434) INVENTION OF HEAVEN. 



Apollo are ideals of the body ; God is an ideal of the 

 mind. Both are made by men ; both are superhuman 

 in their beauty ; both are human in their form. To 

 worship the image made of stone is to worship the work 

 of the human hand. To worship the image made 

 of ideas is to worship the work of the human brain. 

 God-worship, therefore, is idolatry; but in the early ages 

 of mankind how fruitful of good was that error, how 

 ennobling was that chimera of the brain ! For when 

 the priests had sufficiently progressed in the wisdom 

 of morality to discover that men should act to others, 

 as they would have others act to them ; and that they 

 should never do in thought what they would not do 

 in deed ; then these priests, the shepherds of the 

 people, desired to punish those who did evil, and to 

 reward those who did good to their fellow-men ; and 

 thus, always transferring their ideas to the imaginary 

 being whom they had created, and whom they adored, 

 they believed and they taught that God punished the 

 guilty, that God rewarded the good; and when they 

 perceived that men are not requited in this world 

 according to their deeds, they believed and they 

 taught that this brief life is merely a preparation for 

 another world ; and that the souls or ghosts will be 

 condemned to eternal misery, or exalted to everlasting 

 bliss, according to the lives which they have led within 

 the garment of the flesh. This belief, though not less 

 erroneous than that on which the terrors of the oath 

 were based ; this belief, though not less a delusion 

 than the faith in ghosts, of which, in fact, it is merely 

 an extension; this belief, though it will some day 

 become pernicious to intellectual and moral life, and 

 has already plundered mankind of thousands and 

 thousands of valuable minds, exiling earnest and 



