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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality?, by 
+M. M. Mangasarian
+
+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/license
+
+
+Title: Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality?
+       A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society, Chicago
+
+Author: M. M. Mangasarian
+
+Release Date: April 16, 2012 [EBook #39455]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IS LIFE WORTH LIVING WITHOUT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Paul Clark and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
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+
+
+
+ Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
+    possible, including non-standard spelling and punctuation.
+
+    Some changes of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are
+    listed at the end of the text.
+
+    OE ligatures have been expanded.
+
+    Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
+
+    Bold text has been marked with =equals signs=.
+
+
+
+
+ _Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up
+ the substance for the shadow._
+
+ --Victor Hugo.
+
+ Is Life Worth Living
+ Without Immortality?
+
+ A Lecture Delivered Before
+ the Independent Religious
+ Society, Chicago
+
+ By
+ M. M. MANGASARIAN
+
+     I may be doing you an injustice, Bertie, but it seemed to me in
+     your last that there were indications that the free expression of
+     my religious views had been distasteful to you. That you should
+     disagree with me I am prepared for; but that you should object to
+     free and honest discussion of those subjects which above all others
+     men should be honest over, would, I confess, be a disappointment.
+     The Free-thinker is placed at this disadvantage in ordinary
+     society, that whereas it would be considered very bad taste upon
+     his part to obtrude his unorthodox opinion, no such consideration
+     hampers those with whom he disagrees. There was a time when it took
+     a brave man to be a Christian. Now it takes a brave man not to be.
+
+ SIR A. CONAN DOYLE,
+ The Stark Munro Letters--Fourth Letter.
+
+
+
+
+Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality?
+
+
+Is life worth living? If we are in good health, it certainly is. In a
+certain sense, even to ask such a question implies that we are not at
+our best. It is the sick, mentally as well as physically, who question
+the value of life. We cannot appreciate health too highly. Our
+philosophy of life is more profoundly affected by the condition of our
+body than we have any idea. If I were composing a new set of beatitudes,
+one of them would be in exaltation of health:
+
+_Blessed are they that have health, for they shall take pleasure in
+life._
+
+Health also inspires _faith_ in life. The first commandment of the
+decalogue, instead of reading, "Thou shalt have no other gods before
+me," which is metaphysical and without definite meaning, could with much
+advantage be altered to read:
+
+_Thou shalt not trifle with thy health._
+
+How fortunate it would have been for man had the "Deity" given that as
+his first and best thought to the world! Then, indeed, would he have
+been the friend of man. We cannot preserve our health without observing
+all the other commandments--of temperance, purity, sanity, self
+possession, contentment, and serenity of mind. "Behold I bring unto you
+health" ought to be the glad tidings of salvation. Give us that, and all
+the rest will be added unto us. Health is the foundation of character.
+If the foundation is insecure--if we have inherited disease and
+corruption, we can be sound, neither in our thoughts nor in our actions.
+The time may come when to be sickly will be considered a crime. A
+revolution in our feelings in this matter is already taking place.
+Formerly it was thought that the path to self-development is through
+sorrow and suffering, and that the sick were the saints. The verdict of
+science today, which has been confirmed by the growing experience of
+man, is that pleasurable activity is the most wholesome environment for
+man. Happiness has upon human nature the same effect that the sunshine
+has upon the soil. Man is a failure if he is not happy. The highest
+accomplishment is the ability to enjoy life. To those who say that
+service or usefulness is the noblest aim of life, we answer, "Why should
+those who serve the noblest ends of life be unhappy?"
+
+But let me first present to you the answer which one of America's best
+known psychologists, Prof. William James, of Harvard, gives to this most
+interesting question. Prof. James is a teacher not only of the young men
+in one of our leading Universities, but his ideas have become a part of
+the furniture of the American mind. Both his thought and the candor with
+which he expresses himself have secured for him a large following. Prof.
+James has an engaging style. Not that he is not also a profound thinker,
+but his sentences are as symmetrical as they are solid. He writes to be
+understood. That, I take it, is the secret of the masters of style. The
+gods always speak from behind "clouds and darkness." That explains why
+it is so difficult to understand what they say. But the great teachers
+permit no screens, draperies, curtains, or hangings of any sort to come
+between them and the public. There is nothing hidden about their
+thoughts. Neither do they speak in parables. Whoever can not make
+himself understood should hold his peace.
+
+The parents of this renowned psychologist were Swedenborgians, and I
+believe the professor is still, nominally, at least, a member of the
+Swedenborgian church. Swedenborg, as you know, was a mystic; he was,
+indeed, a sort of a medium, who claimed to have seen and conversed with
+God face to face, and to have received from him a supplementary
+revelation, in some such sense that Mrs. Eddy or Joseph Smith received
+one. Of course, Swedenborg was also a philosopher, which Smith and Eddy
+are not. The early connections and training of Prof. James explain in
+part his interest in the work of the Psychical Research Society, of
+which he is one of the officers. So-called spiritist or occult
+phenomena, such as automatic slate writing, table tipping and telepathy,
+have always interested Prof. James, but he is by no means an easy
+victim, though he looks forward hopefully to the time when science will
+definitely locate the undiscovered country whose bourne has not yet been
+sighted.
+
+Some years ago when Prof. James and I were summer neighbors in New
+Hampshire--near Chocorua lake--I heard the professor deliver a lecture
+on hypnotism in the village church of Tamworth. An incident occurred at
+the time which has its bearing on the experience our Society is having
+with the directors of the Orchestral Association. While Prof. James was
+explaining the phenomena of hypnotism from the pulpit, I saw, from where
+I was sitting, an elderly woman showing signs of restlessness in her
+seat. Presently she rose to her feet, walked up the aisle slowly, and
+taking her stand directly in front of Prof. James on the platform, she
+upbraided him for desecrating the House of God by delivering in it a
+lecture on hypnotism. In clear, though trembling tones, she ordered him
+out of the church. Naturally the professor was greatly embarrassed, as
+was also his audience. The old woman, however, was soon prevailed upon
+by the elders of the church to resume her seat and keep the peace. But
+she was trying to oust Prof. James from the church, as the trustees of
+this building are trying to oust our Society from this hall, on account
+of religious differences. The old woman of New Hampshire was not
+successful, and I trust that the old woman of Chicago will not fare any
+better. To close a hall to a movement is an easy thing, but to close the
+ear of the world to its message is not so easy.
+
+I have spoken of the early education of Prof. James in order to explain
+the metaphysical bent of his mind. As a psychologist, he has an
+international reputation, but his greatest vogue is among, what are
+called, the liberal Christians. The orthodox have no use for him, but to
+those who are endeavoring to interpret Christianity so as to make it
+harmonize with modern thought--who are filling the ancient skins with
+wine newly pressed--he is a defender and a champion of the faith. Prof.
+James seems to have discovered a way by which one can be a scientist and
+a supernaturalist at the same time. He appears to be of the opinion that
+a person may deny or reject many of the orthodox dogmas, and still be
+justified in calling himself a Christian. He is, in fact, one of the
+New Theologians, who are supposed to have reconstructed Christianity,
+and saved the supernatural. For this service, Prof. James and his
+_confreres_ are held in high esteem by those who would have had to give
+up Christianity but for their timely help.
+
+In his lecture on, "Is Life Worth Living," the professor admits that he
+is writing for the pessimists. It is they who are in the "to be or not
+to be" mood of mind. The optimist does not need consolation, for he is
+incapable of even suspecting that life is not worth living. Some
+temperaments are as incapable of depression or gloom, as others are of
+happiness. If there are parts of the world on which the sun never goes
+down, so there are natures which know no night. We make a mistake,
+however, if we think that the pessimist represents a lower type of
+mental evolution. On the contrary, pessimism comes with civilization,
+and it generally attacks men and women of a higher culture. Suicide is
+rare among the negroes or the less advanced races; but in the United
+States, representing the most perfect type of civilization, dowered
+magnificently, and rich in the possession of the treasures of art and
+nature; in America, the home of hope and opportunity--with its immense
+prairies, its great West, its army of earth-subduers, empire-builders,
+large-natured, generous, daring, enduring, restless, resistless
+pioneers--more than three thousand people every year kill themselves. If
+we were to seek for an explanation of this strange phenomenon, the
+nearest we can come to it would be to say that these people prefer death
+to life because they do not find life worth their while. There is not
+enough in it to satisfy them. To use an Emersonian phrase, life is to
+them no more than "a sucked orange." When the perfume, the aroma, the
+taste, the tints, and the juices have been extracted from the fruit--who
+cares for what is left.
+
+Of course, these remarks have no reference to the cases of sudden
+suicide, committed in a moment of frenzy--when a man driven, as it were,
+by a storm in the brain, lets go of his hold and slips into the
+darkness. The professor has in mind rather those who even though they do
+not commit suicide, live on reluctantly, under protest, and who treat
+life as we would a guest who has overstaid his welcome, and to whose
+final departure we look forward with pleasure.
+
+But there is still another class of pessimists who need to be reasoned
+with. These are the people who brood over the existence of evil in the
+world, and feel the misery of the many so keenly, that they think it
+involves a point of honor to consent to be happy in such a world. The
+contemplation of human sorrow, the surging waves of which break upon
+every shore; and the cry of human anguish rising like the blind cry of
+all the seas that roll, has a tendency to slacken the hold of the
+reflective mind upon life. Prof. James admits that pessimism is
+essentially a religious disease, in the sense that it results from the
+inability of man to entertain two contradictory thoughts at the same
+time: A father in heaven, whose tender mercies are over all his
+children, and children dying of hunger and neglect! Infinite wisdom
+enthroned in heaven, and a world running topsy-turvy. The refined mind
+cannot contemplate this contradiction without distress. If God is
+everywhere, why is there darkness anywhere? If there is within reach an
+ocean of truth, why is it doled out to us in driblets which hardly wet
+our lips, when we are burning with thirst? Religion provokes desires
+which it cannot satisfy, and makes promises which it will not fulfil. It
+is this contradiction which bites the soul black and blue. God is
+infinite! and behold we are starving. God is light! and we grope in
+darkness. God is great! and we cannot budge without crutches. It is this
+thought which teases us out of our peace of mind. The idea of a God,
+gifted with infinite parts, measured against the helplessness of man,
+makes for pessimism.
+
+But in the opinion of Prof. James, religion alone can cure the disease
+which religion creates. By religion, he does not mean merely loving
+one's neighbor and being loyal to one's best thoughts. Religion,
+according to Prof. James, means the belief that beyond this present
+life, "there is an unseen world of which we now know nothing positive
+but in its relation to which the significance of our mundane life
+consists." If this is the first act of an unending drama, it would have
+great worth and significance, but if it is a detached and disconnected
+piece, upon which the curtain will soon fall never to rise again--if it
+is never going to be finished--it loses, according to Prof. James, its
+seriousness. In other words, it is the belief that man is an eternal
+being whom no catastrophe can crush or annihilate, which makes our
+present existence worth while, and which also reconciles us to the
+discipline of pain and evil. Life is worth living, in short, if man is
+immortal. This is the drift of Prof. James' teaching, as it is also that
+of all supernaturalists.
+
+What evidence does the professor offer to prove the existence of an
+unseen world and the immortality of man? He offers none. He admits that
+science has not as yet demonstrated the reality of an invisible world.
+Perhaps it never will, but what of that? "You have got a right to
+believe in an unseen world," declares the professor. Is it not
+interesting? It will be seen that if the professor has no evidence, he
+has many arguments. One of his arguments is that, since, we must either
+believe or disbelieve in a future life, neutrality in the matter being
+an unattainable thing, why not take our choice, and while we are at it,
+choose immortality. Another argument is, that as our longings and
+yearnings in other directions have turned out to be prophetic, we have
+every reason to believe that the desire for eternal life also will be
+fulfilled. Art, science, music, health, have come to us because of an
+inner impulse which prompted us to go after them. A similar impulse
+urges us to seek the divine, which is a sort of proof that the divine
+exists. Still another argument is this: All the great successes or
+achievements of life came as a result of the courage that takes risks.
+Without audacity, man would never have crossed the ocean, or invented
+the aeroplane. If the belief in immortality requires the taking of
+risks, if it is hazardous even to hold it, we should not hesitate on
+that account, since some of the best things have come to us by taking
+risks. Start out for God and immortality; and some day you may cast
+anchor in the shining waters that lap the shores of a divine continent.
+"We are free to trust at our own risk anything that is not impossible,"
+concludes the professor. Finally, there is the argument from analogy,
+which I may explain by a personal experience. In the Pasteur Institute
+in Paris, last summer, I saw in the vivisection room, physicians in
+their white aprons, operating upon live rabbits, cutting and dissecting
+them, while the helpless creatures were so fastened to the tables that
+they could not move a muscle. Now all this must seem very cruel to the
+rabbit. It must think the physician a butcher, devoid of all feeling,
+or justice, and it must perforce denounce the world in which such wanton
+torture is inflicted by the strong upon the weak. But if the rabbit
+could take a larger view, if it could be made to see that its sufferings
+are contributing to the progress of science and the amelioration of the
+conditions of life upon this planet, and thereby helping to hasten the
+day when disease shall be conquered, would it not be reconciled to the
+physician's knife and the operating table? The larger view which would
+embrace the world unseen will help to give to evil, suffering and
+misery, which now we do not understand, a _raison d'être_. The part of
+wisdom as well as of courage then, is to "believe what is in the line of
+our needs, for only by the belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to
+believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably
+perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save
+yourself."
+
+It will be seen by what has preceded, that Prof. James of Harvard
+University, throws the weight of his influence on the side of those who
+have always maintained that God and immortality are indispensable to the
+happiness of man. In his opinion, what a man would be if deprived of his
+reason, the universe would be if deprived of a God, and life, of a
+future existence. The eminent psychologist takes the further position
+that it is immaterial whether or not there is any evidence to prove the
+existence of a God or of a life after death. If the belief is essential
+to our happiness and usefulness, he thinks we have got the right to
+entertain it, irrespective of the question of evidence. "If there is a
+belief of any kind to which you have taken a special fancy, or one that
+you feel like crying for," the professor seems to say, "help yourself to
+it; you have only yourself to suit." Even if such a belief should
+involve an element of risk, we are urged to take the risk. If it
+requires audacity even to believe in a God and immortality, we are told
+to have the audacity. It is his idea that when we are dealing with the
+unknown, the important thing is the heart's desire, and not the question
+of evidence. In passing, I might suggest that Prof. James would never
+have thought of pushing aside with such nonchalance, the question of
+evidence, were it not for an irrepressible suspicion that the evidence
+is against him. He hopes to do without the evidence because the evidence
+will not help him. This reminds us of the saying of the philosopher
+Hobbes, that, men are generally against reason when reason is against
+_them_.
+
+As already intimated, the liberal party in the church regards Prof.
+James as a defender of the faith. He is classed with such men as Sir
+Oliver Lodge and Lord Kelvin, who though scientists still believe in the
+supernatural, and by their example have made such a belief respectable.
+It must be borne in mind, however, that these distinguished men are
+Christians only, if at all, in a very loose sense of the word. All the
+cardinal doctrines of revelation, such as the creation, the atonement,
+the incarnation, and a personal God--even one, to say nothing of a
+trinity--they reject. These gentlemen have not enough faith to be
+baptised to-day, had they not been baptised in their childhood,--or to
+be received into any Christian church without greatly stretching the
+rules in their behalf. It remains then quite true, and the argument has
+not yet been answered, that there is not a single eminent thinker in
+the world to-day who will subscribe to the creed of Christendom
+without first going through it with a blue pencil, or a pair of
+scissors. But Prof. James, as also Lodge and Kelvin, if they are
+not supernaturalists in the ordinary sense of the word, neither are they
+anti-supernaturalists. They are between and betwixt, if I may use that
+phrase--not quite ready to part with supernaturalism altogether, nor yet
+able to hold on to it in its entirety, and so they linger somewhere on
+the borders or the edge of it.
+
+The first remark I have to make on the position of these newly recruited
+defenders of supernaturalism--even though the supernaturalism which they
+defend be of the attenuated kind--is, that their argument is not even an
+improvement on that of the theologian. I like the dogmatic and
+autocratic, "thus saith the Lord," of theology, much better than the
+"suit yourself" of these gentlemen. The one position is as destructive
+of intellectual integrity, as the other. The theologian starts with the
+fallacy that God can make a thing true by an act of his will--that his
+_say so_ makes all need of evidence superfluous. Prof. James and the men
+of his school start with a proposition equally fatal to the
+truth--namely; that whatever we wish to be true concerning the unknown
+is true. All that is needed, for instance, to give the universe a God is
+to wish for one. All that is necessary to make a man immortal is to
+desire and believe that he is. "The Will to Believe," which is the
+title of one of the professor's writings, makes truth the creature of
+man, as theology makes it the creature of God. You see that after all,
+the theologian and the "scientific" supernaturalist pull together. That
+is to say, when science lends itself to theology, it ceases to be
+scientific. It is not theology that goes over to science, but science
+that goes over to theology. As soon as science appears at the camp of
+theology, it is forthwith swallowed up. When Prof. James speaks of the
+"will to believe," and never mind the evidence, he is borrowing from
+theology, the "will to create" of God.
+
+Even as the Deity in creating did not have to consider anything but his
+glory and pleasure, likewise man in believing does not have to consider
+anything but his needs and desires. Ask, "What is Truth?" and the
+theologian answers: "Whatever God wants it to be." Ask now the scientist
+allies of the supernatural, "What is Truth," and they answer: "Whatever
+man desires or craves it to be." Of course, it may be objected that it
+is only concerning the unknown that man is permitted to dispense with
+evidence and consult his will. But there is no merit, for instance, in a
+man not telling any falsehoods where he is sure of being found out; his
+character is tested by his refusal to lie where he is sure he never will
+be found out. It is concerning the unknown about which we can say
+anything and everything we please without the fear of ever being caught,
+that we should restrain ourselves and show our loyalty to the
+everlasting law of honor, never to depart from veracity. To make any
+assertions about the unknown is to take an undue advantage of one's
+neighbors. "Truth is not mine to do with it as I please," said Giordano
+Bruno, "I must obey the truth, not command it." But the
+theologico-scientific position is the very reverse of this. If a god
+were to ask the question, "What is Truth?" His priests would answer,
+"Lord, suit thyself." If men asked, "What is Truth?" the Harvard
+professor and his colleagues would reply, "It depends upon your will to
+believe."
+
+The name given to this "free and easy philosophy," if I may use such
+an expression--is pragmatism, which is a word from the Greek root
+_pragmatikos_, whence our word "practice" and "practical." The idea
+at the basis of this philosophy is that whatever is practical and
+business-like--whatever is necessary to a given program, is
+authoritative. The philosopher, Kant, was one of the first to urge that
+we have a right to believe as we please concerning the things which we
+can neither prove nor disprove by evidence, if such beliefs are
+necessary to morality. His modern disciples following his leadership,
+take the position that it is the usefulness of a hypothesis or a belief,
+and not its truth, that should concern us. "Does it work," is the test,
+they say, of the value of a scheme or statement, and not, "Is it true?"
+If it works, what do we care whether or not it be true. If it does not
+work, it is of no help to us even if it were true. This is identically
+the same argument which is advanced by the Roman Catholics, to justify
+for instance, the belief in the existence, somewhere in the universe, of
+a place called purgatory. "The doctrine of purgatory works," argues the
+priest, and therefore, it makes no difference whether or not such a
+place really exists. It is a useful, consoling and profitable doctrine.
+Therefore it is as good as true. In the phraseology of pragmatism,
+millions of people want a purgatory, therefore, there is one. And once
+again, to the question, "What is Truth," the answer of both the
+theologian and the pragmatist is, "Do not bother about it." And this
+describes the attitude of the Protestant as well as of the Catholic
+toward truth. They do not bother about it. Yes, _they do not bother
+about it_. That is why progress limps and the darkness lingers. People
+have been brought up not to bother about truth, which explains why error
+is still king of more than half of the world. I cannot find the
+words--all words fail me to express my disappointment that a teacher of
+the youth in one of our great institutions, who are to be the America of
+tomorrow, should in any way contribute to the impression that truth is
+secondary; that our needs, our interests, our inclinations, or our
+whims, come first, and that if we have not the courage to look the truth
+in the face, we can turn around and make terms with myth and fable.
+
+If we were disposed to trip the professor, or by one single thrust to
+disqualify him for further action in the arena of thought, we could say
+that even from the point of view of the pragmatist, truth comes first,
+and that by no imaginable manoeuvring can truth be shifted to a
+subordinate rank. It cannot be done. Listen! You may not have to prove
+the existence of a God, or of a future, or of a purgatory, before
+believing in it. Granted: but you have to prove and you are trying to
+prove, that it is _true_ that you do not have to prove them. Even
+pragmatists who say that utility is before truth, labor to prove that it
+is _true_ that utility is before truth. In other words, they have got to
+prove the truth of their theory, whatever that may be, before they can
+make it have any value, or before it can command our respect. Things
+have to be true else they cannot exist. All the labor of Prof. James has
+for its object the demonstration of what he considers to be a truth,
+namely: that the truth of the belief concerning the unknown is not
+essential. In other words, God may be true or not, a future life may be
+true or not, but it has to be true that it makes no difference whether
+they are true or not. Wiggle as we may, we cannot escape the ring of
+reason that embraces life. This is what I mean when I say that the stars
+fight for Rationalism. Truth is so tightly screwed and made fast to the
+top of the flag-pole that even hands of iron and steel cannot pull it
+down to a lower notch.
+
+A second remark I would make on Prof. James' manner of reasoning is that
+such arguments as he uses to prop up the belief in God and immortality
+show, not confidence, but desperation, if it is not too strong a word to
+use. Urging us to take risks, to have the audacity, to ignore the
+question of evidence, to suit ourselves, and, not to mind the facts, is
+not the language of sobriety, but of recklessness. To say to a man
+standing on the edge of a precipice and looking down into a chasm of
+unknown depth and darkness, to jump over, because, perchance, he may
+discover his heart's desire at the bottom, is frantic advice, and a man
+has to be in a panicky state of mind to let go of the sun and of the
+green earth for a possible world at the bottom of the abyss. It was a
+thought of Emerson that the humblest bug crawling in the dust with its
+back to the sun, and shining with the colors of the rainbow, is a thing
+more sublime than any possible angel. If there were the slightest
+foundation for the belief in an unseen world, no one would think of
+resorting to such extreme measures as our learned professor does, to
+uphold it. When I see a man huffing and puffing, I do not conclude that
+he has a strong case, on the contrary, I am apt to suspect that it is
+the weakness of his cause which has disturbed his serenity. To tell us
+that we can will ourselves immortal, or will God into existence, and
+that all we need is the audacity to plunge into the unknown, whatever
+the risks, reminds me of La Fontaine's parable of the frog--who thought
+he could will himself into the size of a cow--with fatal results. The
+beginning of wisdom is to recognize one's limitations. To tell a man
+that he can _will_ things into existence is to do him an injury. Pitiful
+is the God, and chimerical the immortality that has no better foundation
+than the whim of man.
+
+According to the doctrine of "The will to believe" there would be no God
+if there were no men to "will" his existence, and no immortality if men
+did not desire it. This is theology dressed up as philosophy or science.
+How was the world made? And the theologians answer, God said, "Let there
+be light, and there was light." How was God made? And the pragmatists
+answer, "Man said, let there be a God, and there was one." This is
+trifling. If the word is not too harsh, I shall call it sophistry, or
+mental gymnastics, to which men never resort except when straight
+reasoning will not help them.
+
+Sophistry is a plea of guilty. I was debating the other evening in a
+Milwaukee theater on the question of the responsibility for the burning
+of Joan of Arc. While listening to the defense of the gentleman who was
+trying to prove that the Catholic Church was not responsible for her
+martyrdom, I said to myself that such a defense would never have been
+thought of were it not for the fact that the old claim that the church
+of God cannot err had not broken down. In the same way the defense that
+the bible should be taken allegorically, proves that the old position
+that the bible is from cover to cover the word of God with every letter
+and punctuation, as well as word and meaning inspired, is no longer
+tenable. To say that the bible must not be taken literally is but
+another way of saying that the bible is not true, or that you can make
+it mean what you please. Men never put up such a defense for anything
+unless they are driven to it by sheer desperation.
+
+My third remark on the pragmatic philosophy of Professor James is that,
+besides doing violence to our reason, his doctrine that an unseen world
+is indispensable to make life worth living, or to help make the world
+moral, places man not only in an unenviable light, but it also does him
+a great injustice. If it is true that a man will make a beast of himself
+if he finds out that he is not a God, I take the position that he is
+beyond hope. Nothing can save him. But it is not true. It is a priestly
+tale that a man will not behave himself unless we can promise him the
+moon, or the sun, or eternity. A man would only be a contemptible animal
+if he must be given toys and trinkets and sawdust dolls to divert his
+attention from mischief. The claim of the preachers that unless men are
+assured of black-eyed houris and golden harps, or at least,--some sort
+of a ghostly existence,--somewhere and at sometime in the future, they
+will convert life into a debauch, is simply a falsehood. Man is not so
+depraved as that. Indeed, the doctrine of total depravity was invented
+by the priests to create a demand for the offices of the church. The
+priest cannot afford to believe in human nature. If a man can save
+himself, or if he can do good by his own effort, what need would there
+be of the mysteries and the sacraments,--the rites and the dogmas?
+
+I had occasion to tell you a few Sundays ago that if a lily can be
+white, or a rose so wondrous fair, or a dog so loyal and heroic, without
+dickering with the universe for a future reward, man can do, at least,
+as much. Would this be expecting too much of him?
+
+In France, there is, in one of the close-by suburbs of Paris, a cemetery
+for dogs. Of course, no priest or pastor would think of officiating at
+the interment of a dog, however useful or faithful the animal may have
+been. They are brought here by their owners and quietly buried. The
+visitor finds here, however, many tokens of appreciation and gratitude
+for the services and value of the dog to man. Little monuments are
+raised over the remains of some of the occupants of the modest graves.
+One of these bears the inscription: "He saved forty lives, and lost his
+own in the attempt to save the forty-first." He did his best without the
+hope of a future reward. Is man lower than the animal? Does he require
+the help of the Holy Ghost, the holy angels, the holy Trinity, the holy
+infallible church, and all the terrors of hell fire to make him prefer
+sense to nonsense, cleanliness to dirt, honor to disgrace, the respect
+of his fellows to their contempt, and a peaceful mind to one full of
+scorpions? Do we have to swing into existence fabled and mythical beings
+and worlds before we can induce a human being to be as natural as a
+plant and as faithful as a dog? The doctrine of total depravity is a
+disgrace to those who have invented it, and a blight to those who
+believe in it. It is not true that we have to be put through acrobatic
+exercises,--make our reason turn somersaults, resort to
+sophistry,--become frantic with fear about our future,--postulate the
+existence of ghosts, Gods, and celestial abodes before we can prefer the
+good to the bad and the light to darkness. Supernaturalism is both
+negative and destructive. It denies goodness, and it destroys in man the
+power of self-help. Von Humboldt's indignation seems pardonable, when he
+used the word "infamous," to characterize the theologian's attempt to
+make the well-being of the human race depend upon such supernatural
+gossip as he had to market.
+
+And what is the verdict of history on this question? Does the belief in
+God and immortality make for morality? How then shall we explain the
+dark ages which were ages of faith, and why are not the Moslems, whose
+faith in Allah and in a future life is very much stronger than ours, a
+more moral people than the Europeans or Americans? Why was King Leopold,
+the Christian, a moral leper to the hour of his death, while Socrates,
+the pagan, who was uncertain about the future, has perfumed the
+centuries with his virtues? Has the belief in the supernatural prevented
+the criminal waste of human life, protected the child from the
+sweat-shop and the factory, or even robbed religion of its sting--the
+sting whose bite is mortal to tolerance, brotherhood and intellectual
+honesty? There are excellent people who believe in the supernatural and
+equally excellent people who ignore the supernatural, from which it
+would follow that excellence of character is independent of one's
+speculations about either the eternal past, or the eternal future. It is
+not true then that we have to prove to man that he has always existed,
+or that he shall always exist before we can make him see that the sunset
+is beautiful, or that the sea is vast, or that love is the greatest
+thing in the world.
+
+A man will be careful of his health whether he expects to live again or
+not. He will avoid headaches, fevers, colds, anaemia, nervous
+prostrations and diseases of every kind which rack the body and make
+life a misery, irrespective of his attitude to the question of survival
+after death. The question of health, then, which is a very important
+one, is independent of any supernatural belief. It would not affect our
+health a particle were the heavens empty or full of gods. In the same
+way, men will continue the culture of the mind irrespective of
+theological beliefs. Will a man neglect the pleasures of the mind,
+despise knowledge and remain content in his ignorance, if he cannot be
+sure that he is going to live forever? But if neither the culture of the
+body nor that of the mind is in danger of being neglected, is there any
+reason to fear that the culture of the affections and the conscience
+will suffer without a belief in an unseen world? We have only to look
+into the motives which govern human actions to recover our confidence in
+the essential soundness of human nature, and in the ability of morality
+to take care of itself without the help of ghosts and gods. You love
+your country and you are willing to defend its institutions, if need be,
+with your life, but is it because your country is immortal? Is America
+going to live forever? Is it going to have a future existence? And yet
+Washington and his soldiers loved it dearly and risked their lives for
+it. Were the ancient Greeks and Romans, to whom patriotism was a
+religion, and who loved and fought for their country--fools, because
+they did not first make sure that their country was going to live
+forever? You are devoted to art, you have built palaces for the
+treasures of the brush and the chisel. You have paid fabulous prices for
+the works of a Rembrandt and a Titian. Is it because these paintings are
+never going to perish? Is the canvas which you adore immortal? You prize
+the works of genius--of a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Voltaire, a Darwin.
+You have edifices of marble and steel in which to house the great books
+of the world. And yet a fire tomorrow may wipe them out of
+existence--they may become lost, as many great works have been lost in
+the past. Nevertheless, are they not precious while we have them? If a
+humane society will interest itself in the welfare of the horse and the
+cat and the dog, which live but a few years; if the flower which blooms
+in the morning and fades in the evening can command our attention and
+devotion--must a man be a god before we can take any interest in him?
+Must somebody be always whispering in our ears, "Ye are gods; ye are
+gods," to prevent us from doing violence to ourselves or to our fellows?
+And men seek health for the present, not for the future. And they
+cultivate the mind to make life richer now and here. And love is desired
+because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstasy. What then
+is the value of any speculation about the unseen world, since man can
+care for his body, mind and heart, without venturing out on an ocean for
+which he has neither the sails nor the compass?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the unseen world is necessary, the professor seems to think, in
+order to explain the suffering and the injustice in this. In my opinion,
+such a belief has done more to postpone the reform of present abuses
+than anything else. The time to suppress injustice and to relieve human
+suffering is now, not in some distant future,--here and not in an
+undiscovered country. The belief in God has tempted man to shirk his
+responsibilities. He has left many things to be done by God which he
+should have done himself. It is a nobler religion that tells man to do
+all he can now, and to do it himself. Moreover, how can what is wrong
+here be made right in the next world? What, for instance, can make Joan
+of Arc's atrocious murder--a girl of nineteen, who had saved her
+country, roasted over a slow fire--right in heaven? What explanation can
+the Deity give to us which shall reconcile us to so infamous a crime. A
+million eternities, it seems to me, cannot alter the character of that
+act. The deed cannot be undone. That frightful page cannot be torn from
+the book of life. You cannot destroy the memory of that injustice; you
+cannot rub so foul a stain from the hands of even a God. Suppose God
+were to say to us in the next world that this crime was necessary to the
+progress of civilization. Would that satisfy us? Would we not still wish
+for a God who could have contributed to the progress of civilization
+without resorting to so unspeakable a murder? And there you are. Another
+world can never reconcile us to a policy that required the commission
+of crimes whose stench rises to our nostrils. What is wrong can never be
+made right.
+
+You remember that to illustrate the thought of Professor James, I spoke
+of my visit to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where, in the vivisection
+hall, I saw the physicians operating on live rabbits. Professor James
+thinks that if the rabbit could see everything, it might say to the
+physician, "Thy will be done." But the rabbit might also say this: "It
+is well to advance science and civilization; and if it is a part of the
+_scheme_ to make me contribute to it by my sufferings, I am resigned;
+but what about the character of the _schemer_ who must torture to death
+some of his creatures--slaughter with excruciating pain a portion of his
+family--in order to make secure the lives of the rest?" The existence of
+evil in a world created by a perfect God is the rock upon which all
+religions go to pieces. If God can prevent misery and crime, but prefers
+to work through them, he is to be feared; if he cannot help himself,
+then he is to be pitied. Who would not rather be the rabbit on the
+operating table, with the knife in his flesh, than such a God! A God who
+cannot make a rose red except by dipping it in human blood can be sure
+that no human being would ever envy him his office. On the last day of
+judgment, if such a day there be, it will not be the rabbit, or man, who
+will fear the opening of the books; it will be God.
+
+And how do we know that things will be better in the unseen world?
+Suppose they should be worse? Jesus intimated that the next world would
+be worse, for he says in Matthew 7:13-14, "Wide is the gate, and broad
+is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in
+thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
+leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."
+
+Surely this is not an encouraging prospect. A future which offers
+happiness to a small minority cannot be looked forward to with
+enthusiasm. Neither is the thought of a few saved and the many damned a
+consolation. One of the oft-repeated claims is that the belief in God
+and immortality is such a happiness that he must be an enemy of his race
+who would deprive people of it. Even Rationalists are said to envy the
+believer his peace of mind. But the truth is the very opposite of this.
+There is abundant testimony to prove that of all people the real and
+consistent believer is the most unhappy being in the world. The
+proverbial unhappiness of the Rationalist, like the proverbial death-bed
+horrors of a Thomas Paine and a Voltaire, is a pure fabrication. While
+there is absolutely nothing in Rationalism to make anybody miserable,
+since it does away with fear, which is the only thing to fear,
+Orthodoxy, on the other hand, starts by not only calling this a vale of
+tears, but proceeds forthwith to make it so. If we were to place the
+greatest known Christian saints on the stand to interrogate them on this
+subject, they would one and all confirm our statement. Listen, for
+instance, to the confession of Thomas à Kempis: "Lord, I am not worthy
+of thy consolation.... Thou dealest justly with me when thou leavest me
+poor and desolate, for if I could shed tears as the sea, yet should I
+not be worthy of thy consolation. I am worthy only to be scourged and
+punished."[A] These are not the words of a buoyant and happy soul. And
+listen to the lamentation of John Bunyan: "Sometimes I could for whole
+days together feel my very body as well as my mind to shake and totter
+under the sense of this dreadful judgment of God.... I felt also such a
+clogging and heat in my stomach by reason of this terror that I thought
+my breast-bone would split asunder. Oh, how gladly would I have been
+anything but a man."[B] I could quote long chapters from the biographies
+of the saints to show the wretchedness, the despair and the agony of the
+believer, shuddering upon the brink of eternity--uncertain whether
+heaven or hell awaits to receive him. I could give you a similar chapter
+from my own experience. When I was much younger, I had implicit faith in
+the bible and the unseen world. What was the effect of this belief upon
+me? Did it make me happy? I can never forget the moments of agony I
+spent on my knees, at the "throne of grace." My pillow was often wet
+with weeping over sins I had never committed, and fearing a depravity I
+could never be guilty of. Christianity in its virile form took hold of
+my young heart as the roots of a tree take hold of the earth in which
+they grow. I was as sensitive and responsive to its influence as fire is
+to the wind that fans it into flame. "Am I saved? How can I be sure that
+God has forgiven me? Where would I open my eyes if I should die tonight?
+Oh, God! what if I should after all be one of the reprobates--damned
+forever." Such was the terrible superstition that cheated me out of a
+thousand glorious moments, and made my youth a punishment to me. One day
+a member of my church came to me in great distress of mind. He behaved
+like one who had actually seen hell. "I am damned, I am damned," he
+cried. "God has forsaken me; there is no hope for me." If a wild beast
+had its paws in his hair, or a hound its teeth in his flesh, he could
+not have been more scared. If he could have only laughed at the stupid
+superstition, all the devils of his distorted imagination would have
+melted into thin air.
+
+  [A] _Imitation_--III 52.
+
+  [B] Quoted by Cotter Morrison, _Service of Man_--34.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Our religion does not trouble us that way," I hear the Christians say
+in reply. Of course not, they no longer believe in it. They let art,
+music, science, the drama, business, to divert their attention from this
+Asiatic fetish. Rationalism has dissipated the terrors of the future,
+and tinted the horizon with beauty and light. But let them believe in
+Christianity as their fathers believed in it, let them be sincere with
+it, and it will make life miserable for them as it has for thousands of
+others. Yes, believe in Christianity as the Apostle Paul did, for
+example, and you must agree with him, that, "If in this life only we
+have a hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." And listen to
+the cry of despair from the lips of the Son of God: "My God, My God, why
+hast Thou forsaken me?" The nails in his hands and feet tore his flesh,
+but it was the thought that he had been forsaken by God that broke his
+heart. Surely, if a belief in a future life could make anybody happy, it
+should have made the death of Jesus a symphony, instead of a tragedy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In conclusion: Not God, nor the unseen world, but Truth is the sovereign
+good. There is nothing more excellent. If there be philosophies, they
+shall pass away; if there be theologies, they shall pass away; if there
+be creeds, cults, gods, they shall pass away. But Truth is _from_
+everlasting _to_ everlasting.
+
+     In my mind's eye, I see a wonderful building, something like the
+     Coliseum of ancient Rome. The galleries are black with people; tier
+     upon tier rise like waves the multitude of spectators who have come
+     to see a great contest. A great contest, indeed! A contest in which
+     all the world and all the centuries are interested. It is the
+     contest--the fight to death--between Truth and Error.
+
+     The door opens, and a slight, small, shy and insignificant looking
+     thing steps into the arena. It is Truth. The vast audience bursts
+     into hilarious and derisive laughter. Is this Truth? This
+     shuddering thing in tattered clothes, and almost naked? And the
+     house shakes again with mocking and hisses.
+
+     The door opens again, and Error enters,--clad in cloth of gold,
+     imposing in appearance, tall of stature, glittering with gems,
+     sleek and huge and ponderous, causing the building to tremble with
+     the thud of its steps. The audience is for a moment dazzled into
+     silence, then it breaks into applause, long and deafening.
+     "Welcome!" "Welcome!" is the greeting from the multitude.
+     "Welcome!" shout ten thousand throats.
+
+     The two contestants face each other. Error, in full armor,--backed
+     by the sympathies of the audience, greeted by the clamorous
+     cheering of the spectators; and Truth, scorned, scoffed at, and
+     _hated_. "The issue is a foregone conclusion," murmurs the vast
+     audience. "Error will trample Truth under its big feet."
+
+     The battle begins. The two clinch, separate, and clinch again.
+     Truth holds its own. The spectators are alarmed. Anxiety appears in
+     their faces. Their voices grow faint. Is it possible? Look! See!
+     There! Error recedes! It fears the gaze of Truth! It shuns its
+     beauteous eyes! Hear it squeak and scream as it feels Truth's
+     squeeze upon its wrists. Error is trying to break away from Truth's
+     grip. It is making for the door. It is gone!
+
+     The spectators are mute. Every tongue is smitten with the palsy.
+     The people bite their lips until they bleed. They cannot explain
+     what they have seen. "Who would have believed it?" "Is it
+     possible?"--they exclaim. But they can not doubt what their eyes
+     have seen. That puny and insignificant looking thing called Truth
+     has put ancient and entrenched Error, backed by the throne, the
+     altar, the army, the press, the people, and the gods--to rout.
+
+The pursuit of truth! Is not that worth living for? To seek the truth,
+to love the truth, to live the truth? Can any religion offer more?
+
+What is the remedy for the pessimism that asks, "Is life worth living?"
+A sound mind in a sound body. There is no better preventive of that
+depression of spirits whence proceed the diseases which menace life,
+and mar the happiness of man, than health--moral, intellectual,
+physical--health; individual and social health. The highest ideal of
+Christianity is a man of sorrows. The highest ideal of Rationalism is a
+man of joy!
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF MY MIND OR HOW I BECAME A RATIONALIST
+
+_Price, Fifty Cents_
+
+# In this latest publication of the Independent Religious Society, M. M.
+Mangasarian describes his religious experience--how, starting as a
+Calvinist, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and a pastor of
+the Spring Garden Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, he thought and
+fought his way up to
+
+RATIONALISM
+
+# The book contains a dedication to "My Children," in which the author
+says:
+
+     "I am going to put the story in writing, that you may have it with
+     you when I am gone, to remind you of the aims and interests for
+     which I lived, as well as to acquaint you with the most earnest and
+     intimate period in my career as a teacher of men."
+
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+
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+
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+     and arranged by M. M. Mangasarian. 25c. Presentation Edition,
+     limp leather                                                  $1.00
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+
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+ CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+
+The following is a list of changes made to the original. The first line
+is the original line, the second the corrected one.
+
+    other gods before me" which is metaphysical and without
+    other gods before me," which is metaphysical and without
+
+    a _raison d'etre_. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then,
+    a _raison d'être_. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then,
+
+    take an undue advantage of one's neighbors," "Truth is not
+    take an undue advantage of one's neighbors. "Truth is not
+
+    manoeuvreing can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank.
+    manoeuvring can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank.
+
+    frantic advice, and a man has to be in a panicy state of mind
+    frantic advice, and a man has to be in a panicky state of mind
+
+    because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstacy.
+    because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstasy.
+
+    straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
+    strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
+
+    instance, to the confession of Thomas A'Kempis: "Lord, I
+    instance, to the confession of Thomas à Kempis: "Lord, I
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Is Life Worth Living Without
+Immortality?, by M. M. Mangasarian
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality? by M. M. Mangasarian.
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality?, by 
+M. M. Mangasarian
+
+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/license
+
+
+Title: Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality?
+       A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society, Chicago
+
+Author: M. M. Mangasarian
+
+Release Date: April 16, 2012 [EBook #39455]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IS LIFE WORTH LIVING WITHOUT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Paul Clark and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
+<p>
+Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
+possible, including non-standard spelling and punctuation.
+</p>
+<p>
+Some changes of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are
+listed at the end of the text.
+</p>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<blockquote>
+<p><big>
+<i>Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up
+the substance for the shadow.</i></big></p>
+
+<p class="right">&mdash;Victor Hugo.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<h1>Is Life Worth Living<br />
+Without Immortality?</h1>
+
+<p class="center">A Lecture Delivered Before<br />
+the Independent Religious<br />
+Society, Chicago</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">By</p>
+<h3>M. M. MANGASARIAN</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<blockquote><p>I may be doing you an injustice, Bertie, but it
+seemed to me in your last that there were indications
+that the free expression of my religious views had
+been distasteful to you. That you should disagree
+with me I am prepared for; but that you should object
+to free and honest discussion of those subjects
+which above all others men should be honest over,
+would, I confess, be a disappointment. The Free-thinker
+is placed at this disadvantage in ordinary
+society, that whereas it would be considered very bad
+taste upon his part to obtrude his unorthodox opinion,
+no such consideration hampers those with whom
+he disagrees. There was a time when it took a brave
+man to be a Christian. Now it takes a brave man
+not to be.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+SIR A. CONAN DOYLE,<br />
+The Stark Munro Letters&mdash;Fourth Letter.<br />
+</p></blockquote><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="Is_Life_Worth_Living_Without" id="Is_Life_Worth_Living_Without">Is Life Worth Living Without
+Immortality?</a></h2>
+
+
+<p>Is life worth living? If we are in good health, it certainly
+is. In a certain sense, even to ask such a question implies
+that we are not at our best. It is the sick, mentally as well as
+physically, who question the value of life. We cannot appreciate
+health too highly. Our philosophy of life is more
+profoundly affected by the condition of our body than we have
+any idea. If I were composing a new set of beatitudes, one
+of them would be in exaltation of health:</p>
+
+<p><i>Blessed are they that have health, for they shall take
+pleasure in life.</i></p>
+
+<p>Health also inspires <i>faith</i> in life. The first commandment
+of the decalogue, instead of reading, "Thou shalt have no
+other gods before me," which is metaphysical and without
+definite meaning, could with much advantage be altered to
+read:</p>
+
+<p><i>Thou shalt not trifle with thy health.</i></p>
+
+<p>How fortunate it would have been for man had the "Deity"
+given that as his first and best thought to the world! Then,
+indeed, would he have been the friend of man. We cannot
+preserve our health without observing all the other commandments&mdash;of
+temperance, purity, sanity, self possession, contentment,
+and serenity of mind. "Behold I bring unto you health"
+ought to be the glad tidings of salvation. Give us that, and
+all the rest will be added unto us. Health is the foundation
+of character. If the foundation is insecure&mdash;if we have inherited
+disease and corruption, we can be sound, neither in
+our thoughts nor in our actions. The time may come when
+to be sickly will be considered a crime. A revolution in our
+feelings in this matter is already taking place. Formerly it
+was thought that the path to self-development is through sorrow
+and suffering, and that the sick were the saints. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+verdict of science today, which has been confirmed by the
+growing experience of man, is that pleasurable activity is the
+most wholesome environment for man. Happiness has upon
+human nature the same effect that the sunshine has upon the
+soil. Man is a failure if he is not happy. The highest accomplishment
+is the ability to enjoy life. To those who say
+that service or usefulness is the noblest aim of life, we answer,
+"Why should those who serve the noblest ends of life be
+unhappy?"</p>
+
+<p>But let me first present to you the answer which one of
+America's best known psychologists, Prof. William James, of
+Harvard, gives to this most interesting question. Prof. James
+is a teacher not only of the young men in one of our leading
+Universities, but his ideas have become a part of the furniture
+of the American mind. Both his thought and the candor with
+which he expresses himself have secured for him a large following.
+Prof. James has an engaging style. Not that he is not
+also a profound thinker, but his sentences are as symmetrical as
+they are solid. He writes to be understood. That, I take it,
+is the secret of the masters of style. The gods always speak
+from behind "clouds and darkness." That explains why it is
+so difficult to understand what they say. But the great teachers
+permit no screens, draperies, curtains, or hangings of any
+sort to come between them and the public. There is nothing
+hidden about their thoughts. Neither do they speak in parables.
+Whoever can not make himself understood should
+hold his peace.</p>
+
+<p>The parents of this renowned psychologist were Swedenborgians,
+and I believe the professor is still, nominally, at least,
+a member of the Swedenborgian church. Swedenborg, as
+you know, was a mystic; he was, indeed, a sort of a medium,
+who claimed to have seen and conversed with God face to face,
+and to have received from him a supplementary revelation, in
+some such sense that Mrs. Eddy or Joseph Smith received
+one. Of course, Swedenborg was also a philosopher, which
+Smith and Eddy are not. The early connections and training
+of Prof. James explain in part his interest in the work of the
+Psychical Research Society, of which he is one of the officers.
+So-called spiritist or occult phenomena, such as automatic slate
+writing, table tipping and telepathy, have always interested<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+Prof. James, but he is by no means an easy victim, though he
+looks forward hopefully to the time when science will definitely
+locate the undiscovered country whose bourne has not yet been
+sighted.</p>
+
+<p>Some years ago when Prof. James and I were summer
+neighbors in New Hampshire&mdash;near Chocorua lake&mdash;I heard
+the professor deliver a lecture on hypnotism in the village
+church of Tamworth. An incident occurred at the time which
+has its bearing on the experience our Society is having with
+the directors of the Orchestral Association. While Prof. James
+was explaining the phenomena of hypnotism from the pulpit,
+I saw, from where I was sitting, an elderly woman showing
+signs of restlessness in her seat. Presently she rose to her
+feet, walked up the aisle slowly, and taking her stand directly
+in front of Prof. James on the platform, she upbraided him for
+desecrating the House of God by delivering in it a lecture
+on hypnotism. In clear, though trembling tones, she ordered
+him out of the church. Naturally the professor was greatly
+embarrassed, as was also his audience. The old woman, however,
+was soon prevailed upon by the elders of the church to
+resume her seat and keep the peace. But she was trying to
+oust Prof. James from the church, as the trustees of this
+building are trying to oust our Society from this hall, on account
+of religious differences. The old woman of New Hampshire
+was not successful, and I trust that the old woman of
+Chicago will not fare any better. To close a hall to a movement
+is an easy thing, but to close the ear of the world to its
+message is not so easy.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the early education of Prof. James in
+order to explain the metaphysical bent of his mind. As a
+psychologist, he has an international reputation, but his greatest
+vogue is among, what are called, the liberal Christians.
+The orthodox have no use for him, but to those who are
+endeavoring to interpret Christianity so as to make it harmonize
+with modern thought&mdash;who are filling the ancient skins
+with wine newly pressed&mdash;he is a defender and a champion of
+the faith. Prof. James seems to have discovered a way by
+which one can be a scientist and a supernaturalist at the same
+time. He appears to be of the opinion that a person may deny
+or reject many of the orthodox dogmas, and still be justified in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+calling himself a Christian. He is, in fact, one of the New
+Theologians, who are supposed to have reconstructed Christianity,
+and saved the supernatural. For this service, Prof.
+James and his <i>confreres</i> are held in high esteem by those who
+would have had to give up Christianity but for their timely help.</p>
+
+<p>In his lecture on, "Is Life Worth Living," the professor
+admits that he is writing for the pessimists. It is they who
+are in the "to be or not to be" mood of mind. The optimist
+does not need consolation, for he is incapable of even suspecting
+that life is not worth living. Some temperaments are as incapable
+of depression or gloom, as others are of happiness.
+If there are parts of the world on which the sun never goes
+down, so there are natures which know no night. We make
+a mistake, however, if we think that the pessimist represents a
+lower type of mental evolution. On the contrary, pessimism
+comes with civilization, and it generally attacks men and
+women of a higher culture. Suicide is rare among the negroes
+or the less advanced races; but in the United States, representing
+the most perfect type of civilization, dowered magnificently,
+and rich in the possession of the treasures of art and nature;
+in America, the home of hope and opportunity&mdash;with its immense
+prairies, its great West, its army of earth-subduers,
+empire-builders, large-natured, generous, daring, enduring,
+restless, resistless pioneers&mdash;more than three thousand people
+every year kill themselves. If we were to seek for an explanation
+of this strange phenomenon, the nearest we can come to
+it would be to say that these people prefer death to life because
+they do not find life worth their while. There is not enough in
+it to satisfy them. To use an Emersonian phrase, life is to
+them no more than "a sucked orange." When the perfume,
+the aroma, the taste, the tints, and the juices have been extracted
+from the fruit&mdash;who cares for what is left.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, these remarks have no reference to the cases of
+sudden suicide, committed in a moment of frenzy&mdash;when a man
+driven, as it were, by a storm in the brain, lets go of his hold
+and slips into the darkness. The professor has in mind
+rather those who even though they do not commit suicide, live
+on reluctantly, under protest, and who treat life as we would
+a guest who has overstaid his welcome, and to whose final
+departure we look forward with pleasure.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But there is still another class of pessimists who need to
+be reasoned with. These are the people who brood over the
+existence of evil in the world, and feel the misery of the many
+so keenly, that they think it involves a point of honor to consent
+to be happy in such a world. The contemplation of human sorrow,
+the surging waves of which break upon every shore; and
+the cry of human anguish rising like the blind cry of all the seas
+that roll, has a tendency to slacken the hold of the reflective
+mind upon life. Prof. James admits that pessimism is essentially
+a religious disease, in the sense that it results from the
+inability of man to entertain two contradictory thoughts at the
+same time: A father in heaven, whose tender mercies are
+over all his children, and children dying of hunger and neglect!
+Infinite wisdom enthroned in heaven, and a world running
+topsy-turvy. The refined mind cannot contemplate this contradiction
+without distress. If God is everywhere, why is there
+darkness anywhere? If there is within reach an ocean of
+truth, why is it doled out to us in driblets which hardly wet
+our lips, when we are burning with thirst? Religion provokes
+desires which it cannot satisfy, and makes promises which it
+will not fulfil. It is this contradiction which bites the soul
+black and blue. God is infinite! and behold we are starving.
+God is light! and we grope in darkness. God is great! and
+we cannot budge without crutches. It is this thought which
+teases us out of our peace of mind. The idea of a God,
+gifted with infinite parts, measured against the helplessness
+of man, makes for pessimism.</p>
+
+<p>But in the opinion of Prof. James, religion alone can cure
+the disease which religion creates. By religion, he does not
+mean merely loving one's neighbor and being loyal to one's
+best thoughts. Religion, according to Prof. James, means the
+belief that beyond this present life, "there is an unseen world
+of which we now know nothing positive but in its relation to
+which the significance of our mundane life consists." If this
+is the first act of an unending drama, it would have great
+worth and significance, but if it is a detached and disconnected
+piece, upon which the curtain will soon fall never to rise again&mdash;if
+it is never going to be finished&mdash;it loses, according to Prof.
+James, its seriousness. In other words, it is the belief that
+man is an eternal being whom no catastrophe can crush or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+annihilate, which makes our present existence worth while,
+and which also reconciles us to the discipline of pain and evil.
+Life is worth living, in short, if man is immortal. This is
+the drift of Prof. James' teaching, as it is also that of all
+supernaturalists.</p>
+
+<p>What evidence does the professor offer to prove the existence
+of an unseen world and the immortality of man? He
+offers none. He admits that science has not as yet demonstrated
+the reality of an invisible world. Perhaps it never
+will, but what of that? "You have got a right to believe in
+an unseen world," declares the professor. Is it not interesting?
+It will be seen that if the professor has no evidence,
+he has many arguments. One of his arguments is that, since,
+we must either believe or disbelieve in a future life, neutrality
+in the matter being an unattainable thing, why not take our
+choice, and while we are at it, choose immortality. Another
+argument is, that as our longings and yearnings in other directions
+have turned out to be prophetic, we have every reason
+to believe that the desire for eternal life also will be fulfilled.
+Art, science, music, health, have come to us because of an
+inner impulse which prompted us to go after them. A similar
+impulse urges us to seek the divine, which is a sort of proof
+that the divine exists. Still another argument is this: All the
+great successes or achievements of life came as a result of the
+courage that takes risks. Without audacity, man would never
+have crossed the ocean, or invented the aeroplane. If the
+belief in immortality requires the taking of risks, if it is
+hazardous even to hold it, we should not hesitate on that
+account, since some of the best things have come to us by taking
+risks. Start out for God and immortality; and some day you
+may cast anchor in the shining waters that lap the shores of a
+divine continent. "We are free to trust at our own risk anything
+that is not impossible," concludes the professor. Finally,
+there is the argument from analogy, which I may explain by
+a personal experience. In the Pasteur Institute in Paris, last
+summer, I saw in the vivisection room, physicians in their
+white aprons, operating upon live rabbits, cutting and dissecting
+them, while the helpless creatures were so fastened to the tables
+that they could not move a muscle. Now all this must seem
+very cruel to the rabbit. It must think the physician a butcher,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+devoid of all feeling, or justice, and it must perforce denounce
+the world in which such wanton torture is inflicted by the strong
+upon the weak. But if the rabbit could take a larger view, if
+it could be made to see that its sufferings are contributing to
+the progress of science and the amelioration of the conditions
+of life upon this planet, and thereby helping to hasten the day
+when disease shall be conquered, would it not be reconciled to
+the physician's knife and the operating table? The larger
+view which would embrace the world unseen will help to give
+to evil, suffering and misery, which now we do not understand,
+a <i>raison d'être</i>. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then,
+is to "believe what is in the line of our needs, for only by the
+belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to believe, and you shall
+indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe,
+and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself."</p>
+
+<p>It will be seen by what has preceded, that Prof. James
+of Harvard University, throws the weight of his influence
+on the side of those who have always maintained that God and
+immortality are indispensable to the happiness of man. In his
+opinion, what a man would be if deprived of his reason, the
+universe would be if deprived of a God, and life, of a future
+existence. The eminent psychologist takes the further position
+that it is immaterial whether or not there is any evidence to
+prove the existence of a God or of a life after death. If the
+belief is essential to our happiness and usefulness, he thinks
+we have got the right to entertain it, irrespective of the question
+of evidence. "If there is a belief of any kind to which you
+have taken a special fancy, or one that you feel like crying for,"
+the professor seems to say, "help yourself to it; you have
+only yourself to suit." Even if such a belief should involve
+an element of risk, we are urged to take the risk. If it requires
+audacity even to believe in a God and immortality, we
+are told to have the audacity. It is his idea that when we are
+dealing with the unknown, the important thing is the heart's
+desire, and not the question of evidence. In passing, I might
+suggest that Prof. James would never have thought of pushing
+aside with such nonchalance, the question of evidence, were it
+not for an irrepressible suspicion that the evidence is against
+him. He hopes to do without the evidence because the evidence
+will not help him. This reminds us of the saying of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+philosopher Hobbes, that, men are generally against reason
+when reason is against <i>them</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As already intimated, the liberal party in the church regards
+Prof. James as a defender of the faith. He is classed with such
+men as Sir Oliver Lodge and Lord Kelvin, who though scientists
+still believe in the supernatural, and by their example have
+made such a belief respectable. It must be borne in mind,
+however, that these distinguished men are Christians only, if
+at all, in a very loose sense of the word. All the cardinal doctrines
+of revelation, such as the creation, the atonement, the
+incarnation, and a personal God&mdash;even one, to say nothing of
+a trinity&mdash;they reject. These gentlemen have not enough
+faith to be baptised to-day, had they not been baptised in their
+childhood,&mdash;or to be received into any Christian church without
+greatly stretching the rules in their behalf. It remains then
+quite true, and the argument has not yet been answered, that
+there is not a single eminent thinker in the world to-day who
+will subscribe to the creed of Christendom without first going
+through it with a blue pencil, or a pair of scissors. But Prof.
+James, as also Lodge and Kelvin, if they are not supernaturalists
+in the ordinary sense of the word, neither are they anti-supernaturalists.
+They are between and betwixt, if I may use
+that phrase&mdash;not quite ready to part with supernaturalism
+altogether, nor yet able to hold on to it in its entirety, and so
+they linger somewhere on the borders or the edge of it.</p>
+
+<p>The first remark I have to make on the position of these
+newly recruited defenders of supernaturalism&mdash;even though the
+supernaturalism which they defend be of the attenuated kind&mdash;is,
+that their argument is not even an improvement on that of
+the theologian. I like the dogmatic and autocratic, "thus
+saith the Lord," of theology, much better than the "suit yourself"
+of these gentlemen. The one position is as destructive of
+intellectual integrity, as the other. The theologian starts with
+the fallacy that God can make a thing true by an act of his
+will&mdash;that his <i>say so</i> makes all need of evidence superfluous.
+Prof. James and the men of his school start with a proposition
+equally fatal to the truth&mdash;namely; that whatever we wish to be
+true concerning the unknown is true. All that is needed, for
+instance, to give the universe a God is to wish for one. All
+that is necessary to make a man immortal is to desire and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+believe that he is. "The Will to Believe," which is the title
+of one of the professor's writings, makes truth the creature of
+man, as theology makes it the creature of God. You see that
+after all, the theologian and the "scientific" supernaturalist
+pull together. That is to say, when science lends itself to
+theology, it ceases to be scientific. It is not theology that goes
+over to science, but science that goes over to theology. As
+soon as science appears at the camp of theology, it is forthwith
+swallowed up. When Prof. James speaks of the "will to believe,"
+and never mind the evidence, he is borrowing from
+theology, the "will to create" of God.</p>
+
+<p>Even as the Deity in creating did not have to consider anything
+but his glory and pleasure, likewise man in believing does
+not have to consider anything but his needs and desires. Ask,
+"What is Truth?" and the theologian answers: "Whatever God
+wants it to be." Ask now the scientist allies of the supernatural,
+"What is Truth," and they answer: "Whatever man
+desires or craves it to be." Of course, it may be objected
+that it is only concerning the unknown that man is permitted
+to dispense with evidence and consult his will. But there is
+no merit, for instance, in a man not telling any falsehoods
+where he is sure of being found out; his character is tested
+by his refusal to lie where he is sure he never will be found
+out. It is concerning the unknown about which we can say
+anything and everything we please without the fear of ever
+being caught, that we should restrain ourselves and show our
+loyalty to the everlasting law of honor, never to depart from
+veracity. To make any assertions about the unknown is to
+take an undue advantage of one's neighbors. "Truth is not
+mine to do with it as I please," said Giordano Bruno, "I must
+obey the truth, not command it." But the theologico-scientific
+position is the very reverse of this. If a god were to ask the
+question, "What is Truth?" His priests would answer, "Lord,
+suit thyself." If men asked, "What is Truth?" the Harvard
+professor and his colleagues would reply, "It depends upon
+your will to believe."</p>
+
+<p>The name given to this "free and easy philosophy," if I
+may use such an expression&mdash;is pragmatism, which is a word
+from the Greek root <i>pragmatikos</i>, whence our word "practice"
+and "practical." The idea at the basis of this philosophy is that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+whatever is practical and business-like&mdash;whatever is necessary
+to a given program, is authoritative. The philosopher, Kant,
+was one of the first to urge that we have a right to believe as
+we please concerning the things which we can neither prove
+nor disprove by evidence, if such beliefs are necessary to morality.
+His modern disciples following his leadership, take the
+position that it is the usefulness of a hypothesis or a belief,
+and not its truth, that should concern us. "Does it work," is
+the test, they say, of the value of a scheme or statement, and
+not, "Is it true?" If it works, what do we care whether or
+not it be true. If it does not work, it is of no help to us even
+if it were true. This is identically the same argument which is
+advanced by the Roman Catholics, to justify for instance, the
+belief in the existence, somewhere in the universe, of a place
+called purgatory. "The doctrine of purgatory works," argues
+the priest, and therefore, it makes no difference whether or
+not such a place really exists. It is a useful, consoling and
+profitable doctrine. Therefore it is as good as true. In the
+phraseology of pragmatism, millions of people want a purgatory,
+therefore, there is one. And once again, to the question,
+"What is Truth," the answer of both the theologian and the
+pragmatist is, "Do not bother about it." And this describes
+the attitude of the Protestant as well as of the Catholic toward
+truth. They do not bother about it. Yes, <i>they do not bother
+about it</i>. That is why progress limps and the darkness lingers.
+People have been brought up not to bother about truth, which
+explains why error is still king of more than half of the world.
+I cannot find the words&mdash;all words fail me to express my
+disappointment that a teacher of the youth in one of our
+great institutions, who are to be the America of tomorrow,
+should in any way contribute to the impression that truth is
+secondary; that our needs, our interests, our inclinations, or
+our whims, come first, and that if we have not the courage to
+look the truth in the face, we can turn around and make terms
+with myth and fable.</p>
+
+<p>If we were disposed to trip the professor, or by one single
+thrust to disqualify him for further action in the arena of
+thought, we could say that even from the point of view of
+the pragmatist, truth comes first, and that by no imaginable
+man&oelig;uvring can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+It cannot be done. Listen! You may not have to prove
+the existence of a God, or of a future, or of a purgatory,
+before believing in it. Granted: but you have to prove and
+you are trying to prove, that it is <i>true</i> that you do not have
+to prove them. Even pragmatists who say that utility is before
+truth, labor to prove that it is <i>true</i> that utility is before
+truth. In other words, they have got to prove the truth of
+their theory, whatever that may be, before they can make it
+have any value, or before it can command our respect. Things
+have to be true else they cannot exist. All the labor of Prof.
+James has for its object the demonstration of what he considers
+to be a truth, namely: that the truth of the belief concerning
+the unknown is not essential. In other words, God may be true
+or not, a future life may be true or not, but it has to be
+true that it makes no difference whether they are true or not.
+Wiggle as we may, we cannot escape the ring of reason that
+embraces life. This is what I mean when I say that the stars
+fight for Rationalism. Truth is so tightly screwed and made
+fast to the top of the flag-pole that even hands of iron and
+steel cannot pull it down to a lower notch.</p>
+
+<p>A second remark I would make on Prof. James' manner of
+reasoning is that such arguments as he uses to prop up the
+belief in God and immortality show, not confidence, but desperation,
+if it is not too strong a word to use. Urging us to
+take risks, to have the audacity, to ignore the question of evidence,
+to suit ourselves, and, not to mind the facts, is not the
+language of sobriety, but of recklessness. To say to a man
+standing on the edge of a precipice and looking down into a
+chasm of unknown depth and darkness, to jump over, because,
+perchance, he may discover his heart's desire at the bottom, is
+frantic advice, and a man has to be in a panicky state of mind
+to let go of the sun and of the green earth for a possible world
+at the bottom of the abyss. It was a thought of Emerson that
+the humblest bug crawling in the dust with its back to the sun,
+and shining with the colors of the rainbow, is a thing more
+sublime than any possible angel. If there were the slightest
+foundation for the belief in an unseen world, no one would
+think of resorting to such extreme measures as our learned
+professor does, to uphold it. When I see a man huffing and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+puffing, I do not conclude that he has a strong case, on the
+contrary, I am apt to suspect that it is the weakness of his
+cause which has disturbed his serenity. To tell us that we
+can will ourselves immortal, or will God into existence, and
+that all we need is the audacity to plunge into the unknown,
+whatever the risks, reminds me of La Fontaine's parable of
+the frog&mdash;who thought he could will himself into the size of a
+cow&mdash;with fatal results. The beginning of wisdom is to recognize
+one's limitations. To tell a man that he can <i>will</i> things
+into existence is to do him an injury. Pitiful is the God, and
+chimerical the immortality that has no better foundation than
+the whim of man.</p>
+
+<p>According to the doctrine of "The will to believe" there
+would be no God if there were no men to "will" his existence,
+and no immortality if men did not desire it. This is
+theology dressed up as philosophy or science. How was the
+world made? And the theologians answer, God said, "Let
+there be light, and there was light." How was God made?
+And the pragmatists answer, "Man said, let there be a God,
+and there was one." This is trifling. If the word is not too
+harsh, I shall call it sophistry, or mental gymnastics, to which
+men never resort except when straight reasoning will not help
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Sophistry is a plea of guilty. I was debating the other
+evening in a Milwaukee theater on the question of the responsibility
+for the burning of Joan of Arc. While listening to the
+defense of the gentleman who was trying to prove that the
+Catholic Church was not responsible for her martyrdom, I
+said to myself that such a defense would never have been
+thought of were it not for the fact that the old claim that the
+church of God cannot err had not broken down. In the same
+way the defense that the bible should be taken allegorically,
+proves that the old position that the bible is from cover to cover
+the word of God with every letter and punctuation, as well as
+word and meaning inspired, is no longer tenable. To say that
+the bible must not be taken literally is but another way of saying
+that the bible is not true, or that you can make it mean
+what you please. Men never put up such a defense for anything
+unless they are driven to it by sheer desperation.</p>
+
+<p>My third remark on the pragmatic philosophy of Professor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+James is that, besides doing violence to our reason, his doctrine
+that an unseen world is indispensable to make life worth
+living, or to help make the world moral, places man not only
+in an unenviable light, but it also does him a great injustice.
+If it is true that a man will make a beast of himself if he finds
+out that he is not a God, I take the position that he is beyond
+hope. Nothing can save him. But it is not true. It is a
+priestly tale that a man will not behave himself unless we can
+promise him the moon, or the sun, or eternity. A man would
+only be a contemptible animal if he must be given toys and
+trinkets and sawdust dolls to divert his attention from mischief.
+The claim of the preachers that unless men are assured
+of black-eyed houris and golden harps, or at least,&mdash;some sort
+of a ghostly existence,&mdash;somewhere and at sometime in the
+future, they will convert life into a debauch, is simply a falsehood.
+Man is not so depraved as that. Indeed, the doctrine
+of total depravity was invented by the priests to create a demand
+for the offices of the church. The priest cannot afford
+to believe in human nature. If a man can save himself, or
+if he can do good by his own effort, what need would there
+be of the mysteries and the sacraments,&mdash;the rites and the
+dogmas?</p>
+
+<p>I had occasion to tell you a few Sundays ago that if a lily
+can be white, or a rose so wondrous fair, or a dog so loyal
+and heroic, without dickering with the universe for a future
+reward, man can do, at least, as much. Would this be expecting
+too much of him?</p>
+
+<p>In France, there is, in one of the close-by suburbs of Paris,
+a cemetery for dogs. Of course, no priest or pastor would
+think of officiating at the interment of a dog, however useful
+or faithful the animal may have been. They are brought
+here by their owners and quietly buried. The visitor finds
+here, however, many tokens of appreciation and gratitude for
+the services and value of the dog to man. Little monuments
+are raised over the remains of some of the occupants of the
+modest graves. One of these bears the inscription: "He
+saved forty lives, and lost his own in the attempt to save the
+forty-first." He did his best without the hope of a future
+reward. Is man lower than the animal? Does he require the
+help of the Holy Ghost, the holy angels, the holy Trinity, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+holy infallible church, and all the terrors of hell fire to make
+him prefer sense to nonsense, cleanliness to dirt, honor to disgrace,
+the respect of his fellows to their contempt, and a peaceful
+mind to one full of scorpions? Do we have to swing into
+existence fabled and mythical beings and worlds before we
+can induce a human being to be as natural as a plant and as
+faithful as a dog? The doctrine of total depravity is a disgrace
+to those who have invented it, and a blight to those who
+believe in it. It is not true that we have to be put through
+acrobatic exercises,&mdash;make our reason turn somersaults, resort
+to sophistry,&mdash;become frantic with fear about our future,&mdash;postulate
+the existence of ghosts, Gods, and celestial abodes
+before we can prefer the good to the bad and the light to
+darkness. Supernaturalism is both negative and destructive.
+It denies goodness, and it destroys in man the power of self-help.
+Von Humboldt's indignation seems pardonable, when he
+used the word "infamous," to characterize the theologian's
+attempt to make the well-being of the human race depend
+upon such supernatural gossip as he had to market.</p>
+
+<p>And what is the verdict of history on this question? Does
+the belief in God and immortality make for morality? How
+then shall we explain the dark ages which were ages of faith,
+and why are not the Moslems, whose faith in Allah and in a
+future life is very much stronger than ours, a more moral
+people than the Europeans or Americans? Why was King
+Leopold, the Christian, a moral leper to the hour of his death,
+while Socrates, the pagan, who was uncertain about the future,
+has perfumed the centuries with his virtues? Has the belief
+in the supernatural prevented the criminal waste of human life,
+protected the child from the sweat-shop and the factory, or
+even robbed religion of its sting&mdash;the sting whose bite is mortal
+to tolerance, brotherhood and intellectual honesty? There
+are excellent people who believe in the supernatural and equally
+excellent people who ignore the supernatural, from which it
+would follow that excellence of character is independent of
+one's speculations about either the eternal past, or the eternal
+future. It is not true then that we have to prove to man that
+he has always existed, or that he shall always exist before
+we can make him see that the sunset is beautiful, or that the
+sea is vast, or that love is the greatest thing in the world.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A man will be careful of his health whether he expects to
+live again or not. He will avoid headaches, fevers, colds,
+anaemia, nervous prostrations and diseases of every kind
+which rack the body and make life a misery, irrespective of
+his attitude to the question of survival after death. The question
+of health, then, which is a very important one, is independent
+of any supernatural belief. It would not affect our
+health a particle were the heavens empty or full of gods. In
+the same way, men will continue the culture of the mind irrespective
+of theological beliefs. Will a man neglect the pleasures
+of the mind, despise knowledge and remain content in
+his ignorance, if he cannot be sure that he is going to live
+forever? But if neither the culture of the body nor that of
+the mind is in danger of being neglected, is there any reason
+to fear that the culture of the affections and the conscience
+will suffer without a belief in an unseen world? We have
+only to look into the motives which govern human actions to
+recover our confidence in the essential soundness of human
+nature, and in the ability of morality to take care of itself
+without the help of ghosts and gods. You love your country
+and you are willing to defend its institutions, if need be, with
+your life, but is it because your country is immortal? Is
+America going to live forever? Is it going to have a future
+existence? And yet Washington and his soldiers loved it
+dearly and risked their lives for it. Were the ancient Greeks
+and Romans, to whom patriotism was a religion, and who
+loved and fought for their country&mdash;fools, because they did
+not first make sure that their country was going to live forever?
+You are devoted to art, you have built palaces for the
+treasures of the brush and the chisel. You have paid fabulous
+prices for the works of a Rembrandt and a Titian. Is it because
+these paintings are never going to perish? Is the canvas
+which you adore immortal? You prize the works of
+genius&mdash;of a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Voltaire, a Darwin.
+You have edifices of marble and steel in which to house the
+great books of the world. And yet a fire tomorrow may wipe
+them out of existence&mdash;they may become lost, as many great
+works have been lost in the past. Nevertheless, are they not
+precious while we have them? If a humane society will interest
+itself in the welfare of the horse and the cat and the dog,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+which live but a few years; if the flower which blooms in the
+morning and fades in the evening can command our attention
+and devotion&mdash;must a man be a god before we can take any
+interest in him? Must somebody be always whispering in our
+ears, "Ye are gods; ye are gods," to prevent us from doing
+violence to ourselves or to our fellows? And men seek health
+for the present, not for the future. And they cultivate the
+mind to make life richer now and here. And love is desired
+because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstasy.
+What then is the value of any speculation about the unseen
+world, since man can care for his body, mind and heart, without
+venturing out on an ocean for which he has neither the
+sails nor the compass?</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>But the unseen world is necessary, the professor seems to
+think, in order to explain the suffering and the injustice in
+this. In my opinion, such a belief has done more to postpone
+the reform of present abuses than anything else. The time
+to suppress injustice and to relieve human suffering is now,
+not in some distant future,&mdash;here and not in an undiscovered
+country. The belief in God has tempted man to shirk his
+responsibilities. He has left many things to be done by God
+which he should have done himself. It is a nobler religion
+that tells man to do all he can now, and to do it himself.
+Moreover, how can what is wrong here be made right in the
+next world? What, for instance, can make Joan of Arc's
+atrocious murder&mdash;a girl of nineteen, who had saved her
+country, roasted over a slow fire&mdash;right in heaven? What
+explanation can the Deity give to us which shall reconcile us
+to so infamous a crime. A million eternities, it seems to me,
+cannot alter the character of that act. The deed cannot be
+undone. That frightful page cannot be torn from the book
+of life. You cannot destroy the memory of that injustice;
+you cannot rub so foul a stain from the hands of even a God.
+Suppose God were to say to us in the next world that this
+crime was necessary to the progress of civilization. Would
+that satisfy us? Would we not still wish for a God who
+could have contributed to the progress of civilization without
+resorting to so unspeakable a murder? And there you are.
+Another world can never reconcile us to a policy that required<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+the commission of crimes whose stench rises to our nostrils.
+What is wrong can never be made right.</p>
+
+<p>You remember that to illustrate the thought of Professor
+James, I spoke of my visit to the Pasteur Institute in Paris,
+where, in the vivisection hall, I saw the physicians operating
+on live rabbits. Professor James thinks that if the rabbit could
+see everything, it might say to the physician, "Thy will be
+done." But the rabbit might also say this: "It is well to
+advance science and civilization; and if it is a part of the
+<i>scheme</i> to make me contribute to it by my sufferings, I am
+resigned; but what about the character of the <i>schemer</i> who
+must torture to death some of his creatures&mdash;slaughter with
+excruciating pain a portion of his family&mdash;in order to make
+secure the lives of the rest?" The existence of evil in a world
+created by a perfect God is the rock upon which all religions
+go to pieces. If God can prevent misery and crime, but prefers
+to work through them, he is to be feared; if he cannot
+help himself, then he is to be pitied. Who would not rather
+be the rabbit on the operating table, with the knife in his
+flesh, than such a God! A God who cannot make a rose red
+except by dipping it in human blood can be sure that no
+human being would ever envy him his office. On the last
+day of judgment, if such a day there be, it will not be the
+rabbit, or man, who will fear the opening of the books; it will
+be God.</p>
+
+<p>And how do we know that things will be better in the unseen
+world? Suppose they should be worse? Jesus intimated
+that the next world would be worse, for he says in Matthew
+7:13-14, "Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth
+to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because
+strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
+unto life, and few there be that find it."</p>
+
+<p>Surely this is not an encouraging prospect. A future which
+offers happiness to a small minority cannot be looked forward
+to with enthusiasm. Neither is the thought of a few saved
+and the many damned a consolation. One of the oft-repeated
+claims is that the belief in God and immortality is such a
+happiness that he must be an enemy of his race who would
+deprive people of it. Even Rationalists are said to envy the
+believer his peace of mind. But the truth is the very opposite<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+of this. There is abundant testimony to prove that of all people
+the real and consistent believer is the most unhappy being
+in the world. The proverbial unhappiness of the Rationalist,
+like the proverbial death-bed horrors of a Thomas Paine and
+a Voltaire, is a pure fabrication. While there is absolutely
+nothing in Rationalism to make anybody miserable, since it
+does away with fear, which is the only thing to fear,
+Orthodoxy, on the other hand, starts by not only calling
+this a vale of tears, but proceeds forthwith to make
+it so. If we were to place the greatest known Christian
+saints on the stand to interrogate them on this subject,
+they would one and all confirm our statement. Listen, for
+instance, to the confession of Thomas à Kempis: "Lord, I
+am not worthy of thy consolation.... Thou dealest justly
+with me when thou leavest me poor and desolate, for if I could
+shed tears as the sea, yet should I not be worthy of thy consolation.
+I am worthy only to be scourged and punished."<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a>
+These are not the words of a buoyant and happy soul. And
+listen to the lamentation of John Bunyan: "Sometimes I could
+for whole days together feel my very body as well as my
+mind to shake and totter under the sense of this dreadful judgment
+of God.... I felt also such a clogging and heat in my
+stomach by reason of this terror that I thought my breast-bone
+would split asunder. Oh, how gladly would I have been anything
+but a man."<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> I could quote long chapters from the
+biographies of the saints to show the wretchedness, the despair
+and the agony of the believer, shuddering upon the brink of
+eternity&mdash;uncertain whether heaven or hell awaits to receive
+him. I could give you a similar chapter from my own experience.
+When I was much younger, I had implicit faith in the
+bible and the unseen world. What was the effect of this
+belief upon me? Did it make me happy? I can never forget
+the moments of agony I spent on my knees, at the "throne of
+grace." My pillow was often wet with weeping over sins I
+had never committed, and fearing a depravity I could never
+be guilty of. Christianity in its virile form took hold of my
+young heart as the roots of a tree take hold of the earth in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+which they grow. I was as sensitive and responsive to its
+influence as fire is to the wind that fans it into flame. "Am
+I saved? How can I be sure that God has forgiven me?
+Where would I open my eyes if I should die tonight? Oh,
+God! what if I should after all be one of the reprobates&mdash;damned
+forever." Such was the terrible superstition that
+cheated me out of a thousand glorious moments, and made my
+youth a punishment to me. One day a member of my church
+came to me in great distress of mind. He behaved like one
+who had actually seen hell. "I am damned, I am damned,"
+he cried. "God has forsaken me; there is no hope for me."
+If a wild beast had its paws in his hair, or a hound its teeth
+in his flesh, he could not have been more scared. If he could
+have only laughed at the stupid superstition, all the devils of
+his distorted imagination would have melted into thin air.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>"Our religion does not trouble us that way," I hear the Christians
+say in reply. Of course not, they no longer believe in it.
+They let art, music, science, the drama, business, to divert their
+attention from this Asiatic fetish. Rationalism has dissipated
+the terrors of the future, and tinted the horizon with beauty
+and light. But let them believe in Christianity as their fathers
+believed in it, let them be sincere with it, and it will make
+life miserable for them as it has for thousands of others. Yes,
+believe in Christianity as the Apostle Paul did, for example,
+and you must agree with him, that, "If in this life only we
+have a hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable."
+And listen to the cry of despair from the lips of the Son of
+God: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" The
+nails in his hands and feet tore his flesh, but it was the thought
+that he had been forsaken by God that broke his heart. Surely,
+if a belief in a future life could make anybody happy, it should
+have made the death of Jesus a symphony, instead of a
+tragedy.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In conclusion: Not God, nor the unseen world, but Truth
+is the sovereign good. There is nothing more excellent. If
+there be philosophies, they shall pass away; if there be theologies,
+they shall pass away; if there be creeds, cults, gods, they
+shall pass away. But Truth is <i>from</i> everlasting <i>to</i> everlasting.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<blockquote><p>In my mind's eye, I see a wonderful building, something
+like the Coliseum of ancient Rome. The galleries are black
+with people; tier upon tier rise like waves the multitude of
+spectators who have come to see a great contest. A great contest,
+indeed! A contest in which all the world and all the
+centuries are interested. It is the contest&mdash;the fight to death&mdash;between
+Truth and Error.</p>
+
+<p>The door opens, and a slight, small, shy and insignificant
+looking thing steps into the arena. It is Truth. The vast
+audience bursts into hilarious and derisive laughter. Is this
+Truth? This shuddering thing in tattered clothes, and almost
+naked? And the house shakes again with mocking and hisses.</p>
+
+<p>The door opens again, and Error enters,&mdash;clad in cloth of
+gold, imposing in appearance, tall of stature, glittering with
+gems, sleek and huge and ponderous, causing the building to
+tremble with the thud of its steps. The audience is for a
+moment dazzled into silence, then it breaks into applause, long
+and deafening. "Welcome!" "Welcome!" is the greeting
+from the multitude. "Welcome!" shout ten thousand throats.</p>
+
+<p>The two contestants face each other. Error, in full armor,&mdash;backed
+by the sympathies of the audience, greeted by the
+clamorous cheering of the spectators; and Truth, scorned,
+scoffed at, and <i>hated</i>. "The issue is a foregone conclusion,"
+murmurs the vast audience. "Error will trample Truth under
+its big feet."</p>
+
+<p>The battle begins. The two clinch, separate, and clinch
+again. Truth holds its own. The spectators are alarmed.
+Anxiety appears in their faces. Their voices grow faint. Is
+it possible? Look! See! There! Error recedes! It fears
+the gaze of Truth! It shuns its beauteous eyes! Hear it
+squeak and scream as it feels Truth's squeeze upon its wrists.
+Error is trying to break away from Truth's grip. It is making
+for the door. It is gone!</p>
+
+<p>The spectators are mute. Every tongue is smitten with the
+palsy. The people bite their lips until they bleed. They cannot
+explain what they have seen. "Who would have believed
+it?" "Is it possible?"&mdash;they exclaim. But they can not doubt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+what their eyes have seen. That puny and insignificant looking
+thing called Truth has put ancient and entrenched Error,
+backed by the throne, the altar, the army, the press, the people,
+and the gods&mdash;to rout.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The pursuit of truth! Is not that worth living for? To
+seek the truth, to love the truth, to live the truth? Can any
+religion offer more?</p>
+
+<p>What is the remedy for the pessimism that asks, "Is life
+worth living?" A sound mind in a sound body. There is no
+better preventive of that depression of spirits whence proceed
+the diseases which menace life, and mar the happiness of man,
+than health&mdash;moral, intellectual, physical&mdash;health; individual
+and social health. The highest ideal of Christianity is a man
+of sorrows. The highest ideal of Rationalism is a man of joy!</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_STORY_OF_MY_MIND" id="THE_STORY_OF_MY_MIND">THE STORY OF MY MIND<br />
+<small>OR</small><br />
+HOW I BECAME A RATIONALIST</a></h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Price, Fifty Cents</i></p>
+
+
+<p>¶ In this latest publication of the Independent Religious
+Society, M. M. Mangasarian describes his religious experience&mdash;how,
+starting as a Calvinist, a graduate of Princeton Theological
+Seminary, and a pastor of the Spring Garden Presbyterian
+Church in Philadelphia, he thought and fought his way up to</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><b>RATIONALISM</b></p>
+
+<p>¶ The book contains a dedication to "My Children," in
+which the author says:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"I am going to put the story in writing, that you may have it with
+you when I am gone, to remind you of the aims and interests for which
+I lived, as well as to acquaint you with the most earnest and intimate
+period in my career as a teacher of men."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p class="center">
+<i>ORDER THROUGH</i><br />
+THE INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY<br />
+CHICAGO<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h3>EARLIER PUBLICATIONS BY MR. MANGASARIAN</h3>
+
+<p class="hanging-indent"><b>A New Catechism.</b> Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged,
+with Portrait of Author. Price <span class="ralign">$1.00</span></p>
+
+<p class="hanging-indent"><b>The Truth About Jesus: Is He a Myth?</b> A new book of
+295 pages. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.00; Paper <span class="ralign">$0.50</span></p>
+
+<p class="hanging-indent"><b>Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate on the Historicity of Jesus.</b>
+25c.</p>
+
+<p class="hanging-indent"><b>Pearls.</b> (New Edition.) Brave Thoughts from Brave
+Minds. Selected and arranged by M. M. Mangasarian.
+25c. Presentation Edition, limp leather <span class="ralign">$1.00</span></p>
+
+
+<p>A FEW LECTURES&mdash;10c A COPY</p>
+
+<p>
+Is the Morality of Jesus Sound?<br />
+Rome-Rule in Ireland, with Postlude on Ferrer.<br />
+How the Bible Was Invented.<br />
+Morality Without God.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Sent postpaid on receipt of price. Ask for complete list.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY<br />
+CHICAGO<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> <i>Imitation</i>&mdash;III 52.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Quoted by Cotter Morrison, <i>Service of Man</i>&mdash;34.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
+<p>
+The following is a list of changes made to the original.
+The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one.
+</p>
+<p>
+other gods before <span class="u">me</span>" which is metaphysical and without<br />
+other gods before <span class="u">me,</span>" which is metaphysical and without
+</p>
+<p>
+a <i>raison <span class="u">d'etre</span></i>. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then,<br />
+a <i>raison <span class="u">d'être</span></i>. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then,
+</p>
+<p>
+take an undue advantage of one's <span class="u">neighbors,"</span> "Truth is not<br />
+take an undue advantage of one's <span class="u">neighbors.</span> "Truth is not
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="u">man&oelig;uvreing</span> can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank.<br />
+<span class="u">man&oelig;uvring</span> can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank.
+</p>
+<p>
+frantic advice, and a man has to be in a <span class="u">panicy</span> state of mind<br />
+frantic advice, and a man has to be in a <span class="u">panicky</span> state of mind
+</p>
+<p>
+because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an <span class="u">ecstacy</span>.<br />
+because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an <span class="u">ecstasy</span>.
+</p>
+<p>
+<span class="u">straight</span> is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth<br />
+<span class="u">strait</span> is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
+</p>
+<p>
+instance, to the confession of Thomas <span class="u">A'Kempis</span>: "Lord, I<br />
+instance, to the confession of Thomas <span class="u">à Kempis</span>: "Lord, I
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Is Life Worth Living Without
+Immortality?, by M. M. Mangasarian
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality?, by
+M. M. Mangasarian
+
+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/license
+
+
+Title: Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality?
+       A Lecture Delivered Before the Independent Religious Society, Chicago
+
+Author: M. M. Mangasarian
+
+Release Date: April 16, 2012 [EBook #39455]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IS LIFE WORTH LIVING WITHOUT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Paul Clark and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
+    possible, including non-standard spelling and punctuation.
+
+    Some changes of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are
+    listed at the end of the text.
+
+    OE ligatures have been expanded.
+
+    Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
+
+    Bold text has been marked with =equals signs=.
+
+
+
+
+ _Sacrificing the earth for paradise is giving up
+ the substance for the shadow._
+
+ --Victor Hugo.
+
+ Is Life Worth Living
+ Without Immortality?
+
+ A Lecture Delivered Before
+ the Independent Religious
+ Society, Chicago
+
+ By
+ M. M. MANGASARIAN
+
+     I may be doing you an injustice, Bertie, but it seemed to me in
+     your last that there were indications that the free expression of
+     my religious views had been distasteful to you. That you should
+     disagree with me I am prepared for; but that you should object to
+     free and honest discussion of those subjects which above all others
+     men should be honest over, would, I confess, be a disappointment.
+     The Free-thinker is placed at this disadvantage in ordinary
+     society, that whereas it would be considered very bad taste upon
+     his part to obtrude his unorthodox opinion, no such consideration
+     hampers those with whom he disagrees. There was a time when it took
+     a brave man to be a Christian. Now it takes a brave man not to be.
+
+ SIR A. CONAN DOYLE,
+ The Stark Munro Letters--Fourth Letter.
+
+
+
+
+Is Life Worth Living Without Immortality?
+
+
+Is life worth living? If we are in good health, it certainly is. In a
+certain sense, even to ask such a question implies that we are not at
+our best. It is the sick, mentally as well as physically, who question
+the value of life. We cannot appreciate health too highly. Our
+philosophy of life is more profoundly affected by the condition of our
+body than we have any idea. If I were composing a new set of beatitudes,
+one of them would be in exaltation of health:
+
+_Blessed are they that have health, for they shall take pleasure in
+life._
+
+Health also inspires _faith_ in life. The first commandment of the
+decalogue, instead of reading, "Thou shalt have no other gods before
+me," which is metaphysical and without definite meaning, could with much
+advantage be altered to read:
+
+_Thou shalt not trifle with thy health._
+
+How fortunate it would have been for man had the "Deity" given that as
+his first and best thought to the world! Then, indeed, would he have
+been the friend of man. We cannot preserve our health without observing
+all the other commandments--of temperance, purity, sanity, self
+possession, contentment, and serenity of mind. "Behold I bring unto you
+health" ought to be the glad tidings of salvation. Give us that, and all
+the rest will be added unto us. Health is the foundation of character.
+If the foundation is insecure--if we have inherited disease and
+corruption, we can be sound, neither in our thoughts nor in our actions.
+The time may come when to be sickly will be considered a crime. A
+revolution in our feelings in this matter is already taking place.
+Formerly it was thought that the path to self-development is through
+sorrow and suffering, and that the sick were the saints. The verdict of
+science today, which has been confirmed by the growing experience of
+man, is that pleasurable activity is the most wholesome environment for
+man. Happiness has upon human nature the same effect that the sunshine
+has upon the soil. Man is a failure if he is not happy. The highest
+accomplishment is the ability to enjoy life. To those who say that
+service or usefulness is the noblest aim of life, we answer, "Why should
+those who serve the noblest ends of life be unhappy?"
+
+But let me first present to you the answer which one of America's best
+known psychologists, Prof. William James, of Harvard, gives to this most
+interesting question. Prof. James is a teacher not only of the young men
+in one of our leading Universities, but his ideas have become a part of
+the furniture of the American mind. Both his thought and the candor with
+which he expresses himself have secured for him a large following. Prof.
+James has an engaging style. Not that he is not also a profound thinker,
+but his sentences are as symmetrical as they are solid. He writes to be
+understood. That, I take it, is the secret of the masters of style. The
+gods always speak from behind "clouds and darkness." That explains why
+it is so difficult to understand what they say. But the great teachers
+permit no screens, draperies, curtains, or hangings of any sort to come
+between them and the public. There is nothing hidden about their
+thoughts. Neither do they speak in parables. Whoever can not make
+himself understood should hold his peace.
+
+The parents of this renowned psychologist were Swedenborgians, and I
+believe the professor is still, nominally, at least, a member of the
+Swedenborgian church. Swedenborg, as you know, was a mystic; he was,
+indeed, a sort of a medium, who claimed to have seen and conversed with
+God face to face, and to have received from him a supplementary
+revelation, in some such sense that Mrs. Eddy or Joseph Smith received
+one. Of course, Swedenborg was also a philosopher, which Smith and Eddy
+are not. The early connections and training of Prof. James explain in
+part his interest in the work of the Psychical Research Society, of
+which he is one of the officers. So-called spiritist or occult
+phenomena, such as automatic slate writing, table tipping and telepathy,
+have always interested Prof. James, but he is by no means an easy
+victim, though he looks forward hopefully to the time when science will
+definitely locate the undiscovered country whose bourne has not yet been
+sighted.
+
+Some years ago when Prof. James and I were summer neighbors in New
+Hampshire--near Chocorua lake--I heard the professor deliver a lecture
+on hypnotism in the village church of Tamworth. An incident occurred at
+the time which has its bearing on the experience our Society is having
+with the directors of the Orchestral Association. While Prof. James was
+explaining the phenomena of hypnotism from the pulpit, I saw, from where
+I was sitting, an elderly woman showing signs of restlessness in her
+seat. Presently she rose to her feet, walked up the aisle slowly, and
+taking her stand directly in front of Prof. James on the platform, she
+upbraided him for desecrating the House of God by delivering in it a
+lecture on hypnotism. In clear, though trembling tones, she ordered him
+out of the church. Naturally the professor was greatly embarrassed, as
+was also his audience. The old woman, however, was soon prevailed upon
+by the elders of the church to resume her seat and keep the peace. But
+she was trying to oust Prof. James from the church, as the trustees of
+this building are trying to oust our Society from this hall, on account
+of religious differences. The old woman of New Hampshire was not
+successful, and I trust that the old woman of Chicago will not fare any
+better. To close a hall to a movement is an easy thing, but to close the
+ear of the world to its message is not so easy.
+
+I have spoken of the early education of Prof. James in order to explain
+the metaphysical bent of his mind. As a psychologist, he has an
+international reputation, but his greatest vogue is among, what are
+called, the liberal Christians. The orthodox have no use for him, but to
+those who are endeavoring to interpret Christianity so as to make it
+harmonize with modern thought--who are filling the ancient skins with
+wine newly pressed--he is a defender and a champion of the faith. Prof.
+James seems to have discovered a way by which one can be a scientist and
+a supernaturalist at the same time. He appears to be of the opinion that
+a person may deny or reject many of the orthodox dogmas, and still be
+justified in calling himself a Christian. He is, in fact, one of the
+New Theologians, who are supposed to have reconstructed Christianity,
+and saved the supernatural. For this service, Prof. James and his
+_confreres_ are held in high esteem by those who would have had to give
+up Christianity but for their timely help.
+
+In his lecture on, "Is Life Worth Living," the professor admits that he
+is writing for the pessimists. It is they who are in the "to be or not
+to be" mood of mind. The optimist does not need consolation, for he is
+incapable of even suspecting that life is not worth living. Some
+temperaments are as incapable of depression or gloom, as others are of
+happiness. If there are parts of the world on which the sun never goes
+down, so there are natures which know no night. We make a mistake,
+however, if we think that the pessimist represents a lower type of
+mental evolution. On the contrary, pessimism comes with civilization,
+and it generally attacks men and women of a higher culture. Suicide is
+rare among the negroes or the less advanced races; but in the United
+States, representing the most perfect type of civilization, dowered
+magnificently, and rich in the possession of the treasures of art and
+nature; in America, the home of hope and opportunity--with its immense
+prairies, its great West, its army of earth-subduers, empire-builders,
+large-natured, generous, daring, enduring, restless, resistless
+pioneers--more than three thousand people every year kill themselves. If
+we were to seek for an explanation of this strange phenomenon, the
+nearest we can come to it would be to say that these people prefer death
+to life because they do not find life worth their while. There is not
+enough in it to satisfy them. To use an Emersonian phrase, life is to
+them no more than "a sucked orange." When the perfume, the aroma, the
+taste, the tints, and the juices have been extracted from the fruit--who
+cares for what is left.
+
+Of course, these remarks have no reference to the cases of sudden
+suicide, committed in a moment of frenzy--when a man driven, as it were,
+by a storm in the brain, lets go of his hold and slips into the
+darkness. The professor has in mind rather those who even though they do
+not commit suicide, live on reluctantly, under protest, and who treat
+life as we would a guest who has overstaid his welcome, and to whose
+final departure we look forward with pleasure.
+
+But there is still another class of pessimists who need to be reasoned
+with. These are the people who brood over the existence of evil in the
+world, and feel the misery of the many so keenly, that they think it
+involves a point of honor to consent to be happy in such a world. The
+contemplation of human sorrow, the surging waves of which break upon
+every shore; and the cry of human anguish rising like the blind cry of
+all the seas that roll, has a tendency to slacken the hold of the
+reflective mind upon life. Prof. James admits that pessimism is
+essentially a religious disease, in the sense that it results from the
+inability of man to entertain two contradictory thoughts at the same
+time: A father in heaven, whose tender mercies are over all his
+children, and children dying of hunger and neglect! Infinite wisdom
+enthroned in heaven, and a world running topsy-turvy. The refined mind
+cannot contemplate this contradiction without distress. If God is
+everywhere, why is there darkness anywhere? If there is within reach an
+ocean of truth, why is it doled out to us in driblets which hardly wet
+our lips, when we are burning with thirst? Religion provokes desires
+which it cannot satisfy, and makes promises which it will not fulfil. It
+is this contradiction which bites the soul black and blue. God is
+infinite! and behold we are starving. God is light! and we grope in
+darkness. God is great! and we cannot budge without crutches. It is this
+thought which teases us out of our peace of mind. The idea of a God,
+gifted with infinite parts, measured against the helplessness of man,
+makes for pessimism.
+
+But in the opinion of Prof. James, religion alone can cure the disease
+which religion creates. By religion, he does not mean merely loving
+one's neighbor and being loyal to one's best thoughts. Religion,
+according to Prof. James, means the belief that beyond this present
+life, "there is an unseen world of which we now know nothing positive
+but in its relation to which the significance of our mundane life
+consists." If this is the first act of an unending drama, it would have
+great worth and significance, but if it is a detached and disconnected
+piece, upon which the curtain will soon fall never to rise again--if it
+is never going to be finished--it loses, according to Prof. James, its
+seriousness. In other words, it is the belief that man is an eternal
+being whom no catastrophe can crush or annihilate, which makes our
+present existence worth while, and which also reconciles us to the
+discipline of pain and evil. Life is worth living, in short, if man is
+immortal. This is the drift of Prof. James' teaching, as it is also that
+of all supernaturalists.
+
+What evidence does the professor offer to prove the existence of an
+unseen world and the immortality of man? He offers none. He admits that
+science has not as yet demonstrated the reality of an invisible world.
+Perhaps it never will, but what of that? "You have got a right to
+believe in an unseen world," declares the professor. Is it not
+interesting? It will be seen that if the professor has no evidence, he
+has many arguments. One of his arguments is that, since, we must either
+believe or disbelieve in a future life, neutrality in the matter being
+an unattainable thing, why not take our choice, and while we are at it,
+choose immortality. Another argument is, that as our longings and
+yearnings in other directions have turned out to be prophetic, we have
+every reason to believe that the desire for eternal life also will be
+fulfilled. Art, science, music, health, have come to us because of an
+inner impulse which prompted us to go after them. A similar impulse
+urges us to seek the divine, which is a sort of proof that the divine
+exists. Still another argument is this: All the great successes or
+achievements of life came as a result of the courage that takes risks.
+Without audacity, man would never have crossed the ocean, or invented
+the aeroplane. If the belief in immortality requires the taking of
+risks, if it is hazardous even to hold it, we should not hesitate on
+that account, since some of the best things have come to us by taking
+risks. Start out for God and immortality; and some day you may cast
+anchor in the shining waters that lap the shores of a divine continent.
+"We are free to trust at our own risk anything that is not impossible,"
+concludes the professor. Finally, there is the argument from analogy,
+which I may explain by a personal experience. In the Pasteur Institute
+in Paris, last summer, I saw in the vivisection room, physicians in
+their white aprons, operating upon live rabbits, cutting and dissecting
+them, while the helpless creatures were so fastened to the tables that
+they could not move a muscle. Now all this must seem very cruel to the
+rabbit. It must think the physician a butcher, devoid of all feeling,
+or justice, and it must perforce denounce the world in which such wanton
+torture is inflicted by the strong upon the weak. But if the rabbit
+could take a larger view, if it could be made to see that its sufferings
+are contributing to the progress of science and the amelioration of the
+conditions of life upon this planet, and thereby helping to hasten the
+day when disease shall be conquered, would it not be reconciled to the
+physician's knife and the operating table? The larger view which would
+embrace the world unseen will help to give to evil, suffering and
+misery, which now we do not understand, a _raison d'etre_. The part of
+wisdom as well as of courage then, is to "believe what is in the line of
+our needs, for only by the belief is the need fulfilled. Refuse to
+believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably
+perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save
+yourself."
+
+It will be seen by what has preceded, that Prof. James of Harvard
+University, throws the weight of his influence on the side of those who
+have always maintained that God and immortality are indispensable to the
+happiness of man. In his opinion, what a man would be if deprived of his
+reason, the universe would be if deprived of a God, and life, of a
+future existence. The eminent psychologist takes the further position
+that it is immaterial whether or not there is any evidence to prove the
+existence of a God or of a life after death. If the belief is essential
+to our happiness and usefulness, he thinks we have got the right to
+entertain it, irrespective of the question of evidence. "If there is a
+belief of any kind to which you have taken a special fancy, or one that
+you feel like crying for," the professor seems to say, "help yourself to
+it; you have only yourself to suit." Even if such a belief should
+involve an element of risk, we are urged to take the risk. If it
+requires audacity even to believe in a God and immortality, we are told
+to have the audacity. It is his idea that when we are dealing with the
+unknown, the important thing is the heart's desire, and not the question
+of evidence. In passing, I might suggest that Prof. James would never
+have thought of pushing aside with such nonchalance, the question of
+evidence, were it not for an irrepressible suspicion that the evidence
+is against him. He hopes to do without the evidence because the evidence
+will not help him. This reminds us of the saying of the philosopher
+Hobbes, that, men are generally against reason when reason is against
+_them_.
+
+As already intimated, the liberal party in the church regards Prof.
+James as a defender of the faith. He is classed with such men as Sir
+Oliver Lodge and Lord Kelvin, who though scientists still believe in the
+supernatural, and by their example have made such a belief respectable.
+It must be borne in mind, however, that these distinguished men are
+Christians only, if at all, in a very loose sense of the word. All the
+cardinal doctrines of revelation, such as the creation, the atonement,
+the incarnation, and a personal God--even one, to say nothing of a
+trinity--they reject. These gentlemen have not enough faith to be
+baptised to-day, had they not been baptised in their childhood,--or to
+be received into any Christian church without greatly stretching the
+rules in their behalf. It remains then quite true, and the argument has
+not yet been answered, that there is not a single eminent thinker in
+the world to-day who will subscribe to the creed of Christendom
+without first going through it with a blue pencil, or a pair of
+scissors. But Prof. James, as also Lodge and Kelvin, if they are
+not supernaturalists in the ordinary sense of the word, neither are they
+anti-supernaturalists. They are between and betwixt, if I may use that
+phrase--not quite ready to part with supernaturalism altogether, nor yet
+able to hold on to it in its entirety, and so they linger somewhere on
+the borders or the edge of it.
+
+The first remark I have to make on the position of these newly recruited
+defenders of supernaturalism--even though the supernaturalism which they
+defend be of the attenuated kind--is, that their argument is not even an
+improvement on that of the theologian. I like the dogmatic and
+autocratic, "thus saith the Lord," of theology, much better than the
+"suit yourself" of these gentlemen. The one position is as destructive
+of intellectual integrity, as the other. The theologian starts with the
+fallacy that God can make a thing true by an act of his will--that his
+_say so_ makes all need of evidence superfluous. Prof. James and the men
+of his school start with a proposition equally fatal to the
+truth--namely; that whatever we wish to be true concerning the unknown
+is true. All that is needed, for instance, to give the universe a God is
+to wish for one. All that is necessary to make a man immortal is to
+desire and believe that he is. "The Will to Believe," which is the
+title of one of the professor's writings, makes truth the creature of
+man, as theology makes it the creature of God. You see that after all,
+the theologian and the "scientific" supernaturalist pull together. That
+is to say, when science lends itself to theology, it ceases to be
+scientific. It is not theology that goes over to science, but science
+that goes over to theology. As soon as science appears at the camp of
+theology, it is forthwith swallowed up. When Prof. James speaks of the
+"will to believe," and never mind the evidence, he is borrowing from
+theology, the "will to create" of God.
+
+Even as the Deity in creating did not have to consider anything but his
+glory and pleasure, likewise man in believing does not have to consider
+anything but his needs and desires. Ask, "What is Truth?" and the
+theologian answers: "Whatever God wants it to be." Ask now the scientist
+allies of the supernatural, "What is Truth," and they answer: "Whatever
+man desires or craves it to be." Of course, it may be objected that it
+is only concerning the unknown that man is permitted to dispense with
+evidence and consult his will. But there is no merit, for instance, in a
+man not telling any falsehoods where he is sure of being found out; his
+character is tested by his refusal to lie where he is sure he never will
+be found out. It is concerning the unknown about which we can say
+anything and everything we please without the fear of ever being caught,
+that we should restrain ourselves and show our loyalty to the
+everlasting law of honor, never to depart from veracity. To make any
+assertions about the unknown is to take an undue advantage of one's
+neighbors. "Truth is not mine to do with it as I please," said Giordano
+Bruno, "I must obey the truth, not command it." But the
+theologico-scientific position is the very reverse of this. If a god
+were to ask the question, "What is Truth?" His priests would answer,
+"Lord, suit thyself." If men asked, "What is Truth?" the Harvard
+professor and his colleagues would reply, "It depends upon your will to
+believe."
+
+The name given to this "free and easy philosophy," if I may use such
+an expression--is pragmatism, which is a word from the Greek root
+_pragmatikos_, whence our word "practice" and "practical." The idea
+at the basis of this philosophy is that whatever is practical and
+business-like--whatever is necessary to a given program, is
+authoritative. The philosopher, Kant, was one of the first to urge that
+we have a right to believe as we please concerning the things which we
+can neither prove nor disprove by evidence, if such beliefs are
+necessary to morality. His modern disciples following his leadership,
+take the position that it is the usefulness of a hypothesis or a belief,
+and not its truth, that should concern us. "Does it work," is the test,
+they say, of the value of a scheme or statement, and not, "Is it true?"
+If it works, what do we care whether or not it be true. If it does not
+work, it is of no help to us even if it were true. This is identically
+the same argument which is advanced by the Roman Catholics, to justify
+for instance, the belief in the existence, somewhere in the universe, of
+a place called purgatory. "The doctrine of purgatory works," argues the
+priest, and therefore, it makes no difference whether or not such a
+place really exists. It is a useful, consoling and profitable doctrine.
+Therefore it is as good as true. In the phraseology of pragmatism,
+millions of people want a purgatory, therefore, there is one. And once
+again, to the question, "What is Truth," the answer of both the
+theologian and the pragmatist is, "Do not bother about it." And this
+describes the attitude of the Protestant as well as of the Catholic
+toward truth. They do not bother about it. Yes, _they do not bother
+about it_. That is why progress limps and the darkness lingers. People
+have been brought up not to bother about truth, which explains why error
+is still king of more than half of the world. I cannot find the
+words--all words fail me to express my disappointment that a teacher of
+the youth in one of our great institutions, who are to be the America of
+tomorrow, should in any way contribute to the impression that truth is
+secondary; that our needs, our interests, our inclinations, or our
+whims, come first, and that if we have not the courage to look the truth
+in the face, we can turn around and make terms with myth and fable.
+
+If we were disposed to trip the professor, or by one single thrust to
+disqualify him for further action in the arena of thought, we could say
+that even from the point of view of the pragmatist, truth comes first,
+and that by no imaginable manoeuvring can truth be shifted to a
+subordinate rank. It cannot be done. Listen! You may not have to prove
+the existence of a God, or of a future, or of a purgatory, before
+believing in it. Granted: but you have to prove and you are trying to
+prove, that it is _true_ that you do not have to prove them. Even
+pragmatists who say that utility is before truth, labor to prove that it
+is _true_ that utility is before truth. In other words, they have got to
+prove the truth of their theory, whatever that may be, before they can
+make it have any value, or before it can command our respect. Things
+have to be true else they cannot exist. All the labor of Prof. James has
+for its object the demonstration of what he considers to be a truth,
+namely: that the truth of the belief concerning the unknown is not
+essential. In other words, God may be true or not, a future life may be
+true or not, but it has to be true that it makes no difference whether
+they are true or not. Wiggle as we may, we cannot escape the ring of
+reason that embraces life. This is what I mean when I say that the stars
+fight for Rationalism. Truth is so tightly screwed and made fast to the
+top of the flag-pole that even hands of iron and steel cannot pull it
+down to a lower notch.
+
+A second remark I would make on Prof. James' manner of reasoning is that
+such arguments as he uses to prop up the belief in God and immortality
+show, not confidence, but desperation, if it is not too strong a word to
+use. Urging us to take risks, to have the audacity, to ignore the
+question of evidence, to suit ourselves, and, not to mind the facts, is
+not the language of sobriety, but of recklessness. To say to a man
+standing on the edge of a precipice and looking down into a chasm of
+unknown depth and darkness, to jump over, because, perchance, he may
+discover his heart's desire at the bottom, is frantic advice, and a man
+has to be in a panicky state of mind to let go of the sun and of the
+green earth for a possible world at the bottom of the abyss. It was a
+thought of Emerson that the humblest bug crawling in the dust with its
+back to the sun, and shining with the colors of the rainbow, is a thing
+more sublime than any possible angel. If there were the slightest
+foundation for the belief in an unseen world, no one would think of
+resorting to such extreme measures as our learned professor does, to
+uphold it. When I see a man huffing and puffing, I do not conclude that
+he has a strong case, on the contrary, I am apt to suspect that it is
+the weakness of his cause which has disturbed his serenity. To tell us
+that we can will ourselves immortal, or will God into existence, and
+that all we need is the audacity to plunge into the unknown, whatever
+the risks, reminds me of La Fontaine's parable of the frog--who thought
+he could will himself into the size of a cow--with fatal results. The
+beginning of wisdom is to recognize one's limitations. To tell a man
+that he can _will_ things into existence is to do him an injury. Pitiful
+is the God, and chimerical the immortality that has no better foundation
+than the whim of man.
+
+According to the doctrine of "The will to believe" there would be no God
+if there were no men to "will" his existence, and no immortality if men
+did not desire it. This is theology dressed up as philosophy or science.
+How was the world made? And the theologians answer, God said, "Let there
+be light, and there was light." How was God made? And the pragmatists
+answer, "Man said, let there be a God, and there was one." This is
+trifling. If the word is not too harsh, I shall call it sophistry, or
+mental gymnastics, to which men never resort except when straight
+reasoning will not help them.
+
+Sophistry is a plea of guilty. I was debating the other evening in a
+Milwaukee theater on the question of the responsibility for the burning
+of Joan of Arc. While listening to the defense of the gentleman who was
+trying to prove that the Catholic Church was not responsible for her
+martyrdom, I said to myself that such a defense would never have been
+thought of were it not for the fact that the old claim that the church
+of God cannot err had not broken down. In the same way the defense that
+the bible should be taken allegorically, proves that the old position
+that the bible is from cover to cover the word of God with every letter
+and punctuation, as well as word and meaning inspired, is no longer
+tenable. To say that the bible must not be taken literally is but
+another way of saying that the bible is not true, or that you can make
+it mean what you please. Men never put up such a defense for anything
+unless they are driven to it by sheer desperation.
+
+My third remark on the pragmatic philosophy of Professor James is that,
+besides doing violence to our reason, his doctrine that an unseen world
+is indispensable to make life worth living, or to help make the world
+moral, places man not only in an unenviable light, but it also does him
+a great injustice. If it is true that a man will make a beast of himself
+if he finds out that he is not a God, I take the position that he is
+beyond hope. Nothing can save him. But it is not true. It is a priestly
+tale that a man will not behave himself unless we can promise him the
+moon, or the sun, or eternity. A man would only be a contemptible animal
+if he must be given toys and trinkets and sawdust dolls to divert his
+attention from mischief. The claim of the preachers that unless men are
+assured of black-eyed houris and golden harps, or at least,--some sort
+of a ghostly existence,--somewhere and at sometime in the future, they
+will convert life into a debauch, is simply a falsehood. Man is not so
+depraved as that. Indeed, the doctrine of total depravity was invented
+by the priests to create a demand for the offices of the church. The
+priest cannot afford to believe in human nature. If a man can save
+himself, or if he can do good by his own effort, what need would there
+be of the mysteries and the sacraments,--the rites and the dogmas?
+
+I had occasion to tell you a few Sundays ago that if a lily can be
+white, or a rose so wondrous fair, or a dog so loyal and heroic, without
+dickering with the universe for a future reward, man can do, at least,
+as much. Would this be expecting too much of him?
+
+In France, there is, in one of the close-by suburbs of Paris, a cemetery
+for dogs. Of course, no priest or pastor would think of officiating at
+the interment of a dog, however useful or faithful the animal may have
+been. They are brought here by their owners and quietly buried. The
+visitor finds here, however, many tokens of appreciation and gratitude
+for the services and value of the dog to man. Little monuments are
+raised over the remains of some of the occupants of the modest graves.
+One of these bears the inscription: "He saved forty lives, and lost his
+own in the attempt to save the forty-first." He did his best without the
+hope of a future reward. Is man lower than the animal? Does he require
+the help of the Holy Ghost, the holy angels, the holy Trinity, the holy
+infallible church, and all the terrors of hell fire to make him prefer
+sense to nonsense, cleanliness to dirt, honor to disgrace, the respect
+of his fellows to their contempt, and a peaceful mind to one full of
+scorpions? Do we have to swing into existence fabled and mythical beings
+and worlds before we can induce a human being to be as natural as a
+plant and as faithful as a dog? The doctrine of total depravity is a
+disgrace to those who have invented it, and a blight to those who
+believe in it. It is not true that we have to be put through acrobatic
+exercises,--make our reason turn somersaults, resort to
+sophistry,--become frantic with fear about our future,--postulate the
+existence of ghosts, Gods, and celestial abodes before we can prefer the
+good to the bad and the light to darkness. Supernaturalism is both
+negative and destructive. It denies goodness, and it destroys in man the
+power of self-help. Von Humboldt's indignation seems pardonable, when he
+used the word "infamous," to characterize the theologian's attempt to
+make the well-being of the human race depend upon such supernatural
+gossip as he had to market.
+
+And what is the verdict of history on this question? Does the belief in
+God and immortality make for morality? How then shall we explain the
+dark ages which were ages of faith, and why are not the Moslems, whose
+faith in Allah and in a future life is very much stronger than ours, a
+more moral people than the Europeans or Americans? Why was King Leopold,
+the Christian, a moral leper to the hour of his death, while Socrates,
+the pagan, who was uncertain about the future, has perfumed the
+centuries with his virtues? Has the belief in the supernatural prevented
+the criminal waste of human life, protected the child from the
+sweat-shop and the factory, or even robbed religion of its sting--the
+sting whose bite is mortal to tolerance, brotherhood and intellectual
+honesty? There are excellent people who believe in the supernatural and
+equally excellent people who ignore the supernatural, from which it
+would follow that excellence of character is independent of one's
+speculations about either the eternal past, or the eternal future. It is
+not true then that we have to prove to man that he has always existed,
+or that he shall always exist before we can make him see that the sunset
+is beautiful, or that the sea is vast, or that love is the greatest
+thing in the world.
+
+A man will be careful of his health whether he expects to live again or
+not. He will avoid headaches, fevers, colds, anaemia, nervous
+prostrations and diseases of every kind which rack the body and make
+life a misery, irrespective of his attitude to the question of survival
+after death. The question of health, then, which is a very important
+one, is independent of any supernatural belief. It would not affect our
+health a particle were the heavens empty or full of gods. In the same
+way, men will continue the culture of the mind irrespective of
+theological beliefs. Will a man neglect the pleasures of the mind,
+despise knowledge and remain content in his ignorance, if he cannot be
+sure that he is going to live forever? But if neither the culture of the
+body nor that of the mind is in danger of being neglected, is there any
+reason to fear that the culture of the affections and the conscience
+will suffer without a belief in an unseen world? We have only to look
+into the motives which govern human actions to recover our confidence in
+the essential soundness of human nature, and in the ability of morality
+to take care of itself without the help of ghosts and gods. You love
+your country and you are willing to defend its institutions, if need be,
+with your life, but is it because your country is immortal? Is America
+going to live forever? Is it going to have a future existence? And yet
+Washington and his soldiers loved it dearly and risked their lives for
+it. Were the ancient Greeks and Romans, to whom patriotism was a
+religion, and who loved and fought for their country--fools, because
+they did not first make sure that their country was going to live
+forever? You are devoted to art, you have built palaces for the
+treasures of the brush and the chisel. You have paid fabulous prices for
+the works of a Rembrandt and a Titian. Is it because these paintings are
+never going to perish? Is the canvas which you adore immortal? You prize
+the works of genius--of a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Voltaire, a Darwin.
+You have edifices of marble and steel in which to house the great books
+of the world. And yet a fire tomorrow may wipe them out of
+existence--they may become lost, as many great works have been lost in
+the past. Nevertheless, are they not precious while we have them? If a
+humane society will interest itself in the welfare of the horse and the
+cat and the dog, which live but a few years; if the flower which blooms
+in the morning and fades in the evening can command our attention and
+devotion--must a man be a god before we can take any interest in him?
+Must somebody be always whispering in our ears, "Ye are gods; ye are
+gods," to prevent us from doing violence to ourselves or to our fellows?
+And men seek health for the present, not for the future. And they
+cultivate the mind to make life richer now and here. And love is desired
+because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstasy. What then
+is the value of any speculation about the unseen world, since man can
+care for his body, mind and heart, without venturing out on an ocean for
+which he has neither the sails nor the compass?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the unseen world is necessary, the professor seems to think, in
+order to explain the suffering and the injustice in this. In my opinion,
+such a belief has done more to postpone the reform of present abuses
+than anything else. The time to suppress injustice and to relieve human
+suffering is now, not in some distant future,--here and not in an
+undiscovered country. The belief in God has tempted man to shirk his
+responsibilities. He has left many things to be done by God which he
+should have done himself. It is a nobler religion that tells man to do
+all he can now, and to do it himself. Moreover, how can what is wrong
+here be made right in the next world? What, for instance, can make Joan
+of Arc's atrocious murder--a girl of nineteen, who had saved her
+country, roasted over a slow fire--right in heaven? What explanation can
+the Deity give to us which shall reconcile us to so infamous a crime. A
+million eternities, it seems to me, cannot alter the character of that
+act. The deed cannot be undone. That frightful page cannot be torn from
+the book of life. You cannot destroy the memory of that injustice; you
+cannot rub so foul a stain from the hands of even a God. Suppose God
+were to say to us in the next world that this crime was necessary to the
+progress of civilization. Would that satisfy us? Would we not still wish
+for a God who could have contributed to the progress of civilization
+without resorting to so unspeakable a murder? And there you are. Another
+world can never reconcile us to a policy that required the commission
+of crimes whose stench rises to our nostrils. What is wrong can never be
+made right.
+
+You remember that to illustrate the thought of Professor James, I spoke
+of my visit to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where, in the vivisection
+hall, I saw the physicians operating on live rabbits. Professor James
+thinks that if the rabbit could see everything, it might say to the
+physician, "Thy will be done." But the rabbit might also say this: "It
+is well to advance science and civilization; and if it is a part of the
+_scheme_ to make me contribute to it by my sufferings, I am resigned;
+but what about the character of the _schemer_ who must torture to death
+some of his creatures--slaughter with excruciating pain a portion of his
+family--in order to make secure the lives of the rest?" The existence of
+evil in a world created by a perfect God is the rock upon which all
+religions go to pieces. If God can prevent misery and crime, but prefers
+to work through them, he is to be feared; if he cannot help himself,
+then he is to be pitied. Who would not rather be the rabbit on the
+operating table, with the knife in his flesh, than such a God! A God who
+cannot make a rose red except by dipping it in human blood can be sure
+that no human being would ever envy him his office. On the last day of
+judgment, if such a day there be, it will not be the rabbit, or man, who
+will fear the opening of the books; it will be God.
+
+And how do we know that things will be better in the unseen world?
+Suppose they should be worse? Jesus intimated that the next world would
+be worse, for he says in Matthew 7:13-14, "Wide is the gate, and broad
+is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in
+thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
+leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."
+
+Surely this is not an encouraging prospect. A future which offers
+happiness to a small minority cannot be looked forward to with
+enthusiasm. Neither is the thought of a few saved and the many damned a
+consolation. One of the oft-repeated claims is that the belief in God
+and immortality is such a happiness that he must be an enemy of his race
+who would deprive people of it. Even Rationalists are said to envy the
+believer his peace of mind. But the truth is the very opposite of this.
+There is abundant testimony to prove that of all people the real and
+consistent believer is the most unhappy being in the world. The
+proverbial unhappiness of the Rationalist, like the proverbial death-bed
+horrors of a Thomas Paine and a Voltaire, is a pure fabrication. While
+there is absolutely nothing in Rationalism to make anybody miserable,
+since it does away with fear, which is the only thing to fear,
+Orthodoxy, on the other hand, starts by not only calling this a vale of
+tears, but proceeds forthwith to make it so. If we were to place the
+greatest known Christian saints on the stand to interrogate them on this
+subject, they would one and all confirm our statement. Listen, for
+instance, to the confession of Thomas a Kempis: "Lord, I am not worthy
+of thy consolation.... Thou dealest justly with me when thou leavest me
+poor and desolate, for if I could shed tears as the sea, yet should I
+not be worthy of thy consolation. I am worthy only to be scourged and
+punished."[A] These are not the words of a buoyant and happy soul. And
+listen to the lamentation of John Bunyan: "Sometimes I could for whole
+days together feel my very body as well as my mind to shake and totter
+under the sense of this dreadful judgment of God.... I felt also such a
+clogging and heat in my stomach by reason of this terror that I thought
+my breast-bone would split asunder. Oh, how gladly would I have been
+anything but a man."[B] I could quote long chapters from the biographies
+of the saints to show the wretchedness, the despair and the agony of the
+believer, shuddering upon the brink of eternity--uncertain whether
+heaven or hell awaits to receive him. I could give you a similar chapter
+from my own experience. When I was much younger, I had implicit faith in
+the bible and the unseen world. What was the effect of this belief upon
+me? Did it make me happy? I can never forget the moments of agony I
+spent on my knees, at the "throne of grace." My pillow was often wet
+with weeping over sins I had never committed, and fearing a depravity I
+could never be guilty of. Christianity in its virile form took hold of
+my young heart as the roots of a tree take hold of the earth in which
+they grow. I was as sensitive and responsive to its influence as fire is
+to the wind that fans it into flame. "Am I saved? How can I be sure that
+God has forgiven me? Where would I open my eyes if I should die tonight?
+Oh, God! what if I should after all be one of the reprobates--damned
+forever." Such was the terrible superstition that cheated me out of a
+thousand glorious moments, and made my youth a punishment to me. One day
+a member of my church came to me in great distress of mind. He behaved
+like one who had actually seen hell. "I am damned, I am damned," he
+cried. "God has forsaken me; there is no hope for me." If a wild beast
+had its paws in his hair, or a hound its teeth in his flesh, he could
+not have been more scared. If he could have only laughed at the stupid
+superstition, all the devils of his distorted imagination would have
+melted into thin air.
+
+  [A] _Imitation_--III 52.
+
+  [B] Quoted by Cotter Morrison, _Service of Man_--34.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Our religion does not trouble us that way," I hear the Christians say
+in reply. Of course not, they no longer believe in it. They let art,
+music, science, the drama, business, to divert their attention from this
+Asiatic fetish. Rationalism has dissipated the terrors of the future,
+and tinted the horizon with beauty and light. But let them believe in
+Christianity as their fathers believed in it, let them be sincere with
+it, and it will make life miserable for them as it has for thousands of
+others. Yes, believe in Christianity as the Apostle Paul did, for
+example, and you must agree with him, that, "If in this life only we
+have a hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." And listen to
+the cry of despair from the lips of the Son of God: "My God, My God, why
+hast Thou forsaken me?" The nails in his hands and feet tore his flesh,
+but it was the thought that he had been forsaken by God that broke his
+heart. Surely, if a belief in a future life could make anybody happy, it
+should have made the death of Jesus a symphony, instead of a tragedy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In conclusion: Not God, nor the unseen world, but Truth is the sovereign
+good. There is nothing more excellent. If there be philosophies, they
+shall pass away; if there be theologies, they shall pass away; if there
+be creeds, cults, gods, they shall pass away. But Truth is _from_
+everlasting _to_ everlasting.
+
+     In my mind's eye, I see a wonderful building, something like the
+     Coliseum of ancient Rome. The galleries are black with people; tier
+     upon tier rise like waves the multitude of spectators who have come
+     to see a great contest. A great contest, indeed! A contest in which
+     all the world and all the centuries are interested. It is the
+     contest--the fight to death--between Truth and Error.
+
+     The door opens, and a slight, small, shy and insignificant looking
+     thing steps into the arena. It is Truth. The vast audience bursts
+     into hilarious and derisive laughter. Is this Truth? This
+     shuddering thing in tattered clothes, and almost naked? And the
+     house shakes again with mocking and hisses.
+
+     The door opens again, and Error enters,--clad in cloth of gold,
+     imposing in appearance, tall of stature, glittering with gems,
+     sleek and huge and ponderous, causing the building to tremble with
+     the thud of its steps. The audience is for a moment dazzled into
+     silence, then it breaks into applause, long and deafening.
+     "Welcome!" "Welcome!" is the greeting from the multitude.
+     "Welcome!" shout ten thousand throats.
+
+     The two contestants face each other. Error, in full armor,--backed
+     by the sympathies of the audience, greeted by the clamorous
+     cheering of the spectators; and Truth, scorned, scoffed at, and
+     _hated_. "The issue is a foregone conclusion," murmurs the vast
+     audience. "Error will trample Truth under its big feet."
+
+     The battle begins. The two clinch, separate, and clinch again.
+     Truth holds its own. The spectators are alarmed. Anxiety appears in
+     their faces. Their voices grow faint. Is it possible? Look! See!
+     There! Error recedes! It fears the gaze of Truth! It shuns its
+     beauteous eyes! Hear it squeak and scream as it feels Truth's
+     squeeze upon its wrists. Error is trying to break away from Truth's
+     grip. It is making for the door. It is gone!
+
+     The spectators are mute. Every tongue is smitten with the palsy.
+     The people bite their lips until they bleed. They cannot explain
+     what they have seen. "Who would have believed it?" "Is it
+     possible?"--they exclaim. But they can not doubt what their eyes
+     have seen. That puny and insignificant looking thing called Truth
+     has put ancient and entrenched Error, backed by the throne, the
+     altar, the army, the press, the people, and the gods--to rout.
+
+The pursuit of truth! Is not that worth living for? To seek the truth,
+to love the truth, to live the truth? Can any religion offer more?
+
+What is the remedy for the pessimism that asks, "Is life worth living?"
+A sound mind in a sound body. There is no better preventive of that
+depression of spirits whence proceed the diseases which menace life,
+and mar the happiness of man, than health--moral, intellectual,
+physical--health; individual and social health. The highest ideal of
+Christianity is a man of sorrows. The highest ideal of Rationalism is a
+man of joy!
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF MY MIND OR HOW I BECAME A RATIONALIST
+
+_Price, Fifty Cents_
+
+# In this latest publication of the Independent Religious Society, M. M.
+Mangasarian describes his religious experience--how, starting as a
+Calvinist, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and a pastor of
+the Spring Garden Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, he thought and
+fought his way up to
+
+RATIONALISM
+
+# The book contains a dedication to "My Children," in which the author
+says:
+
+     "I am going to put the story in writing, that you may have it with
+     you when I am gone, to remind you of the aims and interests for
+     which I lived, as well as to acquaint you with the most earnest and
+     intimate period in my career as a teacher of men."
+
+ _ORDER THROUGH_
+ THE INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY
+ CHICAGO
+
+
+EARLIER PUBLICATIONS BY MR. MANGASARIAN
+
+ =A New Catechism.= Fifth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with Portrait
+     of Author. Price                                              $1.00
+
+ =The Truth About Jesus: Is He a Myth?= A new book of 295 pages.
+     Illustrated. Cloth, $1.00; Paper                              $0.50
+
+ =Mangasarian-Crapsey Debate on the Historicity of Jesus.= 25c.
+
+ =Pearls.= (New Edition.) Brave Thoughts from Brave Minds. Selected
+     and arranged by M. M. Mangasarian. 25c. Presentation Edition,
+     limp leather                                                  $1.00
+
+
+A FEW LECTURES--10c A COPY
+
+ Is the Morality of Jesus Sound?
+ Rome-Rule in Ireland, with Postlude on Ferrer.
+ How the Bible Was Invented.
+ Morality Without God.
+
+Sent postpaid on receipt of price. Ask for complete list.
+
+ INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS SOCIETY
+ CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+
+The following is a list of changes made to the original. The first line
+is the original line, the second the corrected one.
+
+    other gods before me" which is metaphysical and without
+    other gods before me," which is metaphysical and without
+
+    a _raison d'etre_. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then,
+    a _raison d'etre_. The part of wisdom as well as of courage then,
+
+    take an undue advantage of one's neighbors," "Truth is not
+    take an undue advantage of one's neighbors. "Truth is not
+
+    manoeuvreing can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank.
+    manoeuvring can truth be shifted to a subordinate rank.
+
+    frantic advice, and a man has to be in a panicy state of mind
+    frantic advice, and a man has to be in a panicky state of mind
+
+    because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstacy.
+    because it makes each passing moment a thrill and an ecstasy.
+
+    straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
+    strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
+
+    instance, to the confession of Thomas A'Kempis: "Lord, I
+    instance, to the confession of Thomas a Kempis: "Lord, I
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Is Life Worth Living Without
+Immortality?, by M. M. Mangasarian
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IS LIFE WORTH LIVING WITHOUT ***
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