HOMILIES

OF

SCIENCE

DR. PAUL CARUS.

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CHICAGO:
The Open Court Publishing Company.
1892.

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PREFACE.

' I ""HESE Homilies of Science first appeared as editorial
¦*- articles in The Open Court. The principle that pervades
them is to preach an ethics that is based upon truth and upon
truth alone. Truth is a correct statement of fact. Truth ac
cordingly is demonstrable by the usual methods of science, and
whenever a statement appears to be incorrect or insufficient every
body has a right to examine it, either for refutation or verification,
and in this sense the book was named " Homilies of Science."
There is a difficulty in writing Homilies of Science. This
difficulty consists mainly in the fact that they must appeal through
thought to the will ; they must convey sentiment without being
sentimental ; they should not employ emotional arguments and
they have to dispense with all the charms of traditional religious
poetry. Moreover they stand in opposition to and have to counter
act a very popular error, viz. , the view that a full knowledge of the
laws of this world would rather dispose a man to become immoral
than to purify and ennoble his soul. The belief is not uncommon
that a moral teacher has either to suppress some of the facts or to
add some fictitious facts. The rules of morality it is often sup
posed, can be justified through pious fraud alone.
If that were so, morality would stand in contradiction to
science and the holiest feelings, the deepest wants, the highest
aspirations of mankind would be mere illusions.
The ' ' Homilies of Science " are not hostile towards the estab
lished religions of traditional growth. They are hostile towards
the dogmatic conception only of these religions. Nor are they

VI HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
hostile towards freethought. Standing upon the principle of avow
ing such truths alone as can be proved by science, they reject that
kind of freethought only which refuses to recognise the authority
of the moral law.
The Religion upheld in these Homilies may be called Natural
Religion to the extent that it takes its stand upon the facts of na
ture, that is, the experiences of life or the data furnished us by the
world in which we live. It may be called the Religion of Science in
so far as the statement of these facts must be done with scientific
exactness and critical circumspection. It may be called the Religion
of Humanity, in so far as it finds its aim in the elevation, progress,
and amelioration of mankind. It may be called Cosmic Religion
in so far as its ethics rests upon the consideration that every indi
vidual is a part of the great whole of All-existence. It may be
called the Religion of Life, for it is concerned with the salvation
of the human soul, so as to make man fit to live and to meet the
duties of life. Or it may be called the Religion of Immortality,
for it teaches us how through obedience to the moral law our lives
can become building-stones in the temple of humanity which will
remain forever as living presences in future generations. It pre
serves the human soul, even though the body die, and gives it life
everlasting. * * *
Many a reader will ask, how did this peculiar combination of
seemingly opposed ideas come about which are on the one hand so
unflinchingly radical and iconoclastic and on the other hand so
tenaciously conservative and religious ? The answer is. They de
veloped naturally ; they are the result of the author's life, and the
product of his experiences..
From my childhood I was devout and pious, my faith was as
confident as that of Simon, whom, for his firmness, Christ called
the rock of his church. On growing up, I decided to devote
myself as a missionary to the service of Christianity. But alas !
inquiring into the foundations of that fortress which I was going

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. VII
to defend, I found the whole of the building undermined. I grew
unbelieving and an enemy to Christianity. Yet in the depth of
my soul I remained thoroughly religious. I aroused myself and
gathered the fragments from the wreck, which my heart had suf
fered. Instinctively I felt that some golden grain must be amongst
the chaff. When my confidence in dogmatic Christianity broke down,
I lamented the loss, but after I had worked my way through to
clearness I saw that the pure gold is so much more valuable than
the ore from which it is gained. I have lost the dross only, the
slags and ashes, but my religious ideals have been purified. My
life was such that I could not help becoming a missionary, but I
became a missionary of that religion which knows of no dogmas,
which can never come in conflict with science, which is based on
simple and demonstrable truth. This religion is not in conflict
with Christianity. Nor is it in conflict with Judaism or Moham
medanism, or Buddhism, or any other religion. For it is the goal
and aim of all religions.
I see now Christianity, and the other religions also, in another
light. The old Christianity had to stand or fall with certain dog
mas. The new Christianity is identical with truth. It is no longer
belief in a dead letter, but faith, a living faith in truth ; and no
scientific progress will ever destroy it.
Every religion has the tendency to drop all sectarianism and
to develop into broad humanitarianism. Every religion will in its
natural growth mature into a cosmical religion.
How many thousand hearts investigate like me ! They have
believed and doubted, they have criticised and condemned. And
how many that winnow the wheat, lose the grain together with
the chaff ! #
* *
I hope that wherever my work is inadequate, and I heartily
wish it were better in every respect, others will come after me to
do it better than I did.
The Author.

" Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good."— St. Paul.
" Free enquiry into truth from all points of view is the sole remedy against
illusions and errocs of any kind." — Herder,
"Let there be no compulsion in religion." — Koran.
" The ink of the sage and the blood of the martyr have the same value in
heaven." — Koran.
" Ein Mensch ohne Wissenschaft ist wie ein Soldat ohne Degen, wie ein
Acker ohne Regen ; er ist wie ein Wagen ohne Rader, wie ein Schreiber ohne
Feder; Gott selbst mag die EselskOpf nicht leiden." — Abraham a. Sancta
Clara. " Science ye shall honor
Far from vainglorious pride.
For God's are those who teach,
And God's are those who aspire.
He who science praises, praises God." — Koran.
" God is an empty tablet upon which nothing is found but what thou hast
written thyself." — M. Luther.
"Despair alone is genuine atheism." — y. Paul Richter.
" God is wherever right is done." — Schiller
" The purpose of true religion should be to impress in the soul the prin_
ciples of morality. I cannot conceive how it has come about that men. espe.
cially the teachers of religion, could deviate so far from that purpose." —
Leibnitz. The world order is the basis of ethics.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS GROWTH.
PAGE.
Is Religion Dead ?  i
To Fulfil Not to Destroy  4
The Vocation  8
Religion Based upon Facts  13
The Religious Problem  18
New Wine in Old Bottles  22
The Revision of a Creed  28
The Religion of Progress  32
PROGRESS AND RELIGIOUS LIFE.
The Test of Progress  36
The Ethics of Evolution  43
Fairy-Tales and Their Importance  48
The Value of Mysticism  52
The Unity of Truth  58
Living the Truth  63
Thanksgiving-Day  68
Christmas  71
GOD AND WORLD.
Revelation  75
God  79
Design in Nature  83
The Conceptions of God  go
Is God a Mind ?  99
Is the Infinite a Religious Idea ?  108
God, Freedom, and Immortality  113
Prometheus and the Fate of Zeus  117

X HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
THE SOUL AND THE LAWS OF SOUL-LIFE.
PAGE.
Enter Into Nirvana  121
The Human Soul  127
The Unity of the Soul  133
Ghosts  '.  137
The Religion of Resignation  143
The Religion of Joy.  148
The Festival of Resurrection  151
DEATH AND IMMORTALITY.
The Conquest of Death  155
The Price of Eternal Youth  158
Religion and Immortality  163
Spiritism and Immortality  166
Immortality and Science  174
Death, Love, Immortality  185
FREETHOUGHT, DOUBT, AND FAITH.
Freethought, its Truth and its Error  189
The Liberal's Folly  195
The Mote and the Beam  200
Superstition in Religion and Science  206
The Question of Agnosticism  213
The Bible and Freethought  221
Faith and Doubt  227
The Heroes of Freethought  250
ETHICS AND PRACTICAL LIFE.
The Hunger After Righteousness  233
Ethics and the Struggle for Life  239
Render Not Evil for Evil  245
Religion and Ethics  252
The Ethics of Literary Discussion  256
Sexual Ethics  260
Monogamy and Free Love  263
Morality and Virtue  269
SOCIETY AND POLITICS.
Aristocratomania  276
Socialism and Anarchism  283
Looking Forward  288
Womon Emancipation  294
Do We Want a Revolution  298
The American Ideal  j0ej

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE

IS RELIGION DEAD?

One of the greatest historians of morals says : Re
ligion has ceased to be the moving oower in our na
tional and in our private life. Interest in theological
discussions is nowhere to be found, not even in the
churches. What do the people care for the religious
issues of former days ? They are quite indifferent
about the interpretation of Bible passages and the
sacraments, which in former centuries caused sangui
nary wars among nations. And a great French phi
losopher announces the advent of an irreligious age,
where creeds will disappear, where no church shall
exist, and religion shall cease to be.
Contemplating the habits and the life of our age, we
are struck by a noticeable change in the general ten
dencies of men. It seems that everything has become
more worldly, more realistic, and more practical. Yes,
more practical ! and I should say there is no harm in
being practical, if the ideal world be not lost in the
realistic aims which we pursue, if our hearts be still
aglow with the sacred fire of holy aspiration for purity,
for honor, and above all, for truth ! Let us be practical,
and let us more and more become so, in applying the
highest ideals to our everyday life and in realizing
them !
The God of old Religion said through the mouth
of one of his prophets : " Lo, I make all things new."
And a psalmist of the western world sings in one of

2 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
his deepest lays : "There is no death — what seems so,
is transition." Nature cannot die, it may undergo
changes, but it will live forever. Nature is life, it is
the fountain of eternal youth.
Learn to understand the signs of the time. If you
see the leaves turn yellow and red and shine in all
colors, know that autumn is at hand. The leaves will
fall to the ground and snow will soon cover the trees
and woodlands and meadows. But when you see buds
on the branches, although they may be few and the
weather may be cold, still, know that spring is at the
door, and will enter soon, filling our homes with flowers,
with joyous life, and with love.
The leaves of dogmatic opinion are falling thickly
to the ground., How dreary looks the landscape, how
bleak the sky ! How cold and frosty, how forlorn are
the folds of the churches ! There is the end of religious
life, you think; the future will be empty irreligiosity —
without faith in the higher purposes of life, without
ideals to warm and fill our hearts, without hope for
anything except the material enjoyments of the present
life. And yet, my friends, observe the signs of the time !
There are buds on the dry branches of religious life
which show that the sap is stirring in the roots of the
tree of humanity. There are signs that the death-
knell of the old creeds forebodes the rise of a new re
ligion. Everyone who knows that nature is immortal can
see and feel it. A new religion is growing in the
hearts of men. The new religion will either develop
from the old creeds which now stand leafless and
without fruit, which seem useless, as if dead, or it
will rise from the very opposition against the old

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 3
creeds, from that opposition which is made not in the
name of frivolous cynicism, but in the name of honesty
and truth. The beautiful will not be destroyed to
gether with the fantastic, nor the higher aspirations
in life with supernatural errors. Though all the creeds
may crumble away, the living faith in ideals will last
forever. That which is good and true and pure, will
remain — for that is eternal.
The new religion which I see arising and which
I know will spring forth as spontaneously and power
fully as the verdure of spring, will be the religion of
humanity. It will be the embodiment of all that is
sacred and pure and elevating. It will be realistic, for
it loves truth. It will promote righteousness, for it
demands justice. It will ennoble human life, for it
represents harmony and beauty.
The new religion that will replace the old creeds
will be an ethical religion. And truly all the vital
questions of the day are at bottom religious, all are
ethical. They cannot be solved unless we dig down
to their roots, which are buried in the deepest depths
of our hearts — in the realm of religious aspirations.
Life would not be worth living if it were limited
merely to the satisfaction of our physical wants; if it
were bare of all higher aspirations, if we could not
fill our soul with a divine enthusiasm for objects that
are greater than our individual existence. We must
be able to look beyond the narrowness of our personal
affairs. Our hopes and interests must be broader than
life's short span ; they must not be kept within the
bounds of egotism, or we shall never feel the thrill
of a higher life. For what is religion but the growth
into the realm of a higher life ? And what would the
physical life be without religion?

TO FULFIL NOT TO DESTROY.

The greatest religious revolution which the world
has ever seen was that of Christianity. From the
standpoint of an impartial umpire, it must be con
fessed that the triumph of the Christian Faith has
been the grandest in history. The founder of Chris
tianity, who died on the cross as an outlawed criminal,
led the van of a new civilization. In his name kings
and emperors reverently bowed and yielded to the de
mands of humaner ideals ; while the greatest philoso
phers, the princes of thought, brooded over his ethical
doctrines. How can we explain the unparalleled success of
Christianity ? It is due, undoubtedly, to the sublimity
of Christ's ethics, to the gentleness and nobility of his
person, to the kindness of his heart, to the wealth of
his spiritual treasures, and to the poverty of his ap
pearance. But that is not all. Every business man
knows that for success, not only ability is required, not
only the solidity of one's goods, but the merchandise
offered must also be in demand.
No movement in history can be successful unless
it is based upon a solid ethical basis, having in view
the elevation and amelioration, not of a single class or
nation, but of the human kind. Yet this is not all.
A revolution must be needed; it must stand in de
mand. No revolution will endure unless the ethical

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 5
idea by which it is animated lies deeply rooted in the
past. A successful revolution must be the result of evolu
tion ; and a successful revolutionist must combine two
rare qualities, an unflinching radicalism and a strong
conservativism. The ideal of a successful movement
must open new and grand vistas for progress, but at
the same time it must be the fulfillment of a hope,
the realization of a prophecy. Thus it will shed its
light on the ages past, which will now be understood
as preliminary and preparatory endeavors to effect and
to realize this ideal.
We stand on the eve of another great religious
revolution. Humanity has outgrown the old dogma
tism of the churches, and a new faith is bursting forth
in the hearts of men, which promises to be broader
and humaner than the narrow bigotry of old creeds.
It promises to accord with science, for it is the very
outcome of science ! It will teach men a new ethics
— an ethics not founded on the authority of a power
foreign to humanity, but upon nature, upon the basis
from which humanity grew ; it will rest upon a more
correct understanding of man and man's natural ten
dency to progress and to raise himself to a higher
plane of work, and to a nobler activity.
Science, has undermined our religious belief, and
beneath its critical investigations dogmas crumble
away. But whatever science may undermine of ec
clesiastical creeds, it does not, and will not, prove
subversive of the moral commandments of religion.
Science will, after all, only purify the religious ideals
of mankind, and will show them in their moral im
portance. The most radical criticism of science will

6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
always remain in concord with the reverent regard for
the moral ideal.
We believe in progress, and trust that man lives
not in vain, that man's labor, if rightly done, will fur
ther the cause of humanity and make the world better
— be it ever so little better — than it was. We aspire
to a nobler future — and let me point out one import
ant subject which is too often overlooked, and which
is indispensable to success. The success of ideals is
impossible without a due respect for the ideas which
are to be displaced. The triumph of a better future
depends upon a due reverence for the merits of the
past, or, in other words, we must know that the new
view is the outcome of the old view. The ethical re
ligion of the future springs from the seed of past
ecclesiastical religions. And if the latter appear to
us as superstitious notions of a crude and strangely
materialistic imagination, they nevertheless contain
the germs of purer and more spiritual conceptions.
And there is no doubt that the founder of Christianity
is more in accord with the new rising movement than
with the doctrines of his followers, who worship his
name, but neglect the truth and spirit of his teachings.
When Christ preached the sermon on the mount,
which contains, so to say, the programme of his doc
trines, he expressly stated : " Think not that I am
come to destroy the law or the prophets ; I am not
come to destroy, but to fulfil." This sentence con
tains the clue to his grand success. Christ was a con
servative revolutionist. The new movement which he
introduced in the history of mankind, was the result
of the past ; the New Testament was the fulfillment
of the Old. And so every successful movement has
been, not a mere destruction of old errors, not the in-

HOMILIES OP SCIENCE. 7
troduction of some absolutely new idea, but the ful
fillment of the past, and the realization of long cher
ished aspirations and hopes.
Let us learn a lesson from Christ, and like him, let
us " not come to destroy, but to fulfil."

THE VOCATION.

When I was a youth a voice came unto me and
said: "Preach!" And I answered: "What shall I
preach? Lo, I am young and have not sufficient
knowledge." "Go into the world," I was told, "and
preach the truth."
That voice came from my parents and grandpar
ents, from my teachers and instructors ; and it found
a ready response in my soul. To be a preacher of
Truth, what a great calling ! Is there any profession
more glorious, is there any work more celestial and
divine? I will go and preach the truth, I avowed;
and in the secretness of- my heart I swore allegiance
to the Banner of Truth. I vowed to seek for Truth,
to find it, to confess it, to go into the wide world and
to preach it, yea, to give not only all my labor and
efforts, but, if it were necessary, even my life, my
blood, myself, and all that I was, for truth.
That was a holy hour in which I devoted myself to
the cause of truth, and yet it was a rash decision, a
preposterous act. It was an act that I had to regret
in many dreary hours when I desperately pondered
upon the problems of truth, when I had hopelessly
lost myself in the labyrinths of life, and when I de
spaired of Truth's very existence.
When I was young, Truth seemed so simple to me.
What is Truth? I asked, and the teaching of my child-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 9
hood always echoed forth the ready answer : Truth is
the gospel, and doubt in Truth is the root of all evil.
I knew the gospel by heart, and I studied eagerly,
that I might be a worthy minister of the word of God.
But the more I studied the more that sinful tendency
to doubt grew, first secretly, then openly, first sup
pressed, then frankly acknowledged, until doubt ceased
to be doubt ; it became an established conviction. A cry
of despair wrung itself from my heart : "The gospel
is not truth ; it is error ! It is a falsity to preach it, and
he who preaches it, preaches a lie !"
A pang of discord vibrated through my bosom and
tore my whole being into two irreconcilable parts.
Could I step to the altar in this condition and swear
to preach the gospel ? Never ! I had believed that
the gospel was but another name for truth and I now
saw that whatever truth might be, the gospel certainly
could not be truth.
Is there truth at all ? No ! I thought ; there is no
truth ! There are opinions only, and one opinion is as
good as another. Man likes to look upon the world
as a cosmos — but there is no cosmic order, there is no
higher law, there is no justice and no truth in the
world, there is disorder everywhere, the universe is a
chaos of forces, natural laws are indifferent to good
or evil, and the lie rules supreme in society, sham
gains the victory over truth, cunning and selfishness
triumph over virtue and love.
Oh ! these were dreary hours when I had lost the
ideals of my childhood. I had cast my anchor into
the ground of religious belief and had suffered a ship
wreck, in which I expected to perish.
There was a time when I did not know which I hated
more, Science that had taken away the comfort of

lo HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
my religious faith, or Religion that had promised all
to me and had proved false. Religion could not justify
itself as Truth before the court of scientific research.
I abandoned religion and followed science.
Years passed away amid earnest labors, and science
reluctantly opened to me her treasures. She made me
see the wonders of life. Life appeared different to
me. The universe of science is another world than
that which I imagined to see around me in the chaotic
turmoil of the struggle for existence. I perceived in
visible threads that connected distant events. I rec
ognized that while the laws of nature might work
blindly, yet they produced order. The more my views
expanded, the clearer I saw that the chaotic attaches
to the single, to the isolated only, not to the whole,
not to the greater system, and the All itself is identical
with order. The All is a cosmos truly.
Opinions clash with opinions in the empire of sci
ence ; and the knowledge that we possess is almost
always an approximate statement only of the truth.
Nevertheless, there is truth and there is error. One
opinion is by no means equivalent to every other opin
ion ; there are wrong opinions and correct opinions,
there is Truth in this world and Truth is a power. She
reveals her sacred face only to him who earnestly strug
gles for truth. Truth may seem awful at first, but fear
her not; trust her, have confidence in her, even as
does a child in its mother. Give up your prejudices
and your misconceptions even if they are holy to you,
even if they seem to constitute the very life-blood of
your spiritual being.
In the meantime I had given up every intention to
preach the gospel and found satisfaction in the retired
hermitage of the study, where I became an adept of

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. ii
truth in quite another sense than I had intended in
the preposterous ambition of my youth. I was not a
teacher, not a preacher of truth, but her pupil, not a
master but a disciple who plodded modestly and
patiently. How often, O how often, was a grain of
truth dearly bought through the toil of many, many
hours — and yet never too dearly !
In former years I had answered the question What
is truth, with the words : "Truth is the gospel." Now
I learned to reverse the statement. I had met so much
misery and woe in the world and in looking around for
salvation, I said : If there is any gospel, it must be
truth — and truth must be found by patient labor, by
scientific, honest research and by severe exactness.
What a folly in man to imagine that truth should drop
down from heaven as a revelation. Truth must be con
quered by our own efforts. Truth would not be truth
if it were acquired in some other way.
Years passed away and, again a voice come unto me
and spoke: "Preach! Preach the truth. " I answered
and said: "How can I preach? Am I not a mere
disciple who has no hope ever to become a master ? I
am no preacher and no one has appointed me to speak
in the name of truth. When I was a youth I felt the
strength to preach, and lo, I had it not. I had almost
stepped to the altar and had almost made a vow which
I now know I should have had to break. Let me
study truth, let me devote my labor to science, but
send another man worthier than I. Besides, I am not
eloquent : but I am slow of speech and of a slow
tongue. I know not how to speak as a preacher to
the congregation.
But that voice came again: "Preach the truth."
He who is called to proclaim, the religion of mankind

12 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
will not be bound by any oath to adhere to this or to
that confession of faith. He is pledged to be faithful
to truth only. If you have the conviction that truth —
mere truth and nothing but the truth — will be the
gospel of mankind, that the salvation from error can
come from it alone, that science, whose fruit seemed
so bitter at first, contains the germs of a higher re
ligion, step forward upon this platform and preach
that new faith which is greater than the old faith, be
cause it is truer.
I feel as if a preacher that has not joined any of
the many churches, must be a voice crying in the
wilderness. But that should be no reason to decline
the calling. Therefore I shall accept the call upon
that platform. One thing alone shall be sacred to the
preacher of the religion of humanity, and that is truth.
There shall be no oath of allegiance to any dogma, no
pledge to any creed. I accept the calling, yet I do
it with hesitation, because I am aware of its difficul
ties. And at the same time I accept it in gladness, be
cause I know that the new religion which grows out
of science — out of the rock upon which the old creeds
were shipwrecked — will not come to destroy. The
new religion will come to fulfill the old faith.

RELIGION BASED UPON FACTS,

A well known clergyman, famous for his indefatig
able energy, atid the comprehensiveness of his practi
cal activity, who believed in a supernatural world of
purely spiritual existence, and a scientist with material
istic tendencies who looked upon all religious aspira
tions as mere illusions, once had a discussion about
facts. The scientist declared that science alone dealt
with facts, the clergy did not see the real world, but
dealt with things that were unreal. The clergyman
answered rather sharply in about this way: "You
scientists imagine that you have a monopoly of facts.
You should know that I have to deal with facts just as
much as you do. I have stood at the bed- side of the
sick and dying, and my experiences concerning that
which comforts them in the hour of death and tribula
tion are based upon observations of facts. Practical
theology is in no less a degree based upon facts than
the science of physical or chemical phenomena."
The clergyman was right in so far as the duties of
his calling arose from the facts of life. A pastor should
be the adviser, the fatherly friend, and comforter of
his congregation in all the situations of life. Individ
uals are not isolated beings. Many of their actions,
and indeed their whole demeanor, are of great concern
to the community, and the community protects itself
against vicious individuals by law. The duty of the

1 4 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
clergy is to impress upon their congregations the moral
spirit of goodwill towards all mankind, to teach them
to regulate their conduct so that in the hour of death
no remorse will flit over their minds, — to teach them
that when they lie dd*wn to eternal rest, their deeds,
their love, their sympathy, and their thoughts will live
on and bear witness to their having fought a noble
battle in life. The more thoroughly the clergyman
does his duty in a spirit of religious truth and moral
aspiration, the less will we want the work of the state's-
attorney and the judge.
It is to be hoped that our churches will imbibe
more and more the positive spirit of the age, and so
found their duties upon the facts of life. Whether they
believe in a supernatural world of purely spiritual
existence is, or should be, of secondary importance.
Our churches, however, have so much mixed up the
real and objective facts of life with their antiquated
interpretations of these facts, that they believe the
fictitious world of supernaturalism as described in their
dogmas, to be a reality.
It is a fact that people need solace in the hour of
death, it is a fact that matrimony is a holy ordinance,
in which not only the couple that is united for life
until death do them part, but the whole community is
greatly concerned. It is a fact that the birth of a child
imposes duties upon the parents; the child is not their
property ; it is entrusted to their care, and they have to
rear it for the best of humanity. Godfathers or god
mothers promise to take the place of parents, if death
should call the latter away too early to fulfill their
duties upon the child. From the naming of a child
upon its entrance into the world, unto the burial of the
dead, when we pay the last honors to our beloved

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 15
ones, man's life is permeated with duties that point
higher than the fulfillment of egotistic desires. Ego
tism finds its end in death ; man's duties teach him
to think beyond his own death. And it is the per
formance of these duties that is the substance of all
religious commands.
Some imagine that science is limited to the lower
sorts of natural facts only. Religious and moral facts
have been too little heeded by our scientists. Thus
people came to think that science and religion move in
two different spheres. That is not so. The facts of
our soul-life must be investigated and stated with
scientific accuracy, and our clergy should be taught to
purify religion with the criticism of scientific methods.
They need not fear for their religious ideals. So far
as they are true, and their moral kernel is true, they
will not suffer in the crucible of science. Religion will
not lose one iota of its grandeur, if it is based upon a
scientific foundation ; all that it will lose is the errors
that are connected with religion ; and the sooner they
are lost the better for us.
One of my orthodox friends maintains that Chris
tianity, that is to say orthodox Christianity, is based
upon facts, and these facts, he says, are historical facts :
they are the life and teachings, the suffering and the
death, and above all the resurrection, of Jesus Christ.
If Christianity is based solely upon historical facts,
it stands and falls with their truth. If Christian morals
depend upon the occurrence of a few events that are
supposed to have happened once and will never happen
again, their fate is very problematic indeed.
The question is well worth a closer consideration.
Natural processes around us show a certain regu
larity combined with a certain irregularity. Every

l6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
phenomenon that takes place has its individual fea
tures, and no one thing is exactly like another. A vis
itor from the city may imagine that every sheep in a
herd of one breeding looks like the other ; yet the
shepherd knows them all individually, and can distin
guish them apart. Grains of corn may appear to. us
all alike, yet they are not ; every one has its own idio
syncrasy. But in spite of all difference, there is a uni
versality of law in all things and in all natural phe
nomena. A closer acquaintance with the nature of the
differences teaches that they result, and can only re
sult, from a difference of condition. Yet it is the same
law that governs all. Thus we arrive at the conclu
sion, that isolated facts cannot exist which stand in
contradiction to the laws of all other facts. And it is
a rule that science derives its laws — the so-called nat
ural laws — from such facts alone as repeat themselves
again and again, from such as can be verified by ex
periment, from such as are accessible to the observa
tion of every one who takes the trouble to investigate.
It need scarcely be added that the same rule holds
good for positive philosophy. Single and isolated ob
servations cannot give a solid basis for a conception
of the world. The facts upon which a view of the uni
verse rests must be ascertainable by every one who
cares to be positive about their being as they are rep
resented to be and not otherwise.
The rule is unequivocally acknowledged in science.
It is accepted — by some with a certain reserve — in
philosophy. Yet it is recognized in religion only by
few. Although if it be true in science it must be true
in religion also.
What is religion but a conception of the world, in
accordance with which we regulate our conduct ? If

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 17
religion is based upon verifiable facts, it stands upon
a rock. If it is based upon an assertion of facts that
happened once and will never happen again, it is built
upon sand; and when 'the rain descends, and the
floods come, and the wind blows, and beat upon it,'
the structure will fall.
Chr.st's doctrine in so far as it is the religion of
leve, stands upon the moral facts of human soul-life.
The ethical truth of Christianity rests on solid ground.
Christian dogmatism, however, stands or falls with the
history of Christ's life, his death, and resurrection.
Had not orthodox Christianity been supported by the
great truth of Christ's religion of love, it long ago
would have disappeared ; for Christianity as an histor
ical religion is indeed extremely weak. What must a
religious truth be that has to depend upon the verifica
tion of a few historical facts ? And these historical
facts are in themselves improbable, nay, impossible ;
they stand in contradiction to all the facts verified by
science, and whether they are true or not, have not
the least bearing upon the moral conduct of man.
Whether Christ healed a few lepers or not, whether
he abstained from all food for forty days or not, whether
he has bodily risen from the dead or not, the 'ought '
of Ethics remains the same. If Christianity means
the dogmatism of the Church, it is an historical re
ligion which will disappear in the course of time ; if it
means the doctrine of Christ, the fulfillment of the law
through love, it will be the religion of mankind.

THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM.

The political, religious, and intellectual growth of
humanity constantly produces changes in the condi
tions of society, and in times of rapid progress these
changes may become so great as to demand the read
justment of our institutions of government, the refor
mation of church and school, and the reconstructior
of our fundamental conceptions of the world and life.
When the necessity, therefore, for readjustment and
reformation becomes keenly felt, problems arise.
Thus we speak of the social problem, the educa
tional problem, the religious problem, and many
others. The religious problem results from the rapid ad
vances made by science. Our religious conceptions,
it is now generally acknowledged, can possess value
only if they are recognized in their moral importance.
Their dogmatic features are coming more and more to
be considered as accessory elements, which can, and
indeed often do, become injurious to the properly re
ligious spirit.
The moral rules which we accept as our maxims
of conduct in life, must have some basis to rest upon.
We demand to know why and to what end the single
individual has to obey certain commands, to observe
which may sometimes cost great self-sacrifice. The
old orthodox systems of religion cannot answer this

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 19
question at the present day with the authority which
the blind and unasking faith of their adherents for
merly attributed to their utterances; and we are there
fore brought to the task of remodeling our religious
conceptions, in order to make them harmonize with
the present altered situation.
The religious problem has been solved differently
by men of different stamp. The orthodox theologian,
of course, denies the existence of a religious problem.
Being stationary he has not progressed with his time ;
he knows nothing of evolution, and looks upon the
advances of science as steps towards depravation.
He would solve the problem by checking all further
progress, and would keep humanity down to the level
of his own littleness.
The iconoclast, on the other hand, solves the prob
lem by extirpating religion altogether. Like Dr.
Ironbeard, in the German legend, he frees his patient
from pain by a plentiful dose of opium, that lulls him
to eternal rest. It is a radical cure. Kill the patient
and he will cease to complain.
The religious problem of to-day does not mean
that we doubt the ten commandments. We do not
object to the behests: "Thou shalt not steal,"
"Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbor. " Nor do we object to
the Christian ideals of Faith, Hope, and Charity ; we
do not oppose the rule, " Love thy neighbor as thy
self." The religious problem means that we have
ceased to believe the dogmas of the church. We
have ceased to look upon God as a person who made
the world out of nothing, and governs it at his pleas
ure. We have ceased to believe in miracles ; we
have ceased to believe in the supernatural and in the

20 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
fairyland which, according to the dreams of former
ages, existed in heaven beyond the skies.
So many illusions fell to the ground when the light
of science was thrown upon them ; but the moral
command, " Love thy neighbor as thyself, " did not.
Science has destroyed the mythology of religion, but
it has left its moral faith intact ; indeed, it has jus
tified it ; it proves its truth, and places it upon a solid
basis, showing it in its simple and yet majestic
grandeur. Science teaches that harmony prevails everywhere,
although to our blunted senses it often may be diffi
cult to discover it. Science teaches that truth is one
and the same. One truth cannot contradict another
truth, and when it seems so it is because we have not
found, but will find, the common law that embraces these
different aspects of truth which to a superficial in
spection appear as contradictory. Science further
teaches that the individual is a part of the whole.
The individual must conform to the laws of the All,
not only to live at all, but also to live well — to live a
life that is worth living.
The properly religious truths are not the dogmatic
creeds, but the moral commands ; and it is their scien
tific and philosophical justification which is demanded
by the religious problem of the present age. The so
lution of the religious problem must give us a clear
and popular conception of the world, based upon the
broadest and most indubitable facts of science so ar
ranged that every one can understand the necessity of
conforming to those laws which have built human so
ciety, and make it possible for us to live as human be
ings a noble and worthy life. The solution of the
religious problem will most likely do away with many

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 21
sectarian ceremonies and customs, it will enable us to
dispense with certain narrow views and antiquated
rites, which many, up to this hour, look upon as the
essentials of religion. But it will not do away with the
moral law; for we know that that will never pass
away. It is the moral law which Christ and the
Apostles again and again declare contains the essence
of all their injunctions : for the whole law is fulfilled
in one word, even in this, "Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself," and "This is the love of God
that we keep his commandments, and his command
ments are not grievous."

NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES.

Christ said : "No man seweth a piece of new cloth
on an old garment : else the new piece that filleth it
up taketh away from the old and the rent is made
worse. And no man putteth new wine into old bot
tles, else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the
wine is spilled and the bottles will be marred ; but
new wine must be put into new bottles."
What Christ's meaning was when he spoke these
words we can hardly guess, for the context in Mat
thew (ix, 16, 17) as well as in Mark (ii, 21, 22) appears
to be corrupted. Christ, as reported in these pas
sages, said these words in answer to the question :
"Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy dis
ciples fast not?" This part of Christ's answer does
not fit to the question. But, whatever Christ meant,
it is certain that, if these allegories mean the renewal
of old ideas, the rejuvenescence of a dying faith, he
himself did pour new wine into old bottles. He did
not reject the truths of the Old Testament, but he
adopted them, he perfected them, he brought out
their moral purport, and showed the spirit of their
meaning. If the simile is to be interpreted in this
sense, evolution is a perpetual repetition of putting
new wine into old bottles.
What is the progress of science but a constant re
modeling of our scientific conceptions and terms and
formulas ? What is the progress of national and so-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 23
cial life but a constant alteration and improvement of
old institutions and laws ?
What enormous changes has our conception of
God passed through ! How great they are is scarcely
apparent to us now, at least our orthodox brethren
are not much aware of it. It is known to the historian ;
and we can give an idea of these changes by pointing to
the fact that the idea of evil passed through the same
phases. The crude anthropomorphism displayed in
the history of the idea of the devil is fresher in our
minds, and is better preserved in legends.
How often have the orthodox on the one hand,
and infidels on the other, declared that if the word
God means anything, it means and can mean only
some one thing. How often did the former conclude
from such a premise that everyone who did not hold
their opinion was an atheist, and the latter maintain
that this -conception being wrong, there was no God at
all. How often was the conception of God changed,
and how often had the dogmatic believer to shift his
position. There is a point of strange agreement between the
old orthodox believers and their infidel antagonists.
Believers, as a rule, declare that religion means noth
ing, unless it means the worship of a supernatural
divine personality ; and atheists, accepting the latter
definition of religion, conclude that religion, there
fore, should be rejected as a superstition.
This agreement between believers and infidels is
at first startling. In my childhood I sided with the
former, in my youth with the latter ; but, when I be
came a man, I freed myself from the narrowness of
both. I now know that some errors they have in
common.

24 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Opponents have always something in common,
else they could not be antagonistic to one another.
Thus the orthodox believer and the infidel disbeliever
stand upon the same ground, and this ground is their
common error. The infidel speaker on the platform,
appears to me, in principle as well as in method, like
an inverted orthodox clergyman. He agrees with his
adversaries in the principle — and he always falls back
upon the dogmatic assertion — that there is no one who
can know : no one who can solve the religious prob
lem, no one who can prove or disprove whether there
is a God and an immortality of the soul or not. But
the infidel inverts the argument of the orthodox be
liever. While the latter argues, "I must believe, be
cause I cannot know, I must have faith, because it is
beyond the ken of human reason ; " the infidel con
cludes, "because I cannot know, I must not believe ,
and I must reject any solution of the problem's of God
and the soul because the subject is beyond the ken of
human reason."
Weighing the pros and the cons of the question, I
became convinced that both parties were one-sided,
that, misguided by a narrow definition, both had be
come so ossified as to allow of no evolution to a higher
standpoint. Therefore, I discarded all scruples about
using the words Religion, God, and Soul in a new
sense, which would be in conformity with science. It
was, perhaps, a new path that I was traveling, and
there are few that find it, but it is, nevertheless, I am
fully convinced, the only true way that leadeth unto life.
The adherents of the new religious conception are
in the minority ; and there are the theists on the one
side, and the agnostics on the other, both uniting their
objection to a widening of ideas that have become too

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 25
narrow for us now, both declaring that old definitions
should not be used in a new sense.
Strange! is it not? It seems so, but it is not.
The agreement between believers and unbelievers is
easily explainable from the law of inertia. The law
of inertia holds good in the empire of thought just as
much as in the empire of matter.
When Lavoisier discovered that fire was a process
of oxidation, he met with much opposition among
his co-workers. It was plainly told him that fire, if it
meant anything, meant a certain substance, scientifi
cally called "phlogiston," the qualities of which could
be perceived by our senses. And this phlogiston, it
was maintained, possessed, among other properties,
the strange property of a negative weight, and the
argument seemed so evident, since all flames tend
upwards. If fire meant a mere mode of motion,
would not that be equivalent of denying the real
existence of fire altogether ?
We now all know that the definition and the mean
ing of the words fire and heat have changed. Neither
have the words been discarded, nor have we ceased to
believe in the real existence of fire, since we have
given up our wrong notion of the materiality of fire.
On the contrary, we now know better what fire is, and
in what consists the reality of a flame.
Concerning religion let us follow the example of
Christ, and break the fetters that antiquated definitions
impose upon us. Not the letter giveth life, but the
spirit ; and let us preserve the spirit of religious truth,
if need be, at the sacrifice of the letter, in which the
spirit is threatened to be choked.
Christ's words about the new cloth, and the new,
wine, it seems to me, meant that certain religious

26 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
institutions, that ceremonies and forms will wear
out like old garments, and like old bottles. Anti
quated institutions, which have lost their sense, should
not be preserved. For instance, the sacrifices of
lambs and goats, which were offered by the Jews, as
well as by the Greeks and the Romans, were aban
doned in Christianity : they had lost their meaning,
and Christ's religion would have been an old garment
with a new piece of cloth on it, if the old cult had
been preserved. Indeed, even the Jews are so much
imbued with the new spirit that they have given up
their sacrifices forever.
It will be the same with the new religion that is
now dawning upon mankind. Some of the old cere
monies have lost their meaning, they will have to be
dropped. But the whole purport of religion, the
ideal of religion and its mission will not be gone.
Man will always want a guide in life, a moral teacher
and instructor. Man must not allow himself to drift
about on the ocean of life, he must have something to
regulate his conduct. Who shall do that? Shall man
follow his natural impulse to get as much pleasure out
of his life as he can ? Shall he follow science ? Or
shall he follow religion ?
Man might follow science, if every man could be
come a scientist ; and in some sense, this is possible.
We can not, all of us, become specialists in the different
sciences, but we can, all of us, to some extent become
specialists in ethics. What is religion but a popularized
system of ethics ? And this religion of ethics will be
the religion of the future. All of us who aspire after
progress, work for the realization of this religion.
Let the religion of the future be a religion of science,
let religion not be in conflict with science, but let the

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 27
science of moral conduct be so popularized that the
simplest mind can obey its behests, not only because
he knows that disobedience will ruin him, but also be
cause he has learned to appreciate the moral com
mands, so as to love them, and follow them because
he loves them.

THE REVISION OF A CREED.

We have at present the strange spectacle that in
one of our churches the proposition is discussed to
change some grave particulars of creed. The old
doctrines have become "unpreachable," as it is ex
pressed, either because the ministers no longer be
lieve them, or because people are loath to listen to
ideas which now appear as monstrosities and absur
dities. We naturally hail the progress of a church and its
development into broader views of religious truth.
Yet at the same time we feel the littleness of the ad
vance. What is the progress of a few steps, if a man
has to travel hundreds of miles ! Moreover, what is
any progress, if it is done under the pressure of cir
cumstances only and not from a desire to advance and
keep abreast with the true spirit of the times ! The
change of a creed should not be forced upon a
church from without by the progress of unchurched
thinkers, but it should result from the growth and ex
panse of its own life. The church, as the moral in
structor of mankind, should not be dragged along be
hind the triumphant march of humanity, but should
deploy in front with the vanguard of science !
The eternal damnation of noble-minded heathen
and of the tender-souled infants who happen to die
unbaptized, was sternly believed in by the ancestors

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

29

of our Presbyterian friends. They declared, without
giving any reasonable argument for their opinion, that
this is part of the divine order of things, and whoso
ever does not believe it, will be damned for all eternity,
together with the wise Socrates and the virtuous Con
fucius. Who made Calvin the councillor of divine provi
dence and who gave him the right of electing or reject
ing the souls of men ? On what ground could his
narrow view, excusable in his time, be incorporated
into the creed of a church ? The argument on which
Calvin's view rests, was very weak, but the founders
of the Presbyterian Church being convinced of its
truth, thought to strengthen it by incorporating the
doctrine into their Confession. An idea, once sanctified
by tradition, has a tenacious life. Reverence for the
founders of a church will keep their errors sacred
and will not allow an impartial investigation of their
opinions. Reverence is a good thing ; but all reverence toward
men, be they ever so venerable, must be controlled by
the reverence for truth. And this is the worst part of
the change of the Confession. The change, it appears,
is not made because the objectionable doctrines are
recognized as errors ; but simply because they are at
the present time too repulsive for popular acceptance.
Why are the doctrines of eternal punishment not
openly and confessedly branded as errors? Why can
it not be acknowledged that tenets which our fathers
considered as truths of divine revelation, were after all
their personal and private opinions only ?
We ask why, but receive no explanation. Yet
there is a reason that lurks behind ; although it seems
as if the men who are most concerned were not con-

3o HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
scious of it. If the error were acknowledged, a prin
ciple would be pronounced which opens the door to a
greater and more comprehensive reform. And such
a reform is not wanted. The clergy seem to be
afraid of it. If the error is conceded, it means the
denial of the infallibility of the Confession. The dog
mas of the church cease to be absolute verities ; and
truth is recognized above the creed of the church, as
the highest court of appeal — truth, ascertainable by
philosophical enquiry and scientific research.
This would be equivalent to the abolition of all
dogmas and wonld mean the enthronement of a princi
ple to fill their place. This principle, if we look at it
closely, is nothing new ; it is an old acquaintance of
ours ; it is the same principle on which science stands.
And the recognition of this principle would be the
conciliation between science and religion once for all.
Brethren, do not shut your eyes in broad daylight,
but look freely about and follow the example of the
great founder of Christianity. Worship God not in
vain repetitions, not in pagan adoration, as if God were
a man like ourselves. Worship God in spirit and in
truth. Acknowledge the superiority of truth above
your creed, and be not ashamed of widening the pale
of your churches.
If you acknowledge the supremacy of truth and
make your changes in the Confession because truth
compels you to make them, your progress will be that
of a man who walketh upright and straight. But if
you do not acknowledge the superiority of truth above
your creed, if you identify truth with your creed, your
progress will be the advance of a soldier loitering in
(he rear of his army, who is afraid of being left be
hind. You will unwillingly have to yield to the ne-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 31
cessity of a change ; and you will have to do it again
and again, and always without dignity.
Is it dignified to alter a religious creed because it
appears as a relic of barbarism, because it has become
odious to the people, and because it no longer suits
their tastes ? Your Confession should be allegiance
to truth. Will you degrade it to be the unstable ex
pression of the average opinion of your members ?
There is but one way to free yourselves from all
these difficulties. Recognize no dogma as absolute
and reverence no confession as infallible ; but let truth,
ascertainable truth, be the supreme judge of all doc
trines and of all traditions.
Your bible, your hymn book, your catechism, the
history of your church, and the reminiscences of your
venerable leaders shall remain respected among your
self and children, but let them not be overrated in
their authority. Truth reigns above them all, and
the holiness of truth is the foundation of all true re
ligion. When Luther stood before the emperor and the
representatives of church and state, he begged to be
refuted, and if he were refuted, he promised to keep
silence ; but as he was not, he continued to preach
and he preached boldly in the name of truth as one
that had authority. Therefore let religious progress
be made as in the era of the Reformation, not in com
plaisance to popular opinion, but squarely in - the
name of truth.

THE RELIGION OF PROGRESS.

Vladimir Solovieff, a Russian thinker of uncom
mon depth calls attention to the fact that the central
idea of Christianity must be sought in the glad tidings
of the kingdom of God. He says:* "To either the
direct or indirect elucidation of this idea are devoted
almost all the sermons and parables of Christ, his eso
teric conversations with the disciples, and finally the
prayer to God the Father. From the connection of
the texts relating thereto, it is clear, that the evangel
ical idea of the kingdom is not derived from the con
cept of divine rule, existing above all things, and at
tributed to God, conceived as almighty. The king
dom proclaimed by Christ is a thing, advancing, ap
proaching, arriving. Moreover it possesses different
sides of its own. It is within us, and likewise reveals
itself without ; it keeps growing within humanity and
the whole world by means of a certain objective, or
ganic process, and it is taken hold of by a spontane
ous effort of our own will."
This conception of Christianity is strikingly correct.
Taking the gospels of the New Testament as our source
?"Christianity: Its Spirit and its Errors." The Open Court, Vol. V, No.
206, p. 2900. Translated from the Russian Quarterly Vofrosm Filosofii i Psi-
qhologii by Albert Gunlogsen,

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 33
of information, we find none of the Church dogmas
proclaimed, but we hear again and again that the king
dom of God is near at hand, and that the kingdom of
God cometh not with observation, i. e. with ceremo
nies or rites. It is not an institution as are syna
gogues and churches. It exists in the hearts of men.
We must create it, we must make it grow within us,
Our own efforts are needed to let it come. Says Christ :
" From the days of John the Baptist until now the
kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent
take it by force."
Is this not a strange conception of the kingdom of
God? Indeed it is, if we preserve the orthodox God-
idea of a personal world- monarch. But it is not a
strange conception of the kingdom of God, if we un
derstand by God the divinity of the universe and the
potentiality of spiritual life which has produced us and
leads us onward still on the path of progress to ever
greater truths and sublimer heights.
What is the meaning of the kingdom of God if we
state it in purely scientific terms without using the
symbolism of allegorical expressions? God means
that reality about us and within us in which we live
and move and have our being, and the kingdom of God
which has to come, which grows within us, is our
knowledge of God, it is our cognition of reality, it is
the evolution of truth. What is truth but a correct
conception of reality and what is all religion but our
agreement with truth in thought as well as in action ?
When asked by Pilate whether he was a king
Christ said : "Thou sayest that I am a king. To this
end I was born, and to thi* cause I came into the
world that I should bear witness unto the truth. Ev
eryone that is of the truth, heareth my voice."

34 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Christ considered himself as a king of truth. " My
kingdom," he said, "is not of this world," meaning
thereby the world in which the ambition of Pilate was
centered. Christ did not intend to exercise political
power and the accusations of his enemies as well as
the hopes of his followers that he would create a
worldly kingdom were unfounded. His kingdom was
a spiritual kingdom — the kingdom of truth. Truth
however is not something that exists somewhere as
objects exist in material reality, truth is the correct
ness, the validity, the adequateness of our concep
tions of reality; and truth does not come to us, we
must produce it, we must work it out through our own
efforts, we must build it up in our own souls. The
more we have acquired of truth, the more we shall
partake of the kingdom of God. For Truth is the
kingdom of God and the kingdom of God is Truth.
Every other conception of the kingdom of God is pure
mythology. Christianity being the gospel of the kingdom of
God, it became the religion of progress. Its aim is
the growth of truth within us, and all our efforts are
needed to develop truth. Thus a spiritual realm of
truth and of obedience to truth, i. e. morality was
created ; and this spirit of progress remained the liv
ing spirit of Christianity in spite of all the vagaries of
the Christian churches.
Dogmatic Christianity is dead. Yet it still exists
as a dead weight. Dogmatism is barren like the thorns
and thistles in the parable, and it is choking the spirit
of the Christian religion, but this spirit will not die,
it will spring up again a,rid lead mankind upward and
onward to higher and grander goals.
The test of progress is ever increasing truth, i. e.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 35
an ever more comprehensive conception of the world
we live in ; yet the test of religion is progress.
He alone is Christ the Messiah, the saviour who
leads us onward on the path of progress, and he only
is a discijale of Christ who courageously follows on the
path of progress. Those who attempt to make man
kind stationary, who try to lock up the stream of life,
and prevent the soul from growing and expanding,
from increasing in the knowledge of the truth and thus
developing the kingdom of God, are false prophets
who come to us in sheep's clothes. They preach the
letter of the gospel but suppress its spirit.

THE 1EST OF PROGRESS,

The word "Progress" is one of the most com
monly used terms and yet its meaning is extremely
vague with most people. Progress is the ideal of our
time and the glory of this generation. But what is
progress ? Can we give a definite and clear answer
to this question, or is "progress" one of the many
words by which people feel much but think little ?
Progress is the act of stepping forward, it is a
march onward. But who can tell us the right direc
tion of an onward march ? Did it ever happen to you
when travelling on your ideal highroad of progress that
you met a man who marched in the direction which
you left behind ? It happens very often, and if you
inquire of the wanderer, Why do you go backward in
stead of forward ? he will assure you that he marches
onward while you yourself are retrogressive. Those
who preach progress are by no means unanimously
agreed as to the right direction. Make a chart of all
the directions propounded and it will look like a com
pass dial. All directions possible are represented and
there are not a few who believe that the development
of our present civilisation proceeds in the wrong di
rection ; they call us actually backwards to stages
which lie behind us in a distant past and would con-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 37
sider a return to them as real progress. These retro
gressive reformers are not so much among the ultra-
conservative classes as among the ultra-radical en
thusiasts who in one-sided idealism find perfection in
the most primitive sfates either of absolute anarchy
or absolute socialism, or whatever may be their special
hobby. The question, What is progress ? is of paramount
importance to ethics. For if there is no progress, if
the direction of the onward movement is either inde
terminable or indifferent, then, certainly there is no
ethics. And if there is a special and determinable
line along which alone progress has to take place, it
is this alone which has to be used as a compass for
our course of action. This line alone can be the norm
of morality. From this alone we have to derive our
moral rules, this alone can give us the real contents of
the otherwise empty and meaningless term of moral
goodness and this alone must constitute our basis of
ethics. Our time should know what progress is, for our
generation surveys the origin and growth of life so
much better than did any previous generation. We
now know that all life follows certain laws of evolution
and has begun from the very beginning as slimy specks
of living substance developing to the present state.
The man of to-day is the product of that evolution, and
man's progress is nothing but a special form of evo
lution ; it is the evolution of mankind. Our scientists
have discovered the fundamental laws of evolution ;
so they may be able to give us a satisfactory explana
tion of progress. The law of evolution we are informed
is adaptation to surroundings. The polar bear adapts
himself in the color of his skin and in his habits to his

38 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
environment ; while the insects of Madeira lose their
power of flight and have to a great extent become wing
less. There is a survival of the fittest everywhere, but
natural selection does not always favor the strongest
and the best. The ablest flyers on the islands are
swept by the winds into the ocean and the weak only
will survive, those who are lacking in a special virtue,
but not the bravest, not the strongest, not the best!
May we not imagine that there are periods or so
cieties so radically corrupt (and history actually teaches
that there were repeatedly such eras) in which the
spirit of the time made it actually impossible for good
men to exist and to act morally. The evil influence
of tyranny, of corruption, or of hypocrisy swept the
brave, the courageous, the honest, the thinking out
of existence and allowed only the weak, the degen
erate, the unthinking to remain ? It is true that when
ever a nation fell under such a blight, she was doomed.
Other nations took her place and there were quite a
number of peoples entirely blotted out from the face
of the globe. We have progressive as well as retro
gressive adaptation (as Professor Weismann informs
us), and adaptation in many cases is no sign of pro
gress in the physical world, let alone the moral pro
gress of human beings. We may say that the law of
adaptation explains survival, but it cannot afford a
criterion of progress.
We will ask the philosopher what progress is. The
philosopher takes a higher and more general view of
life, he may give us a broader and better information
as to what is the characteristic feature of progress.
Progress, we are told, is "a passage from a homoge
neous to a heterogeneous state." ... "It is a contin
ually increasing disintegration of the whole mass ac-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE

39

companied by an integration, a differentiation, and a
mutual, perpetually-increasing dependence of parts as
well as of functions, and by a tendency to equilibrium
in the functions of the parts integrated." Complexity,
it is maintained, is a sign of a higher evolution, and
it is true — in many respects higher forms of exist
ence are richer, more elaborate, more specialised, than
lower forms. But is therefore complexity the crite
rion of progress ; can we use it as a test wherever we
are in doubt in a special case. Does it show us the
nature of progress, its meaning and importance? It
appears that this explanation is not even generally
true, for there are most weighty and serious excep
tions which overthrow the validity of this formula en
tirely. Is not the progress in the invention of ma
chinery from the more complex to the less complex?
Invent a machine to do a special kind of work simpler
than those at present in use ; it will, the amount and
exactitude of work being equal, on the strength of its
simplicity alone be considered superior and it will soon
replace the more complex machinery in the market.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, the philosopher of evolu
tion, overlooked the main point when he attempted to
explain evolution as he proposed in terms of matter
and motion. Evolution means change of form, and
this change of form has a special meaning. Evolu
tion is not a material process and not a mechanical
process, and the attempt to solve the problem of evo
lution on the ground of materialism or mechanicalism
(i. e. to express its law in terms of matter and motion)
must necessarily be a failure. Mr. Spencer, it is true,
recognises the importance of the formal element, for
his view of increasing complexity involves form and
change of form. Yet he selects a mere external

40 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
feature (one that is not even a universal) as charac
teristic of evolution and he neglects the very meaning
of the change of form. This meaning remaining as an
irresoluble residue in his philosophical crucible might
find a place of shelter under the protecting wings of
the Unknowable ; but this meaning of the change of
form is the very nerve of the question and all other
things are matters of detail and secondary considera
tion. The evolution of the solar system, being a mechan
ical process may find in the Kant-La Place hypothesis
a purely mechanical solution. But the evolution of
animal life is not a purely mechanical process. There
is in it an element of feeling which is not mechanical.
I do not mean to say that the nervous process which
takes place while an animal feels is not mechanical.
On the contrary I consider all processes which are
changes of place, biological processes included, as in
stances of molar or molecular mechanics. But the
feeling itself is no mechanical phenomenon. It is a
state of awareness and in this state of awareness some
thing is represented. This state of awareness has a
meaning, which may be called its contents.
I do not hesitate to consider the meaning that feel
ing acquires as the characteristic feature not only of
animal but especially also of intellectual life — of the
life of man. It is upon the meaning-freighted feelings
that soul- life originates. Let every special feeling,
representing a special condition or object, be consti
tuted by a special form of nerve-action, and we should
see the soul, the psychological aspect of nerve-forms,
develop together with the organism. A higher devel
opment leads naturally, as a rule but not without ex
ceptions, to a greater complexity of nerve-forms. Yet

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 41
it is not this complexity which constitutes the evolu
tion of the soul and the progress in the development
of the organism. The test of progress can be found
in the meaning alone with which the feelings that live
in the action of these nerve-forms, are freighted.
What is this meaning ?
The different soul-forms (so we may for brevity's
sake call these feelings, living in the different nerve-
structures) represent special experiences and through
these experiences the surroundings of the organism
are depicted. The soul accordingly is an image of
the world impressed into living substance and de
picted in feelings. This however is not all, the soul
is more than that. It is also the psychical aspect of
the reaction that takes place in response to the stim
uli of the surroundings. And this reaction is indeed
the most important part in the life of the soul. The
former may be called by a generalised name cogni
tion or intelligence, the latter activity or ethics. The
former has no other purpose than to serve as an in
formation for the proper direction and guidance of the
latter. We do not consider the world as a chaos of mate
rial particles. We do not believe that blind chance
rules supreme. On the contrary we see order every
where and law is the regulating principle in all things
and processes. The world is not a meaningless med
ley, but a cosmos which in its minutest parts is full of
significance and purport. And this truth has found a
religious expression in the God-idea. The world con
sidered in its cosmic grandeur is divine, and when in
the process of evolution the soul develops as an image
of the world, the divinity of the cosmos is also mir
rored in the soul. The higher animal life rises, the

42 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
more does it partake of the divine, and it reaches the
highest climax in men and finally in the ideal of a per
fectly moral man — in the God man.
The test of progress must be sought in the growth
of soul. The more perfectly, the more completely,
the more truthfully the world is imaged in the soul-
forms, so as to enable mankind, the individual man as
well as the race, to react appropriately upon the pro
per occasions, to be up in doing and achieving, to act
wisely, aspiringly and morally, the higher have we
risen on the scale of evolution. It is not the com
plexity of soul-forms which creates their value, it is
their correctness, their congruence with reality, their
truth. Evolution sometimes leads to a greater com
plexity. In the realm of cognition it does so wherever
discrimination is needed. But sometimes again it will
lead to a greater simplicity. Complexity alone would
have a bewildering aspect, it must be combined with
economy, and the economy of thought is so important
because it simplifies our intelligence ; it enables us not
only to see more of truth at once but also to recognise
the laws of nature, the order of the cosmos, and its
divinity. The test of progress, in one word, is the realisa
tion of truth extensive as well as intensive, in the soul
of man. The more truth the human soul contains
and the more it utilises the truth in life, the more pow
erful it will be and the more moral. In this way the
soul partakes of the divinity of its creator, call it na
ture or God; it will come more and more in harmony
with the cosmos, it will more and more conform to its
laws, it will be the more religious, the holier, the
greater, the diviner, the higher it develops and the
further it progresses.

THE ETHICS OF EVOLUTION.

The first chapter of Genesis is at present inter
preted by the greatest number of our theologians in a
sense which is hostile to the theory of evolution. It
is nevertheless one of the most remarkable documents
that prove the age of the idea, for no impartial reader,
either of the original or of a correct translation will find
the dogma of special creation acts out of nothing justi
fied in these verses. The first verses of Genesis tell us
that God "shaped" the world beginning with simple
forms of non-organised matter and rising to the higher
and more compiex forms of plants and animals. God
shaped the heaven and the earth, is the correct trans
lation, he made the greater and the lesser light, i. e. he
formed them ; he made man and the breath of man's
life is God's own breath. If Darwin himself or a poet
like Milton, thoroughly versed in Darwinian thought,
had been called upon to present the evolution theory
in a popular form to the contemporaries of Moses they
could not have described it in a more striking man
ner. Any improvements upon the Mosaic account
which could be suggested are mere trifles and matters
of detail. It is a fact that ethical aspirations, the ideal of
elevating humanity, of raising men upon the higher

44 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

•

level of a divine manhood, of creating a nobler type
of human beings, of saving the souls that would go
astray and showing them the narrow and strait gate
which alone leads into life, — in short the sursum of
evolution, — have been the kernel of all religions, espe
cially those great religions which in the struggle for
existence have survived up to this day — Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedan
ism. Nevertheless the idea of evolution is still looked
upon with suspicion by the so-called orthodox leaders
of our churches. Do they not as yet understand the
religious nature of the idea? Or is it perhaps exactly
its religious nature of which they are afraid ? For
being a religious truth, it will in time sweep away
many religious errors which are fondly cherished and
have grown dear to pious souls.
The idea of evolution as a vague and popular con
ception of the world-process is very old, but as a theory
based upon exact science it is not much older than a
century. Kant told us in his "Natural History of the
Starry Heavens " that an evolution is taking place in
the skies, forming according to mechanical laws solar
systems out of the chaotic wcrld-dust of nebulae. Cas
par Friedrich Wolff,* Lamarck, f Treviranus,J Karl
von Baer,§ and others came 10 the same conclusion
with regard to the domain of organised life and Baer
pronounced the proposition that evolution was the
fundamental idea of the whole universe. || The work
of these men is the foundation upon which Charles
* Theoria Generationis . 1759.
t Philosophic Zoologique, 1794.
X Biologie. 1802.
§ Entiuickelungs-Geschirhte der Thiere. t*?8
| Ibid. p. Z94.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 45
Darwin stood. This great hero of scientific investiga
tion collected with keenest discrimination and most
careful circumspection the facts which prove that the
struggle for life will permit only those to survive which
are the fittest to live and will thus bring about not
only a differentiation of species, not only an increasing
adaptation to circumstances in the animal world at
large, but also the progress of the human race.
The evolution in the animal kingdom has a peculi
arity which distinguishes it from that of the starry
heavens. It takes place exactly in the same way ac
cording to mechanical laws, being a complex process
of differentiation, yet there is an additional element in
it. Animals are feeling beings.
When certain motions pass through the organism
of an animal there arises an awareness of the motion,
and this awareness, which is a mere subjective state,
is called "feeling." The same impressions produce
the same forms of vibrations in the organism and the
same forms of vibrations in the organism exhibit the
same feelings. Every impression however leaves a
trace in the system which is preserved and when pro
perly stimulated will be reawakened together with its
feeling element. When new sense-impressions are
produced, the old memories of the same kind reawaken
together with them, and all their feelings blend into
one state of consciousness richer than the present
sense-impression could be, if it stood alone and un
connected with the traces of former sense-impressions.
In this way the whole world of an animal's surround
ings is being mapped out in the traces left in the or
ganism according to- the law of the preservation of
form, as after-effects of sense-impressions and of their
correlated reactions. Many of these traces when stim-

46 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE
ulated into activity exhibit states of awareness and
thus consciousness rises into existence constituting a
realm of spiritual life.
This spiritual life has been called the ideal world in
opposition to the world of objective reality — ideal mean
ing pictorial, for the ideal world depicts the real world
in images woven of the glowing material of feelings.
Evolution in the animal world concentrates more
and more in a development of the ideal world and this
ideal world is not something foreign to the world of
objective realities which it mirrors, it is intimately in
terconnected with it. Reality must be thought of as
containing in itself the conditions of bringing forth
feeling beings and through feeling beings the ideal
world ; and this ideal world is not merely a phantas
magoria, a beautiful mirage without any practical pur
pose, it is to the beings which develop it the most
important and indispensable thing, for it serves them
as a guide through life and as a basis for regulating
their actions. If the world of objective realities is
correctly depicted in the ideal world, it will help them
to act in the right way, so as to preserve their lives,
their existence, their souls. Ideas which are correct,
which faithfully represent the realities which they de
pict, are called true, and actions which are based on
and regulated by true ideas are called right or moral.
Thus the ideal world contains in germ the possi
bilities of truth and of morality.
Evolution in the spiritual world means the devel
opment of truth, it means an expanse of the soul, a
growth of the mind as well as a strengthening of the
character to live in obedience to truth.
When Mr. Spencer undertook to write a philosophy
of evolution, he was fully conscious of the sweeping

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 47
importance of the evolution theory, but when he ap
proached the ethical problem, he became inconsistent
with his own principle and instead of establishing an
ethics of evolution, he propounded an ethics of hedon
ism regarding that action as right which produced the
greatest surplus of pleasurable feelings.
Pleasurable feelings are experienced under most
contradictory conditions. Pleasures cannot form any
standard of ethics or a regulative principle to guide
our appetites. Pleasures on the contrary are often
dangerously misleading and many a life has been
wrecked by trying to choose that course of action which
promises a surplus of pleasures.
Feelings are mere subjective states and their im
portance depends entirely upon the meanings which
they convey. It is not the pleasurableness of feelings
and of ideas which ought to be considered when they
are proposed as norms for action, but their correctness,
their truth. That which brings man nearer the truth
and harmonises our actions with the truth is right, and
that which alienates man from the truth is wrong.
Accordingly that which makes our souls grow and
evolve is moral, that which dwarfs our souls and pre
vents their evolution is immoral.
There is but one ethics and that ethics is the ethics
of evolution.

FAIRY TALES AND THEIR IMPORTANCE.

The attempt has been made to banish fairy tales
from our nurseries. The cry is raised " away with
ogres and fairies, away with fictitious monsters ! Let
us teach our children truth and nothing but truth.
Prepare their minds for life. It is a downright in
jury to fill their imagination with stories that are un
real, untrue, and even impossible."
This proposition is made on the ground that every
thing unreal is untrue ; therefore it is obnoxious and
should not be allowed to be instilled into the minds of
children. The principle of removing everything untrue from
our plan of education is unquestionably good. The
purpose of education is to make children fit for life,
and one indispensable condition is to teach them truth,
wherever we are in possession of truth ; and, what is
more, to teach them the method how to arrive at truth,
how to criticise propositions, wherever we have not as
yet arrived at a clear and indisputable statement of
truth. Allowing that fairy tales are unreal and may lead
the imagination of children astray : are they for this
very reason untrue ? Do they not contain truths of
great importance, which it is very difficult to teach
children otherwise than in the poetic shape of fairy

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

49

tales ? I believe this is the reason why in spite of so
much theoretical antagonism to fairy tales they have
practically never been, and perhaps never will be, re
moved from our nurseries. There are no witches who
threaten to abuse the innocence of children, and there
are no fairies to protect them. But are there not im
personal influences abroad that act as if they were
witches, and are there not also some almost unac
countable conditions in the nature of things that we
meet often in the course of events, but which act as if
they were good fairies to protect children (and no less
the adult -children of nature called men,) in dangers
which surround them everywhere, and of which they
are not always conscious ?
Science will at a maturer age explain such mys
teries, it will reveal to the insight of a savant that
which is a marvelous miracle to the childish concep
tion of an immature observation. But so long as our
boys and girls are not born as savants, they have to
pass through the period of childhood, they have to
develop by degrees and have to assimilate the facts of
life, they have to acquire truth in the way we did,
when we were children, as the race did, when hu
manity was in a state of helpless childhood still.
Did not religion also come to us in the form of a
fairy tale ? And is not a great truth contained in the
legend of Christianity ? The belief in the fairy tale will
pass away, but the truth will remain.
The development of children, it has been observed,
is a short repetition of the development of the race.
Will it be advisable to suppress that stage in which
the taste for fairy tales is natural? Is not a knowledge
of legends, fairy tales, and sagas an indispensable part
of our e.Iucation, which, if lacking, will make it impos-

jo HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
sible to understand the most common place allusions
in popular authors? Our art galleries will become a
book with seven seals to him who knows nothing about
the labors of Hercules or the Gods of Olympus. Will
you compensate the want of an acquaintance with our
most well-known legends, sagas, and characters of fic
tion at a later period, when the taste for such things has
passed away ?
I met once an otherwise well-educated lady who
did not know who Samson was. An allusion to Sam
son's locks had.no meaning to her, for she had en
joyed a liberal education, her parents being free
thinkers, she had never read the Bible and knew only
that the Bible was an old-fashioned work, chiefly of
old Hebrew literature, which she supposed was full
of contradictions and without any real value.
A total abolition of fairy tales is not only inadvis
able, but will be found to be an impossibility. There
are certain classical fairy tales, sagas, and legends,
which have contributed to the ethical, religious, and
even scientific formation of the human mind. Thus
not only many stories in the Old and the New Testa
ment, but also Homer, Hesiod, and many German
and Arabian fairy tales have become an integral part
of our present civilization." We cannot do away with
them without at the same time obliterating the devel
opment of most important ideas. Such fairy tales
teach us the natural growth of certain moral truths
in the human mind. These moral truths were com
prehended first symbolically and evolved by and by
into a state of rational clearness.
I do not propose to tell children lies, to tell them
stories about fairies and ogres and to make them be
lieve these stories. Children, having an average in-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 5i
telligence, will never believe the stories, however much
they may enjoy them. The very question : Is that
really true ? repeated perhaps by every child, betrays
their critical mind. Any one who would answer, " Of
course, every word is literally true," would be guilty
of implanting an untruth in the young minds of our
children. We must not suppress but rather develop
the natural tendency of criticism.
While we cannot advise the doing away with fairy
tales, we can very well suggest that the substance of
them may be critically revised, that superfluous matter
may be removed and those features only retained that
are inspiring and instructive.

THE VALUE OF MYSTICISM.

Mysticism is the blight of science. Mysticism in
science is like a fog in clear daylight. It makes the
steps of the wanderer unsafe and robs him of the
use of his most valuable sense — the sense of sight.
There is impenetrable darkness around him ; every
thing is confused by insolvable problems. The whole
world appears to the benighted mystic as one great
and inscrutable enigma.
Mysticism in religion is widely different. It is
here where the value of mysticism must be sought
for. But religious mysticism does not claim that
truth is unknowable. It claims not only, as does
science, that truth can be known, it claims that truth
can he felt even before it is known. Truth is a strong
and wholesome power, unconquerable and omnipotent,
which is available not only to the knowing but to those
also who grope in the dark, yet cherish the love of
truth in their hearts.
A scientist can scientifically enquire into the social
laws, and can after a life-time of long and laborious
study arrive at the truth, that what is injurious to the
swarm is not good for the bee. The ethical maxims :
thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt
honor father and mother, the scientist will perceive,
are not cunningly invented by religious or political
leaders, they are the indispensable conditions under

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 53
which alone society can exist. Wherever they are not
heeded the whole community will go to the wall.
The individual that sins against these laws will injure
society, yet he will ruin himself at the same time.
The ethical truths are important truths, and it is
good to know them, to understand their full import
ance. Yet even those who are unable to grasp them
in their minds; those who have not the scientific
knowledge to see how the moral law works destruction
to the trespasser and is a blessing to him who keeps
the law — even the unscientific, the poor in spirit, can
feel the truth ; they can trustingly accept it on faith
and can be sure that they are right. And truly, if
they do accept it, if they act accordingly, they are better
off than those scientists who have arrived at some
approximations that upon the whole it is perhaps after
all even for the single individual better to be honest,
than to be shrewd.
There are scientists and among them some of
great name and fame, who after a life-time of long
and laborious study did not arrive at the ethical
truths that the moral commands will preserve, and
that they do preserve, both the individual who keeps
them and the society to which that individual belongs.
There are naturalists who are very familiar with a
certain province of nature, especially with the brute
creation. They say, not the morally good will sur
vive, but the strongest, the cunningest and the
shrewdest. The naturalists who say that, are most
learned professors; they are crammed with biological
data, and have made many zoological observations ;
they know facts of nature and have classified them as
natural laws — but Nature herself has not revealed her
divine face to them. They have not entered the holy

54 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
of holies in the temple of Creation, for they see parts
only, and do not perceive the whole ; they overlook
the quietly working tendencies of the whole. They
misinterpret the meaning of the partial truths that
happened to come under their observation.
Moral truth can be felt. Therefore let religious
mysticism gain hold of man so as to make him feel
the truth of the moral law even before he is able to
understand it.
The moral feeling is man's conscience. The moral
law and man's trust in the truth of the moral law
must not be planted into the reasoning faculty of man
only, it must be planted by example and instruction
into his heart long before the reasoning faculty of his
mind is developed. It must be made part of his in
most soul long before he commences to study, to
learn, and to observe. It must be the basis of his
whole being, and the determining factor of his will.
If the moral law were merely superadded in later
life, if its presence in our minds rested upon abstract
conclusions only, upon logical arguments and syl
logisms, how uncertain, how precarious would its in
fluence be upon our lives. Rational insight must
come to strengthen the moral truth of our soul, but
its roots must be deeply buried in the core of our
heart. Science will come to explain what conscience
is, and why conscience is right in this or in that case,
science will also assist us to correct an erring con
science, but if the basis of a man's character has not
been laid in early childhood, science will come too
late to benefit him through moralizing arguments.
A conscience that is grounded upon ratiocination only,
is weak in comparison to a conscience that permeates
the whole being of a man, his emotions, his will, and

Homilies of science. 55
his understanding; his heart as well as his head.
Conscience must be, as we say in popular speech, our
"second nature" — yea, it must be our "first nature,"
so that in all situations of life, in tribulations, and in
temptations it will well up unconsciously with an
original and irresistible power, even before we can
reason about the proper course of our actions.
The tempter approaches us always in the name of
science, but his arguments are not science, they are
pseudo science. The tempter says: "Do not be fool
ish, be wise. The criminals are convicted not for
their crimes but because they were fools ; they were
not shrewd enough to escape the consequences of their
deed. Be wise, be cunning enough, and thou wilt out
wit all the world." There is no criminal who did not
think himself wise enough to escape the law, and if
he regrets at all, he will commonly regret not the deed
but one or the other of his mistakes which, as he sup
poses, betrayed him. The criminal tries to remove
the vestiges of his deed ; yet the acts done to this
purpose become new and powerful witnesses against
him. They, chiefly, become the traitors that deliver
him to the judge.
Do not be deceived by the pseudo-wisdom of your
thoughts that lead you into temptation. They will
lead you into ruin, if you follow them. Do not be
deceived by the escape of evil-doers from their legal
punishment ; they carry a punishment within them
which is worse than the penitentiary. Neither be
deceived by the success of the unprincipled. Many of
those whom you suppose to be morally depraved, are
perhaps after all not so unscrupulous as you think.
They may have virtues and abilities, strength of will,
power of concentration, industry, intelligence, fore-

56 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
sight in business combinations, of which you think
little, but which meet the wants of their time and serve
the common good. Such men succeeded, perhaps, in
spite of those faults in their characters to which you
erroneously attributed their success. If they are really
unprincipled, and are successful in their enterprises,
do not judge of them before you have seen the fulfill
ment of their destiny.
The royal psalmist of Israel, the shepherd boy, who
was a poet and at the same time a hero, who became
the king of his nation because he treated even his
enemies with justice, had during his career often seen
the unprincipled succeed, and so he sang :
I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green
bay tree, But David continues :
Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not ; yea I sought him but he could not
be found.
Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is
peace. It may seem to you as if crooked means were better
than straightforward truth, as if small trickery and
well-calculated deceptions would gain the victory over
the simplicity of honest dealing. It may seem so to you
and it may seem so to your friends and advisers. It
is not ! Truth and justice are always stronger than the
strongest lies. And if you do not understand it, be
lieve it and act accordingly.
I do not mean to say that if your cause is just, if
you are morally good and honest in your purpose, that
truth and justice will come down like gods from heaven
to assist you. O, no ! You must fight for truth and
you must stand up for justice with all your abilities and
foresight. What I mean to inculcate is not blind
confidence in the victory of truth and justice, as if they

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 57
intended actually to appear on earth to work for you,
instead of your working for them : I mean to say that,
under all circumstances, falsity, untruth, injustice, and
all immoral means, however cunningly they maybe de
vised, are the most dangerous allies. Whoever as
sociates with them will be sure to go to wreck and
ruin. The way to success, to a final and solid success
is only that steep and thorny path on which virtue led
the Greek hero to Olympus. Because strait is the gate,
and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few
there be that find it.

THE UNITY OF TRUTH.

Truth, thou art but one. Thou mayest appear to
us now stern and now mild, yet thou remainest always
the same. Thou blessest him that loves thee, thou
revealest thy nature to those that seek thee, thou
hidest thy countenance from him that disregards thee,
and thou punishest him that hateth thee. But whether
it is life or death thou givest, whether thy dispensations
are curses or blessings, thou remainest always the same,
thou art never in contradiction with thyself ; thy curses
affirm thy blessings, and thy rewards show the justice
of thy punishments. Thou art one from eternity to
eternity; and there is no second truth beside thee.
There was a strange superstition among the learned
of the middle ages. The Schoolmen believed in the
duality of truth. Something might be true, they main
tained, in philosophy, which was not true in theology ;
a religious truth might be true so far as religion was con
cerned, but it might be wrong in the province of sci
ence, and vice versa a scientific truth might be an
error in the province of religion.
The Nation of August 7th, 1890, contains a criti
cism by an able pen of the aim which is pursued by
The Open Court. But the criticism is written from
the standpoint that the duality of truth is a matter of
course ; whereas it is merely a modernised reminis-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 50
cence of the scholastic doctrine that that which is true
in science will not be true in religion.
We are told :
"The profession of Tke Open Court is to make an 'effort to
conciliate religion with science.' Is thiswise? Is it not an en
deavor to reach a foredetermined conclusion ? . . . Does not such
a struggle imply a defect of intellectual integrity and tend to un
dermine the whole moral health ? . . . Religion, to be true to itself,
should demand the unconditional surrender of free-thinking. Sci
ence, true to itself, cannot listen to such a demand for an instant.
. Why should not religion and science seek each a self-devel
opment in its own interest ?"
It is true enough that many religious doctrines
stand in flat contradiction to certain propositions that
have been firmly established by science ; and the
churches that proclaim and teach these doctrines do
not even think of changing them. There are dogmas
that defy all rules of sound logic, and yet they are re
tained ; they are cherished as if they were sacred
truth. But church doctrines and dogmas are not
religion; church doctrines and dogmas are traditions.
They may contain many good things but they may
also contain errors, and it is our holy and religious
duty to examine them, to winnow them so as to sepa
rate the good wheat from the useless chaff.
Let us obey the rule of the apostle, to hold fast
only that and all that which is good. And what is
good ? Let us inquire of Truth for an answer. That
is good which agrees with truth. Good is not that
which pleases your fancy, however lofty and noble
your imagination, and however better, grander, or
sweeter than the stern facts of reality you may deem
it to be. You will find that in the end all things that
appear good, but are not in accord with truth, are
elusive : they will be discovered to be bad ; usually

60 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
they are worse than those things which are bad and
appear so to us at first sight.
What is religion ? Religion is our inmost self ; it
is the sum total of all our knowledge applied to con
duct. It is the highest ideal of our aspirations, in
obedience to which we undertake to build our lives.
Religion in one word is truth itself. Religion is dif
ferent from science in so far as it is more than scien
tific truth ; it is applied truth. Religion does not con
sist of dogmas, nor does the Religion of Science consist
of scientific formulas. Scientific formulas, if not applied
to a moral purpose, are dead letters to religion, for
religion is not a formulation of truth, but it is living
the truth. True religion is, and all religion ought to
be what Christ said of himself and of his missionj
"the way, the truth, and the life."
If a teacher tells his pupil never to be satisfied with
his work until the result when examined agrees with
the requirements, and to work his examples over until
they come out right ; is that a predetermined conclu
sion ? In a certain sense it is, but not in the sense
our critic proposes. If objection is made to a duality
of truth, and if it is maintained that religion and scien
tific truth cannot contradict each other, is that an
effort which " implies a defect of intellectual integrity
and tends to undermine the whole moral health " ?
Just the contrary ; it is the sole basis of intellectual
integrity, it is the indispensable condition of all moral
health. "Religion to be true to itself should demand,"
and that religion which The Open Court proposes,
does demand not "an unconditional surrender of free-
thinking " or of free enquiry, but an unconditional de
votion to truth. Does science demand free-thinking?

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 61
Perhaps the answer may be "yes," and there can be
no objection provided that free-thinking means free
enquiry and the absence of all compulsion. But the
free-thinking that is demanded by science means at the
same time an absolute obedience to the laws of thought.
The same free-thinking, which is at the same time
an unconditional surrender to truth, is the cardinal
demand of religion. The great reformer Martin Luther
called it the freedom of conscience and considered it
as the most precious prerogative of a Christian.
The Open Court does not propose to conciliate
science with certain Christian or Mosaic or Buddhistic
doctrines. This would be absurd and such an under
taking would justly deserve a severe criticism, for it
would be truly a predetermined conclusion in the
sense that our critic intends. It would "imply a defect
of intellectual integrity and undermine the moral
health." Autocracy and individualism are not recon
cilable, but socialism and individualism are reconcil
able. Order and liberty are not such deadly enemies
as may appear at first sight. Superstition and science
are irreconcilable, but religion and science are not
irreconcilable. Indeed, the history of religious progress
is a constant conciliation between science and religion.
. Religion and science, it is maintained, must "seek
each a self-development in its own interest." Cer
tainly it must, but this does not prevent that which
we deem to be religious truth being constantly ex
amined before the tribunal of science, and that
which we deem to be scientific truth being con
stantly referred to religion. Our critic seems to have
no objection to religion and science coming into accord,
but he proposes to wait until they approach comple
tion. If this maxim were universally adopted, there

62 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
would be no progress in the development of religion.
Is not "completion " a very relative state ? Waiting
for completion would be about equivalent to stopping
all social reform, until mankind has reached the mil
lennium. Every social reform is a step onward along
the path to the millennium, and every conciliation be
tween science and religion is a step onward in the
revelation of living truth.
The religion of the middle ages was a religion of
dualism, it proposed the duality of truth. The religion
of the future will be a religion of Monism ; and what
means Monism? Monism means unity of truth. Truth
is invincible. It never contradicts itself, for there is
but one truth and that one truth is eternal.

LIVING THE TRUTH.

They are but few who do the thinking of mankind,
and the great masses are led by the few sometimes
in the right, sometimes in the wrong direction. It
matters little whether this is to be regretted or not,
it remains a fact and must be faced. Yet this state
of things makes every independent thinker the more
valuable. Every man who is an independent thinker
is a power in his sphere, and will contribute a share
to the further evolution of thought in humanity.
The intellectual battles of mankind are mostly
fought out by a few leaders, and the great mass is
ready to follow those who have been successful in the
fight. Nevertheless we must recognise that thought
has increased ; and there are many unmistakable symp
toms that humanity is making progress at an increas
ing ratio. This lets us hope that the misery unneces
sarily and foolishly produced by improvidence or ignor
ance will be lessened and that knowledge will spread
together with a general good-will among men. This
is the aim of thought, nay it is its necessary result.
Thought is not mere sport. Thought is the most
important, the most practical, the most indispensable
activity of man. Thought is the savior of mankind,
and the salvation of man is the goal of the aspirations
of those who struggle against superstition and indiffer
ence.

64 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
I do not hesitate to say that indifference is worse
than superstition. I am always glad to meet a think
ing man who is earnest in his defense of some old
creed, if he is only honest. However much I may
differ from his views I shall always treat him with the
respect due to sincerity. Difference of opinion must
never induce us to set aside justice ; and after all a
man who is sincere and has an independent convic
tion, even though his conviction be utterly wrong,
does a greater service to progress than the indifferent
man who will always belong to that party which hap
pens to be the fashion of the day. Indifference more
than error hinders progress.
I see the thinkers of mankind, few though they are,
divided into two camps. The champions of the one
trust in progress and work for constant amelioration ;
the champions of the other believe that innovations
are extremely dangerous, and the best thing for hu
manity would be to remain stationary. Those of
the latter class will concede perhaps that in the do
main of industry and in the sciences progress must
be made, but they do not believe in the progress of
religion. Their religion is to them perfection, it re
presents in their minds absolute truth, and progress of
absolute truth, progress of something that is already
perfection, is, as a matter of course, gilding refined
gold. The battle waxes hot between the two parties, the
former is strong through its alliance with scientific
aspirations, but the latter is still in the majority. It
is in possession of the great mass of indifferent people ;
and the champions of progress may often become de
spondent so as to give up all hope of a final victory.
Ignorance seems stronger than knowledge and folly

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 65
more powerful than wisdom. In a moment of such
despair Schiller is said to have exclaimed : "Against
stupidity fight even Gods in vain."
Who among us when confronted with unconquer
able superstitions, has not had such sentiments at one
moment of his life or another ? And now I ask, can we
know which party in the end will be victorious?
Can we know the means by which alone a victory is
to be achieved? Let me in a few words indicate the
answer which I trust is very simple in the general plan
of its main idea, and yet so very complex in its ap
plication that we could philosophize on the subject as
long as we live. Indeed, mankind does philosophize
on the subject and has never as yet got tired of it.
And I suppose it never will, for here lies the object of
all science, of all knowledge, of all philosophy.
What will conquer in the end? Truth will con
quer in the end. By what means will truth conquer?
By being truth, or in other words by morality. That
party will conquer, be it ever so weak in numbers, be
it ever so badly represented, that is one with truth.
But it is not sufficient merely to know the truth. Truth
must be lived.
Only by living the truth shall we be able to con
quer the world. Therefore it is necessary to recog
nize the all-importance of morality. The ethical prob
lem (as I have often said on other occasions) is the
burning question of the day. To know the truth, to
preach the truth, and also to denounce the untruth of
superstitions is very important; but it is more im
portant to live the truth.
If you have two men, one of whom knows the
truth but does not live it, while the other lives the
truth but does not know it ; who must be regarded as

66 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
nearer the truth ? Surely he who ignorant of the truth
lives it, and not he who knowing the truth does not.
What is truth ? Truth is agreement with the facts
of reality. Truth accordingly is not a mere negation
of untruth, not a mere rejection of superstitions. Truth
is positive, it is the correct recognition of facts as well
as of the laws that live in the facts and have been ab
stracted therefrom by science. Morality is the agree
ment of our actions with truth, and the most important
truths for the regulation of men's actions are the laws
which rule the relations between man and man form
ing the conditions of human society.
The strength of the many organisations that still
hold to antiquated superstitions lies in the fact that
after all they try' their best to obey the moral laws.
And the weakness of many free-thinking persons as
well as organisations, lies in their neglect of ethics,
They do not feel the urgency of demanding strictness
in morals ; they are perhaps not exactly immoral but
they are indifferent about the claims of morality.
The moral laws have been formulated by Religion
first in mythological expressions ; but the mythology
of Religion is slowly changing into a scientific concep
tion of facts. Mythology is fiction, it preaches the
truth in parables. Nevertheless it contains actual
truth. And the religious parables are not less true,
they are more true than the unthinking believers im
agine. The truth of these parables is grander, subimer,
higher than the similes in which they are expressed.
Here lies the secret of success. The church has
grown into existence and has attained its power be
cause it was the ethical teacher of mankind in the
past. On the one hand it appears that the church re
fuses to progress, and on the other hand progressive

HOMILIE S OF SCIENCE.

67

thought has heretofore too much neglected to become
practical or in other words to push the moral applica
tions of truth.
We stand now before a crisis: Either the churches
will reform ; they will cease to believe in supersti
tions ; they will acknowledge truth and the correctness
of the scientific methods of reaching truth; in one
word they will become secular institutions, institutions
adapted to the moral wants of the world we live in ;
in which case they will remain the ethical teachers of
mankind; or those institutions which represent pro
gressive thought and have recognized truth and the
rational means of reaching truth, will more and more
inculcate the practical applications of truth ; and if
they do, they will become the moral teachers of man
kind. Truth must conquer in the end ; but knowing the
truth is not as yet sufficient ; it is living the truth which
will gain the victory.

THANKSGIVING-DAY.

As the sun rises to-day from, the depths of the At
lantic, he beholds a great and prosperous nation cele
brating one of the most beautiful festivals of the year.
It is the day of giving thanks for all the bounties which
Nature, our common mother, has showered upon us
in the year gone by. It is the day of giving thanks
for the rich harvest now being gathered into the barns
of the farmer, and which we who are not farmers,
shall none the less enjoy. For all of us, the merchant
and the artisan, the manufacturer and the banker,
the artist and the scholar, the soldier and the sailor,
all of us who make an honest living, depend ulti
mately on the blessings that Nature bestows upon
us, the fruits that grow in the fields, and the meat that
she provides.
It. is true that we must work for it. In the sweat of
our face we must eat our bread. But all our labor
would be in vain if Nature ceased to yield the harvest
which in abundance she annually offers.
*
* IE-
Considering the state of affairs in this light, we
must have a feeling of pride and at the same time of
modesty. Of pride, because our prosperity, our prop
erty, our life with all its future hopes, are the result of
our own work ; what we are is the product of our own

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 69
and our forefathers' endeavors. Of modest}', because
all our labor would be in vain if that omnipotent power
of natural forces did not continually carry along upon
its mighty billows of life the courageous boats of think
ing beings.
We must learn to know, that what we are, we are
through nature only ; for we ourselves are but parts of
that great power in which we live and move and have
our being.
Our fathers in their gratitude called that power of
omnipotent Nature God, and Christ taught us to re
vere it in child-like love as a Father. If we have ceased
to believe in a humanized Deity, if we no longer adopt
the idea of a personal God, we must not forget that
there is a great truth in the words of the psalmist who
sings :
Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build
it ; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in
vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the
bread of sorrows : for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
It is a noble feature in man's nature that prompts
him to celebrate great events and to remember the
momentous days of his existence. But our feasting
must not consist of good eating and drinking alone.
Our festivals must be a consecration of our life. Festi
vals, if celebrated in a truly humane spirit, will elevate
man's actions by thought and ennoble his work by re
flection. " 'Tis that alone which makes mankind —
And 'tis the purpose of man's reason
That he consider in his mind
His handiwork of every season."
You who are happy, you who look back upon a year
that has yielded its harvest, rejoice in the blessings of

7o HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Nature, rejoice in the health of life, rejoice that you
behold this day ! Be thankful for the bounties you
have received and close not the doors of charity to
the needy and the poor who are less fortunate than
yourselves !
The unfortunate, the sick, the poor are invited to
join in the general joy and to rejoice in the general
prosperity of our country, in the glorious growth of
our nation, and in the noticeable progress of all man
kind which apparently leads more and more to higher
and purer ideals of the universal brotherhood of man.
Those who are prosperous will celebrate this sacred
day with a grateful mind, sympathetic towards those
who are stricken with the many ills that flesh is heir
to. Let us remember our own weakness, let us con
sider that what we are we are not of ourselves. Thus
we shall learn the wisdom of modesty that teaches us
to look upon the forlorn and shipwrecked as brothers,
so that we shall lend them a helping hand. Let us
assist the fallen and downtrodden in the right spirit,
not in the arrogance of our own merits, of our own
good luck and fortune, but in the fraternal love of a
pure-minded and heartfelt kindness.

Blessed be the sun that shines upon this day, and
blessed be his return in all future years. Blessed be
the country that yields us the fruit upon which we
live, and blessed be that great nation that flourishes
in this wonderful land of liberty. May the highest
ideals we cherish, be realized in her destinies !

CHRISTMAS.

The Christmas bells will soon chime and with their
harmonious peals they will bring joy and merriment
into every household. There is a secret charm in the
celebration of this holy festival. It is wonderful what
sacred gladness attaches to the sight of the glorious
tree that remains green in winter-time, when it is
decked with glittering ornaments and its many can
dles shed their joyous light upon the circles of frolick
ing children with roseate cheeks and beaming eyes !
What is the mystery of this jubilant feast, and how
is it possible that wherever it has been introduced,
there it will remain as the dearest and most cherished
of all holidays ?
First Christmas was celebrated as Yule-tide by the
old Teutons, especially by the most northern tribes of
the great Teutonic family, the Norsemen and the Sax
ons, as the return of the sun, as salvation in midst of
anxieties and troubles, as the victory of light over
darkness. As many other feasts so Christmas, and
Christmas, it seems, more than others, is a festival of
natural religion. Then the Christians adopted it and
very appropriately selected it as the memorial day of
the birth of the Saviour. Now it is celebrated by Chris
tians and Pagans, by Jews and Gentiles, by all who
came in contact with Saxons or Germans, or their
kindred in the North. No one can withdraw from the

72 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
sacred spell that the worship of Nature exercises
even now upon our minds. Christians like to forget
that their Christmas tree is an old pagan symbol of
the world. It is Ygdrasil, under the branches of which
the three norns of the present, the past, and the fu
ture are sitting, lisping runes and weaving the fates
of the Universe. There is Urd's well at the roots of
the holy tree and its water is sacred. The norns
spray the water upon the branches of Ygdrasil which
sinks down into our valleys as dew. This keeps the
tree ever green and strong.
The festive Yule tide has been a holy season to our
Teutonic ancestors since times immemorial; since they
settled in their northern homes in Europe, which their
descendants, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch,
the English, and the Germans still inhabit. The drear
iest days of the year, when darkness and frost with
snow and ice were most oppressive, became by reac
tion as it were the most joyful time.
In the northern parts of Norway the sun disap
pears entirely towards the close of December, and
when after an absence of two nights or more it rose
for a short time on the horizon, it was saluted with
bonfires lit with yule-logs, with festive processions,
with fir-trees illuminated with candles, with merry
making and family feasts of all kinds.
The mistletoe which grows on holy oak-trees and
remains green in winter-time, whose seed was sup
posed to have fallen from heaven, was the sun-god
Baldur's sacred plant. With mistletoe therefore the
houses were decorated, and the greeting under the
mistletoe was all love and friendship in the name of
Odin's fairest and most righteous son. Baldur had
been killed by the dark and gloomy Hcedur, but he

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 73
was restored to life again. With Baldur all nature re
ceived new life, and all mankind rejoiced in him.
When Christianity was introduced, how could a
better day for the celebration of Christ's nativity be
selected than Baldur's festive day. The birthday of
Jesus 'was not celebrated in the early church, and
there is not even the faintest legendary account re
garding its date. Our Teutonic ancestors succeeded
in settling this problem in favor of their dear Yule-tide
by a quotation from the scriptures. John the Baptist
says as to his relation to Christ : "He must increase
but I must decrease." (John iii. 30.) Accordingly,
St. John's day was fixed upon the 24th of June when
the days begin to decrease, and Christ's upon 25th of
December when the days begin to increase again.
Yule-tide lost none of its charms when it was
changed into Christmas. On the contrary, the sacred
joys Weihnacht gained in spiritual depth and import
ance, preserving all the while the old pagan ceremon
ies that symbolize the immortality of light and life.
Christmas is not a feast of any special creed or na
tionality. The custom of celebrating it has spread
from the Teutonic nations to France, and Spain, and
Italy, and Ireland, and over the whole world. It is
now the family feast of almost all mankind whether
they believe in Jesus as their saviour or not.
We keep the Christmas season as a dear and sacred
time which in the midst of a dreary winter night re
minds us of the sun's return. Darkness cannot con
quer light, and death cannot conquer life. Christmas
teaches us to bear up bravely in troubles, to keep up
hope in misfortunes, to preserve the courage of life in
the midst of struggles of cares and worries, and to
spread joy around us so far as it is in our power.

74 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
There are times so dreary that in our anxiety we
see no hope but death. There are days so Bleak and
wintery that we begin to despair, and encumbered
with cares we cry, "The evil is stronger than the
good in this world, and the power of darkness quenches
the glory of light." The days become shorter and
shorter. The nights become longer and longer. A
general corruption is prevailing and increasing ; the
moral sense is growing debased and retrogression
seems all but universal.
O ye of little faith ! Be of good cheer, and in the
midst of all your trouble and worry celebrate a joyous
Christmas. For Christmas is the commemoration of the
holy morn that greets us after the longest night. It
reminds us of the undying hope, that light and life are
eternal. It is true that life is a world of woe, full of
toil and of pain. Nevertheless, there is a saviour born
into the world ; and this saviour is the son of man. The
ideal son of man lies as yet in the cradle. But we know
that he will grow ; he will rescue the world from those
troubles' which are caused by folly and crime ; he will
elevate mankind through purity and justice ; and he
will consecrate life and the struggle for life through
the noble aims which more and more will become con
scious ideals in the minds of men.

REVELATION.

In my childhood I was told that there were two
kinds of divine revelation. God had revealed him
self (i) in Nature, and (2) in the Scriptures. Neither
revelation was easy to decipher and interpret, but God
always aids the endeavors of the upright, and the
one revelation would assist us in understanding the
other. There is, too, according to the catechisms, a third
kind of revelation : the Conscience of Man. Man has
an instinctive recognition of that which is right and
that which is wrong, and this instinct is sometimes
a most wonderful and accurate guide, although there
are many cases in which it leads astray. Conscience,
we are told, is the voice of God, and the behests
of conscience we are bound to obey, although we
must be on our guard lest conscience be perverted by
errors and superstitions.
These three revelations of God must be one and
the same. If they are true and reliable they must
agree, and wherever they do not agree our interpre
tation of one of them, or of two, or of all them, is
wrong. As a matter of fact, we find that the three
conflict, and we must accordingly investigate which of
the three is the most reliable.
The dogmatic Christian claims that the Bible is
the most reliable ; and in all religious matters the

76 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Bible must be considered as the ultimate authority.
Yet, whatever precious doctrines the Bible may con
tain, it can be considered as divine only in so far as
it is true, and God cannot proclaim one truth in na
ture, and another truth in the Scriptures. He cannot
be one God to all the world, and another God to a few
prophets. God might reveal himself more fully to
those who are maturer in mind, whose souls are fur
ther advanced in moral and mental growth, for God
reveals himself to the extent that we search for him,
and are able to comprehend the truth. Yet the two
revelations should never be contradictory. They might
be different in degree, but not in kind.
Of the three divine revelations there is but one that
is consistent, one that never contradicts itself, that
has remained unchanged, and will remain so forever.
That is the revelation of God in Nature. There is
order in nature, and law rules supreme. All natural
phenomena are in all their glorious variety so many
instances of the oneness that pervades nature, and
among all the natural phenomena, the most wonderful
revelation of God appears in man ; and in that which
is most human in man, in language, and in thought.
Every truth is divine, every truth is a revelation, and
every scripture thus inspired will prove useful in work
ing out righteousness. Therefore we agree with the
apostle when he says :
Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction, which is in righteous
ness : that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely
unto every good work.-n. thim., 3, 16. 17.
It is not the Bible alone which is a revelation of
God, but the Vedas, the Zendavesta, Homer, the
Koran, the Edda ; Shakespeare, and Goethe ; and

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 77
Kant and Darwin, and all the scientists. All the
scriptures, all the literatures of all people so far as
they contain thoughts that are noble and elevating,
and beautiful and true — they are all revelations of
God. In so far as a book contains errors it is not de-
vine, it is no revelation of God, whether it be incor
porated in the biblical canon or not.
The Bible was considered by the old Hebrews in
.this light, for the Old Testament is nothing but a
collection of the Hebrew literature up to a certain
date. Had Goethe lived among the Jews at the time
of David, and had the anachronism been possible
that he had written his Faust at that time; Goethe's
Faust would be one of the canonical books in the
Bible of to-day.
Conscience, it is true, is a revelation of God; but
what is conscience but the development of the ethical
instinct in man.
Experience has taught man that certain acts that
promise to be pleasant at first, will cause regret after
wards; that the injury done to others will not bring
to him the benefit he expected, but may even entail
harm which he never thought of. Experience will
teach him that self-denial and unflinching love of truth,
even where they appear very obnoxious, will in the
end prove to be the best. Conscience accordingly is
ultimately based upon experience, not only of our
selves, but of parents and teachers. It is partly an
inherited tendency ; partly it is based upon all the re
membrances of our life from earliest childhood. The
examples given us by beloved and respected persons,
by our elders and by our friends, are written in our
souls and will consciously and unconsciously influence
our actions. It is neither uncommon nor strange that

78 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
the voice of man's conscience is often perverted, by
bad examples and insufficient or wrong instruction. As
the knowledge of the medicine man is the rude be
ginning of science; so is conscience a natural product
which needs refinement and culture by methodical
education. The only direct and reliable revelation of God is
to be found in the facts of nature ; and all the other
revelations in the Scriptures, and in conscience, are but,
parts of this one and only true revelation. They are
true only in so far as they agree and represent this ;
and the truth of this can be revised again and again.
The book of nature is open to every one, and in the
places where to-day we understand its disclosures im
perfectly, we can hope that to-morrow by more careful
observations and closer investigations, we shall better
comprehend its meaning.
Truth is the exactness with which the harmony of
cosmic order is represented in the mind of a thinking
being; truth is the mark of divine dignity in man,
through truth and truthfulness we become children of
God, and truth is the saviour of all evil.

GOD.

Who is God and what is God? is a question that
is raised by both religious and irreligious people ;
and most different answers are given. Every one
of us has perhaps his own and peculiar opinion
about God ; some of us are theists, some pantheists,
some atheists, and there are in the history of religion
and philosophy, so far as I can judge, not two thinkers
who fully agree upon the subject. Shades of differ
ences are visible everywhere.
I do not intend to discuss any one of the many
conceptions of God ; nor do I intend to preach either
Theism, or Atheism, or Pantheism. All I ask is the
use of the word God in the sense of "the ultimate
authority in conformity to which man regulates his
actions. " Of those who allow their actions to be de
termined by the first impulse that comes over them,
I would say, that whim is their God. Those who are
swayed by egotism, we say that self is their deity.
There are others whose sole principle of conduct is
the pursuit of pleasures: their God is happiness.
Others still may possess a moral ideal ; the endeavor
to be obedient to their duties : their God would be
duty. After this preliminary definition of God, we put
the question : Is there any way of ascertaining the na
ture of God, so that all men of different opinions may

Ro HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
be led to the recognition of one God, who is the only
true God, beside whom all other Gods are mere idols ?
In other words, Is the authority in conformity with
which man regulates his conduct merely his private
pleasure, is it purely subjective in its nature, or is it a
power that is above us, that is mightier than our
selves, that enforces obedience and wrecks those who
dare to disregard it? Is that saying of Antisthenes
true, "The Gods of the people are many, but the God
of nature is one ?"
The answer to this question is simple, and can
easily be deduced from experience. I cannot at all
act as I please, but have to regulate my actions ac
cording to the facts of nature. If I attempt to walk
on the water I shall sink ; if I try to fly from the top
of my house to the roof of my neighbor's house across
the street, I shall fall. Natural laws will not be altered
on my account, and I shall not be able to fashion
them so as to suit my purposes. However, I can
accommodate myself to the facts of nature, I can obey
the natural laws, and if I do so, it will be to my own
benefit. The more intimately man is acquainted with
nature, the more perfectly he adapts himself to the
order of nature, the wider will be his dominion. In
the measure in which he becomes more obedient to
the authority of natural laws, the more powerful, the
more independent, the more free will man be.
Schiller said :
" Within your will let deity reside
And God descendeth from his throne."
" [Nehmt die Gottheit auf in euren Willen
Und sie steigt von ihrem Weltenthron.]
The natural laws of the physical world, gravita
tion, mechanical laws, physical laws, biological laws,

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE 81
may appear to the present generation plain and pal
pable facts of nature, yet it took centuries to sum up
the facts in laws and to state some of them in simple
terms. The men who succeeded in stating them in
simple terms were prophetic geniuses, such as Coper
nicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Huyghens, Darwin,
and others ; the results of their labors are discoveries
of a divine inspiration, and are a revelation of the
eternal and universal order of nature.
Besides the physical laws of nature, there are the
sociological laws that prevail in the higher kingdoms
of living organisms, and in the societies which greater
numbers of single individuals unite. Every one of
us is a member of a community ; and again all the
communities of human beings are closely bound to
gether, however great the distance in which they
dwell, by certain relations, by common interests, and
mutual sympathies. These sociological laws are not
a product of well calculated intentions, but they are
of a natural growth ; the evolution of the social affairs
of mankind is deeply rooted in the conditions of
things. Now every fact of science stated as a law has its
practical side ; it teaches us how to behave in certain
conditions. There is no knowledge but it can be
framed in the shape of a moral command. The tables
of arithmetic are mere statements of fact ; but every
one of them is a most valuable ethical law : it is a
guide for our actions and a rule of conduct.
Every child knows that the ethics of arithmetic
cannot be changed, it is a sovereign power above
us. Yet we can make that royal authority descend
from its throne by obedience to its behests, we can
adapt our calculations to it, and thus we shall partake

82 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
of its sovereignty. The more accurately and the
purer truth dwells in our minds, the more will our
souls grow divine, and the more will we bear in our
selves the image of God. There is no knowledge
that does not make us purer, and no correct applica
tion of knowledge that does not make us more divine.
But among all the natural laws that it behooves a
man to know and to obey, are the laws of human life,
the relations among human beings, and the aspira
tions of human ideals. It is here where the revelation
of God appears in its grandest, its most beautiful, and
its holiest form.
How many people are there that understand that
these laws are no less cogent and irrefragable than
the laws of the multiplication tables ! How many
imagine that they can break these laws with impunity.
Let us do evil, they say, that good may come from it.
The prophet Hosea says : " People are destroyed
from lack of knowledge, " and these words are true even
to-day. People injure themselves and others mostly
from ignorance and from ill-will, which is a necessary
result of ignorance. Would not the brute cease to be
brutish if it were endowed with human reason?
Let us open our eyes to see and prepare our minds
to learn the ordinances of the divine authority that
shapes the destinies of our life. The better we observe
them, the clearer we understand them, and the more
promptly we obey them, the sweeter will be the bless
ings that come upon our lives, the greater will be the
advance of humanity, and the nobler will appear the
divinity of mankind.

DESIGN IN NATURE.

At a meeting of a scientific club lately, a discussion
was held on the subject : "Is evolution directed by in
telligence ? " This question touches the very heart
of religion and science ; and we cannot shirk it if we
desire to attain to any clearness and comprehensive
ness of view concerning the most vital problems of
human existence.
Before we can answer the question proposed, we
must first ask what do we understand by intelligence.
We must analyze its meaning and separate it into the
elements of which it consists.
Intelligence comprises two elements : (i) We mean
by intelligence design, plan, order, harmony, con
formity to law, or Gesetzmassigkeit ; and (2) when
speaking of intelligence we think that there is attached
to it the element of feeling or consciousness.
Feeling by itself has nothing to do with intelli
gence ; yet consciousness has : consciousness is in
telligent feeling. A single feeling, a pain or a pleas
ure, as long as it remains isolated cannot be called in
telligent ; yet it acquires a meaning as soon as it re
fers to one or several other feelings. For thus feelings
become representations of the surrounding conditions
that produce feelings. Consciousness is nothing but
a co-ordination of many feelings into one harmonious

84 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
state. Beings in possession of conscious intelligence
we call persons.
Now we ask, Can there be design which is not con
nected with feeling ? Can there be order or plan with
out a conscious being who made the plan? We say,
Yes. The crystallization of a snowflake is made with
wonderful exactness, in agreement with mathematical
law. Is this formation of snow-crystal manufactured
with purposive will, by -a personal being ? A mathe
matician knows that the regularity of forms necessarily
depends upon the laws of form, upon the same in
trinsic order which is present in the multiplication
table; it depends upon the arithmetical relations among
the numbers.
Is a personal intelligence necessary for creating
the laws that produce the harmony of arithmetical
proportions ? Is a personal intelligence necessary for
making the angles of equilateral triangles equal ? Cer
tainly it is not.
Suppose that some substance crystallizes at a given
angle. Necessarily it will form regular figures shaped
according to some special plan.
Suppose again that certain cells of organized sub
stance, plant-cells or animal-cells, perform special
functions, will they not in their growth exhibit a cer
tain plan in conformity to their nature not otherwise
than a crystal ? They will, or rather they must ; or
can we believe that the interference of personal in
telligence is necessary to apply the plan to the growth
of organized substance? Organization is so to say
crystallization of living substance ; it is growth in con
formity to law.
The growth of a child takes place unconsciously,

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 85
not otherwise than the growth of a flower. The con
sciousness developed in the former is the product,
not the condition of its development ; it is the product
of organization. The consciousness of man is the
highest kind of systematic co-ordination of feeling that
we know of, and therefore we say that he is endowed
with intelligence. Man is a person.
Personality is not the annihilation of the mechan
ical law ; yet through the introduction of feeling the
mechanical law that governs the changes and innumer
able adaptations of a person, becomes so complex that
it at first sight appears to us as an annihilation of the
mechanical law.
The hypothesis of a personal intelligence is not
needed to explain either the design of nature, or the
plan of evolution, or the gradual development of na
tions and individuals, which processes are all in rigid
conformity to law. At the bottom of all cosmic order
lies the order of mathematics, the law that twice two
is always four.
Personal interference is so little necessary to pro
duce regularity according to some design with any
exactness, that it would even make it all but im
possible. If man desires the execution of some work
with minute exactness, he has to invent a machine to
do the work. A machine performs its work with rigid
immutability. And a machine, what is it but an unfeel
ing and an unconscious, — a mechanical, — intelligence?
Personality, what is it but the power of constantly
renewed adaptation? Personality, therefore means
mutability. Suppose a book were written and not printed ; sup
pose it were produced by the conscious intelligence of
a personal being, and not mechanically by a machine ;

86 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
could we expect the same minute exactness ? As
suredly not. It would be witchery to adapt anything
in close and rigid conformity to law, without machine
like unconscious intelligence.
Suppose that the planets were run by some per
sonal being ; that they were constantly watched with
conscious wisdom and regulated by purposive adjust
ment ; we could not trust our safety a moment on this
planet. Mechanical regularity in minutest details is
all but impossible in the work of personal intelligence.
* *
A machine has no feeling and possesses no con
scious intelligence ; yet a machine must have been in
vented by a conscious and premeditating intelligence.
A machine proves the presence of a designing person
somewhere. And the question arises : Could not the
Cosmos be considered as a machine invented by a great
and divine person, designed for some preconceived
end ?
Even though there were no objections to this rather
child-like and antiquated anthropomorphism, this con
ception of things would be of no use towards explain
ing the cosmic order. A machine is not invented by
an inventor as a fairy-tale is conceived by a poet. A
machine can work only if it conforms to that imper
sonal intelligence which we call mathematical neces
sity. It is the latter that makes the machine useful,
and it is the latter that has to be explained.
If God made the world as an inventor makes a ma
chine, he had to obey the laws of nature and to adapt
his creations to the formulas of mathematics. In that
case, however, the Creator would not be the omnipo
tent and supreme God; there would still be an imper
sonal Deity above him. In that case the Creator would

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 87
be no less subject to the cosmic order than we poor
mortals are.
Show me by any convincing argument that the
cosmic order represented in so simple a statement as
"twice two is four" had to be created arbitrarily by
some conscious intelligence, and I shall willingly and
without hesitation return to the anthropomorphic be
lief in a personal God — a belief which was so dear to
me in my early youth. Yet so long as the cosmic or
der must be recognized as uncreated and uncreatable,
as omnipresent and eternal, as omnipotent and irref
ragable, we must consider the worship of a personal
God as pure idolatry. * *
But this solution of the problem — is it not dreary
atheism ? It is not, or it is — according to our ability
to receive the message of the necessity, the irrefraga-
bility of the Formal Law.
Our theologians maintain that the order of the
cosmos proves the existence of a deity. I maintain
that it does more : The order of the Cosmos is itself
divine. It does not prove that there is a God outside
the universe who made the cosmic order ; it proves the
presence of a God inside.
Is the order of the Cosmos void of intelligence ? It
is without feeling, but surely not without plan or de
sign. The laws of nature represent design ; they are
embodied design. The law of gravitation, for in
stance, does not act with consciousness, yet it rep
resents order. It describes the regularity of the fall
of a stone as well as of all the motions of the heavenly
bodies in their wonderful order.
The immutability of the cosmic order disproves
a supernatural God, but it proves an immanent God.

88 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
And this God cannot be a person. He is more than
a person. God is called in the Old Testament the
Eternal, he is represented as immutable. Can a per
son be immutable ? Is not personality embodied mu
tability, is it not adaptability to circumstances ? The
divine order of the Cosmos as represented in Natural
Laws stands above all mutability — unchangeable, in-
adaptable, eternal. * *
This God, the immutability of impersonator rather
of superpersonal intelligence, is the condition of science
and the basis of ethics. If natural laws were personal
inventions which could be changed at the pleasure of
their inventor, science would become impossible, and
morality would become an illusion. What is morality
but our effort to conform to the order of nature, and
above all, to the laws that shape society ?
This impersonal intelligence is higher than person
al intelligence, as much so as the laws of a country are
infinitely higher and holier than all its citizens, its
princes and kings not excepted. There is a rule in
monarchies that the sovereign stands above the law.
Is it necessary to explain that this idea is a farce, an
illusion, a felony against the sanctity of the law ? Sim
ilarly, the idea of a God, fashioned according to the
personality of man, is a blasphemy of the higher God,
of that God who alone is God, of the Deity that pass-
eth all understanding, i. <?., all conscious reasoning and
personal wisdom.
The worship of a personal God is the last remnant
of paganism. Our religious convictions can and will
not be purified until we apperceive a glimpse of the
grandeur of a higher view.
There is a superhuman Deity, whose glory the

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 89
heavens declare, and the firmament showeth his handi
work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night un
to night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor
language where their voice is not heard. The whole
Cosmos is permeated by eternal and divine law, by in
telligence, by design.
The whole world is a glorious revelation of its im
manent God. Yet this revelation is concentrated in
man's personality. He possesses, not only a conscious
intelligence reflecting in his soul the divinity of the
All, but also the aspiration of moral ideals inspiring
him to conform to the cosmic order that rules supreme
from Eternity to Eternity.

THE CONCEPTIONS OF GOD.

Among the conceptions of God there are three
which have been and are still the most prevalent and
powerful ; these three are Theism, Pantheism, and
Atheism. The Theist anthropomorphises that power which
he recognises as the authority of moral conduct, and
looks upon it as a stern ruler or a kind father. If evils
appear as the consequence of vice, he says : These are
God's visitations ! And he thinks of God as teaching
his creatures his will and enforcing his obedience, not
by making the contrary absolutely impossible, but like
a wise educator raising children in liberty, allowing
them to make mistakes so as to learn by their own
experience. Theism is not wrong if we keep before us the fact
that the personality of God is an allegory ; and it
must be granted that it is the best allegory we can
discover. There is a world-order manifesting itself
to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. We
have to conform to it and there is no escape from it.
It is omnipresent, like all natural laws ; like gravita
tion it is everywhere, it is bound up in all existence,
being that something that encompasseth all our life.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 91
In describing this omnipresence of God, the
psalmist says :
Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee
from thy presence ?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : if I make my bed
in hell, behold thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermoi-t
parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall
hold me.
There has been made, so long as Christianity ex
ists and even longer, a strong opposition to the idea
that God is, like man, an individual being, having at
different times different passions and desires. The
Old Testament contains the well-known passage :
" God is not a man that he should lie ; neither the son
of man that he should repent."
God is as little a person as are the ideas of Good
ness, Beauty, and Truth ; and the passages of the Bi
ble in which God is described as wroth or repenting,
or as being subject to any emotion or sentiment of a
human character, have been understood since they
were written, by rabbis no less than by the fathers of
the Church, in an allegorical sense, which was not
only appropriate because of the strength and express
iveness of the simile, but because it was also the lan
guage of the time. To speak or think of spiritual things
otherwise than in the habits of the times would be
equivalent to expecting that the author of Genesis
should have known Darwin's origin of the species and
all the details of natural history when he described in
great poetical outlines the formation of the world and
the origin of man out of the dust of the earth.
The dogmatic view that God is a person and must
be considered as a person became finally established

92 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
as the orthodox view of the Church during the second
and third century after Christ, and in this way all
other views were branded as atheism. But who gave to
a few narrow-minded bishops and to the theologians of
a special school the right to impose this interpretation
of the Bible upon all mankind ? Who gave the right
to Athanasius to pronounce as an oecumenical con
fession of faith the Quicunque vult salvus esse, i. e.
" No one can be saved except he believe as is here
prescribed." Living the truth can save alone. But
the truth cannot be pronounced on the motion of a
bishop by the majority decision of an ecclesiastic
council. The truth must be searched for, it must be
established by careful observation and critique, it
must be proved.
We are willing to recognise the truth wherever
we find it, even in the errors of the past ; we will pa
tiently winnow all opinions and creeds, lest we throw
away the wheat together with the useless chaff. But
with all that, we do not intend to compromise with
superstitions sanctified by traditions. If Athanasius's
view of God and other religious conceptions are to be
regarded as infallible truth too sacred for criticism and
required to be accepted blindly, we shall openly and
squarely side with atheism and denounce the belief in
God as a superstition.
Atheism is right in the face of dogma and dog
matic theism. There is no person ruling the world ;
all the processes of nature take place with an intrinsic
necessity according to the life that is in everything
that exists. The whole world is one great cosmos
pervaded by unalterable law.
But was the idea of God not something more than
a belief in a huge person? Is it possible that an

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. g3
enormous error swayed the intellectual development
of humanity for millenniums? The strength of the
God idea was not its error but its truth, and its truth
is contained in the fact, that in spite of the advantages
which sin, malevolence, iniquity, falsehood, and disre
gard of the rights of others seem to bring the evil-doer,
humanity still believed in the final victory of justice
and the triumph of truth. And this one feature in
the idea of God was predominant whenever and wher
ever it exercised a moral influence over the minds of
men. It gave them strength in temptation,, hope in
affliction, and confidence in tribulation. And shall we
relinquish this treasure because it was alloyed with
error? Shall we drop with the personality of God all
the moral truth which the idea contains ?
Schiller says :
" One God exists, one holy will,
While fickle man may waver.
Above time and space there liveth still
The highest idea forever."
If, then, God is no person, if God is consid
ered as the All in All, if Nature alone is God, is not
the latter view nearer the truth than theism ? This
view which identifies God and the world is called
Pantheism, and it cannot be denied that in the face
of the theistic view, pantheism is a deeper and more
correct conception of God. Nevertheless, Pantheism
has also its blind side, and most of its defenders are
entangled in gross errors.
It is true that the idea of a personal God outside of
the world and nature is not tenable ; yet the idea of
God and the idea of nature are not identical. God is
nature in so far only as nature serves us as a regulative
principle for our actions. God is the cosmos in so far
only as its laws represent the ultimate authority of

94 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
moral conduct. God is not the heat of the sun, not
the rain that descends from the clouds; he is not the
blossom of the tree, nor the ear of wheat in the field.
The idea of God is a special abstraction, different from
other abstractions, and it should not be confounded
with them. Pantheism recognising the truth that there
is no God outside of the universe, preposterously con
founds God and the universe and thus leads to the
confusion of a God-Nature, in which there is no wrong,
no sin, no evil.
It has been said, and it is true, that the weakness
of Pantheism is its inability to explain the evil of the
world. If the All is in every respect absolutely iden
tical with God, there is no evil : if everything is a part
of God, its existence whatever it be, even the exist
ence of evil, is sanctified by being divine. There
would be no wrong, but there would be no right either.
The morally bad would disappear together with that
which is morally good, and the whole would appear as
an absolutely indifferent and meaningless play of phys
ical forces.
Does this state of things really represent life as it
is? Are there no ideals, no aspirations? Is there no
direction, no goal, no aim in the evolution of life and
in the development of mankind? Surely there is
good and bad, there is right and wrong, there is health
and sickness, there is prosperity and ruin, evolution
and dissolution, building up and breaking down ; there
is heaven and hell in human hearts, there is God — and
the devil. The world as it is is possible only in these
contraries, in these oppositions, and its life is a con
stant struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman.
It is a vain dream to think of a world which is good
throughout. We can as little think of light that casts

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 95
no shadow as of "good" without being the resistance
to "evil," or without standing in a contrast to "bad."
Christ said :
"Woe unto the world because of offences ! For it must needs
be that offences come ; but woe to that man by whom the offence
cometh." The Talmud contains a legend that the rabbis had
once succeeded in catching the devil and keeping him
confined, when lo ! the whole world came to a stand
still. Everybody went to sleep and all life ceased.
Suppose it were possible that a world existed without
any evil, it would be a world without any opposites,
it would be a world of indifferent homogeneity, with
out aim, without direction, without interests. If there
were at all in an absolutely good world a play of forces
evolution would be as good as dissolution, progress
would be equivalent to retrogression, and the cosmos
would be a machine which might be turned backward
just as well as forward.
Could you have a thermometer which indicates the
heat only and not the cold at the same time ? Good
and evil are relations which are deeply founded in the
nature of things. These relations arise through the
very complications of life. To identify God and the
All, to understand by God the upward direction just
as much as the downward direction of evolution, is the
same mistake as to identify the concepts heat and tem
perature. It is true that the same degree of the ther
mometer may now be perceived as heat and now as
cold. Heat and cold are not two things mixed in our
temperature ; they are one. So are good and evil.
Nevertheless there is a difference in the rising and the
failing of the thermometer. There is a difference of
heat and cold. This difference isrelative and it dis-

96 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
appears as soon as we leave the sphere of relations
and consider either a single moment in its unrelated
isolation or the total whole in its absolute entirety. A
single act in my life if it remained unrelated and iso
lated could be called neither good nor evil. There is
no absolute evil ; nor is there any absolute cold. An
isolated act would be like a certain position of the
thermometer of which we do not know whether it rep
resents a rise or a fall. It becomes hot or cold not
until it is referred to another state of temperature.
And there is no sense either in speaking of the morality
or immorality of the All in its absolute totality.
That which appears to us from our standpoint as evil
— and I do not deny that, considered in this relation, it
is actually and undeniably evil — appears if considered
in the whole as a part of the total development of uni
versal life, as a transitional and a necessary phase
only. It is a partial breakdown, but it is no absolute
destruction. The evil in the world is comparable to the negative
magnitudes and quantities in arithmetic. There are
no negative things in the world ; but there are nega
tive magnitudes in arithmetic. They represent a con
trary direction to that which has been posited. The
minus is a positive operation, but this operation is
employed to reverse a plus of equal magnitude. The
plus and minus operations have sense and meaning
only if considered in their mutual relation. This re
lation being neglected we have only single operations
or the results of operations, but neither positive nor
negative magnitudes. If the impossibility could be
thought, that there are no interconnections among the
parts of the whole cosmos, we should have neither
bad nor good, but only isolated actual existences.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 97
Consider the whole world as a whole and destruc
tion disappears as much as new creations. There are,
so far as we can see, only actual existences which
move onward somehow in some direction. That which
appears to us as a dissolution, as a destruction, is in the
motion of the whole a mere preparation for a new gen
eration. The breakdown of a solar system must appear
only as an evil, as a negative operation in comparison
to the positive operation of a building up. But in the
entire cosmic life it will most likely be the indispen
sable preliminary phase of the construction of a new
world. In the entire cosmic life, there is no evil, there
is the progress of formation on the one hand and there
is on the other hand the dissolution of those combina
tions which have become unfit for a continued exist
ence. They must be dissolved in order to be prepared
for new formations; and thus their dissolution may
be considered as a blessing, as much as the curses
that rest upon sin, if viewed as integral parts of the
whole world-order, are not inflictions; they are as much
blessings as the gains that accompany noble deeds.
In this sense we may say that God is everywhere
in nature, he is in evolution, he is in dissolution, he
will be found in the storm; he will be found in the
calm. He lives in the bliss of good aspirations and in
the visitations that follow evil actions. He lives in
the growth of life and in its decay. God is not the
storm, he is not the calm, he is not the decay of life,
he is not dissolution. He is not the bliss of virtue,
nor is he the curse of sin. But he is in them all.
In contradistinction to Theism, Atheism, and espe
cially to Pantheism, we call this conception of God
Entheism. God is the indestructible sursum, which ensouls

98 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
everything that exists, which constitutes the direction
of evolution and the growth of life, which is the truth
in the empire of spiritual existence. It is an actu
ality, no less than matter and energy ; and indeed
like these two, which represent as it were God's re
ality as well as his power and omnipotence, it cannot
be lost in all the changes that take place in the con
stant formation, dissolution, and re-formation of solar
systems. It is eternal, and it is in him we live and
and move and have our being.

IS GOD A MIND?

We read in the first chapter of Genesis :
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness : and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing lhat creepeth upon the earth.
" So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
created he him.1'
These verses are significant. They have a scien
tific meaning. To us God is that power to which we
have to conform ; he has produced man such as he is,
that is as the thinking being that aspires to ever higher
and nobler ideals, to us accordingly the view that man
is created in the image of God becomes self-evident
and almost tautological. But primitive thinkers start
ing from the supposition that man is a likeness of God
were led to the strange error that God in his turn must
be a likeness of man. Thus arose all the anthropo
morphic conceptions of God.
That power which produced man — let us at present
call it "nature" so as to avoid the old confusion of
anthropomorphism — cannot have been matter and
nothing but matter, it cannot have been force or energy
and nothing but force, it cannot have been sentiency
or the conditions of sentiency, and nothing but poten
tial sentiency. Nor can it have been form or a forma-

roo HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
tive principle alone. It cannot have been law and or
der only. It must have been all this together. Matter,
force, sentiency, form, law, and order are only aspects
of nature, they are only abstract ideas representing
some qualities of reality, which alone is the One and
All. And this One and All is not a meaningless chaos,
as it represents itself in minds that are confounded,
but an orderly and living whole bringing forth out of
itself sentient beings in whom its existence is mirrored.
Existence mirrored in minds is not a mere Fata Mor
gana, a beautiful mirage, but it serves the practical
purpose of guidance, to let the children of nature live
in accord with its great mother, to show them the way
of salvation, the gate that leadeth unto life.
When we speak of nature we think as a rule of
certain single phenomena only of this One and All ; we
think of mountains and trees but not so much of man's
mind and his interferences with the rest of nature — ¦
for properly considered man's mind is a part of nature.
When we speak of reality, we think above all of its actu
ality, its efficacy, its immediate presence, but when we
speak of God, we think of it as an authoritative existence,
as our standard of ethics, as the moral law, allegor-
ically represented as our Father, that is, as the power
that created us and guides us still, to which we have
to conform in our ethical aspirations. Nature, Real
ity, God, or whatever other expression we may have
for the One and All of the great Cosmos in its infinite
manifestations and in its eternal being, are all names
only, abstract ideas representing now this and now
that quality of one and the same existence.
Sentient creatures, the children of God, in so far
as they are psychical are called minds. And we ask,
What do we understand by minds ?

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 161
A mind, in brief, is a description of the world in
ideas. " Ideas" means literally " images." The dif
ferent things are represented, and the interaction
among these representations is called thinking.
How ideas originate is a question the solution of
which can only be hinted at in this connection. Mind
can originate only in feeling beings. The feelings of
feeling beings are different according to the different
sense-impressions through and with which they make
their appearance, similar sense-impressions being as
sociated with similar feelings. Thus feelings acquire
meaning. The various causes of the different sense-im
pressions are symbolised in various feelings as well as
in the memory pictures of these various feelings. Ideas
again are symbols representing whole groups of such
feelings as are somehow constantly associated. And
the glorious evolution of the realm of ideas in living
beings is easily explained if we consider its usefulness
as a means of information concerning the surrounding
world. They afford the possibility of orientation and
serve as a guidance for action. With the assistance
of representative images plans of action become pos
sible, and a conception of a better arrangement of this
or that state of things — generally called an ideal — is
of the highest importance to the further development
of life and mind. A growth of mind leads to an in
crease of power. Each acquirement of truth means
an expanse of the dominion of mind in nature.
Minds naturally grow by degrees ; they start with
simple feelings in irritable substance, and in the long
run of millenniums through a preservation of soul-
structures (generally called hereditary transmission)
and, in the higher grades of life, through a direct
transference of mind by means of education they gather

102 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
a rich store of soul-structures, of pictures representing
innumerable objects as well as the subtle relations
among these objects.
Let us now ask whether God can be a mind.
Our answer is decidedly negative. Every mind is a
world of representations, of pictures, of ideas ; and
these ideas, pictures, and representations have a mean
ing. If they are true they represent realities. Now
if there is a God, and we say that there is, God is not
ideality but reality ; lie is not a mental representation
of the actual world, of nature, of the Universe, of the
Cosmos ; he is much more than a mere representa
tion, he is the actual world, nature, the Universe, the
Cosmos itself. He is the One and All, not a part of
it, or a mere picture of it. God is also the picture,
and he is that quality of the world which makes the
picturing in minds possible. God is in the mind, he
reveals himself in the human soul ; he appears in
Truth. But God is not only the truth ; he is infinitely
more than the truth, he is the reality represented in
the truth.
Truth is truth because it is an image shaped unto
the likeness of the original. The human mind is
created as an image of God. Now the theologian
comes and says, Man is like God, man is mind — i. e.,
a world of images or ideas — therefore God must be a
mind. Is this not like saying, This is a picture of
George Washington, it is like George Washington.
Therefore George Washington is a picture ! No !
George Washington is more than a picture ; he is the
original of the picture !
It is often said that man is a finite mind and God
is an infinite mind. But what has either infinitude or
finiteness to do with mind ? Mind, every mind, is in-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 103
finite in its possibilities, there is no limit to its growth,
there is no boundary which it cannot reach and tran
scend. But at any special state, as at present or at
any moment in the future, mind is and always will" be
something definite. Consider that all mental repre
sentations are possible only through limitation. Thus
vision is possible only through focusing the eyes upon
one spot. Comprehension in mental pictures, is a
focusing of the mind's attention upon one thing or one
feature of things. Accordingly minds in this sense are
always finite, always limited. Every mind is always
the mind of a concrete being and the contents of 'every
mind are also of a concrete kind. Think of infinite
pictures, or infinite ideas ! What a meaningless com
bination of words ! If God, the One and All, is infinite
indeed, he certainly cannot be a mind.
We might and some people indeed do -understand
by mind the nature of mind, mentality. The nature
of mind may be found in sentiency or in that quality
of nature which produces sentiency— -we call it poten
tial sentiency. Or it may be found in the order pre
vailing among the mental representations, which order
is representative of the objective world-order, of the
cosmic law and the rationality of the universe as rep
resented in cosmic laws. Very well. If " mind " means
the nature of mind, then certainly God is mind, but
he is not a mind.
If God were a mind, it were necessary for him to
have ideas. Otherwise his mind would represent
without representations and symbolise without sym
bols. He would have to think his ideas consecutively
as we do and form different associations at a time.
Yet, what would mental representations avail him ?
He need not think, he need not speak to himself

io4 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
in order to make up his mind to act in this or that
way. He simply acts. He in his all-sufficiency is al
ways himself and thus he is consistent with himself.
In the catechism this truth is mythologically ex
pressed in the idea of omniscience. Nature, as it were,
obeys the law everywhere. The falling stone falls as
if it knew the law of gravitation and had correctly
computed the present case. Nature need not know
the law in order to obey it. She need not employ the
symbols of mental representation to remain consistent
with herself. She is herself everywhere, and the laws
of nature are a part and feature of nature. We say,
Nature is as it were omniscient. Actually nature is
more than omniscient. As omniscient, she might com
municate information about all things of herself to her
self. This communication, however, is so direct, she
being herself everywhere, that its means, i. e. the sym
bols, which are the crutches of communication, dis
appear into zero. The communication is received
before it is pronounced.
That God should be the One and All, and at the
same time a mind, would be something like saying,
that a man in order to be a man and himself, should
always have his passport or his picture in his pocket.
No ! If we speak of the man, we mean the man and
not his picture. If we speak of God, we mean the
All-Being and not a mind, we mean the original and
not the copy, we mean the creator and not the creature.
Is it Atheism to deny that God is a mind ? If you
understand by God that he is a person like ourselves,
it certainly is Atheism. But if the conception of God
as a mind and a person were the only allowable God-
idea, then theism would be paganism. What is pagan
ism but the personification of parts of nature or nature

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 105
as a whole and the acting accordingly. Pagans try to
bend the course of nature and natural laws not by their
own efforts and honest work, but by prayers and sacri
fices — as if God or the Gods were human beings like
ourselves influenced by flatteries and bribable by gifts !
Christ has done away with the vain repetitions as do
the heathens, but the Christians still cling to Pagan
customs, pagan rites and a pagan conception of God.
People who have given little thought to the sub
ject might think, that if God is not a mind, it is as
good as if he did not exist. Then he would only be
brute force and crude matter. But this is a mistaken
conception of God. The materialist runs to the other
extreme. God is not mere force and God is not crude
matter. How grand and divine this wonderful All-
Being is, can only be learned from its manifestations.
The heavens declare the glory of God and the firma
ment showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth
speech and night unto night showeth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language where their voice is
not heard. Yet grander than all the starry heavens
in their glorious concert is the soul of man, the mind
that yearns for truth, the spirit that understands, and
aspires to achieve, the work of truth.
The All, the Cosmos, God, or by whatever name
we may call the great whole of which we are parts and
phenomena, is not a heap of material atoms nor a
chaos of blind forces. The most characteristic feature
of his being is order and law. And this order and law
is called in the New Testament Logos — i. e. rationality,
reason, logical consistency. God would be no God
without the logos. This Logos is a constitutional part
of God. God is not a mind, but he is mind, he is
logos, and he appears in mind. God is not truth, but

io6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
he appears in truth. This is the revelation which
Christianity has brought into the world.
Says St. John : " In the beginning, [that means
from eternity] was the Logos and the Logos was with
God and the Logos was God. All things were made
by him and without him was not anything made that
was made. . . . And the Logos was made flesh."
This last sentence is the kernel of Christianity.
The divinity of the world appears in humanity, and
and true humanity embodies all that which we call
divine. The son of man is the child of God and the
ideal of humanity is the God man. God is not a mind,
but nevertheless God is mind, and when we come to
ask, where is the Father, Christ answers very posi
tively and unmistakably "I and the Father are one."
Those who believe in God as being a mind are
more pagan than they are aware of. It may be said
that God is mind, but not a mind. Suppose he were
a mind, is that not actually polytheism only with the
number of Gods reduced to the singular? Christ does
not say, God is a spirit, but "God is spirit." Yet the
pagan conception of God has been so influential that
the translator has inserted that little word which
changes a most radical, a philosophical and a monistic
idea into the very same superstitions against which
Christ had protested so vigorously.
Science is not dangerous to religion, and clear
thought is not against the teachings of Christ. Science
is dangerous to superstitions and clear thought is in
compatible with many dogmas and conceptions which
are upheld at present by the Christian churches. The
dogmatist rightly shuns the light of science, but the
religious man, that is, he who wants truth unadulter
ated and is ready to conform to truth, to live it and to

Homilies of science. 107
act according to his best knowledge of truth, he will
not lose his religion but purify it through thought and
scientific exactness of thought.
Says Lord Bacon :
"A little philosophy inclineth Man's mind to atheism, but
depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."
Bacon's view of God is not clear and thus this fa
mous saying of his also lacks lucidity. We understand
it and quote it in the sense, that a little philosophy is
sufficient to make apparent the contradictions and ab
surdities contained in the traditional idea of God.
But a deeper insight will reveal the profound truth
that is contained therein. Depth in philosophy will
help us to purify the fundamental conceptions of re
ligious thought, above all the idea of God. When we
maintain that God is not a mind, we do not deny that
he is mind, taking mind in the sense of the Greek
"logos"; and at any rate he is greater than the
greatest human or other mind can be, for he is the re
ality itself of which a mind is only an image, a sym
bol, and a representation.

IS THE INFINITE A RELIGIOUS IDEA?

Prof. Max Mueller's view of religion is based on
the conception of the infinite. His idea of God is the
infinite behind the finite. He says :
"Convince the human understanding that there can be acts
without agents, that there can be a limit without something be
yond, that there can be a finite without a non-finite, and you have
proved that there is no God." ,.
Is this not going rather too far ? Does the agent
supposed to be behind the processes of nature con
stitute nature's divinity? Prof. Max Muller's view
of God is scientific as well as radical, but it makes of
religion a metaphysical speculation ; it identifies it
with the conception of an hypothetic something be
hind nature of which we really know nothing. It ap
pears very desirable to free religion from this metaphys
ical element and build it upon the positive facts of our
experience which will always remain its safest founda
tion. Positivism knows of no agent behind the natural
phenomena ; it dispenses also with the agent behind
the psychical processes of soul-life. Positivism is an
economy of thought. Instead of viewing acts as mo
tions produced by the pressure of an agent behind
them, we think the act and agent together as one. The
agent is in, not behind the act. The act is the agent
itself.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 109
Positivism is commonly represented as atheism just
as much as the view of the orthodox Oxford Professor
would have been decried as atheism some ten or
twenty years ago. And I grant that Positivism is not
Theism, if Theism means the belief in a personal God
who being shaped into the image of man, is conceived
as an individual being, as a great world-ego swayed
by considerations and even by passions and emotions,
thinking now of this now of that thought, and regulat
ing the affairs of the universe as it pleases him like a
powerful monarch.
There is nothing more or less divine in the infinite
than in any other mathematical, logical, or scientific
idea. The infinite has one advantage only — if it be
an advantage — over other ideas ; its nature is less
understood. But if there were anything divine in
the conception of the infinite, why do we not use such
formulas a \ or tangent 90 degrees, or simply the sign
00 as holy emblems in our churches ?
Prof. Max Miiller must have felt this insufficiency
of the idea of infinitude as the basis of religion. At
least he has on another occasion modified his defini
tion. In another article of his,* Prof. Max Miiller
says :
" It may be said in fact it has been said, that the definition
of religion which I laid down is too narrow and too arbitrary.
I thought it right to modify my first definition of religion as ' the
perception of the Infinite,' by narrowing that perception to ' such
. manifestations as are able to influence the moral character of man.
I do not deny that in the beginning the perception of the Infinite
had often very little to do with moral ideas, and I am quite aware
that many religions enjoin what is either not moral or even im
moral. But though there are perceptions of the Infinite uncon-
* Fire- Worship and Mythology in their Relation to Religion, {The Open
Court, page 2322, No. 146, Vol, IV. — 16).

tio HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
nected as yet with moral ideas, I doubt whether they should be
called religious till they assume a moral influence. On this point
there may be difference of opinion, but every one may claim the
right of his own opinion."
The infinite, it appears to me, is not at all a spe
cially religious idea, and it will be very difficult to
prove how the idea of the infinite can ever assume a
moral influence, except in a very limited sphere. The
powers of nature in their overwhelming influence upon
the fate of man in a beneficent and evil way, the light
of the sun, the flashes of the thunderstorm, the joy of
great triumphs, the enthusiasm after extraordinary
successes, our trials and sorrow at the bedside of
our beloved ones, the agonies and anxieties of life, in
one word definite and actual realities have done
much more than the idea of the infinite in the produc
tion of religion. I am aware that Prof. Max Miiller
says : " These finite realities suggest an infinite agent
beyond them." But this is no description of religion ; it
is an interpretation of religious ideas, representing
them in a special phase of development.
The infinite may have produced a religious awe in
a lonely scholar when he pondered over the problems
of its nature and found himself unable to solve them.
And it may have stirred a still deeper religious emo
tion in the mathematical mind who succeeded in solv
ing some of its problems. But the same religious in
fluence must be attributed to any other scientific idea.
Was not Kepler overwhelmed with the grandeur of
the cosmos when he solved the riddle of the mo
tions of the heavenly bodies? Was not his emotion
truly religious, and is there anything infinite in his
formulas? It will be noticeable that the infinite as a properly

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. m
religious idea enjoys a very limited field. The two
greatest religious documents are to my mind the Deca
logue representing the Old Testament and the Lord's
Prayer representing the New Testament ; in neither
can any idea of the infinite be found. It is true that
the Lord's prayer ends with the clause "for thine is
the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever,
Amen." "Forever" I grant, means infinite time. But
it is well known that these words are not genuine with
Christ ; they have been added by the Christians of the
first or second century ; and if they were genuine, how
incidental is the idea of the infinite, how secondary if
compared with the momentous propositions of the
prayer itself ! It appears that religion would not suffer
if the idea of the infinite were entirely dropped from
its definition and Prof. Max. Miiller's additional clause
(i. e. " that which will influence the moral character of
man ") were made its main essence.
The definition of God as the infinite conveys no clear
idea. The popular view of the infinite is very indefi
nite, and its scientific conception is a thought-symbol
for a process never to be finished. The scientific
view of the infinite does not represent a complete and
real thing, but an incomplete and never to be com
pleted function. Suppose that in measuring the world
we arrived at the last star of the farthest milky way
and took our stand between the definite reality behind,
and empty space before us, is there no divinity in the
finite existences we have measured, and is God living
in the nothingness of the infinite space that lies be
yond us unmeasured and immeasurable?
Let us define God as those realities of our expe
rience to which we have to comform ; as those mani
festations of nature which we cannot fashion ; as those

U2 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
laws of cosmic existence which we have to obey ; and
atheism will never again rise to overthrow the proofs
of an existence of God. God is the authority of moral
conduct, and religion is the basis of morality. All ideas
which influence the moral character of man are re
ligious, while dogmas are either religiously indifferent,
as if they represent ideas having no bearing upon
moral conduct, or even deeply irreligious, if they are
productive of immoral habits. And one of the most
immoral church doctrines, not as yet entirely aban
doned by orthodox people, is that man should believe
blindly. It is a sacred religious duty to investigate
the truth most scrupulously. Religion is not belief in
the supernatural as the theologian of the old school
says, nor is it the search for the infinite, as Prof. Max
Miiller says. Religion is much simpler. It is our search
for truth with the aspiration to regulate our conduct
in accord with truth.*
*Prof. F. Max Miiller wrote to the author with reference to the above
criticism of the Infinite as a religious idea: " I thank you for your article on
my fourth Lecture. I quite agree with your objections, and when you see the
whole of the lectures, you will find how carefully I guarded against this mis
apprehension. The Infinite is simply the highest generalisation for all that
ever formed the object of religion. There is no wider term, it is wider even
than Spencer's Unknowable, as I tried to show. But here as elsewhere we
want a katharsis of language, otherwise we shall never have a new phi
losophy. F. Max Mueller."

GOD, FREEDOM, AND IMMORTALITY.

Kant showed in his Critique of Pure Reason that
the ideas Soul, World, and God are 'paralogisms of pure
reason.' We can arrive at these concepts by a logical
fallacy only. We may nevertheless, he declared in his
Critique of Practical Reason, retain these concepts,
because they are of greatest importance for our prac
tical and our moral life. If we act as if we had no
soul, and as if no God existed, we are more likely to
go astray than if we act as if we had an immortal soul
and as if a God existed — a God, a just and omnipo
tent judge, who will reward the good and punish the
evil. Upon the need of morality he builds an ideal world,
the foundations of which are the ideas of Freedom (in
cluding moral responsibility), Immortality, and God.
Being fully conscious of the fact, that these ideas are
not provable, Kant called them " the three postulates
of practical reason."
The conflict between Pure Reason and Practical
Reason proves that in Kant's philosophy traces of Du
alism are preserved which lead him to incompatible
assertions. He boldly and honestly lays down the in
consistency of his philosophy in his four "antinomies,"
or contradictory statements. Popularly expressed, they
are:

114 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

THESIS.
i. The world is lim
ited. 2. The soul is a sim
ple substance, and there
fore immortal.
3. There is moral free
dom distinct from the law
of causality. 4. There is a God.

antithesis.
1. The world is infinite.
2. The soul is a com
pound, and therefore de
structible. 3. There is no freedom,
but all is subject to cau
sality. 4. There is no God.
Kant believes that the arguments to either issue,
the positive or the negative, are of equal weight.
Thesis as well as Antithesis, he declares, can be de
fended or attacked with equal force.
Is it not strange that a great man can fall into so
great an error — an error that is at the same time so
palpable ? Of two statements that are contradictory,
one only can be true. It is impossible that both are
right, or that the arguments of either are correct. Yet
it is possible that both are wrong, that the formula
tion of the dilemma is radically incorrect, — and is such
the case with Kant's antinomies.
We resolve the four antinomies into the following
statements, which cannot be said to be contradictory.
1. Space (which is no object, no palpable thing, but
merely the possibility of motion in every direction) is
infinite. Yet the world, although immeasurable to us
consists of a definite amount of matter and energy
which can neither increase nor decrease.
2. The soul is a compound of highest complexity
and is therefore destructible; but being a compound of a
special form, it can be broken and built again. When
built again, it can be improved. Souls of a special
kind can be formed, and ever nobler ideas can be im-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 115
planted into souls. Thus the soul — a special compound
of living thoughts, living in the organized brain-sub
stance of bodily beings as real nerve-structures — can
continue to exist even beyond the death of the single
individual ; it can be propagated, transplanted, and
evolved. And to accomplish this is the main object
of human institutions. There is no immortality of the
ego beyond the clouds, but there is a continuance of
soul-life in this world. The continuance and higher
development of soul-life is of vital importance, and the
duties of our present lives must be performed, not to
please or benefit ourselves but in a spirit such as to
enhance the life of the race to come. We must live
so that our soul shall continue to live and to evolve in
future generations.
3. Freedom and necessity are not incompatible;*
but freedom and compulsion are contradictions. If a
man is compelled by the authorities of the law to observe
the law he cannot be said to be free. But if the law —
the good will to live according to the law and the
honest intention to act with righteousness — is a part
of the man and a feature of his character, he is free
while observing the law. The actions of a moral man
are necessarily moral ; they are the necessary outcome
of his free will.
4. The anthropomorphic idea of God as a transcend
ent personality is undoubtedly a paralogism of pure rea
son ; but the conception of an immanent God as the
cosmical law to which we have to conform in order to
live and to continue to live in future generations is no
paralogism, no logical fallacy. Such a conception of
God is at variance neither with reason nor experience,
and there is no atheist who could not be converted to
*See the writer's "Fundamental Problems," pp. 191-196.

n6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
it by rational argument and by a study of nature. This
God is not the personified weakness of a benevolent
father — the ideal of the deists who would fain make
him as sentimental and feeble as they were them
selves. This God is the stern severity of order and
law — irrefragable and immutable as are all natural
laws, and yet at the same time as reliable and as grand,
as sure and eternal — visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children unto the third and -fourth genera
tion, and showing mercy unto the thousands of those
that keep his commandments.
We thus have the three postulates of Kant again,
although in another shape. We have no transcenden
tal God, no illusory ghost-immortality, no freedom that
stands in contradiction to the law of causation. But
we have the immanent God of a moral law in nature;
we have the immanent immortality of a continuance
of our soul-life beyond death and the moral freedom
of responsibility for our actions. The errors that were
attached to these ideas are done away with, but their
ethical value remains unimpaired. They have ceased
to be postulates and have become truths — for now
they are no longer paralogisms, they are free from
contradictions ; they are real, because they represent
certain facts of reality which can be verified by expe
rience.

PROMETHEUS AND THE FATE OF ZEUS.

The Greeks possessed an old myth which in phil
osophical depth somewhat resembles the Teutonic
Faust. The story of Prometheus is told in different
versions by Hesiod in his "Theogony" (511 et seqq.)
and in his "Works and Days" ^48 et seqq.). Aeschy
lus, the first of the three great Athenian dramatists,
gave in his great trilogy of the Fire-bringer Prome
theus, the Bound Prometheus, and the Liberated
Prometheus a third and undoubtedly the best, the
most philosophical, and the profoundest version of the
legend. And since these three great dramas exist only
in fragments which bear witness to the grandeur of
the Greek poet's thought, this greatest of all ideas,
that of aspiring and conquering man — conquering
through forethought — still awaits a great poet to give
it a modern form. As Goethe created the final con
ception of the Faust-myth, so the poet of the future,
perhaps still unborn, will let us have the final concep
tion of the Prometheus legend.
Prometheus is the son of Themis, and Themis is the
Goddess of law. Prometheus" with the help of the
eternal laws of existence has acquired the faculty of
forethought. Prometheus means the man who thinks
in advance.

1 1 8 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Prometheus had a brother and his name was Epi-
metheus, that is the man who thinks afterwards, when
it is too late. There is a story about an old Gotham
magistrate who had very wise thoughts, but they did
not come to him until the session was over and all the
foolish motions of the fathers of the town had passed.
His best thoughts came when he walked down stairs
in the city hall. This same kind of wisdom, the wis
dom of the staircase, was the wisdom of Epimetheus,
and thus the two brothers were very unlike each
other. In those days Zeus kept the fire for himself ; he
allowed the sun to shine upon the earth and when he
grew angry he threw down his thunderbolts upon oaks
and mountain-tops. But he was envious and feared
that man might become too powerful. Prometheus
foresaw the great advantages which the usage of fire
would have for mankind. So he stole the fire from the
heavens and brought it to the people on earth, teaching
them how to build a hearth and to use it wisely. But
Zeus punished Prometheus severely for his theft, he
chained him to a rock and had an eagle swoop down
upon him daily to devour his liver which always grew
again during the night. Prometheus was afterwards
liberated by the skill and courage of another daring
man — by Hercules who shot the eagle and rescued the
sufferer. Why did Zeus not kill Prometheus ? First we are
told that Prometheus was immortal. But there is
another reason still. Prometheus knew a secret which
Zeus did not foresee, •although it foreboded evil to the
father of the gods. This secret, as we can surmise
for several reasons, consisted according to the old
mythological tradition in this : Zeus loved a goddess ;

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 119
her name was Thetis, and it was written in the books
of fate that the son of Thetis should be greater, in
finitely greater, than his father. According to the
version of Aeschylus, Zeus became reconciled with
Prometheus on the condition that he should reveal
the fata] secret to him so that he might protect him
self against the imminent evil. And we are told that
Zeus resigned his love and ordered Thetis to be
married to a mortal man whose name was Peleus, and
the son of Peleus was the greatest hero of Greek an
tiquity, the noble, the brave, the proud Achilles.
This is the version of Aeschylus, but there is an
other version still left. That is the version of the poet
of the future. Aeschylus believes that Zeus was saved.
Zeus being reconciled with Prometheus knew of the
danger and evaded it. Yet we now know, that he
could not evade it. Let a god have a son and the son
will be greater than the god, even though the son of
God may call himself the son of man. Says Goethe :
"The son shall be greater than the father," — that is
the law of evolution, the law of life, the law of pro
gress. We now know that Zeus was actually de
throned by a greater God than himself and this greater
God was the son of man — the aspiring, th* suffering,
the conquering son of man.
Zeus is dead, but Prometheus is still living. Who
is Zeus and where is Zeus ? Zeus is the phantom-god
of pagan antiquity. Zeus is a personification of the
Divine in nature, he is a grand picture of God, but he
is not God himself. If we expect that the picture we
have made of God is God himself, if we imagine him
to be a mind like ourselves, we shall fall into the same
errors and pass through the same disappointments as
did Prometheus. Says Goethe's Prometheus :

I20 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
" While yet a child
And ignorant of life,
I turned my wandering gaze
Up toward the sun, as if above
There were an ear to hear my wailings
A heart like mine
To feel compassion for distress."
It was most likely necessary that Prometheus should
pass through his errors to arrive at truth, it was indis
pensable to brave the evils of life and to undergo
severe sufferings in order to conquer. The errors as
well as the sufferings, the very evils of life are good in
so far as they help man to struggle and to progress.
But in order to gain the victory, Prometheus ought to
know that he must fight himself ; he cannot rely upon
the help of his phantom-god — of a Zeus above the
clouds. The real God of nature is deaf to the prayers
of those who pray in the hope that he will do the work
for them.
There is more divinity in Prometheus than in Zeus.
The God of the present time is the son of man and his
symbol is the cross, which means that the way of suf
fering is the way of salvation, struggle is the condition
of victory, the path of toil only is the road to a higher
existence, the narrow gate leadeth unto life. The
Zeus- idea qf God is doomed and an infinitely greater,
because truer, idea of God is dawning upon mankind.
There is truth in mythology and there is a meaning in
parables, yet the parable is told for the sake of its
meaning and the truth is greater than mythology. Let
us not be satisfied with mythology, but let us look out
tor the truth.

ENTER INTO NIRVANA.

THE RELIGION OF A FORERUNNER OF CHRIST.

The religion of Buddha hinges upon the two ideas
Sansara and Nirvana.
Sansara is the bustle of the world ; it is full not
only of vanity, but also of pain and misery ; it consists
of the many little trivialities that makejup life. It is
the pursuit of happiness ; it is hunting for a shadow
which the more eagerly it is pursued the quicker it
flies. The worldling lives in Sansara. He imagines he
proceeds onward in a straight line, yet he moves in a
narrow circle without being aware of it. He hastens
from desire to pleasure, from pleasure to satiety and
thence back to desire.
The worldling eagerly tastes the pleasure, and if
he can he tastes it to the last, he intoxicates himself
with it, only to find out that it was not what he had
hoped for. Pleasure if tasted to the last becomes
stale ; it becomes staler than its symbol, the nectar of
the grape that has been left in the glasses of topers
after a night's carousal.
What is the result of a life in Sansara ? Man's feet
will become sore and his heart will be full of disap
pointment. The Buddhist says: The circular path of
the Sansara is strewn all over with fiery coals.

122 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE'
Desire burns like a flame and satiety fills the soul
with disgust. Enjoyment, however, is the oscillation
between both. Desire is want ; it is parching thirst and
pinching hunger. It is destitution, poverty, dearth.
Satiety, on the other hand, is not at all a preferable
state. It is tedious and wearisome monotony ; it is life
without a purpose. The fulfilment of want means an
emptiness of aspirations, it produces the nausea of
maudlin misery, and the absence of desire is felt as
an actual torture. A longing rises in the heart for the
thirst of an unsatisfied desire and thus the pendulum
swings back to the place from whence it came.
And happiness ! What is the happiness of a world
ling ? It is merely an imaginary line between both
extremes. TJie pendulum that swings to" a certain
height on the one side will necessarily reach exactly
the same height on the other. It does not come to
rest in the middle. There is no escape from this
law, and if a man of the world be prudent he will
moderate the oscillations so as to diminish the misery.
Not going to the highest pitch of desire, he will not
be obliged to drain the cup of myrrh to the lees.
Why does mankind continue to move in the circu
lar course upon the fiery coals of Sansara ? Because
their eyes are covered with the veil of Maya. Indi
vidual existence, the Buddhists say, is a sham, an il
lusion, a dream woven of the subtle stuff of sensations.
Man imagines that his sensory world is a reality.
Buddhism teaches that the world of the senses is like
a veil upon our eyes.
The veil of Maya does not exactly deceive man ;
on the contrary, the veil is the means by which man
knows whatsoever he knows of truth. If the veil were
not upon man's eyes, he would see nothing, he would

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE 123
be blinded, as was Moses in the presence of God. In
itself the world of sensations is not a deceit, if it is not
made so by being misunderstood.
The error, it is true, is natural. All errors origi
nate according to natural laws ; so did, for instance,
the ideas of the- flatness of the earth and of the ap
parent motions of the heavenly bodies. But if we
err, the fault is not with the facts that lead astray,
but with us. We deceive ourselves by our own error.
The veil of Maya makes us feel our own being in
contradistinction to that of all-existence ; and this
"we," the "I," the ego in its separateness is a self-
deception. We live the dream of a pseudo-existence.
From the growth of the ego rise the self-seeking
yearnings. Egoism begets egotism, and passions are
the fruits of egotism. Passions produce pain and bring
upon man the many evils of his earthly miseries.
Is there no escape from Sansara ? Yes there is !
The illusion that considers individual being as a real
ity can be destroyed. The veil of Maya can be lifted ;
which means, that its nature can be understood. In this
way shall we recognize the error of egoism. There is
no ego in the sense of a separate and individual exist
ence, and with this truth it will dawn upon us that the
regulation of action, as if there were an ego, is a fatal
mistake. This mistake lies at the bottom of all the
wretchedness of Sansara, and we can free ourselves
only, so teaches Buddhism, by enlightenment, by un
derstanding the truth, by abandoning the illusion. He
who has attained enlightenment is a Buddha. Buddha
means the enlightened one.
The highest stage of Buddhist perfection, the
stage where a man becomes a Buddha is called Nir
vana. Nirvana means extinction. As a flame is ex-

124 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
tinguished and ceases to be, so the ignis fatuus of the
ego can also be extinguished. The egoistic error being
extinguished, we enter Nirvana.
Nirvana means peace ; it means liberation from il
lusion, and thus it brings a freedom of desire.
Nirvana is not annihilation. It is the annihilation
of error only ; and in this respect it reveals to him
who lives in Nirvana, the higher life of true reality.
In Buddhistic literature Nirvana is sometimes charac
terized in its negative aspect as an extinction of sham-
existence, and sometimes again in its positive aspect
as the life of truth and immortality.. It is often de
scribed in most positive terms as true happiness, as
a state of perfect bliss, as living in the realm of eter
nity, where there is no pain, no misery, no death.
This appears to be contradictory to its literal meaning,
but it seems to me that it is not.
As soon as we recognize the error of individual ex
istence, we lift ourselves above the narrowness of ego
ism. We can in this state of mind contemplate our
own fate from a higher standpoint ; we can easily and
we do willingly give up our pursuit of happiness ; we
can live in this world as though we were not living.
Our "we," our "I," our "ego," the separateness of
our individuality has ceased to be, and the life of the
universe lives in us. We have become stewards of
cosmic existence. In this way our joys as well as our
pains are transfigured and a divine peace will inherit
our souls that are now free from desire.
Pain, together with the vanity of pleasure, will
diminish in the degree of the enlightenment attained.
This is a law that is demonstratable in such exact
sciences as physiology and biology. Our scientists
inform us that the use of the sensory nerves blunts feel-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 125
ing and favors intellection. The highest sensory nerve,
in which the intellectual element is comparatively
most perfect, is the optic nerve. The retina of the
optic nerve, while perceiving the differences of infinit-
esimally small fractions in ether-waves, has become in
sensible to pleasurable as well as to painful feelings.
The idea of Nirvana, it must be said, is of a most
dangerous character, if it is conceived as mere pes
simism in its negative features alone. It will in that
case lead to apathy, to destruction and death. Did
perhaps Gautama Buddha himself conceive Nirvana
in a spirit of negativism ? Perhaps he did. At least it
is certain that many of his disciples did ; for the Bud
dhism of the East has produced most fatal effects of in
difference and retrogression upon those races that em
braced its faith.
If Nirvana is conceived in its liegativeness, Bud
dhism will be a dualistic religion. In that case we have
existence and non-existence, Sansara and Nirvana,
sham-reality and nothingness. If, however, Sansara
is conceived as an illusion and Nirvana as the destruc
tion of the illusion, we need not resort to the nihilistic
world conception of a dual nothingness ; we need not
derive from the Buddhistic premises the negative
ethics of destroying life together with the illusion of
egoism. One of the most important truths proclaimed by
Buddha, was the doctrine that man can enter into
Nirvana while he lives. When Gautama had found
redemption from the evils of existence, he resolved to
announce his gospel to the world. He went to Benares
and on the way he met one of his old acquaintances
who asked him :
" What is it that makes you so glad and yet so calm ?

126 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Buddha answered :
' ' I have found the path of peace, and am now free from all
desires." Little interested in Gautama's bliss, his acquaint
ance further enquired where he was going ; and we are
told in the Buddhist legend :
The Enlightened one answered :
' ' I am now going to the city of Benares to establish the king
dom of righteousness, to give light to those enshrouded in dark
ness, and open the gate of immortality to men."
He gave up fasting, for he looked upon the op
pression of the body as a vain effort of conquering the
evils of existence. He abandoned asceticism as a
means of salvation.
It seems strange that life can be gained only through
annihilation of self; immortality is possible only through
the death of the transient and the happiness of eter
nal peace will come with the crucifixion of the desire
for happiness. It seems strange, but it is not. How
ever, it is natural that the deeper a truth is, the more
contradictory it will appear to those who are prisoners
still in the bondage of error.
Buddha's doctrines were misunderstood, misinter
preted, and misused. Yet they have given strength
in temptation, comfort in misery, peace in tribula
tion, solace in death to many millions of toiling, as
piring and suffering human hearts.

THE HUMAN SOUL.

The practical purpose of Religion is the salvation
of human souls. When Jesus was walking by the Sea
of Galilee, he saw two brethren, Simon, called Peter,
and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea:
for they were fishers. And he sayeth unto them : "Fol
low me and I will make you fishers of men. "
And so shall ministers be fishers of men to save
human souls. But how can they save human souls
when we are told that modern psychology is a psychol
ogy without a soul ? The immortal soul, consisting
of a trancendent substance, as it was supposed to be
by the old schools of orthodox theology, does not exist.
There is no such a thing as an eternal and mystical
ego which continues to live even if the body dies.
The great Scotch philosopher, Hume, said :
" As for me, whenever I contemplate what is inmost in what I
call my own self, I always come in contact with such or such spe
cial perception as of cold, heat, light or shadow, love or hate,
pleasure or pain. I never come unawares upon my mind existing
in a state void of perceptions : I never observe aught save percep
tion  If any one, after serious reflection and without preju
dices, thinks he has any other idea of himself, I confess that I can
reason no longer with him. The best I can say for him is that per
haps he is right no less than I, and that on this point our natures
are essentially different. It is possible that he may perceive some
thing simple and permanent which he calls himself, but as for me
' I am quite sure I possess no such principle." *
•Home, Works, Vol. I, p. 321.

128 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Modern psychology has fully adopted Hume's posi
tion. If a man speaks about himself, he means per
haps his body, or a certain part of his body. In an
other case he may mean a special idea of his mind. It
is that idea which at the time is prominent in his soul
and which he pronounces as his opinion. Formerly it
was supposed that the ego who pronounces the opinion,
"I say this and I say that," was one thing, and the
opinion adopted by that ego another thing. And this
ego was supposed to form the basis of man's person
ality, its supernatural unity. Modern psychology now
contends that this ego is identical with its opinion ;
the " I say" is identical with the idea pronounced ; or,
in other words, the ego and its contents are one.
Accordingly, our ego is constantly changing, for it is
now this, now that idea, which is prominent in our
mind. An ego by itself, a thinking subject without an
idea, a perception, or sensation to be thought or felt,
does not exist ; and our soul is nothing but the sum
total of all the ideas that live in our brain.
Very well then ! The ego, as a thing independent
of its contents, is a sham and always was a sham. Can
a man be afraid of losing that which he never pos
sessed ? Certainly not ! Renounce that ego, and aban
don your anxiety about its preservation.
The matter, however, is different concerning the
preservation of your soul. Is the soul of man less valu
able since it has been proved that it lacks the unity
which the ego was supposed to afford to it. Not in the
least ! Our soul, whatever it be, remains as valuable
and precious as ever ; if it is the sum total of our
thoughts merely, yet that is the sum total of our intel
lectual and moral existence. The ideas which in
their totality constitute ourselves, are the elements

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 129
that condition our actions, and our actions shape
our future ; they will lead us to higher planes, or they
will undo us and wreck our lives. Thus the purpose of
religion, to save the souls of man, it seems, becomes
rather more urgent than before.
Science seems to destroy Religion. But it does not ;
it destroys its errors only. Indeed, it becomes the
basis of Religion, and Religion based on Science will
be truer, purer, and grander. When our long cherished
errors fade away before the light of science, life appears
so empty and truth seems void of comfort. Let us,
however, not be dismayed ! After all, truth is better
than error and a deeper insight always proves in the
end that the truths taught by science are by far nobler
and greater than the loftiest fiction and fairy-tales of
our imagination can be.
Let us but consider how easily souls are lost ! The
purpose of religion becomes more imperative when we
bear in mind the fact that souls can grow and expand.
We can implant in the souls of men new thoughts
and purer ideas, which will preserve them in tempta
tions and guide them through the many allurements
and dangers of the world. We can by instruction and
example transmit to the minds of children our own
souls, and thus build again our characters in the grow
ing generation.
Goethe said: 'The son should be better than the
father'; and yet the son can be better only if the
father rears the better part of himself in the soul of
his son. Thus humanity will progress, it will advance
more and more in the triumphant march of evolu
tion. The child that lies in the cradle possesses a most pre
cious soul. But the infant's mind is a promise rather

i3o HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
than a real and full grown soul ; it is the bud not the
fruit; it is a dear hope, a potentiality, but not the harvest
of maturity. The most valuable parts of his soul, the
elements of manly strength and of moral character that
will give stability to his will and direction to his pur
pose, must be implanted into the tender mind of the
child. All that which makes of man a human being,
must be grafted upon the inherited predispositfon of
his mind. And how easily is that purity lost, how
quickly is that innocence gone which appears as the
sweetest charm in the beaming eyes of children. When
they come in contact with the lower tendencies of life,
how readily evil thoughts enter their minds and impure
ideas poison their souls and the habits of their lives.
Therefore David prayed, " Create in me a clean heart,
O God, and renew a right spirit within me."
The soul of man is not immortal in the sense that
matter and energy are now known to be indestruc
tible. On the contrary, the soul of man is mortal. But
seeing that we can make it immortal, that we can pre
serve our souls even after death in the coming genera
tions, that we can implant our spirit in our children,
the purpose of religion grows in its. scope and im
portance. The pure, the noble, the great, the moral thought
will live and will exercise upon everyone a wholesome
influence. If our soul is the sum total of our hopes
and wishes, of our aspirations and longings, of our con
cepts and our ideas, let us take heed and beware not
to introduce evil thoughts," but let us receive into our
soul the love of truth and the eagerness of performing
that which is right and just. This is the object of re
ligion ; and this is the sum total of the religion of man
kind.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 131
Bad thoughts as well as good thoughts are like
leaven ; and a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
Let the religion of humanity thus enter your souls not
as words without a meaning that slumber like a dead
letter in your mind, but as a power of enthusiasm
which, like the leaven in meal, pervades all your
thoughts and sentiments until the whole be leavened
and changed into another and better substance.
Morality is that which preserves our soul, and it is
the moral part of our soul only which we wish to pre
serve in our children. Immorality is that which leads
to wreck and ruin, but morality makes life everlasting.
The immortality thus acquired is greatly different
from the old dogmatic view of immortality. The old view
of immortality is a chimera of Utopian character, the
new view is a truth established by science, a truth that
can be verified. The old view of immortality is a holy
legend, and the best that can be said of it is this, that
it foreboded the true view of immortality which teaches
that there is a continuation of our soul-life after death.
This continuation, however, is not an inherent quality
of the soul, nor is it given to us as an act of mercy.
The continuation of our soul-life must be acquired by
our own efforts, it must be worked for, it must be
earned by hard struggles, and it must be deserved.
I see all the world gathering earthly treasures to
leave an inheritance to their children. But I see few
who care for their souls. All interests are taken up with
the desire for riches, but the most valuable riches which
you might possess, remain heglected. You provide for
meat and raiment and other necessities of life, but you
disregard to provide for the immortality of your soul.
What are all the possessions of man if he is not
wise enough to use them well, and what is power and

132 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
earthly blessings if the men to whose lot they have
fallen, cease to progress or even commence to degen
erate ? What is an inheritance left to your children, be it
ever so great, if you disregard the education of their
souls? The word oE Christ will forever remain a great
truth: "What shall it profit aman, if he shall gain
the whole world and lose his own soul?" (mark
viii. 36.)

THE UNITY OF THE SOUL.

The main difference that obtains between the old
and the new psychology concerns the unity of the
soul. The old psychology considers the soul as an
indivisible being whose centre is found in the ego.
This ego-entity is said to be the subject of the psy
chical states ; it is the subject in the original sense of
the word ; i. e. that which underlies. The soul, ac
cording to this view, is not the feelings and the
thoughts which ensoul a human being, but it is a mys
terious something which is in possession of feelings
and thoughts, and the nature of the mysterious some
thing, of the underlying subject, is unknown to us.
Modern psychology does not consider the soul as
an indivisible being. The soul is not an ego-entity,
a subject, that has feelings and ideas, but these feel
ings and ideas are actual parts of the soul. A man's
soul is the totality of his feelings, of his thoughts, of
his ideals.
This view may easily and wrongly be interpreted
as if the soul were simply a heap of feelings, as if no
unity existed and as if the ideas dwelling together in
one and the same brain were like a bag of peas,
which have no connection, no bond of union, among
themselves. This is not so. The feelings, ideas, and

134 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
ideals in a man form indeed a unity — only this unity
is a hierarchical system, it is a unity of arrangement
and does not mean that the soul is an indivisible unit
or a kind of psychic atom. This truth can most
clearly be expressed by contrasting the two views in
two German words : The soul is not an Einheit, but
an Einheitlichkeit ; not a unit, but a unification.
And the unity of the soul produced by unification
is by no means an indifferent quality. The unity
of the soul, I feel almost constrained to say, is the
soul of the soul. The way in which certain ideas are
combined in a unity constitutes the most individual
and most remarkable and also the most characteristic
feature of a personality. Also the energy of nerve-
action, the vigor with which the different ideas re
spond to their stimuli is of incalculable importance.
Suppose we could put together the soul of a man
from a given number of ideas as we put together a mo
saic from a given number of colored stones. The stones
and their colors, their brightness, their shape and the
variety of their colors are of importance, but the pat
tern will after all make the picture of the mosaic. The
same ideas are put into the minds of thirty or forty
children in one and the same class-room, but how dif
ferently do their minds develop ! Even children of the
same parents who live in the same surroundings and
under the same conditions, receiving the same in
struction and having before their eyes the same exam
ples, will develop quite distinct and divergent indi
vidualities. The very same thoughts in two different
minds do not necessarily produce a sameness of soul.
In one mind everything may be methodically ar
ranged, so that on the proper occasion the proper
thoughts turn up at once and all the ideas form a

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. l35
system, so that order reigns everywhere. Again in
another mind there may be the very same thought-
material, yet order is lacking, confusion prevails,
everything stands topsy-turvy as if the brain were an
old lumber-room in which things have been set aside
without any plan of consideration.
It is wonderful how rich the possibilities of soul-
patterns, so to speak, are ! We cannot say that this one
and this one only is the true ideal soul, for, provided
that those indispensable soul-structures which con
stitute the humanity of a man are not lacking, we
may have and indeed we do have, an unlimited variety
of personalities, the beauties of each being peculiar to
themselves. People often show a tendency to classify the per
sonalities of groat men in higher and lower classes
asking such questions as these : Who was greater
Shakespeare or Goethe ? Plato or Aristotle ? Bis-
mark or Moltke ? The answer is, we cannot measure
the greatness of mind by a scale so as to have the
great men of thought and action classified by degrees
as number one, two, three, etc.
The soul of man, being the organisation of his
ideas, is too subtle a substance, — indeed we should not
even call it so for it is form and not substance — the
soul of man is too subtle to be weighed or measured,
and the worth of a noble soul is so peculiar, so unique
that, irrespective of its shortcomings which we must
expect even great men to have, we can compare one
soul with other souls only in order to set them off by
contrast and to appreciate their qualities by contrast,
but we must recognise that each soul possesses a spe
cial charm of its own, each soul is an individuality

r36 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
which as such is not classifiable as higher or lower,
better or worse than other individualities.
Individuality being a natural and also a most val
uable feature of a man's soul, it is our duty to respect
individuality. Every man has a right to be individ
ual provided the traits of his individuality do not
come in conflict with the rights of his fellow-beings.
And the application of this right in educational affairs
is greater still. We are bound to respect the indi
vidualities of children also. Parents, educators, and
teachers have to observe and study the characters of
the souls entrusted to their care. They have to prune
and guide the growth of individualities wherever
whims and vagaries arise, yet they should do so with
due discrimination and with a becoming respect for
the individuality of the growing minds.

GHOSTS.

The Norwegian poet Henrik Ibsen has written a
most awe-inspiring drama under the mysterious title
"Ghosts.". Does this most modern author believe in
spirits? Does he take us into a haunted house?
Are not ghosts and haunted houses left as a survival
only? O no! The ghosts of which Henrik Ibsen
speaks are every where ; they are not exceptional cases ;
for we ourselves are visited by the spirits of former
ages ; our brain is haunted by ghosts. It is full of the
proclivities, the dispositions, the ideas, and the sins of
our ancestors.
Mrs. Alving, the widow of a dissolute husband,
and mother of a son whose life has been poisoned by
his father's sin, witnesses her son's behavior in the
adjoining room. It is the exact repetition of a scene
in which her husband had played her son's role some
twenty years ago. There is his ghost reappearing. In
considering the weighty seriousness of the truth, that
we inherit, not only the character of our ancestors,
but also the curses of their sins ; that all our institu
tions and habits are full of ideas inherited from a dead
past, she says : "I am afraid of myself, because there
is in me something of a ghost-like inherited tendency
of which I can never free myself  I almost think

138 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have
inherited from father and mother that reappears in us,
it is all kinds of dead old beliefs and things of that
sort. These ghosts are not the living substance of
our brain, but they are there nevertheless and we
cannot get rid of them. When I take up a news
paper to read, it is as though I saw ghosts speaking
in between the lines. There must be ghosts ail over
the country. They must be as thick as the sands of
the sea."
It is perfectly and literally true that our soul is
haunted by ghosts; nay, our entire soul consists of
ghosts. Our brain is the trysting place where they
meet and live ; where they grow and combine, and in
their combinations they propagate, they create new
thoughts which according to their nature will be be
neficent or baneful.
What are these ghosts ? They are our experiences,
the impressions of our surroundings upon the sentient
living substance of our existence. They are the reac
tions that take place upon the impressions of our sur
roundings ; they are our yearnings and cravings ; they
are our thoughts and imaginations. They are our
errors and vices, our hopes and our ideals.
Henrik Ibsen shows that the ghosts which are the
inherited sins of our fathers lead unto death. What
an overwhelming and horrific scene is the end of the
drama, where the son asks his mother to hand him
the poison in case the awful disease will pass upon
him which will soften his brain and spread the eternal
night of imbecility over his soul. The mother in her
anxiety to calm her son's wild fancies, promises to do
so: "Here is my hand upon it," she says, with a
trembling voice: "I will — if it becomes necessary.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. i3g
But it will not become necessary. No, no ! It will
never become a possibility. "
There is a law of the conservation of matter and
energy ; but there is also a law of the conservation of
the stuff that ghosts are made of. The law holds good
not only in the material world, but in the spiritual
world also. Every vice transmits its curse ; and the
moment comes when the unfortunate mother has to
face the fatal attack of the terrible disease.
The heroine of the drama, the innocent and
wretched mother had sought help of the clergyman —
the man whom she had loved. When her husband
had betrayed her, had poisoned her in her youth, she
fled to him in wild excitement and cried : " Here I
am, take me ! " But the clergyman's stern virtue had
turned her away from his door, and he prevailed upon
her to remain a dutiful wife to her vicious husband.
She had tried to find comfort in the religious injunc
tions which he preached to her. She lived a life in
obedience to what he represented as her duty. But
now she says to him : " I began to examine your teach
ing in the seams. I only wished to undo a single
stitch, but when I had got that undone, the whole
thing came to pieces, and then I found that it was all
chain-stitch sewing-machine work."
The distressed woman feels only the curse of law
and order which have been invented for the salvation
of mankind. Her experience leads her to trust rather
in anarchy than in the threadbare superstition which
our generation has in favor of the letter of the law.
The sternness of virtue cannot save us, nor our blind
obedience to sanctified traditions. She exclaims :
'¦' What nonsense all that is about law and order. I
often think it is that which exactly causes all the mis-

140 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
eries there are in the world. I can no longer endure
these bonds ; I cannot ! I must work my way out to
freedom ! "
Here lies the cure of the disease. We must work
our way out to freedom. The simple method of shak
ing off law and order will only increase our troubles.
We must learn to understand the nature of ourselves.
By patient work alone can we exorcise the evil spirits
that haunt our souls ; and we can nourish and foster
those other spirits which shower blessings upon our
lives and the lives of our children. We cannot escape
the natural law which, inviolate, regulates the growth
of our souls ; but we can accommodate ourselves to
the law and the same law, that works disaster and
death, will produce happiness and life.
Superabundance of life gives a power that might
produce great and noble results. But when the life is
stagnant as was that of Mrs. Alving's husband, a vigo
rous youth exuberant in strength and health, an un-
satisfiable craving for pleasure takes the place of a
want of activity; and instead of useful work, vicious
habits are produced. The germ of many diseases is
a morbid pursuit of enjoyment. Pleasure is made the
aim of life, leading astray step by step into the abyss
of misery and death. Not that happiness and pleasures
were wrong ! But it is wrong to make of them the
purpose of life. Let happiness be the accompani
ment of the performance of duty and happiness will
follow as the shadow follows the body. If we pursue
happiness, we turn our back upon the sun of life and
we shall never find either satisfaction or happiness.
* *
The law of the conservation of soul-life with its
blessings and its curses has not only a gloomy side, it

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 141
has also a bright side, and it behooves us when con
sidering our heir-loom of curses, to remember that
they are small in comparison to the grand inheritance
of blessings which have come to us from thousands of
generations. What is all our activity, our doing, and
achieving, our dearest ideals — what are they but the
torch of life handed down from our ancestors ? Gustav
Freytag, the German novelist, might also have called
almost all his novels "Ghosts." Especially the "Lost
Manuscript" and the series of novels called "The An
cestors " are studies illustrative of the same truth. Yet
while Ibsen paints the dark side only of the law of the
conservation of ideas, Gustav Freytag paints the dark
and the bright sides. Gustav Freytag says :
" It is well that from us men usually remains concealed, what
is inheritance from the remote past, and what the independent
acquisition of our own existence ; since our life would become full
of anxiety and misery, if we, as continuations of the people of the
past, had perpetually to reckon with the blessings and curses which
former times leave hanging over the problems of our own existence.
But it is indeed a joyous labor, at times, by a retrospective glance
into the past, to bring into fullest consciousness the fact that
many of our successes and achievements have only been made pos
sible through the possessions that have come to us from the lives
of our parents, and through that also which the previous ancestral
life of our family has accomplished and produced for us."
We have to bear the evil consequences of the
vices of our ancestors, but these evils can be overcome;
and when they cannot be overcome, they will after all
find a termination, for death is the wages of sin.
The nature of sin is its contrariness to life ; its
main feature is the impossibility of a continued exist
ence. Extinction being the natural consequence of
viciousness, the wages of sin are at the same time the
saviour, the redeemer from the evils of sin.

142 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
If all the parents "in the whole world were like
Chamberlain Alving, the ruthless father of Oswald
Alving, and like Mrs. Engstrand, the frivolous mother
of the coquettish girl Regina, humanity would soon
come to an end. It may be that none of us is entirely
free from these traits ; but some of us are so more or
less. In some of us these traits are mixed with enno
bling features, and we are striving to overcome that
which we have recognised as bad. However, nature
is constantly at work to prune the growing genera
tions. Death is the wages of sin, and the bright side
of this awful truth is the constant amelioration of the
race.

THE RELIGION OF RESIGNATION.

Among the many religions upon earth there are
two that exceed all the others in the number of their
devotees. They are Buddhism and Christianity.
Neither Judaism nor Mohammedanism, nor even
Paganism, can approach them. The latter taken to
gether do not as yet equal one of the two former; it is
as if the world were divided between them.
Buddhism and Christianity have one common
feature. Both proclaim the gospel of salvation from
the evils of this world by resignation. Both point to
a higher life which can be gained through the sacrifice
of our individual selves. Other religions require sac
rifices of lambs and goats. Buddhism and Christianity
demand the surrender of self. Mohammedanism prom
ises enjoyment and happiness upon earth and in
heaven. Both Buddhism and Christianity preach en
durance in affliction and submission to tribulation.
It seems natural to seek pleasure and to shun pain.
The religious injunctions of Buddha and Christ are a
reversion of this instinctive desire. They preach this :
Do not shun pain, and do not seek pleasure. Says
Christ : " If any man will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross and follow me."
Buddhism, it is well known, did not succeed in
overcoming the many superstitions of its converts.
Christianity became ossified as soon as its mythology

144 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
was systematized into theological dogmas. The Chris
tians, while clinging to the letter of their creed which
killeth, lost the spirit of their teacher's doctrine.
We shall not here point out the errors of these
religions, but try to find the key to their wonderful
success. And can there be any doubt about it ?
Their success can be due only to their thorough
conquest of death. The Buddhist who has taken his
refuge in Buddha, and the Christian who is earnest in
his following of Christ, will not tremble in the face of
death, for to them death has lost its sting. The
Christian lives in God, and the Buddhist has even upon
earth spiritually entered into Nirvana. They have
placed all their hopes in a higher life, " where there
shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying,
neither shall there be any more pain, for the former
things are passed away."
This victory over death is not accomplished by avoid
ing death and by shunning the anguish of life, but by
a surrender to death of that which cannot escape death
and by finding rest in the ideal world of immortal life.
Whatever be our fate, — they say unto themselves, —
the kingdom of God will be victorious ; all other things
are mere trifles ; therefore let us remain children of
God and we shall inherit his kingdom. Luther sings :
Strong tower and refuge is our God,
Right goodly shield and weapon ;
He helps us free in every need,
That hath us now o'ertaken.
Take they then our life,
Wealth, honor, child and wife,
Let these all be gone,
No triumph have they won.
The kingdom ours remaineth.
This song with its powerful melody was the slogan
of the new faith that regenerated Christianity and

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 145
conciliated religion with the progress that science
had made before the Reformation. Yet Luther and
other Christians believed in the immortality of their
ego, and it seems as if their religious confidence were
based upon this error. We have ceased to believe in
a mystical soul-substance which was formerly supposed
to inhabit the body as a stranger, and which after death
will hover about somewhere as a spectre. We have
ceased to believe in ghosts ; science has banished the
phantoms of disembodied spirits out of the provinces
of psychology and philosophy. But must we for that
reason cease to believe in life and in spiritual life ?
Must we therefore consider death as a finality ? Does
not science teach the persistence of life and of spiritual
life ; and is there the slightest reason that we should
cease to believe in the immortality of our ideals? Is it
not a fact, scientifically indubitable, that every work
done, be it good or evil, continues in its effects upon
future events ? Is it not a fact established upon reli
able observations that the evolution of mankind, and
of all life generally upon earth, is one great and con-
tinous whole; that even to-day the efforts of our an
cestors are preserved in the present generation ; their
features, their characters, their souls now live in us.
Certainly not all features are preserved, but those only
which nature considered worth preserving. So our
characters, our thoughts, our aspirations, our souls
will live in future generations, if they are strong
enough, if they are noble and elevating. In order to
be strong, they must be in accord with nature, they
must be true. In order to live, they must be engen
dered by the evolutionary tendency in nature, which
constantly endeavors to lift life to higher planes. It
must be, as the Christian expresses it, in harmony with

146 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
God, if God is meant to be that power in nature and
in our hearts that ever again and again prompts us to
struggle and to strive for something higher.
Our soul can no longer be considered as that unity
which it used to be to our forefathers. It is a part of
the soul of humanity in a certain phase of its develop
ment. As such it is a rich combination of certain
ideals, thoughts, and aspirations of hopes and fears, of
wishes and of ideals. Our ego is nothing but an ideal
thread on which are strung the invaluable pearls of our
spiritual existence. The ego is nothing but the tem
poral succession in which these ideas are thought.
It is not the belief in an immortalized ego that can
conquer death, but it is the surrender of this ego and
of all its egotistic desires. This ego we now know is
no real thing ; it is an illusion and possesses a fleeting,
momentary, sham existence only. Reality of life is
not to be found there, and if its continuity is broken
in death, our individual existence ceases, but not
necessarily the life of our soul. The ideal world of
our mind can outlive our body, and we can gain an
immortality of that part of ourselves which is most
worthy of being preserved.
This it appears, is the truth in Buddhism and Chris
tianity, this is the secret that explains why they con
quered the world. Resign all egotism, do not place
your hope upon this fleeting existence, and devote
your efforts to the creation of that higher life, of that
ideal world, where death is unknown and the petty
tribulations of life disappear !
This life cannot be realized by the poet and
philosopher only, not by the great only, the heroes of
mankind : it can be realized by every one of us. It is
this that Christ preached, and it is this that Buddha pro-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 147
claimed. Every one of us is called to participate in
the higher life, for the intellectuality of a higher life
is one phase of it only, and it is not its grandest part.
Its sum-total is comprised in all those many ideals
and aspirations that, in one word, we call morality.
It is, as Paul says, Faith, Hope, and Charity ; but
Charity is the greatest among them.
Men who have given up their individual ego, who
have risen to the height of that spiritual life which
knoweth not death, will live in this world as though
they lived not ; they that weep, as though they wept
not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not,
and they that buy as though they possessed not, and
they that use this world as not abusing it : for the
fashion of this world passeth away.
They will live, as though they lived not, because
their life is no longer the fleeting sham-existence of
their egotistic desires. Their life has become an ex
pression of that higher life which is immortal. They
buy as though they possessed not, because they know
that they shall have to leave their possessions.
They consider themselves as stewards to whom
property is entrusted for a wise use. Even their joys
and pains, their recreations and troubles become
transfigured by the universality of the spirit that ani
mates their whole being.
The religion of the future will not be Christian
dogmatism, it will be no creed, no belief in any of the
tenets of the church. Yet it must preserve the spirit
of Christianity which has enabled it to conquer death.
It must be a religion of resignation. If thou wilt
enter into life eternal, cease to cling to that which
perishes, and become one with the Life Immortal !

THE RELIGION OF JOY.

The Christian gospel is a tiding of joy; but its joy
is very different from the happiness that is so eagerly
sought for by thousands and millions of wretched
beings who tire themselves out by hunting shadows.
It is natural that only two religions have a festival
of rejoicing in the birth of a child destined to be the
saviour of the world ; Buddhism, namely, and Chris
tianity. Buddhism and Christianity are the religions of re
signation. They demand that we shall willingly and un
hesitatingly take up our cross ; that we shall not shirk
tribulations, suffering, and least of all death ; that we
shall renounce all cravings for pleasure, sacrifice all
desires of egotism, and in fact give up our very self,
which is the source of all our unsatisfied yearnings.
Buddhism and Christianity, being religions of self-
denial, have been called pessimistic world-concep
tions. In a certain sense they are pessimistic, in an
other sense they are not. They ought to be called
melioristic. Recognizing to its full extent the truth
of pessimism, recognizing all the misery that exists in
the world and the wretchedness of living creatures,
the religions of self-denial are preached to show the
path of salvation. In this sense Buddhism and Chris
tianity are the religions of joy.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 149
Says the Apostle: "Rejoice always ! " and again
he describes himself and his co-workers as the am
bassadors of Christ : ' 'As unknown, and yet well known;
as dying, and behold we live ; as chastened, and not
killed ; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing ; as poor,
yet making many rich ; as having nothing, and yet pos
sessing all things." Says Christ : "Rejoice and be
exceeding glad ! " and the angel said to the shepherds :
"Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of
great joy, which shall be to all people."
Wherever a religion of self-denial has been
preached, it has always been a gospel of cheer, of
gladness, of salvation. This seems to be contradictory,
and yet it is natural.
The main idea of the religions of self-denial is a
truth which, if lost, we should have to discover again.
Similarly, if our knowledge of the law of gravitation
were lost, we should have to discover it again. And
if another than Newton had calculated its formula,
the formula would be exactly the same as it is now,
whether it were expressed in Greek, or in English, or
in Chinese. Spiritual truth is no less rigorous than mathemati
cal truth. Spiritual truth has to develop according to
law no less than the flowers in the fields, no less than
human civilization, the arts and the sciences. When
the blossoms blow in springtide, it appears as if the
earth had long been preparing and expecting this mo
ment. Thus when Buddha went under the fig tree,
where the idea of salvation enlightened his mind, the
Buddhistic gospels relate that the angels sung, "This
is the night the ages waited for."
Is it surprising that so wonderful a truth as that
life is love, salvation is self-surrender, and joy is the

150 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
sacrifice of all desire, has been clothed in myths and
decked with miraculous legends ? Is it surprising that
great institutions were founded with ceremonies and
rites in order to make comprehensible this spiritual
truth to those who could not grasp it ? And again, is
it surprising that in all these institutions the truth is
overgrown and hidden by the myth ? The letter that
killeth has prevailed over the spirit !
Science with ruthless criticism destroys the my
thology which has so long prided itself as the truth.
Yet science will never destroy the truth which has
been the vitality in the germs from which sprang Bud
dhism as well as Christianity. And the religion of
science, if it is to be a live power, must preach the
same truth.
Science recognizes the struggle for life, but the re
ligion of science brings peace. It brings the peace of
soul that makes man one with that power which is the
source of all life, one with that actuality which is the
way, the truth, and the life ; so that what appeared as
a struggle for selfish ends, now becomes work, and
work, whatever it be, pleasant or disagreeable, sowing
or reaping, ruling or obeying, drudgery or the work of
enthusiasm and love, is all transfigured by being con
ceived as the performance of duly.
The religion of science does not preach asceticism,
when it demands self-denial and a radical surrender
of egotism. On the contrary, like the good tidings of
Bethlehem, it proclaims a religion of joy — not for
those who are rich, but for all the world ; first for the
poor, yet also for the rich, if their hearts are fit to re
ceive the gospel.

THE FESTIVAL OF RESURRECTION.

Spring comes again ; and Eastertide reminds us of
nature's immortality. There is no death ! What seems
so is transition. When in wintry weather the sun hides
his face, northern blasts tear the leaves from our trees ;
but now the sun is returned and new life grows on
every branch, the verdure reappears in the fields and
man's heart believes with strengthened confidence in
the realization of human ideals.
Easter day is the festival of Christ's resurrection,
and the question has often been raised whether Easter
day can with any consistency be celebrated by those
who have ceased to believe in the sacred legend that
Jesus Christ who died on the cross rose on the third
day from the dead. We firmly maintain that it can
and that it ought to be celebrated by all those who be
lieve in the revival of spring, in the constant resurrec
tion of human life, and in the immortality of our ideals.
Eastertime is not at all exclusively a Christian
festival ; Eastertime is a festival of natural religion.
Its very name is pagan, for Ostara was the goddess of
the returning light ; and light brings life. She was the
Aurora, the Eos, of the Germans, the deity of the
morning dawn in the East ; and the egg was the holy
symbol that represented her mysterious powers.
An egg is a wonderful thing ; it has been the object

152 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
of repeated investigations by our greatest naturalists ;
and our profoundest philosophers have pondered over
the revelations of its marvelous secrets. The egg rep
resents the potentialities of life. Mere warmth is
needed to change the apparently homogeneous and
insensible yolk into a most complicated animal en
dowed with a certain degree of intelligence. The
egg represents, as we now know, the actual mem
ories of chicken- life up to date. Its memories are
not conscious memories, but the preservations of
certain structures in living matter. They are motions
of a certain form, which under favorable conditions
and proper temperature will repeat all those motions,
those vital activities, which its innumerable ancestors
went through in uncounted ages past.
How wonderful are the secrets of form, and, in
spite of the complex applications of which the laws
of form admit, how simple is the basic idea that ex
plains their mysteries ! The artillerist, who aims his
cannon, knows that a hair-breadth's difference in the
angle of elevation will give another course to the mis
sile-; the curve of its motion will be changed with the
variation of its determining factors.
The egg contains the determining and formative
factors of certain motions of living substance, not
otherwise than three points represent the potentiality
of a special kind of curve. The determining factors
of the egg have, in their turn, been determined by the
parental activities of its predecessors ; and thus the
egg becomes a symbol of resurrection.
Life is not extinct with the dissolution of individ
ual existence, for even the individual features are pre
served in coming generations. And, if this be true
in the chicken, how much more is it true in man.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. i53
Man's intellectual life has still other channels to be
preserved in and transmitted to the souls of other
men. These channels are human speech. The
spoken word, and perhaps more so, the written or
printed word, make it possible for the valuable
thoughts of great thinkers and the enthusiastic as
pirations of poets to live among us as if their authors
had never died. Indeed, they have not died, they
live still. Their souls are, and will remain, active
presences in mankind to shape the destinies, and to
guide the future development of our race.
Whether any given one of the heroes of mankind
rose bodily from the dead or not, especially whether
Christ rose bodily from the dead or not, is quite in
different for the truth of the constant resurrection
which, as science teaches, continuously takes place in
nature and in the evolution of humanity. Let us
not say, because there is no truth in the fables of re
ligious mythology, that there is no resurrection what
ever. Let us not say that we do not care for such a re
surrection as can be observed around us in nature, and
as can be experienced in human soul life ; that unless
we rise as bodiless spirits, as taught by supernatural-
istic religions, we do not care for any resurrection in
which the continuity of our individual consciousness
is interrupted. Let us not speak like spoiled children,
who want their caprices fulfilled, and if they cannot
have their whims satisfied, want nothing at all. Let
us rather become familiar with the real facts of life,
and we shall learn that truth is grander than fiction,
and real nature is better than an imaginary super-
nature. We are told by men that aspire to be radical free
thinkers, that this conception of immortality is a re-

154 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
vival of old superstitions. What a strange miscon
ception ! Man will die, they say, and if man is dead,
all is over with him ; death is an absolute finality ;
and no one, so they maintain, will care for any other
than a personal immortality, in which the continuity
of consciousness is preserved.
Men of this class are not familiar with the facts of
life. Not only is it true that life continues after the
death of the individual, and that the work of every
individual continues as one of the factors in the for
mation of the destinies of future generations, but also
the care for what will be the state of things after our
death is a most important motive in all our actions.
We do care for what will take place after our death.
We do care for the fates of our children, of our nation,
of our country, of our ideals and hopes, and how our
soul life will affect the future development of man
kind. We do care for such a continuance after death,
we do care for an immortality of ourselves, even if
the continuity of our consciousness be broken. The
fact that we care for such things is the basis of ethics ;
it makes of man amoral being. This is the motive
that compels even those who do not believe in per
sonal immortality, to sacrifice their lives for their be
loved ones, for their convictions, and for their ideals.
Let us celebrate Eastertime as one of the most
prominent festivals of natural religion. It is the feast
of resurrection, it proclaims the immortality of life,
and preaches the moral command, not to live for this
limited life of our individual existence only, but to
aspire to the beyond. Beyond the grave there is
more life, and it is in our power to form and to
shape that life for good or for evil.

THE CONQUEST OF DEATH.

Jesus Christ said to his disciples : "In the world
ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have
overcome the world ! "
This is the grandest advantage of religion that it
comforts him who has religious faith, while he who has
it not, must tremble in this world of worry, of turmoil,
of struggle, and of death.
A scientist who had pondered over many deep
problems and had been successful in the solution of
several mysteries of nature, said with suppressed emo
tion : " Religion is a sweet self-delusion that helps us
to overcome the desolateness of life."
Why is it a self-delusion? Because, he might have
answered, the ground upon which religious comfort is
based, is scientifically untenable ; yet is it sweet, be
cause religion alone can overcome the vanity of the
world ; religion alone can fill the emptiness of a perish
able fleeting life that seems to consist only of troubles
and cares, the joys of whjch, if closely examined, are
found to be stale and unprofitable.
The Christians, it may be conceded, delude them
selves when believing all the many dogmas of their
church. But is it a self-delusion, if they have really
conquered the world, and if they face all the agonies of
death with equanimity ? Granted that their belief is
wrong, we often observe their moral courage to be of
the right kind. They prove by their example that

i56 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE
death can be conquered, that we can raise ourselves
above the narrow sphere of selfishness and lead a
life that is inspired by the religious ideal of a victory
over death.
I confess that I am not a believer in the current
doctrines of the Christian churches, but at the same
time I openly declare, that I am a believer in Religion.
I have no theological creed to which I adhere, I know
of no confession of faith which I would adopt, but I
have a faith, that man, without any act of self delu
sion, can overcome the desolateness of life ; he can fill
the emptiness of existence with imperishable treasures
— with those treasures that are laid up in the spiritual
empire of human aspirations, where neither moth nor
iust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal. I have a faith, that man can conquer
death and can build an ideal life of spiritual loftiness
upon the material existence of his being.
This faith is that of the mustard-seed. This faith
does not look behind as do all the creeds ; this faith
looks forward. This faith does not anxiously cleave
to the past ; as do all the dogmatic confessions of faith.
The right kind of faith, the only faith which deserves
that beautiful name, clings to the future. The mustard
is indeed the least of all seeds, but when it is grown,
it is the greatest among herbs and becometh a tree ;
so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the
branches thereof.
Religion therefore, as I understand it, is no for
mula of confession, it is a moral act, it is the soaring
above the lower life of animal nature. And religious
faith is not a belief in something that has happened
two thousand years ago : it is neither the acceptance
nor rejection of the story of David's son born of a vir-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 157
gin, the pathetical story of the heroic martyr who died
at the cross and is believed to have risen from the
grave bodily. Religious faith is the confidence that
we can do our duty, that we can gain the victory of
spirit over matter, and that we can achieve the con
quest of death.
It is death that makes it necessary for man to have
religion. If there were no death in the world, we
would not be in need of religion. But death, the
stern messenger of eternal peace, awaits every one of
us. If death did not exist, we might as well think
that man is born to live happily and enjoy as much as
possible the pleasures of life. But there is the pale
phantom that hovers over us day and night. We know
not when it will call us to the silent rest in the grave,
but we do know that it will call and take us away from
the circle of our family and friends, away from the
field of our activity and labors.
There are some men who live like animals from
day to day without giving a thought to death and with
out care of what may come after them. That is no
life worthy of a human being. They do not fear death,
it is true, but not because they have conquered death.
Like the brute they do not fear it — like dumb cattle
that are driven to the shambles without knowledge,
without a consideration of their fate.
Life is a serious duty ; and the experiences of life
should teach us to number our days, that we may ap
ply our hearts unto wisdom.
If you ask me what Religion is, I say : Religion is
the creation of a higher life and the laying up of im
perishable treasures. Religion is the conquest of
death.

THE PRICE OF ETERNAL YOUTH.

An unnecessary dread of death prevails among
mankind, a dread which is due only to a morbid imagi
nation. Men who are not afraid to suffer pain, are
sometimes found to shrink from the mere idea of haz
arding their lives. It is not the agonies of death of
which they are afraid, nor is it the state after death,
the eternal rest of being dead, which appears appall
ing, but it is the moment of dying, — that it is which
they dread most. It is the passage from life to death,
the passage through that gate,
" Which every man would fain go slinking by —
Where fancy doth herself to self-born pangs compel,
Around whose narrow mouth name all the fires of hell."
This dread is unnecessary ; it is founded upon
wrong ideas of death ; it is based on errors that can
and must be dispelled.
We learned in school that the old physicists believed
in a horror vacui and explained from it certain natural
processes. This horror vacui, as we now know, is an
error, just as much as the dread of death.
It is a fact that dying persons are, as a rule, under
the impression that they have passed through a crisis
for improvement, for the agony is overcome and pain
has ceased. The feeling is due to a blunting of our
sensory nerves and organs, and must be compared to
the pleasant sensation which a fatigued person enjoys

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. i5g
when quietly falling asleep. In sleep the sense-im
pressions become gradually dulled and sweet visions
of dreams rise before our mental eye, until the light
slumber passes into a profound sleep where all con
sciousness ceases. There is no more reason for the
dread of death than for horror at lying down to sleep.
A sage of antiquity said: "Why should we fear
death ? Death is not here, so long as we are here.
And if death is here, we are no longer."
We must meet death in the sense that the Stoic
philosopher on the throne prepared himself to accept
all the gifts of nature. He said : "Everything harmo
nizes with me which is harmonious to thee, O Cosmos.
Nothing for me is too early nor too late which is in due
time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy
seasons bring, O Nature. From thee are all things, in
thee are all things, to thee all things return."
Death is a natural phenomenon not less than birth ;
and the agonies of death are generally less painful than
the throes of birth. The problem of death is closely in
terwoven with the problem of birth, so that you can
not disentangle the one without unraveling the other.
Birth is, as our scientists teach, the growth of an
individual beyond its individuality. It is the nature of
living beings to live and to grow. The lowest kind of
animals do not die ; they grow and divide and thus
they multiply. The amoeba may die from violence, it
can be crushed to death by your foot ; it may starve
from lack of food; but it knows no natural death.
The animalcules which you can observe to-day are the
very same creatures that lived millenniums ago, long
before man appeared upon earth. Immortality is their
natural state.
How did it happen that death came into the world

160 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
of life, into the realm of immortality? Is death the
meed of sin that is due to a violation of nature's laws ?
Or if it is a natural process, pray what is it?
Death came into the world as the brother of birth,
and death became necessary when birth with its re
juvenescent power lifted organic life one step higher
in its evolutionary' career, so as to allow a constantly
renewed progress, so as to create innumerable fresh
beginnings and to give new starts to life, new pos
sibilities to the development of life.
Birth is growth beyond the limit of individuality.
Thus the creature born is the very same creature as
its mother and its father, just as much as the two amce-
bas are the very same substance the mother amoeba
was before her division. But the creature born has
one great advantage over its parents. It can com
mence life over again. It is identical with its parents,
but it is its parents in a state so little fixed and formed,
so young, so unimpaired, so pure, like the fresh dew
that glitters in the morning- sun, that it can make a
new start, it can travel new paths and can climb to
higher planes, which seemed inaccessible to its an
cestors. Not only men but all creatures are naturally one
sided ; they develop to be one-sided through their
occupations and their experiences, and become more
and more so the longer they live. What can life wish
for better, than to be allowed to drop again and again the
fresh prejudices constantly acquired, which we even
admit may be justified in the men that hold them. But
we know that they would become injurious if mankind
clung to them forever. It is for the best of humanity, that
it can drop the errors which are perhaps, as we freely
grant, partial truths. Humanity must gain not only

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 161
renewed vigor, but also virginity in life and in love,
in hopes, and in ideal aspirations.
This is done through the introduction of birth into
the empire of life. And this makes it possible that life
is always young, that it is virgin-like, and endowed
with renewed courage as well as interest.
Is the boon of a constant rejuvenescence of the race
through birth bought too dearly by the surrender of
our individual existence to death? Certainly not, if
the good features of individuals can be transmitted to
their descendants, if their death is only a partial ob
literation of life, where it has lost the capacity of
progressive endeavor, where impartiality of judgment
is gone, so that we no longer can see the light
when a new morn dawns with greater and higher pos
sibilities. Nature does not intend to ossify life, it makes life
plastic, and in order to preserve the plasticity, the
vigor, and virginity of life, nature endowed life not
only with immortality that through the act of birth
makes life extend and grow beyond the limit of indi
vidual existence, but at the same time it bestowed upon
it, through the same means of birth, that wonderful
desirable gift, eternal youth, without which immor
tality would become an unbearable burden.
What would life be, what would immortality mean,
if it were not identical with eternal youth ? If human
ity must buy eternal youth at the cost of death — at the
cost of the death of individuals, it is certainly not
bought too dearly.
Death then is a necessity ; but serious though the
idea of death must make our thoughts, it is not terrible ;
awful though it may be, it must not overawe us. Death
is like the northern sunset. The evening twilight in-

162 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
dicates the rise of a new morn. The nocturnal dark
ness of the end of life is the harbinger of a new day,
clothed -in eternal youth. So closely interwoven is
death with immortality !
The lesson that death teaches let me express in the
words of our poet :
" So live that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

RELIGION AND IMMORTALITY.

Johannes Scherr, one of the most zealous of in
fidels, who used all his great historical scholarship
and philosophical acumen to forge fatal shafts to hurl
at religion, says in one of his lucid sketches :
Religion is a groping from the Temporal into the Eternal ; a
pathfinding from the Finite into the Infinite ; a bridge-spanning
from the Sensible to the Supersensible. If we follow — and I speak
now only of men who have the material and the courage to think
logically — if we follow, I say, this idle worry and contention to its
deepest root within us, we shall find it to mean this : terror at the
thought of inevitable dissolution, abhorrence of imagined void,
dread of death. Man yeirns for existence beyond the bounds that
are set to his life. The happy man, that he may further enjoy in
a kingdom to come the comforts he possessed on earth. The un
happy one, that he may find in the land " above" the fortune he
was robbed of "below." And the ideal enthusiast, that he may
at last arrive at those ' ' regions bright, " where ' ' pure forms dwell "
— the prototypes of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Only
men who through and through are men, who, in the beautiful words
of Lucretius, have advanced to the point where they are able pacata
posse omnia mente tueri, can sternly face the inexorable thought
of the annihilation of the Ego and the Self, and, when the last hour
is come, say with stoic resignation in the words of Manfred,
1 ' Earth, take these atoms ! " The others, the millions and hundreds
of millions, all wish to gain "salvation"; which means, to live
beyond the grave and after dea h. And since it is the fashion of
man to believe and to hope what he wishes, so do they believe and
hope that their dear Self is ' ' immortal " and predestined, after cor
poreal death, to be promoted to a higher class in the eternal school
of perfection, or, as the pious in current parlance term it, ' ' to be
hold God."

164

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

Scherr characterizes religion very well as the dread of
death, and as a desire to live beyond death. And truly,
he is right when declaring that with many religion is
nothing more than the desire to make their dear ego
immortal. But Scherr is decidedly wrong when he
looks upon death as a finality. It is not matter alone
that man consists of, but his form also ; and his hu
manity lies not in the clay but in the spirit. In order
to sustain animal life, it is sufficient to eat and to
drink ; but to sustain spiritual life, man must be nour
ished with thoughts. Our children imbibe their mental
existence from parents and instructors, and the ideas
with which they are reared are the very souls of the
heroes of past ages ; they are the souls of their ancestors
and the valuable results of the lives of the departed.
The earth takes part of its atoms again in every
moment of life, and it is not the atoms that we must
care for most. Man does not live by bread alone, the
nourishment of his soul is the word ; and the word
makes of him a human being. Man's life is not ended
when all the atoms that shape his body return to the
dust from which they came. Nature has devised
means to preserve that which is human and to let the
soul of man continue even after death.
I read of late in an historical essay some sen
tences to the following purport : ' American freedom
was not possible but for the determination and strength
of the Puritan character. The Puritans were not pos
sible but for Luther, and Luther was not possible but
for Paul.' If that is so, and I expect there is no one
who will dispute it, can it be said that death was a
finality to Luther or to Paul ? When the earth took
the atoms of these men, did the earth really take their
whole being? No, it did not. Their better parts,

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 165
those elements of their souls which were pure and
noble, were preserved and will be preserved as long as
men live upon earth. The ideals which they aspired
to, the truths which they taught, are immortal. And
like the torch in the mysteries of Eleusis that passed
from hand to hand, their soul-life will be handed down
faithfully from generation to generation.
The purpose of religion, indeed, is the preserva
tion of the soul. The preservation of the soul beyond
death is no illusion, no chimera of fanatic minds. It is
a fact of our experience, it is a reality that can be sci
entifically proved. Death is no mere dissolution into
all-existence. Certain features of our soul-life are pre
served in their individuality. Copernicus still lives in
Kepler, and Kepler in Newton ; and to-day Copernicus
lives in every one of us who has freed himself from
the error of a geocentric conception of the world. The
progress of humanity is nothing but an accumulation
of the most precious treasures we have — it is the
hoarding up of human souls.

SPIRITISM AND IMMORTALITY.

Spiritism must be well distinguished from Spirit
ualism, although in popular speech the latter term is
generally employed for the former. Spiritualism is
that philosophical view which, in opposition to ma
terialism, assumes spirit as the ultimate and universal
principle from which the phenomena of the world are
to be explained. Spiritism is the belief in spirits and
the apparition of spirits. While spiritualism is a
lofty conception of profound thinkers (such as Berkeley
and Fichte) who boldly spiritualize the whole uni
verse, spiritism, on the contrary, materializes even
spirit itself and spiritual phenomena. With the spirit
ist the spiritual realm has become a world of spirits.
Spiritism, and the belief in spirits, may often have
been occasioned either by successful impositions, or
by mysterious phenomena, which for a length of time
frustrated all attempts at explanation. But, ulti
mately, the origin of spiritism lies deeper; the source
from which it is nourished, is man's longing for im
mortality. From the vague hope of life beyond the
grave, and from the dread of being entirely an
nihilated, spiritism draws its strength; and all at
tempts at disclosing the deceptions of impostors, and
at explaining certain marvelous phenomena which
had been regarded as certain proofs by believers, will
remain futile, so long as the spirit of man is considered

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 167
as an entity, existing of itself and inhabiting the body
during the time of life. The idea of immortality which
is an exceedingly powerful factor in human emotions,
must, in this combination, produce the most fantas
tical and nondescript errors, which, wherever they
have been implanted, will take firm root in the human
mind. Not that the errors possess that strength of
themselves; they derive it from the truth with which
they are mingled; and a total annihilation of ourselves
is so utterly inconceivable, that we feel by an instinctive
intuition, as it were, the truth of immortality.
The immortality of the soul is commonly under
stood to be the continuance of our conscious ego be
yond death in the shape of a spiritual, bodiless being.
This view rests on the principle that the soul is an en
tity which inhabits the body and can exist of itself;
accordingly the ego is considered as a substance which
is supposed to be the constant and continuous factor
behind the transient states of consciousness.
The immortality of the ego stands and falls with
the belief in a ghost-soul, an'd the only scientific evi
dence for the existence of a ghost-soul has been the
supposed unity of consciousness. If our conscious
ness were a substance, and if, as a substance, it pos
sessed a unity, for instance like that of an atom, the
ego of our consciousness would perhaps be inde
structible. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason teaches
that the ego, as an entity, is a fiction. We are
aware of a series of ideas that become conscious in our
mind. It is these ideas that are constantly present,
but to consider consciousness as a substance that exists
apart from its contents of ideas is an illusion, a fal
lacy or paralogism of pure reason. Modern investiga
tions in physiological psychology show that the ego,

1 68 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
with its chains of conscious and subconscious states,
is the product of many factors under very complicated
conditions. The ego forms a unity, i. <?., a unitary
complex, or a compound system; but, of itself, it is not a
unit. The Einheitlichkeit of the soul must not be con
strued as a rigid and ultimate Einheit. In a similar
way the French school of experimental psychology,
foremost among them Th. Ribot and Alfred Binet,
have proved that the ego is not an entity constituting
the "cause" of mental phenomena, but, on the contrary,
that the ego is the " effect " of certain phenomena of
mental activity. If this ego, as an entity, is an illusion,
how can it be immortal? If a ghost-soul does not
exist, how can it continue to exist? If a conscious
ness independent of its contents, which are the ideas
that become conscious in our mind, has no reality,
how can we attribute to it a permanence in ozternum?
Although a ghost-immortality of disembodied
spirits is impossible, man's existence is not a fleeting
phenomenon of an ephemeral nature. His soul-life is
not of yesterday, and does not vanish into nothingness
to-morrow. His ideas as well as his actions are facts
that continue to be factors in the future development
of his race. The life of a single individual is not a
separate and single event that begins with his birth
and disappears again at his death. It is the product
of a long evolution of many thousands of generations.
Their works and thoughts live in the present genera
tion, and our soul-life, our thoughts, accompanied
with the same kind of feelings, will continue to exist
in the future. Those who think, who act, and who
feel like ourselves, possess our souls,* and in them
we shall continue to live and move and have our being.
* Compare The Open Court, page 396, first column, lines 1— 11.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE !6g
It is objected that, as a rule, people do not care for
such an immortality; they want the immortality of
a ghost-soul. This is undoubtedly true, but whether
they care or not, it does not alter the facts. If people
do not care for this grander kind of immortality, they
must be educated to appreciate it.
A Christian missionary in Greenland told his
Esquimaux converts much about their future life in
heaven, and when he was asked whether there would
be plenty of whales and seals and walruses, and
whether the redeemed would have enough cod-liver
oil, he suggested that they would no longer want such
things. The Esquimaux then turned away and said:
" What is the use of your heaven if there are no
whales, nor seals, nor walruses, and if we can have no
cod-liver oil. If such things don't exist, and if the
most glorious joys are not even desirable in heaven,
we don't care for it at all."
Similarly among us, those people who believe that
the soul is a ghost which inhabits the body, do not
care for any immortality unless it be that of a ghost-
soul. They do not care for continuing to live in the
life of mankind, and are satisfied to hover about as
spirits, communicating with their beloved ones
through raps and other primitive manifestations. They
are like the prodigal son, who left his father's house
and fed upon husks for want of better food.
All the most marvelous feats of mediums do not
attain to that wonderful perfection for which our best
performers in legerdemain are famous. The ingenious
way in which they present their clever deceits is also
truly remarkable. The worst thing about spiritism is
its dearth of ideas. The spirits show in their com
munications an extraordinary lack of spirit. If the

170 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
manifestations were as true and undeniable as day
light, they would reveal a most pitiable state of spirit-
life, "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans — every
thing." It is impossible to convince a spiritist of his errors
simply by showing that he has allowed himself to be
duped — so long as he believes in the immortality of a
ghost-soul. The id«a of immortality is strongly im
planted in the human mind, because every living being
feels that life cannot be annihilated; as Goethe says:
" Kein IVesen kann zu nichts zerfailen,
Das Ew'ge regt sichfort in alien,
A>n Sein erhalte Dich begliickt!
Das Sein ist eivigi denn Gesetze
Bewahren die lebend' gen SchHtze
Aus welchen sich das All geschmiickt."

" No being into naught can fall,
The eternal liveth in them all.
In All-Existence take delight, — because
Existence is eternal; and fixed laws
Preserve the ever living treasures
Which thrill the All in glorious measures."
This consciousness of our indestructibility is so
direct and immediate that, in a healthy state of exist
ence, we feel an eternity of life in every moment, and
only with the assistance of much contemplative
thought and earnest reflection can we conceive at all
the idea of death. Even if this earth, the intellectual
life of which has found its consummation in mankind,
should break to pieces and make a further and direct
continuance of our ideas, our actions, and our soul-life
impossible, we know that new life will grow from the
wrecks of our world; that new suns will shine upon
new planets peopled with new generations, who, like

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. i7r
ourselves, will aspire to the same aims and struggle
for similar, perhaps even higher, ideals.
The idea of immortality resting on a true instinct,
and on the natural conviction of the indestructibility
of life, cannot be easily blotted out from the human
mind, even though mixed with errors. And the idea of
immortality need not be eradicated; we have simply
to weed out the errors that grow around it by the
slow and long process of patient education. Those
who have freed themselves of the old errors that have
attached to the conception of immortality look smil
ingly upon their former views, as the man thinks of
his having been a child with childlike thoughts. As the
Apostle says: "When that which is perfect is come,
then that which is in part shall be done away. When
I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a
child, I thought as a child; but when I became a
man, I put away with childish things."
The old view of considering our ego as a real en
tity is, as the sacred Hindoo religion expresses it
the veil of Maya that lies upon our eyes. The man
who recognizes this ego to be a sham has become a
Buddha, i. e., a knower — one who knows; one from
whose eyes the veil of Maya has been taken. He no
longer lives the sham-life of egotistic desires that
moves in the circle of never satisfied wants, but he
has entered Nirvana. The annihilation of the ego is
the condition of a better life, of a broader and higher
existence. This truth, though not fully realized in Buddhism,
was nevertheless presaged by its great founder, Gaut
ama. It has been mixed with pessimistic vagaries
and monstrosities, but has at the same time afforded
comfort to millions of people in their troubles and

1 74 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
cares and agonies of death. This same truth is the
basis of the Christian religion also, whose founder de
mands a surrender of our egotistic desires. Christ
says: "Whosoever shall loose his life shall preserve it."*
And this same truth lies at the bottom of all true
ethics. We must entirely surrender our ego and reg
ulate all our actions by a maxim fit to become a uni
versal law (as Kant expresses it). By lifting all our
thoughts and intents to the broader interests of pro
moting life and of promoting higher forms of life, we
cease to be single and separate beings, and become
the representations of cosmic life, or in biblical terms,
"The householders of God."
The surrender of the ego is a destruction of self
and of selfishness only, but it does not imply, as has
been assumed by pessimistic teachers and by the
monks of a world-despising attitude, an annihilation of
our existence and of life generally. It does not mean
death, but life; not inactivity, but work; not destruc
tion, but immortality. It means life and progress and
aspiring labor, not in the service of egotistic purposes,
but for the evolution of existence in higher forms, for
the development of our race and the realization of the
ethical ideal.
All labor for egotistic purposes would be vain, for,
we shall die, and the purpose for which we have worked
would be gone. But if we consider ourselves as house
holders who stand in the services of a higher purpose
than ourselves, if we aspire for a further evolution
of cosmic life: the purpose of our lives will not die
with us; we shall continue to live in our deeds and
* The same idea is almost literally (though with the addition of " for my
sake") repeated over and over again. Luke xvii. 33; Luke ix. 24; Matt. x. 39;
Matt. xvi. 25; Mark, viii, 35; John xii. 25; John x. 17.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 173
thoughts and in those who are inspired by the same
ideals; as Schiller says:
" Art thou afraid of death? Thou wishest for being immortal?
Live as a part of the whole; when thou art gone it remains."
This view of immortality is not less, not smaller
and more meager, than the immortality of a ghost-soul,
whose very existence is an unwarranted assumption.
It ' is more; it is grander and sublimer; although
those who have the veil of Maya upon their eyes, who
still believe in that sham-entity of the ego, cannot
understand and appreciate it.
Johannes Tauler, of Strassburg, one of the pro
found mystic preachers of the beginning of the four
teenth century, said: " Wir mussen entwerden, um Gott
zu werden." * Our ego must be undone in order for us
to become God. The higher life of immortality will be
ours; but the price to be paid for it, is a surrender of
the sham-existence of our ego.
* Quoted from memory.

IMMORTALITY AND SCIENCE.

It appears as though the problem of immortality
had to be solved anew by every generation. How often
has the question "When a man dies shall he live
again ?" been answered in the affirmative as well as in
the negative? But it appears that a final answer has not
as yet been given. Before the court of science the relig
ious answer "Man shall live again !" is a mere asser
tion. It is the expression of a sentiment, and we may
grant that the sentiment is quite legitimate, it is a strong
sentiment, and to many people it is the most religious,
the most sacred sentiment. It is a holy hope without
which they cannot live. How deep the roots of this
sentiment are buried in many souls will be seen from
the following extract from a letter which I received from
a well educated gentleman whose life has been spent in
teaching and who was devoting the leisure of his old age
to philosophical studies. Having explained some of his
scientific doubts concerning the immortality of the soul
and having rejected at the same time the arguments
that are generally brought forth against this belief, he
adds these thrilling words :
"I am now seventy-four years old, but instead of growing
more cheerful and assured, the reverse has been the case. Accord
ingly my present state of soul is lamentable and pitiful. Whether

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 173
I shall end my life in distraction and insanity or in confidence in
myself and God, I cannot say."
Granted that the belief in immortality is a legitimate
sentiment ; it may be a postulate and an indispensable.
condition of our religious life, yet as long as it remains
the mere expression of a sentiment, it is one-sided and
insufficient. However, the unbeliever's answer, which so often
boasts of being the voice of science, is no less one
sided. And the denial of immortality is religiously not
so heterodox as most unbelievers suppose, for it has
been forestalled in the Biblical sentence of Solomon :
" I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men
that God might manifest them,* that they might see that they
themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men
befalleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth them ; as the one dieth,
so dieth the other ; yea they have all one breath ; so that a man
hath no pre-eminence above a beast : for all is vanity. All go unto
one place ; all are of the dust, and all turn unto dust again." Solo
mon in Eccl, 3, 18-20.
It appears from this quotation that either side of
the question is quite biblical. *
* *
Goethe says : " ' Hast immortality in mind
Wilt thou thy reasons give? '
— The most important reason is
We can't without it live."
The belief in immortality is of paramount impor
tance because it is a moral motive. It is perhaps the
most powerful moral motive man has, and it is of great
importance because if man regulates his life as if he
* The Hebrew lekaram ha Elohim is more correctly translated in the
Septuaginta, on diaxpivel civtovq 6 #<?df "that God will distinguish them."
The sense is: I pondered on the nature of men, whether God distinguishes
them, but it appears that they are beasts.

1 76 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
were immortal, he will survey a larger field than if he
limits his interests to the narrow span of his own indi
vidual life. In other words, the belief in immortality
is useful ; it induces men to adapt themselves more
fully to the great social organism of mankind ; it makes
their life more moral. On this account it has been
proposed : Let us foster the belief in immortality among
the masses, although it maybe untenable as a scientific
conception. This proposition has been called a pia fraus — a
name invented for its justification, and the pious fraud
method has sometimes received more credit than it
deserves. Is it necessary to . add that pious fraud
should be denounced as immoral and objectionable
under all circumstances?
If, however, the belief in immortality is indeed use
ful, I maintain that it must contain a truth. A falsity
may be useful once or twice, or a hundred times, but
it cannot be useful in the long run, for centuries and
millenniums. The belief that death is no finality and
that man shall live again, which so generally prevails
in all our many churches and religious societies con
tains a truth in spite of the apparent and undeniable
counter-truth that man is " like grass which groweth
up ; in the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up ;
in the evening it is cut down and withereth." [Psalm
xc, 5-6. J
What is this truth? Has science, especially through
the discovery of its latest great truth, the doctrine of
evolution, shed any new light upon the problem? and
if it has, what is the new conception of immortality as
it appears from the standpoint of the evolutionist?
The question of immortality is not beyond the pale
of science. It is not only our right to investigate

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 177
whether man's instinctive longing for a continued ex
istence is justified, it is also our duty to attain to clear
ness concerning one of the most important and basic
problems of psychology, and also of ethics. Also of
ethics! For the immortality idea forms the centre of all
ethical questions. It affords the strongest motive to
moral action. Indeed what is morality else but the
regulation of our actions with an outlook beyond the
grave, it is a building up not only sufficient to hold for
our life-time, but for eternity.

All living beings have a dread of annihilation ;
everything that exists has a tendency to continue its
existence ; and it will continue to exist, for there is no
annihilation. Being can never change into not-being.
There, is annihilation only in the sense of dissolu
tion. A certain combination ceases to exist in this form
because it changes into other forms. Being exists, it
is eternal, and it cannot be annihilated. Not-being
does not exist and will never exist. Not-being is a
non-entity, a mere fancy of our imagination. There
is no reason whatever for anything that exists to fear
annihilation. We may dread change, but we need not
dread annihilation,
Our dread of losing consciousness is not justified.
We lose consciousness every night in sleep, and it is
a most beneficial recreation to us. The boiling water
may be afraid of being changed into vapor. But its
fear is groundless ; nature will again change the vapor
into drops of water. From the surface of our planet
all organised life may die off. Our solar system may
crumble away into world dust, but what is that in the
immeasurable whirl of suns? There are other parts of

178 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
the milky way in which new worlds are forming them
selves, and we have sufficient reasons to believe that the
tide of life ebbs and swells in the whole universe not
otherwise than autumn and spring change alternately
in the northern and southern hemisphere on this planet
of ours, not otherwise than waking and sleeping, ac
tivity and rest, day and night change in our lives. The
single forms of life can be destroyed, but life remains
eternal ; life is indestructible, it is immortal.
This truth has been maintained again and again ;
et many declare that it gives no satisfaction to them
unless their persons are included in the general law
of preservation and it is generally supposed that be
fore the tribunal of science there seems to be little
chance for proving the persistence of personality.
Nevertheless, there is a truth even in the idea of the
preservation of the individual soul, and we do not hesi
tate to say that it is the most important aspect of the
immortality idea. That the individual features of our
souls are preserved has been proved by evolution.
Evolution takes a higher view of life. It considers the
whole race as one and recognises the continuity of life
in the different generations.
Humanity lives and the individual is humanity in
corporated in a distinct and special form. Humanity
continues to live in spite of the bodily deaths of the
individuals — and truly it continues to live in the dis
tinct and special, in the personal and most individual
forms of the individuals. Bodies pass away, but their
forms are preserved and their souls are here still. The
preservation of experience from generation to genera
tion, is the condition of intellectual growth. The
preservation of that which is contained in and consti
tutes the very personality of man is the basis of pro-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 179
gress. In one word the immortality of the soul makes
its higher evolution possible.
Evolution teaches a new conception of the soul. It
destroys the old-fashioned idea of an individual. It
shows that the birth of an individual so called is not
a new beginning, but it is only a new start of prior
life. The baby which is born to-day is a product of
the sum total of the activity of its ancestors from the
moment organised life first appeared upon earth. And
organised life, what else is it but a special form of the
cosmic life that animates the whole universe?
What is man's soul but his perceptions and thoughts,
his desires, his aspirations and his impulses which
under certain circumstances make him act in a certain
way. In short, man's soul is the organised totality of
his ideas and ideals. These ideas and ideals of man
have been formed in his brain through experience
which is transmitted from generation to generation,
and in preserving them we preserve the human soul.
Man's soul is not the matter of which he consists
at a certain moment. Man's soul is that particular ac
tivity of his which we call his thoughts and motives.
So far as our brother has the same thoughts and the
same motives, he has also the same soul ; and since
the doctrine of evolution has become a truth recog
nised by science, we can with a deeper meaning repeat
the ancient saw of the Hindoo sages, " Tat twam asi —
That art thou." All living creatures are ourselves ; they
are in possession of souls like ourselves, and the more
they feel and think and act like ourselves, the more
have they our souls.
It is true that from this standpoint our souls are not
something exclusively our own, they are not, as it
were our private property. Our souls are in part in-

180 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
herited and in part implanted into us by education.
The former part consists chiefly of our physical con
stitution and general disposition, the latter part em
bracing our thoughts and ideals is by far the most im
portant one ; it represents the highest and most human
elements of our souls.
There is accordingly a truth in the Buddhistic
doctrine of a pre-existence and migration of souls.
And this truth holds good for the past as well as for
the future. Soul is not an essence, but a certain kind
of activity ; it is a certain form of impulses, on the
one hand conditioned by innumerable experiences of
the past — "inherited memory" it has been called by
physiologists — and on the other hand conditioning
in its turn the future. This latter fact, viz. that our
present soul-life is conditioning the future, it will at
once be understood, is the most important ethical
truth. It must be borne in mind when we are about
to act, that every act of ours continues in its conse
quences. The act may be unimportant, and the con
sequences may be unimportant too, nevertheless it
continues with the same necessity as that every cause
has its effect.
Death is no finality, and we must not form our rules
of conduct to accord with the idea that the exit of our
individual life is the end of all. Says W. K. Clifford
in his article "The Unseen Universe" :
"The soldier who rushes on death does not know it as extinc
tion ; in thought he lives and marches on with the army, and
leaves with it his corpse upon the battle field. The martyr can
not think of his own end because he lives in the truth he has pro
claimed ; with it and with mankind he grows into greatness through
ever new victories over falsehood and wrong.
For you, noble and great ones, who have loved and labored
yourselves not for yourselves but for the universal folk, in your time

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 181
not for your time only but for the coming generations, for you there
shall be life as broad and far-reaching as your love, for you life-
giving action to the utmost reach of the great wave whose crest you
sometimes were!
The preservation of the special and most individ
ual contents of man's personality, the preservation of
that something in him which he regards as the best
and most valuable part of him is the strongest motive
for moral action. Even an unclear idea of the immor
tality of the soul is therefore better and truer than the
flat denial of it. And this is the main reason why the
churches survived in the struggle for existence against
those people who looked upon death as an absolute
finality. The ethics and ethical motives of the churches
come nearer the truth than the ethics of those who be
lieve that the death of the individual ends all of the
individual, body and soul.
* *
Here I might rest my case. But I feel that those
who attach to the belief in immortality the idea of a
transcendent existence in some kind of heaven, are
disappointed because I have not as they suppose,
touched the most vital point of the subject. I grant
that from their standpoint, I am guilty of this mistake.
The reason is that I have tried to state the positive
view of the problem and not its negative aspect.
Immortality means the continuance of life after
death ; continuance means a further duration of the
present state. If you mean by immortality, the soul's
existence in the shape of a bodiless ghost, you should
first prove the existence of bodiless ghosts. Our expe
rience knows only of souls which are the activity of
organisms in their awareness of self. You cannot pre
serve what you do not have, and you should not worry

182 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
about losing something you never possessed ; in fact
you cannot lose it. If immortality of the soul means
an existence as pure spirit, this would not be a con
tinuance of life after death, but the new creation of an
entirely different being about the mere possibility of
whose existence we can form no more a conception than
about an immaterial world in which there would be no
display of forces. What is the use of racking our brains
as to whether an ethereal world Can exist and what
comfort can we derive from a belief in its possibility?
The old view of " the resurrection of the body" as
it has been worded in the apostolic creed, is certainly
more in agreement with modern science and with the
doctrine of evolution, than the later belief of a purely
spiritual immortality. * *
Let me add here a few words in answer to the
anxiety of the old philosopher who finds himself on the
verge of despair because his hope in an unbroken con
tinuance of his consciousness after death somewhere in
an unknown cloudland finds little or no support in
science. The scientist, the philosopher, the thinker,
should never trouble himself about the results to which
his inquiries lead. A sentimental man who wants his
preconceived views proved, who hopes for a verifica
tion of favorite ideas, is not fit to be a thinker. I do
not mean to say that sentiment is not right, but that
sentimentality is wrong. It is not right that sentiment
should perform the function of thinking. Thinking
requires courage and faith, it requires faith in truth.
Truth often appears to destroy our ideals. But
whenever it does destroy an ideal, it replaces it by
something greater and better. So certain features of

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 183
the old immortality idea are untenable before the tri
bunal of science ; yet the idea of immortality which is
taught by science, is surely not less sublime, not less
grand and elevating than the old one. It teaches us
not only a general persistence of all that exists, but a
continuance even of that which constitutes our personal
individual life.
In looking around and studying the facts of life,
we find that we can everywhere improve the state of
things ; there is no place in the world where there is
no chance for improvement, for useful work, for pro
gress. Yet there is no chance whatever for improving
the cosmical conditions of the world, the order of the
universe, or the laws of nature. And truly it is good
for man that he cannot interfere here, because he could
never succeed with his improvements. Dominion is
given to man over the whole creation, but his dominion
ceases where the divinity of nature, the unchangeable,
the eternal, the unalterable, of cosmic existence begins.
If there is a God, it is this something "that is as it
is," expressed by Moses in the word "Jahveh." Con
fidence in God, if it means that we expect him to at
tend to that which can be done by ourselves is highly
immoral, but confidence in God in the sense that the
unalterable laws of nature just as they are, are best for
us and for everything that exists, and that it would
be mere folly on our part to wish them to be different,
is a great truth, and belief in it is no superstition ; it
is true religion, it is the faith of the scientist, of the
philosopher, of the thinker ; it is our trust in truth.
The idea of a -purely spiritual, a transcendent im
mortality would be possible only if the name and being
of Jahveh, if the revelation of God in the reality of
nature were either a great sham, a lie on his part, or a

184 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
huge error on our part. The view that nature is un
real and that outside of this great cosmos of ours ex
ists another and purely spiritual world is called dual
ism. There are no facts in experience to support dual
ism or a dualistic immortality. However, the idea of
an immanent immortality is based upon facts demon
strable by science. It is an undeniable truth — undeni
able even by the dualist, who in addition to it believes
in a purely spiritual immortality somewhere beyond
the skies.
Goethe whose view of life was an harmonious and
consistent monism, expresses his belief in immortality
in the following lines :
,( No being into naught can fall,
The eternal liveth in them all.
In all-existence take delight — because
Existence is eternal ; and fixed laws
Preserve the ever living treasures
Which thrill the All in glorious measures."

DEATH, LOVE, IMMORTALITY.

How is it that our poets so often set into opposi
tion the ideas, love and death ? Is there a secret con
nection between them ? and if so, can that connection
be explained ?
The Hebrew poet in the song of songs, sings :
" Set me as a seal upon thine heart,
As a seal upon thine arm :
For love is strong as death ;
Jealousy is cruel as the grave ;
The coals thereof are coals of fire,
Which hath a most vehement flame.
" Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can the floods drown it ;
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love
It would utterly be contemned."
Love is strong as death, nay it is stronger ; for if
there is any power that can conquer the grimmest foe
of man, it is love. Love therefore, as the conqueror
of death, represents immortality.
How many foolish conceptions of immortality ob
tain among mortals, and how often have they been re
futed by the sages of all creeds and of all philosophies !
Nevertheless, the belief in immortality js as firmly
rooted in the souls of men to-day as it ever has been
in past ages. We have of late read that beautiful pas
sage of the American heretic who rejects all religion,
who hates Christianity, and is in every respect an un-

1 86 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
believer. He has no ridicule, no flippant word how
ever, for immortality ; he says :
"The idea of immortality, that, like a sea, has ebbed and
flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and
fear beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not
born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was
born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow be
neath the mists and clouds of doubts and darkness as long as love
kisses the lips of death.
' ' I have said a thousand times, and I say again, that we do
not know, we cannot say, whether death is a wall or a door — the
beginning, or end, of a day, — the spreading of pinions to soar, or
the folding forever of wings — the rise or the set of a sun, or an
endless life, that brings rapture and love to every one."
What is death ? Is it not the destruction of that
form of ours after it has become unfit for further use ?
It is maintained by the agnostic orator that we cannot
know whether it is the rise or the set of a sun. Let
me answer that to us death appears like the set of a
sun ; but we know that the sun itself never sets.* As
its light never ceases to shine, so life is immortal.
What is love but our longing for immortality ? And
the old man who looks upon his youthful sons and en
joys the baby-smiles of his grandchild, — does not a new
vista of life open to him ? And is not that life that
beams in the eyes of his children and grandchildren
his very own life ? Does he not commence a new ca
reer in every one of them ? Is it mere sentimentality,
an empty figure of speech if we say that love has con
quered death indeed ? Let death have its prey, if we
but live again, if instead of remaining as we are, small,
limited, egotistic, we may grow and expand, if new
chances of commencing life over again are given unto
us, and if guided by love we can determine ourselves,
*Cf. Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, liber die Unzerstdrbar-
keit unseres Wesens durch den Tod.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 187
how we may be improved in future generations ! Let
death have its prey, if our better selves, our noblest
thoughts, our highest ideals, our best deeds will live
in, and have a beneficial effect upon, future genera
tions. Love is not limited to sexual love. Love is enthu
siasm for everything good and great ; love is every
true and noble idea worth being thought again and
again, and to be propagated to the most distant gen
erations. Our body, the visible appearance of our ego, is sure
to die ; and there is no ground for bewailing it, for
what is the use of preserving just this combination of
dust with all its little defects, — a combination whose
psychical components are a medley of a few true ideas,
of a few lofty aspirations mixed with errors and preju
dices ? Is it worth while to preserve this alloy as it
is ? O no ! It is a tnousana rimes more preferable to
preserve the good, the true, the ideal thoughts only,
as Nature really does, and let errors as well as preju
dices perish as they deserve.
Immortality is no fiction, and a craving for immor
tality is a natural feeling of the human heart. True
immortality is not possible by egotism, for there ex
ists no such a thing as an immortality of the ego. True
immortality is realised by love only ; and love is not
only the affection toward our beloved ones; love is
every aspiration for truth, every hope for progress,
and every enthusiasm for the ideal. Love is the broad
ening of our soul beyond the limit of the ego. But it
is not enlarged egoism either ; love has always some
thing of a humanitarian and a universal spirit. It
thrills our pulses with the life of the All and grants in
a fleeting moment the bliss of a whole eternity.

1 88 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Immortality is not presented to us by some gen
erous donor as a gift. It must be gained by our own
efforts ; by our struggling for it must it be deserved.
But there is that comfort in it that it can be gained by
every one who believes in Love.
In this spirit the German poet says :
" Out of life there are two roads for every one open :
To the Ideal the one, th' other will lead unto death.
Try to escape in freedom as long as you live, on the former,
Ere on the latter you are doomed to destruction and death."

FREETHOUGHT, ITS TRUTH AND ITS ERROR.

By freethought we understand the right of every
thinker to seek for, to find, and to state the truth him
self, and in calling freethought "a right" we are well
aware of the fact that as all rights are only the reverse
of duties, so freethought is at the same time the duty
of every thinking being to seek for, to find, and to state
the truth for himself. And this duty, in our concep
tion of religion, is also the highest religious duty of
man. The religion of science, therefore, may also be
called, in this sense, the religion of freethought.
Freethought stands in opposition to authoritative
belief. There have been and there are still religious
teachers and institutions which maintain that man
should not seek the truth for himself, because he is,
as is claimed, unable to find it, and if a man has be
come convinced that he has found some truth for
himself, he must be mistaken and therefore he should
not be allowed to pronounce it, his errors being in
jurious to his fellowmen.
Man accordingly, because he cannot know, should
believe, he should trust in what he is told to be the
truth, he should give himself and his reasoning up to
the higher authority of the church, "bringing into
captivity every thought " (2 Cor. x, 5). Freethought

190 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
has risen in revolution to the religion of blind obe
dience, and freethought, although first suppressed by
ecclesiastical and secular authorities, has come out
victorious in the end and is now almost generally rec
ognised as the cornerstone of progress among all the
nations which represent civilised humanity.
Freethought has often been misunderstood. It is
not only misinterpreted by the adversaries of free-
thought, but not unfrequently also by those who call
themselves freethinkers. Freethought does not mean
that thought is free or should be free, it simply claims
freedom for the thinker to think undisturbedly and un-
interfered with for himself. The thought of the thinker
however is not free and cannot be free, in the sense
that the thinker can think however he pleases. Free-
thought, it is true, claims the liberty and the right to
think for the individual; but that right being procured,
the individual can think only by renouncing its indi
viduality. We can dream as we please, we can imagine
that this or that might be so or so just as we like.
But when we think, we cannot come to a conclusion
just as we please, we have radically and entirely to
give up our likes and dislikes in order to arrive at
what can objectively be proved to be the truth.
The freethinker who claims not only liberty for
thought, but also liberty of thought is gravely mis
taken. There is no liberty of thought. The mere idea
" liberty of thought " is a contradiction, for thought
is strict obedience to the laws of thought and only by
strict obedience can we arrive at the truth which is
always the purpose and final aim of thought.
The error that there can be liberty of thought has
led to another erroneous idea which is a misinterpre
tation of the principle of tolerance. We certainly

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. Tgi
believe in tolerance, but tolerance means the recogni
tion of other people's right to express their opinion.
It does not mean that any and every opinion is of
equal value. Tolerance demands that the opinions of
those who seek the truth should be heard ; they should
not be put down with violence or treated with con
tempt. Yet tolerance does not exclude criticism ; it
does not and should not abolish the struggle for truth
among those who believe that they have found the
truth. For truth is objective and there is but one
truth. If tolerance is based upon the idea that truth
is merely subjective, that something may be true to
me which is not true to you, and that therefore an ob
jective conception of the truth is an impossibility,
tolerance has to be denounced as a superstition. Tol
erance in this sense is injurious to progress, for it pre
vents the search for truth and leads to the stagnancy
of indolent indifferentism.
The expression objectivity of truth must not be
understood in the sense that truth is an object. Truth
is not a thing, but a relation. Truth is the congruence
of our ideas with the reality represented in these ideas.
If the idea is a correct representation of the reality
represented so as to form a reliable guidance in our
deportment toward the reality, it is true. That truth
can be more or less clear, that it can more or less be
mingled with errors, that it can be more or less com
plete or exhaustive is a matter of course. Truth can
not be possessed as objects are possessed so that we
either have it entire or not at all. Truth is the pro
duct of our exertions, it is the result of our search for
truth, so that, the world of realities with its innumer
able relations and unlimited changes being living be
fore us, immeasurable, interminable, and eternal, truth

1Q2 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
can never be complete, never perfect, never absolute
in the minds of mortal beings. But that proves only
the greatness of the universe and the grandness of the
object of our cognition. It is no fault of truth. For
truth remains truth, it remains objective, and can as
such serve as a guidance for conduct, even though it
be incomplete and imperfect. We however are free
thinkers and search boldly for a more complete and
more perfect conception of truth, because we trust in
truth — in its objectivity, its exclusiveness, its univer
sality, and its authority.
Freethought, if the word is conceived as the right
and the duty of everybody to think for himself, boldly
abolishes the slavery of blind obedience, but it does
not abolish, as is sometimes erroneously supposed,
any and every authority. On the contrary, its claim
is based upon authority and can be maintained only
on the strength of this authority. This authority is
the objectivity of truth, which involves its uniqueness.
There is but one truth. All the many different truths
are but so many parts or aspects of truth ; and al
though the different aspects of truth may form con
trasts, although we may state them in paradoxical
formulas, they never can collide so as to enter into a
real and actual contradiction. Whatever is positively
contradictory to truth is impossible, for truth is one
and is always in harmony with itself. Truth is objec
tive and the right to think is based upon the confi
dence that correct thought which is rigidly obedient
to the laws of thought, will lead to the cognition of
truth. Freethought accordingly is not the renunciation of
all authority, it is only the renunciation of human
authority. It is not the abdication of obedience, it is

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 193
only the abdication of blind obedience. Freethought
refuses to recognise special revelations not merely be
cause it disbelieves the reports made about these spe
cial revelations, not merely because it declares them
to be doubtful and unreliable. Freethought would
be weak if it were based on mere negations and dis
beliefs, and that freethought which never ventures
farther than the negations is weak indeed. Free-
thought refuses to recognise special revelation, be
cause it believes in the universal revelation of truth.
The God of freethought is not a God who contradicts
himself, who makes exceptions of his will by miracles
for those who seek after signs. The God of freethought
is not far from every one of us. We can seek him, if
haply we might feel after him and find him. For in
him we live and move and have our being. He ap
pears in the realities of nature and of nature's laws,
and his revelation is not dual ; it is one, it is through
out consistent with itself and every one is welcome to
search for the truth.
Because God has been conceived as a miracle-
working magician, and because the ecclesiastical au
thorities have again and again maintained that such a
God alone can be called a God, freethought has been
driven into the negativism of atheism. But if God is
conceived as the objective reality in which we live
and move and have our being, as that power the cog
nition of which is truth and conformity to which is
morality, freethought is by no means either negative
or atheistic. Freethought is by no means a mere
negation of belief, it is by no means an overthrow of
religion, or a reversal of religious authority. Free-
thought is a strong and potent faith. It is the faith
in truth.

i94 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
The faith of freethought is as a grain of mustard
seed, which indeed, is the least of all seeds, but when
it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and becom-
eth a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge
in the branches thereof. The faith of freethought is
in the beginning a mere maxim, a hope, an ideal.
But it is founded on the rock of ages ; it is founded
upon truth. The faith of freethought is justified. We
have a right to search for the truth ; yea, we have the
duty to search for the truth. And why? Because
truth can be cognised. Truth is not an illusion, not
a mere subjective fancy, it is founded upon objective
reality. It is an ideal that can be approached more
and more, not a mere vision but a realisable actuality.
It is a path, although a steep path full of thorns, a
narrow and strait gate and few there are that find
it. But we must find it for all other paths lead astray.
And we can find it, and blessed are those who have
found it, for it alone leads onward and upward ; it
alone is the way of life, it alone is the road of pro
gress.

THE LIBERAL'S FOLLY.

There was a man in the Fatherland to whom lib
erty was dearer than life. He bravely stood up against
the Government and against the Church, for both
proved oppressive, both curtailed the liberties of the
people. There was no freedom in the Old Country,
and no hope of ever attaining freedom. So this man
left his home and the place of his childhood ; he crossed
the Ocean and came to the Land where the Stars and
Stripes float in the breeze as an emblem of the new
ideals that have become actual facts under our western
skies. This man arrived here poor, but he was industri
ous, frugal, and intelligent. He worked first as a la
borer, then as a mechanic, then as an inventor. He
earned money and he saved money ; first cents, then
dollars, then hundreds, and then thousands of dollars.
After a life of energetic labor he had become one of the
wealthiest citizens of his adopted country.
He had children and they were educated according
to his principles. They should not be suppressed, as
he had been during childhood ; they were brought up
in liberty. To-day this man is broken-hearted. Part of his
wealth is gone, through the imprudence and folly of
his son. Everybody had seen it, but the father had
not, that his son brought up in liberty had become a

196 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
scamp, a foolish, rude lout, a boisterous scape-grace.
The father had enjoyed the pranks of the frolicking
child; but he was disappointed when the adult son
repeated the same pranks in business — not to mention
other dissipations and follies.
Who is that man? His name is legion. Look
around, and you will recognize him at every turn among
your acquaintances and your business friends. This
man can almost be considered as the typical Liberal.
It is not always his immediate son who thus shows the
folly of his errors ; in many cases it is the grandson
or the child of the grandson. For the virtues of the
parents remain a blessing to the second and third gen
eration. The capital of moral strength is not sud
denly exhausted ; yet it dwindles away rapidly.
The children of men of this stamp sometimes still
remain in possession of their father's wealth. If not
laborious and industrious, yet they are shrewd busi
ness men, sometimes unscrupulous too; but they have
mentally and morally degenerated, and in the place of
the republican simplicity of their grandsire they as
sume aristocratic habits. They are ashamed of the
honesty, the industr)', and frugality of their ancestors
and make themselves ridiculous as servile imitators of
European nobility.
Let us, institute an aristocracy of the mind, and
of loftiness of aspirations. Rotten is every nobility
that boasts of wealth. It is a shame that we Ameri
cans, " the brave and the free," are always vaunting
in the face of foreigners the immeasurable, inexhaus
tible riches of our country. It is a poor country where
that is the best to be gloried about, and it is a poor
man whose riches are everything of value that he pos
sesses. Let us cease to admire the rich because they are

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 197
rich ; and ye, the moneyed aristocracy, cease to pride
yourself upon your possessions. The pride of wealth is
the lowest kind of pride, the meanest, the poorest !
But ye liberals, beware that ye are not under the
same curse as the typical liberal. Ye liberals have a
great mission, for ye are the salt of the earth : but
if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be
salted ? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be
cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.
Liberty is a great thing and we should give, if need
be, our lives for liberty. But liberty must be deserved ;
it must be the fruit of our labor. Do not be deceived
by the false prophets who preach in high-sounding
words, who promise happiness and enjoyment, and
then decoy you into the abysses of the pleasures of the
world. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but in
wardly they are ravening wolves ; they tell you that
liberty enlightens the world. Do not be deceived, for
it is just the reverse. Liberty does not bring enlight
enment, but enlightenment brings liberty ; and there
is no liberty which is not based on eiJightment, on
education, on culture, on morality, on wisdom, and
good will.
The impoverished immigrant is the fool of whom the
gospel speaks. His ground had brought forth plenti
fully, and he thought within himself, saying, What shall
I do, because I have no room where to bestow my
fruits ? and he said, This will I do : I will pull down
my barns, and build greater ; and there will I bestow
all my fruits and my goods, and I will say unto my
soul, Soul thou hast much goods laid up for many
years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.
But God said unto him, 'Thou fool, this night thy soul
shall be required of thee, then whose shall those things

198 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
be, which thou hast provided ? So is he that layeth up
treasures for himself, and is not rich toward God.
For a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the
things which he possesseth, but in the abundance and
purity of his soul.
The rich man was a fool because over the cares for
worldly goods he forgot the one thing that is needed.
He neglected his soul ; and his soul was taken from
him. The man to whom liberty was dearer than life neg
lected his soul and he neglected to build up the souls
of his children. Thus they degenerated and involved
their old father in their own ruin.
You liberals call yourselves free-thinkers and you rail
from the platform at the churches and at religion. Ye
blind guides ! Why behold ye the mote that is in
your brother's eye, but perceive not the beam that is
in your own eye ? Either, how can you say to your
brother, Brother let me pull out the mote that is in
thine eye, when you yourself behold not the beam that
is in your own eye ? Ye hypocrites, cast out first the
beam of your own eye and then shall you see clearly
to pull out the mote of your brother's eye.
How insignificant is the mote in the eye of an or
thodox clergyman who when teaching morality cannot
as yet dispense with the traditional fairy tales, in com
parison to the scoffer who rejects any and every au
thority, for fear lest it may enslave the mind.
It is true that our churches and the dogmatic tenets
of the churches are full of errors, and religion as gen
erally taught, is defaced with superstitions. But the
freethinker who casts away religion is like the bear of
the hermit. To drive away the fly on the face of his
master, he crushes his head and kills him.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

i gg

You hate oppression and yet you make your children
slaves of their follies. You love liberty but you shut
the door to that enlightenment without which liberty
is impossible. The Churches with all their errors are
by far superior to the wiseacre who destroys only, but
does not build !
It is not the churches you should oppose, but the
errors of the churches ; it is not religion you should
destroy, but the superstitions of religion ! If you un
dermine the basis of ethics in the name of Liberty, then
you are the salt that has lost its savor.
The churches have repeatedly refused to be the
leaders of humanity. Whereat liberal thought was
called upon to shape the future destinies of man. Ye
men of a liberal mind and of progressive views, ye are
now expected to be the masterbuilders, to lay the
foundation. But it appears that on you the word will
be fulfilled again. Many are called, but few chosen.
The many have again rejected the only foundation
upon which the temple of humanity can be raised.
Our people will pay dearly for the errors committed
by the blind guides. The cornerstone of man's wel
fare is religion, and if man will live, he must take care
of his soul. Tear down religion, neglect the most pre
cious treasures that are entrusted to you, the souls of
yourselves und your children, and you will reap the
destruction which you deserve. The masses of our na
tion seem to be blind to the truth. They follow the false
prophets. But let us not despair, for in the end our
people will bethink themselves of the right path. Then
religion shall be raised up again and the rents therein
shall be closed. Then the prophetic word will come
true again : The stone which the builders rejected, the
same is to become the head of the corner !

THE MOTE AND THE BEAM.

The duty of the church and of all religious con
gregations is to preach morals. Religion should be
man's guiding star through life. Religion, therefore,
must give in great and plain outlines a conception of
the world in which we live, and teach us how to reg
ulate our conduct in agreement with the facts of life,
for the benefit of ourselves and our family, our nation
and humanity. If the church ceases to preach morals,
or if it preaches wrong morals, its influence becomes
injurious to the members of its congregation and
dangerous to society.
As a matter of fact we must acknowledge that the
churches have done much in preaching morals ; they
have accomplished great things in preserving commu
nities and making our men and women strong in en
during the tribulations of life and resisting its many
allurements. Let us take one example only which brings
home to us the wholesome influence of religion. Let
us read a description of the Puritans as they are
characterized by an impartial historian :
"The Puritan was made up of two different men,
the one all penitence, gratitude, passion ; the other
proud, calm, inflexible. He prostrated himself in the
dust before his Maker. But he set his foot on the
neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he
prayed with convulsions, and groan's, and tears. He was

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 2ol
half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. When
he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for
war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left
no perceptible trace behind the'm. But those had
little reason to laugh who encountered him in the
hall of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics
brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of
judgment and an immutability of purpose which some
writers have thought inconsistent with their religious
zeal, but which were in fact the necessary effects of it.
The intensity of their feelings on one subject made
them tranquil on every other. One overpowering
sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred, am
bition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure
its charms. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had
cleared their mind from every passion and prejudice,
and raised them above the influence of danger and
corruption." The virtues of the Puritans, it cannot be disputed,
preserved them in the calamities that had been vis
ited upon them in their old country ; they pointed
out to them the way to their new home, and when they
arrived in the Mayflower on the shores of the new
world, it was these virtues again that made their en
terprise successful. Many of the pilgrims died of cold
and hunger ; yet the little colony of emigrants did not
despair, and finally they triumphed in spite of every
adversity. The virtues which preserved them, which
were the cause of their final success, what were they
but religious ?
Compare the history of the pilgrims to the fate of
those noblemen who landed in Virginia under Captain
Newport in 1607. Why was their enterprise a failure ?
Because they lacked the energy and endurance, the

202 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
patience and self-possession of the Puritans. They
had no religion to teach them these virtues, and they
came over in the hope of becoming rich without work.
They expected pleasures and found innumerable hard
ships. They sought happiness and were soon con
fronted with dangers and disasters which they had
neither the courage nor the strength to resist or to
overcome. Why is it that among all the colonies planted on
our shores the most flourishing were those founded by
religious exiles ?
Religion is a great power, and the religious instinct
will do great work, be it for good or for evil. We
know that the churches made mistakes ; we know that,
through persecution, they induced people to commit
most heinous crimes, that they opposed, and oppose
still, the progress of science. And since they suffer
our conception of the world and life to become dis
torted, their moral preaching is in danger of leading
astray. We object to their oppression and protest
against the fetters with which they shackle our minds
and endeavor to tie us down to certain traditional
errors which they regard with reverence.
The most violent assailants of the churches are
certain freethinkers who declare that all religion is su
perstition and that religion must be killed like a wild
beast, a turbulent hyena; we must rid ourselves of
religion as if it were obnoxious vermin or a lingering
disease. These freethinkers, as a rule, look upon
clergymen as imposters and hypocrites and are in their
turn by faithful believers regarded in a similar and not a
more favorable light. Most of these freethinkers are as
honest as their adversaries, yet, like them, they are
one-sided. They step forth and say to the people :

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 20^
"Why do you allow yourself to be imposed upon by
religion ? Religion is an invention of kings and priests
to keep the masses of the people in subjection. Re
ligion is a humbug and the rules prescribed by re
ligion need not be followed. Live as you please and
take out of life whatever pleasures you can get. That
is the sum and extract of all philosophy."
The narrow orthodoxy of the churches is the mote
in the eye of our clergy. How many of our ministers
feel in duty bound to impress the dogmas of their sect
upon their congregation and forget the main duty upon
which all their work should abut, viz., to preach
morals, to make of the souls that are entrusted to their
care, characters strong enough to face the adversities
of life, to endure troubles, and to resist the dangers of
temptation. Clergymen generally forget that the most
important moral rule is the love of truth, and truth
must be judged by scientific evidence, not by its agree
ment with, or disagreement from, the tenets of their
creed. Such is the mote in the eye of the church. But the
beam in the eye of destructive freethinkers is their
unqualified contempt of religion. They have become
blind to the importance of morality, and the preach
ing of morality. Not as if they were immoral them
selves, or intended to spread immorality among our
people, which as they well know would lead us into
speedy ruin ; but because the beam in their eye, — their
contempt of all religion, — has made them blind to the
fact that their own morality is a treasure inherited
from their religious forefathers, a treasure that will
soon be wasted in the coming generations of their ir
religious descendants.
Churches have faults, and some of their faults are

264 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
most grievous. Their dogmas are untenable unless a
free interpretation be used. Yet their ethics, although
wrong in some points, is upon the whole right. It is
the ethics of the churches that kept them alive. It is
the virtues of religious citizens that make colonies and
nations thrive. Iconoclasts are right when protesting
against the faults of the churches, against the false
pretensions of religious authorities. But they are
wrong when they attempt to destroy the institutions
created for, and devoted to, the purpose of preaching
morals. The creed of the pilgrims was wrong in many
respects ; yet it was right in so far as it made of simple-
minded men heroes, who could become the fathers of
a great nation of liberty. The fathers were in their
way freethinkers also ; but they were constructive free
thinkers, not destructive. They found some flaws in
the religion that was taught them ; yet they did not
therefore throw away the whole ideal of religious life.
They effaced the flaw as well as they understood to
do, and preserved their ideals.
Life is a school. All of us are given a work to do.
Among the scholars in the school of life, there are two :
the orthodox believer and the agnostic nonbeliever.
The one is plodding quietly along and tries to solve the
problem given him ; yet he makes mistakes. The other
does not try to solve the problem, he thinks that the
problem is insolvable, and seeing some blunders in the
lesson of his schoolmate, attempts to erase the latter's
work entirely. It is well that the agnostic should call
attention to the errors of the orthodox, but the attempt
to cast away that which is true and good in religion to
gether with its errors cannot be recommended. There
is a mote in the eye of the one, and the other, pre-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 205
suming to be the corrector and leader of his comrade,
is not aware of the beam in his own eye.
Liberalism will never succeed in conquering the
orthodoxy of the churches unless it offers something
better than the ethics of ecclesiasticism. Liberalism
must teach us morals, and its morals must be better
than those of the church, its sermons must be based
upon scientific truth, and must apply to the practical
issues of life. Liberalism should be positive and con
structive, not negative and destructive. It is true that
it was necessary to destroy the old errors, but now we
have done with tearing down and we intend to use the
empty space to build upon it greater and nobler ideals.
Let liberalism be more than hostility toward anti
quated traditions ; let it cease to preach hatred of
religion ; and liberalism will rise in its grandeur to be
the religion of mankind.

SUPERSTITION IN RELIGION AND SCIENCE.

It is not an uncommon attitude among freethinking
people to see all the glories of science in its ideal per
fection, and to discredit religion with the worst defi
ciencies it ever possessed and thus to identify it in
this contrast as superstition pure and simple. This
attitude is wrong, yet it is the natural consequence of
religious dogmatism. A dogmatic believer when com
paring science and religion, is apt to recognise the
evblutionary element in science and to ignore it in
religion. He knows very well that the present state
of science is not its aim and end, our present knowl
edge is not absolute truth and the full realisation of
the scientific ideal. Yet he is inclined to consider his
religion as absolute and as a model of perfection. It
is not natural that the unbeliever who sees the faulti-
ness of the present religious conceptions, condemns
religion itself for the sake of the errors of religious
people. But is not the dogmatic view of religion a plain and
obvious mistake. Have not the dogmas, in spite of
all the attempts to make them rigid and immutable,
changed constantly and are they not even now almost
visibly changing in all the churches? Religion is as
little absolute truth as is science. Both evolve and

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. ' 207
they must evolve, both grow and develop and they
develop together. A progress of science is always a
prophesy for a progress of religion. And this evolu
tionary power, far from being an evil, is their life.
Without the faculty of growth science as well as re
ligion would be dead.
During the last few centuries all the sciences have
been revolutionised by new discoveries, just as our
civilisation has been modified by the many inventions
made in all branches of life and labor. It is but nat
ural that religion also should be revolutionised and
based upon other principles than heretofore. This
will be accomplished whether we champion or oppose
the new view of religion, for it is the outcome of an
evolutionary process in the growth and development
of mankind. The fact is well-established and yet little appre
ciated that science has just as well its orthodoxy as
religion. Science in former centuries was just as du
alistic as religion. And the history of civilisation is
the slow process by which man frees himself from su
perstition. Superstition is not necessarily a religious
error. By far the most numerous superstitions are
scientific superstitions. Superstition is the assump
tion of an error as if it were an axiomatic truth ; and
one of the most important causes of superstition is the
dualism of former centuries. Those who cherished
their superstition as absolute truth assumed the name
orthodox, viz. the men whose view is correct. They
denounced the heterodox as revolutionists who de
stroyed science as well as religion.
Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and other great scien
tists were to the scientists of their era heterodox, just
as Luther was denounced as a heretic and infidel by

208 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
the church. Socrates was executed because he was
said to be irreligious, and Christ was crucified for
blasphemy. If to-day a scientist would try to establish a new —
although correct — explanation of certain natural phe
nomena, which appeared to be contrary to the present
views of his colleagues, it is certain that his theory
would for a long time be rejected and ridiculed. La
Marck and Darwin have experienced the truth of this
fact. Only by great efforts did they and their follow
ers overcome the old superstition of the orthodox
pharisees of science.
The superstition of former ages, the erroneous du
alism which boasted so much of its infallible ortho
doxy, was not only an attribute of the religion of the
middle ages but also of its philosophy and science.
It is but a few decades since physiology got rid of the
dualistic view of a life-principle, or vital power. Even
to-day our chemists speak of organic and inorganic
chemistry, as if two different kinds of elements ex
isted, the living and the dead. This view and its
whole terminology are but scientific superstitions.
It is not the place here to point out why the path
to truth necessarily leads through errors. Nor can we
here explain at length how the errors of old — far from
being absolute errors — were the germs of truth. They
contained golden grains of truth, and the faithful en
quirer winnowed them until the grain was separated
from the chaff. Thus Copernicus and Kepler were
guided in their great discoveries by the old supersti
tious notions of the Pythagorean philosophy. They
believed a priori va. the harmony of the spheres.
Also another fact can only be hinted at : Humanity
does not consist of single individuals but forms one

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 209
great unity. The single individual is merely the rep
resentative of the ideas of his age, which are the re
sults of a long process of evolution. This will easily
explain why certain ages bear a certain uniform
character. There are, no doubt, exceptions. Some men are
greatly in advance of their times and some lag behind.
But such exceptions confute our argument as little as
cases of atavism overthrow the theory of evolution.
I argued with many different persons upon the
topics of religion and science, and found that apart
from a difference of definitions, fundamentally they
held almost the same opinions. The atheist and the
monotheist have different definitions of God. The
former rejects, the latter accepts, the idea of God, but
de facto both agree much more than they are them
selves aware of. The Roman Catholic priest of to-day
and Robert Ingersoll are more alike in their philosoph
ical views than is generally supposed, but we must
eliminate the differences of their terminology and
translate the language of the one into that of the other.
A free- thinker of to day differs much more from a free
thinker of mediaeval times than from an orthodox be
liever of to-day ; and a Lutheran clergyman differs in
the same degree from Luther himself. What Lutheran
clergyman would throw his inkstand at the devil or
order a misformed babe to be drowned, because it may
perhaps be a changeling ? What Calvinist of to-day
would burn a man who had a peculiar idea of the
Trinity of God. The shortcomings of religious men
are not errors of religion ; just as the ignis vita was
not an error of science. Errors and superstitions are
errors of men and of their times, and our own time
has likewise its full share of them. The scientific and

210 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
the religious spirit is constantly endeavoring to free
humanity from its many errors.
Taking this ground, I fail to see why religion should
be identified with the errors of the past and science
credited with all the great ideals of the future. Why
shall not religion just as well as science be freed from
the shackles of superstition? Absolute truth never
existed either in religion or in science. Scientific
definitions and religious dogmas have changed from
century to century, but the religious spirit and scien
tific spirit remained the same. The scientific spirit is
characterised by a pure love of truth, and, true relig
iosity means man's consciousness of being in unity
with the whole Cosmos — whether it is called the All
or God, Brahma or Nirvana or even Nought. The
religious sentiment is a powerful factor in every human
being. It prompts us to live in accordance with what
we call ethics, and by it our ethical instincts must be
explained. The professedly irreligious possess this
religiosity sometimes stronger than those who profess
a certain religion. Call it other than religion, if you
please, but the rose would be a rose with any other
name. In this sense Schiller said :
" Which religion I have ? There is none of all you may mention
That I embrace ; and the cause ? Truly, religion it is 1 "
The religious spirit and the scientific spirit are so
much in harmony that one cannot exist without the
other. All the prominent men of science were sin
cerely religious— they were not orthodox ; how could
they be so narrow-minded if they were to be the rep
resentatives of progress ? They were intoxicated, as
it were, with their zeal for truth. They felt that the
heart-blood of human progress was throbbing in their
veins. A greater power than themselves had taken

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 211
possession of them. They were conscious of working
and suffering for a great cause, in comparison to which
their individual loss and anxieties were but fleeting
trifles. The same can be said of great artists. Such
sentiment is the true religious spirit of which Goethe
speaks : Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt,
Der hat audi Religion:
Wer aber beide nicht besitzt,
Der habe Religion.
The man who science has and art,
He also has religion.
But he who is devoid of both,
He surely needs religion.
And this leads us to another point. Science is the
privilege of the few, but religion may be had by the
masses. Not everybody can be a scientist, but every
body can be and should be imbued with the true reli
gious sentiment. Religion is not a deep philosophy,
it does not take the profound learning of a scholar to
recognise that the individual is but a part of a greater
whole. Every child can know that ; and every child
should know it, not by being taught so at school, but
by seeing its parents act accordingly.
A true scientist and a great artist conceive that all
natural phenomena are but so many instances of the
IIAN KAVEN. Nature is one and the same every
where. Science and art are based upon this truth.
Accordingly, every true scientific man, every great
artist must eo ipso be possessed of the right religious
spirit. However, those who cannot intellectually grasp
this truth, must needs be religious or they will sink
below the level of the savage and the brute.
What we want is religion for the masses ; not ortho
doxy to make them bow down and worship idols, but
a religion that makes the individual feel himself the

212 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE,
representative of a higher power, of his community,
of his nation, of humanity. A nation in which the
masses are religious in this sense will be truly repub
lican, for every citizen will be a representative of the
sovereignty of the nation — of the sovereignty with all
its prerogatives as well as its obligations.

THE QUESTIONS OF AGNOSTICISM.

There are questions that rise unasked ; they ob
trude upon the human mind and cannot be banished,
because they lie in the nature of things. These ques
tions so long as they remain unanswered, will cause
an unrest in our soul, a spiritual thirst that can only
be quenched by the spiritual waters of life — by truth
and by a joyous submission to truth ; they will appear
as a strong and unsatisfied yearning for something
that will afford help in time of need, and that shall
bring light when we sit in darkness.
This dearth of peace of soul has created religion,
it has created the great cosmic ideal of mankind, the
idea of God as the Lord who made heaven and earth,
who will be our keeper and who will preserve our soul.
This dearth found expression in David's psalm :
" As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my
soul for thee, O God.
" My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God ; when shall I
come and appear before God ?
" My tears have besn my meat day and night, while they con
tinually say unto me, ' Where is thy God ? ' "
Our world-conception has greatly changed since
David's time, and together with it our religious views
have been modified. But the same yearning obtains
for peace and soul ; because according to the nature
of things the same questions rise again and again,
sternly, demanding to be answered.

214 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
The same anxiety as in David's psalm pervades
a communication presented to me some time ago,
which in accprdance with the spirit of our age formu
lates the thirst of the soul for a satisfactory solution
of the eternal problem of life in definite queries. The
letter is characteristically signed "Agnostic," and
reads as follows :
"Will you kindly answer the following questions ? The future
of religion depends, it seems to me, on the answers given.
i) Has the universe an ethical purpose or tendency ?
2) Have we any reason to believe that anything correspond
ing to human life, feeling, or intelligence, exists now in other parts
of the universe, or will come into existence again, after the de
struction of the earth ?
3) Are there any grounds for hope that pain will be dimin
ished and pleasure increased, to any great extent, in the future of
humanity ?
4) According to the doctrine of Evolution, will not the earth
and the whole solar system, in the distant future, become, once
more, a mass of homogeneous vapor, destitute of life, as the term
' life ' is generally understood ?
5) If the universe is an infinite machine, which mercilessly
crushes between its cogs, not only the individual, but eventually
the race, must not the contemplation of the universe awaken feel
ings of melancholy and despair in the human heart ? And are not
such feelings destructive to religion and ethics ? "
*
* *
This is an age of eager research. Wheresoever we
look, we find unanswered questions ; and many people
shrug their shoulders in despair, because they do not
expect that these questions will ever be answered.
Such people call themselves agnostics.
There are three attitudes of agnosticism. There
is, first, the agnosticism of indifference. This is the
position of those who do not wish to be bothered
with questions which they feel incompetent to answer
and which they generally care nothing about. The

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 213
agnosticism of indifference is passive ; it is a philoso
phy of indolence, which boasts of depth where be
cause of its own littleness it has not found bottom.
The second kind of agnosticism is an agnosticism
of despair. It is the agnosticism of "world-pain,"
and has been characterised by Heinrich Heine in the
following lines :
" By the sea, by the desolate nocturnal sea,
Stands a youthful man,
His breast full of sadness, his head full of doubt.
And with bitter lips he questions the waves ;
' Oh solve me the riddle of life I
The cruel, world-old riddle,
Concerning which, already many a head hath been racked.
Heads in hieroglyphic-hats,
Heads in turbans and in black caps,
Periwigged heads, and a thousand other
Poor, sweating human heads.
Tell me, what signifies man ?
Whence does he come ? whither does he go ?
Who dwells yonder above the golden stars ? '
The waves murmur their eternal murmur,
The winds blow, the clouds flow past.
Cold and indifferent twinkle the stars,
And — a fool awaits an answer.*
There are men of great talents who have grappled
with the questions. of the day, yet have failed to solve
them. They feel their labors lost and their energy, spent
in thought, wasted. But because a genius has failed to
solve a problem, is it really absolutely insolvable ?
And if it is absolutely insolvable, would it not in that
case be a pseudo-problem ? A pseudo-problem is a
question which is formulated on a misconception of
facts ; it is unanswerable because it is misstated. The
problem of existence is unanswerable perhaps, not be
cause the world is out of joint, but because the posi
tion of the questioner is wrongly taken.
The third kind of agnosticism is the agnosticism
* Translated by Emma Lazarus.

2i6 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
of science. We might call it with equal appropriate
ness either the agnosticism of ignorance or the agnos
ticism of wisdom. For it is a wise confession of ig
norance. This confession is not made in general terms,
that science is vanity and that all philosophy is trivial.
Such general statements have no meaning, except
that they place the sage and the fool upon the same
level. The agnosticism of ignorance is the agnosti
cism of science. It is an active attitude of agnosticism.
It states definitely a- special ignorance of ours, and
formulates it in exact terms.
The statement of such a specified ignorance is
called a problem, and although it may sometimes be
extremely difficult to solve a problem, the agnosti
cism of science never despairs of a final solution. On
the contrary, every problem is formed with the out
spoken hope that in the end, it will be solved. The
history of science is a continuous conquest of the
hydra-like growing heads of the agnosticism of science.
*
* *
There are certain questions — viz., the moral ques
tions — the nature of which is such as to demand an
immediate answer. "What are the rules of conduct ?
and what are the notions according to which we have
to form these rules of conduct?" — are questions that
are urgent. We live and act ; and we cannot wait
until science has settled all the problems the solution
of which in this or in that way might influence our
actions. We have to act as best we can. The notions
in agreement with which our whole demeanor has to
be regulated, are called " religious " ; and it is natural
that religious ideas through their extraordinary prac
tical importance are of an extremely conservative na
ture. They are laid down as the most sacred posses-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 217
sion of mankind, the holiest heirloom received from
our ancestors. This conservatism is natural, but it
will become dangerous if it prevents the revision of
religious ideas through the best, and truest, and most
earnest critique that can be furnished by science. It
will become detrimental if it produces thoughtlessness,
and makes a generation accept without critique what
ever it has been taught to believe.
It lies in the very nature of religious problems that
they must be solved again and again. Every one of
us has to solve them for himself as best he can. It
may be stated parenthetically that most religions are
creeds ; but they need not be creeds and the Religion
which we advocate is the Religion of Science.
The questions proposed by Agnostic are in their
nature religious questions, and we answer them very
briefly as follows :
1) "Has the Universe an ethical purpose or ten
dency? "
If this question is to be answered by Yes or No, we
should say, Yes — the universe has an ethical tendency.
But it must be borne in mind that this way of putting
the question is incorrect. We should ask whether the
universe has any definite tendency, or whether it has
no definite tendency whatever, without calling its ten
dency either moral or immoral. If the universe had
no definite tendency it would be no universe, no uni
tary world, no cosmos, but a jumble of incoherent
events, a chaos, a labyrinth of heterogeneous things,
a confusion without rhyme or reason, without law or
order. Our answer to this first question is, that the
universe has a definite tendency, and morality means
agreement with this tendency.
2) We have reasons to believe that on other plan-

218 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
ets and in other solar systems, there is something cor
responding to human life, to feeling, and to intelligence.
For philosophical considerations teach us, and science
corroborates it, that the evolution of the human race,
the feeling of animal life, and the intelligence of ra
tional beings have developed with necessity upon
earth in rigid accordance with natural laws. Is there
any doubt that the same conditions in other parts of
the universe will produce the same results, and sim
ilar conditions similar results ? When we analyze the
stars with the assistance of the spectroscope we find
there the same material elements as upon the earth.
Can there be any question as to our finding every
where the same laws and the same tendency of evolu
tion ? Other races on other planets may have very
different constitutions; winged animals of the air or
swimming animals of the sea, bipeds or quadrupeds,
mammals or insects, carnivorous or herbivorous, or
any other kind of creatures might develop into think
ing beings ; yet it is certain that among all rational
creatures, there would be at least in all fundamental
features the same logic, the same arithmetic, the same
mathematics, and above all the same logic of action,
viz., the same ethics.
3) There are grounds for hope that pain will be
diminished in life and that the nobler and more re
fined pleasures will be constantly increased. But con
sidering that pain is either the result of unsatisfied
wants or due to some other disturbance in life, we
must bear in mind that the creation of new wants
which arises through progress, will produce new pains
to the same degree as it will produce more refined and
nobler pleasures.
Are we not sometimes too weak-hearted with re-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 219
gard to our pains? Are not the causes of our woes
mostly of a trivial nature ? Look at them from a higher
standpoint and they appear like the baby's tears over
a broken doll. And if they are not trivial, if they are
not the woes of the individual, but of the aspiring
race, are they not far from being merely lamentable ?
Are they not in such a case sublime ? Are they not
transfigured by their sacred purpose, and must they
not appear as grand as are the struggles, the anxieties,
and the sufferings of a hero in a tragedy?
Let us consider pleasure and pain not from the
standpoint of sentimentality but from the higher stand
point of ethics, where the individual as such disap
pears, where the individual's worth is measured ac
cording to his breadth of mind, and where life is valued
not according to the pleasures it affords, but according
as it contains more or less of those treasures that
"neither moth nor rust doth corrupt."
As to the fourth and fifth question, we should say :
This planet of ours together with our solar system
may, and we have indeed reasons to believe that it
will, break to pieces. Yet the conditions which pro
duced not only our solar system, but also mankind
and human civilization, will not cease to exist. They
will continue to exist and will produce, in fact they
are constantly producing, new worlds out of the
wrecks of the old broken ones. If a man dies, we la
ment the loss ; we weep for the friend, the brother or
the father. But the loss is not so much his ; it is ours.
If our world breaks to pieces it will be a loss— a la
mentable loss. But will it be a loss to mankind ? It
will be a loss in the universe, which, however, as we
can fairly suppose, will be made up by other gains.
The universe is not "an infinite machine, which

220 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
mercilessly crushes between its cogs not only the in
dividual but eventually the race." The universe is
infinite and inexhaustible life. Whatever life of or
ganized beings, of individuals, of entire races and of
entire solar systems may disappear in one part, there
is a probability, practically amounting to certainty,
that in other parts new life will originate to compen
sate for it.
Life on its highest stage means action and action
means performance of duty. Man is an ethical animal,
which means that he has come to understand certain
important features of the tendency prevailing in the
universe. It is the performance of duty in past genera
tions which has raised mankind to its present emi
nence. The world is throughout a field of ethical aspira
tions. If our life ceases, if our planet breaks to pieces,
the immutable laws of nature will remain the same.
Humanity may be wiped out of existence, but those
realities which created humanity and in consonance
with which man's ethical ideals have been shaped will
remain. We read in the New Testament that Heaven
and earth may pass away, but the word of God abideth
forever. The Religion of Science recognizes the truth
of this biblical verse, although it does not accept it in
the narrow interpretation of theistic theology.

THE BIBLE AND FREE THOUGHT.

At present there are two distinct views concerning
the Bible, viz., that of the so-called orthodox, and that
of the irreligious radical. Those advocating the former
view believe that the Bible was revealed by divine in
spiration and communicated word for word. They
declare that it contains nothing but truth, — absolute
truth. The advocates of the latter view consider it a
book full of paradoxes and contradictions. They ridi
cule it as the non plus ultra of superstition and the
very basis of bigotry.
Both parties are in error. The Bible although not
dictated by the Holy Ghost verbatim, is from a human
and secular standpoint the grandest and sublimest
book we have. Compare it with the sacred books of
other nations, with those books which are the old
store-houses of ethical, religious and mythological
ideas. Compare it with the Koran, with Hesiod's
Cosmogony, or the Voluspa of the Northern Edda, or
the Zend-Avesta, or even the Vedas and the Buddha
Gospels. What impartial judge would not give pre
ference to the Bible ?
Goethe found in the Bible an invaluable store and
an inexhaustible mine of poetry ; he ranked it far
above Homer. Read the passage in Humboldt's Kos-

222 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
mos, where he expresses his admiration for the He
brew literature and more especially the poetry of the
psalms !
The sacred books of all nations, and particularly
the Bible form the basis of our modern ethics. That
the Bible should bear traces of the times in which it
was written, is quite natural. But it also points far
beyond its time, in that it contains germs which have
developed into a higher ethical culture. It is this that
gives to the Bible its value.
The Bible, when regarded from the standpoint of
narrow bigotry, becomes a tissue of almost unexplain-
able absurdities. How many things, which can be ex
plained by the ideas and manners prevalent in those
times, must now appear incongruous. No matter how
much the irreligious and flippant scoffer may differ
from the bigot in his ultimate opinion concerning the
Bible, his view nevertheless coincides with the latter's
in that they both guage the Bible according to .the
same standard. Both demand proofs of absolute truth ;
and because the infidel does not find them he depre
cates it and ridicules the pretensions of believers.
Both the bigot and the scoffer lack scientific insight.
If we consider the Bible from the standpoint of the
severest and most radical criticism, we shall only learn
to prize it all the more, on account of its poetical
treasures and on account of the valuable evidence it
affords of the growth of religious, ethical and philo
sophical ideas.
From this standpoint of careful and earnest scien
tific investigation the Bible will be read with the great
est pleasure and edification.
We prize our old legends of fairies and witches,
heroes and ogres, of the shepherd boy who slays the

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 223
giant and becomes a king, but we are blind to the
beauty of the story of David and Goliath. And why
are we unable to appreciate its charm ? Is it not be
cause, when we first read it with our teacher, the hu
man features of the story were ignored? They were
purposely thrown aside and something superhuman,
something awe-inspiring was wrongly substituted ; and
this made the whole tale unintelligible to the child.
The Bible if not distorted by narrow-minded bigotry
is a rich mine for every one. The child's love for
stories is satisfied, the historian finds records which
are of the greatest importance for our knowledge of
the patriarchal era of mankind, its customs and habits,
its beliefs and superstitions, its laws and its culture.
And above all, those who want to found their actions
upon a firm basis of rules and principles, who aspire
toward religious or ethical ideals, will find the most
fertile fields in the books of the Bible, if they search
in the right spirit, prejuduced neither by credulous
acceptance nor flippant rejection of all their contents.
The Old Testament is one of the strongest sup
ports of free thought, and the words of Christ are so
full of truth and righteousness that they have rung
through almost nineteen centuries and have not as yet
lost their power. They have been wrongly interpreted,
they have been scoffed at and ridiculed, they have
been criticised and condemned, but they survived
nevertheless, and will live on in the ethical develop
ment of humanity. The radical freethought of the
Bible is perhaps not understood by those who say
" Lord, Lord," who read and worship the letter and
lose sight of the spirit.
Mr. Salter, the well known lecturer of the Society
for Ethical Culture in Chicago, speaks in The Chris-

224 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
tian Register (Jan. 19, 1888) of the significance of Jesus
for our time. He says : "The charm about the name
of Jesus is that he dared believe in something different
from what he saw about him. He loved justice in his
soul, but with his eyes he saw injustice."
Christ's word, "Ye resist not evil," is a lesson to
the human race which people even to-day have not yet
understood. We are still prone to obey the old rule :
"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." If one
does injustice to another, this other thinks the best
remedy is for him in his turn to do another injustice.
It is almost an unwritten law of our social code "to
render evil for evil and railing for railing." If the
monopolist oppresses the workingmen, the trades-
unions expect to help themselves by committing a
similar injustice. We must be educated to "a per
ception," as Wheelbarrow says, "strong enough to
see that freedom to oppress others is not freedom." It
will perhaps take some centuries for society to learn
that the wrong-doer injures others and himself still
more. He who seeks revenge by retaliating does not
right the wrong but aggravates it. He intends to re
store justice and increases injustice.
There are but few who can distinguish between an
honest fight with their adversary and a hateful perse
cution of their enemy. The former is our duty, the
latter is deplorable, and if done in a cowardly manner
with the help of lies and slander, it is even despicable.
So long as we stick to the old rule of rendering evil for
evil, every evil will beget a new evil. But if we let it
alone, if we fight our struggles honestly without bear
ing any hatred toward our adversary, evil will be ex
terminated. The real Christian is not he who believes the mar-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE, 225
vellous stories told in the Bible, but he who acts in
accordance with the teachings of Christ, which finally
must be recognised as true in their spirit and humane
in their nature. They are right and correct and will
outlast the worldly wisdom of retaliation. They will
come to be recognised more and more, not only as
noble and sublime from the ideal point of view, but
also from the lower standpoint of practical prudence.
We would therefore call the attention of the free
thinker and of the bigot to the Bible. The one will
find in store for him treasures of most radical thought,
love of justice and truth, which he did not expect, and
the other will learn that Christ was different from what
he is generally represented in the orthodox pulpits.
Our modern ethical civilisation is evolved from the
biblical teachings and we have not as yet been able
fully to comprehend all the ideas embodied in them,
nor to realise them in actual life. Mr. Salter in the
above quoted article says : " Religion must inspire to
personal and social reform. That is the only thing
that is religion in the modern world. All else is the
tradition of an earlier time, when justice and judgment
were committed to other hands than man's." ....
"We cannot pray for justice any longer. We have
to do it. We cannot say, Thy kingdom come. We
have to obey the God who commands us to create it."
If any one who claims to be a teacher of free thought
and ethical progress, disdains the prophets in the Old
Testament, or the Doctrines of Christ in the New
Testament, if he scoffs at his followers, the Apostles,
Paul, Augustin or Luther, because they were in many
respects not so far advanced as we are now, he seems
to me like an engineer who foolishly prattles about
the stupidity of Watt and Stephenson or other great

226 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
inventors because their engines were poor in com
parison to the engines of to-day. An engineer of such
stamp will not become an inventor. Due reverence
for and appreciation of the merits of the past is the
only foundation on which a truly grand future can be
built. Radicalism is needed in our churches and our clergv
should know that free thought — in its best sense — can
never destroy religion, but on the other hand religion
is wanted among our freethinkers. They should know
that true religion is the most radical power of a con
sistent free thought which in constant opposition to
narrow-minded bigotry leads humanity onwards in the
path of progress.

FAITH AND DOUBT.

The value of scepticism was the subject of a dis
cussion in a club consisting mainly of scientists, law
yers, and business men. And it was a strange fact
that almost all the speakers glorified scepticism as if
it had been the cause of all progress, as if the human
mind reached the climax of perfection in Doubt.
This attitude, it appears, is based upon an errone
ous conception of the function of doubt, and it is now
so prevalent partly because the terms doubt and scep
ticism are often identified with any denial of certain
religious beliefs, and partly because agnosticism,
which despairs of a definite solution of the fundamen
tal problems of philosophy, is at present the most
prevalent and fashionable world- conception.
In the addresses made, it was maintained that all
success in life was due to doubt. An able business
man had doubted the propriety of the prevalent meth
ods of distribution in the meat-market ; and Charles
Darwin had doubted the truth of the biblical account
of creation, andlo ! what were the results ? The former
created an establishment which made meat cheaper all
over the world, and the latter wrote "The Origin of
the Species" and "The Descent of Man." One of
the speakers defined doubt as the faith of a man in
himself and in his ideals, contrasting it with a blind

228 HOMILIES OF SCLENCE.
faith in dogmas. But it strikes us that this view of
doubt and scepticism is, to say the least, misleading.
Doubt, real doubt, is unable to produce any results.
The man who has a faith acts according to the faith
that is in him. But the man who doubts is like Bur-
idan's donkey who hungers between two bundles of
hay so long as he remains in the agnostic state of not
knowing which bundle should be eaten first.
It was maintained, likewise, that the times of scep
ticism had been the times of progress. This is true
only if scepticism be identified with active thought.
Goethe said, that the epochs of strong faith alone had
been the periods of a strong activity, of progress, of
creative thought, fertile with ideas and deeds. It is
not true that Mr. Armour's doubt produced the new
methods of the distribution of meat, it was his faith in
the new methods and not his doubts as to the old
methods that produced progress. The negative ele
ment of doubt, important though it may be as a tran
sient phase in the growth of our ideas, is not so im
portant as the positive element of a new faith for the
creation of great things. It is most probable that the
new faith in the truth of the evolution theory devel
oped in Darwin's mind long before his old faith had
broken down, and it is not impossible that for a long
time he did not even realise the full extent of the con
flict between the old and the new faith. Success after
all is always due to faith ; and doubt is nothing but a
state of suspense in which a new faith is struggling
with the old faith, and only lasts so long as both faiths
are sufficiently equal in strength to paralyse each
other. The aim of doubt is always its annihilation. Prob
lems tend to be solved and the end of doubt should

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 229
be their settlement. But we were told by an encomiast
of scepticism, that "theories and dogmas vanish in a
clear and keen cut mind before doubt, even as mists
before the morning sun." However if the old theories
are not replaced by new and better theories, — better
because they are truer, — it would seem as if we should
rather compare the state of doubt to the mist. For if
we are surrounded with a dense fog we cannot see,
and only so long as we are in doubt do we answer
"Alas ! I know not."
It is strange that the doubt of this same eulogist
of scepticism is not at all a state of not knowing. When
he attempted to explain the actual advantages of
doubt he became inconsistent with himself. As soon as
he tried to describe his doubter's ' ' hope eternal " it was
noticeable that doubt became simply a wrong name for
the opposite of doubt. What he calls doubt is actually
a new faith. His "doubter mourns not, not as one
without hope," for he positively knows that "we live
and die by laws as inevitable, all working toward a
unity of completion" and "Nature makes no blanks,"
and death has also its place in nature. "It is death
that weaves a crown for birth and life."
A new faith is dawning on the intellectual horizon
of mankind ; and whether the new faith should be
considered as preferable to the old faith has, to the
large masses of our people, not as yet been decided.
Hence the prevalence of doubt. This prevalent state
of doubt is unquestionably the harbinger of better
days, it is a sign of progress, it promises life, and
growth, and evolution. But let us not make doubt
the aim and end of thought.' Our ideal is not the de
spair of an eternal scepticism, but the great hope of a
new, of a better and a truer faith.

THE HEROES OF FREE THOUGHT.

Who are the heroes of free thought? Those who
smile at religious sentiment and think that "religion is
good for the masses while the educated naturally stand
above any religious emotion" — or those who struggle
and yearn for truth, who suffer for it and advance
slowly, but earnestly, on the path of human progress?
The former may be more advanced in refinement,
knowledge and worldly wisdom, but the latter only are
the heroes of free thought. Such men were Giordano
Bruno, Spinoza, Luther, Lessing, Hume, Kant and
others, and it is noteworthy that almost all of them
were not only from childhood earnestly pious, but that
they also came from families where religion was more
than the mere observance of ceremonial rites.
Let us confine ourselves to the best known of such
characters. David Hume was a Scotchman, whose an
cestors were, as are all the old Scotch people, very de
voted Puritans. Kant, also, was of such Puritan Scotch
origin, and we know that his mother was a devout
Christian. Spinoza was a Jew. His parents left their home in
Spain for Holland, in order to remain faithful to the re
ligion of their ancestors. They might have comfortably
remained in Spain if they had abjured their belief and

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 231
turned Christians. The religious spirit of Spinoza's
writings is fully appreciated even by his adversaries,
and he showed this religious spirit in practical life when,
for the sake of truth, he scorned the terrible curse of
the synagogue, in the teachings of which he had been
educated. Luther's faith and love of truth is an historic fact.
He was a hero of free thought, which his contemporary,
the great Pope Leo X., was not. Pope Leo was a
free-thinker of the modern stamp. Luther was a firm
believer, Leo was an unbeliever. Luther had faith in
God like a child. Pope Leo was unhampered by any
credo and at the same time was a protector of art and
a promoter of humanitarianism. He did much for the
Renaissance in resuscitating Greek letters and Greek
culture. He built the glorious Cathedral of Saint Pe
ter's at Rome and to show his Helenic spirit he placed
upon the cross formed by the four great aisles of the
largest church on earth a cupola resembling the pagan
Pantheon. In his heart Greek paganism triumphed
over Christianity.
Compare this great Maecenas, the free-thinker, the
humanitarian, the erudite man, with the poor, almost
illiterate Augustine monk. Would you then have rec
ognised the power of free thought in the latter and the
lack of it in the former ? What gave to the simple-
hearted believer the strength to lead humanity one
great step onward, so as to gain for every man the
freedom of his conscience — the Christian's liberty, as
Luther called it ? It was not that he believed less of
the dogmatic Christianity, but that his religious faith
was stronger. Pope Leo was indifferent to religion ;
he was a free-thinker, and, upon receiving the Peter's
pence, spoke of "the profitable fable of Christ." He

232 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
appreciated and understood Luther's opposition so
little that he thought his preaching against Tetzel's
sale of indulgences was mere jealousy of the Augus
tine monk's against the Dominican Order, to whom
the sale was entrusted. Leo could not imagine that
any one would endanger his life for the sake of con
viction. Luther very probably would have been shocked
had he foreseen that humanity would advance on the
path of religious free thought. He did not see so far.
But it was better for him and better for the cause
which he boldly defended. We, however, should learn
from the juxtaposition of those two men, Leo X. in all
his papal splendor and the poor monk Martin in his
simple faith, that the heroism of free thought is no
mere indifferent negation of religious dogmatism, but
strong faith — religious faith — and confidence in truth.
Let us boldly and consistently think the truth, let us
speak the truth modestly but firmly, that is the spirit
by which the heroes of free thought became a power
and rose above their time so as to lead humanity to
higher and nobler aims.

THE HUNGER AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS.

There is a most dangerous superstition prevailing
among great masses of people that morality is a good
thing as an ideal, but a bad thing for the purposes of
practical life. A business man who wants to succeed,
it is imagined, can succeed by immoral means only.
This is a superstition, for it is not true ; and it is
a dangerous superstition, for it leads those who
believe in it and act accordingly, into ruin. Morality,
if it be true morality, will lead to life, it will preserve,
it will produce prosperity, and afford a noble satis
faction never mingled with regret.
The deep-rooted error that immorality alone can
insure success, seems to have originated through a
strange combination of misconceptions, favored by
special conditions and strengthened by exceptional
instances of successful impostors. Our very language
betrays us into grievous blunders. We speak of a
"smart " business man and understand by "smart"
now the prudent, industrious, judicious merchant,
and now the sagacious, deceitful trickster. Prudence
is indispensable to insure success, but trickery is not.
Trickery will go but a little way and, like the crooked
boomerang, it will unexpectedly fly back upon its
originator. Closely connected with this vagueness of speech is
the vagueness of our views of morality. Morality is

234 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
too often tacitly identified with so-called goodnatured-
ness and with inability. It is proverbial to speak
of incompetent men who are free from other gross
faults as "good people, but bad musicians"; mean
ing thereby that they are morally blameless, yet still
disqualified for the business or profession in which
they are engaged. Such men are popularly called
'good,' i. e., morally good; but they are not good.
They lack that moral nerve that enables us to adapt
ourselves to our work ; they lack that moral energy
of self-discipline by which alone we can train and
educate ourselves to become competent in our pro
fession. The negative morality of doing no harm to any
body is not as yet morality; it is, at best, sentimental
ity. True morality has positive ideals, and foremost
among our moral ideals must be the aspiration of
every individual to become a useful member of so
ciety, by contributing something to its weal and wel
fare. To do some work which gives us pleasure,
dilettanteism in art or science, in business or agri
culture, etc., is not as yet sufficient; our work must be
a service to society, it must stand in demand, other
wise we cannot and ought not expect any return for it.
A certain indifference with regard to honesty easily
arises from an over-prosperous condition of society.
If men earn money without earnest effort ; if they
live in plenty, and find the resources of all depart
ments of industry practically unlimited, they become
indulgent towards the depredator who takes more than
his due, and smile at the thief who nimbly skips away
with his spoil. He who plunders the public treasury
is not taken to account, because the loss is not so se
riously felt. A country in an unusual state of pros-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 235
perity is not so much in need of honesty as a poor
nation, and accordingly the moral instinct, the moral
sense of that country remains comparatively unde
veloped. If man did not stand in need of intelligence,
if he could live without thought, he certainly would
never have developed brains, and humanity would
still lead an unrational existence. The same is true of
morality : it is developed among mankind because and
to the extent in which man wants it. And we do want
it indeed ; we are most intensely in need of it, for so-
society could not exist without it.
A prosperous nation, I say, is not so much in need
of morality as a poor nation, where the struggle for
existence is hard and competition is fierce. Yet
the people that are not at present in such great need
of morality will soon come to that need. History
teaches that the moral, the industrious, the patient
poor people will in time most successfully compete
with the rich and the opulent. As soon as opulency
has reached that degree in which the need of morality
is no longer felt, the decline of a nation sets in. A
crisis in her social life is impending. The down
trodden will complain of their oppressors ; they will
cry out for justice ; and if that justice be not freely
given, the whole nation will suffer for it, and the coun
try once so prosperous will lie deserted and in ruins.
Let the monuments of the great nations that pros
pered before us and passed away be a mene tekel for
us to-day. When the nation of Israel was in a social condition
similar to that which, to a great extent, prevails among
us now, the prophet Amos arose and lamented the
moral depravity of his people. He said :

236 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Thus saith the Lord : For three transgressions of Israel, and
for four, will I not turn away their punishment. For they sell the
righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes. And per
vert the cause of the afflicted. They lay themselves down upon
pledged garments near every altar ; and drink wine procured by
fines, in the house of their gods.
Amos foresaw that such a state of society could not
remain as it was. He said :
And I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs
into lamentation ; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins and
baldness upon every head ; and I will make it as the mourning of
an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.
The need of morality, its indispensableness for the
welfare of the nation as well as of every individual,
must at last be felt, and under the impression of this
truth the prophet continues :
Behold the days come, sayeth the Lord Gcd, that I will send
a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
Amos's prophecy is as true to-day — and we repeat
it in this conviction — as it was about two and a half
millenniums ago. There will come upon us disorder
and misery, our feasts will be turned into mourning
unless we are made aware of the want of honesty, of
justice, of morality. The expression "the words of
the Lord " in the prophecy does not signify belief in
a supernatural revelation ; and if it did, we do not quote
it in that sense. "The words of the Lord," as we in
terpret the term in accordance with its context, mean
the moral commands that will forever remain the sub
stance of religious aspirations. There will arise, as
Christ said, almost two thousand years ago, "a hunger
and thirst after righteousness." Those who feel that
hunger will partake of the blessing that in the nature

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 237
of things is intimately connected with it, that will fol
low upon it, as the effect follows upon its cause.
Says Amos :
For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel
among the nations ; like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not
the least grain -fall upon the earth.
The prophecy of Amos is constantly being fulfilled
in the process of the survival of the fittest. Among
all the nations those alone will survive and fill the earth
that are pervaded with the moral spirit. A society
based upon justice will be stronger than a society in
which an aristocracy oppresses the other classes of
the people. A nation in which the rich devise laws
to protect themselves against free competition and in
which the poor are prevented from bettering their
condition, carries a germ of weakness within itself
and will in the end have to pay for its errors dearly.
The strong will conquer and the weak will go to the
wall — that is the natural law of evolution. But bear
in mind that there is no strength unless it be sup
ported by morality. The social law is a power — a
power that destroys those who do not conform to it.
Says the prophet :
Yet destroyed I the Amorite whose height was like the height
of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks. Yet I destroyed his
fruit from above and his roots from beneath.
Rocks are demolished by silently- working atmos
pheric influences. And the strongest nations perish
as soon as they deviate from the path of righteousness
and the spirit of progressive morality. A constant
selection takes place in the struggle for existence, and
humanity is sifted like as corn is sifted in a sieve.

238 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Let us learn the truth and act accordingly, and we
shall live. Let us not waver in the path of righteous
ness, but do faithfully some useful work in the service
of humanity, lest we become like the chaff which the
wirid driveth away.

ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

This world of ours is a world of strife. Wherever
we turn our eyes, there is war and competition and
struggle. Battles are fought not only in human so
ciety, but in animal society also ; not only in the ani
mal kingdom, but in the plant kingdom ; not only in
the empire of organized life, but in the realm of inor
ganic life — between the ocean and the land, between
water and air, among minerals, and among the dif
ferent formations of mineral bodies, among planets
and planetary systems, among suns and clusters of
suns. Strife is identical with life, and struggle is the
normal state of actual existence.
We can easily understand that a superficial ob
server of nature will feel inclined to look upon life as
a chaotic jungle without rhyme or reason, in which
the wildest hap-hazard and fortuitous chance rule su
preme. A closer inspection, however, will show that
there is after all order in the general turmoil and that a
wonderful harmony results from the conflict of antag
onistic principles. Nay, we shall learn that all order
proceeds from the antagonism of factors that work in
opposite directions. It is the centrifugal and centrip
etal forces that shape our earth and keep it in equilib
rium. It is attraction and repulsion that govern the
changes of chemistry. Gravitation throws all things
into one centre, and radiation disperses the store of

240 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
energy collected in that centre. And the same antith
esis of hostile principles manifests itself in love and
hate, in surfeit and hunger, in hope and fear.
There are many people who are not satisfied with
this state of things. They dream of a paradise where
there is no strife, no war, no conflict ; where there is
eternal peace, unmixed happiness, joy without pain,
and life without struggle. Whenever you try to de
pict in your imagination such a condition of things,
you will find that a world of eternal peace is an im
possibility. The world in which life does not signify
a constant struggle is not a heaven of perfection (as
is imagined), but the cloudland of Utopia, an impos
sible state of fantastical contradictions. Should 3'ou
succeed in realizing in imagination the dream of your
ideal of peace without inconsistency, it will turn out
to be the Nirvana of absolute non-existence, the
silence of the grave, the eternal rest of death.
Natural science teaches that hate is inversed love
and repulsion inversed attraction. Annihilate one
principle and the other vanishes. Both principles are
one and the same in opposite directions. Thus they
come into conflict and their conflict is the process of life.
Science does away with all dualism. The dualistic view
appears natural to a crude and child-like mind. The
Indian might say that heat is not cold and cold is
not heat, yet the man who learns to express tempera
ture by the exact measurement of a thermometer must
abandon the duality of the two principles. Monism is
established as soon as science commences to weigh
and to measure. The divergence in the oneness of
existence creates the two opposed principles, which
are the factors that shape the world, and the en
counter of conflicting factors is the basis from which

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 241
all life arises with its pains and joys, its affliction and
happiness, with its battles, defeats, and victories.
The world being a world of struggle, life teaches
us the lesson that we live in order to fight ; we must
not blink at this truth, for we cannot shirk the com
bat. Ethics, accordingly, if it is true ethics, and prac
tical ethics, must above all be an ethics of strife. It
must teach us how to struggle, how to fight, how to
aspire. In order to teach us the how, it must show us
the goal that is to be striven for, and the ideal which
we should pursue.
The progress of civilization changes the weapons
and abolishes barbaric practices ; yet it will never
abolish the struggle itself. The struggle will become
more humane, it will be fought without the unneces
sary waste which accompanies the rude warfare of the
savage, but even a golden era of peace and social
order will continue to remain an unceasing strife and
competition. You cannot abolish competition even
in the most complete co-operative system. There
will always remain the struggle for occupying this or
that place, and the competition for proving to be the
fittest will continue so long as the world lasts ; and
it is the plan of nature to let the fittest survive.
There are ethical teachers who imagine that the
purpose of ethics is the suppression of all struggle,
who depict a state of society where there is pure
altruism without conflicting interests, a state of mutual
love, a heaven of undisturbed happiness.
The ethics of pure altruism is just as wrong as the
ethics of pure egotism. For it is our duty to stand
up manfully in battle and to wage the war of honest
aspirations. It is the duty of a manufacturer to com
pete with his competitors. It is the duty of the

242 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
scholar, the philosopher, and the artist to rival the
work of his co-laborers ; and the progress of humanity
is the result of this general warfare. Organized life
from its lowliest beginnings developed higher and
higher by a continued struggle; and it is not the
victor alone to whom the evolution of ever higher and
higher organisms is due, but to the vanquisbed also.
The victor has gained new virtues in every strife, and
it is the brave resistance of the vanquished that taught
him these virtues.
There is an old saga of a northern hero, to whose
soul, it is said, were added all the souls of the enemies
he slew. The strength, the accomplishments, the
abilities of the conquered became the spoils of the
conqueror ; and the spirits of the slain continued to
live in the spirit of the victor, and made him stronger,
nobler, wiser, better. This myth correctly represents
the natural state of things, and we learn from it the
great truth, that our efforts, even if we are the unfor
tunate party that is to be vanquished, will not be in
vain ; our lives are not spent in uselessness, if we but
struggle bravely and do the best we can in the battle
of life. Furthermore, we learn to respect our adver
saries and to honor their courage. We are one factor
only on the battlefield, and if our enemies existed not,
we would not be what we are. We are one part only
of the process of life and our enemies are the counter
part. Any contumely that we put upon them in fool
ish narrow-mindedness, debases and degrades our
selves ; any dishonesty that we show in fight, falls
back upon ourselves. It will injure our enemies, as
was intended, but it will do greater harm to ourselves,
for it will disgrace us ; and our disgrace in that case
will outlive the injury of our enemies.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 243
Ethics teaches us that all struggle must be under
taken in the service of a higher and greater cause than
our egoistic self. He alone will conquer who fights for
something greater than his personal interests ; and
even if he be vanquished, he will still have the satis
faction that his ideal is not conquered with him. He
will find successors .to continue his work. His ideal,
if it be a genuine ideal, will rise again in his succes
sors and they will accomplish a final victory for his
aspirations. The Teutonic nations, — the Anglo-Saxons, the
Franks, the Germans and their kin, — are, it appears, in
many respects the most successful peoples in the world,
because of their stern ethics of undaunted struggle to
which they have adhered since prehistoric times. It
was no disgrace for the Teutonic warrior to be slain, no
dishonor to be vanquished ; but it was infamy worse
than death to be a coward, it was a disgrace to gain
a victory by dishonest means. The enemy was re
lentlessly combated, may be he was hated, yet it would
have been a blot on one's escutcheon to treat him with
meanness. It was not uncommon among these bar
barians for the victor to place a laurel wreath upon
the grave of his foe, whom in life he had combated
with bitterest hatred. There is an episode told in the
Nibelungensaga which characterizes the ethical spirit
of the combativeness of Teutonic heroes. Markgrave
Riidiger has to meet the grim Hagen and to do him
battle. Seeing, however, that his enemy's shield is
hacked to pieces, he offers him his own, whereupon
they proceed to fight.
The moral teacher must not be blind to the laws of
life. Ethics must not make us weak in the struggle
for existence, but it must teach us the way to fight and

244 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
must show us the higher purpose to be realized by
our struggle.
Naturalists give us most remarkable reports about
the degeneration of those organs and their functions
and abilities which are not used. If man could live
without reason, without education, language, without
reason, mankind would soon degenerate into dumb
brutes. Do not attempt to preach a morality that would de
prive man of his backbone. Man acquired his back
bone because in the struggle for life he had to stand
upright, thus to keep his own. If it were possible
at all to lead a life without struggle, the backbone of
man would soon become a rudimentary organ. But
as it is not possible, those men alone will survive that
are strong characters, that stand upright in the strug
gle and fight with manly honesty and noble courage.
The men with a moral backbone alone are those to
whom the future belongs.
Ethics must teach us how to struggle ; it must not
hinder us in the combat but help us. And ethics will
help us. Ethics demands that we shall never lose
sight of the whole to which we belong. It teaches us
never to forget the aim which humanity attains through
the efforts of our conflicting interests ; it inculcates the
lesson to do our duty in the battle of life, not only be
cause this is required by our own interests, but be
cause it is the law of life that we have to obey. By a
faithful obedience to the ethics of the struggle for life,
we shall promote the welfare of mankind and contrib
ute to the enhancement of human progress.

RENDER NOT EVIL FOR EVIL,

God is often compared in the Old Testament to a
shepherd who leads his people in the paths of right
eousness ; and those who truthfully obey his com
mands, who allow themselves to be guided by him,
are called his sheep, his lambs, his flock. Christ
adopted the same simile and often refers to it. In the
Acts (viii, 32) Christ himself is compared to a sheep.
To him is referred the prophecy in Isaiah (liii, 7):
"He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a
lamb dumb before his shearers, so opened he not his
mouth." This comparison was sufficient to g/ ve the crown of
glory to the sheep. Christians forgot that similes re
main similes ; that they do not cover the truth in all
respects, but in one or two points only : and thus it
happened that the weakness of the sheep, its sim
plicity, nay, its very stupidity, became an ideal of moral
goodness and Christian virtue. This misconception
of the true meaning of goodness received a further
support in such passages as "Ye resist not evil," and
"Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven." Mental and physical weakness, so the
doctrine of Christianity seemed to say, is a moral merit ;
and the principle of absolute non-resistance was seri
ously defended by many devout believers.
In recent times Christ's word "Ye resist not evil"

246 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
has come again into prominence through the teachings
of Count Tolstoi, who not only adopted it as a prac
tical rule of conduct but attempted to show through
his example that it was possible to live up to it.
Christ's command, "Ye resist not evil," contains
a great moral truth, and Count Tolstoi was taught it
not through traditional belief in dogmatic Christianity,
but through the hard facts of life. Having enjoyed a
good education, he had become an unbeliever by his
acquaintance with the so called sciences, and in his
practical experiences he found himself confronted with
many anxieties : care and worry for his beloved came
upon him ; he beheld the pale face of death ; and in the
moment of despair the unbeliever found comfort and
strength in words of prayer.
Count Tolstoi was converted not by the sermons
and representations of a subtle apologetic divine, but
by the overwhelming logic of facts consisting in the
moral relations between husband and wife, brother
and brother, friend and friend, man and man. It was
life that taught the lesson "Ye resist not evil" to
Tolstoi, and his religion is a religion based upon ex
perience. The myths of the Saviour who came into the world
from spheres beyond, contain pearls of imperishable
worth. Having ceased to believe in the sacred legend,
we may very well preserve the moral truths that like
valuable kernels are hidden in the useless husks of
dogmatism. The ethical teacher of the future while
rejecting the historical fables of Christ's life with an
uncompromising truthfulness, must extract the gold,
purified from dross, out of the ores of the old religions.
Christ's word "Ye resist not evil" must not be
misinterpreted as if it meant the abolition of all strug-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 247
gle and a passive submission to everything vile and
low. A parallel passage, 1 Peter, iii, 8, reads as fol
lows :
' ' Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another,
love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous : not rendering evil for
evil, or railing for railing ; but contrariwise blessing ; knowing
that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing."
Christ's word " Ye resist not evil" demands the
suppression of the natural tendency of retaliation. The
brutish desire in man for vengeance whenever he
suffers a wrong, should give place to brotherly love
and forgiveness. This is a divine command. Yet
divinity, as we understand the term, does not stand in
contradiction to nature. Divinity is nature ennobled
elevated, and sanctified. The ethics of love is divine,
because it is firmly established upon the facts of life ;
and science, if it be not blind to the moral law that
pervades nature, will find that it is true. Spinoza,
whose ethics is not that of revelation, says {Ethics,
III, 43 and 44) :
' 'Hatred is increased through hatred yet can be extinguished
through love.
" Hatred if completely conquered by love, changes into love ;
and this love will be greater than if no hatred had preceded it."
The evil of this world cannot be lessened by coun
teracting it through new evil. You cannot diminish
it by committing more evils. The logic of this truth
is becoming recognized in society now. Suppose that
some one being in a rage, called you names. Would
you stoop so low as to answer in the same tone ? Would
you childishly act like the bad boy saying: "You're
another ! " Certainly not, unless you lose your temper
and do things that you will later regret.
The doctrine "Ye shall not render evil for evil,"

248 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
in this sense, will be more absolutely recognized the
higher the standard of moral culture is. Yet this doc •
trine does not at all imply the abolition of all struggle
and the suppression of combat and fight. We are too
much accustomed to look upon struggle as the root
of all evil, and in that case we shall erroneously ex
pect that a world of moral life must be without com
petition, without war, without fight. The doctrine of
non-resistance, in the sense of giving up all efforts to
defend that which is right and just, is practically and
morally untenable. Life in all its many phases is a
constant struggle, and the ethics of life demands that
we shall fight the good fight of faith trusting in the in
vincibility of the moral ideal.
The sentence "Ye resist not evil" is ambiguous
and it appears preferable to express the truth of this
doctrine in the words, "Render not evil for evil."
Evil must be resisted, but not by other evils ; self
ishness must be overcome but not by other and
greater selfishness. Therefore, by the side of the doc
trine "Resist not evil with evil," let there appear the
command : Do your best in the struggle for life and
conquer evil, not because your own personal interests
are at stake, but because higher principles are involved
than the private affairs of your petty self. We must
never lose sight of the truth that our struggle for ex
istence, even in commercial competition, is fought for
the progress of humanity and for an ever higher and
better realization of human ideals.
Christ — that is, a moral teacher as described in
the four gospels — could not possibly have meant by
his word "Ye resist not evil," that doctrine of passive
indolence that made of the sheep the ideal of moral
perfection. For Christ himself fought and struggled,

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 249
he discussed and wrangled with the Scribes and Phar
isees. When he stood before Caiaphas, according to
the account of John, he was smitten in his face, and
although he was ready to endure another blow, al
though he had to endure worse persecutions, and
although he was not willed, even if he had been able
to do it, to retaliate : yet he did not suffer it with a
passive non-resistance ; he turned to the man who beat
him and took him to account, saying : " If I have
spoken evil, bear witness of the evil ; but if well, why
smitest thou me ? "
The doctrine "Render not evil for evil" is ad
dressed to every single person as an individual. But it
does not refer to the government, nor to the magistrate.
If you are a judge and called upon to pronounce a ver
dict, the word has no reference to your judgment. We
as persons have to renounce all egotism and all vin-
dictiveness. For egotism and the ill-will of the human
heart are the roots of all evil. Our egotism and the
evil wants of petty personal desires must be renounced
once for all and without reserve, not only where we
do wrong, but also where we suffer wrong.
That Christ did not intend to teach the weak morals
of non-resistence can be learned from his own de
meanor. When he and his disciples came to Jeru
salem, "Jesus went into the temple, and began to
cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and
overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the
seats of them that sold doves ; and would not suffer
that any man should carry any vessel through the
temple. And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not
written, My house shall be called of all nations the
house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of
thieves."

250 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Christ did not render evil for evil where his per
sonal interests were involved, yet if punishment is to
be called an evil, he did not hesitate to render evil for
evil in that dominion where he considered himself as
the representative of Him that — according to his ideals
of religious life — he felt had sent him.
Humanity, Christian and non-Christian, is under
the influence of the sheep allegory still. One of the
greatest biologists denies the existence of moral facts
in nature, because the sheep and the deer are eaten by
the wolves, and because in human society the same
struggle for existence as in brute creation is fiercely
fought, although with more refined weapons. The
struggle for existence will continue, it can not be
abolished, because it is a natural law, and sheepish-
ness will never triumph in the world of real life.
Having proved this, the scientist is satisfied, that na
ture is immoral.
Let us beware of the ethics of ovine morality.
Morality is not negative, it is not mere submission to
evil, no pure passivity, no suffering, simply: morality is
positive. Not by the omission of certain things do we
do right, but by straining all the faculties of mind and
body to do our best in the struggle for life which we
have to fight. We may be weak, and we may feel our
weakness. The greater should our efforts be, to fight
the struggle ethically. We may be poor in spirit and
we may feel our want, but nature will supply us with
that which we want, if we but earnestly struggle to
acquire it. He who is strong in spirit and in body,
he who feels his strength and misuses it, will not be
the conqueror in the end. It is not the self-sufficient
that are blessed; but those who are aware of their in-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

251

sufficiency. This only, in my opinion, can be the
meaning when Christ says :
." Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven." We must be on our guard against unfeeling stern
ness, yet on the other hand let us not drop into the
other extreme. We must be on our guard against
ethical sentimentality also. There is too much preach
ing about the sweetness of religion and the rapturous
delight of ethics. Yet this saccharine religiosity is just
as impotent and useless as that ovine morality which
glorifies in its weakness and does not struggle for
strength. Austere rigidity in religion and ethics is like a rose
without odor, it is life without gladness, and obedience
without loving devotion. The passivity of a lamb-like
submission is idealized weakness fortified and strength
ened by moral vanity and sugared over with senti
mental enthusiasm.
Religion and ethics, we do not deny, are full of
sweetness and noble joys, yet at the same time they
are stern ; they are of an unrelenting severity and
majesty. It is only the unison of both, the strength
of austerity and the fervor of sentiment, that makes
morality wholesome, sound, and healthy.

RELIGION AND ETHICS.

There are people who believe that theology and
metaphysics have nothing to do with morality. Re
ligious and philosophical world- conceptions, it is main
tained, are one thing and ethical convictions are an
other. This is true in a limited sense only. It is true
that the side issues of theology and metaphysics, which
by theologians and metaphysical thinkers are generally
considered as the most important of things, have as a
rule little or no bearing whatever on morality. In so
far, however, as Theology and Metaphysics discuss
vital religious and philosophical problems, they have
a certain relation to morality.
Morality depends on a sound conception of our
selves in relation to the world and, therefore, philo
sophical and religious errors will have an injurious
effect upon morality.
If we allow ourselves to be carried away by im
pulse, we are not moral. Animals are un-moral. Their
brutish conduct is not immoral ; it is natural in them,
as it becomes their brutish nature; and their good
conduct (self-sacrifice of mothers for their young,
etc.), although we justly praise it, cannot be properly
considered as moral, because it is the result of instinct

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

253

done from impulse and not an act of conscious delib
eration. Man is moral in so far as he consciously and
deliberately regulates his actions according to his re
lations to the All. Religion supplies him with the
reason why the principles of his actions should be such
as they are, and why he should do what he considers
to be right and proper to do.
Religion, if understood to be our recognition of
the Unity in Nature, teaches us to consider ourselves
as parts of the whole ; and who can doubt its strong
influence upon all our conduct ? The laws of the Uni
verse govern also the motions of our body. Heat and
gravitation operate as much in the functions of our
organs as in the solar systems of the universe. Our
lives depend upon surrounding nature, upon the at
mosphere we breathe, the soil upon which we stand
and the food which mother earth produces for us.
Our existence is a continuous exchange and intercom
munication with the whole "in which we live and
move and have our being." The very pressure of the
air upon our limbs is part of our life, which, if taken
away, would cause instant dissolution.
But we are not only physical parts of Nature, we
belong also to a higher order of natural growth which
discloses ethical ideas and moral duties. The threads
of each individual life are connected with the lives of
other beings like ourselves, of beings whose origin is
the same as ours and with whom we form one great
family. These relations, although woven of invisible
threads, are of no less importance than the coarser re
lations of our body to physical Nature. These rela
tions of social and family life, if recognised, will teach
us duties, and the performance of these duties is mor
ality.

254 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Religion, Science, Philosophy, Ethics and Morals
accordingly are closely related to each other; religion
is the recognition of the Unity in Nature which makes
us feel that we are parts of it ; Science is the study of
the several departments of nature by observation and
classification of its phenomena ; philosophy is the re
sult of the sciences, systematised. Ethics is the sci
ence of morals, and Morality is our behaviour regu
lated by religion, viz., by the recognition of the Unity
of Nature in all its phases, the lower physical, the
physiological and above all the social relations between
man and man.
Those who are moral, prove that they have re
ligion, for the moral man regulates his actions in ac
cordance with his duties as implied by his relations to
the All, especially to his fellow-beings. It is of great
consequence to have religion in this sense, but it is of
little consequence to confess a religion. Religion has
to do with morals and morality, but all the different
religions, i. e. the rites of churches, synagogues, and
mosques, the various confessions, church-membership,
etc., have little or no connection with morality, and
if they have, it is only in so far as they contain religion.
False religions and wrong philosophies had always
detrimental effects upon their adherents. The quiet
ism of India has nipped in the bud a grand and rich
civilisation, and the dualism of the middle ages has
dragged many thousand victims to a shameful death
for the alleged crime of witchcraft. The evil conse
quences of fundamental errors in philosophy and in
religion bear witness to the dependence of morality
on philosophy and religion. If you poison the religious
or philosophical views of a man or of a nation, you
will poison their morality also. The roots of man's

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 255
intellectual life (viz., of that in man which makes of
him a human being) are his convictions and his emo
tional inclinations (i. e., his philosophy and his re
ligion), while his actions are the fruits thereof, by
which we may recognise their soundness and vitality.

THE ETHICS OF LITERARY DISCUSSION,

The ethics of literary discussion can be expressed
in one sentence : Let the search for truth be your su
preme maxim to which all other interests must be sub
ordinate and subservient. Controversies which (not
unlike duels) are waged for mere personal matters,
have either to conform to this ethical maxim, or if they
do not, they will be recognised as downright unethical
or at least non-ethical.
The following rules are derived from the ethical
maxim of literary discussion :
Never defend an opinion which you do not believe
yourself. Never accept a belief which is not demon
strable. You must not only be convinced that it is
so, but your arguments must be strong enough to con
vince impartial readers.
Strength of argument rests on the following con
ditions :
i. The facts upon which it is based, must be well
established. 2. These facts must cover the whole field, so as to
be exhaustive as instances.
3. The reasoning must be logical.
4. The presentation of the argument must be lucid.
5. Your presentation cannot be lucid if you are not

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 257
clear yourself. Accordingly, you must be ready to
define every word you use.
6. Technical terms should not be employed unless
their definitions are given.
7. Be careful that your words and especially your
terms are used as they are commonly understood and
not in a double or ambiguous sense.
8. Make the main points prominent and do not lose
yourself in matters of detail, however interesting those
details may be. They draw the attention of your
readers and of yourself from the main subject.
These rules being observed, you can fearlessly
await the most powerful adversary.
Before attacking the position of your adversary, try
to understand his arguments from his standpoint.
Acknowledge fully where your adversary is right.
Where he uses an ambiguous term, state plainly
in what sense the term would be allowable.
This is a matter of justice due to your adversary.
To show justice in this way is advantageous first, to
your opponent, and then, perhaps in a higher degree,
to yourself, and what is most important, to the problem
under discussion. It clears the situation and you thus
limit the field of controversy to those points where you
know your adversary to be wrong.
The points of agreement have become neutral
ground which, it is true, your adversary can use for
an honest retreat, if he chooses. However, his anni
hilation is not the object of the discussion, but the
elucidation of truth. If he does not choose the chance
of an honest retreat, his defeat will be the more inev
itable, the more carefully the field of contest has been
limited to his errors.
The weakness of an opponent is generally sup-

258 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
posed to be the strength of his antagonist. This is
utterly false. It must be a poor cause you defend, if
it profits by the weakness of its adversaries. The
strength of an adversary adds to your own strength if
you defend a cause that is worth defending. The weak
ness of an adversary lowers you down to his own in
tellectual weakness. Therefore, do not have any discus
sion with weak opponents, and if you cannot avoid an
encounter, do not take advantage' of their weakness.
The common issue is lost sight of by abusing an ad
versary for his weakness, ignorance, or faults. Conse
quently, you being the stronger, the duty of helping and
promoting your adversary devolves on you. This should
be done without ado, simply by giving information.
If your adversary uses rude language or deroga
tory expressions, there is no need of following his ex-
example or of attempting to out do him. Either do not
answer his rant at all, or if you cannot avoid giving an
answer, ignore all personal disparagement and confine
your comments to the cause at issue. If you adopt
the railing method of your adversary, you lower your
self to his moral inferiority.
Never use sophisms.
Sophisms easily impose upon large masses, but
they do not delude the few independent thinkers who
are perhaps silent by-standers. The ultimate result
has never as yet depended upon the masses who judge
rashly, but upon the judgment of the few independent
thinkers who judge slowly but in most cases justly.
Sophisms are dangerous to the parties who employ
them ; sophisms will ultimately fall back and harm
their own inventor. By using sophisms you venture
on untenable ground, there to plant your colors, and
if your enemy is on the alert, you will lose not only the

HOMILLES OF SCIENCE. 259
position but your colors also. Sophisms afford inci
dental and transitory advantages.
If your adversary by negligence shows a hidden
weakness or is guilty of a self-contradiction, point it
out to him, stating at the same time how he should
have expressed himself from his own standpoint. If
his negligence is merely carelessness of verbal expres
sion, you have settled the point for good. However, if
the self-contradiction lies deeper, you have thus limited
the field of discussion (as suggested above) to those
points where the difference of the issues at stake will
be seen to be primary and radical.
This always is the end toward which all honest
and well directed discussion must tend. Even if the
disputants cannot gain the best of one another, their
discussion must elucidate the problem about which
the discussion is waged. The disputants must learn
by their discussion in how far they agree and wherein
their differences consist : whether it is only a difference
of words (which happens much oftener than is gen
erally imagined), or a material difference. If it is a
material difference, we must find out by the discussion,
whether the difference is fundamental, i. e., whether
the parties disagree because they start from different
principles (which they have accepted as axioms) or
whether it is a different interpretation of facts acknowl
edged by both parties, or whether one party takes its
stand on facts which are not recognised by the other
party as sufficiently established.
Whatever should be the result of a discussion con
ducted upon such ethical maxims, the discussion would
never be entirely useless, but would be valuable in
exact proportion to the issue at stake and the com
bined abilities of both opponents.

SEXUAL ETHICS.

Sexual ethics is the very core of all ethics. It is
the most important sphere of human conduct, the ten-
derest, holiest, and most delicate realm of moral aspira
tions. When speaking of morality, we first of all think
of sexual purity. So much is sexual ethics regarded
as the very essence of morality ! And no wonder that
it is so. Consider but for a moment the importance
of sexual relations ! The future of our race depends
upon them. The generations to come are shaped,
they are created through sexual relations.
The legalized form of the sexual relation is called
marriage. If marriage were not a sacrament, we
ought to make it such, for it is the dearest, the most
important, and most sacred of all human bonds.
The relation of parents to children is sacred in
deed. It is the relation of the past to the present.
Parents hand down the hallowed torch of spirit-
life to the present generation ; and if there is any
thing holier still, it certainly is the alliance between
husband and wife to become parents and to devote
themselves to the continuation of humanity and all
the spiritual treasures of the race.
The sexual relation is a natural want produced
through the necessity of self-preservation. The hu
man soul yearns to live ; it yearns to grow and to mul
tiply. In the face of death it longs for immortality,

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 26i
but immortality is not granted to the individual and
in order to become immortal an individual must grow
beyond the limits of individuality. The natural con
sequence of these conditions is that immortality can
spring from love only. Immortality must be gained
by sacrifice, it must be taken by conquest, and there is
but one power that can gain immortality. It is that
power of which the Song of Songs says, " it is stronger
than death." That one power is the holiness of the
sexual relation, it is matrimonial love.
If we deprive sex-relation of its sanctity, it sinks
down far below the most brutish acts of lowest animal
life. Human sex- relation in which the spiritual ele
ments of love and an exchange of soul are lacking de
grades man and more so woman ; it deprives them of
their sanctity and sullies the holiest emotions they
are capable of — the longing for immortal life. Animal
sex-relations are at least natural. Animals yield to
their natural wants without any consciousness of their
importance or consequences. In the absence of
thought, it is nature that acts in them. Immoral men
and women, who prostitute the holiest sentiments be
cause they imagine they find a pleasure in so doing,
cease to remain natural and accustom themselves ar
tificially to unnatural wants which weaken their bodies
and poison their souls.
The apostle (in the Epistle to the Ephesians, vi. 2)
speaks of the commandment "Honor thy father and
mother," as being "the first commandment with prom
ise." Reverence to parents is our willingness to re
ceive the sacred torch of human soul-life with a grate
ful mind. Lack of reverence is a self-deprivation of this
rich inheritance, and the highest reverence is shown
hot by a passive reception of merely conservative

262 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
obedience, but by actively taking possession of the
spiritual treasures by sifting them critically and by in
creasing their value. In fact, there is no passive re
ceiving ; all receiving is an active taking. Says Goethe :
" What from your father's heritage is lent,
Earn it anew to really possess it."
Greater than the promise of the fifth command
ment is the blessing that accompanies sexual purity.
Chastity is the condition of physical, mental, and
moral health. When the Romans became acquainted
with the valiant barbarians of the North, they recog
nized the natural holiness of the sexual relation as the
source of their strength. Caesar as well as Tacitus
are fully aware of this fact and give in their histor
ical accounts of German life with keen foresight due
prominence to this most important factor in the evo
lution of a nation of barbarians.
The sexual instinct of man serves a most important
and sacred purpose ; it is the preservation of human
soul-life, it is the attainment of immortality. If it is
led into other channels, it decoys man into danger
ous aberrations. Woe to those who find pleasure in
depriving it of its sanctity! The curse that falls upon
them will outlive their lives, for it will go down to
their children and the children of their children.
It is not ethereal prudery that nature demands of
us, not an extirpation or suppression of nature, but an
elevation and purification, that the noblest features
of nature's living and moving and being may be devel
oped. A cynical attitude towards the mysteries of
sexual life besmirches the soul of man with moral filth.
Chastity has regard for laws that underlie the procrea
tion of life, and reverence for the tenderest and most
wonderful of nature's secret dispensations.

MONOGAMY AND FREE LOVE.

If we understand by free love what the word
literally means, an absence of all compulsion to love so
that love is granted and received as a free gift, what
can be better, nobler, and more natural than free love ?
Love must always be free — or it is not love. Accord
ingly, free love is a matter of course, which in its pro
per meaning no one can dispute. Yet if we understand
by free love that which as a rule is preached by most
of the so-called apostles of free love, it would mean
the absence of all restraint in the relation of the sexes,
the destruction of its ideal element and the reign of
licentious laxity. In that case it is only a beautiful
name that has been given to an ugly monster ; it is
a devil that appears in the garment of an angel ; it is
moral filth praised as celestial manna.
There are laws of life which we must obey under
penalty of perdition, and there are laws of love which
we must obey under penalty of destroying the holiness
of love or even defeating its end and purpose.
The purpose of love, that is of sexual love, is not
the gratification of the sexual instinct, nor is it any
pleasure that man may derive from such gratification.
Wherever there is a gratification in love or in friend
ship, it is, regarded from the moral point of view, in
cidental ; it is of secondary consideration and we need

264 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
not speak of it here. The purpose of sexual love, its
end and its holy law, is the welding of two souls into
one so that a new soul-life may spring from it in which
the two souls are inseparably fused.
What is soul ? The Saxon poet says :
" Soul is form and doth the body make."
Soul is the form of a living organism. A fusion of
souls actually takes place in the procreation of a new
life ; and this fusion of souls is one of those mysteries
of nature which even, though science should succeed in
explaining to our satisfaction its mechanical process,
will forever remain a wonder before which we stand
spell-bound in awe and admiration — a wonder which
is grander and more miraculous than all miracles in
which many of us are so fond of believing.
*
* *
What is the law of love that must be obeyed ? The
law of love is obedience to the purpose of love, and
the purpose of love is one of the holiest duties of
man ; it is the building up of our race. And this can
be accomplished only if it is done with truthfulness,
devotion, and self sacrifice.
The love of friendship between congenial minds,
the love of the teacher to his pupils, of the preacher
to his congregation, are also a building up, a preserva
tion and a transference of soul-life in the human race ;
but conjugal love is devoted to the procreation of new
souls, and without the sex relation of conjugal love
humanity would die out.
Conjugal love in its legal form is called marriage,
and the present form of marriage- among all the civil
ized races is monogamy. Humanity has found by
experience that society prospers best where the sexual
relations are so arranged that one husband and one

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 265
wife constitute the foundation of a family. The races
in which polyandry prevails are rare exceptions ; and
wherever polyandry is the normal state of society,
there is, as a matter of fact, no civilization, no cul
ture, no progress. We have reasons to believe that
polyandric tribes are a very low phase of human so
ciety, perhaps even a state of degeneration which in
the end will lead to extinction.
Polygamy is practiced still in Asia, and it has been
practiced among highly civilized people. Yet wher
ever monogamous and polygamous nations were rivals
for supremacy, the monogamous nation proved always
victorious in every kind of competition, in war as well
as in peace.
There can be no doubt that monogamy is that form
of matrimonial relations which best attains the ends
of sexual love. Polygamous nations may have, but
as a rule they do not have more children than monoga
mous nations, yet the children raised in monogamous
family life are sturdier, healthier, and better educated.
The institution of polygamy, while it degrades woman,
easily induces man to marry merely for the gratifica
tion of their sexual appetites, and the seriousness of
the duties of marriage is overlooked.
The ultimate purpose of marriage is the preserva
tion of human soul-life, and if monogamy is more effi
cient in this one point than polygamy, if it enables
man to raise a generation that loves freedom and de
lights in progress, it must be preferred whatever other
advantages or pleasures might be connected with any
other system of regulating the sexual relations in hu
man society.
Monogamous nations are distinguished by love of
freedom and by a progressive spirit ; polygamous peo-

266 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
pie are on the contrary easily enslaved. Their life
as a rule shows a state of stagnancy, and their history
consists of a series of court intrigues and palace revolu
tions. Monogamy has become a holy institution to the
nations of Aryan speech, because their civilization
rests upon monogamous family life. So long as the
moral sense of a nation is vigorous, it will most se
verely resent whatever threatens to destroy the holi
ness of monogamous family life. Thus the apostles of
free love when they attempt to attack and destroy mon
ogamy will meet with almost unanimous resistance. '
* *
The theory of free love in the sense of unre
stricted sensuality is sometimes claimed to be the nat
ural state, while matrimony is denounced by the de
fenders of free love as unnatural. If that were so, all
the institutions of civilization ought to be considered
unnatural. Raw food would be natural and cooked
food unnatural ; to live like the monkeys of the Sunda
Islands would be natural, while plowing, sowing, and
harvesting would be unnatural. Indeed the claim that
free love is the natural state has been made only by
most immature minds, who are without knowledge of
the historical growth of our institutions, who are not
familiar with the evils of such former states of society
as are supposed to be more natural.
The defenders of free love very often lack all per
sonal experience of harmonious and healthy family
life. Not infrequently they have sprung from a mar
riage of ill-mated parents and have been too deeply
impressed with certain incidental evils developed in
such cases by the monogamous system. It would be
a rare exception indeed if a father or a mother would

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 267
advocate for their children the theory of unrestrained
sexual intercourse.
Free love might perhaps be the correct theory, if
such institutions as marriage could be judged from
the standpoint of single individuals. The sex relation
however is of greater concern than mere individual
interest ; and the problems rising therefrom must be
judged from the higher standpoint of the common
welfare of society.
The nature of human society develops certain re
lations which are wanting in the lower stages of animal
life ; but they are nevertheless just as natural. Who
would say the oak is less natural than the lichen, only
because the oak represents *a higher stage in the evo
lution of plant life ? The oak however would become
unnatural, it would be in a morbid state, if its organs
would degenerate so as to fall back to the lower stages
of plant life.
Let us beware lest in trying to be natural, we
should degrade ourselves into habits which may be
natural to animals but are most unnatural to human
beings — not that the satisfaction of the animal wants
of man is unworthy of his higher nature, but that the
animal way of satisfying them must be condemned.
*
* *
It cannot be concealed however that as high an
ideal as monogamy is, it sometimes demands great
sacrifices ; and the social sentiment which by law as
well as by public opinion enforces the institution of
monogamy, will sometimes have its victims. Mar
riages in which a man and a woman who for some
reason cannot agree, are joined .together until death
shall part them, will produce misery that changes life
into hell. There are also cases in which for some rea-

268 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
son or other a legalization of the bond that has joined
two noble souls in sacred love, could not take place.
There are several well known instances even among
great thinkers and geniuses of literary fame. There
are some cases that cannot be measured by the usual
standard of morality. It is a fact that men and women
whose fates led them into paths that were different
from the prescribed forms of marital relations suf
fered greatly from public prejudice. We should in
such cases remember how kindly Christ treated the
woman that was found guilty. "He that is without
sin among you," Christ said, and we understand that
he here refers to the sins against our sexual ideal of
morality, "let him first caTst a stone at her."
The sexual instinct in man is a most powerful ele
ment of his soul life. It is dangerous to rouse it and
more dangerous still to suppress or eradicate it. The
whole vigor of natural forces is hidden in it. Sexual
love wherever it grows is a serious thing to deal with.
If it cannot have its way in legitimate channels, it will
like steam that is shut up, break its way through
laws and customs in spite of prejudices and public
condemnation. Let us therefore beware on the one hand lest we
fall into temptation, and on the other hand when we
see the mote in the eye of our brother, lest our judg
ment be too severe. Those who are without sin, be
ware that they preserve the purity of their soul. He
who according to the holy legend of the Christian gos
pel was above all temptation, abstained from throwing
a stone. He said in his lordly dignity to the adul
teress : "Go and sin no more."

MORALITY AND VIRTUE.

Morality is taught in our churches and in our
schools ; it is preached in our religious and liberal
congregations. And yet there is a strong doubt in
the minds of many whether obedience to moral pre
scripts will be a help to a man who wants to get on in
life. We hear it again and again that the moral man
is the stupid man, the dupe of the smart impostor,
while the man of the world, the man of business and of
success must use misrepresentations. Strict honesty
is said to be impossible. We are told by men of
learning and experience who are supposed to know
the world, that "the two sayings 'Be virtuous
and ycu will be happy' and 'Honesty is the best
policy,' are very questionable." And it is claimed by
many that if that kind of honesty which never mis
represents nor ever keeps back part of the truth, were
practiced, it would be difficult to carry on business. *
This view of life according to which the utility of
honesty is of a doubtful character, which induces us to
incline toward trusting in dishonesty as a good policy,
which makes trickery and the methods of misrepre
sentation appear as promoting our interests, is the
worst error, the falsest conception of life and the most
* See the article "A Few Instances of Applied Ethics " in The Open Court
No. 219.

270 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
dangerous superstition that can prevail, and woe to
that community where it becomes prevalent.
The grocer who sells impure goods as pure, the
merchant who inveigles people to buy by false labels
will succeed in cheating the public time and again.
But let us not be hasty in forming our opinion,
that cheating is advantageous ; we shall find that in
the long run this man cannot prosper through mis
representations. There is but one thing that will wear,
that is truth, and truthfulness is the only good policy.
The man who intends to cheat must be very smart,
very wide-awake and very active in order to succeed,
and in the end he will find out that better and easier
rewards are allotted to the industry and intelligence
that are used in the service of straightforward and
honest purposes.
Several curious counterfeits are exhibited under
glass to the inspection of the public in the treasury of
the United States at Washington, and among them
are two bills, one of fifty the other of twenty dollars,
both executed with brush and pen only and yet they
are marvels of exactness, and it must have been very
hard to discover that they were imitations. No won
der that they passed through several banks before they
were detected. T.he man who made them was an
artist and he must have spent on their fabrication
many weeks of close work. For the same amount of
similar artistic and painstaking labor he would have
easily realised more than double the return of the
value which these counterfeits bear on their faces.
Is there any character more instructive than Eph-
raim Jenkinson in Oliver Goldsmith's world-famous
novel "The Vicar of Wakefield." Howsuccessfuljenkin-
son was in his calling as atrickster and a rogue! and yet

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 271
to be caught but once in a hundred times is for a rogue
sufficient to ruin him forever. The Vicar and Jenkin-
son meet in the prison, and when the Vicar, having
recognised by his voice the man who cheated him out
of his horse, expresses surprise at his youthful appear
ance, the man answered, "Sir, you are little ac
quainted with the world ; I had at that time false hair,
and have learned the art of counterfeiting every age
from seventeen to seventy." Jenkinson indeed appears
as a master of his trade, yet he adds with a sigh :
"Ah ! sir, had I but bestowed half the pains in learn
ing a trade that I have in learning to be a scoundrel,
" I might have been a rich man at this day."
Jenkinson is too smart to be wise enough to follow
the experience of millenniums, laid down in the moral
rules, and he found this out when he had leisure
enough to think of his life within the prison walls. He
says on another occasion to the Vicar :
"Indeed I think, from my own experience, that
"the knowing one is the silliest fellow under the sun.
" I was thought cunning from my very childhood :
"when but seven years old, the ladies would say that
"I was a perfect little man; at fourteen I knew the
"world, cocked my hat, and loved the ladies; at
"twenty, though I was perfectly honest, yet every one
" thought me so cunning that not one would trust me.
"Thus I was at last obliged to turn sharper in my own
"defence, and have lived ever since, my head throb-
"bing with schemes to deceive, and my heart palpi-
" fating with fears of detection. I used often to laugh
"at your honest, simple neighbor Flamborough, and
"one way or another generally cheated him once a
"year. Yet still the honest man went forward with-
"out suspicion and grew rich, while I still continued

272 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
"tricksy and cunning, and was poor, without the con
solation of being honest."
Only a very superficial experience leads us to the
assumption that wickedness is a help in the world and
that the unscrupulous have an advantage in life. And
this is a sore temptation to those who believe that it
is so. Says Asaph in the seventy-third psalm :
"But as for me, my feet were almost gone. My steps had
well nigh slipped.
"For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity
of the wicked.
' ' They are not in trouble as other men ; neither are they
plagued like other men.
' ' Therefore pride encompasseth them about as a chain ; vio
lence covereth them as a garment.
' ' Their eyes stand out with fatness : they have more than
their heart could wish."
But the prosperity of the wicked is mere appear
ance. It is the state of the world as things seem to
be, when only isolated instances are considered. The
wicked may succeed a hundred times, but in the end
they are sure to fail, and if they fail they are done with
forever. An honest man may fail. a hundred times and
yet he may rise again, for his hands are clean and his
conscience is not weighed down by guilt. Asaph con
tinues :
1 ' Then I went into the sanctuary of God and I observed their
end. ' ' Surely thou didst set them in slippery places. Thou castest
them down in destruction.
' ' How are they brought into desolation as in a covenant, they
are utterly consumed with terrors."
Honesty is after all the best policy and he who
does not believe it will have to pay for it dearly in his
life. But let us not go too far in our trust in honesty as

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 273
well as in all negative morality. Honesty is not enough
to make success in life ; honesty is not as yet virtue,
and obedience to the several injunctions of the "thou
shalt not " conveys by no means an indisputable claim
to prosperity. True virtue is active not passive, it is
positive, not negative.
What is virtue ?
Morality as the word is usually understood is merely
a refraining from wrong-doing; it is the avoidance of
all that which does harm to our neighbor, which in
jures society or retards the growth and evolution of
mankind. However, morality in order to be all it can
be, ought to be more ; it ought to be virtue, and virtue
is the practically applied ability to do some good work.
Virtue is activity, it is doing and achieving. And
what is the good work which stamps activity as vir
tue ? Virtuous is that kind of work which enhances
the growth and evolution of mankind, which helps so
ciety, which promotes the welfare of our neighbors as
well as of ourselves.
Mark ! virtue is not exclusively altruistic ; it is
not opposed to egotism. Virtue may be altruistic,
but there are sometimes very egotistic people who
possess great virtues. Their virtues may be employed
first and even so far their intentions go exclusively in
the service of egotism. Nevertheless, they will de
signedly or undesignedly enhance the progress of man
kind, and therefore we have to consider their abilities,
their methods of action, their manners of work as
virtues. There are men of great virtue who have conspic
uous moral flaws and it is not uncommon to judge of
great men according to the pedantic morality of the
Sunday school ethics. The bad boy who plays truant

274 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
possesses sometimes more positive virtue than the good
boy who is pliable and obedient to his teachers. It is
a narrow view of morality and indeed an actually
wrong ethics that cavils at the heroes of mankind,
pointing out and magnifying their peccadilloes in order
to obliterate and forget their virtues. Goethe whose
greatness has often been detracted by the smallness
of such dwarfs as have the impudence to speak in the
name of morality said of Napoleon, the great con
queror and legislator :
" At last before the good Lord's throne
At doomsday stood Napoleon.
The devil had much fault to find
With him as well as with his kind.
His sins made up a lengthy list
And on reading all did Satan insist.
God the Father, may be it was God the Son,
Or even perhaps the Holy Ghost—
His mind was not at all composed —
He answered the Devil and thus began :
1 1 know it, and don't you repeat it here ;
You speak like a German Professor, my dear.
Still, if you dare to take him, well —
Then, drag him with you down to hell.' "
Lack of positive virtue is often considered as moral.
Lack of courage is taken for peacefulness, lack of
strength is taken for gentility, lack of activity is taken
for modesty. If moral people are deficient in energy
and ability, do they not deserve to be beaten by the
wicked who possess energy and ability? Says Goethe in
a little poem :
" The angels were fighting for the right,
But they were beaten in every fight.
Everything went topsy turvy
For the devil was very nervy,
He took the whole despite their prayer
That God might help them in their despair.
Says Logos, who since eternity
Had clearly seen that so it must be,
' They should not care about being uncivil
But try to fight like a real devil,

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 275
To win the day, to struggle hard,
And do their praying afterward.'
The maxim needed no repeating
And lo I the devil got his beating.
T' was done and all the angels were glad —
To be a devil is not so bad."
Let us not be pusillanimous in ethics. It is pusil
lanimity which produces squinting views of morality.
The morality of the pedant, the exhortations of the
Sunday-school teacher, and the ethics of professors
and lectures are not always correct, and if they are not
exactly incorrect they are often insufficient or merely
negative. The opinion that morality is no good guid
ance in life, that honesty is not always the best policy,
that the unscrupulous, the deceitful, the immoral have
a better chance in the struggle for life rests either on
an insufficient experience or an insufficient conception
of what ethics means.
Let us not be shaken'in our trust in truth. Truth
fulness toward ourselves*and others is the best policy,
it is the only possible policy that will stand for any
length of time. Trickery, misrepresentation, deceit,
imply certain ruin. At the same time let us remem
ber that negative morality is not sufficient, we must
have or acquire positive virtues. The omission of sins
is not as yet the fulfilment of the law, the ideal of
moral perfection is infinitely greater, it consists in
building up the future of mankind in noble thoughts
and energetic works.

ARISTOCRATOMANIA.

Envy of the rich is a very common feeling among the
poor. And why is it so common ? Because the rich
are more fortunate in possessing wordly goods to sat
isfy not only their needs, but also any unnecessary
wants. They have the means of procuring for them
selves whenever they please all sorts of pleasures
which because they are expensive lie outside the reach
of the poor.
It is true that the rich have the means to procure
themselves pleasures in an extraordinarily higher de
gree than the poor ; but if the poor imagine that for
that reason they actually enjoy life and life's pleasures
better than the poor, they are greatly mistaken.
This is true in several respects. First the zest of
pleasures is lost, if they are procured without trouble.
Pleasure cannot be bought, pleasure must be felt, and
the capability of having pleasure depends upon sub
jective and not upon objective conditions. The man
who does not work lessens his capability of enjoyment
in the same degree as he ceases to be in need of re
creations ; and pleasure which is no recreation after
serious toil, which is not the satisfaction of a want,

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 277
soon ceases to be a real pleasure, it becomes flat, stale
and unprofitable.
The rich, in order to remain healthy in his spirit,
in his sentiments, in his recreations and wants, must
live like the poor man — not like those who are wretched
and destitute, but like those who work for a living.
The rich, be they ever so rich, must, for the mere
sake of their mental and moral health, continue to be
active, and their activity must have an aim and pur
pose,' it must be productive of some good, it must be
work of some kind.
The pleasures of the poor are, as a rule, richer and
deeper in color than those of a certain class of typ
ically rich people — viz., such rich people who notice
ably appear and wish to appear as rich among their
less fortunate fellow creatures ; and the reason of this
difference lies deeper still than in a mere lack of exer
tion and wholesome activity on the part of the rich.
One of the most irresistible temptations of the rich, it
appears, is their eagerness to be distinguished from
their fellowmen as a special class of men, a peculiar
and a higher species of the human kind. This is a
disease which may be called aristocratomania, and it
is one of the most deplorable diseases, not uncom
monly proving fatal to the existence of noble and great
families. Aristocratomania is a disease which erects a barrier
between special classes of men, not because the one
is actually better, wiser, more moral, or nobler in
character than the other, but because the one can in
dulge in luxuries in which the other cannot.
The aristocratomaniac is no aristocrat in the etymo
logical and good sense of the word. He is not a better
man than the rest of mankind ; he is worse, he is a

278 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
degeneration. His soul instead of being enlarged and
widened has shrunk, and in the measure as it has
shrunk it has lost in human interest, sympathy, and
love. The aristocratomaniac is perhaps charitable, he is
kind, but his charity and his kindness appear offensive
as soon as they are properly analysed, for their main
element is a superstitious condescension.
The state of aristocratomaniacs is ridiculous and
pitiable. It is ridiculous because of the vanity of their
pride ; it is pitiable because of the shriveled condition
of their souls. The punctilious observance of social
formalities has taken the place of cordiality and truth
fulness. The fashionable ceremonial of society life
has become the highest rule of conduct, but the real
sentiments which ought to underlie the forms of social
intercourse are neglected and forgotten.
The highest object of the aristocratomaniac is to
burn incense before the altar of his God — the Puny
Self which is fed with flattery and vanity. No emotion
is permitted which would conflict with this deity, for
great is the Puny Self and he is almighty in the soul
of the aristocratomaniac.
Whenever the aristocratomaniac has injured or
has given offense to his fellowman, the little word :
"I beg your pardon," which by natural impulse wells
up in a human soul, remains unspoken because the
great Puny Self sees in it a humiliation of his majesty.
Why is there so little warmth in the family life of
aristocratomaniacs ? Brothers and sisters among the
poor help one another, they rejoice at their joys and
bear their woes in common. Does wealth produce a
chill in the atmosphere so as to freeze out all cordiality
and goodwill? Does wealth beget dissatisfaction,

HOMILIE S OF SCIENCE. 279
envy, jealousy, ill-will among men? Is the old Nibe-
lungen-saga true that a curse rests on gold which will
lead its owner to perdition ? Certainly it takes a strong
character to be wealthy and to remain human, kind-
natured and broad-minded. The dearest and most
sacred affections are too easily suffocated among the
thorns and thistles of worldly goods. Proud of their
possession of worldly goods the higher goods, of truly
human feelings are lost. As the mother of Christ
said to Elizabeth :
" God hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he
hath sent empty away."
There are several causes of aristocratomania, for
it is a very complicated disease and its symptoms
show themselves in different ways, but one cause ap
pears to be its main source and this one cause is the
lack of solidarity with the interests of aspiring, toiling
and progressing mankind. That which kindles sym
pathies in the hearts of men are common labor, com
mon sorrows, common wants and common hopes.
There is nothing of that between the aristocrato
maniac and his fellowmen. He has with other aris
tocratomaniacs common joys, common fancies and
fashions, common comforts and a common pride. But
these feelings do not kindle sympathies.
There is a peculiar and a manlike sympathy in the
dog who drags the cart of his poor master and earns a
living as his help mate, sharing his master's labor and
bread. But there is no such amiability in the snarling
pug who idles away his time in the lap of his idle
mistress. He is egotistic, impertinent and dissatis
fied. He has also become infected with aristocrato
mania, for dissatisfaction is one of the most telling

2go HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
symptoms of the disease. Says Goethe in describing
the symptoms of aristocratomania :
' ' They 're of a noble house, that's very clear
Haughty and discontented they appear."
There are. among the poor a class of people who
either from lack of strength, because the burdens of
life are heavier than they can bear, or from lack of
courage and good will, because they do not intend to
work for a living, become spiteful and bitter. This
disease is in many respects similar to aristocratomania.
The aristocratomaniac feels himself exempt from the
common lot of mortals, the spiteful poor thinks that
he also ought to be exempt. He has the predisposi
tion of becoming an aristocratomaniac, and being
hopelessly shut out from the class to which his in
stinct leads him, he dreams of rising above the crowd
of common mortals with the help of the masses by
preaching hatred and destruction. This is the Marrat
type of the demagogue, vanity, egotism and ambition
are but too often the motives of him who pretends to
be a reformer, imitating Christ in his denunciations
only but not in his charity, love and self-renunciation.
One of the most prominent social agitators actually
exposed his main spring of action in quoting Virgil's
verse :
" Flectere si nequeo superos Acheronta movebo.
[Can I not bend the Gods, I'll stir the under world.]
Moral health cannot be found in the aristocrato
maniac nor in the would-be aristocratomaniac, but in
the patient and plodding worker, be he rich or poor.
He who has risen in his imagination above mankind
and the sorrows of mankind has cut himself loose from
the tree of humanity. The fate of aristocratomaniac
families as a rule is sealed. They are doomed. Life

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 281
is activity and wherever life ceases to be activity, it
dries up and withers away.
Is this perhaps the meaning of Christ when he said
that "A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
These passages are strong and what they teach
should not remain unheeded. There are two lessons
which they teach, one of warning and the other of
comfort. The warning is for the rich not to erect a
barrier between themselves and humanity, not to al
low their souls to be shriveled by wealth and pride of
class, for the poor, not to be blinded by the advan
tages of wealth ; wealth is not happiness and does not
convey happiness. The real contents of life, its mean
ing, its import and its worth cannot be expressed in
dollars and cents. We have to create the actual
values of life ourselves.
But there is in Christ's words about the rich also
a solace. The solace is for those who live their lives
in the sweat of their brows. Life's strength is labor
and sorrow. Let us not expect a different fate and
we shall the more easily be able to meet the duties of
life and to conform to the unalterable laws of mental
and moral growth.
Let us not lose time with complaints, but let us be
like Horatio :
" As one, in suffering all that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Has ta'en with equal thanks."
Let us preserve the elasticity of our minds and if we
have to drudge, if we are surrounded with difficulties
and disappointments, we shall bear them gladly and

282 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
grow the stronger through their resistance. It is said
that the palm tree, if weighed down by some heavy
stone grows the more stately and the more straight
raising its crown above all the other trees which either
do not experience any resistance, or if they did, would
not have the strength to overcome its pressure.

SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM.

Social reformers and the enthusiastic prophets of
a new mankind tell us that when their dreams are
realised a radical change will take place in the nature
of man. The coming man will lose all the vicious
features of the present man ; universal happiness will
reign all the world over and humanity will become a
homogeneous mass either of independent sovereigns
or of well adapted members of society. The former
extreme is called anarchism, the latter socialism or
nationalism ; and the exponents of either view expect
from the application of their panacea a cure for.all so
cial diseases and the institution of a millennium upon
earth. How vain are the endeavors to construct an ideal
Utopia either of an individualistic or socialistic hu
manity ! Does it not prove that sociology is still in
its infancy ? Instead of studying facts, we invent and
propose schemes.
The mistake made by anarchists as well as by so
cialists is that individualism and socialism are treated
as regulative principles while in reality they are not
principles ; they are the two factors of society. Neither
of them can be made its sole principle of regulation.
You might as well propose to regulate gravity on earth

284 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
by making either, the centrifugal or the centripetal
force the supreme and only law, abolishing the one
for the benefit of the other.
Individualism and socialism are factors and cannot
be made principles. This means : Individualism is
the natural a-spiration of every being to be itself, it is
the inborn tendency of every creature to grow and de
velop in agreement with its own nature. We might
say that this endeavor is right, but it is more correct
to say that it is a fact ; it is natural and we can as
little abolish it as we can decree by an act of legisla
ture that fire shall cease to burn or that water shall
cease to quench fire. Socialism on the other hand is a
fact also. " I " am not alone in the world ; there are my
neighbors and my life is intimately interwoven with
their lives. My helpfulness to them and their help
fulness to me constitute the properly human element
of my soul and are perhaps ninety-nine one hundredths
of my whole self. The more human society progresses,
the more numerous and varied become the relations
among the members of society, and the truth dawns
upon us that no advantage accrues to an individual
by the suppression of the individuality of his fellows.
First he, in so doing, never succeeds for good, and
secondly the mutual advantage will in the end always
be greater to all concerned the more the factor of in
dividualism in others remains respected. Human
society as it naturally grows is the result of both
factors, of individualism and of socialism.
The anarchist proposes to make individualism, and
the nationalist to make socialism the main principle
of regulation for society. Are not these one-eyed re
formers utterly in the dark as to the nature of the so
cial problem ? The social problem demands an inquiry

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 285
into the natural laws of the social growth in order to
do voluntarily what according to the laws of nature
must after all be the final outcome of evolution. By
consciously and methodically adapting ourselves to
the laws of nature, we shall save much waste, avoid
great pains, and acquire the noble satisfaction that we
have built upon a rock : and no innovation is possible
except it be a gradual evolution from the present state
and the result of the factors which are at present active.
Socialism and anarchism are the two extremes, and
all social parties contain both principles in different
proportions. The republicans and the democrats rep
resent the same opposition of centripetal and centri
fugal forces in their politics. Party platforms are ex
ponents of the forces that manifest themselves in the
growth of society. They may be either symptoms of
special diseases or indicators of a wholesome reaction
against special diseases. A movement may be needed
now in the direction of anarchism and now in that of
socialism. We may now want a regulation of certain
affairs in which the public safety and interest are con
cerned : for instance, in giving licenses to physicians
and druggists, in the supervision of banks, in rail
road matters, etc., etc.; and then again we may want
a greater freedom from government interference. The
temporary needs as they are more or less felt will swell
the one or the other party.
It would be a misfortune, however, if one of these
partisan forces could rush to the extreme and realise
the social or anarchical ideal before its opposite had
been deeply rooted at the same time in the hearts of
the people. Social institutions not based upon liberty,
or government interference to the suppression of free
competition, would be exactly as insupportable as an-

286 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
archy among lawless people who have no regard for
the rights of others. But there is no danger that either
extreme would entirely disappear to leave the whole
field to the other alone. The law of inertia holds good
in the psychical and sociological world no less than in
the physical.
As the present man is the man of the past only
further developed, so the coming man will be the
present man only wiser, nobler, purer. There is no
chance for a radical change of the nature of man or of
the constitution of society. However there is a chance
and more than a chance, there is a fully justified
hope and a rational faith that man will continue to
progress. Nature's cruel work of incessantly lopping
off the constantly new appearing vicious outgrowths
of human life through the survival of the fittest, and
by an extirpation of the unfit, will in the future be
performed by man himself, from the start, as soon as
he has discovered the conditions under which these
outgrowths become impossible.
Human society will in the future be more anar
chistic in the same measure as it will be more social
istic. Not that socialistic institutions or laws will
through an external pressure abolish competition and
impose upon the individual more socialistic relations ;
nor that the abolition of laws will restrict government
interference so as to give more elbow-room to individ
ual liberty. Individual liberty will increase at the
same ratio as the social instincts of mutual justice
will become more than at present a part of every in
dividual man. This has been the law of social pro
gress in the past, it has made the republican institu
tions of the present possible and this law will hold
good for the future also. Anarchism could be real-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 287
ised only where the laws of justice were inscribed in
the hearts of all men, so that every man were a law
unto himself ; and perfect socialism can be realised
only where every individual's greatest joy consisted
in the ambition to serve the community. The former
would be a state of altruistic individualists and the
latter one of individualistic altruists. Both states are
ideals and both are represented by more or less con
sistent parties which for the attainment of the same
aim propose opposite means. These parties are
exponents of certain forces that manifest themselves
in the growth of society. It is well to understand
both ideals and to sympathise with both, although the
one as much as the other may be equally impossible,
for evolution is a constant and a simultaneous approx-
mation to both ideals.

LOOKING FORWARD.

Human progress depends upon the dreams of en
thusiasts. The inventor, the discoverer, and the
reformer are dreamers, who prophet-like see in their
imagination things that other mortals know not of.
Every one of such men might very well say : "I had
a dream which was not all a dream." Their dreams
become realities and many such dreams are common
place facts to us now. Indeed civilization consists
of such realized dreams. How useful are these
dreams !
We call dreams which are not all dreams, ideals.
Why is not every dream as useful as a genuine ideal ?
Because the stuff of which the ideal is made — I mean
the genuine ideal only — is taken from the actual state
of things as they exist in reality, and handled accord
ing to the laws of nature.
James Watt took iron and steel and steam, and
made them act according to their nature. He com
bined certain realities. He applied natural laws, and
lo ! the combination of his thoughts revolutionized the
world, and lifted all humanity upon a higher level than
it had occupied before. The genuine ideal is a dream
that genius shapes out of reality.
We have become reverent toward the dreamer
because of the usefulness of certain dreams. Dream
ers, it appears, command our respect even if they

HOMILIES OE SCIENCE. 28g
are but dreamers. A certain man once learned at
school that our atmosphere exercises a constant pres
sure of fourteen pounds upon every square inch of our
body— constituting a total pressure of about forty
hundred- weights upon the surface of the skin of an
average adult person. This man had a dream that he
lived upon a planet without an atmosphere. People
felt so free and easy, in the absence of all pressure,
that they moved about like winged angels. He told
his dream to his neighbors, he wrote it down and pub
lished it, and it is the one hundred and ninety-first
or second edition that is now being sold. Humanity
builds altars to the dreamer, because he is a dreamer ;
he had a vision.
Every man that works for the progress of the
human race has and ought to have our sincerest sym
pathy. We, all of us, should know that society in
many respects, — perhaps in most respects, — is not
what it ought to be. We have abolished slavery, but
the laborer is not as yet the free, and independent, and
intelligent man he ought to be ; not as yet is the em
ployer the humane, and intelligent, and well educated
man he ought to be. The people perish from want
of knowledge ; it is knowledge that will make the
laborer free, it is knowledge that will make the em
ployer humane. Knowledge, if it is knowledge at all,
means an acquaintance with facts as they really are,
with natural laws and sociological laws, which latter
are just as much laws of nature as gravitation or other
natural laws are. And it is truth only that can make
us free. There comes a dreamer who flatly proposes to
abolish the law of gravitation. He explains in a
marvelously lucid sketch that every man who falls and

29o HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
breaks his leg, falls only because of the law of gravi
tation. Things are heavy because matter gravitates
toward the centre of the earth. All the troubles
of transportation are inconveniences due to gravity.
There is no misfortune or annoyance that has not its
root in this vilest of all natural institutions — gravity.
Come therefore and let us abolish gravitation !
A dreamer like that is called an idealist, and great
respect is paid him by the unkowing many. It is diffi
cult to state whether such a dreamer, and all those in
fatuated by his dream, are to be envied or to be pitied
for their illusions.
Mr. Bellamy depicts a state of society where there
is no competition. Competition is the struggle for
life among peaceful human beings. It is the struggle
for life that created man and human society and all
progress of the human race. But then there is much
misery that arises from the struggle for life. The
lesson that life teaches is, in my opinion, the admo
nition to make the struggle for life more humane. Let
us therefore educate the growing generation better
than the former generations, let us adapt ourselves
to nature, let us break down artificial barriers be
tween man and man, that the struggle for life may
become a fair and honest fight for progress, that
our competition may be an honest endeavor to do
better and more useful work. Let us be fair to our
enemies and to our competitors, and we shall soon
find out, that the abler they are, the stronger and
fiercer their competition is, the better it will be for us.
They help us to progress, they force us to progress,
however much worry they cause, we would certainly
not be better. off without them.
Why should the relation between employer and

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 291
employee be that of a master to his slave? It is
partly now, and let us hope that in the future it will
always be, looked upon as the co operation of a worker
with his co-workers, in which the one bears the main
risk and will get a proportionate share of the profits,
if there are any, while the others earn their fixed
wages. Why should we abolish the principle of free
enterprise, which encourages thrift, and progress, and
invention, because there are some imperfections in its
application ?
In certain branches co-operation may, and I believe
it will, become more practical than it is to-day. Such
co-operation will in each case have to be based upon the
freewill and assent of every independent individual, but
it cannot — even not by the vote of a majority — be im
posed upon the whole nation. And if it could, it
would not work. It would change all trades into in
dustrial armies and a few bosses would have to run
and regulate the whole co-operative business of the
nation. It would transform our present life of free en
terprise and competition into an enormous peniten
tiary, only very humanely instituted — supposing that
all convicts would willingly submit to the rules of the
institute. The imperial army as well as the imperial
post office and railroad service of Germany are a par
tial realization of Nationalism.
We want more chances for labor, more elbow-room
for the courageous, especially for the poor. It is true,
we demand that the license of the unprincipled be
checked, but we do not want the liberty of anybody
to be curtailed, be he a millionaire or an unskilled
navvy. Mr. Bellamy proposes to abolish the struggle for
life. He has told us in his little book all the advan-

292 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
tages of the scheme, and they are many. We can dis
pense with all the tedious inventions of civilization ;
we need no more private property, no money, no re
wards for industry. But with the evils of competition, —
which has produced our civilization, — we shall abolish
the most divine blessings : human freedom, indepen
dence, responsibility, and above all self-reliance.
We are confident that " the present order may be
replaced by one distinctly nobler and more humane."
But the new order of things cannot be established by
the proposed panacea of Nationalism and the abolition
of competition. The new order must grow and
evolve out of the present state of things, not other
wise than our present civilization developed out of
savagery. In the new order of things we hope all un
necessary struggle will be avoided ; we shall have less
waste and.a minimum of friction ; yet the law of com
petition will remain in a future and better state of so
ciety just as powerful as it ever was since time im
memorial and as it is to-day.
Nature has not designed man to live for the mere
enjoyment of life. Nature under penalty of degenera
tion sternly demands and enforces a constant pro
gress through struggle and work and sacrifice. And
those who devote themselves to the pursuit of happi
ness, will soon find that they are following an ignis
fatuus that leads them astray into the imperviable
marshes of perdition. If a social reformer promises a
millennium of happiness, be on your guard, for in
that case he is misleading you. Look at his schemes
with a critical mind and you will see that his Utopia
is a fool's paradise.
Mr. Bellamy's book and its popularity is one of the
most ominous symptoms of our time. It is an outcry

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 293
for the satisfaction of material wants and for pleas
ures ; a hunger for panem et circenses to be provided
by the government, by the nation. The average cit
izens of Rome during the Punic wars were by no means
rich, but they possessed an indomitable love of inde
pendence, and the Republic at that time rested upon
a sound foundation. But when the Romans cried
for panem et circenses, Liberty died and Caesar ap
peared. Caesar gave them panem et circenses, and the
price they had to pay for the trouble he took, is known
in history. The people who want to be taken care of
and catered to with bread and pleasures, have for
feited their claim to freedom.
"Looking Backward" proposes to abolish the
social law of gravitation which indeed causes many
troubles in life but which at the same time produced
and still produces our civilization. Thus the book is
truly a looking backward to the primeval state of bar
barism; Let us cease to dream the useless dreams of abol
ishing the laws of nature. Let us rather abolish the
artificial barriers between the so-called higher and
lower classes. Give the poorest a chance to acquire
as good an education as the richest command. Fa
cilitate the opportunities of labor so that the indus
trious need not go begging for work. Thus we shall
break down the hindrances that prevent progress, and
in adapting ourselves to the laws of nature we shall
better be prepared for a true and useful Looking
Forward.

WOMAN EMANCIPATION.

One of the most important and at the same time
noblest of our present ideals is the emancipation of
woman. Woman is the weaker sex, because nature
has destined her strength to be sacrificed for the per
petuation of the race. Woman represents the future
of humanity ; the immortality of mankind is entrusted
to her. The burdens of life are upon the whole so di
vided that man must struggle with the adversities of
conditions, while woman must suffer all the throes
and woes which are the price of the continuance of
human existence. He is the more active fighter, the
worker, the hero; she is the passive endurer, the toiler,
the martyr. He has under these conditions grown
strong, physically and. intellectually ; she has grown
noble. The activity of each being shapes its organ
ism and models its character. Thus the virtues of
man became daring courage, concentration of thought,
and enterprising energy ; the virtues of woman be
came abnegation of self, patience, and purity of
heart. Woman, being the weaker sex, has been and to a
great extent is still held in subjection to the power
and 'jurisdiction of the stronger sex. It is true that
among cultured people the rudeness of this relation,
has disappeared. The husband has ceased to be the

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 295
tyrant of the household. He respects the indepen
dence of his wife and prefers to have in her a loving
comrade rather than a pliant slave. Nevertheless
progress is slow. It is perhaps not so much oppres
sion by single persons as by traditional habits that is
still weighing heavily upon woman, retarding the final
emancipation of her sex.
Prof. E. D. Cope has written an article on the
economical relation between the sexes * in which he
emphasises woman's dependence on the support and
protection of man. Professor Cope explains satisfac
torily the present state of society, but he leaves out of
sight the question whether this present state has to
continue forever. His article is a scholarly investiga
tion of existent conditions, but he does not touch the
problem whether this is the only possible natural state
or a special phase in the development of human sex-
relations. We believe that the present phase is to be
followed by another phase securing to woman a better,
nobler, and more dignified position.
It may be conceded, as a matter of historical state
ment, that in the struggle for life women had to de
pend upon men for protection and sustenance. Yet it
must not be forgotten that men in their turn also had
to depend upon women. What are men without
mothers and wives ? How helpless is an old widower,
and in spite of his so-called liberty how poor is the
life of an old bachelor.
Professor Cope does not overlooK this point, yet
he maintains that women as a rule cannot make a liv
ing ; he maintains that whenever they do, it is an ex
ception and this is the reason why they must look
for sustenance and protection from the stronger sex.
* The Monist, No. 1, p. 38.

296 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
Granted that this has been so ; also granted that many
women had to marry for this sole reason, must we
therefore conclude that this wretched state of things
is to continue forever ? It may be true that there was
a time when serfdom was an unavoidable state for a
certain class of people who in a state of liberty would
not make a decent living for themselves; slavery per
haps was a greater blessing to them than to their mas
ters. Would that be a reason for continuing slavery
in a higher state of social conditions ?
The woman question has originated through the
very progress of civilisation. In order to make a liv
ing a human being has no longer to depend upon
physical strength, but mostly upon mental capacities,
nay, more so upon moral qualities. Sense of duty is
more important than muscle power, and sometimes
even than skill. The time has come that at least in
many branches a well educated woman can do the
same work as a man, and she is no more dependent
upon man for sustenance and protection.
This fact will not alter the natural relation of sex.
Our women will not cease to marry, to bear and to
raise children. Yet it will alter their position in this
relation. They will no longer marry for the mere sake
of protection, but for love alone. They will then enter
marriage on equal terms; and thus they will obtain a
more dignified place in human society.
It cannot be denied that woman is different from
man. The average man is superior in some respects,
and the average woman is superior in other respects.
Neither man nor woman is the perfect man. True
humanity is not represented by either. True humanity
consists in their union, and in the consequences of their
union, namely in the family.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 297
Woman's emancipation does not involve any de
traction from man's rights or duties. Man will not
suffer from it, on the contrary he will profit. It will
raise our family life upon a higher stage and man will
be as much a gainer in this bargain as the slave-holder
who can employ free labor easier and cheaper than
keep slaves. As no one would wish to re-establish
slavery now, so in a later period no man would ever
care to have the old state recalled when women mar
ried mainly for the sake of sustenance and protection.
Let me add that woman emancipation is slowly
but assuredly accomplished, not by acts of legislature,
but by a natural growth which no conservatism can
stop. Acts of legislature giving more liberty and
chances of making a living to woman, will not be the
cause, they will come in consequence of a true woman
emancipation. There are many steps taken in a wrong
direction. Efforts are wasted especially by some over-
enthusiastic women in making women like men, in
stead of making men and women equal. These erro
neous aspirations are injurious to the cause, yet after
all they cannot ruin it. There is an ideal of a higher,
more elevated and a better womanhood, and this ideal
(although it is often misunderstood) will be accom
plished without the destruction of the womanly in
woman.

DO WE WANT A REVOLUTION ?

"Do we want a Revolution ? " is the subject of an
article by Mr. Morrison I. Swift which appeared in
No. 1 66 of The Open Court. The question is answered
in the affirmative ; Mr. Swift declares : We want a
revolution. Mr. Morrison I. Swift is a young man and full of
earnest enthusiasm for social justice and the elevation
of the poor. He makes himself the attorney of the
oppressed and hurls his shafts of indignation against
the oppressors. He appears as the prophet of revolu
tionary reform, indicting a number of rich men, "be
cause," he says, "they make our lives hard and
dull." Their crime, he declares, consists in being "willing
in the present hour of enlightenment to accept the
colossal advantages their place in an irrational system
gives them, to use these perfectly prodigious powers
selfishly." Not the slightest proof is adduced for this
wholesale indictment. The indiscrimination in his col
lection of several well known names proves that Mr.
Swift does not clearly know himself what they are
guilty of. Are they arraigned for selfishness ? Some
of them are very active for the public good. Are they

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

299

arraigned for possessing wealth ? While none among
them is poor, not every one of them is so extraordinary
rich as Mr. Swift seems to imagine. Nor does the
plaintiff indicate what these criminals ought to do in
order to escape the condemnation of selfishness. Per
haps he would repeat the demand of Christ : " Go and
sell all that thou hast and give to the poor and thou
shalt have treasure in beaven ? "
Plaintiff is a philanthropist and he kindly urges in
extenuation that the rich are "victims of the system
like the rest, victims of a sorry state of human nature. "
The personal indictment of these men seems to rest
on the fact that they do not use their power to over
throw the social order. And this appears to Mr. Swift
as the one thing that is needed. Having realised that
there are iniquities and sufferings he is determined to
promote revolution, because "life would be dishonor
able on any other terms."
Mr. Swift undoubtedly hopes for a better system,
which he supposes will come after the breakdown of
the present system. He may be a nationalist or an
anarchist, I do not know ; and it matters little. Yet
it is certain that rash youth only can so wantonly, al
though with best and purest motives, clamor for a
revolution. Putting the question to himself whether
or not we must be revolutionists, Mr. Swift declares
"it is easy to make his choice."
Does Mr. Swift know what a revolution is ? A rev
olution is a breakdown of society. It is not a building
up, it is a tearing down. If is not evolution, but it is
dissolution. A revolution is a great public calamity which falls
equally heavy on the rich and on the poor. Perhaps
it falls heavier upon the poor, because as a rule they

joo HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
have less education and are ignorant of the course of
events. The facts of the French revolution speak loud
enough. Are they now. forgotten ? To every rich man
who was guillotined hundreds of poor met with the
same fate, and thousands were actually starved to
death. A revolution is like a deluge that, the dam being
broken, sweeps over a valley. The deluge will drown
the rich as well as the poor. It will often happen that
a rich man may be drowned as well as a poor man ; but
after all, the rich man if he be warned in time, has
better chances to escape.
Who will profit by revolutions ? Not the laborer,
he will be starved ; not the employer of labor, he will
be ruined. There is one class of men that will profit.
It is the sharper ; he whose business flourishes while
and because all the world is covered with misfortune.
There are people who undertake to fish in muddy wa
ters. These people are the only ones that are bene
fited by public disturbances, calamities, and revolu
tions. Several months ago I discussed the eventuality of
a revolution with a leading anarchist of Chicago. I
do by no means agree with anarchism ; nor did this
anarchist agree with my views, but he most emphat
ically joined me in denouncing the superstition so pre
valent among many would-be reformers, that revolu
tion can bring any salvation to society. He said,
"When I was young and rash, I believed in revolution
and hoped for a revolution ; I thought to arrive at a
higher state of society by a bee line road. But since
I have seen more of life, I have ceased to believe in
physical force. I then believed that society could be
pulled up by the roots and pitched over the fence, and

HOMILIES , OF SCIENCE. 301
a new social machine, contrary to that which is, put
in its place. I now see, that society is a slow growth,
and the best we can do is to remove those special
privileges, empowering the few to rob the many. Rev
olution, it is true, cannot be condemned under any
and all circumstances. Revolution is, like war, always
an evil, but in exceptional cases, it may happen to be
the lesser evil. Revolution becomes necessary as soon
as evolution has become an absolute necessity. Yet
even then its necessity must be deplored, because all
violence, bloodshed, and wars debase the higher sen
timents of the race, and destroy the sanctity of human
life ; the progress which comes through peace, though
slow it be, is the most certain and enduring."
There is but one way of improving the condition of
the laboring classes ; that is by evolution. We must
enforce a better position of the workers by legal means,
not with the bullet, but with the ballot. The road is
slower, but it leads by and by to the desired aim.
The bee line road of revolution will not bring us
nearer to a realisation of our ideals. In order to reach
a better state of society by the slow process of evolu
tion, we must educate mankind up to it, we must teach
them a higher morality and a respect for law.
What a terrible error it is to preach justice and
recommend the overthrow not of this or that law only,
but of all laws and of the whole order of society.
Society is not an artificial system that can be con
structed with arbitrariness. Society is an organism
and the laws of its development are similar to those of
living creatures, of plants and of animals. You can
promote the growth of a tree, by digging round its
stem, by watering the roots and pruning the dead
branches in its crown, nay, you may inoculate a tree

302 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
so that indeed the thorns may be made to bear figs or
grapes. But if you pull out the whole tree, you will
have to begin quite anew, and it will take a long while
until it has reached that state again in which it is now.
Incendiary speeches are cheap means for agitators
to become popular with the uneducated among our
laboring classes. Yet I hope to see the time when
our laborers will hoot at the demagogue who attempts
to excite them with preaching hatred and ill will.
Yet the incendiary speeches of demagogues should
not be ignored by the rich. We should recommend
them to the rich for a careful perusal. There is cer
tainly something wrong in a state of society in which
young men, enthusiastic for justice, openly clamor for
a revolution. We advise the rich as well as the poor to weigh
carefully Mr. Swift's proposition, not because we agree
with him in the justice of a revolution, or in the ad
visability of preparing and preaching a revolution ; on
the contrary, because we should consider a revolution
as the greatest public calamity, the evil consequences
of which cannot be all foreseen. The probability, ir/
my mind, is that the final result of a great revolution
in the United States, would be the downfall of the
republic and the establishment of an empire. A revo
lution, so far as I can see, will bring us no liberty but
serfdom. It is a law of nature that if a nation cannot govern
itself, a usurper will keep order in that nation, and
every revolution in a republic is a sign that the citi
zens are not able in a peaceful way to administer their
public affairs.
The rich therefore, should heed the cry of alarm.
They should consider that a revolution becomes an in-

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 303
evitable necessity as soon as the discontent of the poor
in a country has reached a certain height at which
their yoke appears to them unbearable.
Our society is by no means free from grievances,
although they have not yet reached their fill. We
should beware of the very beginning and mind all the
symptoms of dissatisfaction. The greater the patience
of the oppressed proves to be, the more formidable
will be the outbreak of their indignation.
It is not good to build barriers between man and
man; as says the prophet Jeremiah: "Let not the
wise man glory in his wisdom ; neither let the mighty
man glory in his might ; let not the rich man glory in
his riches." And the apostle Paul writes to Timothy :
"Charge them that are rich in this world, that they
be not high-minded nor trust in uncertain riches."
The duties of those that have great possessions are
greater than the duties of the poor. The more power
a man has, the more imperative is his obligation to
„ be just in all his dealing with his neighbors. The
citizens of a republic should not attempt to make a
caste of wealth ; and ought to abhor all oppression of
the poor. The employer must show his own inde
pendence and his sense of independence by respecting
the independence of his employees. When weighing
the worth of a man, let us not consider the amount of
his property but the manliness and honesty of his
character. Is there any sense in admiring the aristocratic
habits which have become fashionable with so many
of our wealthy families ? Let us exercise, ourselves,
and teach our children to exercise, simplicity. Let us
honor the democratic principles which so well become
the citizens of a republic, and the mere idea of a rev-

304 - HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
olution will become a ridiculous bugbear. Says Robert
Burns : " Then let us pray that come it may, —
As come it will for a' that,—
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
Its coining yet for a' that, —
When man to man the warld' o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that."

THE AMERICAN IDEAL*

The United States of North America is a nation
without a name. Poets hail our country Columbia,
and Europeans call us simply Americans. Yet these
appellations are not, properly speaking, names. At
tempts have been made to provide the nation with
a name, yet so far all the attempts have proved
failures. We need not care about a name. When we need a
name, it will be given us. Much more difficult would
it be to give ideals to a nation ; yet luckily, although
we are a nation without a name, we are not a nation
without ideals.
We have high and great ideals, although they are
neglected and forgotten by many ; and some of our
most influential politicians treacherously trample them
under foot. We can say without boasting that our
ideals are the noblest, the broadest, the loftiest of
any in the world.
Our ideals are sublime because they are human
itarian, and thus this great republic of the West has
become a bulwark against the evil powers of inherited
errors and false conservatism. So long as it shall re-
* This article first appeared in America of Chicago.

306 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
main faithful to the principles upon which its consti
tution is founded, this republic will be a promise and
a hope for the progress of mankind.
There is a prejudice in Europe against the ideals
of America. It is fashionable in the old countries to
represent Europe as the continent of ideal aspirations
while America is described as the land where the
dollar is almighty. Germans most of all are apt to
praise the fatherland as the home of the ideal while
the new world is supposed to be the seat of realistic
avarice and egotism.
This is neither fair nor true, for there are as many
and as great sacrifices made for pure ideal ends on
this side of the Atlantic as on the other side. We
maintain that Europe is less ideal than America. If
impartial statistics could be compiled of all the gifts
and legacies made for the public benefit, for artistic,
scientific, and religious purposes, the American figures
would by far exceed those of all Europe. In Germany
the government has to do everything. It has to build
the churches, to endow the universities, to create in
dustrial and art institutions. If the government would
not do it, all ideal work would be neglected, science
would have to go begging; and the church would
either pass out of existence or remain for a long time
in a most wretched and undignified position. This
state of affairs is not at all due to a lack of idealism
among the people of the old world, but is a consequence
of the paternal care of the government. The govern
ment provides for the ideal wants of its subjects ; so
they get accustomed to being taken care of. There
is scarcely anybody who considers it his duty to work
for progress, except where he cannot help it, in his
private business, in industrial and commercial lines.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 307
Scarcely anybody thinks of making a sacrifice for art,
science, or the general welfare, and science and gen
eral welfare are looked upon as the business of kings
and magistrates.
We live in a republic and the ideals of republican
institutions are a sacred inheritance from the founders
of this nation. We are no subjects of a czar or em
peror, for in a republic every citizen is a king ; and
the government is the employe of the citizens. The
highest officer of our government, the president of
the United States is proud, when leaving the White
House, of having tried to be a faithful public servant
promoting the general welfare according to his best
ability. It is true that we are far — very far, from having
realised our ideals. Our politics are full of unworthy
actions, and many things happen of which we are or
should be ashamed that they are possible at all in the
home of the brave and the free. It is true also that
many of our laws, far from expressing a spirit of justice
and goodwill towards all mankind, are dictated by
greed and egotism ; further it is true that national
chauvinism and national vanity go so far as to make
any, even the sincerest, criticism of our national faults
odious. Nevertheless we have our ideals and our
ideals may be characterised in the one word humani-
tarianism. How many there are who believe in the beneficial
influence of petty advantages, unfairly gained by giv
ing up the higher standard of justice and right ! How
many there are who suppress the cosmopolitan spirit
of our ideals and foster a narrow exclusiveness which
they are pleased to call patriotism. Their sort of pa-

3o8 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
triotism will never benefit our country but will work
it serious injury.
Our fourth of July orators pronounce too many and
too brazen flatteries upon our accomplishments, and
speak too little about our duties, when they represent
us as that nation upon the development of which the
future fate of humanity depends. There is too much
talk about our freedom, as if no liberty had existed be
fore the declaration of independence. What a degrada
tion of the characters of our ancestry ! Was it not love
of liberty that set the sails of the Mayflower, was it not
love of liberty that drove so many exiles over the At
lantic. Did the love of liberty not pulsate in the hearts
of all the nationalities that make up our nation ? Were
not the Saxons, the Teutons, the sons of Erin, the Swiss,
the French, the Italians, jealous of their liberties?
does not their history prove the pride they took in
preserving their rights and securing the dignity of
their manhood ? Love of liberty fought the battle of
the Teutoburg forest even before the Saxon sepa
rated from his German brothers to found the English
nation. Love of liberty was described by Tacitus as
the national trait of the barbarians of the North whose
institutions and customs and language have with cer
tain modifications devolved upon the present genera
tion now living in America.
Let us not undervalue our forefathers for the sake of
a local patriotism ; let us fully recognise the truth that
we have inherited the most valuable treasures of our
national ideals from former ages. In thus understand
ing how our civic life is rooted in the farthest past, we
shall at the same time look with confidence into the
darkness of future eras. Our present state is but a
stepping stone to the realisation of higher ideals, for

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. 309
the possible progress of mankind is infinite and our
very shortcomings remind us of the work that is still
to be done.
Let us cherish that kind of patriotism which takes
pride in the humanitarian ideals of our nation.
With our humanitarian ideals we shall stand, and
without them we shall fall. So long as our shores re
main the place of refuge for the persecuted, so long
as our banner appears as the star of hope to the op
pressed, and so long as our politics, our customs, our
principles rouse the sympathy of liberty-loving men,
our nation will grow and prosper ; the spirit of progress
will find here its home and the human race will reach
a higher stage of development than was ever attained
upon earth.
This great aim, however, can be attained only by
a strong faith in the rightfulness and final triumph of
the ideal, by perseverance and earnest struggle ; by a
holy zeal for justice in small as well as in great things;
by intrepid maintenance of personal independence and
freedom for every loyal citizen ; and by the rigid ob
servance of all duties political and otherwise so that
the electors cast their votes in honesty and the elected
fill their offices with integrity.
Historical investigations proved that the golden
age must not be sought in the past. May we not
hope that it lies before us in the future ? Without be
lieving in a millennium upon earth, in a state of ideal
perfection, or in a heaven of unmixed happiness, we
yet confidently trust that we can successfully work for
the realisation of the golden age in our beloved home
on the western continent — where the conditions are
such as to leave us only these two alternatives : either
the uneducated classes (among whom we have to count

310 HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.
some of our richest citizens) will with their ballots and
their influence in politics ruin the country, or they
will, perhaps after many dearly bought experiences,
be educated up to a higher moral plane.
Let us work for the American Ideal and let us hope
for the future.

INDEX.

Abolition of dogmas, 29.
Achilles, 119.
Adaptation and evolution, 37.
Adversary, Understand your, 257.
iEschylus, 117, ng.
Agitators, 302.
Agnostic, 214.
Agnostic, The orthodox and the, 204.
Agnosticism, Three attitudes of, 214,
215.
Agreement between, 23.
Ahriman and Ormuzd, 94.
Amelioration, 142.
America, Ideals. of, 305, 306.
Amos, 235, 236.
Anarchism and Socialism, 283, 285,
286, 287.
Anarchy, 139.
Angels and ethics, The, 274, 275.
Antinomies, 113, 114.
Antisthenes, 80.
Aristocracy of the mind, 196.
Aristocratic habits, 303.
Aristocratomania, 277, 278, 279.
Armour, Mr., 228.
Asaph, 272.
Athanasius, 92.
Atheism, go, 104, 112, 193-
Atheism and dogmatic theism, 92.
Authority and freethought, 192.
Authority, God— to regulate action, 79.
Backbone and the struggle for life,
244.
Bacon, 107.
Baer, von, 44.
Baldur, 72, 73.
Beam in the eye, the, 198.
Belief in immortality, 175, 176
Bellamy, 290, 291, 292.
Bible, 75, 76, 77 1 221, 223.

Bible and ethics, 222.
Birth, 14.
Birth and death, 159, 160.
Blind guides, 199.
Bruno, Giordano, 230.
Bryant, quotation from, 162.
Buddha, 123, 125, 126, 143, 146, 171.
Buddhism, 143, 146, 148, 150, 171.
Burial, 14.
Burns, Robt., 304.
Caesar, 262, 293.
Calvin, 30.
Ceremonies, 33.
Changes, 23.
Chastity, 262.
Christ, 6, 7, 17, 21, 22, 25, 33, 6o, 73,
105, 106, in, 121, 143, 146, 149, 151,
172, 208, 223, 224, 225, 236, 245, 246,
247, 248, 279, 280, 299.
Christ and non-resistance, 249.
Christ and the adulteress, 268.
Christ on the rich, 281.
Christianity, 4,15, 32, 49, 143, 146, 148,
150.
Christmas, 71, 74.
Churches, 203.
Classical fairy tales, 50.
Clifford, W. K.t 180.
Cold and heat, 95.
Commandments, 19, 21.
Competition, 239, 241, 248, 265, 285,
286, 290, 292.
Complexity, 39, 41, 42.
Conception of the world, 16.
Conciliation between science and re
ligion, 61.
Conquest of death, 144.
Conscience, 54, 55, 75, 77.
Conservation of matter and energy,
139.

312

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

Conservation of soul-life, 140.
Co-operation, 291.
Cope, Prof. E. D., 295.
Cosmos, 10, 159.
Cosmos and design, 89.
Counterfeits, 270.
Criticism, 51.
Darwin, 43, 208, 227.
David, 56, 130, 213, 223.
David's son, 156.
Death, 14, 145, 147-
Death and birth, 159, 160.
Death and love, 185, 186.
Death, Conquest of, 144- J55-
Death, Dread of, 158.
Death no finality, 180.
Death the wages of sin, 141.
Deceptions, 56.
Dependence, Woman's, 295.
Design, 84.
Design and cosmos, 8g.
Devil, Talmud on the, 95.
Devotion to truth, 60.
Dilettanteism, 234-
Direction in evolution, 94.
Direction of evolution, 95, 98.
Discussion of ethics, 256.
Disintegration increasing, 38.
Disparagement, 258,
Divine, 42.
Divinity and nature, 247.
Dogmas, Abolition of, 29.
Dogmas and science, 59.
Dogmatism, 34.
Doubt and faith, 227, 229.
Doubt in truth, 9.
Dreams and ideals, 288,
Dreams and progress, 288.
Dualism and monism, 240.
Duality of truth, 58.
Duty and work, 150.
Duly of clergy, 13, 14.
Easter, 151.
Ecclesiasticism and liberalism, 205.
Egg a symbol of resurrection, The, 152,
Egg, The Easter, 151,
Ego, 146, 147, 167, 168, 171.
Ego, No immortality of the, 187.
Ego, Surrender of the, 172.

Ego, Surrender of— no annihilation,
172.
Egotism, 273.
Eleusis, 165.
Emancipation, woman's, 297,
Enemies, Our— our counterpart, 242.
Entheism, 97.
Epicurus on death, 159.
Errors, 9, 120, 209.
Errors and truth, 208.
Esquimaux, 169.
Eternal youth and immortality, 161,
Ethical law and knowledge, 81.
Ethical man, 220.
Ethical questions and immortality,
177.
Ethical religion, 3.
Ethics, 37.
Ethics and Bible, 222.
Ethics and immortality, 154.
Ethics and pain, 219.
Ethics, Discussion of, 256.
Ethics in other parts of the universe,
218.
Ethics of altruism wrong, 241.
Ethics of arithmetic, 81.
Ethics of evolution, 47.
Ethics of struggle, 243, 244.
Ethics of the churches, 204.
Ethics, The angels and, 274, 275.
Evil and good, 95.
Evil and negative magnitudes, g6.
Evil and pantheism, 94,
Evolution, 5, 3g, 41, 43, 44.
Evolution and adaptation, 37.
Evolution and immortality, 176, 179.
Evolution and intelligence, 83,
Evolution, Ethics of, 47.
Evolution, Laws of, 37.
Evolution not a material and not a
mechanical process, 39.
Evolution of life not mechanical, 40.
Evolution of truth, 33.
Factors, Principles and, 283, 284.
Facts, 13.
Fairyland, 20.
Fairy tales and truth, 48.
Faith, 156.
Faith and doubt, 227, 229.
Faith in truth, 182, 193.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

3i3

Feeling, 45.
Feelings and mind, 101.
Feel the truth, 53,
Fiction and truth, 153.
Fool of the gospel, The, ig7.
Form, The secrets of, 152.
Free love, 263, 266, 267.
Freethinkers, Religion wanted among,
226.
Free, Thought not, igo.
Freethought, 189,
Freethought and authority, 192.
Freethought, Heroes of, 230,
Freethought, The God of, 193.
Freytag, Gustav, 141.
Fulfillment, 6.
Fulfillment of the law, 17.
Future, Religion of the, 147.
Genesis, 43, 99.
Germany, The paternal government
of, 306.
Ghosts, 137, 138, 139, 141, 145.
Ghost-immortality, 168.
Ghost-soul, 167, 168, 169, 170.
God, 19, 21, 23, 79, 8o, 111, 116, 146,
210.
God and nature not identical, 93.
God a mind? Is, 102.
God as an inventor, 86.
God, authority to regulate action, 79.
God everywhere, g7.
Godfathers, 14.
God-idea, 41.
God immutability of order, 87.
God is reality, 102.
God is spirit, 106.
God, Jahveh, 183.
God, Manifestations of, 105,
God not a man, 91.
God of nature, 80.
God superhuman, 88.
God ihe standard of ethics, 100.
Goethe, 77, 117, ug, 129, 170, 175, 184,
211, 221, 262, 274, 280.
Gold, A curse rests on, 279.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 270.
Good and evil, 95.
Good and truth, 59.
Gospel, 9, 11, 12.

Gravitation, Proposition to abolish,
28g, 290.
Growth of soul, 42.
Guide through life, 46.
Guyau, on irreligion, ±.
Hagen and Rudeger, 243.
Happiness, 148.
Happiness, pursuit of, 121, 124
Hated, 9.
Heat and cold, 95,
Hedonism, 47.
Heine, Heinrich, 215.
Hercules, 118.
Heroes of freethought, 230.
Hesiod, 50.
Heterogeneous, 38,
Higher life, 3.
Historical facts, 15.
Historical religion, 17.
History of religious progress, 6i,
Holy Ghost, 221.
Hosmer, 50.
Homogeneous, 38.
Honesty, Need of, 235.
Honesty, Utility of, 269.
Hosea, 82.
Humboldt, 221.
Hume, 127, 230.
Huxley, 53.
Huxley on morality, 250.
Ibsen, Henrik, 137, 138, 141.
Iconoclast, 19.
Ideal world, 46.
Ideals and dreams, 288.
Ideals of America, 305, 306.
Idolatry, 87.
Idols, 80.
Immortal, 147.
Immortal, Ideals are, 165.
Immortal life, 144.
Immortality, 131, 145, 146, 151, 153,
i54r 159. 160. 1^7. l69» I7o» i7i) 173-
Immortality and eternal youth, 161.
Immortality and ethical questions,
177.
Immortality and ethics, 154.
Immortality and evolution, 176, 179
Immortality and sex-relations, 260,
261.

3H

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

Immortality and spiritism, 166.
Immortality and woman, 294.
Immortality, Belief in, 175, 176.
Immortality, Continuance of life, 181.
Immortality, No— of the ego, 187.
Immutability of order, God, 87.
Indestructibility, 170.
Indifference, 64.
Individual a part of the whole, 20.
Individual, the, 178.
Individuality, 135, 136.
Individuality preserved, 165.
Inertia, Law of, 25.
Infidel, 23.
Infinite, 108, 109, no, in.
.Infinitude and mind, 102, 103.
Ingersoll, Robert, 209. •
Ingersoll on immortality, 186.
Intelligence a machine, 86.
Intelligence, a machine of, 85.
Intelligence analysed, 83.
Intelligence and evolution, 83.
Ironbeard, 19.
Irreligious age, i.
Jahveh, 183.
Jeremiah, 303.
John the Baptist, 33, 73,
Joy, Religions of, 148.
Justice alone insufficient truth, 56.
Kant, 44, 172, 230.
Kingdom of God, 32, 33,
Kingdom of God, Truth is the, 34.
King of truth, 34.
Knowledge and ethical law, 81.
Lamarck, 44.
Lasalle, 280.
Lavoisier, 25.
Law, 139.
Laws of evolution, 37.
Lazarus, Emma, 215.
Leckey on religion, ±.
Leo X., 231.
Lessing, 230.
Letter, 25.
Liberalism and ecclesiasticism, 205.
Life, 37.
Logos, 105,' 106.
Love and death, 185, 186.

Luther, 31, 61, 144, 145. 1G4, 207, 2og
225, 230, 231, 232.
Macauley on the Puritans, 200.
Machine of intelligence, a, 85.
Man and woman, 296.
Man, Ethical, 220.
Manifestations of God, 105.
Marriage, 260, 264.
Matrimony, 14.1
Maya, 122, 123, 171, 173.
Mayflower, 201, 308.
Mediums, 169.
Mene tekel, 235.
Metaphysical, 108.
Metaphysics and morality, 252.
Migrations of souls, 180.
Millennium, 292, 309.
Mind and infinitude, 102, 103.
Mind a world in ideas, 101.
Miracles, 19.
Mistletoe, 72.
Monism and dualism, 240.
Monogamy, 264, 265, 266.
Moral and religious faith, 15.
Morality, 131.
Morality active and passive, 273.
Morality and metaphysics, 252,
Morality and religion, 254.
Morality and success, 233.
Morality and theology, 252.
Morality and truth, 66.
Morality, Need of, 236.
Morality, positive, 274, 275.
Moses, 43,
Miiller, F. Max, 108, no, 112.
Mustard-seed, 156.
Mutability, 88.
Mutability and personality, 85.
Mysticism and truth, 52.
Mythology, 34, 66, 143, 150, 153.
Mythology of religion, 20.
Mythology, Truth in, 120.
Napoleon, 274.
Nation, 58.
Nationalism, 291, 292.
Natural laws of social growth, 285.
Natural selection, 38.
Nature, 75.
Nature and divipity, 247.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

3i5

Nature and God not identical, 93.
Nature immortal, z.
New, 1.
New ethics, 5.
New religion, 3, 12, 26.
Nibelungen saga, 243. 279.
Nirvana, 121, 123, 125, 144, 171.
Non-resistance, 245.
Non-risistance and Christ, 249.
Non-resistance, Struggle and, 248.
Observation, 33.
Omniscience, 104.
Open Court, The, 58, 60, 61.
Order, 10,
Order and struggle, 239.
Ormuzd and Ahriman, 94,
Orthodox, 19, 23, 33.
Orthodox and agnostic, The, 204.
Orthodoxy of science, 207,
Ovine Morality, 250, 251.
Paganism, 104, 105.
Paganism and personal God, 88,
Pain and ethics, 219.
Pain, diminution of, 218.
Palm tree, The, 282.
Panem et circenses, 293.
Pantheism, 90.
Pantheism, and evil, 94.
Pantheism, The blind side of, 93.
Parables, 66.
Parables, Meaning in, 120.
Paralogism, 167.
Paralogisms, 113.
Past, 6.
Pastor, 13.
Paul, 147, 164, 225.
Personal God and paganism, 88.
Personal intelligence laws, 84.
Personalities, Variety of, 135.
Personality, 88.
Personality and mutability, 85.
Phlogiston, 25.
Pilate, 33.
Pilgrims, The, 204.
Pious fraud, 176.
Pleasure, 26.
Pleasure, Craving for, 140.
Pleasures, The zest of, 276.
Pledged to truth, 12.

Polygamy, 265.
Poor and rich, 276-279, 299, 300, 302.
Positivism, 108.
Positivism and theism, 109.
Power and truth, 101.
Power, Religion ceased to be, 1,
Practical, 1.
Preservation of personality, 181.
Preservation of the individual soul,
178.
Principles and factors, 283, 284.
Problem, 216.
Progress, 35, 36, 37, 42, 244, 248.
Progress and dreams, 288.
Progress and truth, 194.
Prometheus, 117, 118, 119.
Pseudo-wisdom, 55.
Puritans, 164, 200, 202.
Pursuit of happiness, 121, 124.
Questions, 213, 214, 216.
Readjustment, 18.
Realistic, i, 3,
Reality and the ideal, 288.
Reformation, 145.
Reformers, Retrogressive, 37.
Regulate conduct, 16.
Religion, 10, 35, 106, 112, 155, 156, 157,
200, 253.
Religion a fairy-tale, 49.
Religion and morality, 254.
Religion and power, 202.
Religion and scienc, 129, 206, 210, 211.
Religion a popularised system of eth
ics, 26.
Religion ceased to be power, 1.
Religion, Historical, 17.
Religion, Object of, 130,
Religion of facts, 66.
Religion of freethought, 189.
Religion of the future, 147.
Religion of joy, 148.
Religion wanted among freethinkers,
226.
Religion ? What is, 60.
Religious and moral faith, 15.
Religious nature of evolution, 44.
Religious revolution, 4.
Republic, 307.

316

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

Republic and caste, 303.
Resignation, 143, 147,
Resurrection, 151.
Resurrection of the body, 182.
Resurrection.The egg a symbol of, 152.
Retrogressive adaptation, 38.
Retrogressive reformers, 37.
Revelation, 75.
Revelation and truth, 76,
Revelations, 76.
Reverence, 30,
Reverence for the merits, 6.
Revision, 28.
Revolution, 5, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302,
303, 304.
Rich and poor, 276-279, 299, 300, 302.
Right and truth, 47.
Right direction, 36.
Righteousness, 76.
Rudiger and Hagen, 243.

Saccharine religiosity, 251.
Sacrifices, 26.
Salter, 223, 225.
Salvation, 163.
Salvation of souls, 127.
Sausara, 121, 123.
Saviour, 74.
Scepticism, 227, 228.
Scherr, Johannes, 163, 164.
Schiller, 80, 93, 173, 210.
Schiller quotation, 69.
Schiller's Xenion, 188.
Schilling on revolution, George, 300,
307.
Schoolmen, 58.
Science, 5, 9, 15, 55, 106.
Science and dogmas, 59.
Science and religion, 129, 206, 210,
211.
Scriptures, 75, 76.
Search for truth, 112.
Selection, 38.
Selection in the struggle for exist
ence, 237.
Self-preservation, Sexual relations,
and, 260.
Sexual ethics, 260.
Sexual relations and self-preserva
tion, 260.

Shakespeare, Quotation from, 170,
281.
Sheep, allegory, The, 250.
Sheep, The simile of a, 245.
Signs of the time, a.
Simplicity, 42.
Sin, Death the wages of, 141.
Social growth, Natural laws of, 285.
Socialism and anarchism, 283, 285,
286, 287.
Socrates, 208.
Solace in death, 14.
Solomon's denial of immortality, 175.
Solovieff, 32.
Son of man, The, ng, 120.
Sophisms, 258.
Soul, 42, 128, 132.
Soul-life, Conservation of, 140.
Soul-life, Origin of, 40.
Soul of the Soul, The, 134.
Soul, Preservation of the individual,
178.
Soul, The human element of the, 284.
Soul, The unity of the, 133.
Souls, Hoarding up, 165.
Souls, Migration of, 180.
Souls of the past, The, 164.
Souls of the slain and the victor, The,
242.
Spencer, 38, 39, 46.
Spencer, Quotation from, 264.
Spinoza, 230, 247.
Spirit, 25.
Spirit, God is, jo6.
Spiritism and immortality, r66.
Spiritism, its dearth of ideas, 169.
Spiritual life, 46.
Standard of ethics, God the, 100.
Strife, 240.
Strongest, 38.
Struggle and non-resistance, 248.
Struggle and order, 239.
Struggle and progress, 241.
Struggle, Ethics of, 243.
Struggle for existence, Selection in
the, 237.
Struggle for life, 45, 291.
Struggle, the backbone of man, 244.
Struggle, The ethics of, 244.
Success, 4, 6.
Success and morality, 233.

HOMILIES OF SCIENCE.

317

Superhuman God, 88.
SuDernatural, ig.
Superstition, 210.
Superstitions of science, 207.
Sursum, 44, 97.
Survival of the fittest, 237.
Survive, 38.
Swift, Morrison I. , 298, 299, 302.
Talmud on the devil, 95.
Tat twatn asi, 179.
Tauler, 173.
Tempter, the, 55.
Test of religion, 35.
Theism and positivism, 109.
Theism not wrong, 90.
Themis, 117.
Theology and morality, 252,
Thetis, 119;
Thinker a power, The, 63.
Thought, In the empire of, 25.
Thought not free, 190.
Tolerance, Misinterpretation of, igo,
191.
Tolstoi, Count, 246.
Treviranus, 44.
Trickery, 56, 233, 275.
Trust in truth, 192.
Truth, 8, 10, 11, 12, 42, 47, 56, 76, 78,
120, 206, 232.
Truth and controversies, 256.
Truth and errors, 208.
Truth and fairy-tales, 48.
Truth and fiction, 153.
Truth and freethought, 190.
Truth and good, 5g.
Truth and morality, 66.
Truth and mysticism, 52.
Truth and power, 101.
Truth and progress, 194.
Truth and revelation, 76.
Truth and right, 47.
Truth appears to destroy, 182.
Truth, Devotion to, 60.
Truth in mythology, 120.
Truth is one, 20,

Truth is the kingdom of God, 34.
Truth objective, 191, 192.
Truth of the God-idea, The, 93.
Truth the supreme judge, 31.
Truth, Trust in, 275.
Truth, Unity of, 58.
Truth useful, 176.
Truth ? What is, 66.
Truth will conquer, 65, 67,
Unity of the soul, The, 133.
Unity of truth, 58,
Universe, Is the— ethical, 217.
Unknowable, 40.
Useful, Truth, 176.
Utility of honesty, 269.
Utopia, 283.
Variety of personalities, 135.
Vicar of Wakefield, The, 270, 271.
Vice its curse, 139,
Victor, The souls of the slain and the
242.
Virgil, 280.
Virtue, 38, 273.
Voice crying in the wilderness, 12.
Watt, James, 288.
Weakness and morality, 245.
Weismann, 38.
Wheelbarrow, 224.
White House, 307.
Whole, 54.
Winnow the errors of the past, 92.
Wolff, Caspar Friedrich, 44.
Woman and immortality, 2g4-
Woman and man, 2g6,
Words religion, God and soul, 24.
Work and duty, 150.
World a cosmos, 41.
Worship of a personal God, The, 87.
Ygdrasil, 72.
Yule-tide, 71, 73.
Zeus, 118.

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The works of Th. Ribot explain the growth and nature of man's soul.
The former book, "The Psychology of Attention " is an exposition of the
mechanism of concentrating the will upon a special object, thus showing the
cause of the unity of the soul and throwing light upon the nature of the ego.
The latter book, " The Diseases of Personality " elucidates the hierarchical
character of man's psychic life which rises from simple beginnings to a com
plex structure. The growth of personality is shown by an analysis of its
diseases, and its evolution is set forth in the instances of its dissolution.

THE PSYCHIC LIFE OF MICRO-ORGAN
ISMS. By Alfred Binet. (Sole Agents in
England: Longmans, Green, & Co.) Authorised
Translation. Cloth, 75 Cents.
A special fascination is attached to the wonders of the world of psychic life
in a drop of water. It is astonishing how much these tiny creatures behave
like ourselves 1
ON DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. New Studies
in Experimental Psychology. By Alfred Binet.
Price, 50 Cents.
Our conscious life is only part of our soul's existence. There are sub
conscious and even unconscious states and actions taking place in man which
are of a psychic nature. M. A. Binet gives an account of his experiments in
this field.
EPITOMES OF THREE SCIENCES.
1. COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. By Prof. H. Oldenberg.
*. COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. By Prof. J. Jastrow.
3. OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. By Prof. C. H. Cornill. Cloth,
75 Cents. The present state of our knowledge in these three sciences, so important
for religious thought, is presented in this book by three specialists.
THE ETHICAL PROBLEM. By Dr. Paul Carus.
Three Lectures Delivered at the Invitation of the Board of Trustees be
fore the Society for Ethical Culture of Chicago, in June, 1890. Cloth, 50 Cents.
The Ethical Problem is a criticism of the position of the societies for eth
ical culture. They propose to preach ethics pure and si-nple without com
mitting themselves to any world-conception of religion or philosophy. It is
shown here that our views of morality always depend upon our view of life :
every definition of good presupposes a certain world-conception.
THE SOUL OF MAN. An Investigation of the
Facts of Physiological and Experimental Psy
chology. By Dr. Paul Carus.
With 152 illustrative cuts and diagrams. 474 pp. Cloth, 93.00.
This book elucidates first the philosophical problem of mind, showing
that mind is not motion but the subjective state of awareness accompanying
certain motions of the brain. It describes the physiological facts of the ner
vous system and the experiments of hypnotism, and after a discussion of the
Nature of Thought, Consciousne s, Pleasure, and Pain, it presents the eth
ical and religious conclusions derived from these considerations.

THE IDEA OF GOD. By Dr. Paul Carus.
A disquisition upon the development of the idea of God. Paper, 15 Cents.
The different conceptions of God (Polytheism, Monotheism, Pantheism,
and Atheism) are discussed and God is defined as the moral law of the world
which is recognised as the authority in accord with which we have to regulate
our conduct. This view is called Entheism.
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS. By Dr. Paul
Carus. (Sole Agents in England: Longmans,
Green, & Co.) Second Edition. Revised and Enlarged.
Cloth, $1.50.
Monistic Positivism, as presented in Fundamental Problems, starts from
facts, and aims at a unitary conception of facts. Knowledge is a descriptiou
of facts in mental symbols. Sensations are the data of experience yet the
formal aspect of facts is recognised in its all-important significance. Agnos"
ticism is rejected, and the ethical importance of a positive world-conception
insisted upon. The appendix consists of a number of discussions in which
the author considers all the objections made by critics of many different
standpoints.
HOMILIES OF SCIENCE. By Dr. Paul Carus.
Gilt Top. Elegantly Bound. $1.50.
Short ethical exhortations and sermon-like discussions of religious, moral,
social, and political topics made from a standpoint which might briefly be
characterised The Religion of Science.
WHEELBARROW. ARTICLES AND DISCUS
SIONS ON THE LABOR QUESTION.
Cloth, Si. 00
This book is written by Gen. M. M. Trumbull and contains the very life-
blood of his experiences. It is a collection of articles and discussions on the
labor problem, and as the author has worked for many years as an unskilled
laborer, he has a right to be heard and indeed his views are liberal as well as
just and are nowhere lacking in a healthy moral spirit.
THE LOST MANUSCRIPT. A Novel. By Gustav
FREYTAG. Authorised translation. Elegantly bound, $4.00. In
one volume bound in cloth, good paper, Si.oo.
The author writes as a motto for the American edition :
" A noble human life does not end on earth with death. It continues in
the minds and the deeds of friends, as well as in the thoughts and the activity
of the nation."
Gustav Freytag did not write his novel with the intention of teaching psy
chology or preaching ethics. But the impartial description of life does teach
ethics, and every poet is a psychologist in the sense that he portrays human
souls. This is pre-eminently true of Gustav Freytag and his novel " The Lost
Manuscript."

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