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 APR 17 1974 
 
APR 17 1974 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE EAST:, 
 
 OK, 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, 
 
 AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ITS RISE 
 
 AND DECLINE. 
 
 V 
 FELIX L. OSWALD. 
 
 " If the right theory should ever be proclaimed, we shall know 
 it by this token : that it will solve many riddles."— J?. W. Emerson. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY, 
 
 28 Lafayette Place. 
 
Copyrighted, 1883. 
 
 BY 
 
 Felix L. Oswald. 
 
THE MEMORY OP 
 
 JORDANUS BRUNO, 
 
 THE HEROIC APOSTLE OP 
 
 NATURE, FREEDOM, AND TRUE RELIGION, 
 
 THIS WORK IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED 
 BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The right of free inquiry is the first condition 
 of progress, and dogmatists who dispute that right 
 virtually impeach the evidence or the morality of 
 their own dogmas. An exception from that rule 
 may, under certain conditions, be admitted in 
 favor of theological tenets. Unobtrusive mystics 
 have a right to expound the unknowable after 
 their own fashion. The priests of Isis and the 
 adepts of the Eleusinian Mysteries had the priv- 
 ilege to veil the secrets of their sacred rites. 
 The discreet Pythagoreans could not be obliged to 
 explain the bean-law of their master or their rea- 
 son for believing in his ghost-stories as firmly as 
 in the evidence of his geometrical theorems. 
 Even nocturnal devil-worshippers may be per- 
 mitted to mumble about their altars, if they do 
 not dress them at the expense of their neighbors. 
 
 But it alters the case, if such creeds become 
 aggressive. The right of secrecy does not pertain 
 to religions that have devastated our earth by a 
 series of murderous wars, that have enforced their 
 
THE SEC11ET OF THE EAST. 
 
 anti-natural dogmas by destroying the prosperity 
 of whole nations, and their ghost-dogmas by the 
 torture and slaughter of millions ; religions which, 
 after the loss of their political power, have used 
 all their moral influence to obstruct the progress 
 of freedom and science, to arrogate the education 
 of our children, and to interfere with the recrea- 
 tions of our holidays,— all under the pretext of 
 promoting the propaganda of an infallible revela- 
 tion. The votaries of such creeds cannot plead 
 the privileges of the ancient mystics, for the right 
 to investigate their claims has become a social and 
 religious duty. Those who recognize that duty 
 will approve the purpose of the present work. 
 
 Felix L. Oswald. 
 Cincinnati, September, 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 9 
 
 I. The Genesis of Pessimism, 15 
 
 II. Buddha and his Galilean Sdooessob, ... 23 
 
 m. The Ethics of the Christian Religion, . . 33 
 
 IV. The Convebsion of Eubope, 52 
 
 V. The Night of the Middle Ages, 65 
 
 VI. An Expensive Creed, 78 
 
 VII. Daybreak, . 93 
 
 VIII. The Protestant Revolt, 104 
 
 IX. Regenesis, . 115 
 
 Appendix. .122 
 
THE SEOEET OF THE EAST; 
 
 OH. 
 
 The Origin op the Christian Religion and the 
 Significance op its Rise and Decline. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "Who has unlocked the gate3 of the morning T'—Sadi. 
 
 The wisest man of all nations and times warns 
 the seeker after truth against the influence of what 
 he calls the "idols (or illusions) of the tribe";* 
 that is, the traditional prejudices of his nation, 
 family, or sect, or, in other words, against the bias 
 of confounding hearsays with the results of our 
 own investigations. To him who could divest 
 himself of that bias, the history of civilization 
 during the last twenty centuries would present 
 itself in the succession of the following prominent 
 phenomena : — 
 
 I. 
 
 The development of a great cosmopolitan em- 
 pire. The military rigor of a belligerent common- 
 wealth, gradually relaxing under the influence of 
 prosperity and international commerce. Political 
 absolutism, co-existent with an almost unlimited 
 personal, social, and intellectual freedom. A flour- 
 ishing state of husbandry. Industrial progress in 
 * Novum Organon, lib. i., cap. 3. 
 
JO THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 the direction of architectural and agricultural im- 
 provements. An optimistic religion, founded on 
 a symbolic nature-worship, and supplemented, or 
 partly supplanted, by three rival systems of nat- 
 uralistic philosophy. Universal tolerance of all 
 tolerant religions. An excellent system of phys- 
 ical education. Flourishing schools of philosophy, 
 natural science, jurisprudence, rhetoric, and medi- 
 cine. Liberal patronage of the fine arts. Un- 
 paralleled material prosperity, flourishing cities, 
 active commerce, excellent roads. Love of health 
 and recognition of its social importance, free 
 aqueducts, free baths and gymnasia. The opti- 
 mism of the popular religion manifested in the 
 general worship of joy, cheerful festivals, inspiring 
 athletic games and field sports, though in the 
 larger cities the want of better diversions leading 
 to the brutal excesses of the gladiatorial combats. 
 ^Esthetic culture evinced in the love of scenic and 
 artistic beauty, poetry and music. 
 
 Summary: Nature- worship, agriculture, indus- 
 trial and scientific progress, commercial activity. 
 Wealth, luxury, and their concomitant vices, offset 
 by a naturalistic philosophy, and the love of ath- 
 letic sports, physical education and health-promot- 
 ing institutions. Intellectual and aesthetic culture, 
 tolerance, material prosperity, and the successful 
 pursuit of earthly happiness. 
 
 II. 
 
 A general eclipse of common sense and science. 
 A wide-spread epidemic of anti-naturalism, mira- 
 cle-worship, and self-torture. Rapid decline of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 industry. The neglect of rational agriculture 
 turning thousands of fertile fields into . deserts. 
 Systematic suppression of political, personal, and 
 intellectual liberty. Religious terrorism, culminat- 
 ing in man hunts and wholesale massacres. Gen- 
 eral ignorance, brutal abasement of the lower 
 classes. Squalid misery of domestic life, general 
 indifference to the beauties of nature and the bless- 
 ings of health. A thousand years' interregnum 
 of science, Faith usurping the throne of Reason, 
 every branch of human knowledge withered by 
 the poison of supernaturalism, literary activity 
 limited to the production of homilies and miracle- 
 legends, education devoted to the suppression of 
 all natural instincts and the substitution of sub- 
 missive belief for the love of truth and free in- 
 quiry. Decadence of the fine arts, natural science 
 merged in a deluge of superstition. 
 
 Summary : Darkness, misery, and slavery. 
 
 III. 
 
 The dawn of a new day. Reason awakening 
 from her long slumber. A spirit of free inquiry 
 arraigning its votaries against the authority of 
 tradition. Gradual emancipation of common 
 sense. The success of a dogmatic insurrection 
 followed by an unprecedented revival of intellect- 
 ual activity, superstitions and abuses succumbing 
 to the successive triumphs of science. Social re- 
 construction, the recognition of human rights, a 
 general reform of juristic, administrative, and mu- 
 nicipal institutions, education redeemed from the 
 tyranny of anti-naturalism. Development of new 
 
12 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 sciences, new arts, and new branches of literature. 
 The increase of general prosperity furthered by 
 the progress of natural science, industry, and 
 rational agriculture, but retarded by the influence 
 of mediaeval reactions and lingering prejudices. 
 Material advantages counteracted by hereditary 
 vices, the purpose of free institutions partly de- 
 feated by traditional superstitions and hereditary 
 moral cowardice. 
 
 Summary: Traditional prejudices obstructing 
 the propaganda of a rationalistic reform, the after- 
 effects of moral and physical poisons resisting the 
 healing agencies of Nature. But, on the whole, 
 progress in the direction of light, freedom, and 
 happiness. 
 
 The most important problem in the history of 
 civilization is now the question : Whence this great 
 sunburst of knowledge? What magic has broken 
 the spell of the dreadful night? How has the 
 sunshine of our life been restored ? Is it the dawn 
 of a new day, or the end of an unnatural eclipse ? 
 The most frequent answer to these inquiries is 
 the theory which ascribes the blessings of modern 
 civilization to the influence of the system of 
 dogmas and traditions known as the Christian Re- 
 ligion. The doctrine of the New Testament, we are 
 told, is the leaven of the moral universe, the re- 
 forming agency that has redeemed the world from 
 vice and barbarism. Only Christian nations have 
 entered the path of progress. Virtue, humanity, 
 and true peace can prosper only in the shadow 
 of the cross. In the night of the Middle Ages, 
 the Bible was our beacon; and, as the cloud- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 pillar of a heavenly guide, it will lead our further 
 progress. 
 
 But, in examining the claims of these theorists, 
 the impartial inquirer cannot overlook the follow- 
 ing objections: 1. That the rise of the Christian 
 faith coincides with the sunset of the great South- 
 European civilization; 2. That the zenith of its 
 power coincides with the midnight of mediaeval 
 barbarism; 3. That the decline of its influence 
 coincides with the sunrise of a North-European 
 civilization; 4. That all the principal victories of 
 Freedom and Science have been achieved in spite 
 of the Church, in spite of her utmost efforts to 
 thwart or diminish their triumph, that only in 
 consequence of the futility of these efforts the 
 heresies of one age have become the truisms of the 
 next, so that Christianity has always marched in 
 the rear of civilization ; 5. That the exponents of 
 the Christian dogmas persist in their hostility to 
 the progress of a reform which they recognize only 
 by condescending to share the fruits of its former 
 victories; 6. That the worst enemies of political 
 and intellectual liberty were firm believers in the 
 dogmas of the New Testament, while the direct or 
 indirect repudiation of those dogmas has been the 
 fundamental tenet of nearly every great thinker, 
 scholar, or statesman, till the degree of Protestant- 
 ism has become the chief test of intellectual sanity ; 
 7. That, among the contemporary nations of the 
 Christian world, the most sceptical are the most 
 civilized, while the most orthodox are the most 
 backward in freedom, industry, and general intelli- 
 gence. 
 
14 THE SECRET OP THE EAST. 
 
 But, on the other hand, if the creed of the 
 Middle Ages was a pernicious superstition, how 
 could its exponents succeed in fastening their yoke 
 upon so many noble and manly nations? How 
 were they able to suppress the healthier instincts 
 of the human race, and perpetuate their power for 
 nearly sixteen centuries ? By what baneful magic 
 could the worst enemies of human happiness main- 
 tain themselves upon the throne of religion and 
 morality ? 
 
 The solution of the enigma has long been a half- 
 open secret, and, but for the clouds in the east, 
 should long have ceased to be a secret at all. One 
 by one, the covering veils have since been lifted, 
 till even the blind could have recognized the pal- 
 pable facts ; but though palpable, and often glar- 
 ingly visible, they have never yet become audible. 
 Their discoverers have been silenced with fire and 
 poison, with threats and bribes. Their promulga- 
 tion has been deprecated in the name of piety, in 
 the name of prudence, in the name of social wel- 
 fare, in the name of morality ; nay, in the name of 
 heaven and in the name of heaven's God. In the 
 course of the last eighteen hundred years, that God 
 has been appealed to under many strange pre- 
 texts. Let us for once invoke his aid in the name 
 of Truth. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE GENESIS OF PESSIMISM. 
 
 "Woe to the Sphinx, if we can solve her riddle."— J. P. 
 Richter. 
 
 About twenty-four hundred years ago, a relig- 
 ious Hindu retired to the hills of Barabar, near 
 Gaya, to meditate upon the problem of life and 
 the origin of evil. The Ceylon Buddhists date 
 the advent of their religion from 534 B.C., but 
 geographical traditions are generally more reliable 
 than chronological records ; and between Behar and 
 Patna, on the Upper Ganges, the traveller of the 
 future may linger in the valley of the Bar Mo- 
 hanan to visit the fountain of the great Marah, the 
 well of bitterness that has poisoned the life- 
 springs of so many hundred nations, and still 
 mixes its gall with the sources of our moral 
 food. 
 
 Near Buddha-Gaya, in the solitude of the Bara- 
 bar hill-forests, the mind of the brooding Hindu 
 evolved a system which has the theoretical advan- 
 tage of consistency. Ho proposed to solve the 
 problem of existence on the nihilistic plan, and 
 avoid the disappointments of life by renouncing 
 its hopes. The hope of earthly happiness, accord- 
 ing to the theory of Buddha Sakyamuni, is a 
 chimera, a phantom that lures us from error to 
 error through endless toils, and robs even the 
 grave of its peace ; for he who dies uncured of his 
 
16 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 delusion must return to earth, and continue the 
 hopeless chase in another life. Quietism — i.e., an- 
 nihilation of desire — is the only hope of emancipa- 
 tion ; and that goal of peace can be reached only 
 by total abstinence from earthly pleasures. All 
 worldly blessings are curses in disguise, and he 
 alone who has lifted the veil of that disguise has 
 entered the path of salvation. To him, self-denial 
 becomes the highest wisdom, and self-abhorrence 
 the supreme virtue. He must court sorrow and 
 disappointment as others woo the smiles of fort- 
 une, he must avoid everything that could recon- 
 cile him to life and lure him back to the delusions 
 of worldly pursuits. Life is a disease, and death 
 the only cure. The highest goal of the future is 
 Nirvana, peace and absolute deliverance from the 
 vexations of earthly desires. All human knowl- 
 edge is vain, the great object of life being the 
 suppression of our natural instincts. Self-afflic- 
 tion is the only rational pursuit. The love of 
 wealth is folly: the slaves of covetousness forge 
 fetters for their own feet. True believers should 
 seek temporal peace by curtailing their wants and 
 cultivating the virtue of indifference to the vicissi- 
 tudes of fortune. He who strives after higher 
 merit must renounce all earthly possessions, live 
 on alms, dress in rags, shave his head, and abstain 
 from marriage, merry-makings, and the use of 
 animal food. He must have no fixed habitation, 
 and must even avoid to sleep twice under the same 
 tree, lest an undue affection for any earthly object 
 should hinder his spirit in the progress of its 
 emancipation from the vanities of life | 
 
THE GENESIS OF PESSIMISM. 17 
 
 According to the Indian tradition, Mahar, the 
 prince of the earth-spirits, exhausted all his re- 
 sources to prevent the promulgation of the new 
 dogma. But, unfortunately for the happiness of 
 the human race, the efforts of Mahar proved una- 
 vailing. Buddha Sakyamuni preached his gospel 
 with the zeal of a divine messenger. His apostles 
 infested all Northern and Eastern Hindostan. Fifty 
 years after his death, the doctrine of anti-natural- 
 ism had superseded the native religions of Cash- 
 mere, Cabul, Candahar, Bactria, and Burmah; 
 and, five hundred years later, a modified form of 
 the Buddha gospel was preached on the shores of 
 the Mediterranean, and the mania of pessimism 
 spread westward and northward with all the symp- 
 toms attending the dissemination of an unnatural 
 vice. Vices are perverted instincts, and by fasten- 
 ing upon the basis of a natural propensity usurp 
 its functions and its resources. Hence their per- 
 sistency. The propaganda of Buddhism owed its 
 first success to the enthusiasm of its apostle ; but 
 what is the secret of its further progress ? What 
 innate bias of the human mind has furnished the 
 basis of its development, — in the cultus of the 
 eastern nations, as well as in the mind of its 
 founder ? 
 
 Gnosticism, Essenism, Sufism, and the doctrines 
 of the New Testament, with all the various subdi- 
 visions of its votaries, are so many excrescences of 
 the Buddhistic parent-tree ; and an exegetical refer- 
 ence to their complex mysticism would be an ex- 
 planation per obscurius. But like other dogmas, 
 and nearly all the myths of the Aryan races, Buddh- 
 
18 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 ism has a germ in the great pantheon of Brah- 
 manism. In the Sanskara, or book of sacraments, 
 the Jaw of Menu lays down a special code of relig- 
 ious ordinances for every period of life, and 
 assigns to extreme old age the duty of certain 
 ascetic practices, which were supposed to harmon- 
 ize with the natural quietism attending the subsid- 
 ence of the passions and vital energies. 
 
 "When a man perceives his body nagging," says 
 the Sanskara, "when he sees his hair becoming 
 gray, when he has seen the son of his son, let him 
 leave his home and retire into the solitude of the 
 forest. He is to live on herbs, roots, and fruits, 
 not to cut his hair or nails, and busy himself only 
 with the Vedas and the contemplation of Brahm, 
 in order to approach perfection in piety and sci- 
 ence"; i.e., he is to renounce worldly occupa- 
 tions and retire to the solitude of the woods, as 
 Felix Sylla retired to his Apulian farm-house, and 
 way-worn Firdusi to the hermitage of Thuss. 
 "Peace returns," says Dr. Zimmermann, "at an 
 age when solitude is enough to make a hermitage 
 pleasant." Under the influence of sorrow and in- 
 firmity, old men become instinctive pessimists. 
 Nature practises her delusions for wise purposes 
 of her own. She baits her matrimonial traps with 
 visions of Elysium, and reconciles her children to 
 the gathering shadows of the long night by exag- 
 gerating the disappointments of the day and the 
 recollection of its fatigues. And, even at the end 
 of a pleasant evening, rest becomes sweet enough 
 to be desired for its own sake. 
 
 But this quietude of the sunset hour Buddha 
 
THE GENESIS OF PESSIMISM. 19 
 
 Sakyamuni attempts to enforce in the morning of 
 life, his disciples are to seek refuge in sleep before 
 their day's work is done, he gathers dry leaves 
 to bury the budding flower. Like the genius of 
 death, he depreciates life by dwelling upon the 
 vanity of its hopes ; and the secret of his success 
 is to be found in the circumstance that in every 
 human breast there is a germ of this feeling which 
 may be stimulated into premature activity. Pes- 
 simism is precocious senility. It is a reversion of 
 the vital instincts. Even in the prime of life, the 
 systematic suppression of all our natural desires 
 will lead to that weariness of earth which nature 
 had intended to deaden the sorrow of the parting 
 hour, as we may force a plant to return as dust to 
 dust by depriving it of its flowers and green leaves. 
 Young pessimists resemble the fruits that rot 
 before they ripen. Monastic tendencies imply an 
 abnormal condition of the human mind. Only a 
 defeated warrior, a man without hope and without 
 courage, can find solace in contemplating the ap- 
 proach of a premature night. 
 
 Buddhism and its daughter-creed can flourish 
 only in a sickly soil. Christianity developed its 
 first germs in the carcass of the decaying Roman 
 Empire, and still retains its firmest hold upon the 
 degenerate nations of Southern Europe ; while the 
 manlier races of the North resisted its propaganda 
 to the last, and were the first to free themselves 
 from its despotism, — just as Buddhism has been 
 expelled from the homes of the Aryan races and 
 relegated to the moral pest-house of the South 
 Mongol empires, for in Japan its influence is con- 
 
20 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 fined to the observance of a few traditional cere- 
 monies. Disease, crushing misfortune, mental de- 
 rangement, whatever disqualifies a man for the 
 healthy business of life, qualifies him for the 
 reception of anti-natural dogmas. Marasmus and 
 pessimism are as concomitant as optimism and 
 health. Crippled foxes decry the vintage. Caged 
 murderers, like gouty libertines, generally become 
 devout. Nearly every scaffold orator edifies his 
 audience by the enunciation of orthodox senti- 
 ments. Superannuated coquettes revenge them- 
 selves by denouncing the illusions of a world that 
 neglects them. Unmasked hypocrites console 
 themselves with the hope of a better hereafter. 
 When the gods of war rejected his appeal, Charles 
 IV. of Spain solaced his spirit by embroider- 
 ing a petticoat for the Holy Virgin. The apos- 
 tles of pessimism were mostly men who had 
 reason to revenge themselves upon nature. Ranee*, 
 the founder of the New Trappists, became devout 
 in consequence of a domestic tragedy, Ignatius 
 Loyola after the siege of Pampeluna where he 
 was crippled and disfigured, Raimund Lullius' 
 quietism dated from the infidelity of his bride, 
 and Count Stolberg's from the death of his wife. 
 Swift, Schopenhauer, and Hannah More were 
 martyrs to chronic headache, Dante was an exile, 
 and Calvin a dyspeptic. 
 
 Tradition says that Buddha Sakyamuni entered 
 upon his mission only after he had exhausted the 
 pleasures of wealth and luxury. The debilitating 
 effects of superannuation may thus be anticipated ; 
 and, if the vital energies have been spent to the 
 
THE GENESIS OP PESSIMISM. 21 
 
 dregs, night and rest become the summum bonum. 
 Lethe is a refuge from the weariness of surfeit 
 as well as from the infirmities of old age; and, 
 under the influence of that weariness, Sakyamuni 
 perhaps recognized its remedy, and mistook it for a 
 panacea. 
 
 "He interdicts the sweetmeats that have become 
 indigestible to his stomach," as Voss explained the 
 pessimism of his friend Stolberg. The gratifica- 
 tion of our natural instincts is, indeed, a sin against 
 the cardinal tenet of a creed which identifies 
 nature with the origin of evil. Hence, that worship 
 of sorrow, which is the distinctive dogma of the two 
 anti-natural religions, and which has so perverted 
 their ethics that they refuse to recognize the merit 
 of any virtue which they cannot exaggerate or mis- 
 construe into a duty of self -affliction. 
 
 Pessimism is essentially the creed of decrepi- 
 tude. Moribund impotence pleases itself in the 
 idea that her lot is preferable to that of the sur- 
 vivors, and from that idea there is but a step to 
 the blasphemous thought that life itself is a delu- 
 sion, and earth a "vale of tears," a land of sorrow 
 and disappointments. A eupeptic boy with a sincere 
 predilection for such dogmas would be a monster 
 per defectum, a being devoid of the instincts of 
 content and gratitude. Hence, we find that, in 
 spite of all street missions, the name of the Young 
 Men's Christian Association is a misnomer, its 
 conventicles being attended chiefly by old women 
 of both sexes. Hence, also the frequency of "sick- 
 bed conversions," — 
 
 "The Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be." 
 
22 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 The evils caused by our sins against the health 
 laws of nature our ignorance, indolence, and arro- 
 gance prefer to ascribe to an inherent defect of her 
 constitution. We find it easier to pine for the gar- 
 dens of the New Jerusalem than to replant the 
 trees of our wasted earthly paradise. 
 
 Pessimism and anti-naturalism are inseparable 
 correlatives. Buddha saw that the healthiest and 
 noblest instincts of the human mind were opposed 
 to his system, and met the difficulty by the total 
 depravity dogma. In order to justify the conclu- 
 sions of his diseased imagination, he had to deny 
 the competence of mental health, and did not hes- 
 itate to denounce our natural instincts as the 
 sources of original sin. A declaration of war against 
 nature was the logical outcome of his system. 
 
 Every religion reflects the moral character of its 
 birthplace : Odin-worship, the martial barbarism 
 of the old Northland ; Judaism, the loyal faith and 
 the stern morality of the Hebrew shepherds; 
 Islam, the chivalrous enthusiasm of the free Arab ; 
 Stoicism and Epicurism (which had supplanted the 
 ethical functions of an obsolete mythological sys- 
 tem), the manliness and the optimistic common 
 sense of the ancient Greeks. Of all the countries 
 of the earth, ancient India was the most cursed 
 with the evils of despotism, with abject and hope- 
 less social degradation, with fantastic superstitions, 
 combined with a neglect of all the sciences that 
 could have enabled an inquirer to ascertain the 
 true cause of human sufferings and their proper 
 remedies. India, the seed-plot of the most con- 
 tagious diseases and the home of the opium-habit, 
 was the birthland of Pessimism. 
 
CHAPTER IT. 
 
 BUDDHA AND HIS GALILEAN SUCCESSOR. 
 "Ex iente Lux." 
 
 In the morning hour of reawakening reason, 
 when men tried to explain religious traditions 
 without questioning the infallibility of their truth, 
 it must have sorely puzzled many an honest in- 
 quirer to reconcile certain dogmas of the Church 
 with the daily evidence of his senses; for in- 
 stance, the innate purity and candor of young 
 children with the doctrine of natural depravity, or 
 the mental and moral degeneration of the most 
 orthodox communities with the dogma of regener- 
 ation by faith. 
 
 But, wherever indoctrination had not yet utterly 
 deadened the instinct of truth, the most perplex- 
 ing of all tenets must have been the theory which 
 considers the two books of the Christian Bible as 
 consistent and mutually confirmatory parts of a 
 harmonious revelation. Unreasoning faith may 
 have repeated the conventional formulas of that 
 dogma, but only wilful blindness could ever defend 
 it upon the internal evidence of the facts. Jean 
 Bodin, a French mystic of the sixteenth century, 
 wrote a book in which he bemoans the growing 
 scepticism of the age, and, after demonstrating the 
 reality of witchcraft by a long list of prodigies 
 and ghost-stories, gives his reasons for enforcing 
 
24 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 the penal code against heretics, with full instruc- 
 tions for their discovery and torture. If that book 
 had been published as an appendix to the philo- 
 sophical works of Lucius Seneca, and under the 
 name of the great pagan moralist, the absurdity of 
 the mistake could not have been more glaring than 
 that of the orthodox Bible theory. 
 
 As a continuation — a second part, as it were 
 
 of the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament 
 would be utterly inexplicable. Perhaps no other 
 two books ever published are more dissimilar in 
 their tendencies. Here, the chronicle of a brave 
 and simple-minded nation of shepherds and hus- 
 bandmen and the code of their manful law-giver, 
 an honest system of morals, rustic and somewhat 
 austere, but with a realistic basis and a practical 
 purpose; there, a compilation of contradictory 
 miracle-legends and anti-natural dogmas. Here, an 
 honest silence on the unknowable mysteries of a 
 future existence, a consistent avoidance of the im- 
 mortality tenet ; there, a constant petitio principii of 
 that dogma : here, a stern inculcation ; there, a con- 
 stant violation of the first commandment: here, 
 health-laws, Samson traditions, and pastoral po- 
 etry; there, indifference to health, to manly strength, 
 and the gifts of our mother earth. Here, nature, 
 agnostic candor, optimism and realism ; there, su- 
 pernatural and anti-natural dogmas, mysticism, 
 sophistry, and gnostic phantoms. The ethical char- 
 acteristics of the two books would be a sufficient 
 proof against the alleged origin of the New 
 Testament, but there is an equally strong pre- 
 sumption that the so-called historical elements of 
 
BUDDHA AND HIS GALILEAN SUCCESSOR. 25 
 
 that work are almost wholly fabulous. The com- 
 mittee of the church-council that made the "four 
 Gospels" the canons of their faith had to select 
 them from fifty-four contradictory versions. The 
 evangelists themselves contradict each other on 
 many essential points; and their chronicles can 
 hardly have been written before the end of the 
 second century, as not one of the earlier fathers 
 (before Irenseus) ever quotes a single passage of 
 their text, while they relate many events which 
 seem to have been recorded in the apocrypha. 
 These apocrypha, like the arbitrarily excepted 
 works, originated in a century so prolific of spuri- 
 ous prophecies, forged epistles and biographies, 
 that it has justly been called the age of pious 
 frauds. The four Gospels, as well as the larger 
 part of the Pauline Epistles, were repudiated by 
 the Socinians, and others of the more intelligent 
 sects of the early Christians. It is equally certain 
 that the stupendous events supposed to have at- 
 tended the appearance of the new prophet are not 
 recorded by any contemporary pagan author, and 
 that the short passage in the seventh chapter of 
 Josephus is a clumsy forgery. Josephus, who 
 describes the reign of Herod in its minutest 
 details, never mentions the miracles of Bethlehem, 
 the appearance of a new star, the massacre of the 
 innocents, or the prodigies of the crucifixion. 
 
 Besides, the rhetoric of the New Testament is 
 throughout illustrative rather than persuasive : it is 
 the eloquence which distinguishes the communica- 
 tion of transmitted from the introduction of origi- 
 nal ideas. And, as Feuerbach well observes, the 
 
26 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 testator's strange neglect to insure the record of 
 his revelation by committing it to writing is a 
 strong presumption that he delivered his gospel as 
 a pre-recorded doctrine. 
 
 But all such discoveries led only to negative 
 results, and increased the obscurity of the main 
 question, when the study of the Oriental classics, 
 that had shed a flood of light upon the etymology 
 of the West- Aryan languages, began to elucidate 
 the mysteries of Biblical exegesis. Dark words 
 were traced to their origin, occult passages as- 
 sumed a meaning, perplexing contradictions be- 
 came suggestive analogies. Buddhism not only 
 explained the doctrines of the New Testament, but 
 harmonized them by revealing the root-dogma 
 which forms the connecting link of their logical 
 correlation. The doctrine of Pessimism is the 
 master-key to the ethical enigmas of the Christian 
 creed. If the blessings of earth are curses in 
 disguise, it behooves the wise to renounce his 
 material possessions, and despise the precautions 
 by which the worldly-minded seek to protect them- 
 selves against want and misfortune. If our nat- 
 ural instincts are wholly evil, it would be merito- 
 rious to love our enemies and hate our father, 
 mother, sister, brother, and children, "yea, and 
 our own life." If God has created a world the 
 sorrows of which so far exceed its blessings, it 
 would be perfectly consistent to expect in a future 
 life a similar proportion of good to evil : Heaven 
 for the elect — ten or twelve out of ten thousand ; 
 for the rest, an eternity of frightful tortures. If 
 the pursuit of earthly happiness is a chimera, the 
 
BUDDHA AND HIS GALILEAN SUCCESSOR. 
 
 27 
 
 children of light should prove their freedom from 
 that delusion by the mortification of their desires 
 and natural impulses : fasting, passive submission 
 to injustice, sackcloth and ashes, and celibacy * 
 
 The anti-cosmic tendency of the Christian doc- 
 trine distinguishes it from all religions except 
 Buddhism. In the language of the New Testa- 
 ment, the "world" is everywhere a synonyme of 
 evil and sin ; the flesh, everywhere the enemy of 
 the spirit. And, when the first Christian mission- 
 aries reached the sacred cities of Thibet, they were 
 astounded to recognize in the sacraments and cere- 
 monies of Buddhism all the essential features of 
 their own cultus. The Transactions of the Royal 
 Asiatic Society (Vol. II., p. 491) mentions the 
 "celibacy of the Buddhist clergy, and the monastic 
 life of the societies of both sexes, to which might 
 be added their strings of beads, their manner of 
 chanting prayers, their incense and their candles. 
 Confession of sins is regularly practised." 
 
 Father Hue, in his Recollections of a Journey in 
 Tartary, Thibet, and China (Hazlitt's translation), 
 says, "The cross, the mitre, the dalmatica, the 
 cope,— which the Grand Lama wears on his jour- 
 neys, or if he is performing some ceremony out 
 of the temple,— the service with double choirs, the 
 psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer suspended 
 
 • Matt. xix.,12,etc. Referring to this passage, Strauss, 
 in his Life of Jesus (Vol. I., p. 618 of the first edition), 
 savs, "In order to defend Christ against the charge of 
 unpractical principles, the Christian apologists have made 
 haste to smuggle in the idea {den Gcdanken emzu- 
 schwciAen) thlt Jesus recommended ee h ,aej J only to 
 his disciples, and in anticipation of the pec V,^r cliftcuities 
 of their apostolic mission; but the truth is U»«m£» f u 2 
 other passages the spirit of asceticism reveals itself too 
 plainly to be mistaken." 
 
28 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 from five chains, and which you can open or 
 close at pleasure; the benediction given by the 
 Lamas by extending the right hand over the heads 
 of the faithful, the chaplet, ecclesiastical celibacy, 
 religious retirement, the worship of the saints, the 
 fasts, the processions, the litanies, the holy water, 
 — all these are analogies between the Buddhists 
 and ourselves." 
 
 The analytical methods of comparative mythol- 
 ogy have since been applied to the study of the 
 Buddhistic scriptures and the writings of the early 
 Gnostics ; and, considering the results of that com- 
 parison, it can no longer be doubted that Schopen- 
 hauer's conjecture* will soon become an estab- 
 lished fact; namely, that the Prophet of Nazareth 
 was a Buddhistic emissary, and preached his gospel 
 in the name of Buddha Sakyamuni. Myths have a 
 curious metamorphic tendency. In a large num- 
 ber of indubitable instances, the sayings, doings, 
 and adventures of legendary heroes (or myth- 
 shrouded historical personages) have been attrib- 
 uted to representative men of a later period : the 
 exploits of a Persian archer, first to a Danish 
 soldier, and afterward to a Swiss patriot ; the dicta 
 of Zoroaster, to several of his followers ; the attri- 
 butes of the old Wood-god, Woden, to Barbarossa, 
 the entranced cave-dweller of the Kyfhauser; the 
 adventures of the Indian Dawn- Spirits, to the 
 heroes of Troy. 
 
 By a similar metastasis of myths, the traditions 
 of the old Hindu Krishna legend were transferred, 
 
 *"I cannot get rid of the idea that the Christian creed 
 will yet be traced to a Buddhistic source."— Die Welt aU 
 Wille, Vol. II., p. 716. 
 
BUDDHA AND HIS GALILEAN SUCCESSOR. 29 
 
 first to the founder of Buddhism, and afterward to 
 the person of his western apostle. Krishna, like 
 Buddha, was a parthenogenitus, a virgin-son. 
 Krishna was crucified; and the sculptured Pan- 
 theon of Brahmanism includes the image of a vir- 
 gin, called the "Queen of Heaven," holding an in- 
 fant and cross in her arms. Krishna, like Buddha, 
 astonished his teachers by his precocious wisdom. 
 Both were born with a f ufty developed power of 
 speech. According to the "Gospel of the Infancy" 
 (attributed to St. Thomas), Maria holds a conver- 
 sation with her new-born son, who informs her of 
 his origin and his divine mission. The name of 
 her Buddhistic prototype was Maja. Both Krishna 
 and Buddha were of royal descent. A chorus of 
 celestial singers celebrated the moment of their 
 birth. The ruler of Krishna's birthland is fright- 
 ened by a prophecy, and resolves the death of the 
 infant. The boy's parents save his life by a timely 
 flight, and conceal him for several years. The 
 baffled despot commands the massacre of all male 
 children of his kingdom. The "Gospel of the In- 
 fancy" relates the miraculous achievements of the 
 Christ-child, his combats with serpents and drag- 
 ons, the fate of persons who insult him and are 
 stricken dead, a council of young boys who choose 
 him as their king. The boy Krishna, according to 
 the Bhagavat Purana, subdues a fiery serpent, 
 strikes dead persons who insulted him, and in his 
 plays with other boys is chosen as their king. 
 Krishna, like Buddha, had twelve favorite disciples 
 who accompanied him on his missionary travels. 
 Krishna, like Buddha, is tempted in the wilder- 
 
30 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 ness by the devil, rejects all proposals, and rejoices 
 with a host of ministering angels. 
 
 In the constellation of the Pleiades, six larger 
 and forty or fifty smaller stars are crowded together 
 within a space that could be enclosed by the appar- 
 ent circumference of the moon. Either these stars 
 form a correlative system, or their aggregation in 
 the field of our vision, as well as the nearly uni- 
 form size of the larger ones, must be ascribed to 
 the strangest kind of coincidence ; and the astron- 
 omer Olbers calculates that the probability of the 
 former hypothesis exceeds that of the latter about 
 twenty-five million times. With a similar degree 
 of assurance, the student of the Hindu scriptures 
 must reject the belief in the accidental analogies 
 of the above-named traditions ; and an equally 
 untenable theory is the conjecture of the Jesuit 
 missionaries, that the Buddhists derived their le- 
 gends from the Christian sect of the Nestorian 
 heretics. We might as well be asked to believe 
 that Homer borrowed his epic from the Iliad of 
 Alexander Pope. 
 
 Together with the unmistakable* doctrine of 
 Buddha Sakyamuni, the prophet of Galilee prob- 
 
 *Even in the modified form of the canonized Gospels. 
 But, besides, there is no doubt that the Church eliminated 
 a large number of unpractical dogmas. Nine-tenths of the 
 early "heretics" were too literal Buddhists to suit the pur- 
 pose of the shrewd and compromising hierarchs. The 
 Encratite3 abstained from wine, animal food, and marri ige. 
 The Marcionites denounced all "worldliness,"— the pursuit 
 of wealth, office-holding, fine houses, and clothes, etc. The 
 Montanists tried to purify their souls by fasting and long 
 vigils, and often took a "vow of solitude," like the Cinga- 
 lese Buddhists, and retired for years to the lonely high- 
 lands of the Phrygian Mountains. The Valentinians prac- 
 tised communism, and subjected their novices to all sorts of 
 ascetic ordeals. The Cassianites professed doctrines which 
 resembled those of the modern "Shakers." 
 
BUDDHA AND HIS GALILEAN SUCCESSOR. 31 
 
 ably disseminated the current tradition about the 
 miracles and adventures of his master ; and, when 
 in the oral traditions of the next century the rec- 
 ords of Buddha and Christ had coalesced, the East 
 Indian legend was transferred to the soil of Pales- 
 tine, while the myth-making faculty of the monastic 
 historians supplied the details of the local coloring. 
 The history of Krishna fades in the cloudland 
 of primeval traditions, and seems to be largely 
 blended with astronomical myths. The historical 
 existence of Buddha Sakyamuni, on the other 
 hand, can hardly be doubted, nor that of his glow- 
 ingly eloquent West- Asiatic apostle. The records 
 of the earlier Gospels are too fragmentary and con- 
 tradictory to reconstruct a trustworthy biography 
 of the Galilean Buddhist, but his system of ethics 
 proves that it was the main object of his mission 
 to graft the doctrine of Buddha upon the optimistic 
 theism of the Hebrew law-giver. Hence, the dog- 
 matical contradictions of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments ; the prominence assigned to the (ante-Mo- 
 saic) paradise legend * the penitential psalms, and 
 
 In refuting these heretics, it is curious to notice how 
 Clemens Alexandnnus uniformly appeals to the Old Testa- 
 ment, and quietly ignores the precepts of the ascetic ap- 
 pendix. The third book of the Stromata is a perfect reduc- 
 tio ad absurdum of Christian pessimism, which, neverthe- 
 less, gained ground wherever the belief in the new revela- 
 tion was sincere enough to turn theory into practice 
 
 ♦'The essence of the Christian religion is the 'centre 
 dogma of Buddhism,— the doctrine of the worthlessness of 
 terrestrial life. With this difference only, that Christianity 
 dates that worthlessness from the transgression of our 
 apple-eating forefather-. This modification implied the 
 fiction of a hber% arbitrii indlfferentiae ; but it was re- 
 quired by the necessity of grafting the doctrine of Buddha 
 upon the mythological dogmas of Judaism. The myth of 
 the Fall offered here the only basis for the insertion of the 
 scion from the East Indian parent-tree."— Schonenhanfir 
 Die Welt als Wille, Vol. II., p! 694. acnopennauer, 
 
32 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 all passages that could be made to assume a pes- 
 simistic significance; the open rejection of the 
 Mosaic health-code (as absolutely irreconcilable 
 with the gospel of anti-naturalism), the sophistry 
 of the Patristic writings, and the forced interpre- 
 tations of the Hebrew prophecies. Hence, also, 
 the old but ever new controversy of the Pelagians 
 and Gnostics, the former leaning toward the ra- 
 tional, manly, and realistic part, the other toward 
 the mystical, pessimistic, and puling part of our 
 heterogeneous Scriptures. 
 
 Like the votaries of Zoroaster, the Hebrew Uni- 
 tarians preserved the purity of their religion ; but 
 the seed of the East Indian upas-tree did not 
 perish. In the superstition-loaded atmosphere of 
 Egypt and the effete vice-centres of Asia Minor, it 
 found a more congenial climate, where it flourished, 
 and finally betrayed its origin by bearing fruits 
 after its kind, though its roots are still encrusted 
 with the soil of the land that rejected it. 
 
 Note.— Tide Appendix, Indian Sources of the New Testa- 
 ment and Concordance of Christianity and Buddhism. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 "Untruth should be exposed, whether its teachers come 
 in the name of God or of the devil."— Ulrich Hutten. 
 
 In the code of ethical principles which the 
 world uses to judge the merits of a social reformer, 
 it has long been recognized as a truism that "the 
 end does not justify the means." But we are apt 
 to overlook the equally cogent maxim that the 
 means do not justify the end. The unkempt 
 republican, who with fire and sword preaches the 
 earth-redeeming gospel of liberty and equality, is 
 denounced as an enemy of the human race ; while 
 the bland, well-combed, and unctuous Jesuit is 
 revered as a saint, though he labors to perpetuate 
 a superstition that has turned the better half of 
 this earth into a desert, and arrested the progress 
 of the human race for fourteen hundred years. 
 Our short-sightedness prevents us from tracing the 
 connection of cause and effect in the fury of the 
 purifying storm and the soft summer winds of the 
 malarious fens. We shudder at the rage of the gale, 
 and admire the beauty of the poisonous swamp- 
 flower. 
 
 To the nations of the Caucasian race, the genius 
 of salvation did twice appear in a storm-cloud, the 
 lures of the tempter came in a small, still voice. 
 The sound of that voice was first heard on the banks 
 
34 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 of the Ganges, and filled the lands of the East till 
 its echo seduced the poor fishermen on the banks of 
 the Jordan. The keystone dogma of the Christian 
 ethics is the anti-physical principle of Buddhism : 
 whatever is natural is wrong. The mission of the 
 Galilean ascetic, like the gospel of Buddha Sakya- 
 muni, was a declaration of war against nature. 
 According to the doctrine of Pessimism, our 
 natural instincts are our natural enemies ; life is a 
 disease, and death its only cure; the pursuit of 
 earthly happiness is a chimera, and enjoyment in 
 all its forms only serves to strengthen the fatal 
 delusion; emancipation from the bondage of life 
 is the summum bonum, and can be attained only by 
 mortifying our natural desires. 
 
 The instinctive love of joy is wrong : the path of 
 self-affliction is the road to salvation. "If any man 
 will come after me, let him deny himself, and 
 take up his cross daily." "Blessed are they that 
 mourn." "Be afflicted and mourn and weep; let 
 your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy 
 to heaviness." "Woe unto you that laugh, for 
 you shall mourn and weep." 
 
 Our natural affections should be suppressed. 
 "If any man come to me and hate not his father 
 and mother, and wife and children, and brothers 
 and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot 
 be my disciple." 
 
 The love of health is wrong: the body is the 
 enemy of the spirit, and does not deserve our care. 
 "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat 
 or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, 
 what ye shall put on." "Bodily exercise profiteth 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 35 
 
 but little." "There is nothing from without a 
 man that, entering him, can defile him." 
 
 The pursuit of natural science is wrong ; doubt 
 and free inquiry are sinful; submissive faith is 
 the gate to heaven. "Blessed are they that have 
 not seen, and yet have believed." "He that believ- 
 eth in me hath everlasting life, and shall not come 
 into condemnation." "If any man love not the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Marana- 
 tha." "If an angel from heaven preach any other 
 gospel unto you than that which we have 
 preached, let him be accursed." "He that believ- 
 eth on me is not condemned, but he that believeth 
 not is condemned already, because he does not 
 believe in the name of the only begotten Son of 
 God." "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth 
 as a branch, and is withered ; and men gather them 
 and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." 
 " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, 
 but he that believeth not shall be damned." 
 
 The trust in secular remedies is wrong : diseases 
 can be cured by faith. "Receive thy sight, thy 
 faith hath saved thee." "If any man is sick 
 among you, let him call for the elders of the 
 church, and let them pray over him, anointing him 
 with oil in the name of the Lord." "And the 
 prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord 
 shall raise him up." "And, when he had called 
 unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power 
 against unclean spirits to cast them out, and to 
 heal all manner of sickness and all manner of 
 disease." 
 
 The natural instinct of resistance to injustice 
 
36 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 is wrong. "Resist not evil, but whosoever shall 
 smite thee on the right cheek turn to him the 
 other also. ... If any man will sue thee at the law 
 and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak 
 also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a 
 mile, go with him twain." "Of him that taketh 
 away thy goods ask him not again." 
 
 The spirit-fancies of the nature-loving nations 
 are wrong. The wilderness swarms, not with 
 harmless fairies, but with malevolent demons. 
 "And the unclean spirit goeth, and taketh with 
 himself seven other spirits more wicked than him- 
 self." "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. 
 . . . And all the devils besought him, saying, Send 
 us into the swine, that we may enter into them." 
 "And the devil took him up into the holy city, and 
 setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple." "They 
 brought unto him many that were possessed with 
 devils." 
 
 The belief in the peace of the grave is errone- 
 ous. For the great plurality of the human race, 
 the end of life is the beginning of endless and hor- 
 rible tortures. "Wide is the gate and broad is the 
 way that leadeth to destruction, and many there 
 be which go in thereat ; and strait is the gate and 
 narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few 
 there be that find it." "The children of the king- 
 dom shall be cast out into utter darkness, there 
 shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." "They 
 shall be cast into the furnace of fire, there shall be 
 wailing and gnashing of teeth." " They shall be 
 tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence 
 of the holy angels and in the presence of the 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 37 
 
 Lamb." "And the smoke of their torment ascend- 
 eth forever and ever, and they have no rest day 
 nor night." 
 
 The love of industry is wrong. A true believer 
 shall not seek to supply his wants by earthly 
 means, but rely on prayer and supernatural aid : 
 "Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? 
 what shall we drink? or wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed ? For after all these things do the Gentiles 
 seek." "Take no thought of the morrow, for the 
 morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." 
 "Ask, and it shall be given you." "If ye have 
 faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto 
 this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and 
 it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible 
 unto you." 
 
 These dogmas were propagated with the zeal 
 and with the disinterestedness of the purest moral 
 enthusiasm ; and yet there is no doubt that they 
 have caused the human race more woe than all 
 wars, all plagues, all famines, all poisons, and con- 
 tagious diseases, and the rage of all the hostile 
 elements of nature taken together : for it can be 
 demonstrated with the utmost certainty of histori- 
 cal evidence that the darkness of the Middle Ages, 
 and the horrors and the misery of that terrible 
 night, were the direct consequences of the faith 
 which attempted to practise the precepts of the 
 New Testament, and that the repressed instincts 
 of our better nature burst their dam when the 
 faith of the Middle Ages dissolved into scepticism 
 and the conventional assent that stops short of 
 practice. 
 
38 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 The worship of -sorrow dogma led to the self 
 torturing insanities of mediaeval monachism. If 
 physical pleasures are sinful and our physical in- 
 stincts an impediment to our spiritual welfare, the 
 seekers after salvation naturally concluded that 
 the body must be treated like a wild beast, caged 
 in monasteries and hermitages, and subdued by 
 fasting, vigils, and all kinds of self-afflictions.* 
 Hence, Anchorites, Flagellants, Celibates, Trap- 
 pists, Puritans, Sabbatarians, and Shakers. 
 
 True friendship was unknown while the de- 
 nunciator of natural affection passed for a divine 
 revelator. "He that hateth not his father and 
 brother," etc., "cannot be my disciple." "For if 
 ye love those who love you, what reward have 
 you ?" Hence, the zeal of the wretched bigots who 
 delivered up their friends to the knife of the Holy 
 Inquisition, and exulted in the suppression of their 
 better instincts. 
 
 The repudiation of the Mosaic health code and 
 the pagan culture of the manly powers led to the 
 physical degeneration of two-thirds of the noblest 
 Caucasian races. If the body is the enemy of the 
 spirit, the promotion of its welfare would be a 
 sheer waste of time, or even a crime against our 
 higher and eternal interests. Hence, the neglect 
 of physical education, the gluttony, the besotted- 
 ness, and the crimes against nature in which the 
 seed-plots of monachism vied with the vice-centres 
 
 *"If any sect," says Ludwig Borne, "should ever take it 
 into their heads to worship the devil in his distinctive 
 qualities, and devote themselves to the promotion of hu- 
 man misery in all its forms, the catechism of such a relig- 
 ion could be found ready-made in the code of several mon- 
 astic colleges." 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 39 
 
 of the decaying Roman Empire,* the general neg- 
 lect of sanitary precautions, which shortened the 
 average longevity of mediaeval Europe by fourteen 
 or fifteen years. 
 
 The faith-cure dogma is the root of mediaeval 
 miracle-mongery. If diseases could be averted by 
 prayer, medical science and sanitary precautions 
 were equally superfluous. Lazy faith was easier 
 than rational research, and the belief in the efficacy 
 of exorcism enabled the Church to share the emol- 
 uments without the labors of secular science. 
 Hence, Loretto chapels, Lourdes water, processions, 
 consecrated rosaries, and relic swindle. 
 
 The propagandists of the Submission to Injus- 
 tice dogma became the faithful ally of every form 
 of despotism. The pagan pride in the majesty of 
 self-reliant manhood was superseded by the wor- 
 ship of abject self-abasement and self-distrust. If 
 human nature was essentially evil, men were unfit 
 for self government ; and their own welfare required 
 the suppression of every revolt against the author- 
 ity of the spiritual powers. Without the recogni- 
 tion of human rights, without the principles of 
 personal dignity and natural justice, f social order 
 
 * "Quod enim Anno 1538, prudentissimus Rex Henrietta 
 Octavus cucullatorum coenobia, et sacrificoruin collegia, 
 votariorum, per venerabiies legum Doctores Tliomam 
 Leum, Richardum Laytonum visitari fecerat, et tanto nu- 
 rnero reperti sunt apud eos scortatores, cinaedi, ganeones, 
 pae licones, puerarii, paederastae, Sodornitae, Ganiinedes, 
 ut in unoquoque eorutn novarn credideris Gomorrham.' 
 Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 449. And the 
 state of affairs in Southern Europe is attested by numer- 
 ous unquotable passages in the memoirs of the Italian 
 Guiccardini, the writings of the Spaniard Sanchez, and the 
 indictment of Pope John XXII. 
 
 t "Justice and equity were foreign to that creed. Why 
 should man try to be better than his God? A God to whom 
 
40 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 became a legalized system of oppression, manliness, 
 became a stigma, the love of freedom was denounced 
 as a sign of an unregenerate heart. Hence, the na- 
 tional degradation of so many Aryan nations, their 
 sickening flunkeyism, their heartless subservience 
 to the caprices of brutal despots. As Herbert Spen- 
 cer demonstrates in his masterly resume of the dan- 
 gers in the path of a progressive republic, a defiant 
 resistance to every form of injustice and official 
 despotism is the price of liberty, and that resist- 
 ance is incompatible with the spirit of a system 
 that inculcates the duty of self-abasement as an 
 article of faith. The pagan martyrs died for 
 human rights, for personal freedom and national 
 independence. The Christian martyrs died for a 
 system of spiritual slavery. The Byzantine bigots 
 who massacred each other in their competition for 
 a lackeyship at the court of the New Jerusalem 
 could not defend their own city against domestic 
 despots and foreign aggressors. 
 
 they were taught to ascribe a monstrous system of favor- 
 itism : arbitrary grace for a few children of luck, and mill- 
 ions foredoomed to eternal damnation."— Feuerbach. 
 
 "They attributed to the Creator acts of injustice and 
 barbarity which it would be absolutely impossible for the 
 imagination to surpass, acts before which the most mon- 
 strous excesses of human cruelty dwindle into insignifi- 
 cance, acts which are, in fact, considerably worse than any 
 that theologians have attributed to the devil."— Lecky. 
 
 "It is said that the King of Morocco, Muley Ismael, has 
 five hundred children. What would you say if a dervish of 
 Mount Atlas related to you that the wise and good Muley 
 Ismael, dining with his family, at the close of the repast, 
 spoke thus: 'I am Muley Ismael, who have begotten you 
 for my glory; for I am very glorious. I love you very ten- 
 derly, I shelter you as a hen covers her chickens. I have 
 decreed that one of my youngest children shall have the 
 kingdom of Tafilet, and that another shall possess Morocco ; 
 and for my other dear children, to the number of four hun- 
 dred and ninety-eight, I order that one-half shall be tor- 
 tured and the other burned, for I am the Lord Muley 
 Ismael.' "— Voltaire. 
 
THE ETHICS OF TnE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 41 
 
 The fanatics who originated the dogmas of ex- 
 clusive salvation by faith, and hell-fire as a punish- 
 ment of unbelief, are responsible for the agonies 
 of the three million human beings who perished in 
 the flames of the stake. It is a libel against human 
 nature to ascribe the barbarities of the Middle 
 Ages to an innate love of cruelty ; and, in order to 
 account for the numberless epidemic outbreaks of 
 truculent fanaticism, the Christian apologists have 
 to invent as many different theories as the mediaeval 
 astronomers who attempted to reconcile their sys- 
 tem with the apparently eccentric motions of the 
 heavenly bodies. The hypothesis of Copernicus 
 solved all those riddles, and a similar solvent of 
 otherwise hopeless enigmas is the vainly disputed 
 fact that the inhumanities of our Christian ances- 
 tors were the inevitable consequences of a sincere 
 belief in the dogmas of their monstrous creed. 
 The most relentless butchers of the Holy Inquisi- 
 tion were men of spotless personal morality. Many 
 of the savage man-hunters of the Thirty Years' War 
 were conspicuous for their clemency in private and 
 domestic affairs. Neither the Austrians nor the 
 frugal Spaniards* are by nature a bloodthirsty 
 race. But the dogma of exclusive salvation left 
 them no choice. It made the suppression of un- 
 belief a sacred duty ; for, if the propagation of er- 
 roneous doctrines could doom thousands to an eter- 
 nity of unspeakable, incomparable, and hopeless 
 tortures, the objections founded upon such scruples 
 
 * "Travellers are unanimous in declaring that in Spain an 
 intense passion for the bulldght is quite compatible with 
 the most active benevolence and the most amiable dispo- 
 sition."— Lecky. 
 
42 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 as compassion with the short sufferings of a con- 
 demned heretic must have assumed an appearance 
 of almost idiotic futility.* 
 
 Hence, inquisitions and crusades, thirty years' 
 wars, heretic-hunts, massacres of St. Bartholomew, 
 expulsions of the Moors, and extermination of 
 the Albigenses. Hence, also, that chief disgrace of 
 our own age, — the cowardly hypocrisy which, like 
 an all-pervading poison-vapor, taints the whole at- 
 mosphere of our social life. "The fathers laid it 
 down as a distinct proposition," says Lecky, "that 
 pious frauds were justifiable and even laudable; 
 and, if they had not laid this down, they would 
 nevertheless have practised it as a necessary conse- 
 quence of the doctrine of exclusive salvation. 
 Paganism was to be combated; and, therefore, 
 prophecies of Christ by Orpheus and the Sibyls 
 were forged, lying wonders were multiplied, and 
 ceaseless calumnies poured upon those who, like 
 Julian, opposed the Church. That tendency tri- 
 umphed wherever the supreme importance of these 
 dogmas was held. Generation after generation, it 
 became more universal : it continued till the very 
 sense of truth and the very love of truth were 
 blotted out from the minds of men." And this 
 mode of thought has survived after the hot fanati- 
 cism which engendered it has cooled down to 
 
 * "Few persons, I think, can follow the history of Chris- 
 tian persecution without a feeling of extreme astonishment 
 that some modern writers, not content with maintaining 
 that the doctrine of exclusive salvation ought not to have 
 produced persecution, have ventured in defiance of the 
 unanimous testimony of the theologians of so manv centu- 
 ries, to dispute the plain historical fact that it did produce 
 it."— Lecky. 
 
 "Haeretici non solum excommunicari sed juste occidi 
 possunt."— Thomas Aquinas, Summa, Vol. II., Art. III. 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 43 
 
 frigid bigotry. The root of hypocrisy is the belief 
 in the atoning efficacy of faith, or, faute de mieux, of 
 conventional conformity. Our bigots sacrifice 
 their conscience where their ancestors sacrificed 
 their reason, and would be very sorry to admit 
 the decadence of a creed that enables them to 
 maintain the reputation of respectable principles 
 by such easy means as connivance, cant, and 
 mental prostitution. 
 
 The Prayer vs. Labor dogma was a death-blow to 
 industry and science. Rational agriculture was 
 abandoned to the Moorish infidels .* Christians 
 neglected their fields and sought to avert famine 
 by prayer-meetings. The pursuit of natural sci- 
 ence was regarded with suspicion. Inventors were 
 denounced as magicians. Erudition was considered 
 a prima facie evidence of unbelief. Scientific 
 progress decreased with the increase of the belief 
 in the efficacy of prayer. Hence, moral and physi- 
 cal deserts; the desolation of the once fertile 
 shores of the Mediterranean; a thousand years 
 eclipse of common sense f an d reason ; mendicants, 
 
 ♦ "The Spanish Christians considered agriculture beneath 
 their dienitv. la their judgment, war and religion were 
 the only?wo 'avocations worthy of being followed Some 
 of the richest parts of Valencia and Grenada were so neg- 
 lected that means were wanting to teed even the scanty 
 population remaining there. Whole districts were de- 
 serted, and down to the present day have never been 
 repeopled. All over Spain, the same destitution prevailed. 
 That once rich and prosperous country was covered with a 
 rabble of monks and /clergy, whose insatiate » rapacity 
 absorbed the little wealth yet to be found. The fields .were 
 left uncultivated; vast multitudes died from want and 
 exposure; entire villages were deserted:' -Buckles Ms- 
 
 Mioi mionafsensible, and humane appear the writings 
 of tbe pagan philosophers, in comparison with the ghastly 
 nonsense of the monastic authors! ^ the freest cujes of 
 our most advanced countries, in Concord and Heidelberg, 
 
44 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 pious vagabonds, and monastic drones ; blind hatred 
 of progress, mysticism, supernaturalism, and con- 
 tented ignorance. 
 
 Has Christianity made us more moral ? A chorus 
 of stall-fed obscurantists will denounce the impiety 
 of the very question ; but the time is past when the 
 shadow of the cross could veil a multitude of sins 
 against truth, and with the help of God we will 
 lift some of these veils. A fruitful source of ethi- 
 cal delusions is the autodogmatic fallacy, or the 
 tendency of every sect to judge the merits of its 
 founder by the standard of his own dogmas. The 
 votaries of barbarous creeds award the highest 
 prize of virtue to deeds of relentless ferocity. 
 They mistake pity for weakness, and its suppres- 
 sion for an act of praiseworthy heroism. The 
 followers of Confucius inculcate the punctilious 
 observance of ceremonies ; and, tried by that stand- 
 ard, the Chinese moralist was undoubtedly the 
 most perfect man. The worship of sorrow has so 
 perverted our moral ideals that for long centuries 
 joylessness and self-affliction ranked among the 
 highest virtues. A jaundiced, whining abstainer 
 from physical enjoyments was the Puritan paragon 
 of moral perfection.* The municipal codes of 
 
 an ancient Athenian would feel almost at home, a modern 
 Unitarian would hail Job as a man and brother; but a 
 resuscitated priest of the Middle Ages would walk our 
 streets like a spectre defying the morning sun. 
 
 * "Ac ording to this code, all the natural affections, aU 
 social pleasures, all amusements, and all the joyous in- 
 stincts of the human heart were sinful. Tne clergy looked 
 on all comforts as sinful in themselves, merely because they 
 were comforts. Thi jrreat object of life was to be in a 
 st ite of constant affliction. Whatever pleased the senses 
 was to be suspected. It mattered not what a man liked: 
 the mere fact of his liking it made it sinful. Whatever 
 was natural was wrong.' ' 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 45 
 
 many American cities still contain provisions for 
 the suppression of public amusements on the only 
 day on which a large plurality of our workingmen 
 find their only leisure for recreation. The old 
 Egyptians turned their funerals into holidays. 
 We celebrate our holidays like funerals. Sublu- 
 nary life, according to a still prevalent theory, is 
 a state of probation for testing a man's power of 
 self-denial. God is supposed to delight in the self- 
 abasement and mortification of his creatures. A 
 "man of sorrows" is our ideal of moral perfection. 
 The cross, an instrument of torture, is the symbol 
 of our creed. That creed has made our daily life 
 so joyless that the mere prospect of a change 
 must, indeed, enhance the attractions of a future 
 existence. 
 
 We have been taught to treat the body as an 
 enemy of the soul; and, if bodily health is an 
 obstacle to true saintliness, we have evidently 
 progressed in the path of salvation. Under the 
 influence of a sixteen hundred years' reign of Anti- 
 naturalism, the degeneration of the South-Euro- 
 pean races has reached that degree where terrestrial 
 existence ceases to be a bl essing, and where the 
 
 " Bathing, being wholesome as well as pleasant, was a 
 particularly grievous offence; and no man could be allowed 
 to swim on Sunday. It was, in fact, doubtful whether 
 swimming was lawful for a Christian at any time, even on 
 week-days; and it was certain that God had on one occa- 
 sion shown his disapproval by taking away the life of a boy 
 while he was indulging in that carnal practice. . . . Even on 
 week-days, those who were imbued with religious princi- 
 ples hardly ever smiled, but sighed, groaned, and wept. 
 One pious elder had acquired distinction by bis faculty for 
 what was termed 'a holy groan.' He used to weep mncbln 
 Draver and preaching; he was every way 'most savory. 
 Eve y n among P young children, from eight years old upward, 
 toys and glmes were bad, and it was a g^od sign when 
 they were discarded."-i?wc/fcte's History of Civilization. 
 
46 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 undue love of life is not apt to prevent the appre- 
 ciation of spiritual comforts. 
 
 We have been taught that faith— i.e., mental 
 prostitution — is a prime condition of eternal wel- 
 fare, and in many countries that virtue has been so 
 earnestly cultivated that, if spiritual poverty is 
 bliss, the kingdom of heaven cannot be far off. 
 
 After the measure of such standards, the Gospel 
 of Pessimism has certainly regenerated the human 
 race. But the virtue of a merchant should not be 
 weighed on his own balance. The merits of a 
 creed cannot be proved by its conformity to its 
 own precepts. The standards we should apply are 
 the laws of nature, the revelations of science, and 
 the lessons of history. Such tests would teach us 
 that the love of gloom is a mental disease ; that, in 
 a state of nature, every normal function is con- 
 nected with a pleasurable sensation; that happi- 
 ness, therefore, is the normal condition of every 
 living creature ; that to enjoy is to obey ; and that 
 he who deprives himself or his child of any inno- 
 cent pleasure commits a crime against nature. 
 They would teach us that physical vigor is a prime 
 condition of moral health, and that he who neglects 
 the health-laws of nature sins against his soul as 
 well as against his body * They would teach us 
 that light is the harbinger of happiness, that the 
 
 * "When life has been duly rationalized by science, it will 
 be seen that, among a man's duties, care of the body is im- 
 perative, not only out of regard for personal welfare, but 
 also out of regard for descendants. His constitution will 
 be considered as an entailed estate, which ought to pass on 
 uninjured, if not improved, to those who f ollww ; and it will 
 be held that millions bequeathed by him will not compen- 
 sate for feeble health and decreased ability to enjoy life."- 
 Herbert Spencer. 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 47 
 
 sun of science has ripened more blessings in a 
 single year than the moonshine of mysticism in 
 eighteen centuries, that the suppression of free 
 inquiry has never benefited any country, and that 
 faith without reason is not a virtue, but a vice. 
 They would teach us that the love of earth was 
 the gospel of all progressive nations, that the love 
 of life lends wings to every valiant enterprise, that 
 the love of joy is the parent of every healthy in- 
 stinct, while the worship of sorrow has never pro- 
 duced anything but monsters and chimeras. They 
 would teach us that pessimism is a blasphemy 
 against the Author of life, against the Power whose 
 all-sustaining hands furnish the weapons of its 
 very assailants, — an insane, impious, and suicidal 
 rebellion against our All- mother Nature, a foe to 
 happiness, and the antithesis of all true religion. 
 
 The doctrines of the Galilean Buddhist have bur- 
 dened the record of human misery with thousands 
 of devastating wars. Have they ever added one 
 millet-seed to the sum of human happiness ? Did 
 the apostle of Nazareth ever speak one word in 
 favor of industry, of rational education, the cause 
 of health, the love and study of nature, of physi- 
 cal and intellectual culture? Not one. Has he 
 promoted our progress in the paths of science and 
 freedom? Not one step. The phantasms of his 
 sickly anti-naturalism have made the world neither 
 better nor wiser. His doctrine in all its tendencies 
 is wholly unearthly, and therefore wholly unavail- 
 able for any secular purpose. 
 
 In what respect, then, has the human race been 
 benefited by a creed that has perverted their ethi- 
 
48 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 cal instincts and systematically opposed the devel- 
 opment of their physical and intellectual faculties ? 
 "In the Duty of Disinterestedness," we are told, 
 "Christianity has revealed a higher type of virtue." 
 A new type would be more correct, if the study of 
 the Buddhistic Scriptures had not revealed the true 
 author of that doctrine. But we should not forget 
 that the self-denial of the New Testament is not the 
 disinterestedness of liberality, not the unselfishness 
 of friendship or patriotism, but the self-abnegation of 
 pessimism, the indifference to the weal or woe of 
 life which inspires the Buddhistic renunciation of 
 worldly possessions. On the shores of the Medi- 
 terranean, that disinterestedness has sadly reduced 
 the interests of real estate, and made mundane life 
 extremely uninteresting. A joy-loving cultivator 
 of the smallest farm, who improves his land and his 
 trees and surrounds himself with a troop of happy 
 children, benefits the world more than a whole con- 
 vent full of disinterested Buddhists with their 
 ascetic crotchets and puling pessimism. 
 
 Has Christianity made us more religious ? Its 
 terrorism once covered the land with churches, and 
 the steeples of those churches still bristle in every 
 city ; but religion — i.e., a whole-souled moral enthu- 
 siasm — requires the co-operation of heads and 
 hearts, and is as different from mediaeval devil- 
 panics as from the stock-list-consulting sanctimony 
 of our Sabbatarian Pecksniffs. Whether as brain- 
 less bigots or as heartless hypocrites, the defenders 
 of the Trinitarian dogma have always been the 
 worst enemies of natural religion. Even a moral 
 atheist would object to the absurdities and atroci- 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 49 
 
 ties they ascribe to the Supreme Being, but there 
 are no real atheists Naturalism, Pantheism, and 
 Theism are only ditierent names for the recogni- 
 tion of the beneficence and omnipresence of the 
 great unseen Power ; and, to every sincere worship- 
 per of that Power, the apotheosis of Nature's enemy 
 must be a shocking blasphemy against her God. 
 
 Has the Reformation improved our moral status ? 
 would be a very different question ; for that reform, 
 without admitting, and perhaps without suspecting, 
 its ultimate mission, has proved itself a rather pro- 
 gressive one, — so much, indeed, that the doctrine 
 preached from the pulpits of our Protestant 
 churches is not Christianity, but an eclectic Bible 
 doctrine, mixed with at least fifty per cent, of 
 purely pagan ethics. Outside of La Trappe, few 
 human beings could nowadays allege a reason for 
 calling themselves Christians, and an honest repug- 
 nance to a solecism of that sort has perhaps evolved 
 the nomenclature of our countless isms. Most Meth- 
 odists know that some of Wesley's doctrines are al- 
 ready out of date ; few Calvinists would like to men- 
 tion certain tenets of the Geneva witch-hunter ; and 
 neither Catholics nor Old Kirk Presbyterians can 
 doubt that the unqualified dogmas of the New Tes- 
 tament would circumscribe the sphere of a modern 
 apostle by limiting his influence to the audience of 
 a lunatic asylum. 
 
 The viands served in the refectory of our spirit- 
 ual purveyors are half pagan and one-fourth He- 
 braic, but the Buddhistic flavor of the remaining 
 fourth greatly impairs the digestibility of their col- 
 lation. Their temperance-precepts are neutralized 
 
50 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 by the doctrine of the man who depreciated the 
 health-code of the Mosaic dispensation, who denied 
 the defiling influence of "anything that enters the 
 mouth," and who once proved his sincere indiffer- 
 ence to the physical welfare of his fellow-men by 
 manufacturing a considerable quantity of intoxicat- 
 ing drink. The worship of God in the wonders of 
 his visible creation is counteracted by the impious 
 tenets of Anti-naturalism, the "vale of tears" 
 dogma, the alleged worthlessness of earthly life, 
 that fills convents and prebendaries with the whin- 
 ing gluttons who 
 
 "With senseless, base ingratitude 
 Cram, and blaspheme their feeder." 
 
 The worship of Nature in her progressive reve- 
 lations, and the regenerative influence of science, 
 are paralyzed by the dogmas of natural depravity 
 and salvation by faith; and every champion of 
 human rights has to contend with the rancorous 
 opposition of the creed that inculcates the duty of 
 self-abasement. 
 
 Protestantism has already eliminated three-fourths 
 of the pessimistic elements in our eclectic system 
 of ethics ; and, even in the interest of religion, it 
 ought to complete its task. We cannot regain our 
 moral health till we cease to consult the oracle of 
 a life-hating fanatic and to disregard the teachings 
 of our life-preserving instincts. Religion will ful- 
 fil its mission when our Unitarians begin to deserve 
 their name by renouncing the dogmas of the blas- 
 phemous age when the offerings intended for the 
 Temple of our God were carried to the house of a 
 usurper. We must choose between Nature and 
 
THE ETHICS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 51 
 
 Anti-naturalism. The compromise plan has failed. 
 If the Prophet of Galilee was a god, we must 
 humbly recognize the fact that it has pleased the 
 Supreme Being to contradict himself in his direct 
 and indirect revelation. If he was a man, I hold 
 that the blindness of his followers does not absolve 
 us from the duty of exposing his baneful errors. 
 Can good intentions outweigh the consequences of 
 such errors ? If a quack kills my child with a poi- 
 son which he honestly believed would cure it, I 
 may forgive him because he meant to do me good 
 instead of harm ; but should I revere him as a 
 model physician, merely because his intentions 
 were good ? And should the same reason entitle 
 the Apostle of Anti-naturalism to be worshipped as 
 a saviour ? The advocates of the compromise plan 
 protest against the revelation of the whole truth, 
 and hide their real motives behind a mask of chari- 
 table forbearance; but that mask has become 
 threadbare, and to their protest I answer : Truth 
 needs no veil, and you would not hesitate to expose 
 the delusions of your unfortunate fellow-men, if 
 you did not desire their welfare less than you fear 
 their prejudices. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE. 
 
 "Consistency is the seal of truth." 
 
 The alliance of Christianity and barbarism, and 
 their joint triumph over the civilization of the 
 Roman Empire, form the most fateful episode in 
 the annals of the human race ; and in the book of 
 history no other page is so stained with the sweat 
 of laborious sophisms. To what complicated theo- 
 ries of strange coincidences and peculiar mishaps 
 the Christian apologists have to resort, in order to 
 reconcile the alleged merits of their creed with the 
 suspicious circumstances of its introduction and 
 the monstrous consequences of its supremacy! 
 From year to year, the progress of science has 
 obliged them to modify their hypothesis by quali- 
 fying its conclusions or falsifying its premises. 
 But the evidence of history remains, and the only 
 theory which can account for the persistent uni- 
 formity of that evidence furnishes also the key to 
 the equally persistent duplicity of the theorists 
 who wish to approximate the truth of historical 
 facts and yet dread to divulge the trade-secret of 
 their creed. 
 
 The Religion of Antinaturalism appealed to the 
 pessimistic tendency of decrepitude, and thus recom- 
 mended itself to the instincts of a decrepit generation. 
 
THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE. 53 
 
 During the first century of the Cesarean era, the 
 silence of the pagan moralists, and their often al- 
 leged blindness to the destiny of the new faith, 
 admit of an equally simple explanation : they did 
 not underrate the influence of the Galilean church, 
 but they overrated the moral health of a nation 
 which, in the incipience of its political abasement, 
 seemed still justified in despising the contagion of 
 a creed which even casual observers had recognized 
 as an "execrable superstition." For the descent 
 from Cato to Nero was really a mere trifle, com- 
 pared with the fall from Nero to Constantine. 
 The murderer of Seneca was the tyrant of a proud 
 commonwealth, which sought and found means to 
 shake off his yoke. The patron of Eusebius tyran- 
 nized a community of submissive slaves, who had 
 lost not only the blessings, but the instinct of lib- 
 erty. The proud stoicism of the Roman philoso- 
 pher, the beauty-worship of the Roman poet, the 
 joyous nature- worship of the Roman peasant, had 
 all given way to the whining pessimism of the 
 Galilean bigots, — to a creed which superadded the 
 devil-panics of the Egyptian church to the asceti- 
 cism of the nature-hating Buddhists. Tacitus 
 misread the signs of his time. But let us put our- 
 selves in his place. Even if the stars of our Re- 
 public should be transferred to the crown of a 
 despot, we might still feel ourselves entitled to de- 
 spise the followers of an Oriental visionary who 
 should deny the value of earthly possessions and 
 the competence of human reason, but profess his 
 belief in devils and witches ; who should denounce 
 the observance of sanitary precautions, the prompt- 
 
54 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 ings of our natural affections, and the cultivation 
 of industrial habits, and advise his disciples to 
 supply their wants by prayer and miracle mongery. 
 Even our Spiritualists, even the Cherokese wor- 
 shippers of the Great Spirit, would be entitled to 
 execrate the superstition of the bigots who should 
 propagate such dogmas, and blaspheme their Crea- 
 tor by co-ordinating his name with that of their 
 mystagogue. 
 
 Tacitus and Suetonius did not apprehend any 
 danger from such sources ; but Oriental vices pre- 
 pared the way for Oriental superstitions, and two 
 hundred years later the countrymen of Scipio Af- 
 ricanus had accepted the yoke of a creed which the 
 countrymen of Judas Maccabseus rejected with 
 persistent scorn. 
 
 Worn-out sensualists consoled themselves with 
 the hope of a better hereafter. Cowards pleased 
 themselves in the idea of fulfilling the duty of 
 meek submission to injustice and the "powers that 
 be." Monastic drones denounced the worldliness of 
 industrial enterprises. Physical indolence wel- 
 comed the discovery that "bodily exercise profiteth 
 but little." Envious impotence insisted on the 
 duty of self-abasement. Transgressors against the 
 health laws of nature relied upon the efficacy of 
 the prayer-cure. Stall-fed priests sneered at the 
 lean philosopher who wasted his time upon labori- 
 ous inquiries, while he might wax fat on faith and 
 the sacrifices of the pious. The demon-dogma was a 
 godsend to the spiritual poverty of the elect. The 
 so-called scholars of the Galilean church, who 
 could not encounter the pagan philosophers on 
 
THE CONVERSION OF EURQPE. 55 
 
 their own ground, found it very convenient to 
 postulate a spook for every occult phenomenon. 
 
 But moralists who clearly discern the change in 
 the ethical standards of a nation are apt to overlook 
 the progressiveness of that change. They see the 
 present and the past, but not the future. In the 
 game for moral supremacy, the pagan philosophers 
 had all the good players on their side; but the 
 Christians, like the gods, played with loaded dice. 
 Two rival crews struggled to row the Ship of State 
 in opposite directions : Health, Manliness, Reason, 
 Science, and Optimism arraigned against Disease, 
 whining Bigotry, Unreason, Fanaticism, and Pessi- 
 mism. But the Pessimists had the winds and tides 
 in their favor. It was a struggle of declining phi- 
 losophy against growing superstition. Before long, 
 the imperial despots recognized their mistake in 
 persecuting a creed which inculcated the duty of 
 passive submission to oppressors, and the doom of 
 Roman liberty was sealed when on its grave the 
 despot Constantine erected the cross of the Gali- 
 lean Buddhist. Claudius Constantine, the Roman 
 Haynau, the man who added the cant of Uriah 
 Heep to the crimes of a Cambyses, became the 
 Pontifex Maximus of pessimism, and, in the view 
 of his ecclesiastical biographers, atoned for all his 
 murders by making Christianity the court-religion 
 of the empire. The despotism which Nero and Ca- 
 ligula had exercised under the influence of tempo- 
 rary insanity, or in defiance of laws which they 
 otherwise recognized, was then elaborated into a 
 system. The last traces of the old democratic in- 
 stitutions were utterly abolished. Where the poor- 
 
56 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 est plebeian of the ancient republic would have 
 claimed a right, the proudest patrician had now to 
 cringe for a favor. The Roman Padisha retired to 
 Constantinople, and surrounded himself with an 
 army of flunkeys and eunuchs. The visitors of 
 the Audience Hall were required to perform the 
 rite of genuflexion, and submit their petitions to 
 the caprice of the autocrat. From the decrees of 
 that caprice there was no appeal. The imperial 
 saint compelled his father-in-law to hang himself. 
 His brother-in-law was strangled in prison. His 
 nephew, the only boy of a widow, had his throat 
 cut. His eldest son was beheaded, and his wife 
 was strangled in a bath. The will of the despot 
 was officially recognized as the supreme law. Every 
 symptom of political or religious independence was 
 rigorously suppressed, and the alliance of Church 
 and State bore its first-fruit in the decree which 
 threatened the readers of Aryan books with capi- 
 tal punishment. "In hoc vinces." The cross had 
 triumphed. 
 
 There is an old Indian tradition that Ravan, the 
 Prince of Darkness, avenged himself upon his con- 
 querors by inviting them to a banquet of poisoned 
 soma-vine. The myth of the Python and the le- 
 gend of Hercules and Nessus are echoes of that 
 tradition, and its meaning has been illustrated in 
 the fate of many a barbarous nation that adopted 
 the vices and superstitions of its conquered rival. 
 The worshippers of sickly saints appealed in vain 
 to the old god of war; and, a century after the 
 death of Constantine, the hordes of the Sarmatian 
 steppe dismembered the empire of the nation 
 
THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE. 57 
 
 which, for centuries, had represented the highest 
 mental and physical development of the human 
 race. But the dying Centaur avenged himself by 
 the bequest of a moral Nessus shirt. With the 
 purple of the Csesars, the Gothic chieftains inher- 
 ited the poison of the Galilean pest. 
 
 Polytheistic savages are especially apt to conclude 
 that their intellectual superiors must have a supe- 
 rior fetich. A Yankee missionary once confessed 
 that he won the confidence of a Fiji Islander by 
 presenting him with a set of carpenters' tools, and 
 describing the several implements as a Christian 
 hatchet, a Christian claw-hammer, a Christian buck- 
 saw. The barbarians of the North embraced the 
 religion of the Roman god as they adopted the 
 code of the Roman lawyer and the trappings of 
 the Roman cavalry. When the savage conquerors 
 returned to their native villages, they could hardly 
 find room and names for the quantity and variety 
 of their spoils,— purple, gold cloth, curious glass 
 trinkets, ornamental shields, sweetmeats and in- 
 cense, musical slaves, dancing-girls, soothsayers, 
 monkeys, and parrots. To commodities of that 
 sort, they had added a few bishops and crosses. 
 They managed to acclimatize them, and quite en- 
 joyed their novel acquisition. The poison had not 
 yet revealed its virulence. A little while after, we 
 find them involved in all the horrors of religious 
 massacres, witch-riots, heretic-hunts, devil-panics, 
 and manias of self-torture. The poison had be- 
 gun to operate. 
 
 The shadow of the cross began to creep over the 
 face of the earth. The sun of pagan civilization 
 
58 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 still gilded the horizon with its last rays, but the 
 foul birds of darkness were already on the wing ; 
 and the spectres of superstition heralded the ad- 
 vent of the dreadful night which for thirteen cen- 
 turies was to blight and darken the fairest countries 
 of the globe. It is a significant fact that the civil- 
 ization of the East revived under the influence of 
 the optimistic doctrines of Islam, while the civili- 
 zation of the West was crushed by the ascendency 
 of a pessimistic religion, and only revived at the 
 decline of its influence. Two centuries after the 
 conversion of Mecca, the sixteen provinces of the 
 Caliph were studded with academies. Their cult- 
 ure and prosperity rivalled the Golden Age of the 
 Grecian republics; and, six hundred years later, 
 the Moors of Spain were still the teachers of Eu- 
 rope in science and arts, as well as in industry and 
 agriculture. Two centuries after the conversion of 
 Rome, the sun of reason had set in a sea of in- 
 sanity; and that night was broken only by the 
 dawn of modern rationalism. At the end of the 
 fourteenth century, when the power of the Church 
 had reached its zenith, not a single country in 
 Europe had gained by its conversion from optimis- 
 tic to pessimistic polytheism. Every school had 
 been turned into a seed-plot of superstition, every 
 jail into a grave of liberty; the sword of Themis 
 had become an instrument of spiritual despotism, 
 literature a farrago of silly fables, science a sham ; 
 the tillers of the soil were treated like wild beasts, 
 thinkers and inventors as criminals ; the enemies 
 of Nature were worshipped as the ministers of her 
 God. 
 
THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE. 
 
 50 
 
 The same Germans and Celts whom the Roman 
 pagans had turned into intelligent citizens the 
 Roman Christians turned into brutish bigots. At 
 the same time, when Moorish Spain rivalled the 
 god-gardens of ancient Italy, and every Moorish 
 town had its schools of poetry and philosophy, 
 Christian Spain was cursed with a chronic plague 
 of mental and physical famines. With every pos- 
 sible allowance for "unfortunate contingencies," 
 "revivals of barbarism," "misunderstood doc- 
 trines," etc., we cannot mistake the significance 
 of the contrast. "Bring up a child in the way it 
 should go, and it will not depart therefrom." And 
 nations, too, are, on the whole, what their educa- 
 tors make them. We need not expect that Pusey's 
 "heaven sent gospel of regeneration" should turn 
 every corner of earth into Eden; but, if it not 
 only failed to alleviate, but always and under all 
 circumstances was sure to aggravate, the misery, 
 and intensify the vices of every converted nation, 
 we can have no difficulty in forming an opinion 
 about the import of such facts. The laziest and 
 sickliest Sybarites of ancient Italy would have ex- 
 ecrated the systematic health ruin of the Italian 
 monks, who boasted of disease and forced their 
 disciples to treat the body as the enemy of the 
 soul. The Alexandrian Platonists, with all their 
 penchant for gnostic phantasms, would have loathed 
 that mixture of superstition, insanity, and disgust- 
 ing sophistry which the Alexandrian clergy dissem- 
 inated as a divine revelation. The warriors of the 
 old pagan Northland, with all their martial trucu- 
 lence, would have shuddered at the mention of the 
 
60 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 inhumanities which their children perpetrated at 
 the instigation of their priests. 
 
 The first Galilean missionaries came in Unita- 
 rian and optimistic disguises. Arius Alexandrinus 
 was the patron-saint of the Visigoths, the Suevi, 
 the Vandals, the Celt-Iberians, and the Burgun- 
 dians. But moral epidemics can rarely be confined 
 to their incipient stages, and there is a curious 
 analogy between mental and physical poison habits. 
 Harmless sweets always please. There is no reason 
 why an octogenarian should not relish a cupful of 
 strawberries as much as seventy years ago, when 
 he picked them among the rocks of the mountain 
 glens. Virgil's Eclogues never lose their charm. 
 But the votaries of an unnatural stimulant must 
 continually increase the dose : their tonic palls, the 
 jaded nerves demand a stronger medium of stimu- 
 lation. The alcohol-tippler has to advance from 
 cider to brandy and rum. The opium-eater gradu- 
 ates from laudanum to morphine. The victims of 
 mental poison habits, too, prove that their vice is 
 progressive. Visionaries advance from hobgob- 
 lins to T)he personal devil. Buddha began with 
 the deserts of Nepaul and ended with Nirvana. 
 The asceticism of the Nazarenes led from celibacy 
 to the Cross. All southern Arians ended by be- 
 coming fanatical Trinitarians and persecutors 
 of Arianism : the stronger poison prevailed ; mod- 
 erate absurdity had no chance against absolute 
 nonsense. Their missionary zeal, too, increased. 
 From synods, it rose to riots, to heretic-hunts, to 
 Jew-massacres, to civil wars, to international wars, 
 and culminated in the inter-continental warfare of 
 
THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE. 61 
 
 the Crusades. Intolerance advanced from excom- 
 munications to excoriations, from the burning of 
 heretical books to the burning of heretics. ^ 
 
 The progressiveness of every poison habit bears 
 an exact proportion to the virulence of the poison. 
 Johnsonian tea-drinkers are phenomenal. For one 
 man who drinks coffee to an absurd excess, we 
 shall find a thousand who swill wine or lager beer. 
 The nature-worshipping Greeks repeated the harm- 
 less myths and practised the merry rites of their 
 creed for centuries without troubling themselves 
 about the myths and rites of their neighbors. 
 Their superstition differed from that of the Church 
 as the inspired love of nature differs from the 
 ecstatic fury of her enemies, as the day-dream of 
 a happy child differs from the fever-dream of a 
 gloomy fanatic. " Procul profani!" was the cry 
 of the Eleusinian priests. They had more follow- 
 ers than they wanted. Their joy-loving creed 
 could dispense with autos-da-fe'. The Hebrews, 
 in stress of famine, conquered a little strip of ter- 
 ritory between Arabia and the Syrian desert, and 
 then tried their best to live in peace with heaven 
 and earth, and their sects contented themselves 
 with metaphorical rib-roastings. The Saracens 
 spread their conquests from Spain to the Ganges, 
 but their wars had a physical rather than meta- 
 physical purpose. They needed land, and made a 
 better use of it than the former occupants. They 
 contented themselves with assessing dissenters, and 
 did not think it necessary to assassinate them. 
 But the Galilean pessimists could not afford to tol- 
 erate an unconverted neighbor. To the enemies 
 
b2 the secret of the east. 
 
 of nature, the happiness of an earth-loving, garden- 
 planting, and science-promoting nation was an in- 
 tolerable offence: reason had to be sacrificed to 
 faith, health and happiness to the cross, and earth 
 to heaven. Their conquests were generally unself- 
 ish: they did not care for the lands of heathen- 
 dom, they merely felt it their duty to suppress the 
 impious prosperity of those who cultivated them. 
 The Spanish Christians did not annex the property 
 of their Moorish neighbors : they merely destroyed 
 it. They did not covet the gardens of Andalusia : 
 they merely wanted to extend the deserts of 
 Aragon. "How hardly shall they that have riches 
 enter the kingdom of heaven." It was the duty 
 of a pious pauper to relieve his neighbors of such 
 religious disabilities. "Blessed are they that mourn, 
 for they shall be comforted.'' It was the duty of 
 a pious pessimist to enlarge that basis of spirit- 
 ual hopes. Year after year, Charlemagne left his 
 Rhineland palace to ravage the villages of the 
 pagan Saxons, who betrayed an undue fondness 
 for bear-hunts and field-sports, when they ought to 
 have been at church, bemoaning their sins. When 
 they declined to slave for his abbots and surrender 
 their children to a band of gloomy fanatics with 
 their unnatural dogmas and secret vices, he en- 
 deavored to cure their stiffneckedness by behead- 
 ing as many as he could catch. For a century and 
 a half, the Spanish Unitarians were burned at the 
 rate of two hundred a year. Jews and Moors 
 were almost the only industrial inhabitants of the 
 peninsula : their expulsion would paralyze agricult- 
 ure, manufactures, science, commerce, and me- 
 
V 
 
 THE CONVERSION OF EUROPE. 63 
 
 chanical arts ; but such trifles could not be allowed 
 to outweigh the ghostly interests of the natives, 
 and, at the expense of the national credit, and the 
 irretrievable loss of national prestige, the subjects 
 of the Most Christian Monarch were reduced to a 
 proper state of financial and spiritual poverty. 
 Between the outbreak of the first crusade and the 
 final expulsion of the Andalusian Moors, more than 
 fourteen million human lives were sacrificed to the 
 propaganda of pessimism, and for seven centuries 
 the neighbors of Christianized Europe were exposed 
 to the almost continual horrors of a moral opium 
 war. 
 
 The monody of Libanius* was the dirge of 
 pagan civilization. As soon as the light of philos- 
 ophy had faded, the vampires of the Galilean 
 church became aggressive, and for the next thou- 
 sand years the moral history of Europe is the 
 history of an unremitting war against Nature, a 
 war which systematically promoted the survival of 
 the unfit by making manliness a stigma and com- 
 mon sense a capital crime. It is this anti-natural- 
 ism that makes the study of mediaeval history such 
 a sickening task. The moral atmosphere of the 
 old pagan republics, even after the star of their 
 fortune had declined, is pervaded by a spirit of 
 mental and physical health ; while the air of the 
 Christian Middle Ages reeks with the miasma 
 of misery and superstition. 
 
 Between the morning-light of pagan philosophy 
 and the evening-light of modern science inter- 
 vened a thousand years' eclipse of human reason, 
 * On the death of the Emperor Julian, 363. 
 
64 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 a millennium of madness and misery which but for 
 that unnatural night might have been the happiest 
 period in the history of mankind. The rule of the 
 Cross robbed the Germanic nations of the spring- 
 time of their national development. When they 
 awakened from the morning-slumber of their 
 political infancy, they found themselves in the 
 coils of a strangling hydra ; and the prime of their 
 strength, which might have won them the golden 
 prizes of the international arena, had to be wasted 
 in the struggle against the slimy monster that 
 threatened to crush out their reason and their life. 
 In that struggle for life and light, the Hercules of 
 the North finally prevailed ; but the Apollo of the 
 South succumbed to the Python : the Mediter- 
 ranean Paradise was forever lost. Here and there, 
 the worshippers of the Light-god still wreathed 
 his altars in happy ignorance of the impending 
 change; but the shadows of Nirvana gathered 
 fast, and fifty years after the death of Julian the 
 day of the Juventus Mundi had faded into the 
 night of the Middle Ages. There, the fragrance of 
 a sunlit mountain-forest, resounding with the hun- 
 ter's shout and the jubilee of happy children; 
 here, the fumes and the groans of a Buddhistic 
 opium-den. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE NIGHT OP THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 "Your prayer for light shall be answered, if you consent 
 to open your eyes."— O. E. Lessing. 
 
 Since the dawn of modern rationalism, the path 
 of social reform has been obstructed by a Sphinx 
 that still propounds her riddle to every philosopher, 
 to every moralist, to every speculative historian. 
 That Sphinx is the Christian religion; and the 
 riddle, which has to be solved before we can clear 
 the road of progress, is the enigma of the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 Whence that dreadful night that followed sud- 
 denly and unnaturally upon the bright sunrise of 
 pagan civilization? that long eclipse of reason, 
 science, freedom, and happiness, that trance-like 
 lethargy of the very nations which before and after 
 gave the most decided proofs of their capacity for 
 mental progress ? What turned their health into 
 a thousand years' disease ? Was it the influence of 
 a supernatural religion? Then, how did the fol- 
 lowers of other supernatural creeds happen to 
 escape that doom ? For we should not forget that 
 the morning-hour of our prosperous Age of Rea- 
 son is but a moment compared with the long cen- 
 turies of health and prosperity which the Greeks, 
 the Spanish Moors, and the Eastern Saracens con- 
 trived to combine with a firm belief in the reality 
 of supernatural agencies. 
 
66 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 It would have been well for the nations of Eu- 
 rope, if their priests had contented themselves with 
 the inculcation of such beliefs. The misery of the 
 Middle Ages was due not to the supernatural, but 
 to the anti-natural, tendency of the Christian relig- 
 ion. According to the gospel of the Galilean 
 Buddhists, earth, with all its joys and desires, with 
 all its visible and invisible habitants, is wholly 
 evil ; the renunciation of temporal blessings is the 
 first condition of eternal welfare, and death the 
 only gate of true life. The Christians did not 
 deny the existence of the pagan deities : they merely 
 changed them into devils. The pagan Pantheon 
 became a pandemonium. Rivers, woods, and moun- 
 tains swarmed, not with harmless nymphs and 
 dryads, but with tempting demons, emissaries of 
 the brimstone-pit who devoted their superhuman 
 powers to the seduction and affliction of Adam's 
 progeny * The gods and saints of Greece, Rome, 
 and Palestine, descended from heaven to share the 
 earthly joys of mortals, to bless and hallow the 
 scenes of their earthly struggles and triumphs. 
 The saints of Buddhism and Christianity visited 
 earth to mar its joys, to depreciate its blessings, to 
 wean its children from their natural instincts and 
 sympathies. Has the worship of sorrow ever failed 
 
 *The belief in fairies was of Druidic origin, and was 
 either suppressed or characteristically metamorphosed by 
 the Church, who, true to her pessimistic principles, diabo- 
 lized the Celtic and German as well as the Grecian dei- 
 ties. Wodan, the hunter-god, became a Wild Huntsman; 
 Hulda, a night-hag, the first May night, when Hertha 
 awakens the slumbering wood-spirits, a Walpurgis-Nacht 
 with its hellish revivals. Even objects of scenic interest, 
 the trysting-places of the nature-worshipping Druids, be- 
 came "devils' pulpits," "devils' bridges," "devils' castles." 
 
THE NIGHT OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 67 
 
 to darken the light of nature ? Has it added one 
 millet-seed to the sum of earthly happiness ? Did 
 the Apostle of Galilee ever speak one word in favor 
 of industry, rational education, the love and study 
 of nature, physical and intellectual culture ? Not 
 one. Has his mission promoted our progress in 
 the paths of science and freedom? Not one step. 
 His doctrine in all its tendencies is wholly un- 
 earthly, and therefore wholly unavailable for secu- 
 lar purposes. 
 
 The pagan gods were the deified powers of Nat- 
 ure, the patrons of mariners, shepherds, and hus- 
 bandmen. The Christian gods were the deified 
 enemies of Nature. Even the Christian Deus 
 Maximus frowned on earthly pleasures, and could 
 be propitiated only by the mortification of almost 
 every natural instinct : the bounteous All-father 
 had become an All-tormentor, a celestial grand- 
 inquisitor, who demanded an implicit submission 
 of human reason to inhuman dogmas, and doomed 
 the vast plurality of his creatures to the tortures 
 of an everlasting auto-da-fe. 
 
 In the instinct of freedom, in the love of knowl- 
 edge, aud the sense of beauty, the Christian mor- 
 alists, like the pagan philosophers, recognized the 
 power of a mysterious inspiration, but with this 
 difference, that the pagans ascribed that inspira- 
 tion to the favor of a beneficent god, the Christians 
 to the wiles of a tempting fiend. More than fifty 
 generations of our Christian ancestors were taught 
 to neglect the health laws of nature as unworthy 
 the attention of a candidate for the higher blessings 
 of the world to come. Every opposition to the 
 
00 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 tyranny of the secular or spiritual authorities was 
 punished as a revolt against the authority of a 
 creed which inculcated the duty of passive submis- 
 sion to injustice. The Holy Alliance of Church and 
 State disdained to recognize the natural rights of 
 men whose natural instincts were supposed to be 
 wholly evil. In every progress of natural science, 
 the guardians of an anti-natural creed scented a 
 danger to the prerogatives of the holy brother- 
 hood. Every philosopher, every mathematician, 
 every naturalist, had to keep the secret of his dis- 
 coveries, if he wished to keep his head. The night 
 of the Middle Ages was not the natural blindness 
 of unenlightened barbarians, but an unnatural 
 darkness, maintained by an elaborate system of 
 spiritual despotism, and in spite of the fierce strug- 
 gles of many light-loving nations. 
 
 In the French province of Languedoc alone, the 
 man-hunters of the Holy Inquisition spilled more 
 human blood than ever reddened the sand of the 
 Roman arena. "But the gladiators died to min- 
 ister to a frivolous popular amusement," says the 
 Jesuitical apologist, "while the mediaeval heretics 
 were sacrificed to the interests of our revealed 
 faith." A faith which would undoubtedly tempt 
 you to renew the butcheries of your predecessors, 
 if you could regain their power; but, after its 
 doctrines have been recognized as a mixture of 
 God-insulting idolatries, nature-insulting precepts, 
 and reason-insulting superstitions, what remains 
 to compensate the world for the lives of the twenty- 
 five hundred thousand martyrs of reason and free- 
 dom whose murder has undoubtedly debased the 
 
THE NIGHT OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 69 
 
 mental type of the human race? Will sophistry 
 dare to mention the elements of natural morality 
 which are common to all religions, but which the 
 anti-natural dogmas of Christianity crowded into 
 the background ? Has religion gained by its asso- 
 ciation with the doctrines of a Church that made 
 it a synonyme of all that is odious and absurd ? 
 Has the rule of that Church furthered the moral 
 progress of the forty generations whose wisest, 
 manliest, noblest, and bravest men were systemati- 
 cally weeded out, to enforce the survival of idiots 
 and hypocrites? For thirteen centuries, the rack, 
 the stake, and the cross were leagued against nat- 
 ure and mankind. 
 
 It is true that here and there the genius of Hu- 
 manity triumphed over its enemies ; it is true that 
 the Christian obscurantists could not entirely sup- 
 press the mental activity of the Caucasian race; 
 but it is equally true that their labors to suppress 
 the fruits of that activity were successful enough 
 to retard the progress of mankind for nearly four- 
 teen hundred years. 
 
 I am not disposed to deny the merits of the 
 amiable inconsistencies of several Christian sects, 
 such as the republican enthusiasm of the English 
 Puritans, who found it convenient to forget the 
 duty of passive submission to injustice ; or the tol- 
 erance of several Catholic pontiffs in their zeal for 
 the revival of pagan arts and sciences, — the same 
 arts and sciences which their predecessors had 
 labored to suppress ; or the promotion of the 
 cause of temperance by Protestant clergymen, who 
 have at last awakened to a recognition of the fact 
 
70 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 that a man can be denied by things that enter his 
 mouth, and that the magician of Canaan set a 
 bad example by turning drinking water into wine. 
 I do not deny that some of the worst Christian 
 hierarchies have done some good, in spite of their 
 creed; but I maintain that, just as far as they 
 have tried to conform to the precepts of that creed, 
 they have proved themselves the worst enemies of 
 mankind. 
 
 "What I" cries my theological friend, "enemies of 
 mankind? Have they deserved that epithet by 
 their unselfish zeal in propagating a religion which 
 inculcates such precepts as the duty of universal 
 love?" 
 
 And I reply : Yes, in just as far as they acted in 
 the antinatural spirit of that religion. For how 
 did it teach them to prove their "love" ? By mak- 
 ing earth more lovely ? By making life more worth 
 living? By increasing the creature comforts of 
 their fellow-men? By teaching them to observe 
 the health laws of God, to recognize the principles 
 of rational education, the conditions of social 
 progress? Not if they could help it. Whatever 
 is natural is wrong, was the foundation dogma of 
 their creed; and true believers tried to promote 
 the welfare of their fellow-men by suppressing 
 their freedom in the interests of "Christian disci- 
 pline," their reason in the interests of "Christian 
 revelation" ; by burning their bodies for the bene- 
 fit of their souls, and by imprisoning their chil- 
 dren in convents, where tyranny and superstition 
 conspired for the suppression of every natural in- 
 stinct. 
 
THE NIGHT OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 71 
 
 The Arabs have a tradition that a roving Bed- 
 ouin once discovered the earthly paradise, and was 
 so haunted by the memory of its scenes and bird 
 songs that he found the dreariness of his native 
 deserts unendurable, and wandered to the seashore 
 and drowned himself. And, if a resuscitated 
 Roman could see what the rule of the Cross has 
 made of his birthland, he, too, would probably 
 take refuge with Charybdis rather than endure 
 the hideous sight. The paradise of Southern Eu- 
 rope could not be at once spoiled. Traces of the 
 old nature worship still lingered here and there. 
 The Apennines still sheltered the remnants of the 
 sacred groves. A few mountain tribes still kept 
 the foe at bay, and relied on the strength of their 
 sinews rather than on prayers and miracles. But 
 the efforts of the spoilers did not cease; and it 
 may be doubted if the Caucasian race will ever 
 wholly recover from the effects of a thousand 
 years' attempt to lure their children from earth 
 to ghostland, to poison their minds with the dog- 
 mas of pessimism, to sacrifice the pagan Elysium 
 to the Buddhistic Nirvana. How is it that "cli- 
 matic influences" have not sapped the physical 
 vigor of the Arabs, the Jews, the Berbers, the Per- 
 sians, the East-Indian Mohammedans ? Only anti- 
 natural religions have achieved that deep abase- 
 ment of the physical type of our race which we 
 see in China and Southern Europe. For we should 
 not forget that the nations of Northern Europe 
 saved themselves by the revolt of the Protestant 
 Reformation, before the poison of pessimism had 
 sapped their strength. The gods of Greece were 
 
72 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 the deified powers of Nature; Olympus was an 
 earthly mountain ; the immortals were worshipped 
 with songs and dances, and did not oblige their 
 votaries to sacrifice their reason and their freedom. 
 The doctrines of anti-naturalism, diabolism, and 
 eternal punishment, were unknown to the expo- 
 nents of the Mosaic dispensation. Nay, with the 
 exception of that doubtful passage in Job, the 
 Old Testament contains not a line, not a single 
 word, that could be fairly construed into an allu- 
 sion to the doctrine of a future existence. Its 
 God rewards his servants with temporal blessings, 
 its retributions are earthly retributions, its para- 
 dise bloomed on this side of the grave. The na- 
 tions of Islam believed in a supernatural paradise ; 
 but its gates had to be won by valiant deeds, by 
 wisdom and temperance, and not by whining self- 
 abasement and the contempt of bodily health. 
 But the dogmas of the Galilean Church were 
 wholly anti-natural, and, in their strict accepta- 
 tion, necessarily conducive to mental and physical 
 bankruptcy. 
 
 When the sceptre of Rome passed into the hands 
 of the victorious Goths, Western Europe and the 
 Mediterranean peninsulas were still in the prime of 
 their fertility. Climate, soil, scenic grandeur, natu- 
 ral facilities of communication, the happiest pro- 
 portion of cultivated fields and forest lands, — all 
 contributed to make them the most favored regions 
 of the Eastern Continent ; and we should remem- 
 ber that the nations who inherited them were, in 
 natural capacities, immeasurably superior to the 
 best Arabian tribes. Among the sad "It might 
 
THE NIGHT OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 73 
 
 have beens" of the world's history, the saddest is 
 the reflection what those countries might have 
 become, if the noble Visigoths, the heroic Longo- 
 bards, and the manful Saxons had been permitted 
 to ru]e them, under the influence of a moderately 
 rational religion, like that of Islam. The golden 
 age of Hellas would have been eclipsed by nations 
 who (as they proved, as soon as they could rid 
 themselves of the Galilean incubus) combined 
 the intellectual faculties of the Greeks with a 
 warmer love of nature and a prouder love of per- 
 sonal independence. 
 
 At the end of the thirteenth century, the ene- 
 mies of nature had reached the zenith of their 
 power; and, at that time, it may be said that, 
 without a single exception, the countries of Christian 
 Europe were worse governed, more ignorant, more 
 superstitious, poorer, and unhappier than the worst 
 governed province of pagan Rome * The "scion 
 
 *< 'Feudalism," says Blanqui, "was a concentration of sJl 
 scourees. The peasant, stripped of the inheritance of his 
 father?, became the property of ignorant, inflexible, indo- 
 lent masters: he was" obliged to travel fifty ^agues^ with 
 their carts, whenever they required it; he labored for them 
 three days in the week, and surrendered to them half the 
 Product of his earnings during the other three; without 
 ?heir consent he conld not change his residence or marry. 
 And why, indeed, should he. wish to marry, if he conld 
 ^•arcelv save enough to maintain himself? The Abbot 
 AlcSn had twenty thousand slaves, called serfs, who were 
 forever attached to the soil. This is the great cause of the 
 rS depopulation observed in the Middle Ages, and of 
 the prodigious multitude of monasteries which sprang up 
 on every sYde. It was doubtless a relief to such miserable 
 men to find in the cloisters a retreat from oppression ; but 
 Se humao race never suffered a more cruel outrage, indus- 
 try never received a wound better calculated to plunge the 
 wJrld again into the darkness -of the rudest antiquity. It 
 Suffices to say that the prediction of the approaching end 
 of thfworfdf industriously spread by the rapacious monks 
 
 at this time, was received without terror."-Besume de 
 
 VHistoire du Commerce, p. 156. 
 
74 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 of the Buddhistic parent tree" had begun to bear 
 fruit after its kind. The sway of the Cross ex- 
 tended from the Baltic to the Hellespont ; the em- 
 pire of the Church embraced every variety- of 
 European climate, it embraced Greek, Latin, Ger- 
 man, Slavic, and Celtic nations, — nations which it 
 had received in every stage of civilization, semi- 
 civilization, and barbarism, but whom the poison 
 of its dogmas had affected with a uniform result * 
 Wherever we look, darkness, slavery, and misery ; 
 bigoted tyrants and brutalized serfs, neglected 
 fields, blighted cities, perverted sciences, and par- 
 alyzed industries; hordes of self-torturing mani- 
 acs frenzying the populace with their threats 
 and prophecies ; international man-hunts, religious 
 massacres, witchcraft riots, and a merciless war 
 against every form of mental and social independ- 
 ence. Peasants were treated like beasts of burden. 
 If earthly pleasure was sinful and heaven our proper 
 home, Herr Baron and Monsieur l'Abbe saw no 
 reason to provide creature comforts for their serfs. 
 
 ♦Protestant Jesuits have tried to ascribe the cause of 
 that result to the pagan admixtures of the Catholic creed. 
 The seasons and rites of many Catholic holidays, they say, 
 correspond to those of old Roman. festivals; the most pop- 
 ular saints of the Catholic calendar were pagan demigods 
 in disguise; the legends of the early Church were cor- 
 rupted with interpolations of Roman and Grecian myths. 
 Corrupted forsooth ! The humanizing and naturalizing 
 influence of pagan traditions alone saved the victims of 
 the Galilean Church from mental inanition in the desert 
 of asceticism : they were reduced to the alternative of the 
 prince in Grimm's folk-sagas, who had to wed a peasant 
 girl or a grinniug death's-head. For analogous reasons, 
 the English Puritans had to popularize their ghastly creed 
 with an infusion of Hebrew elements : the names of their 
 warlike saints, the shibboleths of their peculiar cant, the 
 favorite texts of their field preachers, were nearly always 
 borrowed from the Old Testament. But such palliatives 
 served only to disguise the doctrine of pessimism, as 
 poison-mongers administer their potions with pleasant 
 condiments. 
 
THE NIGHT OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 75 
 
 "One sees certain dark, livid, naked, sunburnt 
 wild animals, male and female, scattered over the 
 country and attached to the soil, which they root 
 and turn over with indomitable perseverance. 
 They have, as it were, an articulate voice; and, 
 when they rise to their feet, they show a human 
 face. They are, in fact, men : they creep at night 
 into dens, where they live on black bread, water, 
 and roots. They spare other men the labor of 
 ploughing, sowing, and harvesting, and, therefore, 
 deserve some small share of the bread they have 
 grown. Yet they were the fortunate peasants, — 
 those who had work and bread,— and they were 
 then the few" (while two thirds of the arable terri- 
 tory of France were in the hands of the Church).* 
 
 If truth was communicated from heaven by di- 
 rect revelation, if diseases, famines, and droughts 
 could be averted by prayer, why should men waste 
 their time on science? "A cloud of ignorance," 
 says Hallam, "overspread the whole face of the 
 Church, hardly broken by a few glimmering lights 
 who owe almost the whole of their distinction to 
 the surrounding darkness. ... I cannot conceive 
 of any state of society more adverse to the intel- 
 lectual improvement of mankind than one which 
 admitted no middle line between dissoluteness and 
 
 fanatical mortifications No original writer of 
 
 any merit arose ; and learning may be said to have 
 languished in a region of twilight for the greater 
 part of a thousand years. ... In 992, it was as- 
 serted that scarcely a single person was to be 
 
 *La Bruyere. Quoted in P. L. Courier's Petition A la 
 Chambre des Deputes, p. 19. 
 
76 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 found, in Rome itself, who knew the first elements 
 of letters. Not one priest of a thousand in Spain, 
 about the age of Charlemagne, could address a 
 common letter of salutation to another." The 
 history of every mediaeval philosopher, discoverer, 
 or reformer is the history of a life-long struggle 
 against the tyranny of a light-hating alliance of 
 despots and bigots. • 
 
 The doctrine of "renunciation" made patriotism 
 an idle dream : the saints whose "kingdom was 
 not of this world" had no business with vanities of 
 that sort; no chieftain could trust his neighbors; 
 cities were pitted against cities, and castles against 
 castles ; patriotic reformers would vainly have ap- 
 pealed to the sympathies of men who had been 
 taught to reserve their interest for the politics of 
 the New Jerusalem. 
 
 And what an age for the lovers of truth I Where 
 should they take refuge from their enemies, when 
 every year the blood of free thinkers was poured 
 out like water ? Where should they quench their 
 thirst after knowledge? Among the Arabs, who 
 would slay them as spies? In cities, where the 
 next neighbor would betray them to the spies of 
 the Holy Inquisition ? In convents, in the strong- 
 holds of pessimism, where, year after year, they 
 had to 
 
 "Erwachen mit Entsetzen Morgens auf, 
 
 Den Tag zu sehen, der in seinem Lauf 
 
 Nicht einen Wunsch gewahren wird, nicht einenl" 
 
 —Awake with horror every morning, 
 
 To see the day which in its course will not 
 
 Grant the fulfilment of a single wish !— 
 
THE NIGHT OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 77 
 
 But the deepest shade of the dreadful night 
 darkened the path of natural religion. To him 
 who seeks to know the will of the All-father by 
 studying the laws of his universe, and honors his 
 wisdom and beneficence by ordering his life in 
 conformity with those laws, it must indeed have 
 appeared as if our earth had been abandoned to 
 the powers of darkness. For what fiends could 
 have insulted the name of the Creator by grosser 
 blasphemies than the maniacs who ascribed to him 
 acts of such monstrous cruelty that the inhumani- 
 ties of the worst earthly despots appeared mild in 
 comparison, and who hoped to gain his favor by 
 turning his paradise into a desert, by rejecting his 
 gifts, by renouncing the blessings of his marvellous 
 earth, and by sacrificing their freedom, their 
 health, and their reason ! 
 
 A year after the death of the prophetess Sos- 
 pitra, says the pagan historian, Eunapius, her son 
 was one day standing before the temple of Serapis, 
 when the prophetic spirit of his mother fell upon 
 him. "Woe be our children !" he exclaimed, when 
 he awakened from his trance. "I see a cloud ap- 
 proaching: a great darkness will fall upon the 
 human race." 
 
 That cloud did not come from Olympus or Sinai. 
 The spectre of an earth-blighting disease stalked 
 through the land ; and the time will come when, 
 in the form of that spectre, all but the wilfully 
 blind will recognize not the manful monotheism 
 of Moses, not the mythology of the nature-loving 
 Greeks, but the nature-hating pessimism of Buddha 
 Sakyamuni. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AN EXPENSIVE CREED. 
 
 "Insani fugiunt mundum, immundumque sequuntur."— 
 Jordan Bruno. 
 
 The most cherished dogma of the modern Jesuit 
 is the belief that the conditions of our earthly 
 happiness are influenced by the continual interfer- 
 ence of preternatural agencies ; for he has to pos- 
 tulate a continued miracle to explain the fact that 
 the creed, which he calls the best of all possible 
 religions, has been a constant source of misery and 
 error. But, if the true reason of that fact has once 
 been named, its concordance with the historical 
 records of the last sixteen centuries will be a 
 sufficient vindication of its correctness; for the 
 consistency of theory and experience may reach a 
 degree that can defy the wiles of sophistry. 
 
 From the first council of Nice to the last con- 
 ference of the "Evangelical Alliance," the history 
 of the Galilean Church has been the history of an 
 unremitting war against nature; and the propa- 
 ganda of her dogmas could prosper only at the 
 expense of our earthly happiness. The direct 
 results of that warfare would be amply sufficient 
 to account for the fact that the Age of Faith, the 
 era when the rule of the cross maintained its 
 supremacy, was the dreariest period in the history 
 of the human race; but, unhappily, those results 
 were not confined to the suppression of harmless 
 
AN EXPENSIVE CREED. 79 
 
 amusements and scientific investigations. It is 
 easier to pervert than to suppress a natural instinct. 
 Wherever pessimism crushed the flowers of this 
 earth, the soil began to teem with poisonous 
 weeds. The suppression of healthful pastimes 
 begat a passion for vicious pastimes, and made 
 the fancied identity of sin and pleasure a sad 
 reality. The Olympic games and the Capitoline 
 festivals were abolished by the order of a Chris- 
 tian emperor. The field-sports of the Gaelic peas- 
 ants were suppressed by the influence of the 
 Scotch clergy. The worship of sorrow spread its 
 gloom over every emotion of the human heart. 
 But, when the Church had succeeded in making 
 life as dismal as the dogmas of her creed, her 
 victims took refuge in secret sins and drunken- 
 ness. Even the slaves of ancient Rome had their 
 saturnalia, when their masters indulged them in 
 the enjoyment of their accumulated arrears of hap- 
 piness ; but our laborers toil like machines, whose 
 best recreation is a temporary respite of work. 
 Human hearts, however, will not renounce their 
 birthright to happiness; and, if joy has departed 
 this life, they pursue its shadow into the land of 
 dreams, and try to spice the dry bread of daily 
 drudgery with the sweets of delirium. 
 
 The attempt to suppress the pursuit of natural 
 sciences led to the pursuit of pseudo-sciences,— -to 
 supernaturalism, demonism, and all sorts of hid- 
 eous chimeras. The attempt to suppress the wor- 
 ship of nature led to the worship of unnatural- 
 ism, the veneration of a whole almanac full of 
 nature-hating, self-torturing maniacs. The fanat- 
 
80 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 ical asceticism that begat callousness to personal 
 sufferings led its victims to behold with indiffer- 
 ence, and at last with delight, the sufferings of 
 their fellow-men. The cruelties of the worst pagan 
 despots were surpassed by the absolute inhumanity 
 of pious Christian monks and priests. The sup- 
 pression of the spirit of manful emulation that 
 assembled the champions of the Olympic festivals 
 forced that instinct to seek its gratification in 
 cunning and treachery, in the sordid competition 
 of hypocrites and sycophants. The suppression of 
 rational freedom led to anarchy, to communism 
 and nihilism. The ordinance of celibacy became 
 the mother of secret vices. Intolerance is the 
 parent of hypocrisy. 
 
 Pessimism has been on trial for sixteen hundred 
 years; and the history of the Middle Ages has 
 taught us that man's divorce from his earthly 
 instincts is the removal of a tree from its native 
 soil, a removal from the basis of life. For sixteen 
 centuries of faith and trust, our ancestors tried to 
 reach heaven by abandoning their place in nature ; 
 and we can now estimate the costs of the experi- 
 ment. 
 
 The dogmas of the Christian Church have cost 
 the world three million square miles of lands, 
 which once were the garden spots of this earth, 
 but which have been turned into deserts by the 
 neglect of rational agriculture and the influence of 
 a creed which labored to withdraw the attention 
 of mankind from secular to post-mortem concern- 
 ments. "The fairest and fruitfullest provinces of 
 the Roman Empire," says Prof. Marsh, — "precisely 
 
AN EXPENSIVE CREED. 81 
 
 that portion of terrestrial surface, in short, which, 
 about the commencement of the Christian era, was 
 endowed with the greatest superiority of soil, cli- 
 mate, and position, which had been carried to 
 the highest pitch of physical improvement, — is 
 now completely exhausted of its fertility. A ter- 
 ritory larger than all Europe, the abundance of 
 which sustained in bygone centuries a population 
 scarcely inferior to that of the whole Christian 
 world at the present day, has been entirely with- 
 drawn from human use, or, at best, is thinly 
 inhabited. . . . There are regions where the opera- 
 tion of causes, set in action by man, has brought 
 the face of the earth to a desolation almost as com- 
 plete as that of the moon; and, though within that 
 brief space of time which we call 'the historical 
 period,' they are known to have been covered with 
 luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and fertile 
 meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be 
 reclaimable by man, nor can they become again 
 fitted for his use except through great geological 
 changes, or other agencies, over which we have no 
 control. . . . Another era of equal improvidence 
 would reduce this earth to such a condition of 
 impoverished productiveness as to threaten the 
 depravation, barbarism, and, perhaps, even the 
 extinction of the human species." (Man and 
 Nature, pp. 4, 43.) 
 
 And the ruin of these countries* is not due to 
 the recklessness and intentional destructiveness of 
 
 *Asia Minor, Turkey, and Northern Africa were for 
 centuries inhabited by priest-ridden Christians, and lost 
 their fertility before they passed under the sway of their 
 present master. India, Persia, and the Caucasus, and 
 those parts of Southern Egypt and Eastern Armenia that 
 
82 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 their inhabitants, but is the inevitable conse- 
 quence of a persistent attempt to follow the pre- 
 cepts of an anti-natural creed. 
 
 Christianity has retarded the progress of the 
 human race by at least fifteen hundred years. 
 The fruits of science and social reform, which our 
 descendants will reap in fifteen centuries hence, 
 might be enjoyed at the present moment, if the 
 last sixty generations had not wasted their time 
 in disputes about the interpretation of idiotic 
 dogmas, and the attempt to gain the heaven of a 
 future world by despising the blessings of the 
 present. 
 
 On the altar of her anti-natural idol, the Chris- 
 tian Church has sacrificed the lives of eighteen 
 millions of the noblest and bravest of our fellow- 
 men. Two millions were butchered in the wars 
 against the freedom-loving children of nature, the 
 Saxons, the Sarmatians, and the pagan Scandina- 
 vians ; one million, in the wars against the Arian 
 heretics ; at least five millions, in the seven larger 
 and four smaller crusades. The extermination of 
 the Spanish Saracens reduced the population of 
 the peninsula by seven millions. One million was 
 slaughtered in the fifteen years' man-hunt against 
 the Albigenses, the Thirty Years' War against the 
 Protestant princes, the massacres of the French 
 Huguenots, the Waldenses, and the insurgents of 
 the Netherlands. A full million human lives were 
 devoured by the Moloch of the Holy Inquisition 
 
 were never under Christian control, have preserved much 
 of their ancient fruitfulness. The so-called Christian 
 countries of Northern Europe were not converted before 
 the eleventh century of our era, and revolted in time to 
 prevent their utter ruin. 
 
AN EXPENSIVE CREED. 83 
 
 and the witch tribunals, which for nearly seven 
 centuries infested all the principal cities of Chris- 
 tian Europe. To this number, we might add the 
 twelve million aborigines of the New World, who 
 in less than a century fell victims to the insane 
 fury of their Christian conquerors and the unre- 
 mitting persecutions of the Christian Inquisition. 
 Many of the Inquisitors were men of spotless 
 personal morality. Montfort, the butcher of the 
 Albigenses, was a pious and righteous cavalier. 
 Jean Bodin and Judge Sprenger, the defender 
 of the witch tribunals, sincerely pitied the fate of 
 their victims; but their horrible creed left them 
 no choice. The blood of thirty millions of our 
 fellow-men cries out against the nature-hating 
 fanatic who inculcated the belief in the sinfulness 
 of our natural instincts, the guilt of scepticism, 
 and the possibility of Satanic incarnations. 
 
 Christianity has turned whole nations of free- 
 dom-loving men into slaves and flunkeys. The 
 precepts of self-abhorrence and passive submission 
 to tyranny and injustice was a direct declaration 
 of war against the manly self-reliance that is the 
 basis of all true independence. The worst tyranny 
 that has ever oppressed the children of this earth 
 was perpetrated in the name of the Christian God. 
 When Charlemagne conquered the land of the 
 pagan Saxons, thousands of brave men were slain 
 like wild beasts ; thousands were transported to the 
 slave-farms of the Abbot Alcuin or imprisoned in 
 Christian convents; hundreds of widows and be- 
 reaved mothers committed suicide; hundreds of 
 children were scourged to death for resisting the 
 
84 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 tyranny of their jailers or trying to regain their 
 liberty. The Spanish Unitarians, the Jews and 
 Moriscoes, the most industrious inhabitants of the 
 peninsula, were hunted from province to province ; 
 and when, after centuries of horrible persecutions, 
 a remnant of the fugitives sought a refuge in Port- 
 ugal, the Christian monarch of that country was 
 forced by the priests to break his promise of pro- 
 tection: the refugees were banished, and their 
 children dragged away to the slavery of the Chris- 
 tian convents. "Piercing shrieks of anguish filled 
 the land: women were known to fling their 
 children into deep wells or to tear them limb 
 from limb rather than resign them to the Chris- 
 tians." (Lecky's History of Rationalism, ii., p. 
 270.) The Church that abolished slavery in name 
 promoted it in fact; for her doctrine implied 
 a divine sanction of despotism, and an entire 
 disregard for man's natural rights. The slave- 
 barracks of ancient Rome were temples of liberty 
 compared with the dungeons of the hierarchical 
 torture-dens, where thousands of nature's noble- 
 men vainly invoked death and madness as a refuge 
 from the power of a more cruel foe. 
 
 The ascetic dogmas of the monstrous delusion 
 have darkened the life-light of countless millions ; 
 for, in the zenith of its power, Pessimism rose 
 almost to the climax of a worship of sorrow for 
 its own sake. And, when the sources of earthly 
 misery were exhausted, the Church elaborated that 
 dogma of a hell of eternal aud all but inevitable 
 tortures, which destroyed the last solace of the 
 wretched as well as the peace of daily life. Dis- 
 
AN EXPENSIVE CREED. 85 
 
 senters were silenced by armed force. Pessimism 
 solved the problem of inflicting the greatest possi- 
 ble amount of misery on the greatest possible num- 
 ber. Every appeal to common sense and mercy 
 was punished as a crime against the authority of 
 an infallible church ; every atrocity was sanctioned 
 that would help to crush the instinct of free inquiry, 
 the dignity of manhood, the sense of justice, the 
 love of joy, freedom, and nature. How many thou- 
 sands of the countless victims who were induced to 
 take the vow of the monastic orders must have 
 awakened to the significance of their sacrifice, and 
 sought, too late, to regain a world which to them 
 was as hopelessly lost as if they had crossed the 
 ferry of Styx ! How many children of the joy-lov- 
 ing nations, whose countries had been cursed with 
 the gloom of the cross, must have pined for the 
 freedom of nature as the captives of Tartarus 
 pined for the sunlight of the upper world; or 
 sought refuge in death, in the hope of reaching a 
 land where the code of Pessimism was unknown. 
 "According to that code," says Buckle, "all the 
 natural affections, all social pleasures, all amuse- 
 ments, and all the joyous instincts of the human 
 heart were sinful. . . . The clergy looked on all com- 
 forts as sinful in themselves, merely because they 
 were comforts. The great object of life was to be 
 in a state of constant affliction. Whatever pleased 
 the senses was to be suspected. It mattered not 
 what a man liked : the mere fact of his liking it 
 made it sinful. Whatever was natural was wrong." 
 And that creed dares to boast of its charitable in- 
 stitutions! The charity of the Christian Church 
 
OO THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 is the charity of the fanatic, who for the love of 
 heaven turned a flower-garden into a desert, and 
 for the love of earth housed a few of the withered 
 plants and watered them with his sickly tears. 
 
 The Christian Church has spread the blight of 
 its influence far beyond the boundaries of her spir- 
 itual empire. The freedom of the North-European 
 pagans and the civilization of the South-European 
 Moors succumbed to the incessant attacks of their 
 Christian neighbors, instigated by the light-and- 
 freedom-hating fanaticism of their priests. 
 
 The dogmas of the Christian Church have smit- 
 ten its victims with the nauseous disease of hypoc- 
 risy. The atmosphere of our whole social life is 
 tainted with the poison of cant and dissimulation. 
 By invoking the aid of the secular powers to pro- 
 tect the authority of dogmas which to all clear- 
 sighted men have become a mixture of blasphemy 
 and absolute nonsense, the Church offers a pre- 
 mium for intellectual dishonesty. Every lover of 
 truth is branded with the reproach of eccentricity 
 by the upholders of a system whose centre has 
 always been an untruth, and generally a very 
 transparent untruth. After doing their best to 
 turn this world into a hell, after insulting the 
 Creator by disregarding his physical laws and de- 
 spising his marvellous earth, the moralists of the 
 Galilean Church hope to conciliate this favor by 
 lying for the glory of his "son." 
 
 The anti-natural dogmas of the Christian Church 
 have so perverted our ideas of duty and natural 
 religion that the worst enemies of mankind per- 
 petrated their enormities for the sake of conscience, 
 
AN EXPENSIVE CREED. 87 
 
 and millions still despise this earth for the sake of 
 heaven. Neither the vices of the Roman Caesar 
 nor the excesses of the French Revolution have 
 contributed so much to weaken the respect for the 
 authority of the law as the systematic inhuman- 
 ity of the Christian Middle Ages, when laws were 
 so intolerable that only the lawless could enjoy 
 life, — outlaws and irresponsible princes, Robin 
 Hood and Robert le Diable. The delusion of 
 anti-naturalism has certainly caused more mischief 
 than the bane of all human vices taken together. 
 "Translated into plain speech, the foundation- 
 principle of our system of ethics is this : that all 
 natural things, especially our natural instincts, are 
 essentially evil, and that salvation depends upon 
 mysterious, anti-natural, and even supernatural 
 remedies. This bottom error has long biassed all 
 our physical and metaphysical theories. The use 
 of our reasoning powers is naturally as agreeable 
 as the exercise of any other normal function. The 
 anti-naturalists declared war against free inquiry, 
 assured us that the study of logic and natural sci- 
 ence is highly dangerous, and that the seeker after 
 truth must content himself with the light of ghostly 
 revelations. We have since ascertained that the 
 ghosts are grossly ignorant in all terrestrial con- 
 cernments, and that their reports on the supra- 
 mundane state of affairs are, to say the least, sus- 
 piciously conflicting. In all but the vilest creatures, 
 the love of freedom is as powerful as the instinct 
 of self-preservation. The anti-naturalists incul- 
 cated the dogma of implicit submission to secular 
 and spiritual authorities. The experiment was 
 
88 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 tried on the grandest scale ; and the result has de- 
 monstrated that blind faith leads to idiocy, and that 
 absolute monarchs must be absolutely abolished. 
 The testimony of our noses justifies the opinion 
 that fresh air is preferable to prison smells : the 
 anti-naturalists informed us that at various sea- 
 sons of the year, and every night, the out-door 
 atmosphere becomes mortiferous, and that sleepers 
 and invalids ought to be confined in air-tight apart- 
 ments. We believed, till we found that the most 
 implicit believers got rotten with scrofula. Happi- 
 ness is the normal condition of every living creat- 
 ure ; for, in a state of nature, every normal function 
 is connected with a pleasurable sensation. 'To 
 enjoy is to obey/ Animals have not lost their 
 earthly paradise: he who has observed them in 
 the freedom of their forest-homes cannot doubt 
 that to them existence is a blessing, and death 
 merely the later or earlier evening of a happy day. 
 The anti-naturalists assured us that God delights 
 in the self-abasement and mortification of his 
 creatures, and hoped to gain his favor by afflicting 
 themselves in every possible way, — by voluntary 
 seclusion, fasts, vigils, the wearing of dingy gar- 
 ments, and abstinence from every physical pleas- 
 ure. Failing to enamour mankind with their dole- 
 ful heaven, they revenged themselves by depriving 
 them of their earthly joys. In hopes of making 
 the hereafter more attractive, they made life as 
 repulsive as possible : kill-joys and persecutors 
 were the active heroes of those times ; ascetics and 
 self-tormentors, their passive exemplars. Virtue 
 and joylessness became synonymes. Men aspiring 
 
AN EXPENSIVE CREED 89 
 
 to superior merit exchanged the glories of the 
 sunny earth for the misery of a gloomy convent. 
 'A man of sorrows' became a type of moral per- 
 fection. The cross, an instrument of torture, be- 
 came the trade-mark of the new religion. Kosmos 
 — i.e., beauty and harmony — was the oldest Gre- 
 cian term for God's wonderful world; a 'vale of 
 tears,' the favorite Christian epithet. 
 
 " 'Worldly pleasures' are still under the ban of 
 our spiritual purists. Daily drudgery and daily 
 self-denial are still considered the proper sphere of 
 a law-abiding citizen, and special affliction a spe- 
 cial sign of divine favor. Life has become a soc- 
 age duty. We do not think it necessary to allevi- 
 ate the distress of the poor till it reaches a degree 
 that threatens to end it. We have countless be- 
 nevolent institutions for the prevention of out- 
 right death, not one benevolent enough to make 
 life worth living. Infanticide is now far more rig- 
 orously punished than in old times. We enforce 
 every child's right to live and become a humble, 
 tithe-paying Christian ; but, as for its claim to live 
 happy, we refer it to the sweet by-and-by. We 
 shudder at the barbarity of the Caesars, who per- 
 mitted the combat of men with wild beasts to cater 
 to the amusement of the Roman populace ; but we 
 contemplate with great equanimity the misery of 
 millions of our fellow-citizens wearing away their 
 lives in work-shops and factories : millions of chil- 
 dren of our own nation and country who have no 
 recreation but sleep, no hope but oblivion ; to whom 
 the morning sun brings the summons of a task-mas- 
 ter, and the summer season nothing but lengthened 
 
90 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 hours of weary toil, — nay, we make it the boast of 
 our pious civilization to deprive them of their sole 
 day of leisure, to interdict their harmless sports 
 lest the noise, or even the rumor of their merri- 
 ment, might disturb the solemnity of an assem- 
 blage of whining hypocrites. Hence, the reckless- 
 ness, the nihilism, and the weary pessimism of our 
 times, the melancholy that everywhere underlies 
 the glittering varnish of our social life. Hence, 
 also, that vague yearning after a happier hereafter, 
 which the murderers of the happy past have made 
 the principal source of their revenues. 
 
 "The Christian dogma of the reformatory value 
 of misery has been refuted by the most dreadful 
 arguments in the world's history. The unhappiest 
 nations are not only the most immoral, but the 
 most selfish and the meanest, in every ugly sense 
 of the word. Virtues do not flourish on a trampled 
 soil. Genius, too, is a child of light. The Gre- 
 cian worship of joy favored the development of 
 every human science, while the monastic worship 
 of sorrow produced nothing but monsters and chi- 
 meras; for, to modern science, Christianity bears 
 about the same relation as the plague does to the 
 quarantine." (Physical Education, p. 186.) 
 
 The doctrine of anti-naturalism still perverts the 
 principles of our system of education, as it per- 
 verted the ethics, the science, the social tendencies, 
 and the religion of the Middle Ages. It is the 
 extra-mundane fulcrum of the lever that forced 
 the moral world from its normal orbit. 
 
 Has the happiness of the human race been se- 
 cured, or in any degree promoted, by the dogmas of 
 
AN EXPENSIVE CREED. 
 
 91 
 
 the Christian religion? Cowardice and stupidity 
 have too long connived at the crime of abetting 
 the dissemination of that earth-blighting supersti- 
 tion, and it is time to say the truth in plain terms. 
 The demonstrable truth then is that, if all the 
 countries of Europe that were destined to pass 
 under the yoke of the cross had, instead, for a 
 thousand years been covered by the ashes of the 
 fire-storm that buried the cities of Pompeii and 
 Herculaneum, the world would to-day be benefited 
 by the result. Our earth would be more fertile 
 and populous, our fellow-men would be freer, wiser, 
 and happier. The waste of the volcanic cinders 
 would have proved less irreclaimable than the des- 
 ert of pessimism. The survivors of the catas- 
 trophe would have saved their children from the 
 alternative of death or moral slavery that awaited 
 the next forty generations of their descendants. 
 The nations of the Caucasian race would have 
 been spared the systematic extirpation of their 
 wisest and bravest men. The Saracens, whose 
 western empire was destroyed by the insane fanati- 
 cism of the Christian priests, would have culti- 
 vated the garden of civilization in a more grateful 
 soil. The discoverers of America would not have 
 deluged the New World with a sea of blood. The 
 relics of pagan art and science would have been 
 safer in the custody of the elements than in the 
 hands of the monkish forgers and fanatics. 
 
 We read of Ammonite devotees sacrificing their 
 first-born to Moloch; of Egyptian peasants starv- 
 ing their children, to fatten a herd of lazy der- 
 vishes; of Hindu pilgrims performing seventy-seven 
 
92 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven somer- 
 saults, "for the benefit of their souls," and compell- 
 ing their families to join in the exercise. But 
 such poor maniacs are, after all, less to blame than 
 the juggler-guild of priests and mystics who first 
 persuaded them to renounce their right of free in- 
 vestigation in favor of any human authority. As 
 soon as reason surrenders to a dogma, the power of 
 the exponents of that dogma becomes autocratic : 
 they can securely further their selfish interests by 
 almost any outrage on common sense and justice. 
 If the philosophers of future centuries should rec- 
 ognize this chief root of superstition, they will 
 perhaps acquit the nations of the Dark Ages from 
 the guilt of their manifold sins against nature, and 
 explain their strangest delusions, with one excep- 
 tion. If they read the history of pessimism and 
 the fate of the nations who had accepted its doc- 
 trines, they will fail to understand how the author 
 of that creed could ever be mistaken for a Saviour. 
 
CHAPTER V1L 
 
 DAYBREAK. 
 
 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth 
 shall awake.— Daniel xii., 2. 
 
 The revival of rationalism at the beginning of 
 the sixteenth century forms the turning-point and 
 the most interesting era in the history of the Mid- 
 dle Ages ; for all the developments of our present 
 civilization can be traced to germs which then first 
 ventured into the light of day. But the researches 
 of the few free-thinking historians of that period 
 have been sedulously perverted by the hired petti- 
 foggers of the Christian cliques. The insurrection 
 against the authority of the Church has been 
 ascribed to the national antipathies of the Latin 
 and German races, to a revival of Latin literature 
 and paganism, to the lessons of the Crusades, to 
 the intrigues of the Spanish Jews, to the panthe- 
 ism of Averroes and other Moorish philosophers. 
 The most extravagant theories have been elabo- 
 rated to avoid the confession of the simple truth, — 
 that the excess of the evil itself produced a reac- 
 tion which led to its abatement. 
 
 Like the idol of the Baal priests, insatiable de- 
 vourers sooner or later swallow an explosive mixt- 
 ure ; and the very triumphs of an intolerable tyr- 
 anny have thus often led to its overthrow. The 
 power of the Roman Empire was broken by the 
 revolt of barbarians whose troops had been trained 
 
94 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 in the imperial armies. The Turks selected their 
 janizaries from the stoutest young men of the van- 
 quished Slavonians, and these very janizaries 
 eventually compassed the ruin of the Ottoman 
 Empire. During the first ten centuries of the 
 Christian era, the power of the Church was bal- 
 anced in the North by the untamed pride of the 
 Teutonic princes, and in the South by the linger- 
 ing influence of pagan philosophy. The fanati- 
 cism of her militant apostles prevailed against valor 
 and common sense, but the plenitude of her tri- 
 umph proved fatal to her supremacy. Europe had 
 become an ecclesiastical allodium. Wealth, the 
 treasures of literature, the control of the censor- 
 ship, the institutes of learning, were almost en- 
 tirely in the hands of the clergy. Legislator^ were 
 their obedient tools. The civilization of the Moors 
 had been annihilated. The high-schools of Toledo 
 and Cordova had lost their protectors. The estab- 
 lishment of the Inquisition and the vigilance of 
 her spies insured the punishment of non-conform- 
 ists. In less than a century, the prodigious num- 
 ber of convents had more than doubled. In 
 1450, the Franciscans had sixteen thousand two 
 hundred convents. In 1520, the subdivision of 
 the order known as the ''Observants" had thirty- 
 four thousand monasteries of their own. In the 
 fifteenth century, the Dominicans and Augustin- 
 ians had spread all over Western Europe. In 
 many parts of Spain there were six friars and two 
 priests for every dozen workingmen. In Spain and 
 Portugal, the Jews had shared the fate of the 
 Moriscoes ; and, in Germany, the Inquisitor Hog- 
 
DAYBREAK. 95 
 
 straaten attempted the destruction of their entire 
 literature, with the exception of the Old Testa- 
 ment. Free thinkers were not only unaided in the 
 pursuit of truth, but effectually debarred from its 
 dissemination. The Church controlled the whole 
 machinery of education, and the votaries of knowl- 
 edge had to become priests or monks. Among the 
 many millions who entered the monasteries in 
 search of peace or in quest of the refectory, a few 
 hundred came with higher aims, and their unselfish 
 love of truth drove them to a fierce rebellion against 
 the power of her enemies. The Church that tried to 
 digest this mixture of monachism and philosophy 
 found that she had swallowed the prescription of 
 Daniel. The font of her consecrated water had 
 been vaunted as the fountain of truth. All other 
 well-springs of knowledge had been stopped, and 
 pilgrims whose thirst could not be stilled with 
 sophisms had been admitted behind the scenes. 
 The revelations that dispelled the shadows of the 
 Middle Ages did not come from Cordova or Bag- 
 dad, but from the strongholds of the Christian 
 hierarchy. Luther, Campanella, Eckardt, Charron, 
 Roger Bacon, Lipsius, and Jordan Bruno were 
 monks. Duns Scotus, Vanini, Abelard, and Wool- 
 ston were theologians. Jean Meslier was a Catho- 
 lic clergyman. These men, and hundreds of their 
 contemporaries, had entered the Church without 
 any special bias in favor of anti-naturalism. In 
 Northern Germany, the word « Pfaffe" (a Romish 
 priest) had never ceased to be a synonyme of 
 everything unmanly and contemptible. In South- 
 ern Italy, the descendants of the old hero race still 
 
96 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 cherished the traditions of their forefathers, and 
 hated the chains which they were unable to break. 
 In the hearts of such men, the study of ancient 
 history, the echoes from the paradise of the past, 
 and the knowledge of the true character of the 
 moralists who had sacrificed that paradise to force 
 their way to the throne of the world, — this knowl- 
 edge, and the comparison of the past and present 
 condition of their native lands, must have pro- 
 duced a degree of indignation which we can only 
 conceive by imagining an analogy of our own 
 country and age. 
 
 • Suppose that the Californian Chinese manage to 
 propagate a superstition which finally enables them 
 to subvert the civilization of the North American 
 continent. The new Celestial Empire is governed 
 on the principle of Buddha, that all earthly posses- 
 sions are vain, and that salvation can be obtained 
 only by suppressing our natural instincts. By the 
 alliance of Pagoda and State, the Buddhists secure 
 the aid of the civil powers, and, in return, sanc- 
 tion the basest tyrannies of the secular rulers by 
 inculcating the duty of passive submission to "the 
 powers that be." * In the summit regions of the 
 
 * As long as their own necks were in danger, the clerics of 
 the early Christian Church inveighed agiinst tyranny and 
 intolerance; but, as soon as that danger was past, the doc- 
 trine of passive submission to injustice bore its natural 
 fruit, and the lot of the European peasantry became infi- 
 nitely worse than that of the so-called slaves of the Roman 
 Empire and the Grecian Republics, where their servitude 
 was so often merely nominal, as many of them were em- 
 ployed as pedagogues and artists,— nay, as banker*, actors, 
 and historians. Besides, the worst Roman despots en- 
 slaved only foreign prisoners of war, while the Christian 
 princes, bishops, and abbots enslaved their own country- 
 men, and treated them with a degree of relentless and sys- 
 tematic inhumanity that produced an incomparably greater 
 aggregate of misery than the occasional truculent caprices 
 or the pagan tyrants. 
 
DAYBREAK. 97 
 
 Rocky Mountains, a few Anglo-American tribes 
 still maintain the independence of their Republi- 
 can forefathers ; but the farmers of the plains are 
 captured, branded like sheep, and divided in 
 chain-gangs to work for the monks of the 
 Buddhistic convents that spring up like mush- 
 rooms in every town. Turner Halls, gymnasiums,* 
 and public baths f are suppressed as "fleshly vani- 
 ties," tending* to divert the minds of men from 
 things spiritual. Our public libraries are demol- 
 ished ; X some of the larger volumes are packed off 
 to the monasteries, not from an appreciation of 
 their literary value, but for the sake of their fly- 
 leaves and blank margins, which are to be used for 
 the record of Buddhistic ghost stories. The New 
 England universities are closed by order of the 
 Grand Mandarin. § Industrial progress is limited 
 to the invention of improved machinery for the 
 torture of heretics. The government bounty for 
 timber plantations is discontinued. The forests 
 are devastated, and the bonzes advise the proprie- 
 tors to avert droughts by prayer-meetings. The 
 Grand Lama instructs his provincials to suppress 
 unbelief by the enforcement of an elaborate penal 
 code. Thousands of scholars are burned alive for 
 maintaining the difference between one and three. 
 
 *The Olympic festivals and the Capitoline games were 
 suppressed by order of the Christian Emperor Theodosius, 
 A.D. 394. 
 
 t The Spanish clergy abolished the public baths of the 
 Moriscoes. Even baths fh private houses were at last inter- 
 dicted. 
 
 t The Christian monks destroyed the Serapian Library of 
 Alexandria and murdered the citizens who resisted the 
 vandalism, A.D. 389. 
 
 § The University of Athens and the academies of Berytus 
 and Thessalonica were suppressed by order of the Chris- 
 tian Emperor Justinian. 
 
98 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 Mathematicians are treated as enemies of the hu- 
 man race.* The professors of the Washington 
 Observatory receive forty bamboo stripes for de- 
 monstrating the annual motion of the earth, and 
 twenty-five extra for maintaining her diurnal mo- 
 tion. Public festivals are enlivened by the whole- 
 sale burning of misbelievers. All cities, all schools, 
 all places of public resort are infested with the 
 spies of the Mongolian Inquisition. Clerical ter- 
 rorism depopulates the land. Misery and famine 
 follow in the wake of the Buddhistic propagan- 
 dists. The industrial classes abandon their homes 
 by thousands. Buddhistic monks fatten on the 
 spoils of the exiles ; but before the families of non- 
 conformists are permitted to depart, their sons and 
 daughters are dragged away to the slavery of the 
 Mongolian convent. Would we not, like the Span- 
 ish Moors, tear our children limb from limb to pre- 
 serve them from such a fate ? 
 
 Yet all this is a mere outline of the change from 
 the civilization of the nature-loving pagans to the 
 barbarism of the Galilean pessimists : the realities 
 of the Middle Ages supplied the details of the 
 dreadful contrast. The very stones of the South- 
 European convents still proclaimed the godlike 
 forms of the men who celebrated life as a festival, 
 and whose desecrated temples now housed a whin- 
 ing brood of nature-hating and nature-hated cari- 
 catures of the human shape. 
 
 The peasants of the North still cherished the 
 battle-hymns and hunting-songs of their free fore- 
 
 * Justinian and several of his successors issued edicts 
 for the "suppression of mathematicians," 
 
DAYBREAK. 99 
 
 fathers, while their children were forced to chant 
 the puling cant of the Christian litany. The tra- 
 ditions of the folk-lore still preserved the memory 
 of a time when the arena of life awarded its 
 wreaths to valor and manly strength, while now 
 hypocrisy and servility were the beaten roads to 
 advancement. Wasted fields, starving hamlets, 
 and gloomy cloisters covered the face of the earth 
 where sculptured ruins mourned the glory of by- 
 gone times ; the temples and palaces of Italy, the 
 academies of Greece, the»sacred groves of Daphne, 
 the shady mountain forests of Taurus and Leb- 
 anon, had been devastated to fatten the foul vam- 
 pires of the Galilean Church. 
 
 Nor need we doubt that the clearer-sighted 
 students of ancient literature had discerned the 
 change which had come over the moral world. No 
 educational bias could entirely blind them to the 
 glaring contrast between the logic, the critical 
 acumen, the manly eloquence, the noble self-reli- 
 ance, the sublime poetry of the Pagan philosophers 
 and old Hebrew prophets, and the idiotic rant and 
 disgusting sophistry of the monastic writers. No 
 great poet, no independent philosopher, had ap- 
 peared for the last eleven centuries. The Muses 
 had fled the desecrated land; the laurel withered 
 in the soil of pessimism; Nature had revenged 
 herself upon her enemies. The philosophers of 
 the sixteenth century might fail to recognize the 
 secret of pessimism, but they could not help seeing 
 the result of its tendencies, the stultifying, soul- 
 diseasing, unmanning, debasing, and earth-blight- 
 ing influence of its dogmas. They saw that 
 
100 THE SECRET OF THE EA8T. 
 
 hypocrites and sycophants prospered, while thou- 
 sands of free thinkers, many of whom they must 
 have known as the truest of Nature's noblemen, 
 had to rot behind prison walls, or could fertilize 
 the seed of liberty only with their blood. What 
 had the world gained by its conversion from 
 Naturalism to Anti-naturalism? "Faith," blind 
 faith, the supposed soul-saving merit of mental 
 prostitution, as the only recompense for so many 
 sacrifices. And now the foundations of that faith 
 proved unsound, nay, utterly unsubstantial and 
 untenable. The honest inquirers into the evidences 
 of the saving faith awakened to a recognition of 
 the fact that the supposed heavenly star which had 
 lured the last forty generations to neglect and ruin 
 their earth was the ignis fatuus of a bottomless 
 swamp. In short, the fearful truth dawned upon 
 them that the paradise of antiquity had been sac- 
 rificed in vain. They could no longer doubt that 
 the chains which galled the noblest races of Eu- 
 rope were an unmixed curse, and the worst curse 
 which had ever befallen the children of men. 
 That this conviction begat a thirst for freedom 
 which often overcame the fear of death is proved 
 by the martyrdom of the twenty-six thousand 
 Protestants, in the noblest sense of the word, who 
 in the course of the sixteenth century bartered 
 their lives for the luxury of breaking the silence 
 which threatened to crush their hearts.* Those 
 who declined the crown of martyrdom or hoped 
 
 ♦Between 1500 and 1580, the Inquisition murdered two 
 hundred and seventy thousand non-conformists. Nine- 
 tenths of these were American pagans and Spanish Mo- 
 hammedans and Jews ; the rest were Caucasian sceptics. 
 
DAYBREAK. 
 
 101 
 
 to see the dawn of a better day, and yet wished to 
 promote its advent, adopted two indirect methods 
 of attaining their object. They veiled their reve- 
 lations in the language of allegory, like Eckardt, 
 Silesius, and Campanella, or they published their 
 views in the name of former free thinkers, and for 
 the feigned purpose of refuting them. The latter 
 plan was adopted by Reuchlin, Lipsius, and Wool- 
 ston, and with eminent success by the precursor 
 of Voltaire, Lucilio Vanini. Thomas Woolston's 
 Apology is not weaker than his statement of the 
 heresies he pretends to- controvert. But Vanini's 
 Amphitheatre anticipates the best arguments of 
 Voltaire, Hume, and Thomas Paine. The mas- 
 terly exposition of these arguments — in pretended 
 quotations from the writings of obscure heretics- 
 is followed by a not less masterly burlesque of 
 the monkish method of controversy, clumsy dog- 
 matism, personalities, and swaggering threats. 
 Yet this scathing satire not only received the 
 imprimatur of the government censor, but was 
 published with the special recommendation of an 
 ecclesiastical college, and did, probably, more to 
 disseminate anti-clerical tenets than any work of 
 the professed reformers. But no man can always 
 wear a mask. In Toulouse, Vanini discovered him- 
 self to a better-masked bigot, who hastened to 
 betray him to the Holy Inquisition. He was 
 burned at the stake. Jordan Bruno, Savonarola, 
 Leszynski, Arnold of Brescia, Stephen Dolet, 
 Mathew Hamount, were tortured and burned. 
 Campanella was racked and persecuted till a 
 merciful death ended his misery; Roger Bacon 
 
102 THE 3ECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 was persecuted and exiled; Thomas Woolston 
 died in prison; Eckardt, Abelard, and Lipsius 
 were bullied into silence. Their works were 
 burned, their disciples were suppressed ; but their 
 labor had not been in vain. Their fate had proved 
 that only the success of an open rebellion could 
 liberate the human race from the hell of Anti- 
 naturalism ; and only in this sense is it true that 
 the fiendish intolerance of the Middle Ages has 
 promoted the progress of European civilization.* 
 
 ♦Every neplus ultra is interesting, and the impudence of 
 Jesuitical sophistry has never surpassed the following 
 dictum of a Protestant Jesuit: "So large a thinker as 
 Albert R6ville has expressed his belief that the intolerance 
 of Christianity indicated a passionate love of truth, which 
 has created modern science. He says that, 'if Europe had 
 not passed through tbose ages of intolerance, it is doubtful 
 whether the science of our day would ever have arrived.' " 
 —North American Review, May, 1883, p. 473. In justice to 
 the honor of our age, I must quote another contemporary. 
 "The per-ecutor," says W. H. JLecky, "can never be certain 
 that he is not persecuting truth rather than error, but he 
 may be quite certain that he is suppressing the spirit of 
 truth. And, indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the 
 doctrines I have reviewed represent the most skilful and 
 at the same time most successful conspiracy against that 
 spirit that has ever exir-ted among mankind. Until the 
 seventeenth century, every mental disposition which phi- 
 losophy pronounces to be essential to a legitimate research 
 was almost unifor nly branded as a sin; and a large pro- 
 portion of the most deadly intellectual vices were delib- 
 erately inculcated as virtues In a word, there is scarcely 
 
 a disposition that marks the love of aostract truth, and 
 scarcely a rule which reason teaches as essential for its 
 attainment that theologians did not for centuries- stigma- 
 tize as offensive to the Almighty."— Hist. Rat., vol. ii., p. 90. 
 
 "Every man loves liberty," says Ludwig Boerne; "but 
 the unjust claims it for himself alone, the just for all." 
 Between dogmatism and the "love of truth" there is just 
 as much difference as between despotism and the love of 
 freedom. A disposition to take liberties would be a queer 
 claim to the merit of liberalism. In the last eight years of 
 his reign, the Czar Nicholas sentenced forty-two thousand 
 political prisoners to the Siberian mines or the wor-e mig 
 ery of a Russian jail, and at his command eleven thousand 
 Polish boys were torn from their parents and dragged 
 away to the military barracks of Eastern Russia. These 
 exploits of the Slavonic Pope the eulogist of Mons. Albert 
 Reville would probably ascribe to a passionate love of lib- 
 
DAYBREAK. 103 
 
 The tyranny of the Church led to the Protestant 
 Revolt, as the tyranny of the French autocrats led 
 to the French Revolution. Christian intolerance 
 has promoted science as the plague has promoted 
 the quarantine. 
 
 erty,— the liberty of tyrannizing his subjects. For more 
 than eleven hundred years, the activity of Monsieur R6- 
 ville's passionate friends obstructed the progress of all 
 sciences, with two exceptions; for it cannot be denied that 
 they successfully cultivated the science of forging miracu- 
 lous biographies and the science of suppressing free in- 
 quiry. 
 
CHAPTER Vm. 
 
 THE PROTESTANT REVOLT. 
 
 Tyranny begins her arguments by fettering free speech. 
 Begin your reply by breaking your fetters.— Mirabeau. 
 
 The analogies of body and mind are most 
 strikingly exhibited in the development of physi- 
 cal and moral poison-habits. At first, every poison 
 is repulsive. Children abhor the very smell of 
 alcohol. The first effect of tobacco is that of a 
 nauseating drug. The disgusting taste of opium 
 prevails through every disguise. Nature protests 
 against the incipience of an insidious "second nat- 
 ure," and this protective instinct often saves where 
 neither law nor science yields its aid. In the slum- 
 alleys of our great cities, and beset by daily tempta- 
 tions, the children of poverty and ignorance often 
 preserve their physical purity by an innate repug- 
 nance to vice ; and even in Northern China there is 
 a "Vigilance Society," whose members, in defiance 
 of law, pledge themselves to antagonize the abettors 
 of the opium traffic and use all possible means to 
 restrict an evil which they cannot suppress. Gross 
 vices do not achieve an easy conquest : the protests 
 of a faithful conscience warn us again and again ; 
 but, if that protest is persistently disregarded, nat- 
 ure at last adapts herself to the abnormal condi- 
 tion, and the instinctive repugnance gives way 
 to a morbid craving for the unnatural stimulus. 
 Healthy food grows insipid. The toper becomes a 
 
THE PROTESTANT REVOLT. 105 
 
 slave to his drug ; and, by educational influences, 
 the baneful habit may develop into a hereditary or 
 even national vice. 
 
 In a similar way, such moral poisons as hypoc- 
 risy, the miracle-mania, and pessimism have to 
 overcome the resistance of every healthier instinct 
 before they can enslave the mind of a whole na- 
 tion. In Southern Europe, the doctrines of the Gal- 
 ilean Church have achieved this victory. Among 
 the Caucasian races of the Mediterranean penin- 
 sula, millions of our fellow-men have lost the 
 normal instincts of their species, and have come to 
 enjoy the poison of anti-naturalism. The Greek 
 and Roman monks vied in self-abasement, self- 
 mutilation, and the voluntary sacrifice of their 
 reason, as their forefathers vied in science and he- 
 roic games. Patriotism has withered under the 
 influence of anti-natural dogmas. Unmanliness 
 has ceased to be a reproach. Manly self-reliance 
 and athletic sports have lost their charm. The 
 prescriptions of the Jesuitical poison - mongers 
 have made simple truth insipid : their victims have 
 contracted a morbid craving for supernaturalism, 
 and love cant for its own sake. The Celtic races, 
 whose forefathers had become inured to the vicissi- 
 tudes of anarchy and despotism, have accepted the 
 yoke of the cross and reserved their protestantism 
 for the struggles of the political arena. Their 
 priests have maintained their influence by catering 
 to their national prejudices. 
 
 But the Germanic races of Northern Europe 
 have never been really converted. Their fore- 
 fathers were compelled to submit to the logic of 
 
106 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 superior force ; but their acquiescence was that of 
 the North-China Vigilance Society — a latent pro- 
 test. Their conqueror had to baptize them in 
 their own blood, and they yielded only after all 
 their able-bodied men had literally been cut into 
 pieces. In the winter of 772, the apostle of North- 
 ern Germany crossed the Weser with an army of 
 sixty thousand men, and founded the bishoprics of 
 Halberstadt, Minden, and Paderborn; while the 
 natives disputed every inch of the ground, and 
 only retreated after the devastation of their vil- 
 lages had deprived them of the means of subsist- 
 ence. Two years after, they rallied their forces, 
 expelled their priests, and chased them across the 
 Rhine, when the return of Charlemagne compelled 
 them once more to yield their homes to the spoiler 
 and take refuge in the wilds of the far North-east. 
 Here, they were attacked in 776, and repelled the 
 invaders with such slaughter that the royal propa- 
 gandist thought it wiser to confine his efforts to 
 the Westphalian lowlands. New bishoprics were 
 founded; and the remaining inhabitants shared 
 the fate of the peasantry in the priest-ridden 
 Frankish crown-lands, and were treated worse 
 than brute beasts, till the menaces of the Spanish 
 Moors called their oppressor across the Pyrenees. 
 As soon as he was gone, all Saxony rose in a fierce 
 insurrection. The hero Wittekind united the 
 scattered tribes, and advanced as far as Osnabruck, 
 but was soon confronted by all the forces of the 
 Frankish Empire; and, during the next seven 
 years, a war of extermination turned his native 
 land into a desert. When the insurgents had been 
 
THE PROTESTANT REVOLT. 107 
 
 driven into the furthest recesses of the Hartz 
 Mountains, the priests returned; and the "con- 
 verted" Saxons tilled their land as duly baptized 
 bondsmen till 792, when the intolerable despotism 
 of their oppressor goaded them into a fresh rebel- 
 lion. But the dire tactics of the iron-clad Franks 
 prevailed again, and the war now became a re- 
 morseless man-hunt. The natives were waylaid at 
 the ruins of their homesteads and at the river- 
 fords. Thousands of women aDd children were 
 dragged off into exile, and the male captives were 
 slain like wolves. In Quedlinburg alone, four 
 thousand prisoners were beheaded in one day. 
 
 There was no gainsaying such arguments, and 
 the next twenty generations of the Saxon yeomen 
 acted on the principle that "Christian submission 
 to the powers that be" may sometimes be the safest 
 plan. But no other slaves have so loathed the 
 chains they could not break. When famine and 
 defeat began to thin the ranks of Prince Witte- 
 kind, the Franks erected large crosses, as rallying- 
 places for "converts"; i.e., deserters, who wished to 
 accept baptism and the bread of bondage. Zu 
 Kreuze kriechen (crawling to cross) has ever since 
 been the most contemptuous term in the German 
 language. Pfaffenthum and pfaffiscli (from Pfaffe, 
 a Romish priest) have become the synonym es of 
 obscurantism and Jesuitical intrigues. The heroes 
 of the national ballads were not the whining 
 saints of the Romish Church, but men like Robin 
 Hood or Ritter Siegfried and Tannhauser. The 
 favorite political leaders were free thinkers, like 
 Otto I., Frederic Barbarossa (as afterward Frederic 
 
108 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 the Great), or Goetz von Berlichingen, Ulric Hut- 
 ten, and George Frundsberg, who openly adopted 
 the motto, "Gottes Freund, der Pfaffen Feind." 
 
 The descendants of the manful old Odin-wor- 
 shippers still prayed to a hero-protecting, bounte- 
 ous All-father rather than to a joy-hating, cant- 
 loving "head-of-the-clerical-interest." Long after 
 the litanies and groaning procession hymns of 
 Southern Europe had silenced the lyre of Anac- 
 reon, and even in Southern Germany passion-plays 
 had superseded the lays of the minnesingers, the 
 songs of the North still breathed a fervid love of 
 nature.* Throughout Northern Europe, and long 
 before Luther, independence and protestantism 
 were as invariable concomitants as faith and 
 slavery. The German nobles paid neither spirit- 
 ual nor material tithes. A few of them kept pri- 
 vate chaplains, in order to complete the clientele of 
 a liberal household, or for educational purposes (as 
 their successors still employ candidates of theol- 
 ogy) ; but their practical habits were the very an- 
 tithesis of monkish humility, and that anti-natural 
 renunciation of earthly happiness which the Church 
 represented as the highest type of human virtue. 
 
 *In the Streitfragen (Minden, Wilhelm Kohler) for Janu- 
 ary, 1881, Prof. Kepler quotes the following "Alte Jager- 
 Lied" (Old Hunter's Song):— 
 
 "Nun steig' ich nimmer wieder ins graue Dorf hinab. 
 Im Walde will ich wohnen ; im Wald grabt mir mein Grab : 
 Wo mir des Pf arrer's Kiihe nicht drauf zur Weide gehn ; 
 Das Wild soil driiber springen, kein Kreuz im Wege 
 stehn!" 
 
 Literally:— 
 "Now, nevermore shall I return to the gray old village. 
 In the woods let me live; in the woods dig me my grave: 
 Where the cows of the priest cannot batten upon its grass; 
 Above it let the wild deer play, no Christian cross stand in 
 the way." 
 
THE PROTESTANT REVOLT. 109 
 
 "Self-help" was their motto. They redressed their 
 own wrongs, and maintained their rights even 
 against their sovereign. In their castle halls, the 
 rule of free speech recognized no higher law what- 
 ever. They did not devote their holidays to the 
 self-afflictions of nature-hating fanatics, but to the 
 recreations of their free ancestors, — to the chase, 
 to songs, and athletic sports. At a time when the 
 Spanish cavaliers competed for the honor of march- 
 ing in procession with the pageant of an auto-da- 
 fe, Francis von Sickingen risked his head rather 
 than surrender the free thinker Hutten, and Martin 
 Luther found a protector in every German noble- 
 man.* As soon as the cities of the Hanseatic 
 League became strong enough to resist the tyranny 
 of the Church, they exhibited the same spirit of 
 defiance; and several of the North-German free 
 towns renounced the advantage of a papal recogni- 
 tion rather than comply with the demands of the 
 In quisitor-general. 
 
 The priests, in the mean time, had not been idle. 
 Their recognized efficiency as the allies of despot- 
 ism secured them the connivance of every despotic 
 ruler ; they controlled the educational institutions ; 
 they influenced legislation ; they founded convents 
 and seminaries. But, in spite of all that, their 
 Church remained an exotic plant, and had con- 
 
 * At a time when a man had to choose between slavery 
 and lawless independence, the chivalry of Northern Eu- 
 rope often maintained that independence at the expense 
 of their fellow-men ; but, in better times, they have pro- 
 duced many of those truest friends of liberty who demand 
 freedom for others as well as for themselves,— e.g., Coligny, 
 Volney, Hutten, Holbach, Philip of Hessen, Stein, Hum- 
 boldt, De Ligne, Mansfield, Bolingbroke, Byron, Halifax, 
 Queensbury, Egmont, Barneveldt, Kossuth, Bathyani. 
 
110 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 stantly to be fertilized by papal subsidies. I jlq 
 the North-China Temperance League, the nations 
 of Northern Europe were forced to connive at a 
 pernicious poison- traffic, but never ceased to detest 
 the poison. The temptations of the anti-natural- 
 ists had failed to corrupt their healthier instincts. 
 Hence, the apparent paradox that the latest con- 
 verts were the first to revolt ; while those who had 
 suffered most under the yoke of the Church were 
 unable or unwilling to break their chains. For 
 those chains were the fetters of an inveterate 
 poison-vice. "Hear me first a few words," said a 
 young man, whom Dr. Mussey had admonished 
 about his intemperate propensities, "and then you 
 may proceed. I am sensible that an indulgence 
 in this habit will lead to loss of property, the loss 
 of reputation, the loss of domestic happiness, to 
 premature death, and to the irretrievable loss of 
 my immortal soul; and now, with all this convic- 
 tion resting firmly on my mind and flashing over 
 my conscience like lightning, if I still continue to 
 drink, do you suppose anything you can say will 
 deter me from the practice ?" 
 
 In similar words, Cardinal Retz might have 
 answered the arguments of Erasmus. For the 
 nations of the Latin races, the chance of salvation 
 had come too late. The brain — their enlightened 
 men — clearly saw the coming tophet of degenera- 
 tion and national bankruptcy ; but the body of the 
 people were intoxicated with the fumes of the 
 Moloch fire, and pursued the road to ruin like 
 blindfolded victims. The poison of anti-natural- 
 ism had fastened upon their souls. They had lost 
 
THE PROTESTANT REVOLT. HI 
 
 not only their liberty, but their desire for libera- 
 tion. The systematic murder of all avowed free 
 thinkers had emasculated the national mind. 
 They were contentedly ignorant. They had 
 ceased to despise mental prostitution. They had 
 come to enjoy the ceremonies and wretched mum- 
 meries of their Church. Spain and Portugal have 
 sunk to the level of the East-Buddhistic nations. 
 Ireland, Southern Germany, and Southern France 
 still sleep; and Greece will awake no more. In 
 Italy, however, the reaction of the Protestant 
 propaganda has led to a quasi compromise,— the 
 intellectual emancipation of the educated classes. 
 By a system of mutual concessions, the lower 
 orders have been abandoned to the wiles of their 
 clerical obscurantists ; while scholars indulge in a 
 scepticism that transcends all that Southern Eu- 
 rope witnessed in the days of Lucretius and Dia- 
 goras. The writings of Leopardi, Mundt, and 
 Taine throw a curious light on this anomaly of 
 social life, even in Rome itself* 
 
 i J! 1 ? the mteen }\ century, the revival of classical studies 
 led to a somewhat similar result. The Colonnas and Mo- 
 ciicis protected several avowed free thinkers, and the Dic- 
 tionary of the French Encyclopaedists has preserved the 
 following anecdote: "Prince Pico de Mirandola once met 
 wh?!.^ 1 ^^ 61 ! 1 -^^® 1101186 of tue courtesan Emilia, 
 ta iwid Wi?h a ' a iH e i 0ly Father ' s , daughter, was confined 
 ™w, nd -kirth, and the people of Rome were discussing 
 whether the child belonged to the pope, to his son Cesar, 
 or to Lucretia's husband, Alphonso of Aragon, who was 
 considered — -. The conversation immediately became 
 <Mv Mt«2 P Ud *? ay - Cardinal B ^bo relates a part of itl 
 wL ? PlC0 ' say ? the P°P e ' 'whom do you think the 
 
 S^^vvST 7 ' '* think your sVin-law,' re- 
 plied Pico. 'What! how can you possibly believe such 
 nonsense?' <I believe it by faith/ 'But, surety, ?ou 
 know that an —-cannot be a father.' 'Faith,' replied 
 S,«ihia° n v 8tS in b . ehevin S tbi °£s because they are im- 
 possible. You require me to believe more incomprehensi- 
 ble mysteries. Am I not bound to believe that — had no 
 
112 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 In Switzerland, Hungary, and other countries of 
 mixed races, a part of the populace had actually to 
 be bribed to achieve their own salvation. Others 
 merely exchanged creeds, and often adopted a 
 gloomier though more consistent form of the old 
 superstition, or yielded only to the eloquence of 
 an inspired apostle. 
 
 But, in the North, such arguments could be dis- 
 pensed with. The nations of Northern Europe 
 waited not for a reformer, but for a liberator ; and, 
 when the intellectual support of a few prominent 
 scholars and the political support of an influential 
 prince had given Luther's enterprise the least 
 chance of success, the moral support of the people 
 took the form of a jubilant uprising, and the 
 Protestant Revolt broke out like the torrent of 
 
 earthly father at all ; that a serpeDt spoke ; that from that 
 time all mankind were damned; that the ass of Balaam 
 also spoke with great eloquence; and that the walls of 
 Jericho fell down at the sound of trumpets?' Pico thus 
 proceeded with a long list of all the prodigious things in 
 which he believed. Alexander absolutely fell back upon 
 his sofa with laughing. 'I had better believe all that as 
 well as you,' says he; 'for I well know that I can be saved 
 only by faith, as I can certainly never be so by works.' 
 'Ah, holy father,' says Pico, 'you need neither works nor 
 faith: they are well enough for such poor profane creat- 
 ures as we are; but you, who are absolutely a vice-god, 
 you may believe and do just whatever you please. You 
 have the keys of heaven, and St. Peter will certainly never 
 shut the door in your face. But as for myself, who am 
 nothing but a poor prince, I freely confess that I should 
 have found some very powerful protection necessary, if I 
 had employed the stiletto and nightshade as often as your 
 holiness.' Alexander VI. understood raillery. 'Let us 
 speak seriously,' says he to the prince. 'Tell me what 
 merit there can be in a man's saying to God that he is 
 persuaded of things of which, in 'fact, he cannot be per- 
 suaded? What pleasure can this afford to God? Between 
 ourselves, a man who says that he believes what is impos- 
 sible to be believed is a humbug.' Pico de Mirandola at 
 this crossed himself in great agitation. 'Mi Dio!' says 
 he, 'I beg your Holiness' pardon, but you are not a Chris- 
 tian.' 'Upon my faith,' says the Pope, 'I am not.' 
 •That's what I suspected,' says' Pico de Mirandola." 
 
THE PROTESTANT REVOLT. H3 
 
 a long-obstructed river. The common people took 
 little interest in the theological subtleties of the 
 dogmatic controversy : they had no cause to hope 
 that the doctrine of the New Testament could in 
 any degree be reconciled with human reason ; but, 
 with the broad instinct of self-preservation, they 
 seized upon the main fact that the success of the 
 insurrection meant liberation from the thraldom 
 of an intolerable yoke. Their clear-seeing men 
 foresaw that the wedge which now divided the 
 power of the Church would soon split it into 
 smaller and lighter pieces: they felt sure that, in 
 the course of time, the antiseptic of free inquiry 
 and the tonic of secular pursuits would eradicate 
 the taint of anti-naturalism ; and, in the mean time, 
 they accepted the dogmas of Luther as a man 
 accepts the cow-pox,— as a protection from the 
 danger of a more horrible disease. 
 
 Martin Luther was not the first sect-founder 
 who builded more wisely than he knew. Pythag- 
 oras, who intended to introduce the superstition 
 of the Hindu Gnostics, succeeded only in reform- 
 ing the hygienic habits of his countrymen. Mo- 
 hammed, the Unitarian revivalist,- was inspired 
 by a purely religious zeal. He recommended 
 neither physical education nor the culture of the 
 intellectual faculties, but he was wise enough at 
 least not to depreciate them. They recommended 
 themselves as means to his ends ; and, a hundred 
 years after his death, the civilization of Islam 
 rivalled the culture of Greece and Rome. Luther's 
 chief purpose was to propagate his dogma of salva- 
 tion by faith, etc., and to restore the theocracy of 
 
114 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 the early Christian churches ; but, before he could 
 plant, he had to uproot, and this weeding of the 
 soil revived the suppressed germs of Naturalism 
 and Philosophy. And though, like Moses, he 
 called himself a humble servant of God, it is 
 certain that neither the diatribes of Martial and 
 Demosthenes, nor the philippics of Dan ton, Mira- 
 beau, and Lord Brougham, have ever equalled the 
 tremendous emphasis of his invectives ; and to this 
 negative preaching he owed his wonderful popu- 
 larity. 
 
 "Freedom awakened in every breast" ;* the mere 
 rumor of the first success gained over whole cities 
 and provinces; the nations of the North flew to 
 arms, like the old Saxons at the return of their 
 heroic chieftain; Northern Germany became the 
 arena of an international war ; and after a struggle, 
 in which the very earth seemed to rise in defence 
 of her children, the enemies of nature were over- 
 powered: the demon of the Buddhistic pest had 
 found its victor. 
 
 The leaders of the Reformation intended a Chris- 
 tian-Patristic revival, but the soul of its success was 
 a protest. 
 
 * Es gereicht den alten Deutschen zum Ruhm, 
 
 Dass sie gehasst das Christenthum, 
 
 Bis Kaiser Karolus leidigem Degen 
 
 Die edlen Sachsen unterlegen; 
 
 Auch haben sie lange genug gerungen, 
 
 Bis endlieh die Pfaffen sie bezwungen 
 
 Und sie sich unter's Juch geduckt: 
 
 Auch haben sie imraer einmal gemuckt. 
 
 Auch lagen sie nur in halbem Schlaf 
 
 Als Luther die Bibel verdeutscht so brav; 
 
 St. Paulus, als ein Ritter derb 
 
 Erschien den Rittern minder herb: 
 
 Freiheit erwacht in jeder Rrust; 
 
 Wir protestiren alle mit Lust.— Wolfgang Goethe. 
 (Recommended to the translators of the Goethe-worship- 
 ping Concord School of Christian Philosophy.) 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 REGENESIS. 
 
 The night ends with storms; yet rejoice : They herald 
 the Morning.— Jean Paul. 
 
 The history of Protestantism is the history 
 of a progressive reform. When the congress of 
 Westphalia accepted the terms of the Protestant 
 princes, the power of anti-naturalism received its 
 death-sentence; for, with the interests of the 
 Christian religion, the right of free inquiry is as 
 incompatible as sunlight with the interests of an 
 owl-association. The spectres of the Middle Ages 
 are fleeing from the morning air; dogma after 
 dogma has silently evanished before the advance of 
 that reform of which the Augsburg Confession 
 was not the consummation, but the beginning. It 
 is probable that few of the reformers could foresee 
 the consequences of the movement they were set- 
 ting forward, but the instinct of the people could 
 not be deceived : they felt the true import of the 
 great regenesis, and expressed their appreciation 
 of its chief fact by the popular name of the cause 
 of Protestantism. That protest has been repeated 
 till we can no longer doubt that its causative prin- 
 ciple is a revival of naturalism. The abolition of 
 witchcraft laws, of religious disabilities and eccle- 
 siastic privileges, the divorce of Church and State, 
 secular education, civil marriages, our newspaper 
 
116 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 oracles, lecture-bureaus and cyclopaedias, our re- 
 publics, our railways, telegraphs, telescopes and 
 electric lights, our life insurances and lightning 
 conductors, mechanics' institutes and gymnasiums, 
 our zoological gardens, Sunday excursions and 
 festivals of the Turner-bund, are strange com- 
 ments on the theory of the sages who ascribe our 
 superior civilization to the restoration of the pa- 
 tristic dogmas. Anti-naturalism was not only the 
 consequence, but the cause and essence of those 
 dogmas. 
 
 The ministers of pessimism still disregard the 
 signs of dawn, or mistake them for the reflection 
 of their mystic light; but they cannot help per- 
 ceiving that the demand for consecrated candles 
 has alarmingly decreased. Their didactic func- 
 tions have been intrusted to the exponents of 
 secular science ; their judicial and statistical func- 
 tions to the municipal authorities; their tribunal 
 of public censure has been surrendered to the 
 public press ; and the very foundation of their 
 spiritual authority has been undermined by the 
 agencies of that ominous phase in the decadence 
 of a creed which drives its ablest champions into 
 the camp of the opposition. Two hundred years 
 ago, a considerable plurality of our educated cler- 
 gymen would have been burned as heretics; and 
 the veil of external forms can hardly disguise the 
 fact that the doctrine now preached in the city 
 churches of the progressive nations is neither 
 Romanism nor Calvinism, but eclectic casuistry. 
 The signs of a progressing change are, indeed, 
 getting distinct enough to be visible even through 
 
REGENESIS. 117 
 
 the painted windows of the Roman cathedrals. 
 The tenure of the infallible Church is in litiga- 
 tion; her drafts on heaven are sadly below par; 
 her Hades has changed its climate, as well as its 
 name. The plan of pressing science into the 
 service of dogmatism has only hastened the prog- 
 ress of disintegration. Nature cannot be fought 
 with her own weapons; by just as much as her 
 enemies increase the knowledge of their disciples, 
 they decrease their orthodoxy; the ministers of 
 darkness try in vain to utilize the electric lights 
 of civilization. 
 
 Yet the church of natural religion is still a 
 militant church. Pessimism is fighting its last 
 battle with bitter obstinacy. The aggressive agen* 
 cies of the Galilean Church have become obstruct- 
 ive elements. The roars of the bestia trionfante 
 have been silenced; the open war against truth 
 has ceased, but her enemies still maintain a de- 
 fensive warfare; such plain duties toward our 
 fellow-men as the exposure of superstition and 
 hypocrisy are still denounced as crimes against 
 the majesty of our God. Monks and Puritans 
 have ceased to enforce the worship of sorrow, but 
 their influence still prevents the worship of joy; 
 the poison of asceticism still blights our festivals ; 
 the love of earth is still a stigma. The Stylites 
 have descended from their columns; self-mutila- 
 tion and self-torture have ceased their work of 
 degeneration; but the regenerating influence of 
 physical education has not yet been recognized; 
 even in America, we have a hundred mythology 
 schools for one gymnasium. Like the deities of 
 
118 THE SECRET OF THE EA8T. 
 
 the Roman Empire, the gods of pessimism have 
 lost their thunder ; their butcher-priests have been 
 disarmed, but their temples still cumber the land ; 
 the embers of their altar-fires still cloud the sky 
 with their murky fumes. 
 
 Yet the rising sun will soon dissipate those 
 clouds. Our pilgrimage to the land of regenera- 
 tion is not yet finished ; but the light of the new 
 day has at least brought to view the goal of our 
 journey, and will help us to avoid the obstacles of 
 our path. The night-spectres flee. The morning 
 sun begins to reveal the true form of the vampire 
 whose loathsome embrace has sapped the life-blood 
 of the last hundred generations. The demon of 
 pessimism will not long hide his ghastly face under 
 the guise of a heavenly messenger. One by one, 
 his masks have dropped ; and the hour of deliver- 
 ance is near, when the hand of science shall lift 
 the veil of the Perversion-fallacy, — the last sophism 
 that still enables the Galilean Church to deprecate 
 the odium of their crimes against the happiness of 
 the human race. The outrages against the friends 
 of science and freedom, they say, were the conse- 
 quences of a perverted creed, while the founders of 
 that creed inveighed only against earthly desires, 
 against unbelief, against the love of wealth, of 
 sensual enjoyments, and worldly honors. "I did 
 not destroy the flowers and fruits of the tree," says 
 the fatuous gardener : "I merely aimed my blows at 
 the base roots." 
 
 The dupes of the perversion-fallacy see the con- 
 trast between the lowly beginning and the out- 
 rageous consequences of anti-naturalism, but they 
 
REGENESIS. H9 
 
 fail to trace the inevitable sequence of cause and 
 effect. They fail to see that the withering of the 
 earthly roots of human life will equally blight the 
 highest flowers of the spirit. They fail to see that 
 decrepitude begets cowardice, meanness, and du- 
 plicity; that destitution is a worse tempter than 
 affluence ; that non-resistance leads to slavery ; that 
 blind faith opens the door to imposture ; that the 
 neglect of terrestrial affairs leads to moral and 
 intellectual as well as material bankruptcy; that 
 the spirit sickens with the body. They fail to see 
 that a noble mind is a flower of which physical 
 health is the stem and the root. 
 
 The New Testament, in fact, contains all the 
 seeds of the insane dogmas that turned the world 
 of the Middle Ages into a mad-house. Not the 
 outcome only, but the very source of the Galilean 
 creed is an earth-blighting superstition. And, 
 wherever the tendencies of our so-called Christian 
 civilization have led to health and happiness, it 
 proves that we have left the age of St. Augustine 
 very far behind. It proves that the doctrine of 
 pessimism has become untenable, that our earth 
 has awakened from the fever-dream of the Middle 
 Ages, that the healing powers of nature have at 
 last prevailed against the most terrible disease of 
 the human race. 
 
 For a large number of our contemporaries, the 
 day of deliverance has already arrived ; but no one 
 deserves his liberty who does not contribute his 
 share to the emancipation of his fellow-men. The 
 bigotry of a besotted fanatic is hardly more con- 
 temptible than the cautious selfishness of the 
 
120 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 man who silently enjoys the sweet air of freedom 
 while thousands of his brethren sicken in the dun- 
 geon of anti-naturalism. The agnostic and apathic 
 creed of science must become a positive religion. 
 The energy which we owe to the fear of disease 
 should be inspired by the love of health. Before 
 the end of this century, the protest against the 
 enemies of nature should consummate its triumph 
 in a gospel of earthly happiness. Religion must 
 cease to be a synonyme of hypocrisy. 
 
 The Religion of the Future will dispense with 
 stakes and torture-chambers. It will employ no 
 weapons but logic, no inquisition but the inquiry 
 after truth. It will appeal to no higher canon than 
 the progressive revelation of science. All the think- 
 ers, discoverers, and reformers who were the ene- 
 mies of religion will become its missionaries. Its 
 work of redemption will not be achieved by the 
 suppression, but by the encouragement of free in- 
 quiry ; not by the renunciation, but by the promo- 
 tion of temporal happiness; not by ghost-stories 
 and self-torture, but by natural science, Olympic 
 festivals, outdoor life, social and educational re- 
 forms, desert-redeeming forest culture, gymnastics, 
 and health-schools. The path of its victory will 
 not lead over the trampled flowers of this earth. 
 The religion of nature will dispense with miracles. 
 It will heal the sick by teaching them to avoid the 
 causes of disease. It will help the poor by increas- 
 ing their means of self-help : it will still their hun- 
 ger after happiness with better fare than litanies 
 and consecrated wafers. 
 
 We may keep our altars ; but the priests of the 
 
REGENESIS. 121 
 
 future will not require the sacrifice of our reason, 
 of our freedom and our natural affections, and 
 will not reject an honest votary, though he should 
 decline to hate his father and mother, — yea, and 
 his own life. We shall worship our God in the 
 temple of nature; and, if Paradise can be re- 
 gained, we shall try to enjoy it on this side of the 
 grave. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Indian Sources of the New Testament. 
 
 The study of Comparative Mythology has estab- 
 lished the rule that the metastasis of myths con- 
 fines itself to a descending line of transmission. 
 The attributes, doings, and sayings of national 
 numina are transferred from gods to heroes, from 
 heroes and demigods to favorite saints and politi- 
 cal leaders, from exuberant and popular religions 
 to inchoate and aspiring creeds. Sarama, the 
 Spirit of the Dawn, becomes a Grecian Helena; 
 the stronghold of the night-gods shrinks to a 
 Mysian city; Wodan, with his celestial compan- 
 ions, descends to the vault of a German castle or 
 rides the storm-cloud through the midnight woods. 
 A mythical hero of ancient Iran sinks to a Danish 
 warrior, and finally to a Swiss peasant ; Venus be- 
 comes a lamia ; Hertha, the earth-goddess, a nurs- 
 ery witch. Conquered nations degrade their old 
 idols, if they cannot preserve them on better terms. 
 The priests and devotees of a newly promoted 
 Olympian try to establish his claim by identifying 
 him with a deity of superior rank. 
 
 It is therefore not probable that the Krishna- 
 tradition was transferred directly from Brahmanism 
 to Christianity. Long before the advent of the 
 
APPENDIX. 123 
 
 Galilean avatar, Krishna, the heaven-born lover of 
 the milkmaids, had ceased to be the centre of a 
 special worship, Buddhism had reacted on Brah- 
 manism as the doctrine of Luther had reacted on 
 the Catholic religion: It had forced the older 
 creed to relinquish its exuberant myths, and re- 
 treat to the stronghold of its essential dogmas. 
 Those portious of the Krishna legend which have 
 blended with our gospel myths were probably 
 transmitted through the medium of Buddhism, 
 and, being confined chiefly to the infancy traditions 
 of the two Messiahs, have no ethical importance 
 whatever. 
 
 Of far different significance is the concordance 
 of Christianity and Buddhism. The character and 
 the astounding number of their analogies not only 
 reveal the genesis of the Christian myths, but 
 also elucidate numerous otherwise obscure pas- 
 sages in the parables and ethical precepts of the 
 New Testament, and thus confirm the intrinsic 
 proofs of its extra-Hebraic origin and its pessimis- 
 tic tendency. 
 
 The chronological subterfuge of the Christian 
 apologists has been effectually disposed of. It had 
 been supposed that the Lalita Vistara, the chief 
 compend of the Buddha legend, was a Cingalese 
 romance of comparatively recent date, and that its 
 compilers might have availed themselves of West- 
 Asiatic traditions. But the researches of Burnouf, 
 Wassiljew, Koppen, Max Miiller, Seydel, Julien, 
 and Plath have most incontestably established the 
 fact that Cingalese Buddhism, though a younger 
 branch of the great Indian religion, has more 
 
124 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 faithfully than the northern sects preserved the 
 original traditions of the Buddha Bible, and that 
 the canonical recognition of the Lalita Vistara — 
 not to mention the period of its development — far 
 ante-dates those of the Christian gospels. Stan- 
 islas Julien proved by an ancient Chinese cata- 
 logue of the Kaygur scriptures that the Lalita was 
 one of the books which in the first century of our 
 chronological era were translated from the old 
 Indian originals, and that therefore, even at that 
 early period, the Lalita was included among the 
 canonical books of Buddhism. Besides, many of 
 the most suggestive passages of the Cingalese 
 gospel are found already in the Thibetan Hinay- 
 dnasj which more than two centuries before Christ 
 had taken rank among the sacred scriptures of the 
 northern Buddhists. Plath demonstrates that 230 
 B.C. the Hinaydnas had already assumed their 
 present form. Prof. Rudolph Seydel, the learned 
 Christian apologist, admits that the canonical 
 recognition of the Lalita cannot be assigned to a 
 later period than twenty years after the birth of 
 Christ. "But what would it avail us," he adds, 
 "to postpone that date to the uttermost limit of 
 possibility ? We could not make it less incredible 
 that the Buddhists should have copied from the 
 legends of a creed which was then only in its 
 cradle, and whose traditions had not even begun 
 to crystallize into fixed forms." — (Das Evangehum 
 von Jesu, p. 79, Leipzig, 1882.) 
 
 Especially since Buddhism was then in the very 
 zenith of its vigor. The homage which the Jews, 
 Christians, and Mohammedans have paid to the 
 
APPENDIX. 125 
 
 founders of their religions, is frigid, compared with 
 the fervor of devotional enthusiasm which gathered 
 about the person of Buddha Sakyamuni. In Ceylon, 
 the name of Gautama has twelve thousand syn- 
 onymes. Compared with the self-tortures of the 
 Buddhistic anchorites, the askesis of the Chris- 
 tian monks looks like self-indulgence. Millions of 
 Buddhistic laymen devoted a tenth part of every 
 day to the study of their sacred scriptures, and 
 committed whole books and chronicles to memory. 
 And shall we believe that the priests of that 
 religion-a religion which then counted its con- 
 verts by hundreds of millions, and was daily 
 preached from many hundred thousand pulpits- 
 dared to adulterate their gospel with the traditions 
 of a creed which, from their point of view, was 
 professed only by a small sect of a contemptible 
 and ignorant mountain tribe of Western Syria ? 
 Suppose that the English translator of the Vulgate 
 had tried his hand at a mediaeval romance : would 
 any Protestant sect have attempted to enrich the 
 New Testament with the adventures of Sir Lance- 
 lot du Lac ? And can we believe that the Cingalese, 
 the most orthodox sect of Buddhism, have thus 
 tampered with the sacred canon of their Hinayana 
 gospel? It would not be more absurd if a thou- 
 sand years hence a student of comparative mythol- 
 ogy should assert that our new version of the 
 Scriptures had been borrowed from the writings of 
 Joseph Smith, or that the chronicle of the wars 
 and adventures of Mohammed were a mere para- 
 phrase of Voltaire's drama. 
 
 On the other hand, no circumstance in ancient 
 
126 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 history is more clearly established thaii the fact 
 that, before the appearance of Christ, Buddhistic 
 traditions and Buddhistic missionaries had reached 
 the land of the Mediterranean nations. Like all 
 great movements in the history of the human 
 race, Buddhism at first advanced toward the setting 
 sun, and only the recoil of its westward tide led to 
 the inundation of Eastern Asia. Long before China 
 and Siam were brought under the sway of the 
 "Word," Buddhistic colonies had been planted 
 beyond the Indus. Spiegel's translation of the 
 Five Gathas and Taranatha's History of Buddhism 
 (translated by Wassiljew) mention Buddhistic mis- 
 sions in Western Persia during the reign of Arta- 
 xerxes Longomanus (about B.C. 450). Alexander 
 Polyhistor describes the ascetic practices of Buddh- 
 istic monks in Bactria, and speaks of self-tortur- 
 ing hermits and mendicant orders; while in the 
 Thirteenth Edict of Girnar, King Asoka, the "Con- 
 stantine of Buddhism," refers to missionary em- 
 bassies sent to the Y6na (Ionian or Greek) kings, 
 Antiochus, Ptolemaus, Antigonus, and Magas. 
 Under the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon, the 
 Grecian philosopher Ktesias gathered a large 
 amount of curious information about India and 
 Indian religions; and the historian Aristoxenos, 
 a contemporary of Alexander the Great, mentions 
 an Indian magus who visited Socrates and other 
 philosophers— probably Pythagoreans — whose doc- 
 trine of metempsychosis and abstinence from wine 
 and animal food indicates an East Indian origin. 
 When Alexander the Great returned to Persia, the 
 Indian ascetic Calanos accompanied him to Per- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 127 
 
 sepolis, and burned himself at the stake to demon- 
 strate his indifference to earthly existence. Two 
 hundred years before Christ, the city of Alassada, 
 near the sources of the Oxus, was a central point 
 of the West Buddhistic propaganda. The con- 
 quests of Alexander established a constant inter- 
 course between the Mediterranean and the western 
 cities of Central Asia, caravans travelled to and 
 fro, the Grecian colonists were probably as tolerant 
 as their western countrymen, and the zealous mis- 
 sionaries of the Cashmere convent towns can 
 hardly have failed to avail themselves of such 
 favorable opportunities. Clemens Alexandrinus, St. 
 Jerome, and Suidas speak of a deified "Butta." 
 Pliny (H. N*. 37, 11) refers to the large overland 
 trade between India and Cappadocia; i.e., between 
 the stronghold of Buddhism and a region which 
 swarmed with Greeks, Jews, and the early prose- 
 lytes of Christianity. The same historian (H. N. 
 VI., 19, 22, 26) records the fact that the commerce 
 by sea between India and Europe drained the 
 Roman Empire of a yearly sum of fifty million 
 sesterces, and that Indian ships with accommoda 
 tion for five hundred passengers with their bag- 
 gage and merchandise landed every year at Alex- 
 andria and Syracuse. Among the ambassadors 
 whom King Poros, or Paurava, sent to the court of 
 Augustus, there was the Buddhist Zarmanochegas 
 (Sramanacharya, i.e., teacher of Sramana, the doc- 
 trine of self -mortification), who afterward went to 
 Athens, and, like Calanos, burned himself on a 
 funeral pyre to attest his belief in the worthlessness 
 of earthly life. 
 
128 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 II. 
 Concordance of Buddhism and Christianity. 
 
 A. TRADITIONAL ANALOGIES. 
 
 1. Both Buddha and Christ were of royal line- 
 age. Both were born of a mother who, though 
 married, was still a virgin. 
 
 2. Both virgin mothers were overshadowed by 
 the Holy Ghost, and, though found with child, 
 remained immaculate. 
 
 3. The birth of the future Saviour is announced 
 by a heavenly messenger. The apparition which 
 Maya sees in her dream informs her : "Thou shalt 
 be filled with highest joy. Behold, thou shalt bring 
 forth a son bearing the mystic signs of Buddh, a 
 scion of royal lineage, a son of highest kings. 
 When he shall leave his kingdom and his country 
 to enter the state of devotion, he shall become a 
 sacrifice for the dwellers of earth, a Buddha who to 
 all men shall give joy and the glorious fruits of 
 immortality." (Jtgya Cher-rol-pan, 61, 63.) 
 
 The angel says unto Mary : "Fear not, Mary, 
 for thou hast found favor with God. And behold 
 thou shalt bring forth a son and call his name 
 Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the 
 Son of the Highest ; and the Lord God shall give 
 unto him the throne of his father David." (Luke 
 i., 30, 31.) 
 
 4. At the request of Maya, King Sudodhana re- 
 nounces his connubial rights till she has brought 
 forth her first son. (Rgya, 69-82.) "And Joseph 
 knew her not till she had brought forth her first 
 son." (Matt, i., 25 ; Luke L, 39-56.) 
 
APPENDIX. 129 
 
 5. The immortals of the Tushita-heaven decide 
 that Buddha shall be born when the "Flower-star" 
 makes its first appearance in the east. (Lefmann, 
 21, 124 ; Wassiljew, p. 95.) "Where is he that is 
 born king of the Jews ? for we have seen his star 
 in the east." (Matt, ii., 2.) 
 
 6. A host of angelic messengers descends and 
 announces tidings of great joy : "A hero, glorious 
 and incomparable, has been born, a Saviour unto 
 all nations of the earth 1 A deliverer has brought 
 joy and peace to heaven and earth." (Lotus, 102, 
 104. Rgya, 89, 97.) "And the angel said unto 
 them, Fear not ; for, behold, I bring you good tid- 
 ings of great joy which shall be to all people. . . . 
 For unto you is born this day a Saviour." (Luke 
 ii., 9.) 
 
 7. Princes and wise Brahmans appear with gifts, 
 and worship the child Buddha. (Rgya, 97, 113.) 
 "And when they were come into the house, they 
 saw the young child and worshipped him ; . . . and 
 they presented unto him gifts, gold and frankin- 
 cense and myrrh." (Matt, ii., 11.) 
 
 8. The Brahmin Asita, to whom the Spirit has 
 revealed the advent of Buddh, descends from his 
 hermitage on Himalaya to see the new-born child. 
 He predicts the coming kingdom of heaven and 
 Buddha's mission to save and enlighten the world. 
 (Sutta-Nipatha, iii., 11 ; Buddhist Birth Stories, 
 i., 69.) "And it was revealed unto him by the 
 Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he 
 had seen the Lord's Christ. . . . Then he took 
 him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, 
 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. 
 
130 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 . . . For mine eyes have seen thy salvation. ... A 
 light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy 
 people Israel." (Luke ii., 26.) 
 
 9. Hymnic Intermezzos. — The Gospel of Luke, 
 like the Lalita Vistara, abounds with hymnic rhap- 
 sodies, which in the parallel passages of the Buddh- 
 istic original harmonize with the spirit of the epic ; 
 while, in the Christian chronicle, their abrupt in- 
 troduction suggests omissions and arbitrary selec- 
 tions. (Luke i., 13-17, 30-33, 35, 42-45, 46-55, 
 67-79; ii., 10-14, 29-32, 34, 38; xix., 37.) 
 
 10. The Abhinish-Kramana Sutra relates that 
 the king of Maghada instructed one of his minis- 
 ters to institute an inquiry whether any inhabitant 
 of the kingdom could possibly become powerful 
 enough to endanger the safety of the throne. Two 
 spies are sent out. One of them ascertains the 
 birth of Buddha, his tribe and dwelling-place, and 
 the promise of his future glory. He makes his 
 report to the king, and advises him to take meas- 
 ures to exterminate the tribe. (Cf. Matt, ii., 1-11.) 
 
 11. The Presentation in the Temple. — The 
 princes of the Sakya tribe urge the king to present 
 (or introduce) his son in a public assembly of 
 nobles and priests. Spirits accompany the march 
 of the procession ; inspired prophets extol the fut- 
 ure greatness of the Messiah. The parallel story 
 of Luke supplies the motive of the ceremony with 
 the words: "As it is written in the law of the 
 Lord." But diligent comparison of the sources 
 of Hebrew law has revealed the fact that no such 
 ordinance ever existed. The rite of purification 
 merely required the mother to offer up a sacrifice, 
 
APPENDIX. 131 
 
 a ceremony which demanded neither the presence 
 of the husband nor of the child, the motive of 
 the narrator's fiction being evidently the necessity 
 of fitting the incident into a frame of Hebrew 
 customs. 
 
 12. Names and Titles. — Among the twelve chief 
 names of Buddha, — the Word, the All-wise, the 
 Messiah, the Way, the Awakened, the Saviour, the 
 Intercessor, the Truth, the Life, the Prince of 
 Peace, the Good Shepherd, the Light of the World, 
 — all but the second and fifth have been applied to 
 the Prophet of Nazareth. 
 
 13. Buddha's parents miss the boy one day; and, 
 after searching for him far and near, they find him 
 in an assembly of Rishis (sages of the past), who 
 listen to his discourse and marvel at his under- 
 standing. (Birth Stories, 74 ; Plath, xii., 2.) "And 
 when they found him not, they turned back again 
 to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass 
 that, after three days, they found him in the temple, 
 sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing 
 them and asking them questions. And all that 
 heard him were astonished at his understanding 
 and answers." (Luke ii., 45-47.) 
 
 14. Buddha, before entering upon his mission, 
 meets the B rah mine Rudraka, a mighty preacher, 
 who, however, offers to become his disciple. Some 
 of Rudraka's followers secede to Buddha, but leave 
 him when they find that he does not observe the 
 fasts. (Rgya, 178, 214.) Jesus, before entering 
 upon his mission, meets John the Baptist, who rec- 
 ognizes his superiority. Two of John's disciples 
 follow Jesus, who states his reasons for rejecting 
 
132 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 John's rigid observance of the fasts. (John i., 
 37.) 
 
 15. Buddha retires to the solitude of Uruvilva, 
 and fasts and prays in the desert till hunger forces 
 him to leave his retreat. (Rgya, 364 ; Oldenberg's 
 Mahdvagga, p. 116.) "Then was Jesus led up of the 
 Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted by the 
 devil. And, when he had fasted forty days and forty 
 nights, he was afterwards a-hungered." (Matt, iv., 1. 
 
 16. After finishing his fast, Buddha takes a bath 
 in the river Nairanjana. When he leaves the 
 water, purified, the devas open the gates of heaven, 
 and cover him with a shower of fragrant flowers. 
 (Rgya, 259.) Comp. Matt, iii., 13. 
 
 17. The Temptation. — During Buddha's fast in 
 the desert, Mara, the Prince of Darkness, ap- 
 proaches him, and tempts him with promises of 
 wealth and earthly glory. Buddha rejects his pro- 
 posals by quoting passages of the Vedas. The 
 tempter flees : angels descend and salute Buddha. 
 (Mara: Ktippen, i., 88; Dhammapadam, vii., 33.) 
 "And said unto him, All these things will I give 
 thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 
 Then Jesu3 saith unto him, Get thee hence, Satan ; 
 for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
 God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the 
 devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and 
 ministered unto him." (Matt, iv., 9-11.) 
 
 18. Precursors. — During the transfiguration on 
 the mountain, Christ is joined by Moses and Elias. 
 Sakyamuni has frequent interviews with the two 
 Buddhas who preceded him. (Seydel, 163.) 
 
 19. Under the Fig-tree. — The shade of the sacred 
 
APPENDIX. 133 
 
 fig-tree that shelters the meditating Buddha is the 
 scene of the conversion and ordination of the first 
 disciples, formerly followers of Rudraka. Christ 
 chooses his first disciples from among the former 
 followers of the Baptist; and in John i., 48, his 
 remark about a fig-tree appears wholly incongruous 
 and irrelevant to the context. In the answer of 
 Nathan ael, the circumstance of having been seen 
 under a fig-tree is accepted as a proof of Christ's 
 messiahship ! 
 
 20. Disciples. — Before Buddha appoints a larger 
 number of apostles, he selects five favorite disci- 
 ples, one of whom is afterward styled the pillar of 
 the Faith ; another, the bosom-friend of Buddha. 
 Before Christ selects his twelve apostles, he chooses 
 five chief disciples, among them Peter, the "rock 
 of the Church," and John, his favorite follower. 
 Among the followers of Buddha there is a Judas, 
 Devadatta, who tries to betray his master, and 
 meets a disgraceful death. (Koppen, i., 94 ; Lef- 
 mann, 51 ; Birth Stories, p. 113.) 
 
 21. Sakyamuni alludes to an interview with 
 several former Buddhas. Sceptics question his 
 statement: "Only forty years ago, you left your 
 native town : how can you claim to have seen all 
 those saints of old?" Buddha explains it by the 
 pre-existence of his soul in other forms. (Lotus, 
 xiv. and xv.) "Then said the Jews unto him, 
 Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou 
 seen Abraham?" (John viii., 57.) 
 
 22. The Macarisms. — The first words of Christ 
 are the macarisms (blessings) in the Sermon of 
 the Mount. When Buddha enters upon his mis- 
 
134 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 sion, he begins a public speech (according to the 
 French translation of Rgya, 355) : "Celui qui a 
 entendu la Loi, celui qui voit, celui qui se platt 
 dans la solitude, est heureux; lid (a l'existence) au 
 milieu des creatures vivantes, et ne faisant pas de 
 mal, il est heureux dans le monde. Parvenu a se 
 mettre au-dessus des vices, exempt des passions, 
 il est heureux; celui qui a dompte' l'dgoisme et 
 Porgueil est parvenu h la supreme felicite." 
 
 23. Buddha remains homeless and poor; re- 
 peatedly instructs his disciples to travel without 
 money, and trust to the aid of Providence. (Comp. 
 Matt, iv., 23 ; viii., 20.) 
 
 24. Ananda, Buddha's favorite disciple, at the 
 end of a wearisome journey, sits down near a 
 well. A woman of the despised caste of the Chan- 
 dalas appears with a water-jug. Ananda asks her 
 for a drink of water. The woman warns him that 
 he will lose caste by persisting in his request. 
 Ananda laughs at her scruples ; and, while they 
 argue the question, Buddha comes up and approves 
 the view of Ananda, who, as he perceives, has found 
 favor in the eyes of the woman. (Burnouf's 
 Divya-Avaddna.) Comp. John iv., 1-20. "He 
 whom thou now hast is not thy husband." 
 
 25. If thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out 
 and cast it from thee. (Matt, v., 29.) According 
 to Max Muller's translation of the Ocean of 
 Legends, a young monk of the mendicant order 
 meets a rich woman who pities his hard lot, and 
 wonders what could induce him to renounce the 
 world. "Blessed is the woman," says she, "who 
 looks into thy lovely eyes." "Lovely?" says the 
 
APPENDIX. 135 
 
 monk. "Look here." And, plucking out one of his 
 eyes, he holds it up, bleeding and ghastly, and asks 
 her to correct her opinion. 
 
 26. Miracles.— Buddha walks on the Ganges, as 
 Christ on the lake. He heals the sick by a mere 
 touch of his hand ; and, according to Wassiljew, 
 the Mayana-Sutra relates the miracle of the loaves 
 and fishes. Buddha repeatedly has a miraculous 
 escape from the snares of his adversaries. "But 
 he, going through the midst of them, went his 
 way." (Luke iv., 30.) A transfiguration, ascen- 
 sion, speaking in foreign tongues, are additional 
 parallels. Buddha descends to hell, and preaches 
 to the spirits of the damned. 
 
 27. In the story of the blind man (John ix.), the 
 disciples ask: "Who did sin,— this man or his 
 parents?" The meaning of the question is re- 
 vealed by the Buddhistic parable of a wilfully blind 
 (obstinate) heretic, whose perversity is caused by 
 his sins in a former existence. {Lotus, 82.) For, 
 in the version of the gospel, the guilt of a man born 
 blind could hardly be alleged as a cause of his 
 misfortune ; while, in the Buddhistic original, the 
 idea is in perfect harmony with the doctrine of 
 metempsychosis. 
 
 28. Instructions to disciples. — Lotus, v., 105 ; 
 Gdtha, pp. 53, 143, 165, and other passages, repeat 
 the injunction of self-denial, meekness, the duty of 
 declining presents, often nearly in the words of 
 Matt, vii., 6. Several of Buddha's disciples receive 
 power to exorcise evil spirits. 
 
 29. At the death of Buddha, the earth trembles, 
 the rocks are split, phantoms and spirits appear. 
 
136 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 (Koppen, i., 114 ; Saint-Hilaire, 44 ; Seydel, 281.) 
 " And, behold, the earth did quake, and the rocks 
 were rent, . . . and the graves were opened, and 
 many bodies of the saints which slept arose." 
 (Matt, xxvii., 51-53.) 
 
 B. DOGMATICAL ANALOGIES. 
 
 1. Belief in the necessity of redemption by a 
 supernatural mediator. 
 
 2. The founder's exaltation to the rank of a 
 God. Buddha is equal to Brahm ; demons are 
 powerless against his word; angels and Arhats 
 minister unto him. 
 
 3. Belief in a hell of fire and ceaseless torments. 
 
 4. Belief in a prodigious number of malevolent 
 demons. 
 
 5. Demerit of wealth. " It is difficult to be rich 
 and keep the way." 
 
 6. Merit of mendicancy. Monastic brotherhoods 
 resembling the order of St. Francis. 
 
 7. The moral merit of celibacy. Abstinence 
 from sexual intercourse a constitutional rule of 
 Buddhistic convents and priest-schools. 
 
 8. Rejection of ancient rites, sacrifices, etc. 
 
 9. Monastic seclusion ; merit of a retired life ; 
 hermitages and convents. 
 
 10. Vanity of earthly joys. 
 
 11. Depreciation of labor, industry, the pursuit 
 of worldly advantage and worldly honors ; mo- 
 nastic vows of poverty and obedience. 
 
 12. The sinfulness of skepticism. 
 
 13. Auricular confession of sins. 
 
 14. Efficacy of vicarious atonement. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 137 
 
 15. Inculcation of patience, submission, and self- 
 denial; neglect of the active, manly, and industrial 
 virtues. 
 
 16. Love of enemies ; submission to injustice and 
 
 tyranny. 
 
 17. Depreciation of worldly affections ; merit of 
 abandoning wife and children. 
 
 18. Trinity of holiest names,— Buddha, Dharma, 
 and Sangha. Dharma is the "Word." "And the 
 Word was with God." 
 
 19. The worship of saints. 
 
 20. Miracle-mongery. The chronicle of the 
 Buddhistic church is overloaded with the records 
 of prodigies. 
 
 21. Metaphorical Analogies.— Buddha is called 
 the "Light of the World" (Gatha, p. 105). Buddha's 
 mercy is compared to a rain cloud which showers 
 blessings upon the just and unjust. Earthly joys 
 are compared to the grass which blooms to-day and 
 to-morrow is cast into the fire (Dhamm., 334). 
 True believers are advised to gather treasures 
 which neither thieves can steal nor fire or water 
 can spoil (Lotus, 130). Ignorant teachers are lik- 
 ened to the blind guiding the blind. The repent- 
 ant sinner is described in a parable of a prodigal 
 son, who wastes his substance in foreign countries, 
 but at last returns to the house of his father, and, 
 after serving him as a common day-laborer, is 
 pardoned, and becomes the father's chief heir. 
 
 C. CEREMONIAL ANALOGIES. 
 
 Monasteries; nunneries; popery; the Thibetan 
 Lama is worshipped as God's vice-regent upon 
 
138 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 earth; oecumenical councils; processions; wor- 
 ship of relics; strings of beads; incense; confes- 
 sion of sins ; chaplets ; service with double choirs ; 
 pulpits ; dalmaticas ; a censer suspended from five 
 chains; litanies; holy water; chalices; shaven 
 polls; priests going bareheaded; weekly and yearly 
 fasts ; exorcism ; division of temples into a nave 
 and lateral halls; aspersion with consecrated 
 water; bell-ringing; candlemas; feast of the 
 Immaculate Conception ; masses for the repose of 
 departed souls. 
 
 The chief proof of the essential identity of the 
 two creeds is the anti-cosmic principle, the nature- 
 hating and earth-despising tendency which dis- 
 tinguishes Buddhism and Christianity from all 
 other religious systems. The gospel of Buddha, 
 though a pernicious, is, however, a perfectly con- 
 sistent doctrine. According to the ethics of Gau- 
 tama, — "the Awakened," as his followers call him 
 in distinction from benighted mortals, — birth, life, 
 and rebirth is an eternal round of sorrow and dis- 
 appointment ; the present and the future are but 
 the upper and lower tire of an ever-rolling wheel 
 of woe; existence is wholly evil, and the only 
 salvation from the misery of life is the escape to 
 the peace of Nirvana. The attempt to graft this 
 doctrine upon the optimistic theism of Palestine 
 has made the Christian ethics so inconsistent and 
 contradictory. A paternal Jehovah, who yet eter- 
 nally and horribly tortures a vast plurality of his 
 children. An earth, the perfect work of a benevo- 
 lent God, yet all a vale of tears, not made to be 
 enjoyed, but only to be despised and renounced. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 139 
 
 An omnipotent heaven, yet unable to prevent the 
 intrigues and constant victories of hell. Chris- 
 tianity is evidently not a homogeneous, but a com- 
 posite, a hybrid religion ; and, considered in con- 
 nection with the indications of history and the 
 evidence of the above-named ethical and traditional 
 analogies, these facts leave no reasonable doubt 
 that the founder of the Galilean Church was a dis- 
 ciple of Buddha Sakyamuni. 
 
 Those who oppose this theory should, besides, 
 remember that the question at issue is not between 
 gospel truth and borrowed traditions, but between 
 borrowed traditions and deliberate fiction; for 
 that the narrative of the New Testament has no 
 historic value admits of mathematical demonstra- 
 tion. Not only does it abound with the records of 
 prodigies at variance with the normal experience 
 of mankind and entirely unsupported by the testi- 
 mony of contemporary historians, but also with 
 self-contradictions which remove the last doubt 
 that the chronicle of the Synoptic Gospels, what- 
 ever may be its origin, is not based upon facts. 
 
 ill. 
 
 Historical Value of the New Testament. 
 
 The following are a few of the self-evident 
 proofs of the historical (and, a fortiori, canonical) 
 value of the book which Prof. Christlieb calls "a 
 canon which it has pleased the Lord to reveal and 
 which the Lord's children are therefore bound to 
 believe." 
 
 In the first chapter of Matthew, the Lord reveals 
 the fact that from the birth of Christ to the reign 
 
140 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 of David there were twenty-six generations, which 
 are enumerated by name. In the Gospel of St. 
 Luke, it has pleased the Lord to reveal a genealogy 
 of forty-three names, of which only the first and 
 last agree with that of the former list. 
 
 Matthew also informs us that Herod ordered the 
 massacre of an enormous number of young chil- 
 dren, and that the parents of Christ saved their 
 infant son only by a timely flight to Egypt. St. 
 Luke does not mention the massacre, and states 
 that the parents of Christ, instead of fleeing to 
 Egypt, continued to dwell in their native city of 
 Nazareth. (Luke ii., 22-39.) Josephus, who re- 
 lates every trifling circumstance in the reign of 
 Herod, especially the despotic acts of the viceroy, 
 does not mention the murder of a single child. 
 (Cf. p. 130. 10.) 
 
 St. Matthew states that the name of Mary's 
 father-in-law was Jacob. (Matt, i., 16.) Accord- 
 ing to the Gospel of St. Luke, Dr. Christlieb is 
 bound to believe that the gentleman's name was 
 Heli. (Luke iii., 23.) 
 
 Mark mentions that John was in prison when 
 Jesus came into Galilee. John informs us that at 
 that time John was not yet in prison. 
 
 Matthew relates that the centurion came in 
 person to beseech Christ in behalf of his sick 
 servant. Luke states that he sent the elders of 
 the Jews. 
 
 According to Mark (xv., 25), Jesus was crucified 
 at the third hour. According to John (xix., 14, 
 15), the preparation for the crucifixion only began 
 at the sixth hour. 
 
 St. Matthew (xxvii., 5) asserts that Judas 
 
APPENDIX. 141 
 
 hanged himself. The Acts (i., 18) relate that he 
 died in a different way. 
 
 According to John, only one woman came to the 
 sepulchre. According to Matthew, she was accom- 
 panied by a namesake. Their statements might be 
 reconciled, but Mark informs us that not less than 
 three women came together. But, even that must 
 be an under estimate, for Luke assures us that 
 there were more than four women. 
 
 Matthew and Mark's women saw an angel at the 
 sepulchre : Luke's more numerous witnesses oblige 
 us to believe that they saw two angels; but the 
 dim religious light of the tomb may have confused 
 their vision, for, while Matthew informs us that the 
 apparition was seen without the sepulchre, John and 
 Mark admit that it was seen within. Mark's state- 
 ment that they reached the sepulchre at the time 
 of the rising sun is no positive counterproof, for 
 John confesses that they reached it while it was 
 yet dark. Matthew's angel was sitting down. 
 Luke's angels did not think it proper to keep their 
 seat in the presence of so many ladies. 
 
 Matthew and Luke state that the women hastened 
 to carry the news to the disciples. Mark (whose 
 women had reached the sepulchre after daylight) 
 admits that they had no excuse for saying any- 
 thing to anybody. 
 
 If we shall believe Matthew, Jesus was three 
 days and three nights in the grave. The account 
 of Mark implies that he was resurrected during the 
 second night. 
 
 According to Luke, the ascension of Christ took 
 place at Bethany. The Acts (i., 9, 12) state that 
 
142 THE SECRET OF THE EAST. 
 
 he ascended from Mount Olivet. Both accounts 
 differ from that of Luke (xvi., 19). 
 
 In the Gospel of St. Matthew, we are informed 
 that at the death of Christ "there was darkness 
 over all the land from the sixth hour unto the 
 ninth." The veil of the temple was rent, the 
 earth quaked, the rocks split, and troops of corpses 
 sallied from their tombs and availed themselves of 
 the opportunity to visit their metropolitan friends. 
 St. Mark and St. Luke do not think it worth 
 while to report such trifles. St. John, an eye- 
 witness of the crucifixion, does not allude to them. 
 Josephus, in his detailed history of the same time 
 and the same country, never mentions them. The 
 Roman historians, whose countrymen ruled all 
 Syria and Asia Minor, mention nothing of the 
 kind. Can we doubt that the rumbling of Mat- 
 thew's earthquake was the echo of that East Indian 
 tradition which the writers of the New Testament 
 mistook for the revelation of the Lord? When 
 Buddha, the saviour, died at Kusinagra, the earth 
 quaked and the rocks were rent, phantoms as- 
 cended from their caves, and the nine heavens 
 were darkened, as well as the earth. 
 
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