robbery.
+
+Yet within the religious realm the trouble is not with the Jehovahs any
+more than within the political realm it is with the Sams, but only with
+what they symbolize.
+
+For one I should feel that both the religious and political realms,
+which are but halves of the same realm--religion the ideal half, and
+politics the practical half--would be poorer without their respective
+Jehovahs and Sams, even as the realm of childhood would be without its
+Santa Claus.
+
+If symbols are not absolute necessities to the religious and political
+realms, nevertheless they always have been, now are and probably ever
+shall be ornaments of them; I hope for their continuance, but as
+subjectivities, not objectivities.
+
+All the imperialistic interpretations of politics and all the
+supernaturalistic interpretations of religion must be overthrown, else
+the world will be lost. The omnipotent, omnipresent saviour who can and
+will deliver us from them is already in the world. His name is
+International Communism, the greatest and holiest name which has ever
+been framed and pronounced; and the gospel of this saviour as it is
+translated by Thomas Carlyle is written on every wall so that it may be
+read by all:
+
+     Understand that well, it is the deep commandment, dimmer or
+     clearer, of our whole being, to be freed. Freedom is the one
+     purpose, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's struggles,
+     toilings, and sufferings, on this earth.
+
+Morality is the greatest thing in the world because without it human
+life would not be worth the living, or even possible; but, paradoxical
+as the assertion may seem, freedom or liberty is greater because without
+it morality would be an impossibility.
+
+One can attain to the very highest standard of morality, religion and
+sainthood without the least necessity of the slightest reference to what
+the gods of the supernaturalistic religions said or did, and this is
+quite as true of Jesus as of any other among such gods, but no man can
+reach even the lowest standard of morality, and so of course not of
+religion or sainthood, without constant reference to the god of truth.
+
+Yet there is a difference between a law and a truth. The law is a doing
+or act of nature, and as such it is a fact or revelation. There are no
+other facts or revelations.
+
+According to the traditional superstitious conception, a truth is the
+revelation of the will of a god, involving a service to be rendered
+directly or indirectly to him, and morality consists in a fulfillment of
+it.
+
+According to the modern scientific conception, a truth is the
+interpretation of a fact involving a service to be rendered to men. On
+the scientific theory each man must have what truth he has, either by
+his own interpretation or by the adoption for himself of another's
+interpretation.
+
+No man can live the moral part of his psychical (soul) life on the truth
+of another any more than he can live his physical (body) life on the
+meals of another. Every one must have his own truths, even as he must
+have his own meals.
+
+Hence the necessity of freedom to morality. Hence, too, the
+impossibility of the moral life under restraint, such as is imposed by
+orthodox churches in their official dogmas, and such as is imposed by
+belligerent states in their espionage laws.
+
+Capitalism is essentially competitive and therefore necessarily
+belligerent in character: hence a complete, an ideal moral life is an
+utter impossibility under it, but even the little of moral life which
+otherwise might be possible is lessened to one-half by official dogmas
+and espionage laws; if, then, the governments of churches and nations
+have any regard for the morality of their memberships and citizenships
+they will at once repeal them, and never enact others.
+
+The democracy which means freedom to learn the laws of the physical
+realm of nature and to interpret them into laws for the regulation of
+human life (a democracy which will secure to each one the longest and
+happiest life which, under the most favorable of conditions, would be
+within the range of possibilities for him) must wait until the
+competitive system of capitalism for the production and distribution of
+the necessities has been universally and completely supplanted by the
+co-operative system of socialism.
+
+The conclusion of the whole matter, as it is well put by an able
+contributor to the excellent Proletarian, is this:
+
+     What is needed is a complete revolution of the economic system.
+     Private ownership of the tools of wealth production stands in the
+     way of further peaceful social development and private ownership
+     must be eliminated. The capitalists themselves will not eliminate
+     it. That is certain. It remains for the working class to do so. In
+     order to accomplish this task it will be necessary for the workers
+     to take control of the institution by which the capitalists
+     maintain their ownership of the tools of production--the political
+     state. That is the historic mission of the working class. The
+     mission of the Socialist is to organize and train the workers for
+     this "conquest of political power."
+
+Among the signs of the times which unmistakably point to the great day
+of the happy consummation of the movement towards the proletarian
+revolution, and the glorious sky is full of them, is the fact that the
+world has recently learned from the great war that man must work out his
+own salvation without the least help from the gods of the
+supernaturalistic interpretations of religion:
+
+  And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
+  Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
+  Lift not your hands to It for help--for It
+  As impotently moves as you or I.
+
+  --Omar.
+
+Yes, and a god moves more impotently than a man; for, whereas the god is
+driven hither and thither by the laws of matter and force, according to
+which they co-exist and co-operate through evolutionary processes to the
+making of the universe what it is, and the god cannot help himself by
+making it or conditioning himself otherwise, the man, if only he will
+learn those laws, may combine, guide and ride them to almost any
+predetermined destination, even out of the class hell of competitive
+capitalism to the classless heaven of co-operative socialism.
+
+
+III.
+
+The salvation of the world from its unnecessary sufferings is dependent
+upon such an equitable sharing of the labor involved in the making and
+operating of the machines of production and distribution, and upon such
+an equitable sharing of the products as shall issue in a classless
+mankind by doing away, through a revolution, with the class which lives
+by owning the means and machines of production and distribution.
+
+It is this advocacy of classless levelism which constitutes the
+theoretical core of revolutionary socialism. Those who oppose this
+socialism proceed upon the assumption of the permanency of existing
+religious and political institutions, the most ruinous of all heresies.
+
+What this heresy is and the fatal policy to which it gives rise has its
+classic expression, so far as religion is concerned, in the
+exhortation--"earnestly contend for the faith once for all delivered to
+the saints"--and, so far as politics is concerned, in the
+representation--"the laws of the Medes and Persians which altereth not."
+
+There is no such faith in religion, and cannot be, for as a creed
+becomes stereotyped it loses the religious character and degenerates
+into superstition.
+
+There are no such laws in politics, and cannot be, for as a law becomes
+stereotyped it loses the political character and degenerates into
+tyranny.
+
+Religion, which is the ideal half, and politics, which is the practical
+half, of the same reality, human socialism, are like all else in the
+universe, constantly changing, and necessarily so, because life and
+progress are dependent upon change.
+
+Orthodoxy in religion and politics is the blight of the ages, because of
+its assumption that the great institutions, the family, state and church
+with their customs, laws and doctrines, as they exist for the time
+being, constitute the foundation of society, without which it could not
+exist; that these institutions are almost if not altogether what they
+should be, and that, therefore, the welfare of society, if not indeed
+its existence, is dependent upon their continuance with but little if
+any change.
+
+But the foundation of society always has been a system for the
+production and distribution of the necessities of life, and hence social
+institutions, customs, laws and creeds are what they are at any time
+because an economic system is what it is.
+
+If we compare an economic system for the production of the primary
+necessities of life (foods, clothes and houses) to a king or bishop (we
+may well do so, for in all ages such systems have been the power behind
+every regal and episcopal throne) we shall see that states, with their
+rulers, codes and police, armies and jails; and churches, with their
+gods, revelations, heavens and hells, are but so many expediencies for
+the protection of the system from change.
+
+What is true in this respect of the state and church is equally so of
+the family, the school, the press, the lodge, the club, the library, the
+theater, the chautauqua and, in short, every institution.
+
+Why all these age-long safeguards against change? Because, so far, every
+economic system has divided society into two classes, a comparatively
+small class who own things and a large one who make things, and if the
+few honest owners are to hold their own as divinely favored
+"grab-it-alls," they must be protected at every point against the many
+dishonest makers who are diabolically tempted to be "keep-somes!"
+
+These rounded out children of god have nothing in common with these
+caved in imps of the devil, no more than the flea and the dog, or the
+tapeworm and the man.
+
+David hastily said: All men are liars. He might leisurely have said this
+of every representative of any religious or political orthodoxy, for
+they insist that their religion and politics are the permanent elements
+in social truth which remain unchanged from generation to generation
+through all ages, whereas no religion or politics continues the same
+during one decade, nor even a single year.
+
+Orthodox Christians say that Jesus founded their sectarian churches,
+though each sect insists that he had to do with only one church, theirs.
+I doubt that he lived. In any case, I am certain that if he did live and
+founded a church in the first century and were to come to earth again in
+this twentieth century, he could not if he would and would not if he
+could become a member of it, because of its changes.
+
+Our own country is different by the width of the whole space of the
+heavens from what it was before the war, and it is destined to a much
+wider change.
+
+So far are churches with their doctrines, and states with their laws
+from being changeless, that they are more or less modified by every
+development in the economic system to which they owe their existence
+and of which they are servants.
+
+In the case of every nation its king, the economic system, has always
+been a robber and enslaver of the overwhelming majority of the people,
+and the church and state have been the hands by which he accomplished
+the robbing and enslaving.
+
+Insofar as they differ, Roman orthodoxy is what it is because of its
+starting out as the religious product of the feudal system of economics;
+and Protestant orthodoxy is what it is because of its starting out as
+the religious product of the capitalistic system of economics.
+
+Protestantism is preferred before Romanism by most of the leading people
+in the financial world, because it is the child of capitalism, their
+sister, so to speak, whereas its rival is only a cousin.
+
+As to the Roman and Protestant orthodoxies they are on the same footing.
+I would not turn my hand over for the difference between them. If
+literally interpreted in the light of modern science, both are utterly
+antiquated and irrational.
+
+Orthodox Romanists and Protestants have essentially the same bible and
+creed. In my opinion, as in that of all Marxian and Darwinian
+socialists, every supernaturalistic representation in both must be
+regarded as having either a figurative or a superstitious character, for
+there is not one among them which can endure a scientific and rational
+analysis; yet, this is an age of science and reason.
+
+The difference between Romanism and Protestantism is not at all a
+question of relative supernaturalism, nor of rightness and wrongness,
+but wholly one of the difference between the systems of economics which
+gave them birth.
+
+If you ask, is not this difference at least partly a question of the age
+in which they took their rise, I reply, yes; but the age itself depends
+upon the system.
+
+However, it is a fact that while an economic system does constitute the
+foundation of every religious and political superstructure, yet below
+the foundation itself there is always a bed rock upon which it
+ultimately rests, and this is a question of machinery by which the
+necessities of life are produced and distributed.
+
+The age of feudalism was essentially traditional or theoretical in its
+character.
+
+The age of capitalism is essentially scientific or experimental in its
+character.
+
+This difference between these ages is due to the fact that during the
+earlier age things were made with hand tools, and during the later one
+with machine tools.
+
+Machinery in a theoretical or traditional age would be an anachronism.
+It must have an experimental or scientific age for its development, and,
+paradoxical as it may seem, this the machinery must make for itself.
+Every period in human history has had its determining character from the
+tools which brought it into being.
+
+Supernaturalism has no place in the observations, investigations or
+experimentations which are necessary to the invention, construction and
+operation of a great machine and, hence, the machines have banished the
+gods from the roof of the earth and the devils from its cellar, leaving
+it to us to make of it what we please, a heaven or a hell without
+reference to them. In his brilliant work entitled "Social and
+Philosophical Studies", translated by Charles H. Kerr, Paul Lafargue
+writes:
+
+     The labour of the mechanical factory puts the wage-worker in touch
+     with terrible natural forces unknown to the peasant, but instead of
+     being mastered by them he controls them. The gigantic mechanism of
+     iron and steel which fills the factory, which makes him move like
+     an automaton, which sometimes clutches him, bruises him, mutilates
+     him, does not engender in him a superstitious terror as the thunder
+     does in the peasant, but leaves him unmoved, for he knows that the
+     limbs of the mechanical monster were fashioned and mounted by his
+     comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion
+     or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and
+     productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the
+     electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send
+     miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city,
+     has but to say, like the God of Genesis, "let there be light," and
+     there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for
+     him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He would be greatly
+     surprised if one were to come and tell him that a certain god
+     might, if he chose, stop the machines and extinguish the lights
+     when the electricity had been turned on; he would reply that this
+     anarchistic god would be simply a misplaced gearing or a broken
+     wire, and that it would be easy for him to seek and find this
+     disturbing god. The practice of the modern factory teaches
+     scientific determinism to the wage-worker, without it being
+     necessary for him to pass through the theoretic study of the
+     sciences.
+
+Earth must be a hell as long as we allow the capitalist system to
+continue on it and to enslave the vast majority of its inhabitants.
+Marxian socialism will ring out the old era with its hell of human
+slavery and ring in the new era with its heaven of machine slavery.
+
+One point must be grasped and held by all who would understand the
+changes which take place within the social realm and it is this: they
+are due to the differences in the instrumentalities or machines by which
+the necessities of life are produced.
+
+Man has risen above the lower animals which have common ancestors with
+his own, because of the superiority of the hand by which he does things
+to the hands by which they do things. If a man's body in general and
+hand in particular were not a great improvement over the bodies and
+hands of the apes, his mind and morality would differ but little from
+theirs.
+
+The superiority of the civilization of this age over its predecessors is
+a question of instrumentalities by which the efficiency of the hand is
+increased.
+
+If all the modern machinery were taken from this generation and replaced
+by the implements of the stone age the civilization of the next
+generation would begin to sink, and within a century it would reach the
+ancient level.
+
+Strong expression is also given to the great truth upon which we are
+here dwelling by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in its noteworthy
+Manifesto:
+
+     Obviously, in order that there may be ideas and human history, two
+     material things must first be present: human beings, and food and
+     shelter for them. And the fundamental fact that is so seldom
+     realized is, that where, by what means, and how much, food and
+     shelter can be obtained, determines if, where, and how, man shall
+     live, and the forms his social institutions and ideas shall take.
+
+     It is, indeed, the very basis of Socialist philosophy that, in the
+     words of Frederick Engels:
+
+     "In every historical epoch the prevailing mode of economic
+     production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily
+     following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from
+     which, alone can be explained, the political and intellectual
+     history of that epoch."
+
+     This materialist concept is the Socialist key to history. It is the
+     first principle of a science of society, and, being directly
+     antagonistic to all religious philosophy, it is destined to drive
+     this "philosophy" and all its superstitions from their last ditch.
+
+Civilization will not die with the death of the capitalist system of
+production any more than it did with the feudal system. It improved
+under capitalism, because of the improvement in the machinery of
+production, and it is destined to continue its progress so long as new
+and better machines are made and this will be to the end.
+
+Marxian socialism is a machine optimism. Under this socialism the number
+and efficiency of machines would increase more rapidly than they have
+under capitalism and feudalism, because its aim will be the production
+of commodities for use within the shortest time by the least exertion at
+the slightest risk of injury.
+
+Up to the point of over production, that is, of glutting the markets, it
+is to the interest of capitalism to encourage improvements in machinery,
+but the ability to do this has been reached, as is evident from what we
+hear at increasingly frequent intervals about an over production of
+commodities.
+
+What machinery we now have renders it possible to produce more
+commodities than can be sold without employing all the labor power. But
+the idle, starving slave is a danger to the idle, surfeiting master.
+Hence, under capitalism there can be no further development of
+machinery, at least not on a large scale.
+
+An industrial government would have for its aim to produce enough of
+everything for all with the least expenditure of energy and time. Hence,
+the greatest benefactors and heroes under socialism would be the
+inventors of labor saving, leisure giving machinery.
+
+We hear much about the mental superiority of the representatives of the
+master class over those of the slave class, but there is little or no
+truth in it.
+
+On the contrary, it can be shown that the invention of a great labor
+saving, rapid-producing machine is, upon the whole, the greatest triumph
+of the human mind and that nearly all among such machines are invented,
+made, operated, kept in order and improved by the laborer.
+
+Masters may be more cunning than slaves, but cunningness is not an
+evidence of a high order of intellectual power. Many of the lower
+animals are quite the equals, if not indeed the superiors, of
+capitalists in this quality, but no animal is the equal of any man, not
+to speak of the exceptionally skilled laborer, in the power to produce
+efficient machines for the production and distribution of the
+necessities of life.
+
+Romanism began its career as a child of the feudal system for the
+production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the owners
+of the land and the means for its cultivation. The mission to which it
+was born was the assistance of its father, feudalism, in robbing and
+enslaving the workers who tilled the soil, and never did a servant more
+faithfully or efficiently perform a task during a longer period.
+
+Protestantism began its career as a child of the capitalistic system for
+the production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the
+owners of the means and machines for their manufacturing. The mission to
+which it was born was the assistance of its father, capitalism, in
+robbing and enslaving the workers, who make and operate the machines,
+and never did a servant more faithfully and efficiently perform a task
+in a larger or more fruitful field.
+
+Hitherto all systems of economics have had the same soul, competition;
+and, because of it, every one among them has been a diabolical trinity
+of which lying is the father; robbing is the son, who proceeds from the
+father; and murder is the spirit, who proceeds from the father and the
+son.
+
+Labor, "the certain man" of every nation, is half dead lying in the
+ditch by the wayside, despoiled and wounded, the victim of capitalism,
+the greatest liar, robber and murderer of all the ages.
+
+The church is the archangel or prime minister through which this
+Beelzebub, capitalism, has done most of his lying, though within the
+last hundred years the business has become so great that the office of
+coadjutor to this archangel was created, and the press appointed to it.
+
+The state is the archangel or prime minister through which this prince
+of devils, capitalism, has done most of his robbing and killing, though
+the church has often taken a helpful hand in these departments of the
+devil's work, the great work of converting earth into a hell.
+
+Nearly all of the backwardness of the world and more than half of its
+unnecessary sufferings have been due to efforts to prevent changes in
+religion and politics. Our nation is passing through the darkest period
+of its history because of such efforts on the part of the powers which
+be in the state, and they are supported by those in the church.
+
+Speaking of the change with which we are here especially concerned, the
+one involved in the supplanting of an old economic system by a new,
+there have been several revolutions due to such changes, and another is
+inevitable and imminent.
+
+When an economic system fails, as the capitalistic one is failing, to
+feed, clothe and house the workers of the world who produce all foods,
+clothes and houses, the time when it must give place to another is
+manifestly near at hand.
+
+Capitalism is failing in this, the only legitimate mission of an
+economic system. It has indeed over-supplied the needs of about one in
+ten, but in doing this it has shown partiality, for the remaining nine
+are left more or less foodless, clotheless and houseless, and this
+notwithstanding they have done all the feeding, clothing and housing.
+Those favored by the system will not be able to prevent its overthrow by
+those who are wronged.
+
+With our materials, factories, railroads and skill, all should have
+enough and to spare of every necessity, but so far is this from being
+the case that millions are insufficiently fed, clothed, housed and
+warmed, and are doomed to a perpetual and exhaustive drudgery which
+leaves neither leisure nor energy for the cultivation of their soul
+life.
+
+The economical and statistical experts of our government's Department of
+Labor represent that the bare necessities of a comfortable and efficient
+life for a family of five require an annual income of $1,500, and that
+the simple luxuries, which are next to being indispensable, require an
+additional $1,000, in all $2,500, per year.
+
+How many American families of five have even the smaller of these sums
+at their disposal? The overwhelming majority have less than $1,000. Let
+us be honest with the peoples of other nations by ceasing to speak of
+our country as "the land of plenty and the home of the free," until
+there is a great change for the better.
+
+Wage slavery may be prolonged by a military coercion but it cannot have
+a successor in any other form of human slavery. Military coercion
+prolonged chattel slavery, and by so doing brought what is known as the
+dark ages upon the world. If wage slavery is to be prolonged by military
+coercion the world must pass through a second dark age. The league of
+nations is fixing for this; but let us hope that this coalition will not
+stand and that wage slavery will soon be followed by machine slavery,
+the form of slavery which will end human slavery; not until then shall
+we have peace on earth and good will among men.
+
+Then they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into
+pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither
+shall they learn war any more.
+
+Do you not now see with me that the christ of the world is not a
+conscious, personal god, but an unconscious, impersonal machine? It is
+the machine of man, not a lamb of god, to which we may hopefully look
+for the taking away of the sins of the world.
+
+Ignorance is the great misfortune of the world, its devil, and slavery
+is his hell. The machine is the redeemer who shall save man from this
+devil and hell.
+
+Yes, strange, even blasphemous, as the representation may seem, it is
+nevertheless true, the machine is the only name given under heaven
+whereby the world can be saved.
+
+Civilization is salvation. The civilization which is salvation depends
+on leisure and it on slavery, but so long as leisure is dependent upon
+the slavery of man, civilization must be limited to a diminishing few.
+
+Marxian socialism is a movement towards the equalization and
+universalization of leisure by doing away with the master and slave
+classes, through transference of slavery from man to machine.
+
+If there is any truth in my naturalistic representation about the
+dependence of morality upon a system for the production of the
+necessities of life, there is none in the supernaturalistic one, which
+makes it dependent on any among the gods; and, what is true of the realm
+of morality is equally so of the realm of history, and this whether it
+be the history of the universe in general or man in particular.
+
+Lavoisier and Mayer showed that no god (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha)
+created the universe out of nothing, for the matter and force which
+enter into its constitution are eternalities and universalities.
+
+Kant and Laplace showed that the earth and the heavenly bodies were not
+created by any god at all, but evolved from gaseous nebulae.
+
+Kepler and Newton showed that these bodies were not governed in their
+motions by a god but by the law of gravitation.
+
+Darwin and Wallace showed that the species of animal and vegetable life
+were not created by any among the gods, but evolved from a common
+protoplasm.
+
+Marx and Engels showed that man's career has not been determined by any
+among the gods, but by his systems for producing and distributing the
+necessities of life.
+
+These ten men are the greatest teachers the world has had, and this is
+the sum of all their great teachings: The universe is self-existing,
+self-sustaining and self-governing, having all the potentialities of its
+own life within itself, and what is true of it in general is equally so
+of all the phenomena which enter into its constitution, including man;
+who, though he is the highest among them, is only a phenomenon, on a
+level with all the rest, not excepting the lowest. A microbe and a man
+are on the same footing, both as to their origin and destiny, and as to
+their having within themselves all power which is available for making
+the most of their respective lives.
+
+  "We are part
+  Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
+  One with the things that prey on us,
+  And one with what we kill."
+
+Darwinism and Marxism constitute one gospel, the only true,
+comprehensive and sufficient gospel which the world has ever had or can
+have, and there is no hope for the future of mankind except in it. If it
+fails the world is lost, but it shall not and indeed cannot fail, for
+its words are so many acts or facts of nature.
+
+There is no fact which is not such an act, and every such fact is a part
+of the one only law upon the knowing and doing of which terrestrial life
+and its happiness are wholly and solely dependent.
+
+Yes, life, long life, happy life, all there is of such human life, or
+divine life, (if there be any), depends entirely upon a knowledge of and
+conformity to this law which is the doing of nature, and not at all upon
+any law which is the willing of a god, if indeed there is such a law.
+
+Neither the religion nor the politics which enters into the constitution
+of Marxian or proletarian socialism is at all concerned about the heaven
+above or the hell below the earth, if there are such places: but the
+concern of both is wholly to ring out a hell from the earth and to ring
+in a heaven upon it.
+
+Nor have the religion and politics which constitute this socialism the
+least concern about the service of a celestial divinity (Jesus, Jehovah,
+Allah, Buddha or any other) by doing his will; but both are much
+concerned with the service of humanity, which consists in rightly
+learning, interpreting and using the laws of nature, wholly for the
+purpose of making the terrestrial lives of men, women and children as
+long and happy as possible, and with absolutely no reference to any
+celestial life which may be either above or below the earth.
+
+Religion and politics are the complementary and inseparable halves of
+the social sphere, religion being its idealism and politics its
+practicalism.
+
+Religious idealism is a social soul of which the church should be the
+embodiment.
+
+Political practicalism is a social soul of which the state should be the
+embodiment.
+
+Contrary to the representations of orthodox Christianism it is
+impossible for any soul to exist without an embodiment.
+
+In truth the body produces the soul, not the soul the body. We must have
+the church and state in order that we may have their souls, idealism and
+practicalism.
+
+  Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside
+  And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
+  Were't not a Shame--were't not a Shame for him
+  In this clay carcass crippled to abide?
+
+  --Omar.
+
+
+IV.
+
+The church and the state are on the same level as to their origin and
+importance. Both are human institutions and each is indispensable to the
+other. It is not at all desirable or possible to rid the world of
+either, but it is absolutely necessary that both should be
+revolutionized, the church by having its bible and creed rewritten or at
+least reinterpreted, on the basis of truth as it is revealed by nature,
+and the state by having its institutions reorganized on the basis of
+service to all instead of only to those of a small class, the owner or
+master class.
+
+All the idealistic aims of churches and all the practical undertakings
+of states should be directly concerned with the answer to three
+questions: (1) the question as to how to reach the goal where
+terrestrial life shall in the case of each man, woman and child be as
+long and happy as it is within the range of possibilities to make it, by
+the fullest of attainable knowledge concerning the laws of nature; (2)
+the question as to how to make the most successful endeavor universally
+to disseminate such knowledge, and (3) the question as to how
+resistlessly to persuade to the living of it.
+
+These are the only concerns and aims of Marxian socialism and they
+cannot be promoted or even avowed by Christian socialists.
+
+The great crime of the ages is the robbing of the producer of the basic
+necessities of human life by the non-producer.
+
+Capitalism is the robber, and the politics and religion of the old
+states and churches are the right and left hands by which he has been
+and is doing the robbing.
+
+Marxian socialism is an undertaking which has for its task the overthrow
+of the system which makes it possible for those who produce nothing to
+live surfeitingly, and renders it necessary for those who produce
+everything to live starvingly.
+
+Poverty is a disease caused by the unjust wage system of competitive
+capitalism for producing and distributing the necessities of life (food,
+clothing and shelter) for the profit of capitalists, the few who live by
+owning the materials and machines of production and distribution; and
+this blighting malady cannot be cured by charity, but it will spread
+until this system is supplanted by the just one of co-operative
+industrialism, a system by which these necessities shall be produced
+and distributed for the use of laborers, those who live by making and
+operating the machines.
+
+Every gift to charity by a rich man is a robbery of a poor man. You will
+not see this at once, if ever, and I shall not blame you for the failure
+to do so. It was not seen by me until I was much older than you; but I
+am now seeing it as clearly as I ever saw the sun on a cloudless
+noonday, and this is true of rapidly growing millions who are resolutely
+resolved to do away with the prevailing conception of charity, according
+to which capitalists may rob laborers of the fruit of their toil, giving
+them of it barely enough to keep body and soul together and to raise up
+children who are doomed to follow in their footsteps; and then, when the
+strength of their victim fails, to make amends for the robberies, by
+giving the most highly favored among them beds in hospitals, poor-houses
+in which to die prematurely, and nameless graves in potter's fields in
+which to await hopefully a resurrection and ascension to an inheritance
+of happiness in a sky, which was denied them on the earth.
+
+The time is at hand when everywhere the unemployed and the underpaid
+shall begin a resistless march towards the goal of economic levelism
+under a banner containing this slogan: We want no charity but the right
+to work and the fruits of our labors that we and our helpless dependents
+may have every necessity to the fullest life for body and soul.
+
+During more than a whole generation Mrs. Brown and I have not produced a
+spoonful of any food, a thread of any garment or a shingle of any house;
+and yet we have had foods, garments and houses in abundance with some to
+spare, while their producers have had them in scarcity with much to
+want.
+
+While the world war was on, an ill wind for the producers blew a
+thousand dollars to us and an ill wind for us blew it into the hands of
+a committee, ostensibly for investment on behalf of a hospital of which
+we approved, but really for the purchase of a bond in the interest of a
+war of which we disapproved.
+
+The fathers of the present generation of producers and distributors of
+the necessities of life were robbed in order that we might inherit the
+property from which our income is derived; the sons and daughters are
+being robbed over and over again and again, year after year, in order
+that the property may continue to yield this income to us.
+
+We therefore paid nothing of our own for this bond. What we gave for it
+was of the spoils which the great robber, capitalism, has bestowed upon
+us, its favorite children, from what it has taken from its unfortunate
+victims.
+
+The same persons or their children and successors were or shall be
+robbed first to create our property, then to pay the income of it, next
+to buy the bond, and now they are being robbed to meet the interest on
+it and finally they will be robbed to pay its face value. If capitalism
+stands, of course the victims of the last of these robberies will
+belong, probably, to a remote generation; but this delay is a misfortune
+in store for many of all intervening generations.
+
+If the robbery connected with this bond were limited to its original
+cost, one thousand dollars, and to its accruing interest, which is
+likely in time to aggregate several thousand dollars, it would indeed
+be bad enough, yet not nearly as much so as it is under the melancholy
+circumstances; for the money paid on account of the bond goes towards
+killing or wrecking its producers, if not those who produced this
+particular thousand dollars, yet others of their class to whom the world
+owes all of its wealth; therefore the thousand dollars which went into
+this bond has been devoted to the robbery of those who were robbed of it
+and of the most precious of all things: life and limb.
+
+You will ask: how can you and Mrs Brown, in the face of your theory,
+according to which all who live by owning are robbers of those who live
+by working, consistently receive and expend the income of your
+inheritance?
+
+The answer was given to a friend who asked us why we did not follow the
+heroic example of a young American who had recently renounced what had
+been inherited by him, and this is, in effect, what we said:
+
+As we look at the question, our course is more rational than his,
+because the wealth which he renounces may go to some one who is without
+his sympathy for the proletariat. We prefer to receive our inheritance
+and use it to overthrow the economic system which makes it possible for
+us to do nothing and have everything, and for those who do everything to
+have nothing.
+
+Capitalists, as such, people who live by the owning of the machines of
+production and distribution, instead of by the making and operating of
+them, have much to say against the alleged anarchism of socialists and
+yet they are necessarily what they accuse anarchism of being, robbers
+and murderers. Every cent of profit, interest and rent is so much
+robbing, and all wars are so many conflicts between the capitalistic
+bandits or robbers in the countries involved, and the peace conferences,
+which follow them, are so many attempts of the bandits on the successful
+side to have the spoils as large as possible, and to satisfactorily
+divide them.
+
+It is Holy Week 1921. The week in which during all the years of many and
+long ages benighted people sacrificed their Christs to Shylock gods. If
+Jesus lived and was a Christ, unhappily He was neither the first nor the
+last, for there were many both before and after Him. Were they who
+superstitiously led these victims to their Golgothas greater sinners
+against humanity than those who did avariciously during the war drive
+large armies of young men to the terrible trenches, a wholesale
+sacrifice of the lords of power and wealth and who do now drive the vast
+majority of the nations involved in that war to a terrible body and soul
+destroying poverty and slavery? No. The modern robbers even more than
+the ancient ones are in need of the prayer: Forgive them for they know
+not what they do.
+
+Communism and Christianism have, indeed, this in common, that their
+object is to promote life, long life, and happy life, both lives in a
+large and full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.
+
+Yet, with this sameness in the gospels of Communism and Christianism
+there is this difference in the aims of the christs who preached them,
+which separate them as widely as the east is from the west, leaving a
+great and impassable gulf between them.
+
+Marx, the christ of the Communist gospel, said: I am come that the
+world might have terrestrial life for body, mind and soul, and have it
+for each in the fullest of possible measures by co-operation with each
+other in the discovery of the laws of nature and in making them serve
+men, women and children by securing for them food, clothing, shelter,
+health and comfort for the body, and leisure for the mind to think and
+for the soul to grow.
+
+Jesus, the christ of the Christian gospel, according to orthodoxy, said:
+I am come that ye might have celestial life for mind, body and soul and
+have it for each in the largest and fullest possible measure by
+co-operation in persuading each other in particular and the world in
+general to receive a revelation of the will of a conscious, personal
+God, made through prophets, preserved in the bible and interpreted by
+the church.
+
+With me it is a melancholy but resistless and deepening conviction,
+that, if orthodox Christianism should become associated with Marxian
+socialism, as Kingsley and you would associate them, we should soon have
+a glaring illustration of the truth of two proverbs: a house divided
+against itself cannot stand; and no man can serve two masters.
+
+Moreover, I believe that if Christian socialism were to become a door to
+Marxian socialism, through which orthodox Christianism could enter and
+make itself at home, the revolutionary aims of the slave class would be
+thwarted and the world would enter upon a new dark age, as it did when
+Constantine was converted to Christianity and Christians became the most
+loyal citizens and valiant soldiers of the Empire.
+
+At that time chattel slavery had run its course as wage slavery has
+now; and, if it had not been prolonged by a military despotism, as I
+fear this may be, the world would have had something of the feudal
+slavery, but nothing of the dark age. This age was the baneful fruit of
+Christianism. Christianity has held the world back from civilization
+instead of advancing it towards civilization.
+
+The Christianization of Marxian communism, in accordance with the
+program of Kingsley and our Church Socialist League, would spell another
+military despotism for the prolongation of a second system of slavery,
+which has run its course and is in a fair way of being overthrown; but
+if the revolutionists fail, as the result of being trampled under the
+iron heel, we are at the threshold of a second dark age and shall soon
+be passing through all the miseries of it.
+
+My interest in the movement within our church looking towards a
+Christian socialism of a more radical and revolutionary type would be
+great, if only I could feel as I should so much like, that the Christian
+socialism to which you have consecrated the whole prime of your life,
+and the Marxian socialism, to which I have consecrated all of the little
+that remains of mine, the fag-end, are not utter incompatibilities, so
+much so that it is absolutely impossible that they can co-exist and
+co-operate to any good purpose.
+
+The irreconcilable incompatibility of Christian socialism and Marxian
+socialism is due to the fact that, whereas the Christian is essentially
+imperialistic in its character, the Marxian is as essentially
+democratic. The reason for this fundamental and ineradicable difference,
+and the consequent incompatibleness, is the fact that orthodoxism,
+whether Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic, is nothing unless
+it is supernaturalistic and traditional; and Marxism is nothing unless
+it is naturalistic and scientific, as much so as is Darwinism.
+
+In order that you may see the reason, as I understand it, for this wide,
+deep and bridgeless difference, I draw the following contrasts between
+the essential beliefs of Marxian socialists and orthodox Christians:
+
+1. Marxian socialism is essentially naturalistic. Orthodox Christianism
+is essentially supernaturalistic. The consistent socialist says: I have
+all the potentialities of my own life within myself. The consistent
+Christian says: My strength is from God.
+
+2. Marxian socialism is essentially classless. Orthodox Christianism is
+essentially a class system by which the world is divided into two
+classes, saints and sinners. The consistent socialist says: Every man is
+my brother. The consistent Christian (like the theist of every
+name--Jew, Mohammedan, Buddhist and the rest) says: Every true believer
+is my brother, but those who are not are only potential brethren.
+
+3. Marxian socialism is essentially terrestrial. Orthodox Christianism
+is essentially celestial. The consistent socialist says: Earth is my
+home. The consistent Christian says: Heaven is my home.
+
+4. Marxian socialism is essentially materialistic. Orthodox Christianism
+is essentially spiritualistic. The consistent socialist says: The basic
+necessities of life, and therefore its first concern, are foods,
+raiments, shelters, comfort and leisure. The consistent Christian says:
+Take no primary thought for these, but only for faith in and obedience
+to God, regarding all else of secondary importance.
+
+5. Marxian socialism is essentially proletarian. Orthodox Christianism
+is essentially bourgeois. The consistent socialist says: I am, by reason
+of my antecedents, a man, a woman, a child of nature on an essential
+level as to my origin and destiny with every other representative of
+humanity and indeed animality. The consistent Christian, like the theist
+of every name, says: I am (by reason of my faith, baptism or conversion)
+a prince or princess, the son or daughter of a king, God.
+
+6. Marxian socialism is essentially democratic. Orthodox Christianism is
+essentially imperialistic. The consistent socialist says: I live with
+reference to the will of the majority. The consistent Christian says: I
+live with reference to the will of a God.
+
+7. Marxian socialism is essentially pacific.[F] Orthodox Christianism is
+essentially belligerent. The consistent socialist says: Since you are a
+man, I co-operate with you. The consistent Christian says: Since you
+are not a believer, I contend with you.
+
+8. Marxian socialism is essentially non-sectarian. The consistent
+socialist says: All the world is my home and the desire and effort to
+render service to men, women and children is my religion. The consistent
+Christian says: Only Christendom is my home and the desire and effort to
+serve a God is my religion.
+
+9. Marxian socialism is, as to the source of knowledge and the means of
+attaining it, essentially scientific. Orthodox Christianism is
+essentially traditional. The consistent socialist says: The salvation of
+the world is dependent upon what is learned by natural experience,
+observation and investigation about the doings of a matter-force-law,
+nature. The consistent Christian says: This salvation depends upon what
+is learned by revelation, tradition and inspiration about the willings
+of a father-son-spirit, God.
+
+10. Marxian socialism explains the history of mankind on the
+naturalistic theory that it has been determined during every period by
+the existing system for supplying the materialistic necessities of life.
+Orthodox Christianism explains this history on the supernaturalistic
+theory that it is determined by the providential directions of a triune
+divinity. The consistent socialist says: If you will tell me of the
+economic system by which a people have fed, clothed and housed
+themselves, I will tell you, at least in general outline, what has been
+their history. The consistent Christian says: If you will tell me what
+the providences of my God have been towards a people, I will tell you
+their history.
+
+11. Marxian socialism has inscribed on one of its banners: Liberty.
+Orthodox Christianism has this inscription on its corresponding banner:
+Obedience. The consistent socialist says: This Liberty-banner is the
+symbol of my freedom as a son of man to be progressively learning,
+living and teaching the unfolding revelations of nature--to know and to
+live which is to have life, terrestrial life in an ever increasing
+measure, all the life there is here and now or elsewhere and elsewhen,
+if there is to be a conscious, personal life anywhere or anywhen else.
+The consistent Christian says: This Obedience-banner is a symbol of my
+slavery as a son of God by which I am bound to receive, live and teach
+the faith once for all delivered to the saints in the Old and New
+Testaments or else lose the permanent life in the sky which is to follow
+this temporary one on the earth.
+
+12. Marxian socialism has inscribed on another of its banners: Justice
+to Man. Orthodox Christianism has on its corresponding banner: Love to
+God. The consistent socialist says: It is my aim to do unto others as I
+would have them do unto me if our circumstances were reversed. The
+consistent Christian says: It is my aim to love God with all my heart,
+mind and soul.
+
+And if there be any further contrast between this Christianism and
+Socialism, it is briefly comprehended in these three statements,--in
+themselves sufficient to show how absolutely impossible it is for a
+consistent Jesuine Christian to be a consistent Marxian Socialist:
+
+1. Marx seeks to save by doing away with both the master and slave
+classes--Jesus by exalting the slave class above the master class.
+
+2. Marx exhorts the slave class to look to itself for
+deliverance--Jesus taught it to look to a God for this.
+
+3. Marx promises salvation for this world here and now, a world about
+which everybody knows much--Jesus promised it for another world
+elsewhere and elsewhen, a world about which nobody knows anything.
+
+The world has never had a gospel which is at all comparable in its
+excellency to that of Marxian Socialism. The gospel of Jesuine
+Christianism, according to the orthodox interpretation of it, is no
+exception; for, granting it to be superior to the Mosaic, Buddhistic,
+Mohammedan and other gospels, it is, nevertheless, almost infinitely
+inferior to the Marxian gospel. Gospels are for the purpose of saving
+the world from its suffering. The Jesuine and Marxian gospels are alike
+in having for their object the salvation of the proletarian world.
+
+
+V.
+
+About three years ago I discovered that I had spent a long, strenuous
+and open-handed ministry in preaching lies to the permanent ruin of my
+health and the temporary embarrassment of my purse; therefore I had the
+unhappy experience of being forced to see that all this part of my life,
+its prime, had been mostly, if not wholly wasted and worse. What was to
+be done?
+
+My friends told me as plainly as they could, and some succeeded in
+making it brutally plain, that in losing my faith in the
+supernaturalistic dogmas of traditional Christianism, as they are
+literally interpreted in the doctrinal standards of the orthodox
+churches, I had lost the pearl of great price.
+
+My soul told me that I had never possessed this jewel, but that, even
+with the little time and enfeebled strength that remained to me, I might
+yet find it, if only I should cease looking for it in the field of
+supernaturalism, under the direction of divine authority, and begin
+looking for it in the field of naturalism, under the direction of human
+reason.
+
+Happily, where faith went out courage came in, and it increased with my
+desperation until (though standing on the shore of death where the deep
+and unknown stream lies darkly between the present and future) I could
+and I did undertake the supreme task of my life--the breaking of the
+chains by which I was bound as a slave to the degrading superstition
+that I was, both by an inherited and cultivated disposition, a doomed
+man, and by an inherent weakness, a helpless one with no power to
+emancipate myself.
+
+Of such enslaving chains I mention three among the strongest, the
+severed parts of which, with those of all the rest, now lie scattered
+about me: (1) the chain of the fear of God; (2) the chain of the fear of
+the devil, and (3) the chain of the fear of man.
+
+Hitherto I had been a child, thinking as a child, understanding as a
+child and speaking as a child.
+
+Henceforth I was to be a man, the greatest, conscious, personal being
+who has anything to do with this world; and as a man, I put away the
+things of a child, especially the most childish of all things, fear, the
+fear of God, the fear of devil and the fear of man.
+
+Preachers of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion say that
+the fear of God is salvation. It is damnation. No one who has fear of
+any conscious, personal master whomsoever or wheresoever, God in heaven,
+devil in hell or man on earth, is free or other than a slave. Nor has
+any such attained to the full stature of manhood.
+
+There is only one fear which saves and that is the fear of ignorance.
+The world's destroyer-god is ignorance. There is no other devil on earth
+or in hell below it, and this one lives, moves and has his being in the
+fear of knowledge.
+
+The world's saviour-god is knowledge. There is no other Christ on earth
+or in any heaven above it, and this one lives, moves and has his being
+in the fear of ignorance.
+
+Happily, I listened to my soul and I have found the pearl of great
+price, yes, a whole bed of them, so that I am now in position to
+substitute in my preaching a truth for every lie I used to preach, and
+thus save myself; but woe unto me unless I make the substitution by
+ringing out the lie and ringing in the truth.
+
+Within the last three years I have learned that, as I have not been,
+since the beginning of my Christian ministry, more than a generation
+ago, a producer, I have nothing of my own to give to charity, and what
+is true of me is true of Mrs. Brown.
+
+No one is a producer who does not grow things on the farm, make things
+in a shop, discover things in a laboratory or render some necessary or
+helpful service to those who do such things. I have done nothing of the
+kind. If I had been preaching truths I might have rendered such
+service, but I preached lies.
+
+Every possession rightfully belongs to the productive worker and nothing
+to the unproductive idler. This is one of the two greatest and most
+salutary among all the truths known to mankind. Recently I made
+acknowledgment of it on the pledges to a good cause, that of the Red
+Cross, by writing on their upper left hand corners: "The gift of Unknown
+Laborers through Bishop and Mrs. Brown, whose possessions are the fruits
+of their enforced toil and sacrifices."
+
+By this acknowledgment I rang out a great lie--the lie which makes the
+salvation of the world depend upon the capitalists with their servants,
+the preachers on the right and the politicians on the left hand.
+
+Salvation or, what is the same reality, civilization, always has been
+and always will be dependent upon the producer. It will never be
+attained until the laboring class has done away with the capitalist
+class. The ideal civilization (which is the salvation of the world from
+its unnecessary sufferings, especially the overwhelming ones due to the
+great trinity of evils, war, poverty and slavery) is in the very nature
+of things an impossibility on the basis of class sectarianism, such as
+we have even in our Anglo-American Christianity, the best interpretation
+of traditional religion, and in our American democracy, the best
+interpretation of traditional politics.
+
+Among the pathetic things about war, there is this, the laboring class
+makes by far the greater sacrifices, not only of life and limb, but also
+of money.
+
+Quite contrary to the general impression, capitalists, as such, pay no
+part of the enormous and ruinous pecuniary cost of war. When Mr.
+Rockefeller pays out three million dollars in war taxes he is disposing
+of what rightfully belongs to laborers, because they, not he, earned it.
+Capitalists, as such, neither earn nor pay anything, in time of either
+war or peace.
+
+So much for one of the two great truths. The other, which is the greater
+because it includes its companion, is this: Man has within himself all
+the potentialities of his own life. This is true of the universe as a
+whole, and, therefore, necessarily so of all that therein is.
+
+The sum of both truths is that the salvation of the world is wholly
+dependent upon productive laborers and that they must look individually
+only to the exertion of their own mental and physical powers and
+collectively to co-operation with each other for the accomplishment of
+their mission.
+
+Through the whole of my past ministry in the field I rang out these
+great truths and rang a great lie in by representing that the salvation
+of the world depends upon a potentiality which is in the sky and not in
+man, that heaven is above the earth and hell below it, not on it.
+
+When I commenced my present ministry in the study,
+
+  I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
+  Some letter of that After-life to spell;
+  And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
+  And answer'd 'I Myself am Heaven and Hell!'
+
+Omar, the poetic astronomer, might have added a stanza which would have
+closed. "I myself am God." This is, in effect, what Jesus did say: "I
+and my Father are one." This is as true of you and me and of every man,
+woman and child as it was of Jesus.
+
+And Jesus represented that God, both as Father and Son, dwells in the
+hearts of believers. But every relevant fact which has been
+scientifically established as such (and there is a whole mountain of
+such facts) points to the conclusion that Christians are no more divine
+than other people, and that, as to his essential nature, no man would be
+less divine than he is if Jesus had never been born.
+
+Gods in the skies (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) are all right as
+subjective symbols of human potentialities and attributes and of natural
+laws, even as the Stars and Stripes on a pole, Uncle Sam in the capitol
+and Santa Claus in a sleigh are all right as such symbols; but such gods
+are all wrong, if regarded as objective realities existing independently
+of those who created them as divinities and placed them in celestial
+habitations.
+
+What is true of the gods is equally so of all the supernaturalistic
+dogmas of the several traditional interpretations of religion. Insofar
+as they are not pure superstitions they are symbols of imaginary events
+which people think should or must have occurred in the past or should or
+must occur in the future; not statements of historical events which have
+occurred or are to occur.
+
+So far I have not found it necessary to renounce the Christian God or
+any of the things which go with him and I have no idea of doing this,
+any more than I have of renouncing the American Uncle Sam and the things
+which go with him, but I place the Brother Jesus of the Christian
+religion and the Uncle Sam of the American politics on the same footing
+with each other and with others of their kind as subjective realities. I
+could be a Jew and an Englishman as conscientiously as a Christian and
+an American. Many of the early Christians were also Pagans, worshippers
+of other Gods than Jesus.
+
+Nor is this all or even much more than half of my religious and
+political levelism.
+
+On the one hand as a religionist I can be any and everything but an
+orthodox sectarian. This orthodoxy is a libel against humanity. The
+world owes to it a great part of all its unnecessary troubles--those
+which are brought about by the triune devil of persecution, ignorance
+and superstition.
+
+On the other hand as a politician I can be any and everything but a
+nationalistic sectarian. This nationalism is a libel against humanity.
+The world owes to it a great part of all its unnecessary troubles--those
+which are brought upon it by the triune devil of war, poverty and
+slavery.
+
+Hoping that you will abandon Jesuine socialism for Marxian communism and
+join me in an effort to banish the fictitious, superstitious gods from
+the skies and the lying, robbing capitalists from the earth, I am with
+every good wish,
+
+Very cordially yours,
+WM. M. BROWN.
+
+Brownella Cottage,
+Galion, Ohio.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] This letter was written in July, 1919, and sent to the press in
+September, 1920. In the interim several of its representations and
+arguments were made more complete: therefore, some among the additions
+bear the marks of dates belonging to later months.
+
+[E] According to the showing of the science of biblical criticism there
+is more than one Jesus of whom we have an account in the New Testament:
+(1) a naturalistic, this-worldly, pacific, human Jesus, and (2) a
+supernaturalistic, other-worldly, belligerent, divine Jesus, the Jesus
+of orthodox Christians.
+
+[F] This shall be true of Marxian socialism when it is triumphant, but
+it will not be so while it is persecuted. Socialist Russia has asked for
+peace after every war which the capitalist nations (England, France,
+Italy and America) have waged against her, not because she could no
+longer defend herself, but for the reason that her socialism, being
+co-operative in its character, necessarily imposes humaneness; yet they
+could not grant it, because their capitalism, being competitive in its
+character, as necessarily imposes inhumaneness. The hand of the
+capitalist world is aggressively against socialist Russia, and must be,
+because the life of capitalism depends upon her death: and her hand is
+defensively against all the capitalist nations. Capitalism and socialism
+cannot occupy the earth together. Either the one or the other must have
+all of it. Mankind in general is illustrating the truth of the proverb
+which has been illustrated by so many families in particular--a house
+divided against itself cannot stand.
+
+
+
+
+THE GRAND MARCH
+
+By Helen Keller
+
+
+The hour has struck for the Grand March! Onward, Comrades, all together!
+Fall in line! Start the New Year with a cheer! Let us join the world's
+procession marching toward a glad tomorrow. Strong of hope and brave in
+heart the West shall meet the East! March with us, brothers every one!
+March with us to all things new! Climb with us the hills of God to a
+wider, holier life. Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to meet the
+Dawn!
+
+Leave behind you doubts and fears! What need have we for "ifs" and
+"buts"? Away with parties, schools and leagues! Get together, keep in
+step, shoulder to shoulder, hearts throbbing as one! Face the future,
+out-daring all you have dared! March on, O Comrades, strong and free,
+out of darkness, out of silence, out of hate and custom's deadening
+sway! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to the wind-blown Dawn!
+
+With us shall go the New Day, shining behind the dark. With us shall go
+Power, Knowledge, Justice, Truth. The time is full! A new world awaits
+us. Its fruits, its joys, its opportunities are ours for the taking!
+Fear not the hardships of the road--the storm, the parching heat or
+winter's cold, hunger or thirst or ambushed foe! There are bright lights
+ahead of us, leave the shadows behind! In the East a new star is risen!
+With pain and anguish the Old Order has given birth to the New, and
+behold, in the East a man-child is born! Onward, Comrades, all together!
+Onward to the camp-fires of Russia! Onward to the coming Dawn!
+
+Through the night of our despair rings the keen call of the New Day. All
+the powers of darkness could not still that shout of joy in far-away
+Moscow! Meteor-like through the heavens flashed the golden words of
+light, "Soviet Republic of Russia". Words sun-like piercing the dark,
+joyous radiant love-words banishing hate, bidding the teeming world of
+men to wake and live! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to the
+bright, redeeming Dawn!
+
+With peace and brotherhood make sweet the bitter way of men! Today, and
+all the days to come, repeat the Word of Him who said, "Thou shall not
+kill". Send on psalming winds the angel-chorus, "Peace on earth,
+good-will to men". Onward march, and keep on marching until His Will on
+earth is done! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to the life-giving
+fountain of Dawn!
+
+All along the road beside us throng the peoples sad and broken, weeping
+women, children hungry, homeless like little birds cast out of their
+nest. With their hearts aflame, untamed, glorying in martyrdom they hail
+us passing quickly, "Halt not, O Comrades, yonder glimmers the star of
+our hope, the red-centered dawn in the East! Halt not, lest you perish
+ere you reach the Land of Promise". Onward, Comrades, all together,
+onward to the sun-red Dawn!
+
+[Illustration: KARL MARX]
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DARWIN]
+
+
+
+
+COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
+
+ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+
+Christianism: A Supernaturalistic Other-worldly Gospel for the Passing
+Age of Class Inequality and Economic Slavery--An Open Letter to a
+Christian Theologian and Brother Churchman.
+
+     Revolutionize capitalism out of state and orthodoxy out of church.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD[G]
+
+
+The contradiction in terms known as the Christian Socialist is
+inevitably antagonistic to working-class interests and the waging of the
+class struggle. His policy (that of the Christian Socialist) is the
+conciliation of classes, the fraternity of robber and robbed, not the
+end of classes. His avowed object, indeed, is usually to purge the
+Socialist movement of its materialism, and this means to purge it of its
+Socialism and to divert it from its material aims to the fruitless
+chasing of spiritual will-o'-the-wisps. A Christian Socialist is, in
+fact, an anti-Socialist.
+
+Clearly, then, the basis of Socialist philosophy is utterly incompatible
+with religious ideas; indeed, the latter have been reduced to their
+logical absurdity in what is called "Christian Science."
+
+Moreover, the consistent Christian, if such exists, could look upon the
+existing world only as an essential part of God's plan, to be accounted
+for only through God, and modified at God's pleasure. He could regard
+those who sought the explanation of social conditions in purely natural
+causes, and who also sought to take advantage of economic development in
+order to turn this vale of tears into a pleasant garden, only as men who
+denied by their acts the very basis of his faith.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[G] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
+showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTIANISM: A SUPERNATURALISTIC OTHER-WORLDLY GOSPEL FOR THE PASSING
+AGE OF CLASS INEQUALITY AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY.
+
+     Come over and help us. Abandon Reformatory for Revolutionary
+     Socialism.
+
+
+My Dear Brother:
+
+Your letter (April 1st, 1920) enclosing an essay, entitled, Is There a
+God, came duly to hand and I thank you warmly for it. The essay is a
+masterpiece and I hope you can let me keep this copy, or make another
+for myself, for reference when I am writing or conversing on its lines,
+as is frequently the case.
+
+
+I.
+
+In the dispute between yourself and friend of which you speak, you are
+altogether right and he is entirely wrong. In the last analysis it is a
+disputation as to whether or not the Jewish-Christian bible contains an
+infallible revelation from an omniscient being, a triune god, Father,
+Son and Spirit. It does not.
+
+As an objectivity there is no such divinity. He is a subjectivity
+existing in the imagination of orthodox Christians. You do not agree
+with me in this, but every day of thought and study deepens the
+conviction that it is true. None among the gods of the supernaturalistic
+interpretations of religion are objectivities. The lesser ones are
+generally ghosts of dead men, and the greater ones are as generally
+versions of the sun-myth.
+
+The one god of the Jews and the triune god of the Christians, if taken
+seriously, are superstitions; and the bible revelations of their
+willings and records of their doings, if taken literally, are lies.
+
+Both the Old and New Testaments are utterly worthless as history. The
+twelve patriarchs of the Jewish God, Jehovah, are not historical
+personages, but myths, and this is true of the twelve apostles of the
+Christian God, Jesus.
+
+Yes, the Old Testament is the Jewish version of the immemorial and
+universal sun-myth, rewritten several times for the purpose, not of
+telling any truth, but of imposing the fiction that Jehovah and his
+people constitute the greatest procession that ever came down the pike
+of supernaturalism. The New Testament is the Christian version of the
+same myth, only with the view of showing that Jehovah and the Jews were
+not, but Jesus and Christians are, this procession.
+
+In itself, the sun-myth, as symbolism, is not only poetically beautiful,
+but also scientifically true; yet, as literalism, it is in the case of
+the ignorant, superstition, and in the case of the educated,
+self-deception.
+
+The sun is, in a very literal and real sense, the creator-god in whom
+this world lives, moves and has its being; and he is the saviour-god who
+was born of a virgin nebula, and every winter descends into hell and
+rises from the dead (the southern solstice) by a new birth and ascends
+into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the father (the sky) at
+the northern solstice, and finally he is the illuminator god who
+lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
+
+And the apostles who preached the gospel of the redemption of the world
+are the twelve signs of the zodiac through which the sun apparently
+passes in its annual ascension to the summer solstice and descension to
+the winter solstice.
+
+Nor is this all: "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the
+world" is the sign of the zodiac, Aries (sheep, ram) through which the
+sun passes towards the end of March, when all the saviour-gods annually
+died and rose again. The rising symbolizes the return of the sun towards
+the northern solstice from the southern one, upon which return seed-time
+and harvest are dependent, without which the world would perish, not
+indeed by sin but by starvation.
+
+Jehovah is the sun-myth rewritten to fit in with the ideals and hopes of
+the owning, master class of the Jews.
+
+Jesus is the sun-myth rewritten to fit in with the ideals and hopes of
+the owning master class of the Christians.
+
+The Christian god, Jesus, is an improvement upon the Jewish god,
+Jehovah, because of the division of labor. The task of the owning master
+class is a twofold one, the robbing of the weak owners by the strong
+ones in wars, and the robbing of the slaves by the masters which under
+the capitalist system is done in surplus profits.
+
+Jehovah serves Christians as the god of war. In his name they wage wars,
+either as groups within a nation having different commercial interests,
+as in the case of the Civil War of the United States, or as nations
+against nations with different commercial interests, as in the case of
+the Revolutionary war of the Colonies with England, or the World War of
+the Allied countries with the Central ones.
+
+Jesus serves Christians as the god of slavery. When they have
+successfully waged a war of conquest, as the Pilgrim Fathers did against
+the Indians of America, or when they have appropriated all the means and
+machines of production, as the capitalists have everywhere, they
+reconcile the propertyless to a terrestrial hell of toil, want, sorrow
+and slavery by preaching the Jesuine gospel of hope for a celestial
+heaven of eternal rest, joy, plenty and freedom.
+
+  "Some for the Glories of This World; and some
+  Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
+  Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
+  Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum."
+
+In remaking the Jewish god to suit their purposes of robbing and
+enslaving, the Christian owning master class provided for a further
+division of his work by creating the Holy Ghost, who devotes himself to
+the giving of new revelations of the will of Jehovah and interpreting
+the earlier ones as they are recorded in the bible.
+
+It is generally supposed that the masters are the strong people of the
+world, but they are not. Labor is really the giant, the Samson, and it
+would be impossible for the pigmy, capital, to rob him, but for his lack
+of knowledge. The Holy Ghost sees to it that the slave class is kept in
+ignorance.
+
+The English-German, or if you prefer, the German-English war has been an
+eye-opener to the giant, labor, and capital is ruined unless he can get
+him to sleep again.
+
+Capital knows that Marx was right in characterizing the orthodox
+interpretations of religion, including the Christian one, and especially
+it, as a sleeping potion.
+
+The churches were the dormitories in which the slaves slept through the
+night of the dark ages of traditionalism, but the light of the age of
+scientism is breaking upon the world and most of the slaves have left
+the churches and are now beyond the reach of their care-takers, the
+preachers.
+
+When I wrote the Level Plan for Church Union, I believed that the coming
+together of the churches would prove to be a blessing to the world, but
+I am now persuaded that it would be a curse, because the league of
+churches would co-operate with the league of nations in its robbing and
+enslaving schemes, the churches doing the lying and the nations the
+coercing.
+
+We are living in the age of scientism and, in the case of its true sons
+and daughters, only scientifically demonstrated facts count in any
+argumentation.
+
+From the scientific point of view it is seen that there is but one
+universal Kingdom of Life, Nature. This kingdom may be divided into
+three, perhaps four, states constituting the United States of Life: the
+mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human.
+
+Beginning with the highest, each of these states, except the lowest, is
+dependent upon the next lower. The only independent autonomous state in
+the kingdom is the mineral. This is the greatest both as to its extent
+and importance. It is the common source of every supply of all the
+states of life, and the seat of each of their governments.
+
+All theologians and some metaphysicians postulate a fifth state of
+life, the divine, placing it above the rest as their source.
+
+Comte, who preceded Marx as a social philosopher, and who is the founder
+of modern socialism of the reformatory type, as Marx is of the
+revolutionary one, had this to say about the theologians, metaphysicians
+and scientists, and he was right:
+
+     From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all
+     directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great
+     fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has
+     a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts of our organization
+     and in our historical experience. This law is this: that each of
+     our leading conceptions--each branch of our knowledge--passes
+     successively through three different theoretical conditions: the
+     theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the
+     scientific, or positive. In other words, the human mind, by its
+     nature, employs in its progress three methods of philosophizing,
+     the character of which is essentially different and radically
+     opposed: viz., the theological method, the metaphysical and the
+     positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general systems of
+     conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes
+     the others. The first is the necessary point of departure of the
+     human understanding; the third is its fixed and definite state. The
+     second is merely a state of transition.
+
+In order for a man who has reached the scientific stage in his
+intellectual development to make anything out of the reasonings of those
+who are still in the stage of theological childhood or in that of
+metaphysical adolescence, it is necessary for him to use their
+insubstantialities as symbols of his substantialities.
+
+The only difference that I can see between a theologian and a
+metaphysician is that, whereas the former personifies a generality
+which is the creation of his imagination, calling it a god, the latter
+objectifies a particularity which is the creation of his imagination
+calling it an entity; but all such personifications and objectifications
+(gods, things-in-themselves, vital entities, souls) are alike
+fictitious, because the childish theologians and metaphysicians proceed
+on the basis of philosophically assumed realities, not on scientifically
+established facts which pave the way on which an adult proceeds.
+
+Comte analyzes the difference between the intellectuality of theological
+children, metaphysical youths and scientific adults as follows:
+
+     In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential
+     nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin and
+     purpose) of all effects--in short, absolute knowledge--supposes all
+     phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural
+     beings.
+
+     In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the
+     first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract
+     forces, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions)
+     inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena.
+     What is called the explanation of phenomena is, in this stage, a
+     mere reference of each to its proper entity.
+
+     In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vain
+     search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the
+     universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the
+     study of their laws--that is, their invariable relations of
+     succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly
+     combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood
+     when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the
+     establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some
+     general facts the number of which continually diminishes with the
+     progress of science.
+
+     There is no science which, having attained the positive stage, does
+     not bear the marks of having passed through the others. Some time
+     since it was (whatever it might be now) composed, as we can now
+     perceive, of metaphysical abstractions: and, further back in the
+     course of time, it took its form from theological conceptions. Our
+     most advanced sciences still bear very evident marks of the two
+     earlier periods through which they passed.
+
+     The progress of the individual mind is not only an illustration,
+     but an indirect evidence of that of the general mind. The point of
+     departure of the individual and the race being the same, the phases
+     of the mind of men correspond to the epochs of the mind of the
+     race. How each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own
+     history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a metaphysician
+     in his youth and a natural philosopher in his manhood. All men who
+     are up to their age can verify this for themselves.
+
+According to the scientific classification, there are only three
+kingdoms or states of life, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal.
+
+The life of the vegetable kingdom has arisen out of the life of the
+mineral kingdom and is sustained by it.
+
+The distinguished scientist, Professor Lowell, says, "there is now no
+more reason to doubt that plants grew out of chemical affinity than to
+doubt that stones did," and nearly all outstanding zoologists would say
+as much of animals.
+
+Sir J. Burdon Sanderson, one of the most eminent among biologists,
+insists that "in physiology the word life is understood to mean the
+chemical and physical activities of the parts of which the organism
+consists." The renowned Sir Ray Lankester strenuously holds that
+"zoology is the science which seeks to arrange and discuss the phenomena
+of animal life and form, as the outcome of the operation of the laws of
+physics and chemistry," and goes so far as to say that he knows of no
+leading biologist who is of a different opinion. The prince of
+biologists, the late Professor Haeckel, occupied this position and
+impregnably fortified it in several great books, especially in his
+"Riddle of the Universe."
+
+There is no force that is not life, nor life which is not force; and
+there is no life or force, about which we know anything, without a body
+or chemical laboratory.
+
+So far as is known, there is only one life--force. The difference
+between lives is a question of the organism, the laboratory, which gives
+embodiment to force.
+
+The life that enables the wheels of a locomotive to go, the sap of a
+tree to flow, the heart of an animal to beat and the brain of a man to
+think is the same chemical potentiality differently organized.
+
+During all historical time and over all the earth, under one name or
+another, the whole world has kept days of rejoicing for life, especially
+Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and Easter.
+
+Nothing is so wonderful as life and perhaps the greatest of its wonders
+is that all of it is of the same kind.
+
+Everything and every being is alive with the same life. The Thanksgiving
+day sheaf of wheat, the Christmas day Son of Man and the Easter day Son
+of God (if there are conscious, personal gods and they have sons) are
+alive and their life is the same, the difference being wholly in the
+form and degree, not at all in kind.
+
+A proof of the oneness and sameness of all life, notwithstanding its
+widely different forms and degrees, is the fact that a bar of iron, a
+stick of wood, a piece of flesh and a section of brain respond alike to
+the same electrical stimulus, and all may be poisoned or otherwise
+killed so that they will make no response to it. Perhaps even a more
+conclusive evidence is that the eggs (every form of both vegetable and
+animal life develops from an egg) of some animals rather high in the one
+tree of mundane life, which has a common root and a stump, but two
+stems, the vegetable and the animal, can be mechanically fertilized by
+chemical processes.
+
+Even Sir Oliver Lodge, the most conspicuous among the comparatively few
+men of science who hold to the theory that life comes to the earth as
+vital entities of celestial origin and destination, makes this fatal
+admission: "There is plenty of physics and chemistry and mechanics about
+every vital action." On the theory of traditional Christianity there was
+no physics, chemistry or mechanics connected with the vital actions
+which originally brought the universe and all that therein was,
+including the earth with its vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, into
+existence.
+
+Every representative of each form of life in these kingdoms (in the
+vegetable: a grass blade, a wheat stalk, an oak tree; or in the animal:
+an insect, a horse, a man) is a chemical laboratory for the production,
+sustentation, advancement and procreation of a particular type of one
+universal life. These laboratories have all the potentialities of their
+respective lives within themselves,--no laboratory, no chemistry; no
+chemistry, no life.
+
+What life is, both as to its manifestation and character, is determined
+by the form of organization through which force, all there is of life,
+becomes a particular and differentiated vital phenomenon. This is as
+true of states and churches as it is of trees and men, for a church or a
+state is a vital phenomenon as really so as a tree or a man.
+
+The trouble with every reformatory socialism of modern times is that it
+undertakes the impossibility of changing the fruit of the capitalistic
+state into that of the communistic one, without changing the political
+organism; but to do that is as impossible as to gather grapes from
+thorns or figs from thistles. Hence an uprooting and replanting are
+necessary (a revolution not a reformation) which will give the world a
+new tree of state.
+
+Capitalism no longer grows the fruits (foods, clothes and houses) which
+are necessary to the sustenance of the world. Hence it encumbers the
+ground and must be dug up by the roots in order that a tree which is so
+organized that it will bear these necessities may be planted in its
+place.
+
+The people of Russia have accomplished this uprooting and replanting
+(this revolution) in the case of their state, and those of every nation
+are destined to do the same in one way or another, each according to its
+historical and economic development, some perhaps with violence, most, I
+hope, peaceably. The Russian Bolsheviki occupy the highest peak in man's
+history; and while they stand, the world will be safe for industrial
+democracy. This democracy is the tree of life whose fruits are for the
+sustenance of the nations and whose very leaves are for their healing.
+
+The only lives of which we need know aught are those that we shall live
+in our bodies by chemical processes and in the race by conscious or
+unconscious influences; for, if there is another, it will take care of
+itself, if we take care of these.
+
+Since, therefore, all life is on a level and since morality, religion
+and Christianity are but manifestations of it, do you not see how
+profoundly and incontrovertibly true is my levelism?
+
+According to this levelism all interpretations of Christianity
+(protestant and catholic--congregational, presbyterian, episcopalian and
+papal) and all the interpretations of religion (Christian, Jewish,
+Mohammedan, Buddhistic and the rest) are essentially on the same
+footing, the difference between them being wholly a question of natural
+excellencies, not at all of supernatural uniqueness.
+
+The science of biology establishes my levelism by proving that animal
+and human life are on a level as to their origin, character and destiny.
+
+The science of sociology establishes my levelism by proving that animal
+and human institutions are on a level, and that therefore, there is
+nothing more supernatural about a human state or church than about an
+ant hill or a bee hive.
+
+The science of literary criticism establishes my levelism by proving
+that the bibles of the several interpretations of religion are on a
+level as to their entirely human origin and authority.
+
+The science of the comparative interpretations of religion establishes
+my levelism by proving that all the conscious, personal creator-gods,
+destroyer-gods, saviour-gods and illuminator-gods, with all their
+angels, heavens and hells, are so many myths--creations of the human
+imagination, subjective fictions, not objective realities.
+
+Until comparatively recent times, through all the theological history of
+mankind, the sun was almost universally regarded as a god. Manifestly
+without it there could be no life on earth, and its annually recurring
+motions are such as to give the impression of birth and death--of birth
+by ascension into the heaven of the summer solstice--of death by
+descension into the hell or grave of the winter solstice. Not only is
+the sun the giver and sustainer of life, but it is also the light that
+lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
+
+Modern science justifies this ancient conception as to the dependence of
+the earth, and all that thereon is, upon the sun for its being. By a
+slight adaptation men of science and scientific philosophers could use
+the very words of the apostle John at the opening of his version of the
+Christian gospel, where he says of Jesus, what they say of the sun:
+
+All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that
+was made. In him is life; and the life is the light of men.
+
+The birth, death, descension, resurrection and ascension of all the
+Saviour-gods, not excepting Jesus, are versions of the sun-myth.
+
+Yet the naturalness, the universalness, the beautifulness and withal the
+profound truthfulness of this myth are such as to render it almost as
+undesirable as it is next to impossible to relegate it to the realm of
+superstition, to which it should undoubtedly be assigned if a literal
+interpretation is a necessity.
+
+The more science advances, the more of precious poetry and pathos, and
+of deep verity, too, is seen in the Saviour-gods, who are essentially
+the same mythical personifications of the glorious sun and of the happy
+events of its annual career, because from it the earth with its brother
+and sister planets had their origin, and because from it the earth, not
+to speak of the other planets, has the heat, light and force which make
+its life a possibility.
+
+There is no reason for believing that any one among the gods of the four
+old supernaturalistic interpretations of religion (Jehovah, Jesus,
+Allah, Buddha) or that either of the gods of the two new interpretations
+by the renowned physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge, and the distinguished
+sociologist, Mr. H. G. Wells, has had more to do in creating, sustaining
+and governing this world than another, that is to say, there is no
+ground for believing that the personal, conscious gods in the skies
+either individually or collectively have had anything at all to do with
+it.
+
+Science, as it is understood by the great majority of its exponents,
+teaches that the earth (with all things, physical and psychical, which
+contribute to make its world what it has been, is, and is to be) was
+originally in the sun, and would quickly disappear into its original,
+unorganized elements but for the sun.
+
+This is as true of man as of all else. He with his brain and its
+thought, with his hand and its skill; with his homes, farms, cities,
+mines, shops, stores, trains, ships, schools, hospitals and churches;
+with his hate, bestiality and barbarism, and with his love, humaneness
+and civilization, was in the sun, billions of years before his
+appearance on the earth.
+
+Speaking of things appertaining to the world war: there in the sun,
+before it had thrown off the earth, were the kaiser on the throne, the
+president in the white house, the millions of soldiers, the uniforms,
+the rations, the forts, the cannons, guns, powder and shot, the
+trenches, the barbed wire, the dreadnoughts, the submarines, the
+aeroplanes, the wireless telegraph stations, the wounded, their
+sufferings and groans, the doctors and nurses, the corpses, the
+cripples, the broken hearts; yes, and all the things connected with that
+terrible war; the bereaved mothers, the widowed wives, the outraged
+girls, the ruined country, the wrecked cities, were in the sun from its
+beginning, indeed while it was yet a nebula, many thousands of millions
+of years previous to the birth of the earth.
+
+If we except intruders into our solar system, such as comets and their
+comparatively inconsiderable effects, we may say that every physical or
+psychical reality which at any time has entered into the history of this
+planet and that of its brothers and sisters was in that vast flowing,
+swirling, revolving globe of gases which is known to have been at one
+time at least five billion miles in diameter, or fifteen billions in
+circumference.
+
+Of course no phenomenon, such as Jesus hanging on the cross, if He lived
+and was crucified, was in the sun as an actuality, but only as a
+potentiality. Nevertheless He, with His doctrine and His suffering, was
+there, else He would never have been anywhere, not in the realm of
+history, not even in the realm of imagination.
+
+The universe is ever all that it can be, and every potentiality which
+contributes to make it so is within itself. What is true in this respect
+of the universe as a whole is equally so of every part of it, including
+man, and especially him, because he is exceptionally capable of
+controlling his own destiny, being able not only to preserve life by a
+discovery of and conformity to the laws upon which it is dependent, but
+also to enlarge and enrich its content by making these laws co-operative
+servants.
+
+The time cannot be far off when it will be seen by all educated,
+thoughtful men and women that if the traditional, supernaturalistic
+interpretation of Christianity is the only possible one, its message is
+not a gospel, because its teaching touching three fundamentals is, in
+each case, contrary to that of three relevant sciences:
+
+1. The sciences of astronomy, geology and biology teach that the
+representation of traditional supernaturalistic interpretation of
+Christianity to the effect that the universe, including the earth with
+its physical and psychical life, was supernaturally created out of
+nothing by a conscious, personal god is not true and therefore can be no
+part of any gospel; for, according to the teaching of these three
+sciences, the truth is: the universe with all that therein is, not
+excepting mankind and civilization, was naturally evolved out of a
+self-existing matter by a self-existing force co-operating in accordance
+with the necessity of their nature.
+
+2. The sciences of biology, physiology and embryology teach that the
+representation of the traditional, supernaturalistic interpretation of
+Christianity to the effect that man and woman are unique beings, who
+have supernaturally derived their physical form, vital and psychical
+potentialities directly from a conscious, personal creator with whom are
+their natural affiliations, is not true, and therefore can be no part of
+any gospel; for, according to the teaching of these three sciences, the
+truth is: man and woman as to their whole beings (body and mind, life
+and soul) were naturally evolved from pre-existing animal life, not
+supernaturally created respectively out of the dust and a rib, so that
+they owe their existence to and natural affinities with a terrestrial
+and bestial parentage, not a celestial and divine one.
+
+3. The sciences of anthropology, sociology and comparative
+interpretations of religion teach that the representation of the
+traditional, supernaturalistic interpretation of Christianity to the
+effect that man and woman were supernaturally created in the image and
+likeness of a conscious, personal god, sinless and deathless beings with
+ideal environments, but that they fell from this happy estate, through a
+serpentine incarnation of a supernatural devil, and are being restored
+to it, through a human incarnation of a supernatural saviour, is not
+true, and therefore can be no part of any gospel; for, according to the
+teaching of these three sciences, the truth is: during many ages man and
+woman, in both appearance and predilection, were much more animal than
+divine and that gradually, without any supernatural assistance, they
+have worked themselves out of a state of bestial barbarism into one of
+human civilization.
+
+It follows therefore that the representations of both the Old and New
+Testaments, concerning the origin and history of man are largely
+fictitious impositions, not historical compositions, so much so, that no
+confidence can safely be reposed in any of them.
+
+There is no rational doubt about the fictitious character of the divine
+Jesus. Some think that the human Jesus may have been an historical
+personage; but, none among outstanding scholars believes that we have a
+connected account of his life and work, and most of them insist that we
+do not certainly know any saying or doing of his.
+
+No religious doctrine or institution of which we have an account in the
+New Testament is peculiar to Christianity and this is equally true of
+moral precepts.
+
+The gods of all the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are so
+many creations of the dominant or master class, and their revelations
+were put into their mouths by the makers for the purpose of keeping the
+slave class ignorant and contented.
+
+Orthodox Christians earnestly contend that this naturalistic doctrine
+makes for immorality. Heretical socialists rationally answer that the
+life which men, women and children live with reference to their
+terrestrial influence, rather than to celestial rewards or punishments,
+is the only one which is lived to any moral purpose.
+
+According to socialism, morality, religion and Christianity are but
+synonyms of one and the same reality, which consists wholly in the
+desire and effort of a man to learn the laws or doings of nature, and to
+conform his thoughts and words to them, in order to make his present
+life on earth, and that of others, as long and happy as possible, and
+not at all in a desire and effort to learn what the will of a conscious,
+personal god is and to conform to it, in order to avoid a hell and gain
+a heaven for a future life in the sky.
+
+  O threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
+  One thing at least is certain--This Life flies;
+  One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
+  The Flower that once has blown forever dies.
+
+If you object that this is a representation of a sceptical poet, I reply
+that it is in alignment with a representation of a scriptural preacher:
+
+  For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts;
+  Even one thing befalleth them;
+  As the one dieth, so dieth the other;
+  Yea, they have all one breath;
+  So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast;
+  For all is vanity.
+  All go unto one place;
+  All are of the dust,
+  And all turn to dust again.
+
+Darwin showed that each man in his physical development from the
+embryonic cell to birth passes through, by short cuts, the different
+forms of life from say, the worm, fish and lemur with all that went
+before, intervened between and followed after, and Romanes showed that
+this is as true of the mind as of the body; that, in fact, all the
+representatives of the animal kingdom are physically and psychically
+related, and therefore on the same level as to their origin and destiny.
+
+In his illuminating book entitled, "The Universal Kinship," Professor
+Moore says:
+
+     The embryonic development of a human being is no different from the
+     embryonic development of any other animal. Every human being at the
+     beginning of his organic existence is a protozoan, about 1-125
+     inch in diameter; at another stage of development he is a tiny
+     sac-shaped mass of cells without blood or nerves, the gastrula; at
+     another stage he is a worm, with a pulsating tube instead of a
+     heart, and without a head, neck, spinal column, or limbs; at
+     another stage he has as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending
+     along the back, and a faint nerve cord, as in the amphioxus, the
+     lowest of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a
+     two-chambered heart, mesonephric kidneys, and gill-slits, with gill
+     arteries leading to them, just as in fishes; at another stage he is
+     a reptile with a three-chambered heart, and voiding his excreta
+     through a cloaca like other reptiles; and finally, when he enters
+     upon post-natal sins and actualities, he is a sprawling, squalling,
+     unreasoning quadruped. The human larva from the fifth to the
+     seventh month of development is covered with a thick growth of hair
+     and has a true caudal (tail) appendage, like the monkey. At this
+     stage the embryo has in all thirty-eight vertebrae, nine of which
+     are caudal, and the great toe extends at right angles to the other
+     toes, and is not longer than the other toes, but shorter, as in the
+     ape.
+
+Surely no argument is needed to convince you that Darwinism corroborates
+the representation of our ancient heretical poet and scriptural preacher
+concerning a life beyond the grave rather than the representations of
+modern orthodox theologians.
+
+  Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
+  Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
+  Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
+  Which to discover we must travel, too.
+
+  --Omar.
+
+
+II.
+
+In history slavery stands out as a huge mountain range traversing the
+whole of a continent. During long ages it was supposed that these
+phenomena of the human and physical worlds were due to the will of a god
+(Jesus, Jehovah, Allah or Buddha) but the vanguard of humanity has now
+reached a viewpoint from which it sees that both are alike due to a law,
+that a law is what nature does, not what a god has willed, and that a
+system of slavery and a range of mountains are due to the same law.
+
+The matter-force law is everywhere the same, and it is as omnipotent and
+immutable in a social order as in a solar system.
+
+  "The very law that moulds a tear,
+  And bids it trickle from its source,
+  That law preserves the earth a sphere,
+  And guides the planets in their course."
+
+Most of the time, and especially just now, our world is very full of
+tears, almost as much so as space is full of spheres, but there would
+not be half so many tears at any time, if the laws of states were so
+many correct interpretations of the laws of nature.
+
+In every age, nearly all the hot tears which deluge the world flow, like
+streams of springs, from their deep sources as the result of unnecessary
+suffering by grinding poverty, by hopeless slavery, by avoidable
+diseases and by premature deaths; and by far the most of these and of
+all sufferings may be traced to man-made laws which not only have no
+correspondence with those of nature but are contrary to them--laws of
+which both the civil codes and religious bibles are too full.
+
+You will agree with me that society should punish none of its members by
+the slightest fine or shortest imprisonment, not to speak of death,
+except on the basis of justice. So far, and it is a long way, we
+certainly walk together. We part company, if at all, on the question as
+to the basis of justice, but come together again in the conclusion that
+it is right, not might.
+
+What, then, is this right? If you answer: the law of the state as it is
+interpreted by a competent court, I reply: no legal enactment, and so,
+of course, no interpretation of one, can really constitute a right,
+unless it is an embodiment of a truth containing an indispensable stone
+in the foundation which is necessary to the superstructure of the ideal
+civilization, under the roof of which every man, woman and child shall
+possess the greatest of possible opportunities to make life for self as
+long and happy as it can be, and to help others in an ever widening
+circle to do this for themselves.
+
+Laws are not made. All social laws (domestic, civil, commercial, yes,
+even the moral and religious ones) are matter-force realities, as much
+so as is any other among all the physical or psychical realities
+entering into the constitution of the universe; which realities are but
+the expressions of the processes necessarily resulting from the
+necessary co-existence and co-operation of this matter and force;
+therefore, laws are so many eternal necessities and, this being the
+case, it is not possible that men in states or churches should make
+them, no, not even gods in heavens.
+
+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 gods (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 God" in states and churches--institutions which exist
+in the interest of the capitalist class and against that of the labor
+class. The world owes by far the greater part of its most poignant
+sufferings to this fatal mistake of looking to gods 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 God 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 god 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 superstition.
+
+There is no one (man or god) 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 God. The gods of the several supernaturalistic
+interpretations of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) are so many
+symbols of this divinity. The words of this God are the facts of nature.
+My religion and politics, worship and patriotism consist in a desire and
+effort to discover these facts and to interpret and live them humanely.
+
+My God, 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 constituted. 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 class--a class 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 god, 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 god, Nature (the triune divinity, matter-force-motion) the doings of
+which god 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 god, 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 (god) 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, God, are one."
+
+  Stop man! where dost thou run?
+  Heav'n lies within thy heart,
+  If thou seek'st God elsewhere
+  Misled, in truth, thou art.
+
+  --Angelus Silensius.
+
+This truth constitutes the most ennobling 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.
+
+The universe moves, with all that therein is. The vanguard of mankind is
+moving to a viewpoint from which rapidly increasing numbers will see
+that a revolution which is necessary on the part of a slave to free
+himself from a master is not only justified but required by the great,
+first law of the biological realm, the law of self-preservation--a
+nature-made law on behalf of freedom. This nature-made law will
+ultimately nullify all class laws, every law which is in favor of the
+enslaving capitalist class and against the enslaved labor class.
+
+Every state with its executive, legislative, judiciary, military and
+educative systems is founded on capitalism. Since this is the case and
+since human nature is what it is, all political institutions, the
+American with the rest, are of the capitalist, by the capitalist, for
+the capitalist, and each to the end that the capitalist may keep the
+laborer in poverty and slavery.
+
+Every modern church with its ministry, bible, creed, heaven and hell is
+founded on capitalism. Since this is the case, and since human nature is
+what it is, all religious institutions, the Christian with the rest, are
+of the capitalist, by the capitalist, for the capitalist and each to the
+end that the capitalist may keep the laborer in ignorance and slavery.
+
+Whether Jesus was an historical or a dramatic person, the morality
+involved in his trial, condemnation and execution is the same. Assuming
+the historicity, he was put to death by Pilate because a class of the
+people said: We have a law and by it, according to its official
+interpretation, he should die. The Governor, finding that the legal
+enactment and the judicial decision were in accordance with the
+representation of the Jews, turned Jesus over to the executioners for
+crucifixion, and the world condemns him because he knew that the law was
+the embodiment of a fiction instead of a truth, because he interpreted
+it in the interest of a sect instead of a people, and because he basely
+acted with reference to his own political interests without regard to
+justice for an heroic but helpless champion of slaves in their struggle
+against the masters.
+
+Philosophic anarchy differs by the space of the whole heavens from
+practical anarchy, and it is the latter that I always have in mind. The
+great essential of philosophic anarchy is individualistic freedom. The
+great essential of practical anarchy is imperialistic slavery.
+
+Capitalism is the outstanding, overshadowing imperialist, the father of
+all the kaisers by which the world has been cursed, not only of the
+terrestrial ones such as Wilhelm II, Nicholas II, Woodrow I, but also of
+the celestial ones such as Jehovah, Allah, Buddha.
+
+The occupants of regal thrones have no more responsibility for the
+existence of imperialism than those of presidential chairs, nor they any
+more than I, and I have none. The truth is that the responsibility for
+this blight of all the ages is now at last, if indeed it has not always
+been, wholly with the representatives of the working class. They have
+the great majority in numbers and all of the revolutionary incentives
+and power; therefore they, and only they can do away with imperialism,
+and they can rid themselves of it whenever they choose. Prince
+Kropotkin, the philosophic anarchist, a great soul, would agree to this
+representation, for he says:
+
+     The working men of the civilized world and their friends in the
+     other classes ought to induce their Governments entirely to abandon
+     the idea of armed intervention in the affairs of Russia--whether
+     open or disguised, whether military or in the shape of subventions
+     to different nations.
+
+     Russia is now living through a revolution of the same depth and the
+     same importance as the British nation underwent in 1639-1648 and
+     France in 1789-1794; and every nation should refuse to play the
+     shameful part that Great Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia
+     played during the French Revolution.
+
+Since death ends all of consciousness, the most inhuman of all
+inhumanities and the most immoral of all immoralities is the shortening
+of human life; and next to it is the diminishing of its happiness.
+
+War shortens many lives and fills more with misery; hence its essential
+inhumanity and immorality.
+
+A large part of the world has just passed through the furnace of war--a
+war between the German and English nations with their respective
+national allies. All international wars are contests for supremacy in
+the markets of the world, or at least for advantage in some among them.
+This one was no exception.
+
+The furnace of this war was seven times larger and seven times hotter
+than any other has been. According to the latest estimates (September,
+1920) its fierce flames directly and indirectly killed thirty million
+young men and wrecked totally twice and partially thrice as many more.
+
+Yet the fire by which the world upon the whole and in the long run
+suffers most is not the intermittent, flaming one of the hell of
+international war, which is always kindled and sustained by the
+capitalists of the belligerent nations for the purpose solely of
+securing commercial advantages over each other; but the greater
+suffering is by the permanent, smoking fire of the hell of the
+inter-class war which is always kindled and sustained by the capitalist
+class in each nation for the purpose solely of robbing the labor class
+of the fruit of their toil.
+
+These national and class wars (hells, flaming and smouldering) are due
+to the same matter-force law, the law of self-preservation, and,
+paradoxical as it may seem, this law is equally operative on both sides
+in each war.
+
+Both hells exist as the result of the working out of the same law of
+animal preservation by competition--the law of capitalism, and both
+hells will be done away with as the result of the working out of the
+same law of human preservation by co-operation--the law of socialism.
+
+One proof of the rightness of the co-operative system is the fact that
+it necessarily operates for the whole people and not for a class,
+whereas the competitive system as necessarily operates for a class and
+not for the whole people.
+
+Still another proof, and it is in itself almost if not quite conclusive,
+of the rightness of the co-operative system is the fact that its
+competitive rival breaks down in every great emergency. It broke down
+completely in all the belligerent countries (in none more than the
+United States) immediately upon their entrance into the world war. Our
+government was obliged to assume control of the railroads, coal mines
+and food products.
+
+If a class government, such as ours is, can provide during a war by the
+co-operative system, and only by it, for the wants of a country, and
+better, too, than during the time of peace, what may we expect in the
+way of plenty, comfort and leisure, when under the classless
+administration there shall be no more war with its wholesale waste, and
+when there shall be one vast army of producers?
+
+All the days which the fifty millions of soldiers spent in idleness will
+then be so many holidays for toilers who are in need of them for rest
+and self-improvement; and every dollar which is now wasted will then be
+two dollars saved, so that the pecuniary prosperity of war times will be
+increased, rather than diminished, and made continuous. Under a
+classless administration the world would soon become comparatively rich
+and happy.[H]
+
+Representatives of the capitalist class are trying to create the
+impression that the co-operative system which our government temporarily
+established as a military necessity is socialism, and that the labor
+class should seek no more than its restoration and continuance: but this
+system is the same old wolf in sheep's clothing.
+
+The rickety house in which we are living is a competitive structure and
+it cannot be made into a co-operative one, at least not upon its present
+foundation, the sand of capitalistic classism. Industrialism must take
+it down and rebuild it upon the rock of classless labor. Neither this
+demolition nor this reconstruction constitutes any part of the
+government program. Its socialism is a mirage, not a reality, and the
+matter-force law renders it necessarily so.
+
+Marxian socialism is simplicity itself. It requires only three
+conditions, each of which is perfectly intelligible; but no one of them
+ever has existed or could exist under any capitalist government, because
+all such governments, not excepting our own, especially not it, are
+organized in the interest of parasitic profiteers, not productive
+laborers. The three indispensable yet simple prerequisites to this real
+socialism or communism are:
+
+     First, that the people within a municipality, either town or city,
+     own and control the utilities within the area occupied by that
+     municipality, which have to do with the immediate comfort of the
+     people who live there.
+
+     Second, that the people in each state own and control the utilities
+     that come in contact with the people on a state-wide scale.
+
+     Third, that the people within the nation own collectively and
+     control democratically the utilities which affect us on a national
+     scale.
+
+     Should we desire to go into more detail, we might say that the
+     things necessary to the individual be owned and controlled by the
+     individual, that the home be controlled by the family, and so on.
+     To go into the question on an international scale we might also add
+     that utilities mutually necessary to all the nations be owned by
+     the nations, as the Panama Canal, for instance.--Higgins.
+
+Prince Kropotkin, though not a bolshevik, says approvingly of the
+Russian revolution that it is trying to build up a society where the
+whole produce of the joint efforts of labor by technical skill and
+scientific knowledge should go entirely to the commonwealth; and he
+declares that for the unavoidable reconstruction of society, by pacific
+or any other revolutionary means, there must be a union of all the trade
+unions of the world to free the production of the world from its present
+enslavement to capitalism.
+
+Higgins and Kropotkin have here put co-operative socialism or communism
+in a nutshell both as to its aim and program.
+
+The law of self-preservation is ever the same, but whether its salvation
+is for a part of the people by competition--capitalist salvation, or for
+the whole people by co-operation--socialist salvation, depends upon
+whether it rides or is ridden.
+
+So long as the law of self-preservation was supposed to be the will of a
+conscious, personal god whose earthly representatives were kings and
+priests or presidents and preachers, the law did the riding within the
+large domain of animal competition--the domain of capitalism. War is the
+normal, indeed necessary evil of this domain, and hence the world must
+have wars so long as it remains within it, and it will remain there so
+long as it has celestial divinities with terrestrial representatives in
+states and churches for its governors.
+
+Now that the law is known to be a matter-force necessity, not a divine
+decree, the time may rationally be hoped for when the people will do the
+riding within the small domain of human co-operation--the domain of
+socialism. Peace is the normal, indeed necessary, state of this domain,
+and hence the world must cease to have war when it enters it, and is
+governed by itself instead of by a god and the powers of state and
+church alleged to have been ordained by him.
+
+Capital punishment should not be administered, if at all, except to a
+murderer whose guilt has been established to the satisfaction of the
+great majority of the people in the community to which he belongs, and
+never in the case of a suspected murderer of whom this is not true.
+
+If William II were really the devil behind the European war by which
+many millions of the young men of the world have lost their lives, and
+if Thomas Mooney were really the devil behind the San Francisco
+explosion by which ten citizens of California lost their lives, their
+punishment by death might be urged with much show of reason as a social
+necessity. But if both were hung on the same gallows the world would go
+on suffering by the ever recurring and closely related misfortunes of
+war and riot as if nothing had happened. The real devil behind all wars
+and riots is the capitalist system. There will never be an end of wars
+and riots until this devil is overthrown.
+
+The so-called Kaiser-war and the so-called Mooney riot are on the same
+footing, both having the character of an insurrection and both having
+the aim of self-preservation. The insurrection of the Kaiser was a riot
+on behalf of the capitalist class of Germany and for the purpose of
+protecting it against the capitalist class of England. The insurrection
+of Mooney (assuming his guilt, merely for illustration) was a riot on
+behalf of the labor class of California and for the purpose of
+protecting it against the capitalist class of that state.
+
+Incidentally, both riots have secondary aims of world-wide extent. The
+Kaiser had two of these: to overthrow the commercial supremacy of
+England that Germany might have it, and to overthrow industrial
+republicanism (socialism) everywhere. Mooney had this: the overthrow of
+commercial imperialism (capitalism) everywhere.
+
+As rioters, there is this in common between Kaiser William and Thomas
+Mooney, that though moving in opposite directions, they are nevertheless
+carried by the same matter-force law which manifests itself in the same
+riotous system, capitalism--a system which, under one form or another,
+has ever produced international wars and class revolutions; and, so long
+as it is allowed to exist, never will cease the production of them.
+
+Hence the interests of the world require not that these rioters, Kaiser
+William and Thomas Mooney, should be hung, but that the capitalist
+system, which by the operation of the law of self-preservation by animal
+competitions, produced both of the riots with which they are
+respectively credited, should be overthrown by the labor system, which,
+by the operation of the same law of self-preservation by human
+co-operation, will put an end to all bloody conflicts.
+
+But taking the popular view concerning the responsibility for this
+commercial war and labor riot and assuming that they should be charged
+respectively to Kaiser William and Thomas Mooney, why should the
+promoter of the little riot die, or worse, suffer imprisonment during
+life, and the promoter of the big war live?
+
+Yet, if the Kaiser were captured even by England there is no probability
+that he would be turned over to a court constituted of representatives
+of the allied nations, tried, found guilty and put to death. Why not?
+Because, like all wars, his war, no matter which side won the victory,
+has been upon the whole, or will be in the long run, in the interest of
+the capitalists of every nation on both sides, at least of the great
+ones.
+
+If Kaiser William would not be sent to the gallows by such a court why
+should the court which tried Thomas Mooney be allowed to send him to it;
+and, especially why, since California is part of a republic, and the
+Kaiser's war was on behalf of imperialism and a small minority, while
+Mooney's riot was on behalf of republicanism and the overwhelming
+majority?
+
+Just now the human part of the world is especially afflicted by
+unnecessary and therefore unjustifiable deaths. The Governor of
+California has the opportunity to prevent one such death. I say to him,
+do it. In the name of Justice and in the name of Humanity, I with
+millions of others solemnly call upon him to save Mooney, the
+revolutionist, as Pilate, the Governor of Judea, according to the
+verdict of all right-thinking men and women, should have saved Jesus,
+the revolutionist.
+
+
+III.
+
+You say in effect that we must postulate a divine consciousness to
+account for human consciousness; but, on your theory, how could human
+consciousness come out of a divine consciousness; and, anyhow, contrary
+to your implication, we know of no consciousness which has come, except
+by inheritance, from another consciousness, but only of consciousnesses
+which have come from unconsciousnesses.
+
+Your contention, in this connection, is to the effect that nothing can
+come out of nothing, and this is the core of a book, "A Short Apology
+for Being a Christian in the Twentieth Century," by the learned
+ex-president of Trinity College, Hartford, Dr. Williamson Smith, with
+whom you have had, I think, some correspondence.
+
+This Apology was written against a letter of mine to the House of
+Bishops, entitled, "A Natural Gospel for a Scientific Age," which has
+never seen the light, partly because the ex-President convinced me that
+if I must give up the orthodox conception of God, I could not hold to
+the one which I had worked out in the letter.
+
+If you have not seen the ex-President's book, you will, I am sure, enjoy
+it more than I did, but I doubt whether you will profit as much by it,
+for it verges towards your lines and away from mine; and so it set me to
+studying as it will not you, with the result of rejecting the new
+conception of God which I had worked out for myself, but with it I threw
+over the old one and ceased to believe in the existence of a conscious,
+personal divinity. Of course, my faith in the existence of a spiritual
+world and hope for a future life in it went with the god.
+
+Dr. Williamson Smith and you are entirely correct in the contention that
+something cannot come out of nothing: but I no longer pretend that it
+can and I now see that the stones which have been thrown at me by you
+both and others have come from glass houses; for this is really the
+pretension of orthodox theologians. They affirm that the universe was
+created by God out of nothing, but produce no scrap of evidence for His
+existence, and even if they could prove that He exists, they would have
+to admit that He came out of nothing, or at least from something which
+did so.
+
+It is indeed true that I am unable to tell what matter, force and motion
+came from, or if I agree with most physicists that they arose from
+ether, I cannot give its derivative; but, granting that I am as
+incapable of proving their existence as you are of proving the existence
+of the Christian trinity, nevertheless I have this immense advantage
+over you, that I can prove that everything both physical and psychical
+(including man and his civilization) entering into the constitution of
+the universe, lives, moves and has its being in my divine
+trinity--matter, force and motion: whereas you cannot prove that
+anything is indebted for what it is to your divine trinity--Father, Son
+and Spirit: therefore I insist that your trinity is a symbol of mine.
+
+What is true of the Christian trinity is true of all the divinities of
+the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion. The Jews live with no
+reference to the Christian God, or at least not with any to his second
+and third persons, and neither Christians nor Jews do so in the case of
+either the Mohammedan or Buddhistic divinity, and so on, all around the
+whole circle of gods.
+
+But no representative of any god lives without constant reference to
+mine, of which yours and all the others are, as I think, symbols, if
+they are anything better than fetishes.
+
+If you and ex-President Smith mean by your fundamental thesis, that a
+thing which is essentially different from that from which it came is an
+impossibility, you are certainly wrong, for the world is full of such
+things. In the tree of life there are millions of examples, since (using
+language in its general significance) everything above the amoeba must
+be regarded as essentially different from it, though all, including man,
+came out of it.
+
+Going back as far as we safely can on solid ground, we come to the
+nebulae from which the solar systems of the universe have evolved, and
+surely a solar system is as essentially different from the nebula as a
+man is from an amoeba. Coming to our earth when its primeval, flaming,
+swirling gases had been condensed into inorganic matter, the protoplasm
+which is organic matter, arose from it, and so something which grows
+from within out, comes from something which grows from without in.
+
+The large hoofed horse came from a small five-toed animal, not much
+larger than a rabbit. The piano and the gun are brother and sister, born
+of the bow and arrow, yet how different the children from the parent.
+
+An infant is unconscious at birth and what it has of consciousness as a
+child and an adult is dependent upon the development of its body.
+
+Moreover, as the human body is a development through animal bodies, we
+may logically conclude that human consciousness is ultimately dependent
+upon and inherited from animal consciousness rather than a divine one.
+
+Jesus is represented as saying that God is a spirit; and the fathers of
+the English part of the Christian reformation said that there is but one
+living and true God without body, parts or passions. This is their
+explanation of his conception of God.
+
+When the Jesuine definition of God and the Anglican explanation of it
+were framed, the Divine Spirit was supposed to be an objective
+personality.
+
+Modern psychology teaches that no spirit, divine, human or otherwise, is
+a personality. According to this science, spirit and soul are synonyms
+for the subjective content of a conscious life, which content consists
+of feelings, aspirations, ideals, convictions and determinations.
+
+Psychologists know of no spirit or soul without a body constituted of
+parts any more than physicists know of a force without matter
+constituted of molecules, atoms, electrons and ions.
+
+Gods represent the religious ideals of people and are symbols of what
+they think they should be as religionists. They are symbolic,
+emblematic, parabolic, allegoric devices of the imagination, and contain
+nothing but the ideal, imaginary things which are put into them by
+people for themselves, and they do nothing except what the people
+perform through them in their names for themselves.
+
+Matter and force constitute a machine, an automatic one, which produces
+things, everything which enters into the constitution of the cosmos, by
+evolutionary processes, or rather all such things, and there are no
+others, are the result of one universal and eternal process of
+evolution.
+
+What is known as nature is the aggregation of the products of this
+machine by this process. The machine is unconscious and its workings are
+mechanical, yet some of its products rise into self-consciousness with
+the power of self-determination, but both the consciousness and the
+determination are limited. The infinite consciousness, personality and
+determination which are postulated of gods are contradictions.
+
+Of all beings man possesses most of consciousness, personality and
+determination. What he has of these is not dependent upon gods, but all
+they have of them is dependent upon him. Divine beings are, as to their
+self-consciousness, personality and determination, human beings
+personified and placed in the sky. Man does everything for gods. They do
+nothing for him.
+
+Such are the facts and arguments based upon them, which have forced me
+step by step over the long way from the position of supernaturalistic
+traditionalism in its Christian form, still occupied by you, to that of
+naturalistic scientism in its socialist form which I am now occupying,
+as tentatively as possible, pending further study in the light of
+additional facts, for which (some six years ago, when I was desperately
+battling to prevent the shipwreck of my faith in the god and heaven of
+orthodox Christianity) I appealed to about 800 outstanding theologians,
+among them yourself, representing all parts of christendom and every
+great church, including of course all our bishops among the theologians,
+and the Anglican communion among the churches.
+
+You may remember how much of correspondence we had at that time, though
+neither you nor any one who kindly tried to reach me with the rope of
+the new scientific apologetics for which I appealed, can realize how
+eagerly I looked for the replies to my questions, nor the sickness of
+heart which I experienced when I saw that, in spite of every possible
+effort of my own and help of others, I was slowly but surely drifting
+towards what I then thought to be the fatal whirlpools and rocks, but
+what I now regard as a sheltered port--the golden gate of that
+delectable country, Marxian socialism, the only heaven that I am now
+hoping to behold.
+
+You earnestly contend that I am wrong in representing that the majority
+of outstanding men of science and scientific philosophers do not believe
+in the existence of a conscious, personal divinity, who created,
+sustains and governs the universe, or in a conscious, personal life for
+man beyond the grave, and that none among such scientists and
+philosophers are orthodox Christians.
+
+Prof. Leuba, the Bryn Mawr psychologist, is one among my authorities for
+these representations. In his "Belief in God and Immortality" (1916) he
+exhibits the results of a recent and thorough-going investigation in a
+chart from which it appears that, taking the greater and lesser
+representatives of the scientists together, they fall below 50 per cent
+as to their belief in God, and below 55 per cent in their belief in
+immortality.[I]
+
+The showing for the scientists who are especially concerned with the
+origin and destiny of life, biologists and psychologists, is much less
+favorable to you; for, taking the greater and lesser together, only 31
+per cent of the biologists believe in God and 35 per cent in
+immortality; and only 25 per cent of the psychologists believe in God,
+and 20 per cent in immortality.
+
+But the worst by far, is yet to come; for, taking the greater biologists
+and psychologists, those who count most, of the former 18 per cent
+believe in God, and 25 per cent in immortality; and of the latter, the
+greatest of all authorities, only 13 per cent believe in God, and only 8
+per cent in immortality.
+
+The greater psychologists are comparatively consistent in that fewer
+among them believe in a conscious, personal life for humanity beyond the
+grave than in the conscious, personal life of divinity beyond the
+clouds. Human immortality is an absurdity without divine existence. The
+overwhelming majority of great psychologists (the greatest of all
+authorities, as to whether or not gods "without bodies, parts or
+passions" can consciously exist in the skies, and disembodied men, women
+and children in celestial paradises) see this and limit the career of
+man to earth. In their judgment his heaven and hell are here, and the
+gods who make and the devils who unmake civilizations are humans, not
+good or bad divinities.
+
+This is the conclusion of a rapidly increasing number of educated
+people. A century ago only a few men of science and scientific
+philosophers had reached it, not twenty five per cent, but now the
+percentage is nearly ninety and it will soon be ninety-nine. The time is
+coming, and in the not distant future, when no educated man shall look
+to the god of any supernaturalistic interpretation of religion for light
+or strength, and when none shall hope for a heaven above the earth or
+fear a hell below it.
+
+  Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
+  And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire
+  Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
+  So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire.
+
+  --Omar.
+
+Joseph McCabe and Chapman Cohen are among the most brilliant of present
+day writers on scientific and philosophic subjects. They are not
+socialists, but both see that modern socialism and orthodox Christianism
+are utterly irreconcilable incompatibilities.
+
+     "How is it that on the Continent democratic bodies are so
+     sceptical, or sceptical bodies so democratic? Precisely because
+     they doubt (or reject altogether) the Christian heaven. They want
+     to make this earth as happy as it can be, to make sure of happiness
+     somewhere. Having taken their eyes from the sky, they have
+     discovered remarkable possibilities in the earth. Having to give
+     less time to God, they have more time to give to man. They think
+     less about their heavenly home, and more about their earthly home.
+     The earthly home has grown very much brighter for the change. The
+     heavenly home is just where it was.
+
+     "The plain truth is, of course, that the sentiment which used to be
+     absorbed in religion is now embodied in humanitarianism. Religion
+     is slowly dying everywhere. Social idealism is growing everywhere.
+     People who want to persuade us that social idealism depends on
+     religion are puzzled by this. It is only because they are
+     obstinately determined to connect everything with Christianity, in
+     spite of its historical record. There is no puzzle. We have
+     transferred our emotions from God to man, from heaven to
+     earth."--Joseph McCabe.
+
+     "Socialists who have one eye on the ballot box may assure these
+     people that Socialism is not Atheistic, but few will be convinced.
+     The statement that Socialism has nothing to do with religion, or
+     that many professedly religious people are Socialist, is quite
+     futile. A thoughtful religionist would reply that the first point
+     concedes the truth of all that has been said against Socialism,
+     while the second evades the question at issue. No one is specially
+     concerned with the mental idiosyncracies of individual Socialists;
+     what is at issue is the question whether Socialism does or does not
+     take an Atheistic view of life? He might add, too, that a Socialism
+     which leaves out the belief in God and a future life, which does
+     not, in even the remotest manner, imply these beliefs, which does
+     not make their acceptance the condition of holding the meanest
+     office in the State, and, at most, will merely allow religious
+     beliefs to exist so long as they do not threaten the well-being of
+     the State, is, to all intents and purposes, an Atheistical
+     system."--Chapman Cohen.
+
+In summing up the results of his investigations Prof. Leuba observes
+that:
+
+     In every class of persons investigated, the number of believers in
+     God is less and in most classes very much less than the number of
+     non-believers, and that the number of believers in immortality is
+     somewhat larger than in a personal God; that among the more
+     distinguished, unbelief is very much more frequent than among the
+     less distinguished; and finally that not only the degree of
+     ability, but also the kind of knowledge possessed, is significantly
+     related to the rejection of these beliefs.
+
+In another connection Prof. Leuba speaking of Christian dogmatism as a
+whole says:
+
+     Christianity, as a system of belief, has utterly broken down, and
+     nothing definite, adequate, and convincing has taken its place.
+     There is no generally acknowledged authority; each one believes as
+     he can, and few seem disturbed at being unable to hold the tenets
+     of the churches. This sense of freedom is the glorious side of an
+     otherwise dangerous situation.
+
+Your conception of the origin, sustenance and governance of the universe
+is burdened, as are all interpretations of religion which are hinged
+upon the existence of conscious, personal divinities, with two
+difficulties: (1) its physical impossibility, and (2) its moral
+impossibility.
+
+1. Physical Impossibilities. The atomic and molecular movements required
+for the thinking of a single man would be beyond the capacity of all the
+gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion together.
+
+Some idea of the number of such motions which are taking place in every
+human brain, will be derived from the conservative representations of
+Hofmeister as exhibited in the following condensed form by McCabe in his
+book, "The Evolution of Mind:"
+
+     We have reason to believe that there are in each molecule of
+     ordinary protoplasm at least 450 atoms of carbon, 720 atoms of
+     hydrogen, 116 of nitrogen, 6 of sulphur, and 140 of oxygen.
+     Nerve-plasm is still more complex.
+
+     Recent discoveries have only increased the wonder and potentiality
+     of the cortex. Each atom has proved to be a remarkable
+     constellation of electrons, a colossal reservoir of energy. The
+     atom of hydrogen contains about 1,000 electrons, the atom of carbon
+     12,000, the atom of nitrogen 14,000, the atom of oxygen 16,000, and
+     the atom of sulphur 32,000. These electrons circulate within the
+     infinitesimal space of the atom at a speed of from 10,000 to 90,000
+     miles a second. It would take 340,000 barrels of powder to impart
+     to a bullet the speed with which some of these particles dart out
+     of their groups. A gramme of hydrogen--a very tiny portion of the
+     simplest gas--contains energy enough to lift a million tons more
+     than a hundred yards.
+
+     Of these astounding arsenals of energy, the atoms, we have, on the
+     lowest computation, at least 600 million billion in the cortex of
+     the human brain.
+
+     Scientists, says Professor Olerich, in his book, "A Modern Look at
+     the Universe," estimate that the chemical atom is so
+     infinitesimally small that it requires a group of not less than a
+     billion to make the group barely visible under the most powerful
+     microscope, and a thousand such groups would have to be put
+     together in order to make it just visible to the naked eye as a
+     mere speck floating in the sunbeam.
+
+     The microscope reveals innumerable animalcules in the hundredth
+     part of a drop of water. They all eat, digest, move and from all
+     appearances of their frolics, they are endowed with sensation and
+     ability of enjoyment. What then shall we say of the minuteness of
+     the food they eat; of the blood that surges through their veins; of
+     their nervous system that thrills and guides them? Their minutest
+     organs must be composed of molecules, atoms, ions and electrons
+     inconceivably smaller than are the organs themselves.
+
+Is there any god in a celestial field who could care for the movements
+which occur in the molecules constituting a hundredth part of a drop of
+water, not to speak of those which occur in the bodies of its myriads of
+inhabitants? And what shall we say of all the inorganic and organic
+movements in a small cup of whole drops of water, let alone those of a
+great ocean of them?
+
+But why go further into this subject? Is not the utter childishness of
+the orthodox representative of a supernaturalistic interpretation of
+religion, who credits his god with the governance of the motions
+occurring in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms of this globe,
+leaving out of account those of its solar system, and of other systems
+which constitute the universe, sufficiently manifest?
+
+If you say that the motions which issue in the phenomena of the universe
+are regulated by a law which was once for all willed by the god of the
+Christian interpretation of religion, I ask why the law should be
+credited to the willing of this god rather than to that of the god of
+Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic interpretation.
+
+Newton took the first of the six initiatory steps in the long way which
+led to the conclusion that the universe is self-existing,
+self-sustaining and self-governing, by showing that all the movements of
+the solar systems were necessarily what they have been by reason of a
+matter-force law, gravitation. This discovery is the most momentous
+event in the whole history of mankind.
+
+Laplace took the second step by showing that the cosmic nebulae contain
+within themselves all the potentialities necessary to the formation of
+solar systems.
+
+Lavoisier took the third step by showing that the matter which enters
+into the constitution of the universe is an eternality.
+
+Mayer took the fourth step by showing that the force which enters into
+the constitution of the universe is an eternality.
+
+Darwin took the fifth step by showing that the protoplasm contains all
+the potentialities of every form of physical and degree of psychical
+life from the moneron to man; that all representatives of both the
+vegetable and animal kingdoms, including man, are related and so on a
+level as to their origin and destiny, and that the different species are
+the natural results of the necessary struggle with rivals and with
+adverse environments for existence.
+
+Marx took the sixth step by showing that the essential difference
+between humans and beasts is primarily a question of the hand and
+secondarily of the machines by which its efficiency is immeasurably
+increased; that slavery has been and must continue to be the means of
+advancement towards the ideal civilization; that the kinds of human
+slavery were what they have been because machines have been what they
+were, and that the time is coming when the slaves will no longer be men,
+women and children, but machines which will be exploited for the good of
+the many, not the profit of the few--then, and not until then, rapid
+advance shall be made towards the goal where the whole world shall be
+one great co-operative family, every member of which shall have the
+greatest of possible opportunities to make the most of terrestrial life
+by having it as long and happy as possible.
+
+2. Moral Impossibilities. The moral impossibility of the assumptions of
+these apologies is seen by all who have eyes for seeing things as they
+are in the fact that if God is credited with the good He must also be
+debited with the evil. If for example, He endowed the human body with
+its useful and necessary parts. He also endowed it with its harmful and
+unnecessary parts.
+
+Experts in the field of anatomy tell us that there are in our bodies at
+least 180 useless parts, some among which are the occasion of much
+suffering and many premature deaths, the vermiform appendix alone
+causing many thousands of such cases annually.
+
+Do you not see that these useless structures, all of which are inherited
+from the lower animals, are so many evidences of the truth of Darwinism
+and the untruthfulness of Mosaism? Eleven of these wholly useless and
+more or less harmful inheritances have been of no use to any of our
+ancestors from the fish up and four are inherited from our reptilian and
+amphibian forefathers, but according to Moses we have no such
+progenitors.
+
+Admitting the fact of the existence of evil there is no escaping from
+the logical conclusions of dear, old sensible Epicurus:
+
+     Either God is willing to remove evil from this world and cannot, or
+     he can and is not willing, or finally he can and is willing. If he
+     is willing and cannot, it is impotence, which is contrary to the
+     nature of God. If he can and is unwilling, it is wickedness, and
+     that is no less contrary to the nature of God. If he is not willing
+     and cannot, there is both wickedness and impotence. If he is
+     willing and can, which is the only one of these suppositions that
+     can be applied to God, how happens it that there is evil on earth?
+
+Oh, if only the world had been influenced by this logic instead of by
+the metaphysics of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, it
+would have been so far on the way towards the ideal civilization as to
+have long since passed the point where it would have been possible to
+have the world war which has recently deluged the earth with blood and
+tears, or to make the Versailles treaty which is destined to issue in
+one war after another, ever filling the world fuller with the tyranny,
+poverty, slavery and misery which are the inevitable concomitants of all
+wars.
+
+In my opinion the fascinating essayist, Mallock, has written the best of
+all apologies for theism. I cannot imagine a better one. He, however,
+makes no more attempt than Sir Oliver Lodge does to establish
+Christianity, or any other supernaturalistic interpretations of
+religion. Like Kant and yourself, Mallock takes his stand on the ground
+that a belief in a celestial God, and in the immortality which goes with
+it, is necessary to morality, the basic virtue upon which civilization
+rests. As Kant admits that the existence of God cannot be inferred from
+pure reason, so Mallock admits and even strongly contends that it cannot
+be established on scientific grounds. I quote a striking passage:
+
+     We must divest ourselves of all foregone conclusions, of all
+     question-begging reverences, and look the facts of the universe
+     steadily in the face.
+
+     If theists will but do this, what they will see will astonish them.
+     They will see that if there is anything at the back of this vast
+     process, with a consciousness and a purpose in any way resembling
+     our own--a Being who knows what he wants and is doing his best to
+     get it--he is, instead of a holy and all-wise God, a
+     scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi-impotent monster. They will
+     recognize as clearly as they ever did the old familiar facts which
+     seemed to them evidences of God's wisdom, love and goodness; but
+     they will find that these facts, when taken in connection with the
+     others, only supply us with a standard in the nature of this being
+     himself by which most of his acts are exhibited to us as those of a
+     criminal madman. If he had been blind, he had not had sin; but if
+     we maintain that he can see, then his sin remains. Habitually a
+     bungler as he is, and callous when not actively cruel, we are
+     forced to regard him, when he seems to exhibit benevolence, as not
+     divinely benevolent, but merely weak and capricious, like a boy who
+     fondles a kitten and the next moment sets a dog at it. And not only
+     does his moral character fall from him bit by bit, but his dignity
+     disappears also. The orderly processes of the stars and the larger
+     phenomena of nature are suggestive of nothing so much as a
+     wearisome court ceremonial surrounding a king who is unable to
+     understand or to break away from it; whilst the thunder and
+     whirlwind, which have from time immemorial been accepted as special
+     revelations of his awful power and majesty, suggest, if they
+     suggest anything of a personal character at all, merely some
+     blackguardly larrikin kicking his heels in the clouds, not perhaps
+     bent on mischief, but indifferent to the fact that he is causing
+     it.
+
+     But we need not attempt to fill in the picture further. The truth
+     is, as we consider the universe as a whole, it fails to suggest a
+     conscious and purposive God at all; and it fails to do so not
+     because the processes of evolution as such preclude the idea that
+     God might have made use of them for a definite purpose, but because
+     when we come to consider these processes in detail, and view them
+     in the light of the only purposes they suggest, we find them to be
+     such that a God who could deliberately have been guilty of them
+     would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible.
+
+The god who had any part in bringing upon the world the English-German
+war, the Versailles peace, the Russian blockade, is for me a devil not a
+divinity. If you say that the Christian god had nothing to do with
+them, I reply that these are among the greatest of all curses wherewith
+mankind has been afflicted in modern times; and if he could not or would
+not prevent them, what ground is there for looking to him for help in
+any time of need?
+
+     How can I adequately express my contempt for the assertion that all
+     things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end? It is the
+     most utter falsehood, and a crime against the human race.... Human
+     suffering is so great, so endless, so awful, that I can hardly
+     write of it.... The whole and the worst, the worst pessimist can
+     say is far beneath the least particle of the truth.... Anyone who
+     will consider the affairs of the world at large ... will see that
+     they do not proceed in the manner they would do for our happiness
+     if a man of humane breadth of view were placed at their head with
+     unlimited power. A man of intellect and humanity could cause
+     everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner. But that
+     which is ... credited to a non-existent intelligence (or cosmic
+     "order," it is just the same) should really be claimed and
+     exercised by the human race. We must do for ourselves what
+     superstition has hitherto supposed an intelligence to do for
+     us.--Richard Jeffries.
+
+  Would but some winged Angel ere too late
+  Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate,
+  And make the stern Recorder otherwise
+  Enregister, or quite obliterate!
+
+  Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
+  To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
+  Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
+  Remold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
+
+  --Omar.
+
+You frequently intimate that my doctrine concerning the origin and
+destiny of the universe with all that therein is, including man, is not
+that of the majority of men of science and scientific philosophers, but
+that yours is. It will therefore be of interest to you to know that I
+have submitted the most radical of my materialistic pieces to three men
+of science, all great authorities, one of whom replied, that he was in
+substantial agreement with me, but thought me to be 400 years ahead of
+our time; another, that he found nothing to criticize unless it might be
+my failure to give greater prominence to the fact that the gods of the
+redemptive interpretations, of religion were so many versions of the
+sun-myth, and the other, that the essay would pass any world congress of
+scientists by a large majority.
+
+You think that I am wrong in quoting Newton and Darwin on my side,
+because they believed in the existence of a conscious, personal god. I
+am persuaded that such was not the case with Darwin at his death; but,
+however this may be, it is in neither of these cases, nor in that of any
+other scientist, a question of what he philosophically believed
+concerning a god, but of what he scientifically established as a fact.
+
+Newton established the fact that the movements of the stars in their
+courses are naturally regulated by the law of gravitation, not
+supernaturally by the will of a god.
+
+Darwin established the fact that all living species of animal and
+vegetable life exist as the natural results of evolutionary processes,
+not as the supernatural results of creative acts.
+
+If Newton were to stand by his theological writings, he would fall in
+your estimation, for his work on the book of Daniel would be regarded by
+you as an absurdity. He considered Daniel to be the great revelation of
+a God, Jehovah, but you know it to be the purest fiction of a man, quite
+as much the work of the imagination of its author as Don Quixote is that
+of Cervantes.
+
+Among the many theological authorities whom you quote against me, the
+greatest, in my estimation, is Dr. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, London,
+whose utterances I have been noting with great interest of late; partly,
+no doubt, because he seems to be giving up your orthodox side and coming
+over, slowly but surely, to my heterodox one. In a London paper which
+has just reached me, the Literary Guide, this is said of the Dean:
+
+     The theological opinions of Dean Inge, one of the official
+     mouthpieces of the Church of England, and probably the most
+     distinguished spokesman for the more liberally minded of the
+     clergy, have now reached an interesting stage, both for those
+     without the Church as well as for those within it. Although he does
+     not feel called upon to state his own private conclusions on such
+     debatable questions, he no longer regards the doctrines of the
+     Immaculate Conception and the Bodily Resurrection as essential
+     prerequisites of Christianity and would consider fit for ordination
+     any candidate who rejected them, provided such a person still
+     acknowledged the divine nature of Jesus Christ--that is, he would
+     not exclude him from the Church's ministry.
+
+If I understand Dean Inge as he is reported in the article of which this
+is the opening paragraph, he bases his faith in the divinity of Jesus
+upon the uniqueness of his character and teachings, not on the
+miraculousness of his birth and healings.
+
+But Dean Inge has no authentic or reliable account of the life and
+teachings of Jesus; and so, as a theologian, like all theologians, he
+lives, moves and has his being in the realm of fiction, the difference
+between him and yourself being that he is in that part of it where the
+imagination sits enthroned, and you in the region where metaphysics is
+monarch of all it surveys.
+
+An outstanding theologian who, as it seems to me, overshadows Dean Inge,
+commenting upon a piece of my writing which is quite as radical as any
+part of this letter goes even further than he.
+
+     "I have," he says, "just read the Chapter of your Natural Gospel
+     for a Scientific Age, which you have kindly sent me, with the
+     greatest interest. Indeed I have come so heartily to share your
+     point of view that I can find no points for criticism; I can only
+     say how grateful I am to have had an opportunity of seeing your
+     uncompromising and clear expression of the only kind of Modernism
+     that has any promise for the future. I am beginning to feel more
+     and more uncomfortable in our Christian movement because so many of
+     our leaders here are attempting an impossible compromise with
+     dogma. Men like Dr. Rashdall have no place in the movement for men
+     who cannot accept their 'fullblooded theism.' In fact they are
+     Harnackians with their one or two unalterably fixed dogmas."
+
+
+IV.
+
+If you ask why I continue to be a member of an orthodox church and its
+ministry, the answer is, there is no reason why I should not for (if
+they may be interpreted by myself, for myself, spiritually) I accept
+every article of the creed of catholic orthodoxy; but if the articles of
+this creed must be interpreted literally there is no one in our church
+(the Episcopal) or in any among the churches, who believes all of them.
+For example, who believes, that God created the heavens and the earth
+out of nothing in six days, as he is represented to have done in his
+alleged revelation of which the creed is a condensation? All in this
+church, or at least all the ministers of it, who have obeyed its
+requirement respecting the devotion of themselves to study, as I have,
+know that the firmament or heaven of which the revelation speaks has no
+substantial existence, only an imaginary one. What was supposed to be
+it, is but the reflection of light upon the dust of the atmosphere. As
+for the earth it was not made out of nothing; and, indeed, it was not
+supernaturally made at all but naturally evolutionized out of matter and
+force, and even they were not created by a god, for they are co-existing
+eternalities; nor were their evolutionary processes directed by him, for
+they have eternally, automatically and necessarily co-operated in such
+processes to the production of every phenomenon which has contributed to
+make both the physical and psychical parts of the universe what they
+have been at any time, including the divine, diabolical and angelic
+fictions which men have made and placed above and below the earth.
+
+If you ask whether I am still a professing Christian, I will answer:
+yes, yet the Brother Jesus of the New Testament, catholic creed and
+protestant confessions, is not for me an historical personage, but only
+a symbol of all that is for the good of the world, even as the Uncle Sam
+of American literature is not an historical personage but only a symbol
+of all which is for the good of the United States.
+
+If you ask whether I am a praying Christian, I shall answer: yes, yet
+when I pray, as I do every day, my prayer is an appeal to a real
+divinity within my heart, the better self, of which self all the unreal
+divinities in the skies including the Christian trinity, Father, Son and
+Spirit, are but poetic symbols, and I no longer expect this God to
+answer otherwise than the symbol of parents, Santa Claus, answers the
+prayers of children, or the symbol of the United States, Uncle Sam,
+answers the prayers of Americans.
+
+If you ask whether I am a communing Christian, I shall answer: yes, yet
+when I go to the Lord's Supper, as I do every month, the strength which
+I receive is derived from the feeling that through it I place myself in
+communion with my human brethren on earth, not with a divine brother in
+the sky, particularly with the members of my church and the citizens of
+my town and its neighborhood, but generally with all men, women and
+children throughout the whole world, of which real brethren the brother
+god in the sky, Jesus, is but a poetic symbol; nor do I now regard the
+communion of this supper as being essentially different from that of any
+ordinary family-meal, lodge-banquet, or socialist-picnic, with each of
+which repasts the informal Lord's Supper of the apostolic church had
+much more in common than it has with the formal celebrations of the
+sacrament in any among the sectarian churches.[J]
+
+Many critics represent that, in view of the changes in my theological
+opinion, if I am an honest man, not a hypocrite, I will leave the
+ministry and communion of the Episcopal Church. But why should I go
+while any of my brother clergymen remain? I give a symbolic or
+allegorical interpretation to every article of the whole system of
+Christian supernaturalism and uniqueism; yet as symbols, allegories,
+parables, or myths, I do not reject any, and no member of our House of
+Bishops literally accepts all.
+
+Who among influential preachers of any rank in any church believes: (1)
+that the world was made about six thousand years ago by a personal,
+Creator-God out of nothing; or that it was made at any time out of
+anything? (2) that such a God formed Adam out of dust and Eve out of a
+rib; that they left His hands as perfect physical and moral images of
+Himself, and fully civilized representatives of the human race; or that
+there was any first man and woman? (3) that He planted a Garden of Eden
+and placed them therein under ideal conditions, and that He walked in it
+and talked with them; or that there ever was any such garden? (4) that a
+personal destroyer-Devil, incarnated in a talking serpent, tempted them
+into disobedience; or that there ever was any such Devil? (5) that but
+for this Devil's influence and their sin, labor and suffering, physical
+death and moral degradation would have been unknown on earth, and that
+it would have been the permanent abode of mankind, as indeed of all
+sentient creatures; or that any of the higher forms of life would have
+been possible without death? and (6) that to repair the evils
+accomplished by this Destroyer-Devil it was necessary for a personal
+Restorer-God to become incarnated in a man, in order that he might shed
+this blood as a sufficient sacrifice for the satisfaction of the
+offended Creator-God; also, in order that the resurrection of the
+bodies (bones, flesh, blood and animal organism) of all deceased men,
+women and children and the rehabitation of them by their respective
+souls could be accomplished, to the end that a few, on account of their
+faith, might be transferred to a permanent home in a heaven on a
+firmament above the earth, and the many, because of their lack of faith,
+to a permanent home in a hell below; or that there ever was any such
+incarnation for these purposes; or that there are any such firmament,
+heaven, and hell, or that there will be any such resurrection, ascension
+or descension?
+
+If other bishops, priests and deacons can, as they must, bring in their
+symbolism or allegorism touching any or all of these six fundamentals,
+which constitute the basis of the supernaturalism of traditional
+Christianity, and yet not leave the church, why may not I bring in mine
+and remain?
+
+Attention is called by several critics to Sir Oliver Lodge, as an
+example of an outstanding man of science who accepts supernaturalism.
+While I was desperately trying to retain my conception of a
+supernaturalistic God and of all the supernaturalism that goes with it
+(revelation of truth, answer to prayer, guidance by providence,
+resurrection of the dead and their ascension, eternal consciousness and
+happiness) I at one time centered a great deal of hope in him, and
+eagerly studied his works as indeed I did those of most apologists for
+supernaturalism among them the greatest, Flammarion, Balfour, Bergson
+and Hudson, but my careful study of his many writings convinced me that
+he does not hold any of the supernaturalistic doctrines which are
+distinctively Christian.
+
+However, it is my doctrine concerning Jesus, rather than that of
+Christian traditionalism, that is in exact alignment with that of this
+renowned physicist. We agree that Jesus, if historical, was a Son of God
+and the Christ to men in no other sense, and therefore in no higher
+degree, than all representatives of the human race may be sons or
+daughters of God, if there are gods and christs, to the men, women and
+children with whom they come in contact.
+
+Most critics think that I am wrong in representing that the great
+majority of the leading men of science are naturalistic, not
+supernaturalistic, but Sir Oliver Lodge represents that among such
+scientists it is generally believed that the universe is
+"self-explained, self-contained and self-maintained;" and speaking on
+his own behalf of its creation out of nothing he says: "The
+improbability or absurdity of such a conception, except in the symbolism
+of poetry, is extreme, and it is unthinkable by any educated person."
+
+All these gods were created, endowed and located by man, and then he had
+them make revelations, create churches, institute sacraments and appoint
+priesthoods for his redemption from devils whom he also created, endowed
+and located.
+
+This is why people of the same country and time have such different gods
+and revelations. Jehovah is the god and the Old Testament the revelation
+of the kings and plutocrats who are responsible for wars; Jesus is the
+god and the New Testament is the revelation of the doctors and nurses
+who do what they can to alleviate the misery of them.
+
+The gods, not excepting Jehovah and Jesus, are as mythical as Santa
+Claus and answer their suppliants not otherwise than he answers his,
+through human representatives. If the suffering, needy or afflicted do
+not get help and sympathy from men, women and children they get none
+from the gods and angels.
+
+While on the one hand the great majority of scientists, scientific
+philosophers and educated people generally doubt that any god ever
+answered a prayer or exercised a providence, on the other, no one doubts
+that men, women and children answer millions of prayers daily and that
+every person's career is wholly different from what it would have been
+but for human providence; that, indeed, life would be impossible without
+the providence which all people exercise in the hearing and answering of
+prayers.
+
+Representatives of many of the interpretations of religion strewed every
+battle-field of the European war. The celestial saviours did not care
+for one of their devotees. The terrestrial saviours (doctors and nurses)
+did everything for the desperately wounded and saved millions who would
+have miserably perished but for them. These were the real christs and
+angels of whom the celestial ones are but symbols. The celestials always
+have passed by on the other side. The terrestrials are the Good
+Samaritans when there are any.
+
+Sceptics infer from this negligence that the gods and angels have no
+real objective existence. Believers contend that they really exist
+objectively and excuse the neglect on account of preoccupation. For
+example, the God of traditional Christianity is supposed to spend much
+time counting hairs on the heads of His people and watching sparrows
+fall to the ground. Sceptics are reverently but earnestly asking: Why
+does He not keep the sparrows from falling? Why does He not let the
+hairs remain unnumbered, until He has put a stop to wars and promoted
+good will among men to a degree which will render it impossible that
+the world should any longer be cursed by them?
+
+If believers say that we have no knowledge of the ways of God, sceptics
+reply: Since all which is known about any objective reality is
+concerning the ways thereof, what the action is under given
+circumstances, how do you know that your God has anything to do with
+either sparrows or men, or even that He exists?
+
+As to their philosophy concerning the origin, sustenance and governance
+of the universe, socialists of the school of Marx, are almost to a man
+materialists; but, as to their philosophy concerning life, they are as
+generally idealists. There is, I feel sure, as much idealism in my
+thinking and living now as there was in the days of my orthodoxy, but I
+will let you judge for yourself after reading the following confession
+of faith:
+
+My early life was blighted as the result of the premature death of my
+father by the Civil War and the consequent breaking up of his family and
+my bondage to a German who made a slave of me, broke my health by
+overwork and exposure, and, worst of all, kept me in ignorance, so that
+when, at the age of twenty-one, I began my education, I was assigned to
+the fourth grade of a public school.
+
+The prime of my life has been wasted in preaching as truths the dogmas
+of the Christian theology, the representations of which I now believe,
+with the overwhelming majority of educated people, to be at best so many
+symbols and at worst superstitions.
+
+But though I do not now and probably never shall again believe in the
+existence of a conscious, personal god, a knowledge of and obedience to
+whose will is necessary to salvation, yet an injustice is done me by
+those who say I have abandoned god and religion.
+
+Every one who desires and endeavors to fulfill the requirements of a law
+which is independent of his will and beyond his control has a god and a
+religion. I desire and endeavor this in the case of two such laws and so
+have two gods and two religions. Both of my divinities are trinities.
+One is in the physical realm and the other in the moral one.
+
+In the physical realm my triune god is: matter, the father; force, the
+son, and motion, the spirit.
+
+In the moral realm, my triune god is: fact, the father; truth, the son,
+and life, the spirit.
+
+For me the triune divinity of Christianity is a symbol of these
+trinities and it is my desire and effort to discover and fulfill what
+they require of me, in order that I may make my own physical, psychical
+and moral life as long, happy and complete as possible and help others
+in doing this for themselves. This desire and effort is at once my
+morality and religion, my politics and patriotism, and they are
+spiritual realities.
+
+On account of the first of these sets of spiritual virtues (morality and
+religion) I claim to be a Christian of the highest type, and that any
+accusation which is raised against me because of alleged disloyalty to
+any essential of Christianism is an injustice.
+
+On account of the second of these sets of spiritual virtues (politics
+and patriotism) I claim to be an American of the highest type, and that
+any accusation which is raised against me because of alleged disloyalty
+to an essential of Americanism is an injustice.
+
+From the viewpoint of the self-styled one hundred per cent Christians,
+I am a betrayer of Brother Jesus because I do not believe that he ever
+had any existence as a god and that, if he was at any time a man, the
+world does not now and never can know of one thing that he did or of one
+word that he said.
+
+From the viewpoint of the self-styled one hundred per cent Americans, I
+am a traitor to Uncle Sam, because I did oppose his going into the
+English-German war, and because I do object to the partiality which he
+shows to his rich nephews and nieces.
+
+Still Jesus and Uncle Sam are as dear to me as ever and indeed dearer,
+yet not as objective, conscious personalities, but as symbols, ideals or
+patterns.
+
+However, though I love my Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam all the time, as a
+child does Santa Claus at Christmas time, I am no longer childish enough
+at any time to look to either of them to do anything for me, because I
+know that what is done for me must be done either by myself or by men,
+women and children, and that as objective, conscious personalities, my
+Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam have had no more to do with my life than the
+man-in-the-moon.
+
+Your observation concerning the American government as being the
+standard to which all governments will ultimately conform challenges an
+earnest word of friendly dissent.
+
+Our government is what all the governments of the world are (with the
+single exception of the Russian) a government in the interest of a small
+class, the representatives of which own the means and machines of
+production and distribution and who produce and distribute things for
+profit, each for himself.
+
+The representatives of one class produce things socially, and those of
+another class appropriate them individually. This is capitalistic
+anarchy, the worst of possible anarchism, and it must have an end soon
+or the world will be lost.
+
+Robbery is the essence of anarchy and Marx showed that every cent of
+profit made under the existing system of economics (and in the United
+States it amounts to several billions of dollars every year) is so much
+robbery of the many who make and operate the machines, because they are
+paid less in wages than the value of the products made and distributed
+by them.
+
+We are hearing much in these days about the anarchy of those who are
+dissatisfied with the capitalistic governments, but the governments
+themselves and those in whose interests they exist are the real
+anarchists. The flesh and blood of anarchism are robbery and lying, and
+these are the meat and drink of capitalism.
+
+The English-German war was the most flagrant act of anarchy in the whole
+history of mankind. The peace of Versailles and the blockade of Russia
+were outrageous acts of anarchy, and so also are the terrorism and
+tyranny of which every capitalistic country is so full, our own with the
+rest.
+
+Morality is the very heart of civilization and of all that really makes
+for it; but morality is impossible on a capitalistic basis, for it is
+founded on the most immoral things in the world, robbery, lying, murder,
+ignorance, poverty and slavery.
+
+If I am right in the conviction that the United States is more wholly
+given over to capitalism than any other nation, not excepting even
+England, it is the greatest robber, liar and murderer on earth. How
+then, can the United States become the standard for the governments of
+the nations?
+
+If the government of Russia holds its own, it, rather than that of the
+United States, will become the standard to which all governments must
+measure up or else go down.
+
+Yes, not the government of the United States but that of Russia is
+destined to become the standard of all peoples, for the aim of our
+government is money, more money, and then some, for the few, while the
+infinitely higher aim of theirs is life, more life, fuller life for
+every man, woman and child.
+
+Within my generation the vanguard of humanity has passed from the age of
+traditionalism to that of scientism and this transition is the greatest
+and most salutary event in the whole history of humanity. It is
+impossible to exaggerate its importance. It marks the time when man
+began consciously to realize that he must look to himself rather than to
+any god for salvation.
+
+From time immemorial man has realized that ignorance is his ruin and
+knowledge his salvation, but during the too many and too long ages of
+traditionalism he made the fatal mistake of supposing that he was
+dependent upon a supernatural revelation by an unconscious, personal god
+for the necessary knowledge. But now the leading people of the world,
+the shepherds of the sheep, are seeing with increasing clearness that
+man has naturally inherited his knowledge and must naturally acquire by
+his own experience, reason and investigation every addition to it.
+
+The world is indeed passing through a long, dark night, but neither the
+longest nor the darkest, and since at last a great and rapidly
+increasing multitude happily realize that humanity must work out its own
+salvation through the living of its own knowledge by its own inherited
+and increased strength, not by a supernatural grace, we of this
+generation may rationally hope, as those of no other did or could, for
+the dawning of the longest and brightest of all days.
+
+As an old year dies into a new one, and as flourishing generations die
+into rising ones, so the old traditional ages, when nations and sects
+looked to their rival gods in the skies for help, are happily dying into
+the new scientific age, when all sensible and good men, relying upon the
+strength of a common divinity which is within themselves, will unite in
+an all-inclusive brotherhood for the promotion of the ideal
+civilization, a universal reign of righteousness.
+
+It is night,--midnight. The clock is striking twelve. But this is the
+very hour and the very minute, when all the saviours of mankind have
+always been and ever will be born. Then it is that the Virgin, Nature,
+comes to this dark world with her new born Son, Truth, whom to know and
+follow is morality, religion, politics and life. It is then that those
+who give expression to the highest ideals and deepest longings of
+mankind, hear the angels, Reason and Hope, sing: On earth peace and good
+will towards men.
+
+Very cordially and gratefully yours,
+WM. M. BROWN.
+
+Brownella Cottage,
+Galion, Ohio.
+
+[Illustration: FREDERICK ENGELS]
+
+[Illustration: NIKOLAI LENIN]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[H] The difference between a political republic, such as America has
+developed, and an industrial republic, such as Russia is developing, is
+that the administrators of the former are elected from the geographical
+divisions and those of the latter from the productive divisions into
+which the population is divided.
+
+If we liken states to fruit trees, the American tree may be said to have
+been evolutionized for the purpose of producing the fruit of commodities
+for the profit of the owning class, and the Russian, the fruit of
+commodities for the use of the working class.
+
+[I] See appendix.
+
+[J] Nevertheless I consider church-going to be a bad habit, and if I
+could live my life over, I would not allow myself to become addicted to
+it.
+
+
+
+
+COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
+
+ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW
+
+
+
+
+Appendix.
+
+
+I Scientific Socialism.
+
+II God and Immortality.
+
+III Mythical Character of Old and New Testament Personages.
+
+IV Would Socialism Change Human Nature?
+
+V What Will be the Form of the Workers' State?
+
+VI Withdrawal of Prize Offer.
+
+VII Afterword.
+
+     Morality is the greatest thing in the world; but paradoxical as it
+     may seem, there is one greater thing, liberty--the liberty which is
+     freedom to learn, interpret, live and teach the truth as it is
+     revealed by the facts or acts of nature. Without this freedom there
+     can be no morality, and of course no true religion, politics or
+     civilization.
+
+
+
+
+SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.
+
+
+  In northern climes, the polar bear
+  Protects himself with fat and hair,
+  Where snow is deep and ice is stark,
+  And half the year is cold and dark;
+  He still survives a clime like that
+  By growing fur, by growing fat.
+  These traits, O bear, which thou transmittest
+  Prove the Survival of the Fittest.
+
+  To polar regions waste and wan,
+  Comes the encroaching race of man,
+  A puny, feeble, little bubber,
+  He has no fur, he has no blubber.
+  The scornful bear sat down at ease
+  To see the stranger starve and freeze;
+  But, lo! the stranger slew the bear,
+  And ate his fat and wore his hair;
+  These deeds, O Man, which thou committest
+  Prove the Survival of the Fittest.
+
+  In modern times the millionaire
+  Protects himself as did the bear:
+  Where Poverty and Hunger are
+  He counts his bullion by the car:
+  Where thousands perish still he thrives--
+  The wealth, O Croesus, thou transmittest
+  Proves the Survival of the Fittest.
+
+  But, lo, some people odd and funny,
+  Some men without a cent of money--
+  The simple common human race
+  Chose to improve their dwelling place;
+  They had no use for millionaires,
+  They calmly said the world was theirs,
+  They were so wise, so strong, so many,
+  The Millionaires?--there wasn't any.
+  These deeds, O Man, which thou committest
+  Prove the Survival of the Fittest.
+
+  --Mrs. Charlotte Stetson.
+
+
+
+
+I. SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM.
+
+
+     The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
+     There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
+     millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing
+     class, have all the good things of life.
+
+     Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers
+     of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and
+     the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.
+
+     We find that the centering of management of the industries into
+     fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with
+     the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions
+     foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be
+     pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby
+     helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions
+     aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that
+     the working class have interests in common with their employers.
+
+     These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working
+     class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all
+     its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary,
+     cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department
+     thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
+
+     Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair
+     day's work", we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary
+     watchword, "Abolition of the wage system".
+
+     It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with
+     capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for
+     the every-day struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on
+     production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By
+     organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new
+     society within the shell of the old.--Preamble of the Industrial
+     Workers of the World.
+
+The following Synopsis of Scientific Socialism will serve both as a
+summary of and supplement to my little book. It is the introductory part
+of a catechism (a series of questions and answers) entitled "Scientific
+Socialism Study Course" published by Charles H. Kerr & Company, 341
+East Ohio Street, Chicago, and is reprinted here by their consent, with
+certain changes in the interests of brevity and perspicuity. As a whole
+this short Study Course of only thirty small pages in large type is the
+greatest piece of catechetical literature of which I have any knowledge.
+Even the synopsis as given here contains more of the education which
+makes for the good of the world than all the catechisms of all the
+churches. The Catechism was published in 1913.
+
+1. How do you explain the phenomena of History?
+
+Ans.: History, from the capitalist point of view, is a record of
+political and intellectual changes and revolutions of so-called great
+men, wherein the economic causes for these acts and changes are ignored
+or concealed; but, from the socialist view point, history reveals a
+series of class struggles between an exploited wealth-producing class
+and an exploiting ruling class over the wealth produced.
+
+2. What effect have "great men" had on history?
+
+Ans.: Great men were simply ideal expressions of the hopes of some class
+in society that was becoming economically powerful. They formed a
+nucleus around which a class gathered itself in attaining economic
+conquests in its own interest, and in establishing social institutions
+in harmony with, and for the perpetuation of, such class interests.
+These men had to embody some vital principles from the economic
+conditions of their time and represent some class interest. The same men
+with the same ideas would not be great men under a different mode of
+production when the time for their ideas was not ripe.
+
+3. What great factor is responsible for the rise of "great men?"
+
+Ans.: The fact that the ideas of these men coincided with the class
+interests of some class in society that was becoming economically
+powerful. Therefore economic conditions must exist or be developing
+which find their highest expression in the ideas of such men.
+
+4. Why do social institutions change and not remain fixed?
+
+Ans.: Because the process of economic evolution will not permit them to
+remain fixed. The development and improvement of the means of production
+and distribution produce economic changes, therefore social institutions
+(the state, church, school and even the family) are forced to change to
+conform with changing economic conditions. These are due to evolutionary
+and revolutionary processes connected with the means of production and
+distribution.
+
+5. What is responsible for the birth of new ideas, and do they occur to
+some one individual only?
+
+Ans.: New ideas, theories and discoveries emanate from material
+conditions, and such conditions act upon individuals. The same idea or
+discovery may be brought out by different individuals independently and
+apart from each other. This proves that it is not great men who are
+responsible for material conditions, but that material conditions (modes
+of production and distribution) produce the men best able to marshal the
+facts and express the idea; usually in the interest of some class.
+
+6. What single great idea occurred to both Darwin and Wallace
+independently?
+
+Ans.: The theory of "Natural Selection" which showed that the closely
+allied ante-type was the parent stock from which the new form had been
+derived by variation.
+
+7. What single great idea occurred to both Marx and Engels
+independently?
+
+Ans.: The "Materialistic Conception of History."
+
+8. Name the three great ideas developed by Marx and Engels which now
+form the bed-rock basis for the socialist philosophy.
+
+Ans.: (1) the Materialistic Conception of History, or, the law of
+economic determinism, (2) the Law of Surplus Value, and (3) the Class
+Struggle.
+
+9. Explain, briefly, the "materialistic conception of history."
+
+Ans.: "In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic
+production and exchange and the social organization necessarily
+following from it forms the basis upon which is built up and from which
+alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that
+epoch." The laws, customs, education, religion, public opinion and
+morals are in the long run controlled and shaped by economic conditions;
+or, in other words, by the dominant ruling class which the economic
+system of any given period forces to the front.
+
+10. What is the most important question in life?
+
+Ans.: The problem of securing food and shelter.
+
+11. What bearing does this have on the materialistic conception of
+history?
+
+Ans.: It gives us the only key by which we can understand the history of
+the past, and within limits, predict the course of future development.
+
+12. What effect does the prevailing mode of production and exchange in
+any particular epoch, have on the social organization and political and
+intellectual history of that epoch?
+
+Ans.: "Anything that goes to the roots of the economic structure and
+modifies it (the food and shelter question in life) will inevitably
+modify every other branch and department of human life, political,
+ethical, religious and moral. This makes the social question primarily
+an economic one and all our thought and effort should be concentrated on
+it."
+
+13. Do the ideas of the ruling class, in any given epoch, correspond
+with the prevailing mode of economic production?
+
+Ans.: They correspond exactly, as all connective institutions, civil,
+religious, legal, educational, political and domestic have been moulded
+in the interest of the economically dominant class who control these
+institutions in a manner to uphold their class interests where their
+ideas find expression.
+
+14. What effect do these ideas of the ruling class have on the interests
+of the subject class?
+
+Ans.: The effect is detrimental to the interests of the subject class as
+the different class interests conflict. Therefore the ruling class finds
+the institutions mentioned very useful in either persuading or forcing
+the so-called "lower classes" to submit to the economic conditions that
+are absolutely against their interest, even though they are the wealth
+producing class.
+
+15. Distinguish natural environment from man-made environment.
+
+Ans.: Natural environment which consisted of the fertility of the soil,
+climatic conditions, abundance of fruits, nuts, game and fish was
+all-important in the early stage of man's development. With the progress
+of civilization this nature-made environment loses its supreme
+importance and the man-made economic environment becomes equally
+important.
+
+16. Explain, briefly, the law of Surplus Value.
+
+Ans.: It is the difference between what the working class as a whole
+gets for its labor power at its value in wages, say an average of five
+dollars per day, for producing commodities, and what the employing class
+as a whole gets, say an average of twenty-five dollars, for the same
+commodities when sold at their value. According to this conservative
+estimate capital is upon the whole and in the long run robbing labor of
+four-fifths of the value of its productive power. Capitalism is
+therefore the great robber, the Beelzebub of robbers.
+
+17. Since the economic factor is the determining factor, what does the
+law of Surplus Value furnish us?
+
+Ans.: "Surplus Value is the key to the whole present economic
+organization of society. The end and object of capitalist society is the
+formation and accumulation of surplus value; or in other words, the
+systematic, legal robbery of the subject working class."
+
+18. Define value and state how measured.
+
+Ans.: Value is the average amount of human labor time socially, not
+individually, necessary under average, not special, conditions for the
+production or reproduction of commodities.
+
+19. What determines the value of labor power?
+
+Ans.: It is determined precisely like the value of every other
+commodity, i. e., by the amount of labor time socially necessary for its
+production or reproduction by the raising and support of children to
+succeed their parents as wage-earning slaves.
+
+20. Since labor power is a commodity, what condition is it subject to?
+
+Ans.: It is subject to the same conditions that all other commodities
+are subject to without regard to the fact that it is the source of all
+social value. The worker in whom the commodity labor power is embodied,
+does not get the value of the product of his labor, but only about
+one-fifth of it, enough to keep him in working order and reproduce more
+labor power in his children. If the worker received the value of the
+product of his labor he would receive much more than enough to keep him
+in working order and to raise his family. Such an economic condition
+would abolish all forms of surplus value or profit, also the wage
+system, by substituting economic and social organization in the interest
+of the working class. No other class could remain in existence and the
+class struggle would be ended.
+
+21. In what economic system, past or present, does surplus value appear?
+
+Ans.: It is the root of all social systems since the rise of the
+institution of private property, but only under the present system
+(capitalism) has labor power assumed the commodity form. Labor power is
+a commodity with a two fold character: it has a use and an exchange
+value. Its use value consists in its being capable of producing values
+over and above its own needs for sustenance and reproduction. Its
+exchange value consists in the amount of socially necessary labor time
+required for its production and reproduction.
+
+The chattel and feudal systems of slavery were not directly concerned
+with the production of commodities for the profit of the masters, but
+rather with the producing of the necessities of life for all, masters
+and slaves, and the luxuries for some, the masters. That which was not
+produced for immediate consumption was sold, if opportunities presented
+themselves, and occasionally the professional traders developed, for
+example, the Phoenicians; but they were an exception to the rule. The
+same holds good for feudalism, except that during the latter stages of
+that system commercialism arose; but this commercialism was no feature
+of feudalism--it was the rising capitalism that began to unfold and
+assert itself.
+
+22. Name the three great systems of economic organization upon which the
+structure of past history and social institutions have their basis.
+
+Ans.: (1) Chattel slavery, (2) serfdom, or feudal slavery and (3) wage
+slavery.
+
+23. Explain, briefly, how the subject class was exploited under each of
+these economic systems.
+
+Ans.: 1. Under chattel slavery the laborer was a chattel (possession or
+property) the same as a mule or horse, and only received his "keep,"
+that is, enough food, clothing and shelter to keep him in working order
+and to reproduce labor power by raising children. All he produced (use
+values and children) was taken by his master. The body of the slave was
+the property of his master. 2. Under serfdom or feudal slavery, the
+worker produced what was necessary to keep him in working order and to
+raise a family of slaves, and then the balance of his time produced use
+values for his feudal lord. The body of the slave was his own, though he
+could not go about with it from one place to another; for it was bound
+to the land of his master. 3. Under the wage slavery, the worker
+receives wages which again equals only the amount necessary to keep him
+in working order and to reproduce more labor power in his children. His
+entire product belongs to the capitalist, and out of this resource he
+pays the wages for the commodity labor, also for other commodities such
+as raw materials, and appropriates all of the balance and converts it
+into capital with which he not only continues but increases the
+exploitation of his workers. The body of the capitalist's slave is
+indeed his own as under the feudal system but with this difference, that
+if he does not like his master, or he is disliked by him, he can or must
+go abroad with it from one place to another looking for a job--a liberty
+or necessity which is to the advantage of the owning class and the
+disadvantage of the working class. Unemployment is necessary to the
+existence of capitalism, but this necessity is a danger to the system
+and will ultimately destroy it in all countries as it has in Russia.
+
+24. Define the "Class Struggle."
+
+Ans.: It is the direct clash between two hostile class interests wherein
+the employing class makes every effort to appropriate more of the wealth
+produced by the working class, and the working class ever struggles to
+retain more of the wealth which it produces. The capitalist class
+strives to get more surplus value and the working class strives to get
+more wages.
+
+The class consciousness of those who live by working has found one of
+its best expressions in the following paragraphs:
+
+     "The world stands upon the threshold of a new social order. The
+     capitalist system of production and distribution is doomed;
+     capitalist appropriation of labor's product forces the bulk of
+     mankind into wage slavery, throws society into the convulsions of
+     the class struggle, and momentarily threatens to engulf humanity in
+     chaos and disaster.
+
+     Since the advent of civilization human society has been divided
+     into classes. Each new form of society has come into being with a
+     definite purpose to fulfill in the progress of the human race. Each
+     has been born, has grown, developed, prospered, become old,
+     outworn, and, has finally been overthrown. Each society has
+     developed within itself the germs of its own destruction as well
+     as the germs which went to make up the society of the future.
+
+     The capitalist system rose during the seventeenth, eighteenth and
+     nineteenth centuries by the overthrow of feudalism. Its great and
+     all-important mission in the development of man was to improve,
+     develop, and concentrate the means of production and distribution,
+     thus creating a system of co-operative production. This work was
+     completed in advanced capitalist countries about the beginning of
+     the 20th century. That moment capitalism had fulfilled its historic
+     mission, and from that moment the capitalist class became a class
+     of parasites.
+
+     In the course of human progress mankind has passed (through class
+     rule, private property, and individualism in production and
+     exchange) from the enforced and inevitable want, misery, poverty,
+     and ignorance of savagery and barbarism to the affluence and high
+     productive capacity of civilization. For all practical purposes,
+     co-operative production has now superseded individual production.
+
+     Capitalism no longer promotes the greatest good of the greatest
+     number, It no longer spells progress, but reaction. Private
+     production carries with it private ownership of the products.
+     Production is carried on, not to supply the needs of humanity, but
+     for the profit of the individual owner, the company, or the trust.
+     The worker, not receiving the full product of his labor, can not
+     buy back all he produces. The capitalist wastes part in riotous
+     living; the rest must find a foreign market. By the opening of the
+     twentieth century the capitalist world--England, America, Germany,
+     France, Japan, China, etc.--was producing at a mad rate for the
+     world market. A capitalist deadlock of markets brought on in 1914
+     the capitalist collapse popularly known as the World War. The
+     capitalist world can not extricate itself out of the debris.
+     America today is choking under the weight of her own gold and
+     products.
+
+     This situation has brought on the present stage of human
+     misery--starvation, want, cold, disease, pestilence, and war. This
+     state is brought about in the midst of plenty, when the earth can
+     be made to yield a hundredfold, when the machinery of production is
+     made to multiply human energy and ingenuity by the hundreds. The
+     present state of misery exists solely because the mode of
+     production rebels against the mode of exchange. Private property in
+     the means of life has become a social crime. The land was made by
+     no man; the modern machines are the result of the combined
+     ingenuity of the human race from time immemorial; the land can be
+     made to yield and the machines can be set in motion only by the
+     collective effort of the workers. Progress demands the collective
+     ownership of the land on and the tools with which to produce the
+     necessities of life. The owner of the means of life today partakes
+     of the nature of a highwayman; he stands with his gun before
+     society's temple; it depends upon him whether the million mass may
+     work, earn, eat, and live. The capitalist system of production and
+     exchange must be supplanted if progress is to continue.
+
+     In place of the capitalist system we must substitute a system of
+     social ownership of the means of production, industrially
+     administered by the workers, who assume control and direction as
+     well as operation of their industrial affairs."
+
+25. Define "class consciousness."
+
+Ans.: Class consciousness of the workers means that they are conscious
+of the fact that they, as a class, have interests which are in direct
+conflict with the interests of the capitalist class.
+
+26. What function does the state perform in the class struggle?
+
+Ans.: "The state is a class instrument, and is the public power of
+coercion created and maintained in human societies by their division
+into classes, a power which, being clothed with force, makes laws." It
+is, therefore, used by the dominant class to keep the subject working
+class in subjection in accordance with the interests of the ruling and
+owning class. It is also used to prevent the workers from altering the
+economic structure of society in the interests of the working class.
+
+As the author of the catechism, of which these twenty-six questions and
+answers constitute a small part, says:
+
+"Society is a growth subject to the laws of evolution. When evolution
+reaches a certain point, revolution becomes necessary in order to break
+the bonds of the old and bring in the new. As the chicken grows through
+evolution until it reaches the point where it must break its shell (the
+revolution) in order to continue its growth, so do classes of people
+come to the point in their evolution where revolution is necessary in
+order to continue their growth, bring in the new society and consummate
+the next step in civilization."
+
+Since 1913, when the foregoing catechism was published, we have had the
+war to end war and to make the world safe for democracy--a fateful and
+mournful war in which millions of lives were lost and other millions
+wrecked with the result of multiplying wars and increasing imperialism.
+
+It was a war between national groups of capitalists with conflicting
+interests for commercial advantages, which is unexpectedly issuing in
+three great crises: (1) the imminent bankruptcy of capitalism; (2) the
+communist revolution in Russia, and (3) the imminent taking over of the
+world by the revolutionary proletariat.
+
+Hitherto, the sons and daughters of capitalism have owned the earth with
+all that thereon and therein is. Henceforth, the sons and daughters of
+the useful workers shall be the owners.
+
+The future belongs to the workers, but not until they organize
+themselves into one big revolutionary union. What ideas and aims are
+involved in the faith and endeavor of Revolutionary Unionism will appear
+from this passage in Comrade Philip Kurinsky's Industrial Unionism and
+Revolution, a brilliant pamphlet, published by The Union Press, Box 205,
+Madison Square, New York City:
+
+     "Slavery is not abolished. It is merely a change in the struggle
+     which throws itself hither and thither like the waves of the seas.
+     In ancient times chattel slavery existed. Feudalism then took its
+     place. Feudalism in its turn was overthrown by capitalism which at
+     present reigns supreme. As the immortal Tolstoy explained, 'The
+     abolition of the old slavery is similar to that which Tartars did
+     to their captives. After they had cut up their heels they placed
+     stones and sand in the wounds and then took the chains off. The
+     Tartars were sure that when the feet of their prisoners were
+     swollen, that they could not run away and would have to work even
+     without chains. Such is the slavery of wages'.
+
+     Of this slavery does revolutionary unionism speak in the name of
+     the revolutionary worker. It analyzes the present society and shows
+     that it is divided into two economic classes. One class, the
+     capitalist class, is the master class which controls all the
+     factories, mills, mines, railroads, lands and fields and all the
+     finished and raw materials. This class possesses all the natural
+     riches of the world and this economic supremacy gives it control of
+     the state, of the church, and of all educational institutions. In
+     short, this class owns everything and controls the whole social and
+     political life of each country. The other class, the working class,
+     owns nothing. It produces all and enjoys little. It uses the
+     machines and tools but does not possess them, and is therefore
+     forced to sell its only possession, its labor power, to the master
+     class. And the latter uses the opportunity to buy that wonderful
+     power like any raw material or some other commodity (some of the
+     representatives of craft unionism wish to deny this but
+     unsuccessfully). For the commodity which the worker is compelled to
+     sell in order that he might live, he receives a wage which is
+     determined as is the price of every other commodity. The price is
+     always smaller than the value of the product which the worker
+     produces for the capitalist.
+
+     Between these two classes there must, naturally, exist a
+     tremendous struggle which often has the character of actual war. No
+     one urges the workers to this war--not the terrible I. W. W.'s nor
+     the political socialist, neither the Bolsheviks nor the Anarchists,
+     but the war naturally and inevitably arises from existing
+     conditions.
+
+     On the one hand, the capitalists are continually chasing after
+     higher profits which results in the employment of cheap labor under
+     the worst conditions. Naturally the ideal of the capitalist class
+     is to keep the workers in a condition of slavery. If the workers
+     attempt to revolt, as they do daily, their masters try to suppress
+     the revolt with all the power at their command. On the other hand,
+     the workers struggle with all their power to lighten their burdens.
+     They strive to get better conditions, higher wages and shorter
+     hours, and in general the ideal of the working class is to throw
+     off the yoke of capitalism.
+
+     No one rightfully can say that this struggle is merely a theory. We
+     can see this struggle in the attempts of the capitalist class to
+     destroy the victorious Russian Proletariat. It is mirrored before
+     our eyes in the continual strikes. Nothing can stop this struggle
+     except the abolition of exploitation.
+
+     No matter how hard the Citizens' Committees, Boards of Arbitration,
+     of Conciliation and of Mediation, with their so-called impartial
+     members try to convince the world that it is possible to bring the
+     warring classes into closer relations, their attempts are doomed to
+     failure. At best their success is only temporary and their efforts
+     succeed only in blinding the eyes of the working masses. And if at
+     some time these boards claim a victory, the credit is not due to
+     them, but to the force exerted by the workers. It is the
+     strike-weapon, held in reserve by the toilers, that brings victory
+     to the workers--not the efforts of the philanthropic gentlemen.
+     Furthermore the efforts of these gentlemen greatly harm the
+     workers, for at times when the workers can attain success through
+     the use of the strike, these philanthropists interfere, and deaden
+     the initiative and aggressiveness of the strikers. Often this
+     causes strife between the strikers themselves. They lose confidence
+     in one another, and the existence of the organizations which the
+     workers succeeded in building up through their efforts and
+     sacrifices are jeopardized.
+
+     The "Conciliation," however, can bring no conciliation between the
+     employers and workers, because that is unnatural. On the contrary,
+     the hatred of one side to the other is intensified and war breaks
+     out oftener and assumes a more bitter and more obstinate character.
+
+     Thus viewing the two struggling classes of capitalist society,
+     revolutionary industrial unionism comes to the logical conclusion
+     that between capital and labor there exists nothing in common, that
+     the struggle must go on and peace can come only when economic
+     oppression will cease, which is possible only when the program of
+     revolutionary unionism will be realized; namely, when the workers
+     will take over the means of production and abolish the system of
+     private ownership. The autocratic control of industry, the unequal
+     division of products will then disappear and society will be built
+     on a socialist foundation, where the industries will be owned and
+     operated by the workers, organized in a truly democratic manner,
+     and where the individual will receive the full product of his
+     labor.
+
+     These are the principles of revolutionary unionism, the principles
+     of the international proletariat. They are the true expressions of
+     the class struggle and because of that, revolutionary unionism
+     attracts more and more followers whose ideal is to develop within
+     the working masses a consciousness of their historic mission."
+
+In the words of an eloquent representative of the organized workers in
+the United States, I exhort the working men and working women of
+America: Keep your eyes on Russia. Watch what is going on there and what
+the capitalist plunderbund will try to do. Do not be misled by the lies
+and slanders that are daily dished up to you. Bear in mind that those
+who tell you these yarns have an interest to mislead you. They want to
+use you as a makeweight in their game of wresting from the Russian
+workers their dearly-won liberty. It is of no use to enumerate the lies
+that have already been punctured because they will invent new ones
+faster than one can write and print. Let your reason guide you. Think
+yourselves into the shoes of your Russian fellow workers. Think how you
+would act if placed in the same position and then draw the conclusion
+that they act about the same way that you would, because they are like
+you moved by the same emotions, the same desires, the same aspirations.
+You, too, would like to keep for yourselves the fruits of your toil, if
+you only knew how to go about it, if you had the organization that would
+make it possible. But as yet you do not know and you have not that
+organization. In politics you still vote against one another in the
+Republican or Democratic camp. You will have to wait until you do know
+and until you do have the means--the Industrial Unions of the entire
+working class that will be able to take and hold and administer industry
+for the reason that it will have the might, the power to do so. And when
+you have expressed through the ballot your will for that new society,
+which will guarantee to you the full fruits of your labor, remember the
+slogan of revolutionary Russia: "All power to the Soviets," and let your
+slogan then be: "All power to the Industrial Unions!"
+
+These are prophetic words written fifty years ago by Frederick Engels:
+
+     Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of
+     production, the appropriation by society of all the means of
+     production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by
+     individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But
+     it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only
+     when the actual conditions for its realization were there. Like
+     every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men
+     understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to
+     justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish
+     these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions....
+     So long as the total social labor only yields a produce which but
+     slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so
+     long, therefore, as labor engages all or almost all the time of the
+     great majority of the members of society--so long, of necessity,
+     this society is divided into classes....
+
+     But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain
+     historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only
+     under given social conditions. It was based on the insufficiency of
+     production. It will be swept away by the complete development of
+     modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in
+     society presupposes a degree of historical evolution, at which the
+     existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but
+     of any ruling class at all, has become an obsolete anachronism....
+
+     With the seizing of the means of production by society, production
+     of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery
+     of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is
+     replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for
+     individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a
+     certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal
+     kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions into really human
+     ones.... It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to
+     the kingdom of freedom.
+
+The capitalist countries are ruled through banks, and a bank is
+necessarily an institution of the owning class.
+
+Russia is ruled through Soviets, and a soviet is necessarily an
+institution of the working class.
+
+Banks and Soviets are so many headquarters for big unions. In capitalist
+countries the banks are such for the one big union of the owners, and in
+Russia the soviets are this for the one big union of the workers. These
+big unions cannot co-exist and flourish in the same country.
+
+All owners everywhere see the necessity for their one big union and in
+all capitalistic countries, nowhere more than in the United States, they
+have the advantage of being on the ground floor and indeed on all the
+floors of all the sky scrapers with their union which is the most
+universally inclusive and the most relentlessly efficient organization
+on earth.
+
+Some workers everywhere see the necessity for their one big union, but
+nowhere is it seen as generally and clearly as in Russia,--the only
+country in which the workers have held the ground floor for any
+considerable time against all comers.
+
+In all countries a beginning has been made by the workers in laying the
+foundation for their one big union, but in only one country, Russia, has
+progress been made with the superstructure, and here as everywhere the
+owners have hindered the workers so that they must defend themselves
+with their right hand while they build with their left. Nevertheless
+wonderful progress is being made and when the industrial structure has
+been completed, as it soon must be, else the world is doomed to
+destruction, it shall tower above its capitalist rival as a mountain
+over a foot hill.
+
+After all, the power of the owner is money and it is not a real
+potentiality, for within the social realm there is in reality only one
+potentiality, the power of productivity which exclusively belongs to the
+worker.
+
+In the sky there is no god, and on earth there is no king or priest like
+unto Labor, the lord of gods, the tzar of kings and the pope of priests.
+
+Labor is high above all potentialities. The motto, "All Power to the
+Workers," which the class-conscious proletarians inscribe on their
+banners, is not the expression of an ideal fiction, but the declaration
+of a practical reality, the greatest among all realities, that reality
+in which the whole social realm lives, moves and has its being.
+
+Down with the one big union of the owners. Long live the one big union
+of the workers.
+
+
+
+
+II. GOD AND IMMORTALITY.
+
+  We have done with the kisses that sting,
+  With the thief's mouth red from the feast,
+  With the blood on the hands of the king,
+  And the lie on the lips of the priest.
+
+  --Swinburne.
+
+
+Many critics contend that socialism and supernaturalism are not, as I
+represent, incompatibilities; but they lose sight of four facts: (1)
+this is a scientific age; (2) Marxian socialism is one of the sciences;
+(3) the vast majority of men of science reject all supernaturalism,
+including of course the gods and devils with their heavens and hells,
+and (4) only in the case of one of the sciences, psychology, is this
+majority greater than in the science of sociology.
+
+The truth of the last two of these representations will be
+overwhelmingly evident from the chart on the next page. It and its
+explanation given in the following quotation is taken with the kind
+consent of the author and also of the publishers of a book entitled God
+and Immortality, by Professor James H. Leuba, the Psychologist of Bryn
+Mawr College. This book is having a great influence and I strongly
+recommend it to all who think that I am wrong in the contention that
+conscious, personal existence is limited to earth; that, therefore, we
+are having all that we shall ever know of heaven and hell, here and now,
+and that whether we have more of heaven and less of hell depends
+altogether upon men and women, not at all upon gods and devils. The
+second edition of Professor Leuba's book is now in the press of The Open
+Court Publishing Company, 122 South Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. Here is
+the quotation in support of our contentions:
+
+[Illustration: Chart XI
+
+PARTIAL SUMMARY OF RESULTS]
+
+     What, then, is the main outcome of this research? Chart XI, Partial
+     Summary of Results, shows that in every class of persons
+     investigated, the number of believers in God is less, and in most
+     classes very much less than the number of non-believers, and that
+     the number of believers in immortality is somewhat larger than in a
+     personal God; that among the more distinguished, unbelief is very
+     much more frequent than among the less distinguished; and finally
+     that not only the degree of ability, but also the kind of knowledge
+     possessed, is significantly related to the rejection of these
+     beliefs.
+
+     The correlation shown, without exception, in every one of our
+     groups between eminence and disbelief appears to me of momentous
+     significance. In three of these groups (biologists, historians, and
+     psychologists) the number of believers among the men of greater
+     distinction is only half, or less than half the number of believers
+     among the less distinguished men. I do not see any way to avoid the
+     conclusion that disbelief in a personal God and in personal
+     immortality is directly proportional to abilities making for
+     success in the sciences in question.
+
+     A study of the several charts of this work with regard to the kind
+     of knowledge which favors disbelief shows that the historians and
+     the physical scientists provide the greater; and the psychologists,
+     the sociologists and the biologists, the smaller number of
+     believers. The explanation I have offered is that psychologists,
+     sociologists, and biologists in very large numbers have come to
+     recognize fixed orderliness in organic and psychic life, and not
+     merely in inorganic existence; while frequently physical scientists
+     have recognized the presence of invariable law in the inorganic
+     world only. The belief in a personal God as defined for the purpose
+     of our investigation is, therefore, less often possible to students
+     of psychic and of organic life than to physical scientists.
+
+     The place occupied by the historians next to the physical
+     scientists would indicate that for the present the reign of law is
+     not so clearly revealed in the events with which history deals as
+     in biology, economics, and psychology. A large number of
+     historians continue to see the hand of God in human affairs. The
+     influence, destructive of Christian beliefs, attributed in this
+     interpretation to more intimate knowledge of organic and psychic
+     life, appears incontrovertibly, as far as psychic life is
+     concerned, in the remarkable fact that whereas in every other group
+     the number of believers in immortality is greater than that in God,
+     among the psychologists the reverse is true; the number of
+     believers in immortality among the greater psychologists sinks to
+     8.8 per cent. One may affirm it seems that, in general, the greater
+     the ability of the psychologist, the more difficult it becomes for
+     him to believe in the continuation of individual life after bodily
+     death.
+
+Within the generation to which I belong Darwin and Marx, the greatest
+teachers that the world has had, went over the top of entrenched
+ignorance with the greatest books of the world, worth infinitely more to
+it than all its bibles together. Darwin did this in 1859 with his Origin
+of Species by Natural Selection and Marx in 1867 with his Capital, a
+Critique of Political Economy.
+
+Darwin with his book is driving the Christian church out of its trench
+of supernaturalism and uniqueism by showing that the different kinds of
+vegetable and animal life are not, according to the representation of
+its bible, so many separate creations by a personal, conscious divinity,
+but interrelated evolutions by an impersonal, unconscious nature, the
+higher out of the lower, and that, therefore, man is so far from being a
+special creation, having his most vital relationships with a celestial
+divinity and his most glorious prospects in a heavenly place with him,
+that he is really more or less closely related to every living thing on
+earth, and is as hopelessly limited to it, as an elephant, a tree or
+even a mountain.
+
+Marx with his book is driving the states out of the trench of
+imperialism and capitalism.
+
+As Darwin is driving the conscious, personal gods out of the realm of
+biology, placing all animal and human life of body, mind and soul on
+essentially the same footing, so Marx is driving all such divinities out
+of the realm of sociology, placing all life of family, state, church,
+lodge, store and shop on essentially the same level.
+
+According to Darwin, all animal life is what it is at any time by reason
+of the effort to accommodate the physical organism to its environment.
+
+According to Marx, human civilization is what it is at any time because
+of the economic system by which people feed, clothe and house
+themselves.
+
+This Darwinian-Marxian interpretation of terrestrial life in general,
+and of the human part of it in particular, is known as materialism. It
+is the materialistic, naturalistic, levelistic interpretation of
+history, and differs fundamentally from the spiritualistic,
+supernaturalistic, uniqueistic interpretation of Christian preachers.
+The contrast between these interpretations is especially strong in the
+case of human history.
+
+On the one hand the Christian preacher says, man's history is what it is
+because of the directing providence of a God, the Father, Son and
+Spirit, and because of His directing inspiration of great leaders, such
+as Washington, Luther, Caesar and Moses.
+
+On the other hand Darwin and Marx agree in saying that both the triune
+god and the inspired leader are what they are, because society is what
+it is; that, again, the character of society depends upon the economic
+system by which it feeds, clothes and houses itself, and that finally
+all such systems owe their existence to the machinery in use for the
+production of the basic necessities of life, the primal machine being
+the human hand to which all other machines are auxiliaries.
+
+The most insatiable and universal among all human longings is for
+freedom--freedom from economic want, social inequality and imperialistic
+tyranny, also freedom to learn, think, live and teach truths.
+
+Socialism of the Marxian type is the gospel of freedom, because a
+classless god, nature, reveals it in the interest of a classless world:
+therefore, it is true, and slavery, of which there never was so much
+before on the earth, and nowhere is there more than in the United
+States, is utterly incompatible with truth, and classless interests.
+
+All the supernaturalistic gospels are revealed by a class god (Jesus,
+Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) in the interest of the capitalist class:
+therefore, they are false and freedom is utterly incompatible with
+falsehood and class interest.
+
+Ignorance is the destroyer-god and capitalism is the diabolical scourge
+by which he afflicts the wage-earner with many unnecessary sufferings,
+especially the crushing ones arising from the great trinity of evils,
+war, poverty and slavery.
+
+Knowledge is the saviour-god and Marxism is his divine gospel of freedom
+from these capitalistic sufferings.
+
+
+
+
+III. MYTHICAL CHARACTER OF OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT PERSONAGES.
+
+     What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first,
+     second, and third days, in which the evening is named and the
+     morning, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such
+     an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise like an
+     husbandman? I believe that every man must hold these things for
+     images under which a hidden sense is concealed.--Origen.
+
+
+One of the critics of Communism and Christianism whose representations
+are in alignment with several others says:
+
+     While the Bishop speaks in the language of scholarship, he entirely
+     ignores all the findings of modern scholars on the literature of
+     the Bible.
+
+The failure to show more clearly that my representations concerning the
+untenableness of the basic doctrines of Christian supernaturalism are in
+alignment with the conclusions of outstanding authorities in the newly
+developed sciences of historical and biblical criticisms is indeed a
+defect and an attempt will here be made to remove it by a short but
+faithful and, as I think, convincing summary of what such authorities in
+these sciences have to say on the subject.
+
+My summary is summarized from a pamphlet by Charles T. Gorham, published
+by Watts and Company, 17 Johnson's Court, Fleet St., E. C. 4, London,
+England, which is itself an able summarization of the relevant facts
+which have been scientifically established as they are given in the
+greatest of all the Bible Dictionaries, the Encyclopedia Biblica.
+
+It will be seen that all except one among my contentions concerning the
+baselessness of the supernaturalism of orthodox Christians are well
+sustained. This exception is the contention that Jesus is not an
+historical personage, but a fictitious one. However the great critics
+are unanimously with me even in this, for two crushing facts are
+admitted by them: (1) the Old Testament affords no scientifically
+established data from which a reliable history of the Jews can be
+written, and (2) the New Testament has no such data for a biography of
+Jesus.
+
+The illuminating summary which is a large part of my answer to the
+criticism under review follows, and it is as far as possible in the
+language of Mr. Gorham:
+
+     Once upon a time there was a system of Christian Theology. It was a
+     wonderful though a highly artificial structure, composed of fine
+     old crusted dogmas which no one could prove, but very few dared to
+     dispute. There was the "magnified man" in the sky, the Infallible
+     Bible, dictated by the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the Fall, the
+     Atonement, Predestination and Grace, Justification by Faith, a
+     Chosen People, a practically omnipotent Devil, myriads of Evil
+     Spirits, an eternity of bliss to be obtained for nothing, and
+     endless torment for those who did not avail themselves of the
+     offer.
+
+     Now the house of cards has tumbled to pieces, or rather it is
+     slowly dissolving, as Shakespeare says, "like the baseless fabric
+     of a vision". The Biblical chronology, history, ethics, all are
+     alike found to be defective and doubtful. Divine Revelation has
+     become discredited; a Human Record takes its place. What has
+     brought about this startling change? The answer is, Knowledge.
+     Thought, research, criticism, have shown that the traditional
+     theories of the Bible can no longer be maintained. The logic of
+     facts has confirmed the reasonings of the independent thinker, and
+     placed the dogmatist in a dilemma which grows ever more acute. The
+     result is not pleasant for the believer; but it is well that the
+     real state of things should be known, that the kernel of truth
+     should be separated from the overgrown husk of tradition.
+
+During the last few years a work has been issued which sums up the
+conclusions of modern criticism better than any other book. It is called
+the Encyclopedia Biblica, and its four volumes tersely and ably set
+forth the new views, and support them by a mass of learning which
+deserves serious consideration. And the most significant thing about it
+is not merely that the entire doctrinal system of Christianity has
+undergone a radical change, but that this change has largely been
+brought about by Christian scholars themselves. A rapid glance at this
+store-house of the heresy of such scholars will give the reader some
+idea of the extent of the surrender which Christianity has made to the
+forces of Rationalism. It must be premised that space will permit of the
+conclusions only being given, without the detailed evidence by which
+they are supported.
+
+Let us begin with our supposed first parents. Is the story of Adam and
+Eve a true story? There are, we are told, decisive reasons why we cannot
+regard it as historical, and probably the writer himself never supposed
+he was relating history.[K]
+
+The Creation story originated in a stock of primitive myths common to
+the Semitic races, and passed through a long period of development
+before it was incorporated in the book of Genesis. If, then, it is the
+fact, as Christian scholars assert, that this story of the Creation
+originated in a pagan myth, and was shaped and altered by unknown hands
+for nearly a thousand years, it is nothing more nor less than
+superstition to hold that it is divinely true.
+
+As for the Old Testament patriarchs, we now learn that their very
+existence is uncertain. The tradition concerning Abraham is, as it
+stands, inadmissible; he is not so much a historical personage as an
+ideal type of character, whose actual existence is as doubtful as that
+of other heroes. All the stories of the patriarchs are legendary.
+
+The whole book of Genesis, in fact, is not history at all, as we
+understand history. Exodus is another composite legend which has long
+been mistaken for history.
+
+The historical character of Moses has not been established, and it is
+doubtful whether the name is that of an individual or that of a clan.
+The story of his being exposed in an ark of bulrushes is a myth probably
+derived from the similar and much earlier myth of Sargon.[L]
+
+Turning to the New Testament, we find that modern critical research only
+brings out more clearly than ever the extraordinary vagueness and
+uncertainty which enshroud every detail of the narrative. From the
+article on "Chronology" we learn that everything in the Gospels is too
+uncertain to be accepted as historical fact. There are numerous
+questions which it is "wholly impossible to decide". We do not know when
+Jesus was born, or when he died, or who was his father, or what was the
+duration of his ministry. As these are matters on which the Gospel
+writers purport to give information, the fact of their failure to do so
+settles the question of their competency as historians.
+
+The supposed supernatural birth of Jesus has of late exercised the minds
+of theologians. It is not surprising that some of them should reject the
+notion, for it is one without a shred of evidence in its favor. Setting
+aside the well-known fact that many other religions assume a similar
+origin for their founders, we may note the New Testament accounts are in
+such hopeless conflict with each other that reconciliation is
+impossible.
+
+The important subject of the "Resurrection" is treated by Professor P.
+W. Schmiedel, of Zurich, who tells us that the Gospel accounts "exhibit
+contradictions of the most glaring kind".
+
+The article on the Gospels by Dr. E. A. Abbott and Professor Schmiedel
+is crammed with criticism of a kind most damaging to every form of the
+orthodox faith. The view hitherto current, that the four Gospels were
+written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and appeared thirty or forty
+years after the death of Jesus, can, it is stated, no longer be
+maintained.
+
+The alleged eclipse of the sun at the Crucifixion is impossible. One of
+the orthodox shifts respecting this phenomenon is that it was an eclipse
+of the moon!
+
+Modern criticism decides that no confidence whatever can be placed in
+the reliability of the Gospels as historical narratives, or in the
+chronology of the events which they relate. It may even seem to justify
+a doubt whether any credible elements at all are to be found in them.
+Yet it is believed that some such credible elements do exist. Five
+passages prove by their character that Jesus was a real person, and that
+we have some trustworthy facts about him. These passages are: Matthew
+xii. 31, Mark x. 17, Mark iii. 21, Mark xiii. 32, and Mark xv. 34, and
+the corresponding passage in Matthew xxvii. 46, though these last two
+are not found in Luke. Four other passages have a high degree of
+probability--viz., Mark viii. 12, Mark vi. 5, Mark viii. 14-21, and
+Matthew xi. 5, with the corresponding passage in Luke vii. 22. These
+texts, however, disclose nothing of a supernatural character. They
+merely prove that in Jesus we have to do with a completely human being,
+and that the divine is to be sought in him only in the form in which it
+is capable of being found in all men.[M]
+
+The four Gospels were compiled from earlier materials which have
+perished, and the dates when they first appeared in their present form
+are given as follows:--Mark, certainly after the destruction of
+Jerusalem in the year 70; Matthew, about 119 A. D.; Luke, between 100
+and 110; and John, between 132 and 140.
+
+The question of the genuineness of the Pauline Epistles, is now far from
+being so clear as was once universally supposed. Advanced criticism,
+Professor Van Manen tells us in his elaborate article on "Paul", has
+learned to recognize that none of these Epistles are by him, not even
+the four generally regarded as unassailable. They are not letters to
+individuals, but books or pamphlets emanating from a particular school.
+We know little, in reality, of the facts of Paul's life, or of his
+death: all is uncertain. The unmistakable traces of late origin indicate
+that the Epistles probably did not appear till the second century.
+
+The strange book of Revelation is not of purely Christian origin.
+Criticism has clearly shown that it can no longer be regarded as a
+literary unit, but it is an admixture of Jewish with Christian ideas and
+speculations. Ancient testimony, that of Papias in particular, assumed
+the Presbyter John, and not the Apostle, as its author or redactor.
+
+The Epistles of Peter, James and Jude are none of them held to be the
+work of the Apostles. They probably first saw the light in the second
+century; the second Epistle of Peter may even belong to the latter half
+of that period.
+
+All the above conclusions are summarized, as nearly as may be, in the
+words of the authors of the respective articles. Their significance is
+surely enormous. Right or wrong, eminent Christian scholars here
+proclaim results in complete antagonism to the ideas usually accepted as
+forming the true basis of the Christian faith. They amount, in fact, to
+a complete and unconditional surrender of the whole dogmatic framework
+which has hitherto been held as divinely revealed, and therefore
+divinely true.
+
+Thomas Paine was a Deist. As such he believed that nature may be
+compared with a clock and God with its maker. As the clock maker, under
+normal conditions, has but little to do with his handiwork, so it has
+been with the Creator and his universe. The theists of every name
+(Christian, Jew, Mohammedan and Buddhist), not to speak of others,
+believe that the universe, with all which therein is, lives, moves and
+has its being as the result of the willings of their respective gods.
+
+Though I have my god, indeed two gods, one god in the world of my
+physical existence--a trinity: matter, force and motion, and another god
+in the world of my moral existence--a trinity: fact, truth and life, yet
+if the rejection of both deism and theism is atheism, I am an atheist.
+
+But assuming for the sake of argument that there is a conscious personal
+being who has had and is having something to do with making things what
+they are, I set my seal to this arraignment:
+
+     Of all the systems of religion that were ever invented, there is
+     none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more
+     repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this
+     thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to
+     convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart
+     torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of
+     power, it serves the purpose of despotism and as a means of wealth,
+     the avarice of priests; but for the good of mankind it leads to
+     nothing here or hereafter.
+
+     --Thomas Paine.
+
+William Rathbone Greg in his Creed of Christendom says that much of the
+Old Testament which Christian divines, in their ignorance of Jewish
+lore, have insisted on receiving and interpreting literally, the
+informed Rabbis never dreamed of regarding as anything but allegorical.
+The literalists they called fools.
+
+Origen and Augustine, the two greatest men which Christianity has
+produced, would agree with Greg in this. We have already quoted the
+motto of this section from Origen, and we will now quote this from
+Augustine:
+
+     It very often happens that there is some question as to the earth
+     or the sky, or the other elements of this world, respecting which
+     one who is not a Christian has knowledge derived from most certain
+     reasoning or observation, and it is very disgraceful and
+     mischievous and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a
+     Christian, speaking of such matters as being according to the
+     Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such
+     nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving him to be as wide from the
+     mark as east from west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[K] But if Adam and Eve are not historical personages there is no
+doctrine of supernaturalistic Christianism resting on the solid ground
+of facts and the whole of its immense dogmatic structure is floating in
+the air of theories and myths.--Author.
+
+[L] It is questionable whether such persons as Samson, Jonah and Daniel
+ever lived, but it is certain that their adventures are as mythical as
+anything in Aesop's Fables.--Author.
+
+[M] But these nine texts which for some years were often triumphantly
+pointed to as the pillars upon which securely rested the historicalness
+of Jesus as a man are now lying in the dust where the learned and
+brilliant Professor William Benjamin Smith of Tulane University put them
+by his great contribution to the Christological problem in a book,
+entitled Ecce Deus in which he, as I think, proves conclusively that the
+Jesus of the New Testament never was a real man but always an imaginary
+god, the Christian recasting of the Jewish God, a new Jehovah.--Author.
+
+
+
+
+IV. WOULD SOCIALISM CHANGE HUMAN NATURE?
+
+  Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,
+  Or the priests of the bloody Faith:
+  They stand on the brink of that mighty river
+  Whose waves they have tainted with death,
+  It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
+  Around them it foams and rages and swells,
+  And their swords and their scepters I floating see
+  Like wrecks in the surge of eternity.
+
+  --Shelley.
+
+
+My revolt against the existing capitalist system of economics and the
+capitalized political and religious systems which support it is
+complete, and the end which I have in view in this booklet is that of
+primitive Christianism, as it is taught by Mary in the Magnificat, the
+putting down of the owning masters of the world and the exaltation of
+the working slaves, only that I do not recommend, as she did, that the
+masters should be banished to starve but rather that they should be
+allowed to become producers and to live then as such, not as robbers, as
+they now live.
+
+This is bolshevism. It is not anarchy, but a new dictatorship instead of
+the old, that of the proletariat in place of the bourgeoisie. But this
+dictatorship (though necessary during the period of transition from the
+capitalist system, by which commodities are made only for the profit of
+a few to an industrial system by which they will be made only for use of
+the many) is not the goal of socialism. Its goal is a classless world--a
+world in which all who are able to work shall directly or at least
+indirectly contribute their due proportion, according to their abilities
+and opportunities, towards feeding, clothing, housing and educating it.
+
+Perhaps the truest thing in the Bible relates to the utterly corrupt
+condition of civilization, nor was it ever truer than now, and it always
+must be equally true while the world is divided into master and slave
+classes under the dictatorship of the masters:
+
+     The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole of
+     the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but
+     wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been
+     closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
+
+Capitalism and Socialism differ fundamentally in that the former always
+has sought and always will seek to exercise a permanent dictatorship,
+whereas that of the latter is to constitute the temporary bridge over
+which the world is to pass from the economic system under which
+commodities are competitively made for the profit of the few, to the
+economic system under which they will be co-operatively made for the use
+of the many.
+
+It is contended with much show of reason that the dictatorship of the
+proletariat will not lead to the goal, because human nature being what
+it is the slaves will automatically develop into another class of
+masters.
+
+But those who raise this contention proceed upon the assumption that
+human nature is a constant quantity so that it cannot be essentially
+changed and that it has made the economic systems, what they have been.
+
+This is not the case. Human nature, like animal nature, is constantly
+changing and neither the one nor the other voluntarily changes itself,
+but both are forced to change by the development of new and external
+conditions and by the necessity of conformity to them.
+
+Professor Joseph McCabe, not a socialist, observes that these
+developments and conformities were so many revolutions and that the man
+who says, the secret of progress is evolution, not revolution, may be
+talking very good social philosophy but he is not talking science, as he
+thinks. In every modern geological work you read of periodical
+revolutions in the story of the earth, and these are the great ages of
+progress--and, I ought to add, of colossal annihilation of the less fit.
+
+Darwin discovered that animal nature changed (for example snake nature
+changed into bird nature) because of changed physical environments and
+the necessity of life to adaptation to them.
+
+Marx discovered that human nature changed from what it was during the
+period of chatteldom to what it was during serfdom and from that to what
+it is under capitalism by reason of the difference in the economic
+systems of these periods by which the world fed, clothed and housed
+itself and that these differences are in turn accounted for by the
+differences in the machines by which the necessities of life are
+produced.
+
+Thus Darwin explained the history of animal life without the hypothesis
+of a divine creator, and Marx explained the history of mankind without
+the hypothesis either of a divine ruler or human leaders. These
+Darwinian and Marxian explanations constitute what is known as the
+materialistic explanation of history.
+
+Marx represented that capitalism would end the class struggle and issue
+in a classless world because its profiteering system of production and
+distribution could not be succeeded by another, since it divides mankind
+into masters who are ever growing less numerous and slaves who are ever
+growing more numerous, without the possibility of those who are half
+capitalists and half workers rising out of their nondescript condition
+into a new master class, as did the bourgeoisie under feudalism. For
+these reasons he contended the proletarian slaves would become the grave
+diggers for the bourgeois masters and so end capitalism with the burial
+of its representatives.
+
+But with the complete and sustained triumph of the proletarian class the
+bourgeois class will rapidly pass away, as is now the case with it in
+Russia, and a classless world will be born to live on a co-operative
+instead of a competitive basis, in a heaven instead of a hell.
+
+
+
+
+V. WHAT WILL BE THE FORM OF THE WORKERS' STATE.
+
+     Hail Soviet Russia, the first Communist Republic, the land of, by
+     and for the common people. We greet you, workers and peasants of
+     Russia, who by your untold sacrifices, by your determination and
+     devotion, are transforming the Russia of black reaction, of the
+     domination of a few, into a land of glorious promise for all.
+     Comrades in America, watch the bright dawn in the East; you have
+     but your chains to lose, and a world to gain!--The Workers'
+     Council.
+
+
+In general outline the form of the workers' state will be that of the
+Russian Soviet Republic, and what it is will appear from the following
+semi-official description, the briefest and clearest of any which I have
+seen. Its authorship is unknown to me but I know it to be the work of a
+committee of which Zinoviev, one of the directing and inspiring minds of
+the proletarian movement in Russia, was a member, and it may be that he
+is the author. Anyhow it is a recently published, authoritative classic
+containing the information for which a large part of the world has been
+waiting:
+
+     We have before us the example of the Russian Soviet Republic, whose
+     structure, in view of the conflicting reports printed in other
+     countries, it may be useful to describe briefly here.
+
+     The unit of government is the local Soviet, or Council, of
+     Workers', Red Army, and Peasants' Deputies.
+
+     The city Workers' Soviet is made up as follows: Each factory elects
+     one delegate for a certain number of workers, and each local union
+     also elects delegates. These delegates are elected according to
+     political parties--or, if the workers wish it, as individual
+     candidates.
+
+     The Red Army delegates are chosen by military units.
+
+     For the peasants, each village has its local Soviet, which sends
+     delegates to the Township Soviet, which in turn elects to the
+     County Soviet, and this to the Provincial Soviet.
+
+     Nobody who employs labor for profit can vote.
+
+     Every six months the City and Provincial Soviets elect delegates to
+     the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which is the supreme governing
+     body of the country. This Congress decides upon the policies which
+     are to govern the country for six months, and then elects a Central
+     Executive Committee of two hundred, which is to carry out these
+     policies. The Congress also elects the Cabinet--The Council of
+     People's Commissars, who are heads of Government Departments--or
+     People's Commissariats.
+
+     The People's Commissars can be recalled at any time by the Central
+     Executive Committee. The members of all Soviets can be recalled
+     very easily, and at any time, by their constituents.
+
+     These Soviets are not only Legislative bodies, but also Executive
+     organs. Unlike your Congress, they do not make the laws and leave
+     them to the President to carry out, but the members carry out the
+     laws themselves; and there is no Supreme Court to say whether or
+     not these laws are "constitutional."
+
+     Between the All-Russian Congresses of Soviets the Central Executive
+     Committee is the supreme power in Russia. It meets at least every
+     two months, and in the meanwhile, the Council of People's
+     Commissars directs the country, while the members of the Central
+     Executive Committee go to work in the various government
+     departments.
+
+     In Russia the workers are organized in Industrial Unions all the
+     workers in each industry belonging to one Union. For example, in a
+     factory making metal products, even the carpenters and painters are
+     members of the Metal Workers' Union. Each factory is a local
+     Union, and the Shop Committee elected by the workers is its
+     Executive Committee.
+
+     The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the federated Unions
+     is elected by the annual Trade Union Convention. A Scale Committee
+     elected by the Convention fixes the wages of all categories of
+     workers.
+
+     With very few exceptions, all important factories in Russia have
+     been nationalized, and are now the property of all the workers in
+     common. The business of the Unions is therefore no longer to fight
+     the capitalists, but to run industry.
+
+     Hand in hand with the Unions works the Department of Labor of the
+     Soviet Government, whose chief is the People's Commissar of Labor,
+     elected by the Soviet Congress with the approval of the Unions.
+
+     In charge of the economic life of the country is the elected
+     Supreme Council of People's Economy, divided into departments, such
+     as, Metal Department, Chemical Department, etc., each one headed by
+     experts and workers, appointed, with the approval of the Union by
+     the Supreme Council of People's Economy.
+
+     In each factory production is carried on by a committee consisting
+     of three members: a representative of the Shop Committee of the
+     Unions, a representative of the Central Executive of the Unions,
+     and a representative of the Supreme Council of People's Economy.
+
+     The Unions are thus a branch of the government--and this government
+     is the most highly centralized government that exists.
+
+     It is also the most democratic government in history. For all the
+     organs of government are in constant touch with the working masses,
+     and constantly sensitive to their will. Moreover, the local Soviets
+     all over Russia have complete autonomy to manage their own local
+     affairs, provided they carry out the national policies laid down by
+     the Soviet Congress. Also, the Soviet Government represents only
+     the workers, and cannot help but act in the workers' interests.
+
+The motto of this section is the conclusion of a good article in the
+first number of one among the best of the periodicals devoted to the
+promotion of Marxism, The Workers' Council, published by the
+International Educational Company, New York City. This article is so
+short and lends itself so naturally as a supplement to the foregoing
+explanation of the new economic system which has been established and is
+being developed in Russia that I quote the rest as the conclusion of
+this section about Sovietism.
+
+     Communist Russia, the Russia of the common people, marks a new
+     epoch in the world's history. It marks a basic change in the
+     structure of human society. Up to this time society lived under the
+     rule of the few, under the rule of the class which possessed the
+     wealth of the country. The methods were different at different
+     periods in the world's history, but the results were the same:
+     riches and power for the few, a bare existence and endless toil for
+     the many. The slaves, the serfs, or the wage workers of today, who
+     compose the masses of the people, have ever been the hewers of wood
+     and the carriers of water, the beasts of burden on whose backs
+     sported and fattened kings and nobles, landlords and capitalists.
+     They who possessed wealth had the power. And they passed laws to
+     protect that power, to make the possession of wealth a social
+     institution. Private property was enthroned and every striving of
+     mankind was subjected to the rule of property. Thence grew the
+     exploitation of man by man for private profit, and all abuses
+     resulting therefrom; fear of loss of property, care of possession,
+     dread of the future, fear of loss of employment, envy and greed.
+     Human society was ruled by property grabbers; masters, kings,
+     capitalists, providing toil, disease, war for the masses of
+     mankind. That is the rule of capitalism, and cannot be otherwise.
+
+But under communism, profit is abolished, and with it the exploitation
+of man by man; private property is no longer a factor in the life of
+man; property becomes universal, all natural and created wealth belong
+to society, to every member of the community, as secure a birth right as
+air and sunlight. Everybody's measured work provides a common fund of
+things to satisfy material needs, today, tomorrow and in years to come.
+There can be no fear of losing one's job, of seeing one's children
+starve, of the poor-house in old age. As sure as the sun will rise on
+the morrow, man is secure of his bread, his shelter and clothing. Man is
+freed from animal cares, free to develop his human qualities, his
+intelligence, his brain and heart.
+
+Russia points the way. Russia is now one huge corporation, every man,
+woman and child an equal shareholder. The state is administered as a
+business; the benefit of the stockholders being the object of the
+corporation. The individual contributes his labor, whatever it may be:
+manual, mental, artistic. This labor is applied to available materials:
+the soil of the farm, the natural resources, the mines, and mills and
+factories. The finished product is distributed through the agencies of
+the corporation, in the shape of food and clothes and shelter, of
+education and amusement, of protection to life and limb, of literature
+and art, of inventions and improvements: to every man, woman and child
+of the nation.
+
+To be sure this ideal of a human brotherhood is not yet realized in
+Russia. No sane person would expect so tremendous a change to be
+consummated in three years, in the face of universal aggression,
+intrigues and blockades. It may take ten years, perhaps a generation.
+What of it! Russia is past the most difficult period of transition from
+the capitalist state to a communist state, while other capitalist
+countries must still face the period of revolution. Therefore let Russia
+lead the way. Let the American workers realize that Russia's fight is
+their fight, that Soviet Russia's success is the success of the laboring
+people the world over!
+
+  Have you ever been to Crazy Land,[N]
+    Down on the Looney Pike?
+  There are the queerest people there--
+    You never saw the like!
+  The ones that do the useful work
+    Are poor as poor can be,
+  And those who do no useful work
+    All live in luxury.
+  They raise so much in Crazy Land
+    Of food and clothes and such,
+  That those who work don't have enough
+    Because they raise too much.
+  They're wrong side to in Crazy Land,
+    They're upside down with care--
+  They walk around upon their heads,
+    With feet up in the air.
+
+  --T.
+
+
+
+
+VI. WITHDRAWAL OF PRIZE OFFER.
+
+     Never have anything to do with those who pretend to have dealings
+     with the supernatural. If you allow supernaturalism to get a
+     foothold in your country the result will be a dreadful
+     calamity.--Confucius.
+
+
+Mrs. Brown and I hereby withdraw, for the present at least, our prize
+offer, and for two reasons:
+
+1. We are convinced that it is as necessary to the welfare of the world
+to smite supernaturalism in religion as capitalism in politics, but
+while many are able and willing to attack the octopus of capitalism,
+this is true of only a few in the case of the dragon of supernaturalism.
+Some hesitate because they feel with one of the critics of Communism and
+Christianism that revolutionary forces are coming to the surface in the
+churches.
+
+"Where," he asks, "shall we classify the stand of the Catholic Church
+against the open shop? What shall be said of the Interchurch report on
+the steel strike? What of the attitude of the combined commission in
+Denver of Catholics, Protestants and Jews on the street car strike?"
+
+We have no desire to belittle such efforts nor to discourage their
+promoters; but (though they may afford some local and temporary
+alleviation to the miseries of far the greater part of the
+world--miseries growing out of its division into two classes, a small
+class of owning masters and a large class of working slaves) we center
+no hope in them, because the whole history of the supernaturalistic
+interpretations of religion, not excepting the Christian, show these
+efforts to be only reformatory and temporary bubbles which sooner or
+later are always pricked by the masters of what little revolutionary air
+they contain, and so never issue in any general or permanent improvement
+of the sad lot of the overwhelming majority of the slaves.
+
+How little the church serves the working slaves, and how much the owning
+masters, will appear from the following representations of Roger W.
+Babson, the well-known financial expert and adviser:
+
+     The value of our investments depends not on the strength of our
+     banks, but rather upon the strength of our churches. The underpaid
+     preachers of the nation are the men upon whom we really are
+     depending, rather than the well-paid lawyers, bankers and brokers.
+     The religion of the community is really the bulwark of our
+     investments. And when we consider that only 15 per cent of the
+     people hold securities of any kind and less than 3 per cent hold
+     enough to pay an income tax, the importance of the churches becomes
+     even more evident.
+
+     For our sakes, for our children's sakes, for the nation's sake, let
+     us business men get behind the churches and their preachers. Never
+     mind if they are not perfect. Never mind if their theology is out
+     of date. This only means that were they efficient they would do
+     very much more. The safety of all we have is due to the churches,
+     even in their present inefficient and inactive state. By all that
+     we hold dear, let us from this very day give more time, money and
+     thought to the churches, for upon these the value of all we own
+     ultimately depends.
+
+What our critics say about the recent efforts of the American churches
+being in the right direction is interesting to Mrs. Brown and me, but we
+are much more impressed by the observation of a writer in a late issue
+of Soviet Russia. In speaking of the baneful influence of the Russian
+church through all the ages he says:
+
+     Out of the shadows of antiquity, from the morning of man's cupidity
+     and avarice, two sinister figures have crawled with crooked talons
+     through history, leaving a trail of blood and fear most horrible
+     which has not halted yet. These are the monarch and the priest. The
+     one is symbolical of despotic or oligarchic power, the other
+     typifies the sordid ignorance and fearful superstition of the
+     credulous masses which maintains the power of the first. High in
+     the streets of Moscow, where one may see the pallid, long-haired,
+     degenerate-looking venders of holy lies and pious impositions
+     shuffle along like spectres from a remoter age, there hangs a woven
+     streamer of scarlet hue with huge white lettering, which defiantly
+     proclaims that religion is the opium of the people.
+
+     Though many still cross themselves a score of times daily on
+     passing the church, yet nevertheless the people are rapidly
+     assimilating the knowledge which elevates and enlightens, and
+     learning to reject that which terrorizes and deforms the mind, and
+     just so sure as the last filthy tyrant has been placed for ever
+     beyond mischief, so will the last priest soon vanish from the land
+     once contemptuously known as "Holy Russia".
+
+The foregoing is from a revolutionary sympathizer with soviet Russia and
+the following is from a reactionary criticizer of it, but both are to
+the same effect, that orthodox Christianity is wholly against the
+interest of the proletariat and entirely for that of the bourgeoisie:
+
+     One of the most striking characteristics of Bolshevism is its
+     pronounced hatred of religion, and of Christianity most of all. To
+     the Bolshevik, Christianity is not merely the theory of a mode of
+     life different from his own; it is an enemy to be persecuted and
+     wiped out of existence.
+
+     To understand this is not difficult. The tendency of the Christian
+     religion to hold before the believer an ideal of a life beyond
+     death is diametrically opposed to the ideal of Bolshevism, which
+     tempts the masses by promising the immediate realization of the
+     earthly paradise. From that point of view Christianity is not only
+     a false conception of life; it is an obstacle to the realization of
+     the Communist ideal. It detaches souls from the objects of sense
+     and diverts them from the struggle to get the good things of this
+     life. According to the Bolshevist formula, religion is opium for
+     the people: and serves as a tool of capitalist domination.
+
+This influence of the churches, in the long run and on the whole has
+been and will continue to be the same throughout christendom everywhere
+and everywhen, not excepting these United States in the twentieth
+century.
+
+Nor is it to any convincing purpose that the representatives of the
+owning class contend that kings and priests have lost their supremacy to
+presidents and preachers, for it is imperialism in politics which
+enthralls and supernaturalism in religion which degrades. The world is
+greatly afflicted with both, none of it much, if any, more than our
+country.
+
+It seems to us that we see two fundamentally important facts more
+clearly than our critics see them: (1) the first step in the way of
+salvation for the proletariat is class consciousness, and (2) the
+Christian interpretation of supernaturalistic religion has been, and
+until it is discredited will continue to be the most efficient among the
+many preventives to this consciousness.
+
+Let me show this to be the case by an experience which I had some years
+ago when Mr. Pierpont Morgan, Senior, was at the height of his glory, as
+the king of the great realm of big business, receiving homage on the one
+hand from the Rockefellers and Rothschilds, and on the other hand from
+the Blockheads and Henry Dubbs of all the world.
+
+At that time I made a confirmation visitation for my sick episcopal
+brother, the Bishop of New York, to what was popularly known as Pierpont
+Morgan's church (St. George's, one of the downtown churches for working
+people.) He was the senior warden of this great parish having nearly
+5,000 communicants. He went with the collecting procession out through
+the great congregation and back to the chancel where each collector
+ceremoniously emptied the contents of his basket into the great gold
+alms basin held by the Rector.
+
+While the famous financier was collecting contributions from obscure
+toilers, how could any, brought up as I was and as nearly all of the
+great congregation were, see that capitalism has divided humanity into
+two conflicting classes which "have nothing in common, the working class
+and the employing class, between which a struggle must go on until the
+workers organize, take possession of the earth and the machinery of
+production and abolish the wage system!"
+
+By the light of what I had been taught all along and of what I was then
+seeing with my own eyes from the bishop's chair such a representation
+would have seemed preposterous and what was true of me was equally so of
+all present, rector, wardens, vestrymen, members and visitors.
+
+There were not many I. W. W.'s. in those days, but if one had been there
+and upon leaving the church had made a representation to this effect to
+a fellow-worker who was a member of St. George's would not the reply
+have been something as follows:
+
+See what Pierpont Morgan and I have in common: the same God; the same
+religion; the same church; the same services for worship; the same
+collection basket in which he puts a $100.00 bill and I a ten cent
+piece; the same Lord's Supper where we eat and drink together; and,
+besides all this, there is the same hell where he will go unless he
+gives me a fair day's wage and where I will go unless I do a fair day's
+work, and the same heaven where both will go to equally glorious
+mansions, if we are alike 100 percenters in church and state, and if he
+pays me liberally for my work and I slave hard enough for his money.
+
+Assuming the truth of the Christian interpretation of religion this
+conclusion is correct. But this Christian religion is not true.
+Christianism offers nothing to either the owners or workers in the sky
+for its god and heaven, devil and hell are lies. And neither religious
+Christianism nor political Republicanism or Democracy, not to speak of
+the other isms of religion and politics, offers the workers aught on
+earth.
+
+Capitalism is the god of this world, of no part of it more than of these
+United States, and capitalism is to the laborer a robbing, lying,
+murderous devil, not a good divinity.
+
+2. The recall of the prize offer is also occasioned and justified, we
+think, by a demand, which was as unexpected as it is gratifying, for our
+little propagandist in foreign countries, and we have been persuaded
+that it should be met by securing to him the gift of tongues. We propose
+to do this by devoting the money which was set aside for the prizes to
+the encouragement of making and publishing translations.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[N] The capitalist countries of the world constitute the United States
+of Crazy Lands.
+
+
+
+
+VII. AFTERWORD.
+
+  "So many Gods, so many Creeds,
+    So many ways that wind and wind,
+  When all this sad world really needs
+    Is just the art of being kind."
+
+  --Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
+
+
+I.
+
+My title, given in Latin on the picture page, is bestowed upon me by
+some in jest and by others in reproach, and I am accepting it from both
+as compliments, because they prove that I have at least succeeded in
+making clear the general outlines of my religious and political
+position.
+
+The use of this title is due to the desire that those who pick up the
+booklet should not buy it, much less undertake to read it, under a
+mistaken impression as to its doctrinal trends. In English the Latin
+title is, "Bishop of the Countries belonging to the Bolsheviki and the
+Infidels."
+
+Certain friends greatly fear that some things said in this booklet may
+fall foul of the criminal-syndicalism laws. I have carefully read those
+of Ohio and believe that the booklet contains nothing which is not
+safely within them.
+
+Anyhow, I have spoken the truth about supernaturalistic religion and
+capitalistic politics as I understand it, and I believe that I have
+adequately supported all my representations on bases of relevant facts
+which cannot be gainsaid or, at any rate, upon sound arguments which
+have such facts for their foundations.
+
+However, I am trying to hold myself open to conviction; and, this being
+the case, if "the powers that be" in state or church feel that they must
+proceed against me, I beg that, in justice to all the persons and
+interests concerned, they will come with their resources of persuasion,
+not coercion.
+
+My appeal to the religious and political rulers to do this shall be in
+the burning words of a celebrated defender of the capitalistic system of
+economics, John Stuart Mill, words which constitute the most remarkable
+passage in his powerful essay on Liberty:
+
+     No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting
+     a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the
+     people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines
+     or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear.
+
+     Speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional countries, to be
+     apprehended, that the government, whether completely responsible to
+     the people or not, will often attempt to control the expression of
+     opinion, except when in doing so it makes itself the organ of the
+     general intolerance of the public.
+
+     Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one
+     with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion
+     unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice.
+
+     But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion,
+     either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is
+     illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the
+     worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in
+     accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it.
+
+     If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person
+     were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in
+     silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be
+     justified in silencing mankind.
+
+     Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the
+     owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a
+     private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury
+     was inflicted on only a few persons or on many. But the peculiar
+     evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is
+     robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing
+     generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than
+     those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of
+     the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose,
+     what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and
+     livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
+
+This passage should be inscribed in letters of gold on the doors of
+every church and court house in the world. It was written in
+condemnation of the persecution by majorities of minorities in states,
+but it applies equally to all intolerance of dissentient opinions.
+
+It is utterly impossible in a printed discussion of the length of this
+booklet to weed out every word capable of misconstruction; and equally
+so to furnish a definition or limitation to every doubtful word or
+phrase. Nevertheless I call attention to a few:
+
+The word "revolution" as used here should not be taken as implying armed
+insurrection or violence, unless expressly so described. These are not
+necessary features of revolution. There have been both political and
+industrial revolutions entirely unattended by violence or bloodshed; for
+example, the political revolution of 1787 when the old Articles of
+Confederation were abolished and the federal Constitution imposed upon
+the United States; also the political and industrial revolution of 1919
+in Hungary when for a time a soviet system was established, with Bela
+Kun as premier.
+
+The bloodshed which often attends revolutions comes almost invariably
+from the lawless counter-revolutionary efforts of the deposed ruling
+class to maintain themselves in power or regain power by terrorism and
+murder.
+
+When I eulogize the Bolsheviki and their system in Russia, I am not to
+be taken as advocating for the United States the employment of the
+bloody tactics for gaining power, which the capitalist press of America
+persists in describing--and as I believe, falsely. I deal in this
+booklet not with tactics but with facts. I concern myself here not with
+the ways by which the Bolsheviki of Russia gained power, but with what
+they did with the power after gaining it.
+
+As I was trained in theology, I am certain that my religious position
+has been so clearly outlined that no mistake as to where I stand will be
+made by the rulers in my church; but, having had no training in the law,
+I am less certain that my political position will be as unmistakably
+understood by the rulers in my state. Therefore, to avoid
+misinterpretation of certain words and phrases in this booklet, I here
+expressly disclaim any intention of violating the criminal-syndicalism
+statute of Ohio, following as closely as may be its phraseology in these
+my denials of criminal intention:
+
+     Nothing herein is to be understood as advocating or teaching the
+     duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence or
+     unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing
+     industrial or political reform. This booklet is not issued for the
+     purpose of advocating, advising, or teaching the doctrine that
+     industrial or political reform should be brought about by crime,
+     sabotage, violence or unlawful methods of terrorism; nor of
+     justifying the commission or the attempt to commit crime, sabotage,
+     violence or unlawful methods of terrorism with intent to exemplify,
+     spread or advocate the propriety of the doctrines of criminal
+     syndicalism; nor of organizing any society, group or assemblage of
+     persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal
+     syndicalism. If any such meaning shall be read into any passage of
+     this booklet by any reader, it will be a wrong meaning, not what I
+     intended to convey.
+
+A revolution by which a new industrial democracy--the freedom to make
+things for the use of workers--will supplant the old capitalist
+democracy--the freedom to make things for the profit of owners--is an
+inevitable event in the history of every country within the twentieth
+century.
+
+
+II.
+
+My object in this booklet is not the promotion of class hatred and
+strife. Far from it. It is to persuade to the banishment of gods from
+skies and capitalists from earth.
+
+Theism and capitalism are the great blights upon mankind, the fatal ones
+to which it owes, more than to all others together, the greatest and
+most unnecessary of its suffering, those arising from ignorance, war,
+poverty and slavery.
+
+This recommendation as to banishments and this representation in support
+of it stand out on nearly every page of the booklet, and in order to
+make sure of special prominence for them on its last pages, I quote the
+following from an article by G. O. Warren (a major in the British army,
+I think) an occasional contributor of brilliant articles to rationalist
+publications on sociological lines:
+
+     If there be a God who rules men and things by His arbitrary will,
+     it is an impertinence to attempt to abolish poverty, because it is
+     according to His will. But if there be no such God, then we know
+     that poverty is caused by men and may be removed by men. If there
+     be a God who answers prayers, the remedy for social injustice is to
+     pray. But if there be no such God, the remedy is to think and act.
+
+     If men go to heaven when they die, and if heaven is a place in
+     which everybody will be made perfectly happy, then there is no need
+     to struggle against poverty in this world, because a few years of
+     trouble, or even degradation, in this world are of no consequence
+     when compared with an eternity of happiness that must be ours by
+     simply following the directions of the clergy. But if there be no
+     such heaven, then it becomes a matter of first importance that we
+     make our condition as happy as possible in this world, which is the
+     only one of which we are certain.
+
+     I maintain that there is no God who rules men and things by His
+     arbitrary will and who answers prayers, and that there is no heaven
+     of everlasting bliss to which we are to be wafted after death. And
+     I maintain this not only because I think that these religious
+     beliefs are erroneous, but because I know that they are most potent
+     to make men docile and submissive to the most degrading conditions
+     imposed on them. I feel sure that the doctrine that obedience to
+     rulers and contentment in poverty are according to the will of God,
+     and the doctrine that the poor and the oppressed will be
+     compensated in heaven are the chief causes of slums, prisons,
+     lunatic asylums and poor-houses.
+
+     All political tyranny is backed up and made possible by belief in
+     an arbitrary God, and all poverty is endured because of the belief
+     that after death everlasting happiness and wealth await us. Two
+     conditions are necessary to human happiness: personal freedom and
+     general wealth. But we never can be free as long as we believe that
+     it is the will of an infinite heavenly ruler that we should submit
+     to a finite earthly ruler, whether he gets upon the throne by
+     hereditary succession or by the votes of a majority; and wealth
+     will never be justly, and therefore, generally, distributed as long
+     as most of the people believe that because they are poor in this
+     world they will be rich in the world to come.
+
+     The apostle Paul says that political rulers are ordained by God and
+     must be obeyed, from the King to the constable, from the President
+     to the policeman. He says that if you are refractory, "the
+     minister of God" will use his sword, and will not use it "in vain."
+     He says that the sword-bearer is God's minister.
+
+     Christ himself recites a parable about a rich man who went to hell
+     because he was rich and a poor man who went to heaven because he
+     was poor. Rich Christians are told by the clergy that the surest
+     way for them to get to heaven is by being rich; but they use this
+     parable to console the poor with the idea that the surest way for
+     them to get to heaven is by being poor. And this idea is confirmed
+     by the saying of Christ: 'Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the
+     kingdom of heaven.'
+
+     I claim that it is impossible to prove that any being exists who
+     can do, or ever does, anything outside of the regular processes of
+     Nature, and therefore that the word "God," which has always meant
+     such a being, should be dropped. I would have no objection to the
+     current use of the word "God" if that use were harmless, but it is
+     very far from that. It is a word that every despot conjures with to
+     keep the people in ignorance and subjection. It is a word that
+     crafty politicians use in carrying out their schemes of bribery and
+     plunder.
+
+     The same thing applies to the word "heaven." It is impossible to
+     show that there is any such place, and the word is used as a bribe
+     to the poor to keep them quiet under injustice. I do not see how
+     there can be a life after death, but if there is it will not be any
+     better because we are poor and undeveloped in this world, and
+     therefore immortality should be a reason rather for discontentment
+     among the poor than for submission to injustice.
+
+     As an atheist, I object to a God who is for every tyrannical ruler
+     and against the rebels that he imprisons, tortures and slays; who
+     is for the idle landlord and usurer and against the workers; who is
+     for the purse-proud prelate and against the people; who is for the
+     boodle politician and against the happiness of the many; who is
+     for the white exploiter and against the simple colored man; who is
+     for the rich profiteer and against the petty burglar and
+     pickpocket.
+
+     If I am told there is no such God as this, I reply that there is,
+     or there is none. The God of every Christian creed is the God of
+     the rulers, the God of the idle rich. There never has been any
+     other God known to the world. This is the God that the church now
+     worships and always has worshiped.
+
+     There are forces in Nature that we do not yet understand, and
+     therefore should not name. But they can only help us as we learn
+     what they are and how to use them. It is therefore neither our duty
+     nor our privilege to pray, nor can any good be thus achieved. It is
+     for us to observe, to think, and to examine the pretensions of the
+     privileged. It is for us to understand that there is no God to
+     raise our wages, and no heaven to compensate us for our poverty and
+     all the misery it entails in this world.
+
+  "Said the parson, 'Be content;
+  Pay your tithes due, pay your rent;
+  They that earthly things despise
+  Shall have mansions in the skies,
+  Though your back with toil be bent,'
+  Said the parson, 'be content.'
+
+  "Then the parson feasting went
+  With my lord who lives by rent;
+  And the parson laughed elate
+  For my lord has livings great,
+  They that earthly things revere
+  May get bishop's mansions here.
+
+  "Be content! Be content!
+  Till your dreary life is spent,
+  Lowly live and lowly die,
+  All for mansions in the sky!
+  Castles here are much too rare,
+  All may have them--in the air!"
+
+
+III.
+
+According to Marxian socialism, the history of man arose from the need
+of his body for food, raiment and shelter. This is the materialistic
+explanation of history, and the following is one of the passages in
+which Marx clearly shows that it is true and reasonable:
+
+     In the social production which men carry on they enter into
+     definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their
+     will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage
+     of development of their material powers of production. The sum
+     total of these relations of production constitutes the economic
+     structure of society--the real foundations, on which rise legal and
+     political superstructures and which correspond to definite forms of
+     social consciousness. The mode of production in material life
+     determines the general character of the social, political and
+     spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men
+     that determines their existence but, on the contrary, their social
+     existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of
+     their development, the material forces of production in society
+     come in conflict with the existing relations of production,
+     or--what is but a legal expression for the same thing--with the
+     property relations within which they had been at work before. From
+     forms of development of the forces of production these relations
+     turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social
+     revolution.
+
+Marx and his followers are justified in their contention that the
+physical necessities of man (not gods or great men) constitute the key
+to his history by the fact that there was no mind of man before the
+human body nor will there be any mind when the body has been
+disintegrated; for the mind was made by the body, for the body, not the
+body by the mind, for the mind. This very remarkable fact, when duly
+considered, will change nearly all the ideas of most men and women about
+almost everything.
+
+A leader is but a mouthpiece of a people through which they give
+expression to their deepest convictions and highest aspirations. Early
+in my life Lincoln was the great leader of the people in the United
+States, and late in it Lenin is the great leader of the people of the
+world. The earlier of these was at least a rationalist and the latter is
+an atheist, so that the first probably did not suppose himself to have
+been inspired by a divinity, and the second certainly does not.
+
+I claim, said Lincoln, not to have controlled events, but confess
+plainly that events have controlled me.
+
+In Lenin's Birthday Anniversary number of the magazine, Soviet Russia,
+the Editor says:
+
+     At the very outset, we must clearly state that much of Lenin's
+     powerful position in present-day history is made by the history
+     itself,--by the fact that we are living at the moment when the
+     entire life of the race is vindicating in a most emphatic manner
+     the theoretical position occupied by Lenin for many years. After
+     all, Lenin, like Trotsky, was an unknown man, except to certain
+     political circles, and the mass of Russian revolutionists, even as
+     late as 1916. And yet, he was the same Lenin; had not the
+     opportunity come to put into practice the system for which he and
+     his associates had been laboring and suffering for many years, no
+     doubt the circle of his admirers and readers would not be much
+     wider in 1920 than it was in 1916. Lenin would probably be the
+     first to admit--nay, insist--that the material circumstance that
+     enables a certain individual to assert himself is the prime element
+     in building his reputation. So that, if the Russian Revolution had
+     not taken the course it did take, Lenin, with exactly the same
+     mental and idealogical preparation, might have remained a
+     relatively unknown man.
+
+Those who on the one hand interpret life from the naturalistic or
+materialistic point of view, and those who on the other hand interpret
+it from the supernaturalistic viewpoint need not and generally do not
+differ as widely as is commonly supposed.
+
+     Materialism is the name for two totally different things, which are
+     constantly confused. There is, in the first place, materialism as a
+     theory of the universe--the theory that matter is the source and
+     the substance of all things. That is (if you associate "force" or
+     "energy" or "motion" with your "matter," as every materialist does)
+     a perfectly arguable theory. It has not the remotest connection
+     with the amount of wine a man drinks or the integrity of his life.
+
+     But we also give the name of materialism to a certain disposition
+     of the sentiments, which few of us admire, and which would kill the
+     root of progress if it became general. It is the disposition to
+     despise ideals and higher thought, to confine one's desires to
+     selfish and sensual pleasure and material advancement. There is no
+     connection between this materialism of the heart and that of the
+     head.
+
+     For whole centuries of Christian history whole nations believed
+     abundantly in spirits without it having the least influence on
+     their morals; and, on the other hand, materialists like Ludwig
+     Buchner, or Vogt, or Moleschott, were idealists (in the moral
+     sense) of the highest order. Look around you and see whether the
+     belief or non-belief (for the Agnostic is in the same predicament
+     here) in spirit is a dividing-line in conduct. There is no ground
+     in fact for the confusion, and it has wrought infinite
+     mischief.--McCabe.
+
+As to their philosophy concerning the origin, sustenance and governance
+of the universe, communists are almost to a man materialists; but, as to
+their philosophy concerning life, they are as generally idealists. There
+is, I feel sure, as much idealism in my thinking and living now as there
+was in the days of my orthodoxy.
+
+Many of the representations of the Jewish-Christian Bible are
+materialistic in a high, if not gross, degree. This is true of the
+account of the creation according to which the god, Jehovah, with hands
+moulded a man out of dust; performed a surgical operation upon him for
+the purpose of securing a rib out of which he carved a woman; made a
+garden; and provided worship for himself by a system of material
+sacrifices. The ark of the covenant was a wooden chest, and its contents
+(a pot, some manna, and Aaron's rod) were materialities.
+
+The conception, birth, death, descension, resurrection, ascension and
+session of the god, Jesus, were (if they occurred) material realities.
+And the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of the god sounds
+like materialism, especially according to the explanation of the Greek,
+Roman, Lutheran and Anglican churches.
+
+
+IV.
+
+A nutshell summary of this booklet is contained in these confessions of
+my religious and political faith:
+
+I. My religious faith is summed up in the following creed of twelve
+Articles:
+
+(1) The chief end of every man should be to make the most of his own
+life by having it as long and as happy as possible and to help others in
+doing this for themselves.
+
+(2) Though parents live unconsciously in their children and all do so in
+those over whom they have had any influence, yet all there is of
+conscious, personal life for man is of a terrestrial character, none
+celestial.
+
+(3) Knowledge is the Christ of the World. The saviour-gods of the
+supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are symbols of this one.
+
+(4) Ignorance is the devil of the world. The destroyer-gods of the
+supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are symbols of this one.
+
+(5) Knowledge consists in knowing facts and truths. Every real fact and
+truth is a word of the only gospel which the world possesses.
+
+(6) A fact is something which matter, force and motion have
+unconsciously done, not what a god has consciously willed. There are no
+other facts.
+
+(7) A truth is a fact so interpreted that if it is lived it will
+contribute towards making the most of life. There are no other truths.
+
+(8) Hence the greatest people in the world are the scientists who
+discover facts, and the preachers who interpret them and persuade to
+their living. If you contend that mothers are greater than teachers, I
+shall agree with you on condition that you will admit that a mother is
+not really great unless she is a teacher.
+
+(9) The desire and effort to learn facts, interpret and live them
+constitute morality.
+
+(10) Morality is the greatest thing in the world, because it is all
+there is of real religion and politics.
+
+(11) But, paradoxical as it may seem, there is one thing which is
+greater than the greatest thing in the world--freedom.
+
+(12) And the freedom which is greater than morality consists in the
+liberty to learn, interpret, live and teach facts, without which liberty
+a man may be a non-moral child, or an immoral hypocrite, but he cannot
+be the possessor of the pearl of great price--morality, without which
+human life is not worth the living or even possible.
+
+II. My political faith is summed up in the following creed of twelve
+articles:
+
+(1) As the universe in general is self-existing, self-sustaining and
+self-governing, so man in particular, who is but one among the
+transitory, cosmic phenomena, has all of the potentialities of his own
+life within himself, so that every man can say of himself what the
+makers of Jesus had him say: I and my Father are one.
+
+(2) Man has set a far-off and high-up goal of an ideal civilization for
+himself, and is finding the way to it by his own discoveries, and is
+walking therein by his own strength, so that he is not in the least
+indebted to any of the gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of
+religion, either for the setting of the goal, or for what progress he
+has made towards it.
+
+(3) Nor is humanity indebted to its outstanding representatives for the
+advance in the way of civilization, as is evident from the fact that,
+but for the gods, it would have long since been far beyond the point
+where the English-German war would have been within the range of
+possibilities, and these gods are the gifts to a blind humanity by its
+blind leaders.
+
+(4) Humanity is not indebted to its physical scientists any more than to
+its spiritual prophets for its advance in the way of civilization,
+because the scientists have always worked, as the prophets have
+preached, in the interests of the profiteers of the existing system of
+economics. Economic systems have been the chief, if not indeed, the only
+promoters of war, and the world war with its tremendous horrors would
+not have been possible but for science.
+
+(5) So, then, the history of civilization has been what it is because of
+the economic systems by which the material necessities of life (foods,
+raiments and houses) have been produced, not because gods have made
+spiritual revelations, nor yet because men have made great discoveries
+and persuasively taught them. According to Marx, who discovered the key
+to the door of history, it is constituted neither by the gods in the
+skies, nor the great men on earth; but by economic systems. These create
+the divinities and the leaders, not they them.
+
+(6) Thus far in the history of mankind every civilization has rested
+upon the institution of slavery and there have been, speaking broadly,
+three different forms of it, with their correspondingly different
+civilizations, chattel, feudal and capital. Each of these forms of
+slavery has been the foundation for a superstructure of a civilization
+peculiar to a distinct period of history. Chattel, feudal and capital
+slaveries respectively constituted the foundations for the
+superstructures of ancient, mediaeval and modern civilizations. The
+second of the two great discoveries by Marx was that the wage slavery of
+capitalism, by far the worst of all slaveries, is due to surplus
+profits.
+
+(7) Since civilizations have their embodiments in religious and
+political institutions (churches and states with what goes with them) so
+clearly as to justify the contention that religion and politics are the
+halves of one and the same reality--civilization--it follows that I am
+right in carrying my materialism over from the realm of religion into
+that of politics.
+
+(8) A system of economics is about the most materialistic thing in the
+world, yet it is the only key which will open the door to the temple of
+human history. Having opened it with this key, the first thing to be
+seen is a world divided into two classes, one class whose
+representatives live by owning the material means and the machines for
+production and distribution; and another class whose representatives
+live by working in making and operating these machines, with the result
+of producing and distributing the material commodities by which the
+world is fed, clothed and housed, but to the surfeiting of the owners
+who as such produce nothing and have everything and the starving of the
+workers who produce everything and have nothing.
+
+(9) Capitalists and communists agree that when the goal of humanity has
+been reached the world will find itself to be one all inclusive
+co-operating family.
+
+(10) Capitalists say that then the co-operating will be between the
+owners as fathers, and the workers as children. The capitalists will
+recognize every laborer who does a fair day's work as a good son or
+daughter, and the laborer will recognize every owner who gives a fair
+day's wage as a good father.
+
+(11) But communists say that then the co-operating will be between men,
+all of whom are on the same footing as laborers, since, when the goal is
+reached, the world will no longer be divided as it has been, from time
+out of mind, into a small owning or master class and a large working or
+slave class; but it will constitute one great all inclusive family,
+every member of which will be on the same footing with all others,
+except that the older members will regard the younger as sons and
+daughters, and they in turn will be regarded as fathers and mothers, and
+all of the same generation will look upon each other as brothers and
+sisters.
+
+(12) Civilization always has been and ever will be impossible without
+slavery, because leisure and opportunity for study, social intercourse
+and travel are necessary to it, but under capitalism, as it works out,
+only representatives of the owning or master class have these
+prerequisites, and those of the working or slave class must be deprived
+of them. When communism supplants capitalism all will have their equal
+parts in both the labor necessary to the sustenance of the physical
+(body) life, and also the leisure necessary to the development of the
+psychical (soul) life. There will still be slavery, indeed much more of
+it than the world has hitherto known, but machines, not men, women and
+children will be the slaves. Of course there will remain much work
+connected with the making and operating of the machines, but the time
+and energy required for it will more and more decrease with the
+inevitable increase in the number and efficiency of the machines until,
+according to conservative estimates, three or four hours per day of
+comparatively light and pleasant employment will be quite sufficient to
+provide the necessities of life in abundance for every worker and his
+dependents, so that, then, all will have as much of them as the few have
+now; and this without any sense of slavery because when one is working
+for the benefit of himself and his own in particular, and the public to
+which he belongs in general, not for the profit of a class of which he
+is not a representative, there is no feeling of irksome servitude.
+
+
+V.
+
+A world-wide revolution has begun and is rapidly spreading over the
+earth. Why? Because a world-wide economic system for feeding, clothing
+and housing the people has broken down so that it must be supplanted by
+a new system, else mankind will perish for the lack of food, raiment and
+shelter.
+
+This revolutionary war is between the working class whose
+representatives live starvingly, though they produce and distribute all
+the necessities of life and the capitalist class whose representatives
+live surfeitingly, though taking no part in the production and
+distribution of these necessities.
+
+Nearly one hundred years ago our fourth President, James Madison, saw
+partly and dimly what nearly every one now sees fully and clearly:
+
+     We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our
+     Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility
+     because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A
+     republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when that day comes, when
+     the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we
+     must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to
+     readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.
+
+The laborers of Russia have turned the country right side up so that
+they themselves are above and the capitalists below, having the
+privilege of remaining down to idle and starve or else to crawl up to
+work and live, but not to rob, war and enslave.
+
+As I lay down my pen the working man's government of Russia is fighting
+a double war, the Poland-Crimea war, to prevent its overthrow by the
+capitalist governments of the world, especially England, France, Japan
+and the United States, which in this war are surreptitiously
+confederated against it, and the victory seems assured to it, largely
+because of the sympathy and help of their fellow workers throughout the
+world.
+
+Marx though dead yet speaketh. He is speaking more widely and
+persuasively in death than in life. Russia is the megaphone from which
+his voice goes out through every land and over every sea.
+
+Never man nor god spake with as much power as he speaks. His gospel is
+to the slave, and this is its thrilling appeal--workers of the world
+unite, and this is its inspiring assurance--you have nothing to lose but
+your chains and a world to gain.
+
+WM. M. BROWN.
+
+Brownella Cottage, Galion, Ohio.
+September 24th, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+The typographical error "overwhelmlingly" was changed to
+"overwhelmingly." All other spelling, capitalization, and
+punctuation was retained.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM***
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