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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



This union of men to work for a common object 

 has transformed them from wild animals into 

 tame ones. Century by century the educating 

 process of the social life has been working at 

 human nature ; it has built itself into our inmost 

 soul. Such as we are — moral and rational be- 

 ings — thinking and talking in general concep- 

 tions about the facts that make up our life, feel- 

 ing a necessity to act, not for ourselves, but for 

 Ourself, for the larger life of man in which we 

 are elements — such moral and rational beings, I 

 say, man has made us. By man I mean men or- 

 ganized into a society which fights for its life, 

 not only as a mere collection of men who must 

 separately be kept alive, but as society. It must 

 fight, not only against external enemies, but 

 against treason and disruption within it. Hence 

 comes the unity of interest of all its members ; 

 each of them has to feel that he is not himself 

 only, but a part of all the rest. Conscience — the 

 sense of right and wrong — springs out of the 

 habit of judging things from the point of view 

 of all, and not of one. It is Ourself, not our- 

 selves, that makes for righteousness. 



The codes of morality, then, which are adopt- 

 ed into various religions, and afterward taught as 

 parts of religious systems, are derived from secu- 

 lar sources. The most ancient version of the Ten 

 Commandments, whatever the investigations of 

 scholars may make it out to be, originates, not in 

 the thunders of Sinai, but in the peaceful life of 

 men on the plains of Chaldea. Conscience is the 

 voice of man ingrained into our hearts, command- 

 ing us to work for man. 



Religions differ in the treatment which they 

 give to this most sacred heirloom of our past his- 

 tory. Sometimes they invert its precepts — tell- 

 ing men to be submissive under oppression be- 

 cause the powers that be are ordained of God ; 

 telling them to believe where they have not seen, 

 and to play with falsehood in order that a par- 

 ticular doctrine may prevail, instead of seeking 

 for truth whatever it may be ; telling them to be- 

 tray their country for the sake of their church. 

 But there is one great distinction to which I wish, 

 in conclusion, to call special attention — a distinc- 

 tion between two kinds of religious emotion which 

 bear upon the conduct of men. 



We said that conscience is the voice of man 

 within us, commanding us to work for man. We 

 do not know this immediately by our own expe- 

 rience; we only know that something within us 

 commands us to work for man. This fact men 

 have tried to explain ; and they have thought, 

 for the most part, that this voice was the voice 



of a god. But the explanation takes two differ- 

 ent forms : the god may speak in us for man's 

 sake, or for his own sake. If he speaks for his 

 own sake — and this is what generally happens 

 when he has priests who lay claim to a magical 

 character and powers — our allegiance is apt to 

 be taken away from man, and transferred to the 

 god. When we love our brother for the sake of 

 our brother, we help all men to grow in the 

 right ; but when we love our brother for the sake 

 of somebody else, who is very likely to damn our 

 brother, it very soon comes to burning him alive 

 for his soul's health. When men respect human 

 life for the sake of man, tranquillity, order, and 

 progress, go hand-in-hand ; but those who only 

 respected human life because God had forbidden 

 murder, have set their mark upon Europe in fif- 

 teen centuries of blood and fire. 



These are only two examples of a general 

 rule. Wherever the allegiance of men has been 

 diverted from man to some divinity who speaks 

 to men for his own sake and seeks his own glory, 

 one thing has happened. The right precepts 

 might be enforced, but they were enforced up- 

 on wrong grounds, and they were not obeyed. 

 But right precepts are not always enforced ; the 

 fact that the fountains of morality have been 

 poisoned makes it easy to substitute wrong pre- 

 cepts for right ones. 



To this same treason against humanity be- 

 longs the claim of the priesthood to take away 

 the guilt of a sinner after confession has been 

 made to it. The Catholic priest professes to act 

 as an embassador for his God, and to absolve the 

 guilty man by conveying to him the forgiveness 

 of Heaven. If his credentials were ever so sure, 

 if he were indeed the embassador of a superhu- 

 man power, the claim would be treasonable. Can 

 the favor of the czar make guiltless the murder- 

 er of old men and women and children in Circas- 

 sian valleys ? Can the pardon of the sultan 

 make clean the bloody hands of a pasha ? As 

 little can any god forgive sins committed against 

 man. When men think he can, they compound 

 for old sins which the god did not like by com- 

 mitting new ones which he does like. Many a 

 remorseful despot has atoned for the levities of 

 his youth by the persecution of heretics in his 

 old age. That frightful crime, the adulteration 

 of food, could not possibly be so common among 

 us if men were not taught to regard it as merely 

 objectionable because it is remotely connected 

 with stealing, of which God has expressed his 

 disapproval in the Decalogue; and, therefore, as 

 quite naturally set right by a punctual attend- 



