^TS * '^\^ ^JUfc • .. B'>ok-^R_k7 * ; ff|^ r_ PRESENTED BY 5*1 - m % i Ws Hi jffe -grltt t- ^ iffe: v *x** *#> ■ k ">r ,- 5^ ££^ #6 ^^Sk, «. CHARLES BOEMLiv; KIRKWOdfi , sx.Louis,^, MAN. A PHILOSOPHICAL TREATISE ON THE HUMAN RACE, IN THEEE BOOKS, By CHARLES BOEMLER. II y a dans le monde bien pen de chores but lesqnelles nn honnfcte borome puisse reposer agrtiabiement son ame on sa penste. — ClIAMFOBT. ST. LOUIS: WM. M. ANDERSON. 1889. **** ^ 7 Gift Author TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE. Preface, 5 BOOK I. Man as a Natural Being. BOOK II. Man as an Intellectual Being. CHAP. I. Man as Man, 33 II. The State, 44 III. His Erudition, 60 IV. His Misery and Happiness, ... 75 V. The Intellect 112 BOOK III. Man as a Moral Being. I. His Object as Man, 167 II. He is By Nature Base, .... 174 III. The Conscience 200 IV. Bewards and Punishment, . . . 203 V. Keligion, 221 PREFACE. In Countries, as the Occidental, where the religion teaches that Man is Lord over every- thing, and that beyond him and Grod there is nothing worthy of our serious consideration ; and in an age when materialistic views are swaying men and things ; when the social standing is without virtue as a basis to rest on, and the marital tie but a connecting link with anarchy; when Mammon and their bellies are the gods of men; when Christ and his religion are but a piece of mockery to reach another end, a stricter moral Code becomes a matter of divine right. To this end, therefore, laboring from a natural and moral impulse, does the author lay this work before the world. St. Louis, March, 1888. BOOK I. MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 1. This Globe is a huge Carcass, on and near the surface of which are bred by the heat of the Sun all living creatures, whether animate or inanimate; and, ' according to all scientific researches, it is the only part of the Universe that has living beings in it. Animals are bred from the earth and from the sub- stance of each other, the Sun being in all cases the generator. The same matter that constitutes the one, also constitutes the other, the only difference being in its form. 2. Our Globe, in consequence of its distance from the Sun, has been so influenced by it since its own heat has left its surface (for we have no evidence that the interior heat of our planet has any influence on the living beings on its surface), that man and all animals are constituted as we see them. Should the Globe again undergo a radical change, of course this would cause an annihilation of everything on it in its present form. We see that heat causes everything to come into existence, and as the Sun is the only source of heat, on which our artificial heat is undoubtedly dependent, it looks wise to regard him as the Creator of all things, and therefore, by the way, if worship be in order, to worship him, as the American Indian does, and as all fire- worshippers regard fire. 3. In all existences there are two divisions that are visible, the organic and the inorganic. Taking it in 8 A TREATISE ON MAN. a closer sense, there is but one existence, and what we call divisions or classes relates only to their re- spective forms; and every existence contains an organ more or less developed; how otherwise could a change occur in its form ? But the only bodies that have self-motion in them, are those that have intellect or instinct; all other existences in their growth and vitality being in an adhesive state to the earth itself. Yet man and all other animals adhere also to -the earth and move around in its atmosphere in the same manner as the roots of the tree move around in its soil, and can no more extricate himself than they can. The intellect and instinct seem to have been given to man and all animals as a means of simply greater action, to ans- wer more ends than other existences. 4. Man eats the animal and the animal eats the man ; thus the one partakes of the other. In this way they mingle each other's blood. It is impossible for man and the lower animal to be independent of each other, for like takes to like. The blood of all animals is blood, the difference being only in the quality. Neither do we have different names for the bodily organs of different animals. 5. The animal serves to the production of the plant in tilling the ground, and supplying the soil with ma- nure ; whilst the plant serves to the existence of the animal. As relates to the benefit that man does for the plant, he does more for it than any other animal So, for the services that the lower animal, for in- stance, the domestic animal does for him, man is com- pelled to supply it with food, keep it in a state of MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 9 cleanliness, and is thus compelled to serve it in a more menial capacity than what it serves man, so equally are all things balanced eventually. When one part of matter undergoes a change, an- other is benefited by such change. The different natural productions are only a change as they have taken place in a part of the whole ; but they are not thereby in the least independent of one another, or disconnected from the whole. 6. In the whole kingdom, the different species of animals bear a relationship to each other, and un- doubtedly had but one origin ; this origin still exists in every creature, but the different capacities have been assumed only by natural selection in consequence of the necessity of things. Every production of nature is but the result of one all-powerful force existing in nature, to which every existence is subject. The dif- ferent forces and capacities of existences arise from the different degrees of this force that is in them. The result of its action is birth and death in infinitum — mere transfiguration in substance. All substance is but one, and it is therefore improper to use the word in the plural. After the breath leaves the body, the latter is nothing but dead substance —like wood or stone —the moist part of it having evaporated or mingled with the atmosphere, the rest having become dust. It is by continual gradation that man has reached the position he now occupies, and his vaunting that he stands above all things surrounding him arises out of his conceit and vanity, which also are necessary characteristics, especially with the common man. We praise a man of humility, because he closely adheres 10 A TREATISE ON MAN. to the original type, and treats with contempt any- thing that tends to draw a line between man and the rest of the Universe. Superiority only lies in the degree of mental capacity, as classified by man. In nature the different animals possess a different degree of mental capacity, in consequence of which they assume a different relation to each other, the one is king and the other subject, etc. Ambition in man is nothing else but that by which the force in nature makes him assume a higher position in life as com- pared to the rest of animals. It is the vigor of his desires that drives him on to conquests and a high intellectual position. And what is desire but an acting of the force in nature to preserve each species in its particular position ? 7. In all his workmanship, man is employed only on those materials that he is surrounded by, not created by himself any more than he himself is; the perpetual store for application in workmanship, either by handi- craft or the mind, is homogeneous to himself. He builds as the beaver does, and eats as the dog does; he propagates as the rabbit does, and fights as the tiger does. His whole efforts, either in the direct necessaries of life or the arts, are only a means to maintain his present condition; the pleasures of life are invented by nature, through man, as being as much of a necessity for his present position as is bodily exercise for his animal life. His high position requires that the time that is not absolutely neces- sary in which to earn means for sustenance, should be consumed by the diversion that his ingenuity invents. All animals love their time of play as well as man, either with their fellows or by themselves. Such MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 11 diversion is always in proportion to the degree of intelligence. Nature keeps every animal so continu- ally engaged, either bodily or intellectually, to make life fleeting, that before we have disposed of one thing, we are about to engage in another. Man's existence is nothing but animal employment. 8. The whole animal kingdom is nothing but one family, subdivided into genuses and species. Man admits his relationship to the rest of animals by call- ing himself an Animal. All animals are created by the same laws, and also destroyed by the same laws; the one is subject as well as the other to the inevi- table decrees of fate, from whose hard and relentless execution the highest intellectual being is no more exempt than the lowest insect. 9. It is reflections like these, and convinced that they are correct, that prevent man from assuming that vanity that is so characteristic of him ; nothing better reminds human nature of its insignificance than to compare it to an animal of an inferior grade. The conceit and vanity with which he has during all ages inflated himself has and does lead to those disappoint- ments in life that too frequently bring a victim to the grave. The wise man sees that he was born as all animals are, sees that he must perish as all animals do; from these he sees that his present existence must be that of an animal, and therefore lives accord- ingly. 10. The works of the intellect are alone what draw a line of distinction between man and the lower animal ; but with the majority of mankind, it is noth- 12 A TREATISE ON MAN. ing but intelligence serving the same purposes as the instinct does with those animals that lack it. 11. There is even a friendship between man and certain of the lower animals, so that many men, for instance, prefer the company of their dogs to that of their fellow men, just as a man will prefer his par- ticular friends to the people in general. Some animals possess certain qualities, such as fidelity, Obedience, cleanliness and others, that take the place of intellectuality, and which, therefore, make thein very agreeable to us. The Great Frederick was better entertained by his dogs than by "that dainued race,' 7 and so every great Frederick says. The fact that every organic being is as much complete in itself as man is, is what makes the natural equality so mani- fest. The same water that quenches our thirst, also quenches that of the dog, and the same stroke that inflicts pain on the naked body of the man, also in- flicts pain on the bare body of the horse. Hence a man of humanity is as much shocked at the cruelty done to an animal as he would be were it one of his fellow men or himself; he feels the blow himself, be- cause he and the animal are one. From this equality it follows that the lower animal is justly entitled to our protection ; it is not a favor to it, but it is a right which it can claim, especially considering the friend- ship and services that many animals favor us with. 12. If man had an active brain for thinking, with- out being confused by the illogical reasoning of school-men and the folly that his religious prejudices have caused him, he would clearly see and recognize the close resemblance there is between all bodies, MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 13 animate or inanimate ; how they are brought into the world, all thrown in together, intended to breed and to propagate on each other; every animal and body at every movement of its life being born and dying. 13. The plant has its desires as well as the organic body ; it has its stages of health and prosperity ; it is even sexual. We see that the plant, for want of moisture or fertile ground, becomes sick and before many days is dead, in the same sense as an animal. We even undertake to treat it as a physician would his patient. 14. The fuel that is placed in the furnace to cause steam to put the engine in motion is the same, arti- ficially, as the victuals placed in the stomach to produce blood, which is also heat, to put the human organization in motion. 15. "So animal can exist long without a proper use of its members, and if the struggle for existence does not yield sufficient exercise of the body, planned exer- cise must be resorted to. It is a fact that all plants, as well, require movement by the wind, in order to cause the sap (blood) to better circulate through the body, and, if entirely deprived of it, will eventually die; a plant having suffered greatly from a storm or sickness seems to become regenerated and prospers so much the better, in the same manner as an animal after it has recovered from a sickness, or as the human mind after it has undergone great suffering and anguish, has thereby become more purified and strengthened. 14 A TREATISE ON MAN. 16. With the exception of the time necessary to supply the male with seinen, he is always prepared to have intercourse with the other sex. So it is also with the female, after she has disposed of her young, so that they can provide for themselves, and has had sufficient time to let her propagating organs become restored. Thus it seems that there is no time allowed to pass away without begetting; in fact, animal exis- tence means nothing but begetting and producing, and when this is impossible, caused by age or imbe- cility, nature has no need of the individual, and now lets him perish; or, from that time, at least with man, she probably uses him to assist those who have taken his place. 17. In all the attention shown by a man to a woman, or vice versa, one can see nothing but the preliminary movements leading to propagation. This is even somewhat noticeable in play between boys and girls. All the gifts made by the one sex to the other mean nothing else than to tempt the one lover to be within reach of sexual enjoyment of the other. 18. Excepting for the purpose of cleanliness, all clothes about the body, a well made toilet and orna- ments, are nothing but the bestial passion in opera- tion to attract the other sex. Woman shows this passion better than man, for she makes the attractive- ness of her body her next greatest employment, as long as the sexual desire lasts, and there is the least ray of hope to have it quieted. He who dis- closes the greatest passion for attracting, thereby discloses the greatest animalism. The fop and cox- comb are never considered men, because their whole vocation in dressing betrays the beast. MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 15 19. The reason why lovers carry on their amours secretly, and steal their glances when in the presence of others, is because they are playing the lower ani- mal, and thereby are depriving themselves of the dig- nity that man as a being of morality is entitled to; there is nothing so degrading to man as to be remind- ed that m this respect he stands on the same level as the brute ; there can be nothing more humiliating to a man of intellectuality than to be called a lover, be- cause here his whole intellectuality is forgotten. Sexual love belongs to brutes, and not to men. So the blushing of the bride at being reminded of her nuptials, or of a beautiful young woman when stared at by men, and the offence that mankind gen- erally take in being reminded of sexual intercourse, even if it be with one of the other sex to whom they are lawfully married, are from the fact that it indi- rectly charges them with propagation— animalism. 20. The reason why a woman's beauty is so strik- ing at first, is because it is sexual, and therefore acts on the animal part of man; but when the animal part, the desire for sexual connection, has ceased to act, he will not be affected by it as before. But the beauty of a man is not so sexual, and will therefore not have that same physical effect; the effect will be to cause awe mingled with sexual admiration ; such beauty will be considered such, more or less, even by those who have no power of propagation, and is lasting, whereas sexual beauty lasts only as long as it is necessary to attract one of the other sex, whether it be in the male or the female. And as there are women who have very little or no sexual beauty, in some cases even a certain intellectual beauty, so there are men who have nothing but sexual beauty. 16 A TREATISE ON MAN. 21. Though they be apparently opposite, yet all beings and things have a similarity, even intellectually and morally; for instance the just and the wicked are both punished, the just man being punished for his justness simply because it is out of order according to the state af things; the poet and the lunatic have something very similar, and the wise man and the fool; the two latter instances on the same principle as the former. 22. The animal always predominates over the man; the animal is man directly, whilst man is natural only indirectly; the latter is civilization, nature's secondary object. Thus we see that as soon as the animal nature and the intellectual nature come into conflict, the man must yield to the animal. 23. It is a rare occurence in the creations of nature to gift a man with such high and extraordinary intel- lectuality as to be able to control the animal that is in him; and there never was and never will be a being born in whom the animal is completely subdued, for this would be a contradiction in itself. Intellectuality is only an adjunct, for it never was the object of nature for man to transcend his boundaries as a civilized animal. 24. The two sexes seek each other under the con- tinual error that in possessing each other, they obtain the happiness that is sought; the lover has not the remotest idea of the real object that lies in the admir- ation he has for his mistress. Man, rationally, is un- willing to assume the responsibility of his young, and, therefore, to compel him to produce them requires him MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 17 to be blindfolded, the animal power in him being so great that for the moment it commands the intellect to be silent, until the act has been performed, when it again comes forward and charges the will with bestial- ity. Only under such a delusion and tyrannical control that the will has over the intellect, can propagation be reached with an intellectual being. Many an individual, under the belief that sexual connection is bliss, finds to his misfortune that in a few years' time his labors of so-called pleasure have fully satisfied the demands of nature, to the extent of having created for her a half dozen or more of beings that he is actually not in a condition to supply with the necessary daily food; he then first sees how much of the beast and how little of the man he is. Take man as an animal, and in one sense he stands lower than the lower animal ; take him as a being of intel- lectuality, and he has not his equal, such a contradict tion is he in himself. 25. Hunger and the desire for sexual intercourse are the two greatest powers on earth, in man as well as in every other animal; this must be so, since it is on these that rests the existence of all beings, by virtue of the former the individual is preserved, and by virtue of the second, the species is preserved. It is on this principle, namely, that nature demands that her claims must first be satisfied, that a lover will for- sake and abandon all moral and intellectual ties merely to answer this end— even when he sees dis- grace and contempt foreshadowing his future career Of course, I am now speaking of animals, not men; there are, undoubtedly, here and there, human beings who, with a powerful will, resist the demand of prop- 18 A TREATISE ON MAN. agating, but yet who can never decline that of hunger unless they contemplate a voluntary death. 26. The same law of nature tbat causes and com- pels a connection of the two sexes, out of which springs a human being, also causes and compels the different particles of sand to connect themselves, from which comes stone. 27. See, for instance, the equality that exists be- tween man and the lower animal, by noticing that aJl his actions drift into the best manner for propagating, subsistence or self-defence; entertainments among people of fashion are to bring together the different animals of their acquaintance, or strangers as visitors to make acquaintance, thereby opening the avenue to a conjugal relation. Tou there find that the conver- sation is not on what is moral or civilized; not on what would be the best means of ennobling themselves, in the proper sense of the word, but it is on the best woman, marrying, money, ibegetting children, the fastest horse or the best dog ; everything to disclose the beast, but nothing to reform the man. Such peo- ple only make an outward appearance of civilization and arts ; we there find all the luxuries and articles of art that the ingenuity and genius of man has been able to invent; we there find in their exterior de- portment some of the finest manners, from all of which, if one did not know the contrary, he would suppose that here alone is the civilized and the moral man ; that here alone art is recognized and genius compensated as it deserves. But upon closer exam- ination, it will be seen that all the difference there is between this class and the lower class is, that whilst MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 19 the latter do tlieir acts more openly, on the principle that they have nothing to jeopardize or lose, the for- mer do their acts, such as are bestial, in secresy and silence; that, although their parlors are filled with statues and paintings, there is no more true taste or judgment of art in the owner than there is in the commonest cobbler, who has never seen any. For genius in art and philosophy we have to seek other abodes. Wealth has that advantage that it doe» not tempt its possessor to little thefts and certain criminalities that the poor man is tempted to, and also enables its possessor to show high-handed acts of charity and a spirit for advancing education, if he possesses such a heart. But human nature in all classes is the same ; if the poor man had the rich man's purse, he too would be charitable and benevolent, and if the rich man had the poor man's wants, he too would pilfer and steal ; every station of life has its good qualities and its bad qualities. It depends on every man's par- ticular individuality, whether that be in a palace or a hut, whether he is to stand on the level of a Genius or on the level of an ordinary human animal. 28. The lower animal has a social instinct as well as man, though not so developed; therefore the lower animals congregate in groups as man does in society, doubtless on the same principle, namely, that of self- defence. The greater the lack of intellect, the greater is the social instinct, and vice versa. 29. There is certainly no more savage creature in the whole animal kingdom than man; his brutality is exceeded by nothing. To such a degree does he 20 A TREATISE ON MAN. carry his fiendishness, that he is even compelled to authorize certain other of his fellow men to protect and guard the rest of mankind against evil-doers of all kinds; and even they, the public ministers and constables of justice, in their turn, require to be guarded against. And yet, with all his foresight in the enactment of laws to meet all the exigencies im- aginable, with the equipment of a full force of police to scrutinize every man's deportment as he passes along the public thoroughfares, in the very midst of what he calls a highly civilized community, how does he not fail to prevent and guard against the brutali- ties and crimes that are continually being committed! Is there anything more brutal than wars, where thousands of innocent human beings are slaughtered to satisfy the whimsicalities of probably a blockhead or simpleton, being in the position of a king, states- man or general? Does the lower animal have any- thing to equal this ? 30. All existences, taken singly, exist by way of opposition to each other. This is so as well in what we call dead matter as in organic beings. Man preserves his existence in this manner as well as the lower animal, that does it by personal bodily attacks and defences. In law the weaker party in- vokes the law's superior strength, and, if resistance be made to that, then the constable invokes the posse-comitatus; if this be not sufficient, then the nation, the military, is called out. With man, his opposition has become more or less indirect, through his intellect; and the greater development of it in its energy enables him to seek a better protection, which is necessary, considering that by his civilization he MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 21 was compelled to give up certain bodily means of attack and defence. With the ordinary man, who may lack intellect or bodily strength, it may be through his money that he contends with the world, and the people in general, lacking bodily strength or intellect, therefore seek it. 31. All the enthusiasm that arises in man in a par- ticular undertaking is nothing real or substantial ; it is nothing but the natural pressure to keep the indi- vidual in existence. His vanity is but that principle that is the incitement and temptation to him to lag along in the world for a limited period, then to find that his whole existence has been without an object for itself. 32. The only time we see the true existence of man, for him who lacks intellect, is when he is out of humor or sick or unfortunate; he now, to his own dis- gust, finds that the veil that before covered his eyes and prevented his seeing things as they are in reality, has been the cause of deception and imposition on him. But in spite of this sore experience, the com- mon man plunges into the same misfortune, as soon as vanity has again blindfolded him. 33. With all of man's assistance from his fellow men, I find that every man in the end must rely on his own resources. The different courses of life that are pointed out to us may have their salutary effect so far as they can be imitated; but if they be not in accordance with our own nature, they soon lose their hold on us. The different biographies of great men show us the career of superior beings, yet what may have been 22 A TREATISE ON MAN, salutary to them, may be disadvantageous to us. As there are no two natures alike in different beings, so there can be no two men who will lead the same life, though probably both lead a wise one. After the time has elapsed that the infant claims of the parent, one man can be of no more aid and assistance to his fellow man than to the extent that civilization has provided means, and this being so limited, as it is, that every man of ordinary good sense soon sees that it is a struggle with him as it is with every other being. His preservation is dependent on his animal parts, not on his intellectual. In fact, the latter even serve the former. 34. Every man that partakes merely of the animal is common, because the animal has no other object than propagating. But what partakes of the Mind, so far as it frees itself from serving the body, is un- common, and, considering the desires of mankind in general, very uncommon indeed. 35. I have often been struck at the shape that man possesses in contradistinction to all other animals; he moves on two legs, that were it not for the equilibrium that he has assumed from use, he would be unable to hold himself erect. All other animals have a more mechanical shape and operation in their movements. Even man himself, when he imitates nature, has a tendency to follow nature, not as she is in himself, but as he sees her outside of himself; for instance, he finds it necessary to put four legs to a table or a chair, or when he wants to show the grandeur or beauty of nature, he will take any other creature but himself as a comparison. Man's position in the animal IMAX AS A NATURAL BEING. 23 kingdom has something unnatural about it, and Scho- penhauer's and Darwin's theory must be correct, namely, that man is descended from a lower animal, and therefore originally depended on his arms and hands for progression. Even those animals, such as the ape and kangaroo, that rely on their hind legs for progression, cannot entirely dispense with their fore legs, which they use as hands. 36. I find with La Eochefoucald that everything is done by man because of self-love. Such things as charity, benevolence, humanity and all the acts that apparently are done for the good and benefit of another, are a result of the particular nature of the well-doer to satisfy his own desires and reach his own ends, which ends may sometimes be very distant, and therefore he himself not even at the time be aware of them. Even Christ was not without compensation in his charity and humanity, namely, the satisfaction and contentment that his conscience left him after the act had been performed. But as long as a man receives no bodily or material benefit for such acts himself, and that he has the peace and quiet of having per- formed a moral duty, it is something sublime, consid- ering that man is an animal. But take the general acts that tend to the benefit of the rest of mankind, and there is no genuine love of humanity as the basis of them; it is nothing but self- love, either transitory benefit to be sooner or later received through them, or fame. With rich men, we see that it is not until they are about to leave the world or have left it, and therefore cannot absorb their riches, that they make public gifts, found uni- versities, hospitals, orphan asylums, etc. So great is 24 A TREATISE ON MAN. human vanity, that, being unable to perform great acts or produce great works, they have this pitiful way left of forcing their common selves on the public ; or else it is done to make their peace with God, as they call it, having lived in a continual state of warfare with him. 37. Man is Ego. What does he acomplish, with all the boasting of his acts, but matters that relate individually to himself? The lower animal follows the laws of nature directly, and this is what gives it such a natural appearance in all its doings^ Man is too vain and conceited to see that he also follows nature, but it being in a somewhat indirect way, he assumes the originality of the act to himself. His forms of govern- ment give him an appearance of separation from the brute creation; but this is only another way of self pre- servation and defense. The forming together of clubs and societies, the entertainments of people of fashion, are all means of intercourse where the one borrows from the other to make up his own deficiency. To the thinker such people are nothing but a troop of wild beasts, to break out in all their criminalities and fel- onies as soon as the inducement offers itself to obtain their own and individual benefits and advantages. Enter on a topic of conversation or on a subject that relates to the benefit of all mankind, to the progress of science and philosophy, on a subject that is pursued for the love of itself, and see how quickly a fellow 01 this stamp will throw dung on it by applying it to himself, his family or his affairs, in order to see in what manner it affects himself— nothing but bestial self-love. MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 25 38. The reason that we take an interest in the welfare of others is because we feel that they and our- selves are one and the same, and that therefore what befalls them has already or may befall us. Some people will therefore sit for whole hours and converse with other people on the fortunes or misfor- tunes of the latter or of their friends and acquaint- ances. This does not rest on the principle of human- ity; it rests on the principle of self-love. They are all body, no mind, no soul. 39. A mother will forsake her infant, that for its existence is absolutely dependent on her, and a lover his mistress, in spite of all his oaths before to her, and which, at the time, were probably not feigned. Also, in every-day life, one friend, as he calls himself, will use his best friend merely to enrich himself, even when it will throw the latter into absolute poverty. It is all on the principle that such an individual first considers his own necessities; if anything be left, the victim can have it, but not otherwise. 40. As man and the rest of the universe are but one, when he serves the rest of mankind or other existences, he is serving himself, and vice versa. 41. The question then is put, Is there no genuine friendship and love in the world ? ]Sone, as it is imag- ined. In all the reasoning thus far on this subject the animal only has been under consideration ; and what we call friendship or love among animals is nothing but a natural instinct for the preservation of the species, and therefore common to all brutes as well as man, and is always confined at the most to one's near- 26 A TREATISE ON MAN, est allied, never even directly reaching to the welfare of every being of such a species. Friendship, such as a moral hero, like Christ, for instance, has, belongs to civilization and not to the brute creation ; it reaches to the welfare of all beings and existences, especially their moral welfare. Mere self-sacrifice of an ordinary military, or, in some cases, political, hero is not mar- tyrdom, because such a victim has continually under considertion his own glory, and probably never even considers the public welfare, of which he is probably not capable.* 42. Man is conscious of his inability to accomplish anything of his own; he feels instinctively that there is a superior power that has control over him, and that it is therefore useless to resist it. This is evident from the daily remarks of individuals, for instance, that although they would like to reform as to their moral character, yet continually complain they cannot resist the evil spirit. Ask the drunkard or the adul- terer, why he drinks or why he commits adultery in spite of the censure of the world, and his answer will be that as great as his inclination may be to reform and as many efforts as he continually makes, it is useless. Eeform can only follow if the individual be so constituted by nature that she wants him to reform; that is, that it is his will to reform. In other words, he follows his animal nature rather than his moral inclination. 43. To see how much man is animal, take, for in- stance, the actions of his body whilst he is asleep, * The subject of Friendship is further discussed and treated in Book II Chap. V, 23. 31 AN AS A NATURAL BEING. 27 when the brain is not in a condition of thinking, and it is plain how the body, in its organization, keeps on working, entirely arbitrarily. So in idiots and luna- tics, they being merely animals, not having intelli- gence sufficient to be of any use either to themselves or others, which is not even the case with the intelli- gent dog, elephant or camel, they in certain traits disclosing as much of the man as the most men dis- close of the animal. 44. When we consider the different actions of all things in nature, and that they operate without any cause being evident to the eye, it is apparent that the action takes its rise immediately in the body itself, and therefore seems to act in the same manner as the will in man does, and that it acts merely because it so wills; the will existing, the act necessarily follows. Take the different members of the body; they move without one's knowing why they move; but it is the will of the individual that they should move, and there- fore they do move. The action of the will not being discernible, is the reason why the cause of the action is not discernible. 45. Man has no will of his own ; all his actions fol- low from the universal will, only a part of which is in him, only so much as is necessary to make him man. His acts do not originate in him, but follow as ne- cessarily from the particular individuality that is in him as the night follows the day. If this were not so, every individual would have to be of a different origin, and the fundamental princi- ples of nature that exist in all men and animals alike, could not exist. It is this very fact, namely, that all 28 A TREATISE ON MAN. men and animals partake of only one and the same will, that they all suffer birth and death; the ouly difference is that the will, as every individual being has it, is differently modified to answer the needs of his particular individuality. Take an inhabitant of China and an inhabitant of America, and they are both men ; they came into the world in the same manner and will leave it in the same manner; they are, far apart as they may be geogra- phically, connected, and both, taken as a part of the universal will, kept in a continual motion in conjunc- tion with the rest of the universe, by its will. To hear that a human being has been eaten alive in a very distant part of the world, gives one horror here, be- cause one feels that a part of one's self has been destroyed in such a barbarous manner. The univer- sal will destroying the victim, also acts on the sympa- thy of a fellow man of the victim, though probably at a later date. 46. Whatever the intellect does is natural indl rectly, but whatever nature does is genuine, and foi that reason the former yields when it is in conflict with the latter; this is because the human will is only a part of the universal will, and is therefore imperfect. The human will serves only for the short space of a life-rime, but nature in her will is always and forever engaged. Nature possesses every creature with a part of the universal will, and this keeps transforming one creature into another. To maintain that the will of man is self-existing, and, consequently, free, would also justify the argu- ment that it could withstand nature, which would be absurd; the truth is, that it is nature's will to the MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 29 extent that it is a will at all, and nothing more original in man than it is in any other animal. The will that is in man now, is the same will that was in his constituent parts before he was born, and will be in him after death. Schopenhauer puts it beautifully by saying, that in spite of time and in spite of death, we are still all here together. 47. Wish and desire in animals lead to a continual change in their nature ; as soon as one wish has been satisfied, there is another present. In youth the wish seeks everything that is consistent with its age, such as will lead to greater growth — strength ; whilst after a man has reached the latter half of his career, his wish craves for things that are consistent with such old age — decay. All wishes are the cause of the vicissitudes of our life, leading us nearer to our grave; continually wishing for things never to be reached, we are deluded by nature, that finishes off our life, the seriousness of which is not felt until it is too late, and ihe victim finds himself a dupe. Our whole nature is a never ceasing change in time; it is our own inclination that makes the change; there- fore, if it is natural that the child should desire the breast of the mother, which is its life, is it not just as natural, and as inevitable to occur, that a certain indi- vidual should seek his own death ? It is as pertinent for nature to cause a change in matter through death as it is to cause it through birth. 48. Nature in her creation makes her supplies superfluous; to every animal she gives much more semen or propagating power than there are animals produced proportionately. This is the same as the 30 A TREATISE ON MAN. providence of the practically wise man in his daily- wants and livelihood. In nature there is ample power to make everything yield, to be able to reach her ob- ject, and as the species and not the individual is the object, she makes the latter yield for the benefit of the former; therefore the first duty that a parent probably owes is not to himself but to his child, for this leads to the preservation of the species ; the parent having received the benefit of sexual satisfaction, nature demands of him that he provide for that which is the result of this satisfaction, how much soever, in certain cases, it may jeopardize his own existence. Herein lies the seriousness of all sexual intercourse. It is a general rule in nature that the parent of all animals has a greater love for the offspring than the offspring has for the parent; especially is this so in regard to the mother during the infant's early stages, because the offspring needs the mother's nourishment. It all arises from the fact that the off- spring is supposed to have a longer prospect than the parent ; but where the parentis to have a longer pros- pect, undoubtedly nature lets the parent neglect the offspring. If one love the child, though probably dislike the mother, the mother will like one ; and if one love the mother, but probably dislike the child, the mother will dislike, though probably not hate, one, unless the child be so far advanced in age that it can dis- pense with the mother's instinctive love, or that the child's future is to be less than that of the mother. 49. A clear mind sees how one existence betrays the likeness of the other, interiorly as well as exteri- MAN AS A NATURAL BEING. 31 orly, as if the one wanted to say to the other, You are I, and I am you; you came from where I came from, and you will go where I will go; let us be at peace with one another. BOOK II. MAN AS AN INTELLECTUAL BEING. CHAPTER I. MAX AS MAN. 1. To improve one's condition is only changing the circumstances so that other evils, which are neces- sarily connected with such a change, will follow instead; and if it be from a condition in which the individual has the necessaries of life, so that he lives comfortably as a human being, to a higher condition, where what is added is not a necessary of life, it will lead to greater evils than those mitigated. It is un- doubtedly true that man as man can improve his con- dition by changing it at times, and in consequence thereof live happier and more contented ; but this is only when he is thereby obtaining those necessaries that his particular nature requires, considering him as an animal in a civilized state. In the ordinary changes in life, as they are prac- ticed by the people in general, it is nothing but seeking to get rid of their present simple position, merely because it is simple, and thus prolonging their own agony. On this principle Eousseau is right in believing that man would be happier in a natural state, — that is, if he were not man. Man, as we see him in the people in general, is a monster, arising from his so-called civilization, which is only a second nature that he has assumed, and this being antagonis- tic to nature directly, we notice that he is continually violating the laws of his civilization to obey the laws of nature. Man as man is such a great sufferer that 35 36 A TREATISE ON MAN. he resorts to suicide, which he does not do as animal any more than the lower animal does, excepting in certain cases dogs have been known to suicide, either actively or passively, for the loss of their master, for instance; and this too is a result of a somewhat superior intelligence. Man as man can therefore be said to be what, in a strict sense of nature, he ought not to be. 2. Man must make efforts to act, and as all efforts are merely to keep the body alive, comfort and happi- ness are necessary principles of life in the existence of every animal. The severest Cynic or Trappist will seek shelter from a storm, for he feels that his exist- ence requires it. If man could not even obtain that satisfaction that he does have, he would refuse to live, and this would frustrate the ends of nature according to the present natural system. 3. Of all animals and existences, man is undoubt- edly of the greatest benefit and importance to nature, for, since nature's object is a continual transforma- tion (being born and dying) in her matter, man. by virtue of his high intellect, has come into need of so many wants and requisites, that his ingenuity is continually the cause of one existence taking the form of another. It is therefore a plausible question, whether this be not the reason, and the only one, that man is created as man. From his daily employment, following only the natural dictates to obtain the requisites of himself aHfl his offspring, it is clear that all his doing has no other object than to serve the purposes of making such changes, so as to make room for other existen- MAN AS MAN. 37 ces. And as he was to probably be the chief means in nature, everything is more or less made to submit to him. 4. In nature there is no superiority or inferiority; everything assumes its respective place to perform its functions, and one thing becomes what another was; therefore there can be no such thing as superiority or inferiority in nature. In nature one thing serves its purposes as well as another; it is of no consequence what name man may give to it. Even in our life, with our superiority of one man over another, and especi- ally over the lower animals, the man of standing is dependent on the man of inferior degree and some of the lower animals for his riches and his comforts. Who can say in what an indirect manner the greatest Genius that ever lived served the purposes of the most inferior being that ever lived, without knowing it? The only distinction in standing to be made among animals is in proportion to their intellect. But as our position in civilization is only an assumed one, it is subject to much abuse. Our original equality in nature is the reason why pride is held in the greatest contempt; it is found only in people who stand low, consequently the disgust and abhorrence it gives rise to in noble minds. In order that the superior may rule, man has found it necessary to make a classification, moral and intel- lectual, among mankind. The possessor of a great intellect can demand that he be recognized as such in matters where it is in order, but in everything that relates only to the animal, he has no right whatever to claim a distinction between himself and the lowest serf. If this were properly carried out, it would be 38 A TREATISE ON MAN. found that the greatest part, I might almost say all, of those now standing at the front in learning, poli- tics and society would be placed with the lowest, and some of the lowest placed higher than those now at the front. The end puts all things right, and then there is gnashing of teeth. It is owing to this very fact, namely, that all men are equal, that people of mere wealth avail them- selves of this to keep separate from the poorer classes? so that it will not be noticed that they are part of the same vermin; their lack of intellect and morality is so instinctively felt by the people in general that all artificial means are resorted to, to set aside the appearance of a common nature. But with a man of genius it is entirely different; he can be crucified with robbers without detriment to his character. 5. When I look over the fate of great men, I find that they always, more or less, suffered for being great. It is the f;ate of mankind to be the victims of those to whom they are heterogeneous. The ordinary vocation of men, it is hardly a matter how insignifi- cant or depraved it may be, will apparently, at least, meet with the approbation or respect of people, more or less, whilst that which is grand and lofty, highly wise and moral, has in all ages been the object of per- sonal envy and hatred, and left without recognition, in the beginning at least. Therefore he who wants to be the author of a great work must be entirely deaf to the hisses of his con- temporaries, and regard their persecution as being but evidence of the superiority of his works. If the authors of great works, whether practical or theoretical, had not all been heroes in defying the 3IAN AS 3IAN. 39 world against all its attacks, man never would have risen to the stage of a being of intellectuality at all. The Genius seeks existence in the mind ; the ordi- nary man seeks existence in the body. And as these two are continually opposed to one another, it is clear that the possessor of the one is an enemy to the pos- sessor of the other ; hence the war that is carried on against the thinker, because his thought, so the world says, is of no practical use, and in this it is correct ; and, hence the war that the Genius carries on against the practical man, because, as he says, he has only for his result an animal existence, and in this he too is correct. The practically wise man blends the two, and thus for*ns the finest and most valuable subject for daily iptercourse. 6. There is nothing so melancholy as to see a great man suddenly struck down; to see that a man possess- ing probably the greatest intellect of his time is made to submit to a stroke of fate without a moment's warn- ing is the most striking evidence of the vanity of hu- man existence ; the destruction of a whole nation, as a political body, will not leave a more melancholy effect than the fact that the greatest of all is made a mere in- strument of nature's caprice, as Addison would proba- bly say. 7. Animals in a wild state of nature are destroyed by one another, or by man, as a means of food, or in self-defence; or by some stroke of nature are pre- vented from increasing to such an extent that their gregariousness would cause famine and a want of means for their own preservation. It is different with man, excepting so far as relates to wars, the occasion- 40 A TREATISE ON MAN. al killing of one another in communities, accidents by fire, water, contagious diseases, etc. Man's crimi- nal code prohibits an unjustified destruction of his own species, and in this manner he would keep on increasing were it not prevented otherwise. Many men decline to marry and propagate, because of the burdens that follow ; woman commits infanticide, or she prevents the seed in her womb from developing itself. These are results of man's civilized state. Now, nature must have an object in all these means, for preventing increase of all animals. Imagine the infinite number of human beings that would be added to the existing number were it not that it is prevented by the ingenuity of man. I suppose that, however, were it otherwise necessary that a child be born of every healthy and child-bearing woman every time that she is capable, the two sexes would not have intercourse to such an extent as they now do. Do- mestic animals, like dogs and cats, that have no means of preventing propagation, man destroys soon after their birth, to prevent their becoming masters over him in number. This all lies in the economy of nature, arising from the state that man has assumed. 8. Man possesses more semen than the lower ani- mal, resulting from the fact that his blood is warmer and of a more productive nature, which is, at the same time, the cause of his greater brain; the higher his intellect is, the higher and more powerful must the bodily functions be to nourish it after it is formed. This is also true of the ape, in proportion to his in- telligence. During the period at which a man possesses the greatest quantity of semen, he is also the most active MAN AS MAN. 41 in body and mind ; whilst as old age increases, both decrease in strength, because the vital power that produced the activity of both is leaving him, and therefore after he has become so old that he no longer possesses any of this vital power, he becomes deprived of semen and intellect, and takes on him a second childhood. Man possesses more semen, and it continues longer, than woman does capacity for propagating, because of the greater bodily functions to produce it and to pre- serve it; hence the more powerful is his intellect, and, therefore, more lasting. This can doubtless be said of all animals. I should also infer from this theory that woman is. brighter in mind when she has the sexual inclination than when she has it not; her blood is then at its highest state. When a woman has grown old and her vital power has left her, which has also taken with it the capacity of propagating, her intel- ligence also has decreased in proportion; therefore when anything has been foolishly said, it is called "old woman's talk." Both man and woman will show themselves best in life during the period in which they are capable of sexual intercourse. But he who possesses much semen but no intelligence, can be said to have derived it from inheritance, and that his progenitor, or he himself, obtained it from an abuse of the sexual organs, which has become a second nature with him ; he is no longer man, but brute. It is evident that the man of genius possesses strong vital bodily powers, in this, that he is always very passionate, is impatient, has a brilliant eye, a fast step, in fact all the movements of his body, like that of his brain, are fast ; generally has a large stomach, whose 42 A TREATISE ON MAN. proper nourishment is the cause of all these ; in short, his blood must necessarily be of a superior order. Now, as man possesses more semen than the lower animal, he must have other means than it of ridding himself of the superfluous part, which is done by prostitution, and other means that have since been assumed. So, considering that this superfluous quan- tity is a result of his present intellectual standing, prostitution, the greatest disgrace that nature has imposed on man, is the heavy penalty that he pays for being man, and thus, again, is brought about full justice. 9. Nature allows the human intellect to rise to a certain degree of greatness, but then, in a short time, ends it again by the death of the individual possessing it. Some ages of a particular nation produce several great men at one time, in consequence of which the nation rises and becomes enlightened, but this rise and enlightenment does not last many centuries, and the darkness and ignorance that follow are in propor- tion to the previous grandeur. This is best seen in the Greeks and Koinans, who, from their ancient greatness in politics, art, letters and philosophy, re- ceded. There is a continual revolution from what we call good to what we call bad, and vice versa. The good or bad is greater at one time than at another, but as between the two, the former, speaking morally and intellectually, is always small compared to the latter. This revolution is continually going on with us, and is very noticeable. At times even a single individual is greater and better than at others ; even during the short space of a single day, his feelings and disposition MAN AS MAN. 43 change so perceptibly that he hardly appears to be the same person in the evening that he was in the morning. Man is what he was, and will be what he is. Mature is always the same, whether it be human or other; therefore human teachings can not change him from what he is We could, figuratively, take one man as the original, and thus consider ourselves as the wan- dering sons of him. The Jew has best preserved his original stamp, and this sameness of look is an evi- dence of the sameness in all ages of his character and genius. 10. Man as man is a rare being, yet possible; but man as god, I have never yet seen, excepting in a figurative sense. CHAPTER II. THE STATE. 1. Virtue surpasses all other qualities of man; it is virtue that is the man. The State for its existence is more indebted to virtue than it is to genius ; the State exists from the virtuous conduct of its subjects, not from their acts of intelligence. It is true that philosophical morality cannot at all be imagined without genius, but I am here speaking of propriety of conduct, whether it arise either from instinct or from a philosophical conviction as to its necessity with man as a civilized being. To be called dishonest or immoral has a greater effect on the conscience than to be called a fool has on the intellect, for the individual feels that the consequences of an expulsion from the intercourse with his fellow men are greater than those of possess- ing not even ordinary intelligence. A subject who is merely honest might be called the negative supporter of the State, and his integrity of character will therefore be entitled to no praise; he will only be entitled to protection. But a Genius, by which I mean a human being possessing intellectual- ity, from which follows morality, is a positive founder and supporter of the State ; he therefore is entitled to praise, if praise be at all in order, for he benefits mankind, without being a part of them, and therefore in all ages such a being has been considered more than man; this is why Jesus is called " Christ/ 9 44 THE STATE. 45 Gaudarua, " Buddha." and the ancients deified their heroes. 2. The conscience is but a power for the State; it is the means of approving or condemning our actions, thus serving as a tribunal of inward rewards and punishments, especially intended for those petty errors, faults and criminalities that the laws of man cannot reach. For the strictly just man, it is all the administration of justice that is required. 3. As wisdom is the basis of the State, the common part of mankind have no share in founding and pre- serving it, and, neither, to any of its honors. The State was especially founded to counteract the brutal and self- unruly character of the common people ; it is these very founders, from the great energy of their Intellects, that brought about the civilization of the rest of mankind. The Moralist being just out of pure conviction of his own, needs no laws for himself, and all the laws of morality or politics that he lays down relate and have reference to the rest of mankind, whose passions would otherwise remain unbridled; it might, by the way, therefore, be said that those faults or criminalities that he does commit, and which, with suck a man, are generally against himself, and from which, therefore, no one else suffers, his example only being bad, ought not to be charged against him, con- sidering the imperfection of human flesh, his own conscience punishing him sufficiently; his whole la- bors and efforts are to the benefit of others, not to himself, and thus by far more than counterbalance his faults and errors. But not so is it with the common politician ; what his inwardness does not supply, is apparently made 46 A TREATISE ON MAN. good by his exterior. Take the capital city of any nation, and you will find it crowded with legislators, office holders and seekers, men who are actually not fit to know the common wants of the people ; who are entirely ignorant of the principles on which a State rests; who have never studied the moral nature of man, and yet who assume to themselves the bearing and airs that mighty statesmen and philosophers, who have founded this very State, and in whose mirror such men reflect their apish countenances, would blush at the thought of practicing such acts them- selves. Or, take a man, who by his merits, either of the head or of the heart, has performed labors that no one else in the nation could have performed, and it is immed- iately noticeable that now others who have performed none of these labors, also claim the same honors. This is especially true of the nobility. A certain subject having distinguished himself either in war or the cabinet, his king sees fit to confer on him individually a mark of distinction, which he himself, out of that same greatness of head or heart that made him truly great and noble, probably even declines ; but suppos- ing that he does accept such royal honors, now comes in the whole herd of the family and other relatives, near and far, of the lowest degree, and demand to be recognized as of the same stamp, and this for gen- erations. 4. The European principle that the throne should be inherited, rests on the same basis as that of heredi- tary title, both going on the reasoning that what the father is that the son will be ; that if the father be a hero ( for being which he was entitled to the throne THE STATE. 47 or the title ), the son will also be more or less of a hero. But thus to keep one family on the throne, and pre- vent all attacks on it, is simply to absolutely close the doors against men who may possess those very virtues that a king should possess. It is owing to the fact that the man that the people do want and need, can not get hold of the reins of government in a country where the throne is hereditary, that revolu- tions, civil wars and anarchies arise. History does not say that the ancient Greeks were troubled with civil wars and revolutions as the Europeans are. The people always being in tbe majority will, in the end, control matters ; therefore as soon as a certain royal family has become despotic and tyrannical, the people dethrone them, and, generally, as a reformation, they resort to a Republic, which proves probably more unstable than the monarchy, especially if the people be not in a state of prosperity. It is simply impossible to lay down any particular rule of appointing a ruler or king, considering what an unreliable, dishonest and given to quarreling race the human family is. But by far would I consider it a preference that the reigning monarch name his successor; if the present incumbent be a good man, he will see that a good successor takes his place ; if he be a mediocre or even incompetent or bad man, it is more probable that his vanity and ambition will dictate to him to make at least a reasonable choice ; or let it be elective, and only during the life of the pres- ent incumbent, for if he be of evil inclinations, they cease with his life — in both cases to be subject to im- peachment by the people. To make it hereditary is to compel a whole nation to accept any blockhead or scoundrel that may issue from the royal womb. At 48 A TREATISE ON MAN. all events absolutely exclude the other sex from any rights to it ; do not add the sexual disgrace to the hereditary one. 5. When a nation allows a woman or mere child to be king, it is evident that they regard the king as a mere form, so only in name, relying on it that the reins of government will fall into the hands of a min- ister. So, to leave the monarchy in the possession of a single family, taking indiscriminately fools and asses of this family, if theybe eldest born, as well as the wise eldest born, to govern a whole nation, was always on the principle that sooner or later and more or less the administration would be controlled by selected men, because even though a king be a fool, his vanity and conceit are more or less great enough to desire the presence of a great man when he is to be found. Besides, in the administration of a government, the king does and knows actually only the smallest part of it, the practical part being left to subordinate offi- cers. It is true, also, that in Europe, at least, they relied on divine intervention, namely, that even if the king be an ass, he being monarch by the grace of God, God would guide his judgment, and his own could therefore be never so erroneous.* *But if it be true that the kings of the mediaeval ages in Europe had the guidance and assistance of God when they slaughtered their fellow men, burnt just and innocent men, threw philosophers and thinkers into prison for enlightening the human race, the sooner that such countries would have deprived their monarch of such assistance in his counsels, the more enlightenment and true Christianity 'there would have been in them. It involves God in immorality, and present statesmen should wipe out the disgrace. THE STATE. 49 The clergy, in order to retain their hold in civil affairs, doubtless are the authors of all this disgraceful delusion, for it would, if he were king by the grace of God, require them, as God's missionaries, to be the king's counsellors and advisers. And finding that there is no better way of controlling a weak man than through the influence of a woman, she soon became a favorite with them, as she is still to day; this necessarily required certain condescensions to be made to her, which gradually increased until the evil reached the recognition in certain countries of her prerogative right to the throne, which was even con- tested in these countries, and absolutely denied in others either as a self-evident fact or by a Salic law. Why a queen, by the way, not a king, should exist with bees, I can only answer that inasmuch as proba- bly only one female is required for propagating, it falls to her, as being alone and free from labor, to hold this formal position ; the neuters, as possessing more skill, are required in the labors of the hive. 6. The right to property that has been obtained by the sweat of the brow, rests on the principle that the owner has paid for it, by giving it his physical or mental force that has been spent on it, acting on the principle that he who gives, has a right to take. This principle is undoubtedly founded on the laws of na- ture, namely, that that substance which gives to another is entitled to expect to be given from the other, everything in the world acting on principles of reciprocity, thus enabling everything to exist ; or, as the jurist puts it, there must always be a considera- tion for that which is given or received ; this principle of the law evidently rests on physical laws also. 4 50 A TREATISE ON MAN. 7. I am always more of the opinion that the negro is a being so different, intellectually and morally, from the white race, that it is against the principles of civ- ilization that the two races should stand on the same political basis. As an evidence that they are an exotic plant, and therefore do not find themselves at home here, it is seen that this climate in certain parts of the year is too cold for them. Unless there be cogent reasons to the contrary, I always believe in following the direct dictates of nature, and therefore think that Africa is the natural Jiome of the negro; that after he had been there for a number of years, he could live more as his nature requires him to live. It is almost impossible to transport them there all at once, but the sooner some such disposition is made of them, the better it will be for the political and moral condition of America. As it is now, every inch that the negro gains from us, either through amalgamation or otherwise, we are the losers by. Through sexual intercourse of the two races, there is an issue that claims a hold on the rights of the white race, and demands to be recognized as its complete equivalent. Now, it is humane to recognize every being as such as our equal, but it certainly is the highest folly when regarded as a principle of politics. I would suggest that the punishment laid on a negro who shall be convicted of a felony, where cap- ital punishment is not meted out, be transportation to Africa. In this way the American people would be obtaining a double advantage, one, that they would get rid of a law-breaker, the other that they would thereby prevent an innumerable propagation of more. This, besides, would cause such a respect for law and order in the rest of the race as to prevent many THE STATE. 51 crimes. They are a people that have no morality of their own, and therefore find theft and adultery as be- ing entirely in order. Keligion, with them, is only a means of social intercourse, and of this latter, Scho- penhauer says, they cannot find too much ; therefore all exterior signs of religion with them, have no relia- ble foundation whatever of morality, since their churches are visited the more as they are immoral, even more so than it is with the white race — the most ignorant and immoral being outwardly the most pious. 8. The ultimate object of the State, as everything else in the world, will always remain a mystery. Our scope of comprehension allows us to see only direct and immediate causes, such as stand in connection with our wants and requirements as civilized beings. Our standing in the world as nature's present object is, would be defeated by gifting us with more depth of thought than we do possess. 9. All speculation on morality, as in metaphysics, has the advantage of developing the brain so that man always becomes a greater civilized being. To bring this object of the State about, nature flatters man into the belief that as a consideration for his labors, he will in the end find the stone so long looked for. History shows that where the thinking powers are great in a particular nation, or at a particular period of time, the civilization was proportionately great. But as sophists and philosophasters will sooner or later overturn the grandest structure of human think- ing with the people, so will demagogues overturn the grandest Eepublic with the aid of the populace. Therefore, even at a time when Civilization might be 52 A TREATISE ON MAN. said to be at its highest with the statesmen in power, with the populace it is probably at its lowest, and brewing for an overthrow. 10. The principle of sacredness among a people has only arisen from the antiquity of their national cus~ toms and manners. Thus the word mores, from which is derived morality, means in Latin, customs, man- ners. From this it would appear that morality was that conduct of a people as was taught and practiced among them as a nation, a system of conduct that was conducive to the interests of the State, existing as a community and arising out of the necessity of things as they gradually developed themselves, be- cause among a savage people there were no mores, and therefore the word has no meaning with an uncivilized people, in the sense that it has with us. Consider yourself alone, and there is no need what- ever of morality, but consider yourself a member of a whole community, the necessity of whose preservation you feel, and you will find that morality itself is the State. The individual himself as a moral being is nothing, nor can one even imagine such a being ; this is the reason that the hero gives up his own interests and even life to save the State; in truth he has no interests and life of his own, considered morally; his life is his as an animal, but his life as a citizen is the State's. A man of morality embodies himself in the State. It is the same with the word virtue, which is derived from the Latin word vir } man; virtue is therefore manliness, such conduct as a "man" would practice. Now, neither is there such a thing as "man" outside of the State; what is not citizen, is brute. No THE STATE. 53 one would say that the actions and doings of a set of unruly nien, who live only to satisfy their bellies, are virtuous; such individuals we call beasts. In this sense of the word Plato is correct in saying that a State can never become a real State until a philoso- pher, the vir, becomes its king. But to find men, as Diogenes experienced, is a difficult thing ; and there- fore, it might also be said that what we call States could very well be considered as a community of ani- mals mutually agreeing together for the individual benefit of plundering one another, or their neighbors, and the object of being together is to make it so much more convenient. For want of the manliness, we find the necessity of constitutions, compacts, treaties, etc., for were all men moral and virtuous, as Christ and Socrates were, there would be no need of such provisions, for the "man" would only practice that which would be conducive to the State, and if every individual would act virtuously, there would be no need of a ruler, law or police. But the very baseness of man's nature makes it necessary for him to oblige himself by putting a power over himself into the hands of another, the constable, so that when he breaks loose from virtue, which he will do every time when in his passions, or it is to his interests to do so, the one to whom he has confided his power can bring him back into the path of correct dealing, the correct deal- ing of the vir. 11. The lower animals, I mean especially those of the higher grade, betray a certain conduct in their doings that is undoubtedly considered by them as more or less decorous, from instinct; it is only not so distinctly 54 A TREATISE ON MAN. marked as ours. We are unable to understand their dealings and treatment of each other, and therefore infer that there is no propriety of manners amongst them. It is remarkable what good manners can be taught to a dog. The cleanliness of the cat, both in keeping her body neat and in burying her excrement, which latter is done because it is so offensive, are marks of instinctive regularity. Undoubtedly, if we could interpret the different conduct of animals, we could recognize a certain undeveloped system of eth- ics more or less resembling ours. It is the custom of the particular animal that in its own eye makes it a system. So it is with nations ; their particular customs and manners may in their respective eyes be a system of ethics, and yet to other nations who have lived under a different climate, and have been subject to different food, such a system may seem abhorrent and preposterous. Take our whole system of Ethics, submit it to one who has not been brought up under it, and who is probably wiser than ourselves, and see what havoc he will make of it ; he will also find that the only difference there is between ours and that of the lower animal is in the grade. Some domestic animals punish their young for dis- obedience; probably all animals do in a certain way that is unintelligible to us. But the propriety of con- duct with the lower animal, as it is with man himself, is always in proportion to its intelligence, and as a reg- ular State is not necessary for it, it has no regular system of morality. 12. Ethics arises out of the necessity of things for man as man. The same power that gave man means to exist as an animal, also gave him an intellect that THE STATE. 55 he might exist as a man. His conduct, which is different from that of the brute, p/dses solely from the fact that he is rational and it >3 not. To make this distinction between man and the lower animal, the intellect was necessary for the former, which, hence- forth, saw the need of a oiyilized state. 13. It is by virtue o^ the laws of the State that men live together, assist and protect one another, and thus keep advancing. Guttenberg did as much, ma- terially, for authors as authors did for him ; the think- ers that preceded him had assisted in the develop- ment of the brain that he had inherited from his ancestors, ?nd which was the cause of his printing invention. Printing was a result, therefore, of the genius with which nature had gifted man, and this genius was a necessity for his present intellectual state. The idea of the necessity of laws, and that we must act justly to our fellow men, is as much an inven- tion arising out of the nature of things as the art of printing was. Lycurgus felt the need of laws to keep order and administer justice in the same manner that the inventor of printing felt the need of his invention to facilitate the publication of books and hand them down to posterity. Neither could Plato have written philosophy if there had been no laws in Athens to protect his life, any more than Bacon could have printed his Essays if printing had not been invented. In other words, one being is dependent on another in civilization, and for this purpose the State has been founded. 14. There are no such things as good and bad in nature; every thing in nature is in order. These are 56 A TREATISE ON MAN. only images of the mind, and are always in proportion to the intellect possessed. All substances are the same, and for that reason what we call bad exists as well as that which we call good. Opposites are always necessary for the existence of beings and matter in general. If there were no such thing as good in the human mind ? there could be no such thing as bad; the one is a consequence of the other; or, rather, the two arise simultaneously as being necessary for the existence of that which partakes of them. The opposition that good receives from bad, as the mind sees it, is the same opposition as that that inorganic matter meets with when coming into contact with itself. 15. Our wisdom tells us that we are all one, the one as good as the other, and that therefore to cheat another is to cheat ourselves. If we cheat and im- pose on one another now, we feel that in the end it will result to our own disadvantage ; but the recogni- tion that all mankind exist in us and we in all man- kind, lies still deeper, and it is the conviction of this truth that makes us so keenly feel the pangs of re- morse at our own dishonest practices. Brutes do not know right and wrong, because they have no intellect to tell them of this equality among them. Tiie idiot knows of no morality, because he sees no need of it; he lives along in the world all at peace without morality ; he invents nothing because he needs nothing. Hamlet says: " There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. n To the extent that there is an intellect, to that extent is there right or wrong; an act that is dishonest may appear to a mediocre mind to be only a fault, but tc THE STATE. 57 a man of superior intellect, it will appear to be a crime. The law will not punish a child for a crime that it could have no conception of, because to it it was no crime ; so it is also with the lower animals. But as soon as the child, or, even some lower animals have been made to see the iinpropiety of their action, the proportional responsibility arises. Lower animals and even men that can not be made to comprehend the impropriety of their actions, and therefore can not correct them, to prevent their being repeated, are accordingly disposed of. The law persuines that a man who will wilfully and with malice aforethought take the life of a fellow man is wholly void of the comprehenson of right and wrong, and can therefore never be corrected, Experience has taught us that in some individuals, by proper training and correc- tion, reform can be brought about in their habits ; this is because they possess such a nature as is pliant; their character is not radically bad, but has only been misled. Could not, by the way, this salutary influ- ence be tried on offenders whose crimes are capital! But the law dare not risk the lives of many in turning- such dangerous men loose, merely to make the at- tempt; this difficulty is a great hardship on the unfortunate offenders who committed their crimes only because of the momentary evil influences that then controlled them. But, here again, it can be ar- gued that if they be set free, they will commit the same offence when the same influences occur agaiu. If other influences are brought to bear on an offender guilty only of an ordinary crime, he may be able to assume contrary habits, especially by avoiding evil company, in the same manner as a lion can be made 58 A TREATISE ON MAN. entirely gentle ; but after the offender has grown old in vice, or the lion in ferocity, it is too late. 16. It is no matter how well a State may be founded, mankind are not so civilized as to be able to do without laws or an army, If or is it a matter how democratical a people may be, it always demands an army merely to commit depredations on another nation. This base- ness is as noticeable in a nation as it is in individuals. A genuine Democracy or Republic is simply an impos- sibility with the human race. A Platonic Eepublic is a mere imagination of the brain, to serve as a model of what the highest civilization ought to be; to reach the highest position possible, perfection must always be kept in view, though it cannot be reached ; what is merely possible, is deficient, and until wisdom is in the ascendency, which will never be, Folly will be the legit- imate pretender to the throne ; for if an individual on his death-bed can have the satisfaction of saying that during his three-score and ten years he has met with at least one really wise man, his satisfaction is such as I begrudge, for this is something marvellous. 17. 1 always supposed that rank was intended to confer honor on those who deserved it ; but history shows to me that as many favorite whores and pan- ders of the king have received it as meritorious subjects. 18. The State should deprive all misers and spend- thrifts, who have not earned the wealth that they have by the sweat of their own brows, of all money and possessions not necessary to allow them a reason- able living, and use it for the benefit of public neces- sity and charity. Such people are a demoralizing THE STATE. 59 example for youth and others, and by the misuse of their wealth evince their own incapacity for handling it If the State left a miser a reasonable amount, this would certainly be enough, in his economy, to answer his purpose; and if a reasonable amount be not enough for a spendthrift, the sooner he deprived him- self of this, the better. 19. The State will not allow private individuals to end their disputes and difficulties by personal combat. Why should nations allow it to themselves any more? All monarchs or rulers pretending to the least Chris- tianity or humanity, could not refuse to enter into a treaty amongst themselves whereby it would be agreed that all quarrels and disputes be disposed of by arbitration. No one but a brute would want to end a quarrel by shedding blood when the same could be disposed of peaceably. CHAPTER III. HIS ERUDITION. 1. It is undoubtedly one of the most obstructed ways of arriving at truth by having philosophical men, employed by the State, lay down their doctrines in accordance with the religion of the State. To take men as they come, and induct them as professors of philosophy, even though they have passed through a half-dozen universities, is to limit philosophy, which has no bounds, within the narrow minds of such men. Besides, in order to hold their professorships, and thereby have their livelihood, they will teach almost anything, considering how ignoble the character of the ordinary man is after gain and a comfortable living. Rather than lose his bread, the common man will prostitute himself. And what noble object can be obtained on such principles ? Philosophy is not a system like jurisprudence or medicine, in which the principles are more defined and settled. Schopenhauer's whole discussion of the university philosophy is therefore correct. It serves to give preference to common men in the way of honor and lucrativeness, whilst the true man of geni- us is compelled to struggle in all his poverty without the least aid either of encouragement or profit from institutions to whose emoluments he has the best claims. 2. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, and as wisdom is alone that which distinguishes man from the brute 60 HIS ERUDITION. 61 creation, the pursuit of wisdom is the grandest and noblest of man's vocations. The thinker's whole em- ployment is the search after truth ; he seeks it for the sake of itself, as every animal seeks and preserves its own existence, not that it will in the end yield it any benefit or profit, but the compensation lies in the pur- suit itself But to ascertain truth, philosophical truth I mean, requires a head, not as that of the people in general, but, as Schopenhauer says, one that is a monstrum per excessum, not the capacity of a judge, in ascertaining whether a certain act was actually committed or not, will answer ; such a head is for daily affairs. There- fore, to say that a man is a man of the people, is simply to say that he is no truly great man— certainly not a man for philosophy. 3. It is not safe to rely on the criticisms of another even if the critic be a good one. What may appear insignificant or praiseworthy to the critic may appear to the contrary in the reader himself, and inasmuch as the tastes and capacity of all men differ, it can not be expected that the critic will give what the reader in fact needs or is seeking. Whoever is capable of enjoying great thoughts, can obtain them from the original author himself, and whoever is not capable of enjoying and reaching them in the author himself, will not be benefited when he receives them from a second-hand source. It is only by people who want to prate and babble, that the general criticisms of great works are read. I do not refer to criticisms and discussions on certain philosophical subjects that have no positive footing. Bead, therefore, the works of the great thinkers 62 A TREATISE ON MAN. themselves, as Schopenhauer also says ; to let others do it for you, is like letting another eat a luxurious dinner for you and after it is finished inform you whether it was good or not. Besides, works that have existed for centuries have their favorable criti- cism in time itself; corrupt and degenerate as the world is, the filth of an age falls into oblivion from the lapse of years, and therefore these works are free from it. An entirely new book should not be read but by a man of good judgment. Do not read every misera- ble book, pamphlet, periodical or newspaper that daily falls into your hands ; they are more dangerous to the mind than the most poisonous drugs of the apothecary are to the body. Thousands of years have passed that had their great men to produce sufficient matter for reading for every one ; in them is an inex- haustible source for meditation. It is remarkable how men will consume the best years of their life in the reading of books that have nothing to attract but their title and handsome binding. 4. Bad books are bad company. There is not only no good to be derived from them, but the result of reading them at all is where the danger lies. They are the infection of the mind as a disease is the infec- tion of the body, and a disease of the mind has not its equal in depravity. A disease of the body will not always cause a disease of the mind ; but when the mind is depraved, it leads to depravity of the body. The reading of bad romances, poetry, fiction in gener- al, and the daily newspapers, has not its equal in making the greatest part of people depraved and im- moral, and yet this is the class of reading that ab- HIS ERUDITION. 63 sorbs the most valuable time that the majority of mankind have ; they are not intent on learning, but are always seeking something that flatters and best compares and agrees with the vulgarity of their bodies. 5. I believe that there is more harm and evil done by fiction, romance especially, than there is good. Unless a reader be a good critic, he will be misled ; there is so much in works of fiction that the writer himself does not approve of, but as a reliable writer and judge of mankind, he gives them, because so they occur in human life. Excepting in the drama and poetry, the ancients do not appear to have written much fiction. Books of fiction should not be read by the people, because they are incapable, and not even desirous, of seeking the moral. The good lies so hidden in a man's life that the people do not see it; it is only the bad that puts itself to the front, and is recognized and therefore accepted by all. How many men are there who read a romance, novel, drama or a poem that will seek out the moral? or after it has been discovered, heed it and use it as a guide for their conduct? As nothing should be undertaken that has not a benefit, so there should be no reading where there is nothing learned. 6. The young reader should never read a book unless it has become a standard, from its merits. Every book, like every man, contains some good, but whether the good that it contains will predom- inate over the evil that is in it, or whether it is worth the loss of time and risk of beiag misled, is too precarious to leave to an injudicious mind, Never 64 A TREATISE ON MAN. form an acquaintance with a book whose character and merits are unknown to you, any more than you would the acquaintance of a man of whom you have never before heard ; it is ten to one that neither of them is worthy of your confidence, for as nature produces common fellows by the score, so do men produce common books by the dozen ; the one is as parsimonious as the other in whatever is good and great. 7. It is well before entering on a work, if pos- sible, to acquaint one's self with the biography of the author, the age in which he wrote, his career of life, the condition of the subject at the time that he wrote on it, and his general surroundings ; this makes his subject intelligible and comprehensible to the reader. Never be in too great haste with taking up a book. A book is read because the reader himself is supposed to be ignorant on that particular topic on which it treats, as he wants to become more familiar with it. Select therefore a good and reliable guide to conduct you through a dark and gloomy forest. 8. In reading, it is well not to confine one's self too great a length of time to one branch of knowledge, especially branches that are difficult; but rather to devote one's self to them a reasonable length of time and then take up some other branch with the intention of returning to them. Too great an effort at anything produces confusion ; it causes and leaves a contradic- tion in the reader's mind. The brain, besides, as the body, requires rest and recreation. Some learned men, Schopenhauer says, from their continual reading, day and night, cause their mind to be so transformed HIS ERUDITION. 65 and blunt that they are no longer capable of original thoughts themselves, although they might have orig- inally possessed such a faculty to a limited extent. 9. People in general, as soon as they come into the presence and conversation of another, begin to con- verse about their own affairs. Knowing that good breeding gives them a hearing, there is no end to their complaints against others or eulogies of them- selves. Take what is called in common language the bon ton, this most shallow, empty-headed, idle and there- fore most ruinous class of people, and it is found that its vanity, founded on its own subjectivity, is so great, that its whole entertainment and talk with themselves in their gorgeous saloons consists of noth- ing but a mutual means of transferring to one another their petty wants and desires. This is the place where such a hearing will be granted, and this is the reason why it will be seen that only people of no originality of thought whatever, are such great pro- moters of its interests. Therefore, for a youth who seeks something more than a mere animal existence, it can very well be said, Avoid a man who is a favorite of society. The wealth that this class generally pos- sesses is a great means of bodily convenience and comfort, and therefore certainly prevents hunger and cold, gives ease of manners, and therefore makes such people pleasant and agreeable in their intercourse, but nothing intellectual or moral can be obtained by associating with them. 10. It is an important question whether it be polit- ically wise to open the highest institutions of Educa- 5 66 A TREATISE ON MAN. tion to the people in general. It is my opinion that only the ordinary Education, such as grammar, read- ing, writing and mathematics should be taught in the free schools. I believe that it is pernicious to the political form of a government to open those institu- tions to the public where are also taught some of those branches that should belong, strictly, to the universi- ties, because they interfere with the practical course of the ordinary business man's life ; neither do the people in general reach that high standard of Educa- tion that will enable them to avail themselves of such studies as Greek, Latin and the foreign languages. It flatters the common man into the belief that he too is probably a statesman or thinker, and thus keeps him away from his work-bench or anvil, where he might have succeeded ; as Pope says : "A little learn- ing is a dangerous thing." There is hardly a more dangerous man to the constitution of a state than one who has a little learning and an unbounded vanity. If the higher Education were confined to the universi- ties, this class of men would be more limited. If there be found, occasionally, a boy of intellect, his way, by such a system, would never be so com- pletely obstructed as to prevent his reaching his aim, although he be poor, for his superior intellect would find a means of reaching that which it requires. Neither could a public Education satisfy his demands ; it could not be so developed as to answer his high purposes, and he would, therefore, after he had finished this, have to seek a higher. Besides, it can not be demanded that the whole country be taxed to instruct only those few that in fact need it. All pub'ic schools are intended only to give the child a, practical Educa- tion, one that will answer its business requirements, HIS ERUDITION. 67 and this should be thoroughly taught, and under compulsion, as it is in Germany, for it is the duty of the country, as a wise parent, to instruct its subjects. 11. The moderns excel antiquity in natural science, and have progressed greatly in the investigation of the constituent parts of matter. But this is no evi- dence that the moderns are a greater people than the ancients; they are only more experimental. The ancient Greeks, about the time of Pericles, taken as a whole, were doubtless more imbued with thought than any other people; they were probably, at that age, the most philosophical people that ever existed, and yet they had no such general system of education as we have. But as philosophy is nothing for the ordinary mind, so their philosophical spirit did not last long with them; it had exhausted itself, and no educational system could have prolonged its existence. 12. To judge of human nature philosophically, it is necessary that we be acquainted with the different manners and customs of the different nations of the world ; it requires a proper survey of all countries in their different stages of civilization. The want of this universal surveying is what makes the works of most writers so one-sided and prejudicial, and, therefore, absurd and disgusting. Although it is true that hu- man nature is everywhere and at all times human nature, yet love of fatherland makes every patriot more or less unfit to judge of mankind in general; but especially in regard to religion is the prejudice so great that the theologian, for instance, might very properly be said not to be able to see straight at all. Such a man regards every religion that is different 68 A TREATISE ON MAN. from his own as a matter of ridicule and contempt ; he has been reared according to the educational sys- tem of his country, and from this follows his preju- dice. Buddha and Christ brought all mankind into their teachings; all the world were their hearers. The best manner to dispose of any book that confines its teachings to the parish or country in which it was written, is to throw it into the fire. Schopenhauer very correctly says that patriotism has nothing to do with philosophy. Whoever writes on subjects that relate to the whole human race, but allows the reli- gion of his country, or its customs or manners, to influence him, writes only for that nation, and is therefore no Genius. 13. There is one class of men among the learned who regard everything that is ancient with the great- est veneration and respect, and everything that is modern with the greatest contempt. Another class, generally the ignorant, regard everything modern with the greatest veneration and respect, and every- thing that is ancient with the greatest contempt. Everybody out of order in this world ! He who can search out what is good of his own age and bad of past ages, and vice versa, is a thinker ; he does not belong to his own age or country exclusively any more than Socrates did to Athens, but also to the past and the future and all the world ; what has oc- curred in all ages and in all countries is his theme. This is the third class. 14. As the character never changes, so, neither, can an honest man be made out of a dishonest one; but as the character can be led astray before the HIS ERUDITION. 69 mind is sufficiently developed to see the danger that may follow a youth's private sinful actions, precau- tionary measures should be taken in time. Here the wrong that is done may not be against the rest of mankind, excepting the formal insult offered their dignity ; the damage that the sinner in such a case commits is probably all against himself, and, as his character is probably radically good, this could have i been avoided by proper moral training. As a radi- cally bad character will always bring the dishonest man back to his dishonest conduct when all exterior influence and threats have ceased to have any effect on him, so will a sinner, whose character is radically good, return to virtue as soon as the exterior cloud that kept him in darkness, has passed away. Therefore I believe that greater attention should be paid by those who have children under their care and guardianship , namely, by moral instruction to show, in a stronger light, the danger that follows from evil influence of others. Saint Augustine must have been under such an influence in his earlier years, and Eance, the Eeformer of the order of La Trappe, is the best example of how a fine soul can fall into those very vices that are directly in antagonism to his cler- ical vows, simply because he seems to have been raised thus, and because of the approval, by their silence, of his superiors and associates, who, doubt- less, are responsible for the misery and remorse that he afterwards suffered from a consciousness of his sins, for the rest of his lifetime, a suffering that I be- lieve has never been equalled by any other being. The education of children should not be so much out of books, and a course leading to a training fitting tliem for practical and business purposes, but there 70 A TREATISE ON MAN. should be more of the moral in it, more of an oral instruction by wholesome lectures at home, in the school-room and on the promenades. 15. When we consider that in all ages the ignorance of mankind seems to have demanded some mode of superstition, in order to inculcate morals, it would appear to entirely eradicate it if man were to establish another institution instead, namely, that of legislative morality. But I am firmly of the opinion that it would be the cause of far less evils than the Christian religion as it is practiced, has been. We see in the Buddhistic religion, which is not so full of superstition, that there is much less contention and strife among its followers; it does not undertake to demonstrate the supernatural, as the Christian church does, but it is based on the moral teachings of Gaudania and his followers, as Christ, who was probably a follower of his moral part, more or less, intended also his religion to be taught. Moralists never stir up the people to sedition and riot ; neither does Christ, who seeks peace and har- mony among men. But the misfortune is that as it speaks of God and the soul in an enigmatic and alle- goric sense, it has enabled its sophistical expounders to use these as a basis on which to erect their super- stition, and as these are two terms that have never been demonstrated, they have become an inexhausti- ble source of disputes and quarrels; besides, becoming intermingled with the common politics of the State, which is continually at war either with itself or its neighbors, it leads to bloodshed and human destruc- tion, and gradually gets its own expounders to take part in politics. No doubt a moral institution free from all supersti- HIS ERUDITION. 71 tion would also eventually fall into hands that would be incapable of teaching its dogmas and lead to mere sophistry, unless the government would set a fixed mode of teaching and lecturing on the standard mor- alists, as it is with the instruction in the public schools and universities, — in the same manner as Schopenhauer would have philosophy taught in the universities. 16. This system of morality would appear to a per- son not a thinker to lead to a change in civilization ; not so, for if it were regulated according to its proper principles, it would be more genuine civilization than that now prevailing. The rules of moral conduct are the same as those of religion, the difference being, that the former are based on reason, the latter on superstition ; consequently these are so unstable that they open to many avenues of dissension. Every man believes in the absolute necessity of morality, and therefore such a system would not be attacked as frequently as religion is, in which prob- ably hardly a single man has full faith ; morality is the same the world over, but religion is different in different parts of the globe, and even different in the same locality. 17. The Ancients were not in danger of religious wars as we, more or less, continually are, because they had one general system of moral conduct based on principles that were common to them all ; such relig- ion as they did have was, also, general. Shedding of blood, as the Christian religion has caused, chiefly perpetrated in the mediaeval ages, is nowhere to be seen in the history of antiquity. 72 A TREATISE ON MAN. 18. The people always and in everything need a ruler, and it would therefore be the greatest absurdity to let every man construe the propriety of his own moral conduct. A correct system of morality incul- cated into the minds of the people, from infancy up- wards, would lead to greater obedience of the law. Temples could be erected and morality taught there- in, properly graded according to the ages of the attendants, and a compulsory attendance be required, the same as it is with the common schools of Ger- many, up to a certain age, say thirty years, and beyond that be voluntary. There is certainly nothing that so greatly interests the Government of a land as the morality of its people ; by what kind of reasoning could any individual refuse to attend an institution where the highest principles of manhood and civiliza- tion would be taught, something that man is always seeking, but under the present state of things fails to obtain. The strict moralist, as Epictetus for instance, has no religion, as such, and yet such a man is the very per- sonification of morality itself. Man needs teachers and instructors in morality, not in superstition ; he needs the principles of men like Christ and Epictetus to lead him through this world of sin and corruption, and not church officials to lead him into a state of confusion as to God and the soul ( which they do not comprehend themselves ), under the pretence of its being Christ's morality, and making their own adher- ents hate and despise the followers of a different creed. Christ, Buddha and John could do more good in this wicked world in their plain and simple garb by preaching out-doors on a mount than all the so- called divines and reverends put together can in HIS ERUDITION. 73 their broad-cloth, standing behind a rosewood pulpit in their magnificent structures. Under such a system of morality, every man could still, to soothe his own conscience, be the follower of any particular religious creed that he wanted, only the state should jealously keep its eye on all the clergy, to prevent all princi- ples that might undermine the state. Superstition is in morality what the bayonet is in politics; -but if both could be dispensed with, even though not radically, kings could somewhat consistently say that they were such ex gratia Dei, With the people in general, all their conduct, mor- al, political and religious, is a mere matter of cus- tom, and so, after a sufficient number of years of experience, one system can as well be established as another, and the old one held in as great contempt as the new one at first was, 19. Morality is the highest aim man can reach ; it is only morality that makes him a civilized being; without it he is a beast. Most animals possess intelli- gence, but no animal but man has anything like a systematic morality. There is nothing that is so satisfactory to the welfare of an individual as to be called moral, not merely honest, because this can be said of many men ; but to be moral, arising from a correct consciousness of morality, has nothing equal to it in man's greatness. A moral man is moral be- cause his wisdom so dictates it ; the ordinary man is honest because his natural inclinations are such. In- telligence alone is not sufficient to disconnect the pos- sessor of it from the brute ; a man of intelligence but of no morality will never receive the admiration of the world ; he surpasses the brute only in the degree of 74 A TREATISE ON MAN. intelligence; but the moral man possesses, in addition to his intelligence, another quality, namely, his morali- ty, which the brute does not possess. Now, as the state's object is to separate man from the brute, why should it not encourage everything that leads to this end, by continually insisting on its citizens recogniz- ing it. It would gradually become more or less hereditary. CHAPTER IV. HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 1. Happiness is the sole object of all of man's struggles ; every movement of the body is an effort to improve on liis x^resent condition. Now, from this it follows that man, and every animal, regards his happiness ( in which may also lie the desire to see others happy) as that compared to which everything else is nothing, and therefore it is a matter of indiffer- ence to a wise man whether the world know of him or not, and as long as the rest of mankind do not suf- fer from his acts, whether in fact he be a wise man or not. Men disclose the greatest folly when, under the pretense of obtaining this happiness, they in fact neglect it, by seeking wealth and empty honor, two objects than which there are none greater to disturb one's peace and quiet of mind. 2. Have faith in nothing human ; never rely on your own undertakings or those of others, for either your lack of intelligence or dishonesty, or that of others, will probably never allow it to become a fact. To prevent disappointments, it is necessary for a man to be able to expect the worst. The hundreds of suicides that annually occur arise chiefly from the mere non-fufill- ment of acts, the result of which could have easily been foreseen, and, consequently, the poor victim could have been prepared to meet it. Hope is nothing on which the wise man will much 75 76 A TREATISE ON MAN. rely ; it is only the fool that becomes its daily dupe. Live to avoid evils yourself, but do uot hope that they will avoid themselves ; every man is the preserver or destroyer of his owu happiness. 3. Man's whole miseries of the mind arise from the fact that he always forgets that he is more animal than man; from having too great a faith in the powers of his mind, arises all his vanity, and from this arise all his disappointments and failures. The animal of the lowest intelligence suffers also, but it suffers only as animal ; but man suffers as an intellectual being (mental suffering) and he suffers as animal (bodily suffering ) , both of which added in one individual, or either one, often leads to self-destruction. Now, if man would bear in mind that his intelli- gence is limited and his body is subject to the labors of nature as well as the body of the worm that he treads on, he would see that everything that occurs occurs of necessity, and therefore was to be expected; but instead of being obedient and law-abiding, he puts himself into an insurrectionary state against fate, and as fate does not heed the vaunting of an ass, he is the first to be subdued by it. If, also, man bore con- tinually in mind that this reasoning is all correct, he would not be disappointed on ascertaining that his neighbor and pretended friend had stolen his purse or misled his wife or daughter. 4. As the degree of intellect is greater, so is the de- gree of comprehending the blessings and misfortunes of life greater. The melancholy that the strictly wise man almost universally discloses rests on the principle HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 77 that inasmuch as there are more evils than blessings in the world, he sees them in a stronger light than the man of ordinary intelligence. As everything has that allotted to it which nature supposed was a necessary part of its belongings, so here again we find that the man of genius cannot con- sistently complain at his lot, nor the man of ordinary intelligence at his, nor the fool at his, for each enjoys that which is proper for him to enjoy, and anything else would increase his misery. It is these different stand-points on which the happiness of men rests; and it is the mistaking of the one for the other that causes a disagreement in the minds of men as to what is the most enjoyable position in the world. If the intellect be considered, the man of ordinary intelli- gence and the fool are justified in envying the man of genius, but if practical life be considered, the man of genius is warranted in envying the rest of mankind. o. Our happiness lies in a state of freedom from fear, pain, want and anything that may disturb the peace and quiet of one's mind. After the mind has thus been liberated, if that be fully possible, there is nothing more to seek, and all efforts to improve in that condition of life is simply the greatest folly, and only tends to destroy even that. But so difficult it is to check the ambition of man that we daily find men who, by being satisfied with their present condition of life, either in fame or worldly possessions, could lead a life as near approaching to human bliss as is possi- ble, but instead thereof seek to increase their present standing, and fail probably not only in this but even fall into disgrace, poverty and often absolute want. 78 A TREATISE ON MAN. 6. Consider therefore, if you seek happiness, that it is not the world that you must possess, and though you were able to become sole and absolute monarch of the whole universe; the greatest happiness to be had in this world, is by becoming absolute mon- arch over yourself. Here is a kingdom that, to be governed well, requires wise legislation ; therefore we find that fools never exercise its authority; it appears to be solely confined to so extremely few that when compared to the thousands that are daily legislating on the rights of others, it makes but a pitiful show for the genius of man. Man is a mysterious fabric; his own nature requires his life-long study to at least in part fathom his own inanity and weakness; but herein alone lies the way of reaching in part what he is daily seeking. To govern one's self is the only man- ner in which to seek a double gain, first, not to be a burden to yourself, and secondly, not to be a burden to the rest of mankind. 7. The inscription over the temple of Delphi was u Know thyself. * It has always been the aim of philosophers to bring man to a contemplation of his inward self; that it is not necessary for man to look outside of himself for matters of thought, and as all that concerns every individual is himself, there is nothing that requires his attention so much as himself. And considering that man is the only being of civi- lization, and therefore partakes something of originali- ty, his existence is mystery sufficient to contemplate on. Diogenes wisely said that he could not under- stand why people would so closely examine and in- spect the quality of a trifling article they intended to buy, but as for their own character they would pass HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 79 it over as if it were entitled to no notice. Christ teaches the same.* The conduct of man is so composed of acts that tend more or less to the disadvantage of his fellow men, that not even the closest observation of one's own acts is great enough to entirely notice it. Every man is by nature appointed the legitimate judge of his own acts; but he has no authority to judge of the acts of another excepting so far as they may affect himself, and yet we are daily judging of the acts of others more than our own. 8. In seeking their own happiness, the people in general always think that it depends on what the rest of mankind think of them, and their relations to it; they do not see that the happiness of every individual entirely depends upon what he himself thinks of him- self. So, for instance, the criminal would be as happy as any other individual if it were possible for him to believe that he had done nothing wrong in the eyes of the rest of mankind. Mankind are vindictive, and think if another has done them an injury they will not be happy as long as it remains unavenged, think- ing that the avenging will free and exculpate them in the opinion of others, and thereby feel restored ; they do not see that avenging themselves drags them into additional quarrels and difficulties, besides showing to the rest of the world that they are incapable of forgiveness and humanity, and that they are unable to control themselves, which is a worse principle of their character than it is a boast that they have com- pletely subdued their adversary. The greatest enemy *Mark viii : 36, 37. 80 A TREATISE ON MAN. that every individual lias, is himself; conquer this enemy, and the admiration that follows is greater than the admiration of all the conquests of Caesar or Alex- ander. Buddha and Christ were therefore greater kings than these. 9. We find among all nations that all great men seek seclusion and isolation; that they are inclined to be in the way of the rest of the world as little as possible. It is also a fact that those men are most highly honored who interfere as little as possible in the affairs of others, either by their talk or their actions; that the less one shows himself, the more tolerable he is, and that the more he interferes with the world, the more despicable and intolerable he is. Now this earnest endeavor on the part of the great- est men, through the space of probably nearly a whole life-time, to be alone not only for their own sake but also for the sake of the rest of mankind, striving, in fact, to exist as little as is possible as ani- mal, is all the result of a conviction that a man's life is not only a burden to himself but to the rest of his fellow men. It is on this principle that monachism rests, and that the third chapter of the book of Job was written. 10. Men struggle and struggle a whole lifetime, and for what? nothing but to earn a subsistence for themselves and the little that they give to others. In perfect earnestness that they are fulfilling an abso- lute duty, some men go so far as actually to jeopard- ize their lives merely to accumulate riches which no law of mankind or of a higher power has enjoined on them. The little needs that a man may require for HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 81 himself and family can be procured with only one third of the labor that man causes himself, and with this little he can live a life more according to the laws of nature, of man and of God— be a healthier being and live a longer and more virtuous life. But everything is abused; nothing is left in its original and natural state; to perfect what great men invent, the fool lays hand to it, and, as a consequence to be expected, completely ruins it. So it is with the luxuries of life ; having been invented to answer the occasional purposes of life as a matter of comfort, they are immediately seized upon by the whole of the human family, as a daily necessity and a part of act- ual existence ; hence the evil it results in. 11, Wherever philosophic minds founded states, the use of money was confined to the purpose for which it was invented, namely, as a means of business inter- course between man and man; so with dwellings, clothes, victuals and all the necessaries of life. Ly- curgus, knowing the evil of money, caused his pieces to be of such great weight that it was impossible to have a great amount about one's person. The supe- rior mind sees that all these are but to answer the purposes of man only so far as he has abandoned his original state of nature, and as the laws of nature were not abused by him before he had abandoned this state, he does not abuse or misuse the means of his present mode of life. It is only the ordinary man that lays his happiness in riches, honor, luxuries and sexual intercourse; but inasmuch as this is that part of mankind which outnumbers the wise part as the grains of the sand of the sea do them, it comes that with the ordinary man the pursuit after these ruinous 6 82 A TREATISE ON MAN. possessions lias become a criterion of social standing, and any digression from or contempt for them is looked upon as the result of a peculiar and eccentric brain, although our daily experience and the end of every man's existence establishes the fact that they are but deceptions and delusions, continually leading men into greater misery and perplexity. 12. The care of obtaining and keeping wealth safe is by far greater than the benefits that are to be obtained from it ; in many cases it causes men to be- come monomaniacs ; in fact some people make them- selves perfectly obnoxious in regard to their wealth, and are therefore hardly fit to be associated with. The best course is the middle one, in this, as in all cases. But probably the greatest damage that wealth has connected with itself is when it falls into hands that have not earned it themselves; it is seldom the case that its use is not then abused; not having earned it, its value is not properly enough estimated. It is the question, whether it would not be policy for the State to claim all moneys and property over a cer- tain amount in cases where the heirs or distributees would otherwise come into possession of an immense fortune. 13. The rich man does not see that the more he in- creases his riches and thereby enables himself to live in ease only, thereby at the same time increases his misery ; that as soon as his amount has reached such an extent that he has everything in superfluity, he is probably unfit to dispose of the rest of his time, and that then, lonesomeness, his house-devil, as Schopen- HIS MISERY AXD HAPPINESS. 83 hauer calls it, takes hold of him, and now, in a time when his mind is unoccupied with increasing his ducats, he has occasion to meditate on his own insig- nificence and littleness. 14. Happiness lies in labor ; man's efforts and strag- gles are his eompensatiou ; the action of his body is what causes the satisfaction ; so the rich man when he meditates over his situation in life finds that the most satisfactory part of his life was when he was poor and saw that his labors were compensated by the health that they gave his body and the small amount that he annually hoarded up out of his earn- ings. If there be no intellect, no talent there to enjoy the beauties of nature in the way of gardening, etc., or the beauties of art, old age, as Schopenhauer says, when it no longer has necessary employment to obtain means of subsistence, becomes a burden. 15. The greatest danger of wealth is, especially with young persons, that it opens the avenue of every vice and evil. How many a promising son has seen his grave before he had reached thirty, because it was his misfortune to be able to pass away his time in idleness, dissipation and lewdness ! 16. Then is to be added, as before said, the burden that wealth and fortune lay on one to preserve them and protect them against the attacks of the rest of mankind, for to do this causes more sleepless nights and misery to the millionaire than the uncertainty of where his loaf of bread is to come from the next morning does to the Franciscan meudicant. Epicte- tus had an iron lamp which some rogue stole from the 84 A TREATISE ON MAN. poor old man ; to avoid this in the future, he procured himself a worthless earthen one, which caused him no trouble. 17. The man of wealth is not subject to the vices and evils of riches in proportion to what he possesses, because the administration of his wealth keeps his mind so fixed that he has no opportunity of being aAvare of them all. But for that very reason he has not time for enjoying them in full ; his eye never gets to see certain gilded corners of his palace. But the reason why common men seek wealth, rests on the same principle as anything that is sought because it has more or less good in it, namely, they see only the good exterior of it, which they mistake for happiness, and as they can see no further, namely, than that wealth secures a man against the daily wants of life, neither can they see far enough to know that after these wants are supplied, their riches, for the majority of them, serve but as a curse, because although their vices and evils can not proportionately be taken in, yet they more than counterbalance the benefits that they yield. These wants, which mankind so dread and fear, are not insuperable monsters, and require neither much intelligence nor any capital; they can be avoided by moderate toil and integrity, and in such a case the blessings of life are nearer approached than by superfluity. 18. The pressure for obtaining wealth and honor arises from public opinion, a power that makes more slaves of the human family than the greatest tyranny of the most absolute despot, for the former enslaves both the body and the mind, whilst the latter can en- slave nothing more than the body. HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 85 19. Man in liis present condition requires provi- dence, to be able to see, that when his physical and mental strength has left him, lie be not compelled to rely on the charity of the world, experience having taught him that this is very cold; if he would rely on it, as many in fact do, the ordinary man would prob- ably find that he would have to stand under a still greater slavery than what riches could probably im- pose on him. In preparing for the wants of life, especially those of old age, the practical man shows his wisdom, but the wants of man are but limited, and therefore in all his undertakings, he should see only a dwarf where only a dwarf stands, and a giant where actually a giant stands. 20. As there is no particular position in life in which man can be said to be happy, almost any posi- tion in which he may find himself can cause him as much hax^piness as another. Therefore the wise man always accepts that position in which he may at pres- ent be. Even in cases where a man from long habit has become satisfied with a certain condition of life, he can, by habit, also become satisfied with an entirely contrary condition. There have cases been known where prisoners confined for a great number of years have returned to their prisons after having been liberated, entirely satisfied with imprisonment, which had become their second nature. Even pain, sickness, etc., having been endured for a great length of time, becomes a matter of more or less indifference to the sufferer. Man should therefore always be satisfied with his present condition ; it is his nature to be as he now is, and he should not complain at the decrees of a 86 A TREATISE ON MAN. superior and irresistible power; besides, any other condition into which he would be placed might be still worse. It should also be borne in mind continu- ally that we receive nothing gratuitously in this world; our miseries are but compensation demanded for past or future happiness ; for a life of happiness without its corresponding evils is impossible. We find, for instance, that with the Genius who enjoys the greatest kind of happiness that man is capable of, it is likewise ; for the superiority that he possesses over the rest of mankind, there is a very high taxation laid on him ; his life is one of being ignored, frequently insulted and annoyed in divers ways, that the man of a mediocre mind is not at all subject to ; eventually probably to be crucified. Thus everything in life has its advantages connected with its evils, and every- thing its evils connected with its advantages. Every man should therefore say, I am where I belong, other- wise nature would not have placed me here ; I will endeavor to make the best of it. 21. The happiness of man lies, as Schopenhauer wisely says, not in having pleasure, but in keeping away evil. Pleasure, in the sense that the world un- derstands the word, is of itself an evil, and from this follow other evils. Contentment lies not in having what the world offers you, but in having a contempt for the world, by which I do not mean the world as nature creates it, but as man undertakes to remodel it. Every individ- ual should therefore seek his happiness in himself, for the world will never be benevolent enough to make him happy ; nay, it would deprive him of his own existence if it could. For instance, the fashiona- HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 87 ble part of the world, who seek happiness not in themselves but in exterior objects, wear a look of dis- appointment on their faces. People of pleasure and fashion have always been considered the greatest fools of all mankind, because they are always endeav- oring to un-nature themselves, and running after shadows, in spite of the daily and repeated lessons in their own life telling them that shadows are not reali- ties. The lower animal, which follows the dictates of nature directly, leads a more contented and desirable life; with us our own intellect is an obstruction to our own happiness. 22 With the most of mankind, their intelligence serves more to lead them astray than it does to keep them in the right path. With his ingenuity man has invented so many vices and evils that his course of life has become almost entirely unnatural ; his concu- piscence he carries to a degree of misuse that is equalled by no other being ; his appetites have ruined his stomach ; and all his other modes of living are artificial and irrational, so that, as Schopenhauer says, he stands as a disgrace in the midst of the rest of nature's creations. With the most men of intelli- gence, it would have been better had they had their instincts alone left as a guide; and it might be said, we could apply this doctrine to at least seven-tenths of mankind. Although his condition in life as regards happiness may in a particular case be even an enviable one, the common man believes that there is something about his neighbor that he can not dispense with to cause himself to be a completely happy man. Many men who have lived happy in their little huts, were tempt- 88 A TREATISE ON MAN. ed to a palace because another man lives in one, which afterwards turned out to be their prison ; and many a man, to be able to wear velvet because his friend wears it, robs the public treasury, to end his days in jail. This causes much grief and sorrow in the world. It is correctly said, that one evil leads to another ; the first temptation may not injure a man; no, it would be good if it did, for here the evil would cease ; but it is the following and connecting evils that keep leading him on until he is so surrounded by the monsters that nothing but death or disgrace awaits him. 23. Is there anything in the world worth taking in earnest ! Your happiness is fleeting, your misery is fleeting; why then dwell on them until they cause you to be gray and wrinkled? Pass over the daily quarrels with your fellow men as nothing; con- sider how slight the cause was that gave rise to them, and you will find that the quarrel is itself nothing. Take notice of another's faults to that extent that the same quarrel will not again arise, but do not make an elephant of what was only a flea. Consider, besides, that if your enemy is in the wrong, he is more entitled to your sympathy or contempt than to your hatred ; and this may have the additional benefit of even reforming him ; and always bear in mind what the greatest peacemaker on earth taught, namely, that revenge belongs to a higher, and not to you. 24. Instead of celebrating one's birth-day, it would be far more appropriate to consider it a day of grief. Neither man nor any other animal was made an object of happiness. Considering life as one of happiness, is taking an entirely wrong view of it. Optimism is HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 89 something for bigoted divines, adhering to the Jews' Old Testament, but nothing for Christ or the philoso- pher, both of whom view life as it actually is, not as it is wanted. A Christian, especially, cannot help but see that life at the best is miserable ; and if a man do not see this, he is no Christian. The whole life of Christ was one of suffering, and in the manner in which he regards it, lies his very greatness. If man were what the optimist would have him be, there would be no need of suicide, churches, and a criminal code to check him in his bestiality and diabolical con- duct. Besides, those books of the Old Testament which are genuine works of thought, do not regard life as one of happiness, but of misery, such as the book of Job, and one of vanity, such as the book of Ecclesiastes. 25. It is not so much our own miseries and sorrows that cause life to be a burden to us, but it is the mise- ries and sorrows of others added to ours that increases it. So it is also with happiness. It is frequently the case that our participation in the miseries or happi ness of others is far greater than they could cause us misery or happiness were they our own ; and this is angelic. This is so not only in regard to our fellow men, but to a certain extent, also, to our fellow creat- ures. But as the misery and happiness that we have in the welfare of others arises from the imagination, it is carefully to be guarded, otherwise the participant may fall a victim to it. Every being is a sufferer. ]Nor is man the only being that possesses sympathy; it is used by nature as a means in the protection of her beings, and therefore she has gifted other animals with it to a certain 90 A TREATISE ON MAN. extent. Were one lost in the snow in winter, in cer- tain parts of the Alps, one could better rely on the faithful assistance of one of the dogs of St. Bernard for the preservation of his life, and though he be a stranger to the dog and a stranger to the country, than he could on the assistance, in his own country, of his fellow men and so-called friends, did it require the same efforts, although they had probably previously enjoyed his bounty and charity even to the extent of actually impoverishing him. 26. Ordinary people presume because a man occa- sionally has moments in which he feels himself at ease and rest, or better than usually, that he is leading a happy life; this is impossible, since misfortune is as necessary for our existence as fortune itself, and were it not for the former we would not know of the latter ; a continual contending is the cause of existence. A wise man will seldom complain at his unhappiness ; he feels that it is part of himself. 27. The daily remarks and actions of men continual- ly prove man's misery and dissatisfaction with the world. It is evident from the fact alone that he is continually endeavoring to improve his condition; every movement of his muscles, every action of his brain, shows that he is dissatisfied with his present situation and is seeking another. So it is with chil- dren, although childhood is considered the happiest part of our life. No man who has thought over his lot, has yet felt that his life was a desirable one, and that he would like to go it over again. Dr. Johnson once remarked that not one week of his past life would he like to repeat. HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 91 28. A man is never completely happy. If pleasure occasionally for an hour or more cause enjoyment, the mind always feels whilst in the midst of it, that what is left in the mind of the past or what is future will make it all vanish as soon as the present is over. The best that a man can wish for is a state of indiffer- ence, a state in which he feels that even if there be moments of satisfaction in the way of pleasure, yet surely they are overbalanced by the hours of dissatis- faction. To be content with the world and individual affairs as they occur, is the greatest blessing that nature can bestow on a man; and whoever possesses this to the greatest degree is the happiest man. 29. Were every man to write down every hour of misery and every hour of happiness that he lives, during his whole course of life, it could be seen, strik- ingly, on which side the predominance would lie; even if the hours of indifference were added to the hours of satisfaction, it would not change the balance. In truth, if we could look at the subject rightly, we would find that our very existence, aside from any evils and misfortunes that may be caused us by other beings or exterior objects, is a burden in itself. Man, from a long course of the endurance of all the evils of his existence, becomes more or less hardened to them, and therefore looks upon them with some- what of an eye of indifference, and it is from this that life to the superficial observer appears to be happy. Man being an animal — propagation — his wish is that he may live forever; but when we consider him as an intellectual being, the shorter his life is, the more it is according to his wishes, because as such he sees its whole misery and vanity. But the laws of propaga- 92 A TREATISE ON MAN. tion and self-preservation being greater, for they are original, than the laws of man's wisdom, which are only secondary, it is true that even the greatest pes- simist makes his struggle for existence; and this power is so great that we even feel thankful when our life has been saved from some calamity, although it may have been one of continual suffering prev iously. 30. Nature has gifted man with sufficient power, mentally and bodily, to contend against the misfor- tunes of his existence for the time that he is to remain on earth. All of his troubles and misfortunes should be as much endured as the tree does the wintry blasts, which almost deprive it of its life, but in the spring-time to prosper so much the better. As the body requires sickness to renovate its system, so does the mind require misfortunes to restore it to its orig- inal energy. 31. Take man's misfortunes in the world, let them take their course, and it will be found in every one of them eventually that they are not ultimately to his disadvantage, but, on the contrary, help to make up the little good that is in him. It is even said in common life that everything is for the best. Misfor- tunes and mishaps are to the mind of man what medi- cines are to the body; although they are very bitter doses, yet the wise man knows their salutary effect, and takes them willingly. As misfortunes are reme- dies invented by nature adapted for the particular individual, I have more faith in their results than I have in the drugs and medicines of man's invention, which are applied to all men alike; and yet there is a HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS 93 class of men, like a class of invalids, that no remedy- in Christendom will heal. They must be disposed of in a summary manner. To the man of a sound and reliable mind and char- acter, misfortunes serve as a warning, as a lesson for the future. One continual course of success in the world would make the most men so conceited and inflated that they would almost wholly ignore their fellow men; they therefore need to be occasionally im- posed upon by the dishonest ingenuity of the latter. Here again is the justice with which nature proceeds. 32. Misfortunes eventually, it might be said, have more benefit in them than fortune. Misfortunes make a man submissive, teach him obedience, and this all in the end serves as a blessing. But fortune, if it be frequent, causes arrogance, pride and contempt, all of which leads to destruction, ruin and contempt, and hatred in return. Misfortunes must humble the proud, and fortune encourage the humble; so that there is a continual balancing of nature's favors. Pascal says that every benefit that we derive is taking us that much farther away from the truth. We find that the greatest men of wisdom were gener- ally men of misfortunes or suffering; they were great because their misfortunes and miseries had instructed them as to the actual state of things in the world. Schopenhauer says that a man should rather be en- vied for his misfortunes than his fortune. 33 Man in all his miseries should never forget that he serves a greater power, whose will and not his own it i« that it should be so. That man who obeys the laws of morality and of his land is a happy subject; but 94 A TREATISE ON MAN, that man that submits to the misfortunes that fate has visited upon him is not only a happy subject, but is also a conqueror, namely, over himself, and this is the greatest conquest that can be had. It is in vain that man strives to rid himself of his misfortunes, and the greater the effort, the greater are the ill conse- quences. It is from the fatal error to look upon miseries and misfortunes that they should not be, that suicides arise. To submit when a superior power surrounds us is manly, but to run to the rum bottle or into the arms of one's mistress or wife when misfortunes over- take us, is cowardly and base, for it evinces that such a being wants to enjoy life without paying for it; whereas every wise man considers that nothing, not even the subsistence that he may receive from nature directly, can be obtained without a consideration, for consideration is as much a necessary part of the con- tract existing between nature and man directly, as it is in law in contracts between two or more individuals. 34. It has been said that if the teachings of the philosophers, such as denial of the world, were follow- ed as they are enjoined, the civilization that man now enjoys, would in time cease and man return to his original brute state. Now, if it were at all possible that these teachings would become a universal practice with the human family, it might be possible that this would be the result; but the teachers of this doctrine are fully aware that this, with the mass of mankind, is simply impossible, and therefore do not anticipate the least danger; but teach it in the strong sense that they do in order to make an impression. They believe that the theoretical part is to be left to themselves HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 95 and the practical part to the ordinary part of man- kind, and thus by keeping the two more or less blend- ed/ as near as it is possible, by introducing theory into practice, mankind would be happier, and this is undoubtedly true. Besides, there is a class of thinkers who do believe that man would make an excellent bargain by giving up his present civilization in return for his original state, and, regarding man from the stand-point of an animal, this view is also correct. In the sense that these thinkers respectively regard the matter, all are correct. Even the common man, by looking at every- thing with an eye to money profit, pursues a proper course for his animal nature, but inasmuch as his course is not based on the dictates of reason but on the desires of the beast, without regarding the wel- fare of his fellow men in his pursuit after worldly possessions, he stands below the common beast, for the latter seeks only what is necessary for its self- protection or self-defence. Such a man would cer- tainly not be degraded by returning to his original state. But, above all this, it does not necessarily follow that man would so return to his original state intel- lectually, for we find that in the primeval ages, when arts and sciences were almost as nothing, more or less great philosophers, poets and law-givers existed, who stand to this day even amongst us as unrivaled. So cer- tain savage nations have their moral laws as regards the intercourse of different tribes or of the family, and which probably are excellent laws in themselves. The ancient Germans, in all their crudeness,and the orig- inal North American Indian, in all his wildness, had private and public laws, and certain of their moral 96 A TREATISE ON MAN. conduct among themselves was so exemplary, that it would be my earnest wish to have nine-tenths of our people of standing schooled according to their teach- ings. And it is of the latter that I believe Humboldt said that they were the happiest people in existence — they are free and still not entirely brute. Of the ancient Germans it is claimed that Marcus Aurelius spent part of his boyhood among them to be impress- ed with their integrity and honesty. 35. To be truly happy requires that one be entirely free. If freedom can not be had, it is better to be a lower animal, because, although its condition may be that of slavery, yet its intelligence being so limited, it can not comprehend its own misery, nor does it increase its misery by letting the imagination dwell upon it. A true genius is never satisfied as long as he is compelled to live among his fellow men who dictate laws to him ; he is law itself and will not admit that it can come from another source. Take, for instance, a law which requires him to adhere to a particular re- ligious creed in which he has not the least failh, and for him it is the highest tyranny, the highest bar- barity and brutality to enforce a law against him enacted by men who could not loosen the latchet of his shoes. The laws relating to stealing, murdering, etc., have no reference to him j he can therefore toler- ate them. Laws are passed to prevent the barbarity and bru- tality of man from transgressing the boundaries of civilization, and to make a Genius also subject to these laws is classifying him with the vulgar of man- kind. Though it can be said that as long as a man does HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 97 not violate a law, he does not come under it, and that it has no reference to him; the true genius, acting on principles of morality, never violates a law in its spirit, Supposing that he was turned free to act as he will, the errors and criminalities that he would com- mit would be nothing compared to the violations of laws by the ordinary man with the law continually hanging over him. But a Genius is an occurrence so extremely rare, that the general laws can take no notice of him and make him an exception. Besides, who would be capable of drawing the line of distinc- tion ? But with the ordinary man, and, in one sense, it can so be said of the man of genius, that, as long as sub- jection is not despotism and tyranny, it is a greater blessing than general and unlimited freedom ; in this sense freedom with the common people would mean anarchy, complete annihilation of the state. The sub- jectivity of the boy under a stern but wise father is that boy's happiness ; and so of a people under a wise king. Crushing the hopes of a subject from enjoying that which his superiors say would be a detriment to him, makes him contented with his present condition, which is happiness. 36. Man is to himself the greatest enemy, individu- ally and to others; his greatest burdens and cares he himself lays on his own shoulders, and the greatest mis^ fortunes that we receive come from our fellow-men. There are but very few men who have foresight and weight enough to provide for their happiness; the world imagines that every man who succeeds in ob- taining riches and the title of nobility, has found it; such a man has pursued the very course where happi- 7 98 A TREATISE ON MAN. ness does not lie in the sense that the wise man regards it. Worldly possessions and social standing are one thing, and contentment, which is the wise man's happi- ness, is another. Eiches, by the way, when in the hands of a practically wise man, will cause greater happiness than nobility, because they prevent want, and if such a man will properly use them by living according to the dictates of nature and of morality, he can be said to be practically happy ; his philan- thropy can thus silence many scruples of the con- science. The greatest disturbers of one's inward contentment, are honor, nobility, society, wealth and politics; these all having to deal not with the interior part of the man so far as his own relations are concerned, being unnat- ural and only assumed by man in his civilized state, cause him many a palpitation of the heart, arising out of envy, fear and hatred In such matters the heart leaps both in its ecstacy and in its discouragement be- yond its boundaries; in neither event has it control of itself, consequently the evil of both. 'And if this be true, it is also true that he is to himself the greatest enemy, for these are always his greatest aspirations, which no one imposes upon him but himself. The wilful obstruction, the malicious interference, fiendish attacks and malevolence practiced by the human family on one another, envying one another because of a moral character, of intellectuality, of a generous heart or of personal beauty, that nature has conferred upon any one of them, or because of the possession of fruits of years of sweat and labor, always reminds me of what Burns says, namely, that " Man's inhumanity to man Makes countlesss thousands mourn." HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 99 A man may, even with the best efforts, thereby intending to benefit the condition of mankind, after years of toil and labor, invent a particular mode, man- ner or means of whatever kind or form, and thereby be a blessing to the world, and yet probably not even to himself, and nine-tenths of mankind immediately wish him and it to the Devil, and five-tenths are armed and ready to send them both to him on a moment's notice. And this human cursedness, al- though it does not manifest itself, exists (I am asham- ed to be compelled to confess it) to a more or less extent in some of the best hearts. When this is the case, namely, that one's best in- tentions are thus received and accepted, the only lot that is left to a man of a true head and faith- ful heart is to separate and seclude himself from a class of beings whom civilization and morals intended as his brothers, his fellow- workers and well-wishers. When he is no longer, when he can no longer remind them of their inferiority as compared to himself, then, because they find that other hypocrites do it, under a pretence of love to his labors and teachings, they lay wreaths on his grave and worship his image. It would make a genius blush if he could rise from his grave and see who some of his worshippers are. 37. The greatest happiness that man can enjoy, or the greatest misery that he can suffer, is in the imagination, for this goes much farther than reality it self. He, therefore who has a powerful fancy and his object be to seek the great and the good, has one of the greatest blessing tnat probably nature can bestow on man. The enjoyment arising from the imagination, where the object is a grand one, is entirely free from 100 A TREATISE ON 3IAN. the unpleasantnesses that necessarily accompany the reality. But a powerful imagination must be carefully guarded, since, if it be allowed full play, it will make realities of its figures, and, consequently, expect them in practical life, or it will magnify the miseries far beyond what they actually are in life, and thus make the victim a hypochondriac. The imaginary Eepublic is by far a greater source of happiness to the philoso- pher when he meditates on it, than it would be if he in reality enjoyed it, but he must always still regard it as but a figure of his mind, otherwise he will expect its principles to be in force where, in fact, probably a despotic form of government reigns. To return, take riches, wine and women, that the vulgar of mankind seek, and they will not yield a pleasure to the actual possessor of them that the imagination does to the poet when dwelling upon them, for in reality they are poisons, as Lichtenberg calls the two last, and therefore always leave behind them a bad and pernicious result; their reality is for the belly, consequently painful. A reality never yields what it promised, even whilst in the enjoy- ment of it. 38. Bacon so beautifully says, " Whoever is delight- ed with solitude is either a wild beast or a god." So here again there is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous ; as it is with everything that is great and noble, solitude is also a subject of abuse and misuse. Man is a civilized being, and requires to live according to certain principles. But since civiliza- tion, which is man's mode of living as a being of intel- lectuality, also finds that nine-tenths of its subjects HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 101 more abase and misuse it than enjoy it as was intend- ed, the philosopher prefers to reject the abuse and misuse of it, and take only so much of it as is salutary. It is more correct to say that, as the ordi- nary part of mankind live but a few stages above the lower animals, they have but very little civilization, and therefore when the philosopher leaves them he is only seeking it. The noble man loves peace and quiet, order and law, as Goethe says, and seeks them in solitude ; the people love anarchy, revolutions, murder, adultery, whoring, rape, theft, wine, &c. As it was philosophers that sought out the civilized state of man, so are they the only ones that are capable of enjoying it, namely, in solitude. 39. If I had let my peace and happiness be annoyed by the continual fault-finding of my character by my so-called friends, I should have been in a deplorable state of happiness, 40. The worldly success of men in general is to compensate them for their lack of higher qualities. Or is it that nature overloads the rascals, for instance, in order that they may serve as an example against wealth and worldly possessions ! for nothing works a greater contempt for a thing than to see it in the hands of him who is not worthy of it. To see a hog adorned with diamonds, certainly deprives a man of noble feeling of the desire for them. 41. It must be that our life itself is an evil, since we find that it receives more punishmeDt (suffering) than it does rewards ( happiness ). 102 A TREATISE ON MAN. 42. The lord in his castle seeks his happiness at his feast; but whilst he is seeking it there, it is probably on a visit to the hut of one of his vassals. 43. Instead of showing a man of wealth respect upon first meeting him, we should rather mistrust his character, at least suspend our respect for the pres- ent, since the mere fact of his wealth is evidence that he belongs to the multitude; besides, it is ten to one that he obtained it upon more or less unjust prin- ciples. 44. Nothing justifies a man to honor or respect but toil and labor, either of the mind or of the body. Just as a continual combat with vice and evil only justifies a man to be called virtuous or moral, so only toil and labor justify a man to possessions and riches. All persons, therefore, who lay a claim to morality, or a claim to riches on any other principles than the above, are simply imj)ostors in the first case and thieves in the second. Not even the Genius, who is maintained by others, obtains his livelihood gratui- tously, for, as Schopenhauer also says, the good that he does mankind is the consideration for it. 45. As long as you live, be satisfied, whatever your misfortunes maybe, because it is your desire to live; when death has arrived, be also satisfied, for that leads to rest, and this is what you have always been seeking. 46. You complain at the roughness with which fate handles you ? Look at your neighbor— in want, sick- ness, suffering and disgrace. HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 103 47. His misfortunes were often his happiness— so indifferent had he gotten as to the world. 48. When health and fortune are at hand, I feel that life is beautiful, and then desire to exist; but when sickness or other misfortunes come, I feel that death is better than life. Both impressions, if taken moderately, at their respective times, are correct, and that we should feel or act according to them is natural and wise. 49. We are created to be nature's slaves; we are here to serve her purposes (in her propagation), not ours, and God knows, she gets out of us all that we are worth. 50. Poverty is natural for man, because he is more animal than man. He has not and never will reach that state of intellectuality that he can invent his own happiness by letting wealth or any other means super- induce it; wealth is only a means for man's subsist- ence. Happiness itself is only a means for subsisting, and when regarded otherwise it becomes misery, as wealth becomes an evil when regarded otherwise than as a mere means of maintenance. 51. Every man should carfully guard every one of his actions and doings, since every one will be of greater importance, either as to his misery or happi- ness, in the future than he now imagines. 52. Our evils are like a great army to contend with ; there is no other remedy than to keep fighting until they are all slain (in death); not until then comes the laurel. 104 A TREATISE ON MAN. 53. By not claiming many of the world's fortunes ? one does not need to take many of the world's misfor- tunes, because where the former is not, there the latter is also not. 54. If man is to lead a civilized life, the moderate luxuries are a necessity j how, otherwise, could a good part of mankind earn a living ¥ 55. Sometime this (1886) or last year, I read in one of the newspapers, that an old Frenchman by the name of Grevy had died in some part of the State of New York, where, without near neighbors, he had lived for many years as a hermit. In an old book that they found after some men who were on a hunt had, by accident, discovered the old man dead in his hut, was written u Thank God, Jules Grevy is President of the French Eepublic." Now, who was the better or the happier man, the President of the French Eepub- lic or the hermit ? As for myself, I am compelled to confess that at the time I read it, I had actually for- gotten, for the time, the name of the President of the French Eepublic, but such an impression did the life of this hermit make on my mind, that I shall never forget his name. 56. A man who suffers is in a better state leading to genuine happiness than a man of fortune and ease. 57. A man should not let his reputation be so that he will first be acquitted and finally condemned, but he should let it be as Christ's was, and as that of all truly great men is, namely, first condemned and then acquitted, for this brings with it true and lasting glory. HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 105 58. Let every man live honestly, so that he can die in peace. 59. All that the world demands of a man is that he do his duty to himself, for this is doing his duty to the world. 60. When ill or thinking of life beyond fifty years, it seemed to him that the evening of life was coming on; it was welcome. To a soul that would like to ele- vate itself above this world, the only reliable consola- tion that is left is Eternity itself. 61. As it is to be struggles either way, he preferred the struggles of poverty to those of wealth and opu- lence, because earthly wisdom and heaven can be better reached in this way than in the other. 62. A man's family now-a-days demands more of him than he demands of himself. 63. Whilst his friends and neighbors were being defeated in political elections, become bankrupts or fallen into some other disgrace, he always found him- self in a state of freedom with his country, with a respectable supply of the necessaries of life, and on a higher moral standing than his fellow men. Thus much his philosophy had profited him, a profit that he considered could not be over-estimated. As Scho- penhauer remarked of himself, that his philosophy had not yielded him any material profit or gain, but that it had enabled him to save a great deal; and as experience teaches us that it is better to prevent an evil coining on than to cure it after it has come on, 106 A TREATISE ON MAN. it is the highest wisdom to regulate our life in such a manner that the greater part of our mishaps and mis- fortunes will be forestalled. 64. Life itself, as men like Christ teach, is no compensation for the misfortunes and miseries that it produces ; then it must certainly follow that all minor matters that relate to it, are subject to the same reasoning. This is evident from the fact that the less our effects in life are, the greater is our peace, and, consequently, happiness; for this reason all wise men, especially religious, withdraw from the world and preach self-denial. The question then arises, Why live at all ? Even Meister Eckart says, he does not know why, but he desires to live. It rests on the principle that a natu- ral law in us, as in every other being, vegetable as well, dictates to us that we should preserve our existence; and unless there be good reason to the contrary, to commit suicide would evince our own cowardice; to consummate our heroism, we must willingly contend against the Hydra of the world. It is the same in the world as it is in contests, which we do not seek nor desire, but when the circumstances necessarily force them on us, we must make a manly defence. This is the definition of life itself, and noth- ing else can be made of it. Fate having brought us into a world that proves but a prison to and imposes a life of slavery on by far the majority of mankind, and to the minority, at its best, it being not even desirable, a genuine hero will make the best of the situation, but when he finds that the welfare of man- kind requires it, as Christ, John and other martyrs did, or that there is no longer hope for prosperity of HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 107 any kind, as is frequently the case with persons who are crippled, have incurable diseases or other good causes to make life itself too great a burden, he wil- lingly submits to death. 65. Books and poverty were all that he had, two possessions in which no one envied him, and which, yet, to him were two of the greatest blessings of his life. 66. Every act that is done by man, should be done out of love, and either for his own moral good or for the public good. A man who acts from compulsion, is a slave, and a man who has not the moral good in view, is a brute. 67. Life is as the most charity fairs, namely, easy enough to get in, but, having so many fair damsels and things to tempt one's staying longer, very difficult to get out. 68 If there be no vice or evil connected with one's character, the occasional remarks of gossip against it should rather console than annoy us; they are evidence of an uncommon character — higher happiness. 69. The wise man acts from love; the ordinary man from necessity; the former is a free being, the latter is a slave. 70. All men can escape from hunger, from cold and from heat, but not from their spiritual troubles; this ta something that only the wise man knows a cure for. 108 A TREATISE ON MAN. 71. Iu everything that be pursued from pure love and admiration, he persevered, and, generally, finally succeeded; but in anything where his compensation was lucre, he soon disgusted of it, and, as a conse- quence, it ended as a failure. 72. He remarked that it was the natural force and power that was in him that had produced him, that it was that that must preserve him, and that it was that that must end him; what, therefore, need he consult the opinion that the rest of the world had of him ? 73. Life itself, at the best, is but a struggle and con- tending to preserve it. Now why add the luxuries and vanities of life to increase a state already sufficiently burdened ? 74. If his aim was reached, namely, that of a con- tented soul, he was not concerned whether his floor was lacquered or his walls ornamented ; he felt that when he had reached that state that he had reached all, more than which Heaven could hardly grant him ; he therefore always felt that there was but one reli- able way of leading to anything like earthly bliss, and that was to do one's duty to one's-self and to the rest of the world. 75. It is useless, it is simply folly, to grieve over our troubles, and yet, who is free from this folly? The best wisdom and experience teach us that things will take their course whether man add his own intellect- ual labors or not, and, therefore, the wisest way is simply to divert ourselves and take up with some HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. 109 other employment when our present plans are frus- trated, and leave the matter to its own fate. 76. That our wish to live is fulfilled, is the reward for our misfortunes of life. But to wish to live and at the same time to refuse to meet the evils connected with the fulfillment of this wish is inconsistent, and as unjust as it is to take another man's money unjustly, and then complain that it has to be returned. 77. What a difference there is between the begin- ning and the end of our existence ! It is with life as when we enter into a negotiation with another, through whom we expect to be benefited in one wise or other; at first we see nothing but his good parts and traits, but when the matter is consummated and we find that he has sought his interests as well as we have ours, and that he has probably been more suc- cessful in the undertaking, whether justly or unjustly, we begin to see nothing but his bad parts and traits. Herein lies the great injustice that we do to ourselves and the rest of the world ; had we but considered that life, as this man, must necessarily have a shadow on the other side simply because the light is on this side, or that the light must be on the other side sim- ply because the shadow is on this side, as it is also with all material existences, and that fate must neces- sarily bring us to the other side, we should not have so rejoiced in the beginning nor mourned so in the end, and vice versa. 78. In morality it is as in practical life, namely, a few must bear all the burden, whilst all the rest look on and refuse to give assistance, although no sooner 110 A TREATISE ON MAN. than it is ascertained that the efforts of these few, or, probably, as it is often, of a single one, are a success, they are then prepared to accept all advantages re- sulting from it ; but if the originator of the undertak- ing had failed, not one of these applicants for benefits would have even given him his sympathy, on the con- trary, they would have even ridiculed and regarded him as insane. Such struggles does Genius have to undergo even when it is in pursuit of blessings that result more to the rest of mankind than to the orig- inator himself. The persecution and final execution of Christ is the best evidence what our fellows are and what we have to expect from them; let no man believe that Truth is a welcomed guest, and that it brings exterior blessings. 79 X had invested his money and character so greatly in marriage certificates, that he had to end his days in a charitable insane asylum; and yet the othei sex thought he must have been very much of a gentle- man. 80. If you have not the satisfaction of a thing's going right, at least have the satisfaction of its going wrong; thereby you will at least have the satisfaction of disappointing the evil Genius that superinduced it, and, at the same time, show yourself to be a hero. 81. What a blessing is it not that our memory does not allow us to remember all our past and all our pres- ent misfortunes ! Why should we not therefore try to forget all such misfortunes as our intellect is not master enough to overcome ? HIS MISERY AND HAPPINESS. Ill 82. Whether, as the Constitution of the United States secures to every man his liberty, a marriage certificate could not be declared to be unconstitu- tional ! 83. If what our enemies say against us be true, we should not complain, because we deserve to be punish- ed for our faults ; if what they say of us be not true, neither should we complain, since then it has no mean- ing, as Socrates said of himself when he was being charged with an offence that he had never committed, and therefore declined to resent it. 84. The general charges against a good man cease, but the general charges against a bad man remain, 85. At the time that we are thinking evil of our friend, he is probably thinking well of us. 86. The hut will give all that it promises, and more, the palace will not. 87. The man who is at present enjoying a state of happiness, is aware that at any moment it may turn into a state of grief; the man who, from a mere popu- larity, sees himself celebrated the world over, feels that in a few years, but certainly after his death, he will be regarded as nothing; whilst the man of genius, though feeling his power as a man deserving immor- tality and the homage of his fellow men, has nothing but consolation as his compensation. However I try to turn my thought to the advantage of our present existence, I can not get rid of the con- viction that I have of the truth of the vanity of van- ities of Solomon. CHAPTER V. THE INTELLECT. 1. Thought is but an action of the brain superin- duced by the other organs of the body; as these organs are in a continual and unceasing operation from the time that life enters the child to the time that life ceases in the old man, the action of the brain must be also proportionate. There is never any more of the cessation in the brain than there is a cessation in the bodily organs, otherwise the bodily organs would have nothing to act on the brain whilst it is in a state of what we call rest. During sleep the brain is at rest, but its action has not ceased ; so, the body rests, and yet is at the same time moving in one or the other parts of it. Kant says that we always dream in our sleep, although we do not know of it when we wake. All our thoughts are connected, and there is no more of a break in the chain of thought than there is a break or cessation in the action that is superinduced by the bodily organs. 2. All thinking is one, that is, all operation of the brain is only one train of thinking, the beginning being the end and the end the beginning; just as one creation of nature is traceable to a remote one, so will it return in its due course of time. The end of a thing always reaches up to its beginning, just as the close of the day reaches to the beginning of the day, and the end of life meets the beginning of life. As time 112 THE INTELLECT. 113 is always the same, its divisions always returning, so is all thought merely a circle, as it might be called. The brain is nourished and trained in the same manner as anything else ; the effect must therefore be the same. There are certain requisites necessary to produce a thought, as well as there are to produce any other creation, both constituted to create, thus keeping in a direct circle of action the one in conjunc- tion with the other. 3. It is only when the brain is tired that the body requires rest, and the greater the brain, the more easily is the body tired, the sensibility being so great that the greatest part of the action of the body is conveyed to the brain, which is thus affected by it. With the lower animal, and all persons of a lower intelligence, the action of the body remains more in the body, it is not all conveyed to the brain, and therefore the brain will be affected only in proportion. But with the action of the brain itself, it is different; here, the greater the brain is, the more it is capable of working; extraordinary application of the brain of a man of medium intelligence will lead to derange- ment. We cannot imagine a man to possess such gigantic mental powers that they could not be fatigued and worn out, but we can very easily imagine that the animal of the lowest intelligence may require but little, almost no rest at all. 4. Man is a being that is limited in his intellect ; its action is such that it can be engaged in but one thing at a time. The happiness that man enjoys never can be enjoyed by him in the whole, it must come in starts; the same it is with misery. As soon as man enjoys a 8 114 A TREATISE ON MAN. happy situation another happiness that could other- wise have been enjoyed by him withdraws to make way for the present one; so it is with misery. As soon as happy or sorrowful news comes to the possessor, other happy or sorrowful news is immediately for- gotten, the former merely taking the place of the lat- ter. Man would otherwise succumb under such a burden on the mind as to be the possesser of all happi- ness or all misery at one time, which we see is occa- sionally the case with persons who let all their happi- ness or misery take complete possession of them, so that they are unlit for anything else, and which in some cases, even of happiness, leads to death. The mind should therefore not be allowed to continually exercise itself on one subject, but should divert itself, otherwise it will lead to monomania; it also requires rest, the same as the body. 5. The reason why intelligent men often or general- ly marry women of no intelligence and vice versa, and large men often or generally marry small women and vice versa, is because thereby the intelligence and cor- poral size are more properly distributed. If it were otherwise, since intelligence and corporal size are more or less hereditary, they would be confined too much to only a part of mankind. This, by the way, is another evidence that nature never allows any particular hu- man beings to possess anything in exclusion of the rest. If one parent possess particular intelligence and the other parent possess none at all, nature will confer on the child neither the whole good of the one nor the whole defect of the other, but will bestow some of both qualities on it; if both parents be superiorly wise or extremely lacking of intelligence, it is not seen, either, THE INTELLECT. 115 that the child inherits double wisdom or double folly; here nature will again come to the relief and add some of her own wisdom or folly; in this manner everything is kept balanced, neither wisdom nor folly predominating at any particular time. 6. The intellect is given to man to aid him in the wants that his civilization brings along with it. His instinct leads him through life as an animal, but it is his intellect that teaches him to lead another life in addition to this. 7. Man having, in part, been deprived of his instinct, which he possessed in full when he was still a lower animal, his inventive genius increased for his support and general protection, and of those standing under him and therefore dependent on him. Medicine is an invention necessary to counteract the bad effects that his unnatural mode of living has brought about ; his appetite for delicacies and all eatables that are not ab- solutely necessary for the support of life, have caused him evils that he did not have as a lower animal, and he, therefore, required a science to meet such evils, not in medicine exclusively ( I being of the opinion that physicians and their medicines kill and injure the body more than they cure), but especially in diet and a judicious care of the body. But what we often call science and wisdom in regard to our health or body and general welfare, arises more from instinct than it does from the intellect; the majority of mankind possess almost no wisdom of intellect, and yet lead a healthy and have a long life, their instinct being of greater benefit to them than their intelligence, and therefore lead a life more direct- 116 A TREATISE ON MAN. ly according to the dictates of nature. But as soon as something not originally natural — the intellect — conies into play, it becomes a double struggle, the one being as it formerly had been, namely, of the instinct, and that of the intellect added, which makes every such a being a being of double existence, physical and mental. This is the reason that the man of genius leads two lives. Only the Genius can, strictly speaking, be said to be intellectually wise, all the rest of mankind being- only instinctively wise; the former is the only one to whom an intellect can be ascribed and that only to a limited extent, that is, so far as he thinks of matters entirely separate and distinct from his own bodily welfare. 8. With the wise men of all nations celibacy, self- denial and a rejection of everything that is worldly beyond the necessaries of life, has been taught, prais- ed and recommended. It has always and will always be true that the highest wisdom runs in an opposite di- rection with public opinion, manners and customs, and consequently, a collision takes place. Probably both are right, considering how every man is by nature con- stituted, for his own welfare. But for the moral and intellectual advancement of the human family, a course of life has always been recommended that stands in direct and positive opposition to what is generally followed. 9. So far as our comprehesion reaches, everything in nature appears to be well done. It is as beings that comprehend and make a distinction between good and bad that we question the propriety of some things and THE INTELLECT. 117 approve that of others. Now as perfection is what man always has in his mind, although he never reaches it, he knows, for the reason that he never reaches it, that nothing can be too good or too well doue. Nature does create some beings of greater purity and more approaching perfection, intellectually and morally, than it does the mass of mankind, and, so, compared to this mass, such beings are too good and too well made. 10. The human family does not seem to be noted for any great wisdom, if we consider that when we do find a wise man, even though his wisdom be only prac- tical, we are in the habit of saying "There goes a wise man. " From this it is evident that the fools are the rule and the wise men the exception. 11. The only satisfaction that a Genius has who will never receive the benefit during his life time, in writing an immortal work, is, as Schopenhauer says, Lis own satisfaction in performing a duty which pressed him until it was discharged. It would leave him no peace otherwise, any more than the hunger of his stomach would his body; the latter was only a physical performance of what the body wanted, so it was only a performance in the former that was de- manded, being so constituted that his intellectual labors were as much imposed on the intellect to be worked off as the food is forced on the stomach to be worked off through a state of digestion. 12. To see a man or a multitude of men sitting in silence, calls forth respect, because it gives the ap- 118 A TREATISE ON MAN. pearance of thought and meditation in them. Even though they be not capable of deep reasoning, one immediately sees that they are at least practicing no folly or vice; the mere cessation from these otherwise prevalent principles causes respect even in the com- monest mind. 13. When I listen to people in their conversations, I am often struck with the wonderful wisdom and sagacity that they seem to possess ; but as soon as I see their works, it raises a doubt in my mind whether they be fit to be called rational beings at all; and whether what they do perform that has practical worth in it, be not a result more of their instinct. 34. In the common affairs of life nature has so or- dained it that they are to be carried out by both intelligence and instinct combined; their success therefore lies more within the power of the ordinary man than it does in that of the Genius. Great delib- eration on common affairs ruins the whole plan; there is then an obstacle and an obstruction in every direction, and the mind from this loses faith in its own undertaking. A man who will bestow the same deliberation on a business project that a Genius would on the subject of the soul, would be entirely unable to find men who would deal with him on such principles, because men are not inclined to regard things in a theoretical light, not even those that are strictly theoretical, but will view everything as it may relate to their practice, to worldly application. Such a man would have to learn that worldly success lies in instinct and a mind that sees nothing more in things than is practically in them, as Schopenhauer says. THE INTELLECT. 119 15. If the vulgar be intolerable to the Genius, the Genius is at times intolerable to the vulgar. His different way of regarding things, namely, in the theoretical sense, makes him in the eyes of the vulgar, who regard everything only in a practical sense, at times nothing but an intolerant member of their so- ciety ; they see that if his views were to prevail in their undertakings, they would prove fatal, and as it is their undertakings which have the control of man as an animal, they can justly exclude him from their society; because with the common man, taken in the mass, there is no desire to learn anything, and to teach, in- struct and guide is all that the man of Genius is ser- viceable for. 16. Man as a being of intellectuality is small ; as he increased in intellectuality, he decreased in size, his reason now taking the place of his bodily strength. In his present state as compared to his brute state originally, he is a matter of quality, not quantity. As nature exposes her creatures to danger, she gives them reason or instinct in proportion to the danger. 17. Since the lower animal has become domesticated, it has also become gradually possessed of some of man's qualities, such as intelligence, lack of extreme barbarity, his means of livelihood in general, and suf- fering more from heat and cold than in its wild state, etc. From these facts and the observations with dogs, namely, that a dog of superior breed and training will rarely associate with a common and vulgar breed, I am of the opinion that they too in proportion to their intelligence possess a certain pride or dignity— of the lowest order. 120 A TREATISE ON MAN. 18. The ordinary man judges from tlie dictates of his heart; in other words, as it is beautifully said, his wish is father to his thought. He does not meditate to form his resolutions; he feels them, follows them according to this feeling, and, as a result, falls into errors and injustice. If he do practice justice (which is based on the intellect ), it happens that his own in- terests coincide with those of the man he is dealing with, and then we hear him boast of how just a man he is. Mankind judge and esteem each other more in re- spect to the heart than in respect to the intellect. Therefore, a man with a big heart will always be wel- come to them, but a man with a great head is ostra- cized. A big heart causes love, but it requires a great head to inspire honor. This is a world of love (propa- gating); by its quantity it predominates over wisdom ( non-propagating). 19. Man's greatest services are of a negative char- acter, reforming and undoing what has been done; in fact, it may be said that all our acts serve as a nega- tive benefit; for instance, man invents a piece of machinery in order to undo a certain disadvantageous mode of doing anything, and these advantages, as they appear to be, again bring along with them their disadvantages, as they also appear to be, there being no end to man's wants and needs. It is man's ingenuity that leads him into many evils; hence the necessity of moralists, philosophers and reformers, who come to ignore or undo the acts that man has committed; their doings and teachings are not as those of the ordinary man, a going forward, practically, but rather a going backward. THE INTELLECT. 121 20. Had man been left to his original instinct to guide him, he would not be led from the natural path, as he now is. From his luxuries and continual sexual intercourse, he has taken upon himself such an unnat- ural course of life that is equalled by no other animal ; his appetites and concupiscence have been so increased as to actually cause many men to shorten their lives by them. Although, occasionally, a Genius or practical phi- losopher be found, yet, before his brain has become sufficiently developed to see the evil results of such a dangerous course, it has probably become a second nature with him, from the example of others. This causes such a shame in the conscience of a noble be- ing, although it may be known only to himself, that what to the common man is in order, is to him an un- pardonable sin. With the majority of men there is no balancing of the thinking power, there is no deliberation. Every- thing is taken in an opposite sense from what it in fact is 5 had they still their original instinct, they would see only so much in things as it was intended they should find use for; or, rather, they would see nothing in them, but as nature would want them to use or practice tbem ; she would blindly lead them to them, without their being at all conscious of any in- tended object, as a wise monarch leads his people, but if he should question them themselves as to the advis- ability of his project, he would be led astray also. 21. It is remarkable to see the great contrast there is in mankind between wisdom and folly, good and bad; in the common transactions of life one does not notice this, because here the one man is about the 122 A TREATISE ON MAN. same, morally and intellectually, as what the other is : but we must go to the moralists, and compare their practical doings with those of the rest of mankind ; these men in their dealings with their fellow men never regard alone their own interests, but also those of the man with whom they are dealing, and if the two interests do not coincide, they will generally sacrifice their own for the benefit of their fellow man ; their whole life is generally passed away in endeavor- ing to improve and reform mankind, sacrificing, in some cases, their own lives. Now look on the other picture; we there find in most men the Jew, the egotistic, avaricious Jew, seeking for nothing but what helps to increase the pleasures of his body and the contents of his purse. It would actually appear from this that the two grades of men are sprung from different classes of beings, the one from gods and the other from beasts; for when I read the old Epictetus, how he admonish- es, or Christ, how he weeps and how he forgives, or Pascal, how passive and submissive, it is impossible for me to conceive whence the material from which these beings are sprung ; or when I read Tauler, or Eckart, or the u Deutsche Theologie," it looks like an entirely different world. 22. The Genius is interested in the welfare of the whole race and world ; the ordinary man is interested only in himself. The former is continually laboring on problems that regard the whole of mankind, whilst the latter, being only animal, seeks his own profits and benefits, and those of others in whom he is direct- ly interested. The Genius labors a whole lifetime for the improvement of mankind, receiving probably not THE INTELLECT. 123 even honor from his fellow men for it ; his only com- pensation being his own satisfaction in doing it. Make a proposition to a common man that yon want him to bestow a little of his attention to the benefit of his fellow men who require it, and his first question is what pay he is to get for it, or what good will that do him. His mind, he considers, belongs to himself, not to the whole world, as the wise man regards his. 23. Friendship is a matter of the mind and the heart; therefore every person has true friendship in proportion to his intellect and moral character; the fool might therefore be said to have almost no true friendship. Love arises from the heart only and is therefore also among the lower animals between the two sexes, or between the parents and their young, this is instinctive ; or the attachment (which is also instinctive) that exists amoDg the lower animals of cohabiting together as a means of mutual protection and defence. This attachment and the ordinary love of Cupid, which exists between the two sexes, is all that a man of no intellectual parts possesses; this he mistakes for friendship. Friendship is lasting, but love only so long as a benefit or advantage is desired; the ordinary man always seeking his personal benefits and advantages, finding that they having ceased, his friendship, as he calls it, also ceases, but not so with the man of in- tellect; he feeling the everlasting one-ness of all beings and things, the same fate that all are sub- ject to, and the same origin from which all are sprung, makes it necessary for him to recognize that he who hungers must have relief, and even though the sufferer has offended, insulted and injured him. 124 A TREATISE ON MAN. In such a case, each, the Genius and the fool, will exercise liis friendship toward the sufferer in propor- tion to his mental qualities. If it be his enemy, it will even do the fool good to know that he suffers, so little intellectual insight has he to know that he is doing the damage to himself. Buddhism, Christ, Pascal, Schopenhauer, the mystics and all true geniuses beau- tifully recognize this identity, this brotherhood exist- ing between all mankind. Christ says that we shall love our enemy as ourselves; and even though he has struck us on one cheek, we shall show our willingness, our submission ( by which is meant, we shall not com- plain even if it do occur a second time ) in being struck again. A man may lose respect for a man who has no mor- al character or may contemn him for the many injuries that he has committed against him and others, or for his folly, yet, if the friendship towards him be true, it nevertheless continues. In fact it is the nature of a man of genius and morality to be the friend of all men; he was their friend before he became acquainted with them, and will remain so even though there be a separation, or there be qo acquaintance at all. Most men in their intercourse with the rest of man- kind and the lower animal are actuated more by the heart than by the head. Women, even some of the best of them, might be said to act almost exclusively by the heart, and therefore I believe with certain thinkers that woman is not capable of a high and reliable friendship; her attachment, good will or charity, arising from the heart, is not lasting, it is fickle; she is continually being charged with coquet- ry, which even flatters the vanity of the heart of most of them. So in all contracts of business, the legal THE INTELLECT. 125 or moral duty of every man will be performed in proportion to the strength of his mind; some men doing and performing all obligations that they owe to the rest of mankind because they feel the practical wisdom of u honesty is the best policy". There is a certain philanthrophy, humiliation and submission in some people that they bear to all men alike, whether friends or enemies, acquaintances or strangers; but this is also only instinctive, probably also a consciousness of the unity of all beings; it is a certain yielding to all events and occurrences without any deliberation over them; it is, in other words, tak- ing things as they come, without knowing why. Friendship can be said to be probably the sublimest characteristic that distinguishes man from the lower animal. Friendship, when found, is worth more than all riches can compensate or take the place of. So great is the good will of one man toward another, and so does it ennoble him, that for myself I would prefer the friendship of a beggar at a time when my stomach yearned for bread, to the fullest purse of the man whose charity proceeds from compulsion. But here again, like every thing that is great and beautiful, its seldom occurrence, it being dependent on a great intellect and a great heart, is the reason of its sublime character. 24. Xo one thing is of more interest to man than another; the fool in his physical structure is as much a source of human study as the brain of the greatest Plato. The preference that one thing receives over another, arises with the cemmon mind, that regards things only so far as they relate directly to his body, and what does not affect his body, nature would not 126 A TREATISE ON MAN. have needed to trouble herself about in coating, ©o far as lie is concerned — so subjective is lie. It is other- wise with the Genius ; he, from a consciousness of the relationship that there must necessarily exist between himself and all the rest of the universe, finds an inter- est in every thing, how far and distinct soever it may be in affecting his body ; knowing that if it was en- titled to creation and existence, it too was entitled to his observation— so objective is he. 25. Plato knew that his Ideas resulted in no satis- factory answer in metaphysics ; he regarded them as he did his Eepublic in matters of state, namely, as necessary speculations to keep the human mind in its present state of thinking, and, if posssble, to advance farther. The whole of Plato's speculations may be regarded as an intellectual basis for human enlighten- ment. His speculations, being merely such and not based on experience and human possibility, none but a very able mind should undertake to treat on them, other- wise they will be abused, as it appears from Epicte- tus that even in Eome during his day, Plato's senti- ments in regard to the community of wives and chil- dren were being used by certain women as a precedent for possible practice. Neither must it be assumed that Plato was in earnest about his theology; he wrote according to the spirit of his time, and it must not be taken for granted that he entertained the same thoughts in regard to religion, especially as to the numerous gods, that the common people had, any more than when a modern philosopher in making use of the words God and soul for a moral application means by them what the vulgar understand by these terms. THE INTELLECT. 127 26. The Genius possesses such an intellect, that he can not help but be at the same time moral, because morality is a necessary consequence of this intellect. It is true that there are probably a few cases where intellectual men swerved from truth and morality to a limited extent, as it was the case with Bacon, yet the character of this man in general was not so. From the earnestness with which the Genius pursues his works in endeavoring to moralize mankind, he always has a moral basis. As it follows that a man who lacks intellect, also lacks morality, (though he may act and deal honestly) so it follows that a man who pos- sesses intellectuality also possesses morality, though he may act and deal dishonestly at times, which may arise from the fact that he claims it as the privilege of a Genius, that is, that being such he is not subject to the ordinary commandments of honest conduct, in the same manner as a king is sup- posed to do no wrong ; the laws that they both make are for the rest of mankind, whose character requires them; besides, as they made them, so have they a right to suspend or recall them ; or, as it has been beautifully said, to the wise man no counsel and to the just man no laws. 27. With the Genius, the body lives for him, as it was with Socrates, who ate so that he might live, but did not live so that he might eat. The intellect of the Genius serving to the benefit of all mankind, which is a greater purpose than his individual interests, every- thing outside of the intellect itself is considered by him but to serve its purpose. It is otherwise with the people in general ; they regard the head but as a means of serving the animal 128 A TREATISE ON MAN. passions ; this reaches the end of keeping the human family in existence, and keeping it in a state of mate- rial prosperity. 28. When one observes the innumerable workings of nature, and views the heavenly bodies in their revo- lutions, one can not be persuaded that the little mind of man was intended to comprehend all this. It has always appeared to me that there must be something entirely different, nothing like what we imagine, at the back of it all ; that the mind of man was intended for his welfare and prosperity as an animal and being of civilization, and therefore not adapted or suited in the least to look through the mist that hides from us nature's origin. Question, whether there be anything at all, whether it be not only a phantom of your brain that there is anything? I can not explain myself; the unfathomable subject allows no explanation. If man is as subject to the changes of existence, from birth to death, he is also, as all creatures, but a means, a sub- missive subject, and, therefore, not authorized or em- powered to construe nature's laws and powers. 29. Man's brain is unfit and incapable to compre- hend the past or the future, not even the present, ex- cepting as to the needs of his body ; to dwell on them is nothing but boasting of a faculty which does not exist ; therefore true theologians say that God can not be comprehended or described, he exists for the human mind as an Idea, and nothing more must be presumed. The Universe before our birth was noth- ingness to us, so it is now and so it will be after our death, for as soon as death has taken charge of the body, the brain's functions have also ceased to act, and THE INTELLECT. 129 there is therefore no intellect to comprehend any- more than there was before birth. The problem of the Universe is one that not all an- tiquity could, not all the present, not ail posterity can answer, and by once and for all admitting the incapacity of the human mind to handle the subject, as Kant said of God and the soul, is to prevent dwell- ing upon a subject that causes great confusion and disturbance in morality, whence it enters into relig- ion and thence into politics, resulting in revolutions and wars— all about a subject that the one is as igno- rant of as the other. 30. It is hardly possible to imagine how the human intellect should presume to form an opinion that it was created by anything that, to us, resembled itself, or that man is the object and that everything else is to serve as his means. What the original thinkers meant by the idea of God or the soul was allegorical ; it is now applied by the vulgar to their own petty wants and desires. It is a misapplication and abuse of the two sublimest ideas that man is the originator of; its abuse is best seen in religion, which is nothing but a means of maintenance for a good part of mankind directly, and for a still greater part indirectly. 31. Man has some foresight, and, in many things, prophesies as well. Yet he himself, whom he is sup- posed to know best of all, can not foretell what he will do or what he will want, for by the time the occur- rence takes place, his whole circumstances have alter- ed, and they alter his case. A wise man, having studied himself and the rest of mankind, knows about in general what his position in one year hence will be, 130 A TREATISE ON MAN. and can therefore very nearly tell what his wants will then be. Such a man is wise in the proper sense of the word. The most men act acccording to their present feeling, and as their humor changes even dur- ing the space of a single day, it is entirely unsafe to rely upon their promises. 32. In the ordinary works of man or of nature, the genius stands with renewed admiration in viewing them, and finds sufficient means of thought to engage him a whole life time; whilst the man of mediocre thought passes them by, taking no notice of their existence. So it is with the individual ; where a man of judgment and insight will see a moralist, a philoso- pher, the common man will see nothing but an animal with two legs and a high forehead. 33. Man strives with might and main to make his thoughts reach to Heaven, and to imitate the works of nature ; and considering the difference that there exists intellectually between him and the lower ani- mal, he does exceedingly well ; but with all his efforts, when compared to nature, he is but a farce ; he can chisel an Apollo or a Venus, but to give them life is entirely beyond his power ; although it is all well, for this is the most that can be demanded of him. Yet to an uninterested spectator it is but matter of laughter and disgust, or else a sympathetic feeling, to see a man contend and contend for three score and ten years, and at the end of that time at the most and best probably leave some moral instructions for his fellow men. 34. The fool being in order in the world, he has much less practical care and trouble than the wise THE INTELLECT. 131 man ; being like the rest of mankind more than like the wise man, he in everything finds his equals, and everything good enough to answer his wants. The fool seeks outside of himself, and inasmuch as this outside is large and replete with the pleasures that man has invented and the necessaries of life, if he do not go into the excess, his cares, practically, are always more limited. The wise man finds his happiness only in himself; he looks around to find those with whom he can com- municate, but finds none but those that have preceded him ( the dead ), and those that are yet to come. It has often been said that the wise man alone is happy; this is true when we consider his life in an intellectual and moral sense ; the sublime happiness and enjoyment that his intellect yields him when it is in its full action, and the consolation and contentment of mind that his moral character give him, have not their equal. The happiness and contentment of mind increases as age increases. With the fool, every time his body has been satisfied, his whole satisfaction ceases ; as he contin- ues in the enjoyment of worldly pleasures and empty honors, so do his desires keep increasing and there is no boundary; he is always making his condition worse; when his desires have left him and old age has come, as Schopenhauer says, he is incapable of knowing how to dispose of himself, unless he be a man who can find entertainment in some practical employment in addition to his business. 35. I have always noticed that, generally speaking, conquerors, generals and popular statesmen belong to the more common and ordinary class of men, having the propensities and qualities more of the 132 A TREATISE ON MAN. lower animal, than those of the Genius. Fundamen- tally, this must be true ; to take other countries, to kill human beings in battle, by strategy, and to take part in the common transactions of the populace, are all resorts of achieving fame through rapine and theft, through murder, and through deception and imposi- tion, underlying them all being but an immoral prin- ciple, being covered and hidden by the enormous and gigantic shape it takes, under pretence of being for the welfare of the victim, in fact being only for the benefit of the individual himself, who sits on his horse and orders his children to battle, or the man at court or in council speculating with the sacred rights of a whole nation — to be able to give him a standing in the eyes of the world. If a man be truly great, he makes no efforts directly to declare it to the world ; he knows it will declare it- self; it is only the man himself who is not truly great that must make his own efforts to make himself cele- brated. Now, we find that the class of men of whom I am here speaking, with but few exceptions, are always candidates for their own honors, by continual struggling and persistent effort; with a good store of forwardness and impudence in the rear, they succeed in making themselves heard, and by an occasional successful stroke ingratiate themselves into the hearts of their countrymen. Read Plutarch, and you will see that men whom the world never would have otherwise heard from became successful generals and statesmen, because the affairs of their country happened to take such a turn that they found that they were the very men to help it out of its misfortunes, which they did by any means lying within their power, moral or immoral, and the world THE INTELLECT. 133 proclaimed them heroes ; thousands of soldiers being ready at their command to spill their blood, and did spill it, the leader receiving the spoils and honors. The success of a general lies in engineering; now, as engineering is connected with mathematics, I do not think that he is capable of abstract thinking, even supposing him to be the best of the kind, and can not be endowed with the qualities of a statesman; in our country he should never become President. As Schopenhauer says, a general being a man of acts, he does not by far stand in the same position as the thinker, and, therefore, in my mind, if he be entitled to be called a Genius, is one of a subordinate kind. He relies for his honors on his uniform ; this is his certificate that he is entitled to honors ; his own acts not being works, as is the case with the thinker, he requires something striking to make an impression on the eye, which his acts do not make on the mind of the spectator. History has to herald his doings to the world, otherwise the world would not be aware of them. Where it is a case of self-defence for the country, it is different ; here the defender is not seeking his own benefit, but is seeking the protection of his country, and for that very reason will resort to the means that are only necessary for this purpose. When we are be- ing attacked without cause, we have a right to use all means to defend ourselves if these means do not en- croach on the rights of our enemies, no matter what their apparent phase may be, or if the damage that is done to our enemy be trifling to the damage that is thereby avoided. This is the meaning of "white lies," and was resorted to, it seems, by Christ himself to avoid his persecutors. 134: A TREATISE ON MAN. Frederick the Great was right in not showing the same honors to his field marshals and generals as he did to himself and Voltaire, the latter being moralists, practical and theoretical instructors of mankind, the former being only perpetrators of acts of which they probably did not even lay the plan. The true statesman stands, in my opinion, on a much higher grade; he has something of the moral in him; he seeks the welfare of a nation, and an indi- vidual working for the benefit of others, always has something sublime in him. The statesman or mon- arch is, at the same time, when there is true greatness in him, a philosopher, taking part in practice and in theory. 36. The reason why some people of ordinary intelli- gence will spend whole hours in conversation on sub- jects that it is impossible to see their importance, is because such matters are of importance to them ; con- sidering the part that they take in making up the greatest part of the human family, it is evident why this is all that interests them ; it is of as much worth to them as the search after the stone is to the philoso- pher, every man having his functions to act, and he performing them as it was intended that he should. Such people feel that they too have a part to play, and therefore demand to be heard, at least among them- selves; and, always being in the majority, they are the rule, and therefore, in such matters, dictate, whilst the wise man, with all his intellectuality, is relegated to his silence. 37. The men who are the founders of a particular system in philosphy, science, politics or religion, are THE INTELLECT. 135 the least to show any pride in regard to it. It is the same in this with the intellect as it is with the moral character. Those who are great or good in fact know that the fact alone that (hey are so will eventually herald itself. Take money, for instance; the greatest admirers of it are not that class who invented the money system, but that class who possess nothing but the shrewdness to earn or accumulate it, especially those who obtained it without merit. So the theories of a God and the immortality of the soul had as their founders philosophers and thinkers who were as free and far from being men of the church and religion, as there is difference between genuine piety and hypocrisy. The past and present ages show that the clergy, who are employed merely to lay down the gos- pel to an ignorant congregation as a school-master lays down the elementry text to his scholars, are the great- est abusers of religion, for they make a business out of it, a means of social standing, and assume a pride that is one of the greatest objects of Christ's religion to suppress. The same abuse is carried on in philosophy and all the sciences; men who merely pursue the study of any one of them and possess no genius what- ever in regard to it, are the ones who enrich their pockets by it, and in their own estimation place them- selves above men who are probably their masters in their own vocation. 38. I believe that the lack of genius among certain nations is owing to the lack of incitement and induce- ment. For instance, as soon as a certain people make a beginning in civilization, sciences, arts and philoso- phy, they keep increasing until they probably reach 136 A TREATISE ON MAN. the highest state; because the works of one genius have an influence on another. But as soon as erudi- tion and learning are neglected, all matters of intel- lectuality become matters of indifference, and the whole nation falls into anarchy, ignorance and super- stition. Necessity is the mother of inventions. If the neces- sity do not exist, or the youth be not reminded and influenced by it. his genius, of course, will lie more or less dormant; yet it might be said that under these very circumstances of anarchy, ignorance and super- stition, the necessity and reminder do exist. It can be said, that a true Genius, under whatsoever circum- stances, will disclose the power of his mind; but his people themselves will show nothing similar unless it be more general. Had his surroundings influenced and induced him, I believe that there is many a rus- tic at the plow, many a carpenter at the bench and many a smith at the anvil, who could write a better philosopheme or give better advice to kings than the miserable philosophasters and demogogues that now occupy these honorable positions. 39. Our present mode of living requires more than that of former, especially much earlier ages; the re- quirements have increased and are probably daily increasing, unless one wants to live more in direct accordance with nature. This is as well true in the manufacture of things as it is in the manner of living. All has its purpose, and arises from the necessity of things. In antiquity the number of human beings was not so great, and, consequently, the different ways of obtaining a subsistence were not so many; whilst in modern times the human family is so great, that the THE INTELLECT. 137 means to earn a livelihood are in proportion. Also, more space was required for habitation; as an exam- ple of this, the discovery of America offers one. Ne- cessity pressing, the mind is put to work to answer the needs. 40. It is impossible to be a thinker, especially a poet, unless the passions be moved; a person, there- fore, of indifference to persons or things around him can never be a Genius; or if a person have such sur- roundings as leave him in perfect peace and quiet, so that neither his admiration nor contempt is moved, his mind is not in action; he can therefore never produce immortal works. For a true Genius, it appears that poverty has a better influence on him, beauseit actuates his mind to thinking, and makes him feel, especially at times of great need, the effects of fate and the superior powers of nature. Goethe also says sublimely that a man who never ate his bread in tears or who never sat weeping at his bed-side, does not know the heavenly powers. Struggles in misfortunes are in order to the human mind to bring out its full strength and energy, the same as necessary labor is to the body. The noble- man has his meat set before him, he has his bed made, his horse saddled, without knowing what countries his spices and luxuries come from, what fowl lost its life to stuff and till his mattress with, or that the horse that he rides has probably more true and natural no- bility in him than the star that he wears on his breast can confer on him; there is no incitement in him to do anything that is great and good. Besides, poverty leaves the mind free from all world- ly temptations and snares, and lets it dwell alone on 138 A TREATISE ON MAN. subjects of a higher nature. Love, contempt, hunger, thirst and cold, aided by fancy, are what superinduce the poetical outbursts of the man of genius, and make his works interesting to every one, because these are effects that every one is subject to. A very little part of the Genius belonging to the world, he wants but a very little part of it. But the ordinary man belongs, heart and soul, to the world ; he flatters it, he honors it, and weeps for it; therefore he is its favorite and is overloaded with its bounties. Man has left his original state but a short distance behind his present state. Now when these wants are supplied, it is better for the mind and the body that there be no superfluity, and therefore a virtuous man, a man who truly loves his child, will always recom- mend a very moderate degree of worldly possessions to his son ; this will compel the child to seek progress, which develops the intellect ; it will compel his body to labor, which will keep it sound and healthy, and will keep it at a distance from vice and evil — the best of all. Nature never intended that man should be rich, or live any more artificially, or resort to artificial means of curing, than in proportion as he has abandoned the original state of nature as a lower animal. Therefore Chamfort so strikingly says: "La nature ne m ? a point dit : Ne sois point pauvre ; encore moins : Sois riche ; mais elle me crie : Sois independant !" Money being only a means of negotiation between man and man in his civilized state, only so much is needed as will supply him with the wants that are required in this state, and this being only limited, this is what the world calls poverty. But in this sense poverty THE INTELLECT. 139 is in order according to the wishes of the gods, and therefore the gods ( of this world ) seek it. 41. When Christ and the philosophers speak of de- nying this world and betaking ourselves to solitude, that happiness lies in doing nothing practical and caring for nothing practical, it must be understood that not all mankind are advised to this course of life ; for such a mode of life for the mass of mankind would lead to revolutions and anarchy, indolence and all kinds of vice, as it is with the rich class whose wealth has been accumulated by an ancestor, and they themselves are not in the least called upon to devote any of their time to earning a livelihood ; their time is spent in all the evils, vices, extravagances and bad examples that tend to their own misery and that of all those connected with them; so that it would have been better had their ancestor left them penni- less, to be compelled to take their part in the struggle for existence, and thus become worthy members of society. Of all the bad examples for leading people into vice, evil and misery, nothing can equal the luxury of the rich. If the world depended upon the intellect of the wealthy part of mankind for its civil- ization, the human race would be in a deplorable state of advancement. 42. The admonitions of Christ and the other philos- ophers apply to the common class of people to the extent of continually reminding them that there is no real value in money and worldly possessions. But as they everywhere praise the industry, thrift and economy of the practical philosopher, as I might term him, they evidently think that such a man has found 140 A TREATISE ON MAN. his right place in the world. But by practical philos- opher is by no means to be understood a man who keeps on accumulating and hoarding up his worldly wealth, all for himself and those he shall leave be- hind hiin, disregarding the claims of the poor or meritorious, or not giving it until he knows that lie himself can not any longer use it ; for this is that very class who are referred to when Christ and the philos- ophers speak of the contempt of worldly possessions. It is the intellectual part of mankind, and that part of the unintellectual that can make itself practically useful, such as a monk or nun, that are admonished, because, by having their minds fixed on worldly affairs, it is impossible to think of anything higher, and thereby the world would be deprived of their sal- utary examples and services in matters of charity and humanity; there must also be grades between the highest (the anointed) and the lowest (the people). 43. The practical part of man leads to enlighten- ment also, for it invents our different modes of scien- tific and philosophical communication, as well as the daily needs of a civilized life. For progress, there- fore, the human race requires the Genius to lay out the plan of human existence and the ordinary man to carry out this plan. 44. The pendulum of the clock is the same to it as the breath is to the animal; they are both the cause of setting the two respective existences into operation. The spring of the clock may be considered the same to it as the heart is to the animal. Ingenuity is given to man that he may live in accordance with his state of intelligence ; and as man is nothing but nature in his THE INTELLECT. 141 own structure in every respect, and therefore subject to her laws in every respect, it is again consistent that all his works should bear a similarity to the works of nature. 45. Sleep is merely a cessation of the thinking oper- ation of the brain ; hence it is during sleep that the brain receives its rest and recreation. We general- ly feel sleepy after we have partaken of a sumptuous dinner, because immediately after eating, the digestive organs are in operation, which therefore deprives the brain of its full action. The closing of the eyelids serves merely as a protection for the eye against light which is only a force produced by heat, and against all other injuries that this delicate member would be sub- ject to when it is impossible to be on its guard. To close the eyelids voluntarily will produce sleep sooner than if we wait until they close themselves, for the reason that the brain is thus deprived of one of its senses, which are the source of its thoughts. But should the brain be already supplied with matter for thought by one of the other four senses, sleep can not be produced in spite of the greatest efforts. People of very mediocre thought, the negro, for instance, as it is also with the lower animal, can fall asleep under aimost any state of their senses; or, rather, their senses are not in operation. 46. The timorousness and obedience that the lower animal shows to man is because of his intellect. The instinct teaches it that man is a being of ingenuity, and therefore is superior to it ; this instinct it inherit- ed from its parents. All domestic animals know the power of man, and therefore a herd of cattle will allow 142 A TREATISE ON MAN. themselves to be driven by a mere child. But wild animals, that have no such instinct, will resist a human being. 47. To prevent anger and its bad consequences is to let the occasion at which one becomes exasperated die out of the mind at the time that it takes place; not to let it have any longer thought will extinguish it. Besides, how little generally is not the matter in its consequences and results at which our anger rises ! it seems too unmanly to dwell upon it. To let the world go as it will insist on going, after one has done his own duty and made such corrections as lie within his power, is the best method. All exas- peration is only the cause of increasing itself with the most people, who find only too great a delight in tor- turing a man when they see that his indignation rises at their mischievous conduct; they should be regarded as people too far beneath the standard of mankind, to let them know that their conduct is unworthy of a superior man's notice. If demagogues and vile scribblers were left unnoticed, the world would not be a continual field of contention and dis- cord, and literature and philosophy degraded. It is an unfortunate state of things to be born among cattle, but only so much the greater is one to regard them as such. Tears are in order in effeminate eyes, but resignation to the manly head. Thus it is a good rule that what can not be avoided should be forgotten and dropped at the moment, and the mind be allowed to seek other employment. 48. The operation of the brain seems to be like the real essence of life itself, the truth of which is entire- THE INTELLECT. 143 ly to be hidden from us ; probably it is the essence it- self, hence the difficulty of comprehending its work- ings; it is Psyche, it is non-entity. You can not grasp it physically, and what can not be grasped physically can not be grasped mentally, if it could, it would be that it would handle and comprehend itself. Where there is no brain, no intellectual force, in the animal or in the plant creation, there it is not claimed that there is a soul ; and the higher the intellect, the higher is the soul-like character of the individual, and as soul is a theory not demonstrable, so is the operation of the brain a mystery; it is simply Kant's "Ding an Sich" or Schopenhauer's "Wille," or Plato's "Idea." 49. The size and quality of the brain are what con- stitute the great head ; when these two are combined in one individual, nature has created her rarest being, so rare that she has not material enough to create many like him. But it seems improbable that nature should grant to only probably two or three men, in a century, I can hardly say this number, the greatest quantity and at the same time the best quality of brain; such beings would seem to be too unnatural. This theory is correct in regard to all material parts of any being; Hercules did not have the largest and at the same time the best muscles ; in regard to qual- ity, any wrestler at the Olympian games could have surpassed him. But to be a metaphysician, as Kant was, there is a large, gigantic brain structure requir- ed; and, as we see with the Germans, who in general have a large head, that they have produced the deep- est thinkers of modern times. And as all things are possible with God, we have no right to presume abso- lutely that it has never occurred that one man sur- 144 A TREATISE ON MAN. passed the whole human race in intellectual quantity and quality. But as relates to thinkers in general, it can be safely said that the one is created for depth of thought and therefore requires a large, the largest, brain with a more than ordinary good quality added; this class is most rare ; whilst the other is created for vigor of thought and therefore a good, the best, qual- ity of brain, with a more than ordinary size added ; this class is more numerous. To the former belong Plato, Kant, and in part Aristotle, Schopenhauer and a few others, who can be reached only by men like themselves, and in part by the second class ; but they are certainly entirely out of reach of the vulgar ; to the second class belong Buddha, Christ, Bacon, Pas- cal, Spinoza and many others, who can be reached by the first class, by each other, and, in part, by the more able class of learned and thoughtful men in gen- eral, and for this reason have the greatest celebrity of all mortals. 50. The practically honest man is as he is because his heart is such ; it is not out of thinking that he prac- tices honesty, but it is out of feeling, consequently he is practical (virtuous), not theoretical (moral). As he gave his action of heart for the benefit of mankind, namely, by recognizing their rights as well as his own, so does he in return deserve the action of their heart (love), but not their honor, this being some- teing of so high an order (when perfectly applied) that his action, which confined itself only to that part of mankind with whom he came into contact, and, espec- ially, because he probably confers no benefit on them by improving their condition, but only does not make their condition worse, is not its equivalent. Such a THE INTELLECT. 145 man is entitled to a certain honorable mention, since his acts are praiseworthy. 51. Genius is more or less hereditary. Schopen- hauer confines the hereditariness to the mother. It is remarkable that, with but very few exceptions, great men have left no great sons. It is a very difficult question to deal with, and probably will therefore never be fully solved. Mature creates a great man, and in order still to keep the human race in their nat- ural state, stops here and sends the son of such a man back to where she left the others. Although there are some ages in the history of man where there are great- er lights and the people more enlightened than at others, yet there is no continual progression in intel- lectuality ; it is with the race as it is with the individ- ual; although he one day displays qualities of a god, the next day he wallows in the filth of a beast. But it is this rarity, this seldomness of the appearance of a Genius, that makes him great ; were there a contin- ual progression, the existing generation would regard with contempt everything of the past. 52. The people judge a Genius from his exterior, and apply the same sentiments and feelings that they them- selves possess also to him. Although the passions also annoy him, his continual efforts are to guard against those beastly temptations that surround every man, and his labors are directed to be more of the man than of the brute. Even if he do satisfy certain de- sires, it is merely a momentary condescension to the Devil in order not to be annoyed by him ; it is not out of an animal instinct, connected with the belief that now the blessed state has arrived ; it is but fulfilling 10 14G A TREATISE ON MAN. a duty for which he was placed in this world, as all men are. The animal part, more or less, is connected with the moral part of a Genius; but considering that it is but subordinate compared to his teachings and a life-long pursuit of self-reformation, leading, in extreme cases, to an actual denial of what the vulgar call the necessaries of life, as it was with Buddha, Christ, John and others, such errors of his character as are probably only a necessary consequence of his solitary and abstemious course of life, arising from the fact that he has closed up every other avenue that would otherwise lead to his personal satisfaction, are no justification to condemn the man or his works ; and what, in a Stoic or Cynic, would be weakness, yet for a man reared in the midst of worldly temptations and allurements, a mis-step is at the most momentary with him, and by no means powerful enough to take the man himself along with it. 53. In spite of the great services that a Genius rend- ers in enlightening and moralizing mankind, the world hardly allows him a hermitage in which to live in peace. The man of wealth and riches does not know that it is only by virtue of philosophy and civilization that he has indirectly attained to his present posses- sions, and that if it were not for the philosopher, he would still be an original natural brute in the forest. It is therefore not charity nor benevolence to give support and maintenance to a man who leads the human race out of all its vice and evil, but it is justice, which he can claim by invoking the laws of nature, that, because they have made him such, have deprived him of the time and, probably, capacity for earning a livelihood otherwise. But knowing with what little THE INTELLECT. 147 favor demands of justice, still less those of charity, are met, he seldom presents himself before a tribunal that grants only when absolute necessity demands it. The great misfortune would be that if the state un- dertook to assist such men, if such a thing were possi- ble, the right would be abused, as it is with military pensions, this excellent means of many unworthy sub- jects living a life of ease and laziness. It is therefore for men of means and easy circumstances in life to give assistance to such men. It is true that there are men, more or less, in every large city, whose good judgment would allow of a liberal philanthrophy were they to find their meritorious and deserving man; but unless he announce himself, he will almost inevita- bly be neglected. The wealthy class throw millions of dollars away annually for subjects of art that have no merit in them, yet will neglect or overlook him who is a genuine artist, by associating with whom they would in fact ennoble themselves. 54. The idealism of the thinker becomes so habitual with him even in the ordinary affairs of life, that in consequence thereof he is often imposed upon by the affair itself, or by the representations of others. His mode of reasoning is so entirely different that his con- clusions vary from the conclusions of the practical man; his being continually in the realm of ideas, and partaking only to a limited extent in the ordinary pur- suits of life, the business-like reasoning of the man of practice is entirely strange to him. He therefore often wonders how men have the patience to labor, for whole hours, on a subject, whose result to him ap- pears to be childish. 148 A TREATISE ON MAN. The Genius inhabits a temple, the interior of which the ordinary man has never seen ; it being something entirely for himself, he is left to his own resources, and the world, not being able to make use of him, is entire- ly willing to leave him there, to his own satisfaction,, but only upon condition that he do not make himself obnoxious to them, namely, by attacking their vices. 55. Philosophers in laying down their theories al- ways make their statement positive, and what is only their opinion, and that sometimes a very doubtful one, they state simply as an unequivocal truth. It arises from the fact, that, they being men without their superiors, and can therefore not clearly be contradict- ed, for the rest of mankind it is a truth ; besides, to themselves their theories are truths. Christ never uses circumlocution. 56. There is nothing handsome but that it has its use ; otherwise it would not be handsome. Everything that has not its proper use is not handsome. There are, nevertheless, things that are no longer of any practical use, and yet in our eyes they are handsome \ but it can be relied upon, that, at the time they were invented and first applied, they were of utility, and the reason that we consider them handsome, is be- cause we have their original object still in view. Therefore, by the way, as a rule of beauty, never have a thing that has not its use. The ancient Greeks never used a stone in their structures unless it had its use ; hence in all ages their architecture, at least that of their public build- ings, has been one of grandeur, and taken as a model; we are so indebted to them in this respect, that, com- THE INTELLECT. 149 pared to them, Schopenhauer says, we are nothing but barbarians. The nations following the Gothic architecture have their structures so encumbered with unnecessary parts, that it disfigures them to the extent of actual disgust. But to see it revived in this age of admiration for ancient Greece, one can hardly withhold his indignation. Sancta simplicitas ! 57. It is time that places the thinker in the right light; it is necessary that a sufficient length of time elapse before the works of a great man can reach those that are actually fit to judge of them; but when they have once reached this stage, they are safe against all oblivion. But I do not think that a great man feels flattered at the admiration that the multitude have for him or his works ; on the contrary, knowing that they were unfit to pass a reliable opinion on them in the begin- ning, and they therefore neglected them both, he feels that as soon as the influence could be brought to bear on the multitude again, they would also again reject him and his works. A political man I would hardly want to be ; his situation, as relates to honor, is sub- ject to a change of probably the entire opposite with- in almost a single day. 58. As it is the physical force that prevails directly, so does the greatest man more or less hesitate in advancing views that are contrary to the general opinion, as the greatest orator will more or less trem- ble at first when addressing a multitude, for at the moment the consciousness of his superiority over them is overawed by the physical force that he sees before him. 150 A TREATISE ON MAN. 59. The greatest satisfaction and consolation that a man can find is when he withdraws himself from the intercourse of the world into his own study, there to converse with men of an entirely different character from that of the man of the world, for to associate, either in person or by reading his works, with a man of genius, is a satisfaction that not the friendship of all the kings of Europe can equal. The advice, there- fore, that the Earl of Eutland gave to a young man was correct, namely, that it was better to walk a hundred miles to be able to converse with a wise man than it was to walk five miles to see a handsome city, for as our person suffers from bad physical surround- ings, so does our intellect gain by being trained by one who is as wise or wiser than ourselves. Some philosopher says that the character of a man is known by the company that he keeps, so is like drawn by like ; therefore a Genius will no more asso- ciate with a simpleton than Aristides would with the Athenian populace. The books on a man's shelves bespeak his character as a man of thought. If a man of thought finds that he is being rejected, he at least has the consolation of knowing, as Scho- penhauer says, that there are others who have lived before him who had shared the same fate, and with whom he can exchange his own thoughts, for they still speak to him through their works ; and that the future also will bring forth men to whom he is now addressing himself. 60. There is a class of writers who say a great many wise things, but one notices, as soon as one criticises a little, that there is no sufficient concatenation oi thoughts. In other words, although there is a frame THE INTELLECT. 151 to give the work an appearance, yet there is no struc- ture to inhabit. But the greatest want in such works is the foundation ; a few good building-stones are not sufficient for a temple that is to stand for ages ; they must be properly hewn, laid and cemented. A true Genius has a complete structure of mental work that he carries around in his head. Occasional wise and witty sayings are enough to impose on a reader or a king who is as shallow as his author ; but a wise pos- terity gives them no shelter. 61. The philosopher, in writing down his thoughts, by no means places before his reader everything that he himself thinks j a great many thoughts that stand in connection with his theory and that tend to the ripening of his own judgment, the reader never sees. The reader is supposed to do some thinking for him- self; the writer lays it before him in general terms only. This is what makes it often difficult for the reader to come to the same conclusion as the writer. Besides, the different material out of which he formed his judgment, remains unknown to the reader. If writers could always make themselves understood, there would not be so much discrepancy in philoso- phy, for it is chiefly from vagueness and a lack of talent for description and relation that make writers disagree. 62. The most of our actions have only a trifling re- sult, and do not compensate the exertion both of the body and mind that is employed, and would not, therefore, be sufficient to raise man above the brute creation. It is only that at times there are actions, which probably do not even cost as much energy and 152 A TREATISE ON MAN. exertion of the mind as the trifling ones do, that make up the difference for the smaller ones, and that are the only ones that point out man as being superior to the lower animal. It is as easy for a Genius to pro- duce a thought that will live forever, as it is for a fool to invent a windmill, and, it might be added, a great deal easier. 63. The different inventions for practical uses are not the result of reasoning so much as they are the re- sult of mere instinct, which acts at the moment that the necessity for the thing invented arises ; and inas- much, as it depends upon the need of the thing, there would be no invention from mere abstract reasoning ; the necessity actually suggests the manner in which to go about to invent it. 64. In the same manner as nature placed the brain at the top of the body, to be served by the lower parts, so has she placed the intellect at the most prominent point, to be served by the animal parts of the rest of mankind. 65. When I see that men of very limited intelli- gence, sometimes not even the ordinary intelligence, succeed in their worldly affairs, whilst those of superior intelligence are unfortunate in whatever they undertake, I can only be convinced that the for- mer are only animals following the dictates of their natural instinct, which requires them to succeed for want of sufficient intelligence to otherwise contend against those of a superior judgment; whilst the lat- ter are unfortunate simply because they have intelli- gence sufficient to embark in something else, and can THE INTELLECT. 153 thus contend with their fellow men in their struggle for existence. It is undoubtedly true that there is a certain intelligence, which, when added to the origin- al instinct, leads a man on from one fortunate under- taking to another; such a man is practically wise. 66. In making an undertaking, the dictation of the moment is relied upon with most men; there is no previous study of the intended pursuit, nor any delib- eration of what its true result may be. With the people in general the word ft Intellect" has almost no definition at all, and the word u Intelligence v but a limited definition ; they " do not think with the un- derstanding, but with the ears," says Apulejus; they have no plan of life laid out which is to serve as a guide in the future, nor are they at all within the control of reason when the senses dictate, although a resolution with them may have been taken with the strongest ties of an obligation. 67. Nature seems to have avoided with great care of bestowing any more of intelligence on mankind in general than was necessary to keep them floating only a little above the surface of that vast ocean in which all other beings also exist. 68. Outside of the field of experience, the intellect can comprehend nothing, for how can the human mind conceive that which has never come within its own practice, or that is entirely heterogeneous to the mind itself? To say that the intellect could demonstrate a God, or the immortality of the soul, would be to main- tain that it was supernatural in its compreheusion ? since only that is natural which comes under the laws 154 A TREATISE ON MAN. of nature as they appear to man; but God and the soul are supernatural objects, hence the mind cannot grasp them. God and the immortality of the soul with the intellect are only ideas, the former represent- ing the power and good, and the latter the imperish- able nature of all beings ; this is consistent, as being comprehensible to the intellect, since it experiences these attributes itself. 69. Scepticism has the great advantage of setting a boundary to the human intellect ; we need this theory as well to set a boundary to our researches, as we need a boundary to our country to set a limit to our territorial rights as citizens of a particular nation. The whole world does not belong to the United States; neither does the original cause of the Uni- verse belong to the intellect. 70. The world, so far as the individual is concerned, is only that which relates to himself ; outside of his own existence there is no world. The individual judges of everything exterior to himself only so far as it affects himself, or, if the act be in regard to another individual, how far it would affect himself if he were in the other's place. If the individual himself judg- ing be not considered, there is no world, and the word has no meaning. 71. A man's life is as much of a delusion to him after he has arrived at maturity as it was when he was but ten years of age. He never matures, for in the proportion that he gains, he loses, and his benefit is at one time no greater than at another. If a man has now thrown aside the many childish acts that sur- THE INTELLECT. 155 rounded liis infancy, he has assumed others that equally expose him as the fool. Maturity has the sex- ual passion to contend with, which irresistably forces him to commit those errors that the child is free from, and also the love of gain and all the worldly posses- sions and pleasures now fill his head. Our whole life is surrounded by a cloud, through which our eye cannot penetrate ; this is evident from the fact that man hopes. Man is continually striving to obtain that which he probably never will obtain ; and he is thus being continually led around in the dark ; he is like a ship in a dense fog, not knowing at what moment some other vessel or rock may com- pletely annihilate him, and ignorant of both latitude and longitude that he may be in. 72. The intellect is unchangeable; the most that can be done with it, is to improve it, but in any wise to remodel it, is impossible. This is the reason why men may become learned from reading, but all the books that have ever been written can never make them the more intellectual than they were before. But let a man have the intellect of a Genius, and though he be illiterate, it will show itself. Yet to be a philosopher requires, as a means of reasoning logic- ally, that the mind be aided and guided by erudition, because the mind, without training, is crude ; in such a case thoughts wander about without regularity. 73. It is the continual exercise of the intellect in matters where thought is required, that develops the brain ; it is susceptible of improvement from exercise the same as the body. For this reason all wise peda- gogues advise the careful study of the Greek and 156 A TREATISE ON MAN. Latin classics. If man had not from the beginning continually exercised his brain, he would not be as far advanced as he is. But too much training of the brain has the same effect on it as too much training of the body has on it; it will cause it to become blunt and prevent its natural vigor that might otherwise act ; from too much straining, it becomes lame and crippled. If there be in the individual a superior intellect, it will, generally speaking, lay out its own course, though it will not entirely neglect a guide. No man ever exist- ed that did not to a more or less extent require the assistance of his fellow men. Especially since man is born without ideas, his knowledge must be acquired from association with his fellow men, and experience in general. 74, Time is perceivable only by the change of things ; it is something that the mind cannot com- prehend in itself, but it is only by virtue of some- thing else that we are at all aware of it— change. The change from youth to old age in man is evidence that a certain number of years have passed away; so in the growth or deterioration of everything, as, also, the change of position of the hands of the clock. Hence to an individual that has no intellect, to per- ceive this change in all things, there is no such thing as time. Kant undoubtedly most satisfactorily dis- posed of the problem of time and space, two of the greatest stumbling-blocks of the human intellect, by calling them mere forms of our knowledge of things. 75. It is only he who does a benefit to the world, that is entitled to honor. Man may do a great many THE INTELLECT. 157 acts that may be beneficial to himself, yet they will not be praiseworthy unless they also be beneficial to others. Wherever we lend direct assistance to na- ture in the procreation or preservation of her different species, there our actions and conduct are praise- worthy, either as mere animals or as intellectual beings, because we then fulfill the highest duty that can be enjoined on us. Men whose actions all tend to their own benefit, discarding and ignoring the rest of the world in their struggles against suffering and misery, are objects of our highest contempt ; where- as he who yields and suffers everything for the bene- fit of others, receives our highest veneration. Men of mere learning are entitled to no praise or honor; they spend their whole lifetime in accumulating learning from books or otherwise, which is all intend- ed for their own comfort and convenience, but do not possess genius to assist the rest of mankind ; they re- main in the same condition as when they came into the world. A man therefore who writes volume upon volume of thoughts that he has derived from others is no Genius, he is a borrower, not a lender. The Genius is called such because he begets (gignere ), and thereby assists nature in her begetting and increasing. 76. The "Kritik der reinen Vernunft ", as Kant himself says, serves as a benefit negative ; it is like a physician, who cannot improve or prolong life, but may, in some cases at least, serve in preventing mal- adies. The "Kritik" has the great benefit of prevent- ing mankind from falling into those great errors of the mind that continually beset it. Schopenhauer recommends the "Kritik"by saying that it is instruc- tive even there where the author himself errs. It is 158 A TREATISE ON MAN. doubtless, as lie says, the most original production of the human intellect that has ever appeared. 77. As soon as the mind perceives anything, it makes an impression on the memory. After the object of perception has been deposited with the memory, the in- tellect discharges itself from further acting on it until it has again been called upon by recollection, as this word very properly defines it. It would be impossible for the intellect to be engaged on present objects and at the same time on all objects that have occurred in the past. The memory may be considered a store-house for wares for future requisition ; though most of them will gradually disappear without one's knowing what has become of them, to make room for others. 78. According to Kant, who seems to have believed that there were other planets besides our own inhabit- ed, the greater the distance away such planets would be from the sun, the greater would be the intellectual endowment of its inhabitants. If it were true that God had sought out man, among all his creations, to make him a special object of his grace and favor, other planets where better material could be found, would be highly necessary. 79. In youth the intellectual part is the more im- portant ; it is not so great a matter whether the char- acter be entirely unblemished or not. If the intelli- gence be sufficient, the individual can always very easily obtain means of subsistence, and, as it is, if, in addition, he possess considerable forwardness, even get a good standing among his fellow men. A little inclination to knavery in youth is even relished by THE INTELLECT. 159 most people ; especially the women regard it with ad- miration. But in old age, the moral character is of the greater importance. Even though a man be otherwise a fool, from a great number of years of experience, nature has given him a store of practical knowledge for the lack of even ordinary intelligence ; and as evidence that he has undergone more or less experience, his gray head bears witness for him. Every man should be very thoughtful of what appearance his moral charac- ter will have after he has left behind him fifty or more years ; his gray hair will then be the greater disgrace to him if his character be not good, for we feel that if he has not established a moral character by that time, he will never have any, that his nature from the be- ginning must have been corrupt. But if a man can boast in his old age, that in the past years there is nothing that can blemish his character, excepting the little faults to which every man is subject, his position is an enviable one. 80. He had noticed that even there where he sup- posed he was master of the situation, he had, at times, been put to right and corrected by those who were supposed to stand entirely under him on the particular subject at point. 81. The animal parts always being greater than those of the intellect, the Genius, where he is personal- ly known, is not honored in proportion to his greatness; but at a distance, where his animal propensities are not seen, the prophet receives more than his due. This is treating him unjustly; in the former case he will be 160 A TREATISE ON MAN. placed too low, and in the second case he will be placed too high. 82. It is very noticeable that where civilization is at its highest, there money is scarce ; and where money is plentiful, there civilization is limited. It is with localities as it is with individuals, namely, where the intellect is, there the dollar is wanting, and where the dollar is, there the intellect is wanting. 83. Men are like plants, the more inferior they are, the better they prosper. The weeds ( of men and plants ) will prosper in soil where the majestic Tree (the Genius) will perish. 84. The man of self-denial receives the admiration of the world on the same principle as the weeping willow is admired, namely, both seek life to the extent that nature wants them both to live, but both, at the same time, the one consciously, the other unconscious- ly, seek a downward course, that leading .to death. 85. Pure thought is such a stranger in the world, that if he wants to exist at all, he is compelled to un- dergo misfortunes that make it appear that his exist- ence is actually a sin or a curse; that he is to take every insult and offense that the common son of nature chooses to give him, for no other reason than because he exists at all. Therefore a little practice mingled with theory is a wise institution, since it enables a man of genius to enjoy at least some of the employ- ments of the world, and makes him more fit to contend with the rest of mankind. THE INTELLECT. 161 86. The talk of most men means nothing; they sim- ply delight in hearing their own noise. 87. How reliable can an intellect be called that will at one time approve an act that it will disapprove probably before twenty-four hours have elapsed, and vice versa, as the human intellect daily does. 88. Xature has provided proper means for man to live as a civilized being, but it requires the intellect to discover them; for this reason it was given him. 89. The begetting we see everywhere, the intellectu- al and moral nowhere. 90. If it were not the custom and fashion, men would not seek honor and riches; intellectuality cer- tainly does not encourage them. 91. When he considered what the human race is intellectually and morally, he at times even rejoiced at being called eccentric and peculiar — merely to be an exception to the general rule of mortals. 92. Take a large gathering of people, such as a picnic, for instance, or any other social gathering, and observe them at a distance, and see whether they do not surpass every other species of animal in noise, disorder, unruly and unbridled conduct. The little of mind that such people possess, actually makes them more of a disgrace, morally speaking, than the lower animal is, which does not possess as much. 93. The thinking of most people consists of nothing but talking, and as this is generally of no use to an- il 162 A TREATISE ON MAN. other, they will, if one is willing to have the patience to listen to them, compensate one for it by inviting him to their house to partake of a fine meal or enter- tainment. And, generally, the invited one is as will- ing to accept, as the other is to invite. 94. The ordinary man does not regulate his conduct according to the rules of wisdom ; his guide is custom and fashion, his knowledge goes no farther than see- ing and hearing what others do; he is born as an animal, he lives like an animal, and he dies like an animal ; it is only the laws of the state that force any- thing like civilization out of him. 95. The first impression is generally the nearest to correctness, as relates to a man's intellect or love ; it is true also of the inventions and improvements of articles of daily use. Although modifications may be added to the original, yet it generally shows that a man will resort to the first plan which had not yet be- come encumbered with additional parts resulting from subsequent planning, in the same manner as a man will always recall the thoughts of his first love, because these took place when they were yet chaste and inno- cent. 96. He was one of those men that the world had no use for ; his intellectual and moral qualities were such as reminded it of its lowness. 97. Small matters generally annoy the mind more than great matters do, because we feel the effect of the former more than we do that of the latter, for the reason that it is more immediate ; the effect of a great THE INTELLECT. 163 matter generally lies in the future, and it can there- fore be somewhat expected, that it will never occur. 98. He had so little faith in human planning that he no longer promised either himself or any one else anything. 99. The reason why things appear horrible and threatening to us when we awake during the night or in the morning, is because the mind has not yet been able to collect the true state of facts of our existence? and, it probably being dark and no one near us who is awake, we feel as if we were left alone to our fate. 100. The man of business says of a new undertak- ing, Where is my profit ? Does the ordinary reader, when he reads a book, inquire how his mind is prof- ited by it ? Nothing should be pursued in life unless it result in some gain or profit, either material, physical, moral or intellectual. Our promenades, our amusements, even what we call luxuries, should not be resorted to unless there be some advantage. 101. The philosopher does not receive the admira- tion of the vulgar as the man of mere talent does, because they cannot comprehend matters of genius as they can matters of mere talent. But for that very reason, neither is he subject to their insults and vitu- peration as the latter is, for if they cannot reach him, neither can they lay their hands on him. 102. Even in the greatest thinker, there is always something to be found that is imperfect or wanting ; it is the same with the moral character and the 164 A TREATISE ON HAN. physical appearance; otherwise the world would be monotonous. It is the general impression that the intellect, or anything else, makes that is to be taken as the correct means of judging of a man — the minor parts must be overlooked. The enemies of a great man generally seek to ignore his general character, intellectually or morally, and seek out the minor parts where his intellect or character fails, to be able to lower him. 103. Is it not true that the Genius grasps more or less slower than the common mind ? He certainly does in practical affairs, because, being continually engaged on theoretical subjects, he must first discharge himself of these to be able to pass over into the practical ones ; besides, he reasons much more fundamentally, and therefore collects his principles slower. 104. Without the Genius, the Nation is nothing, although the Genius is everything without the Nation. 105. The Genius is better in giving advice to others than he is to give advice to himself, in the daily affairs — his intellect is for the world, not for himself. 106. Even if a man do succeed in his plans, how different is it not in the end from what it was in the beginning of his undertaking; sometimes there is hardly a resemblance between the two. 107. It is all an illusion : there was no birth, there is no life, there will be no death ; the past, the present and the future are all one existence, if it can be called an existence at all. BOOK III. MAN AS A MORAL BEING. CHAPTER I. HIS OBJECT AS MAN. 1. Christ is morality itself. In him is not only all that is good, but also all that is great; and he is therefore a genuine type of what a man ought to be — probably the greatest model of human goodness and greatness that nature has yet created in the shape of a human being, whatever his faults as a man may be, for they are necessary constituents of the clay of which we are all formed. He was a fanatic, in a cer- tain sense, as all founders of a religion are, but his fanaticism had a good object. When we look at the high (the highest) moral char- acter that Christ possessed, when compared to that that mankind in general possess, it is not astonishing that he should have assumed a somewhat divine mis- sion ; his calling was such as no man had yet assum- ed, and he could therefore very well suppose that his career among his fellow men was that of a superior; it is not at all remarkable that he should have felt that his authority was from heaven, because there was no authority here on earth that was either superior or equal enough to confer it upon him. The Old Testa- ment had always taught a deliverer for the Jews, and it was therefore very consistent for Christ to assume that character — as being the most entitled to it— his sole object being, leaving out his religion, to deliver mankind from vice and corruption; and it is therefore also that no religion could have accepted a more ap- 1G7 168 A TREATISE ON" MAN. propriate and fit individual for its founder. Kings impersonate the state, so Christ could as consistently impersonate the good (God). 2. Christ is morality according to the spirit ; Moses is law according to the letter. The former is a savior, the latter is an avenger. The whole aim and object of the system of Christ's morality is the salvation of the individual, always considering that man is born with weaknesses and vices, and that there is nothing in the individual himself to enable him to avoid his becoming the possessor of them ; that the most that can be done is to forgive him for what he has done in the past, and point out a proper course for the future, so that his acts of the past will not be repeated. Christ herein shows himself to be a moral teacher. Moses also points out a course of life, but if it be not followed, he punishes and revenges without mercy; he is nothing but a judge. Christ knew the human heart, Moses did not ; the former judges from experi- ence, the most correct and reliable source of know- ledge ; the latter judges from abstract reasoning, as a legislator. 3. Christ was a moral Genius ; born to teach man- kind, not from the cathedra nor from the pulpit, but from the mount, in the street and in the woods, in fact, wherever he found them, whether it were in the brothel or in the temple. Continually observant of the rule that we are born equal in a state of nature, and therefore we should bear one another's faults even to a degree that is almost impossible, and entirely im- possible for most men, it gives him a character that has the appearance of being more than natural. His HIS OBJECT AS MAN. 169 teachings are something like the discourses of Epic- tetus, at the time spoken to a comparatively small audience, with some exceptions, and handed down to us by one or more of his audience. It was a natural dictation in him to instruct and reform; he was born for nothing else, and would therefore have succeeded at nothing else. 4. To reach nature's aim and object, namely, to keep every species of animal and every other creature in existence, it is necessary to have laws that are in- evitable. Every grade that man has assumed up to his present high state, was but a means whereby na- ture preserves him in that condition. When nature creates a man like Plato or Kant, there is undoubtedly natural wisdom in it; they have their functions to perform in this world as well as the ordinary man, whose object it is to propagate; the latter produces men, and the former instruct them; but inasmuch as only a few will answer for the latter vocation, nature does in fact create but very few. If the men of gen- ius had not this object, the inevitability of nature's laws would direct them to other employment; the career of a man's life is not determined by himself, but by the particular nature that is in him. There- fore the intellect was not given to man for the sake of reaching fame; this is only another means by which nature reaches her aim ; it is not an object; it is a consequence of this intellect, given as a compen- sation and reward for services that are for the benefit of all mankind, although the truly wise man spurns it, because he feels that such a compensation is for mediocre minds. 170 A TREATISE ON MAN. 5. As the wise man pursues his course according to his particular character, so does the fool and block- head pursue his course according to his particular character ; they both follow their natural inclinations. But this will by no means compel a toleration of the foolish and improper conduct of people of no under- standing, in an advanced and enlightened age. If the fool is necessarily created by nature to perform his functions as an animal, and for which only he is here, the Genius is as necessarily created to check and re- strain him and guide him in his moral course. When Zeno was correcting his slave for stealing, the slave said, "It was fated that I should steal," to which Zeno answered, "Yes, and that you should be beaten." Whenever nature creates what to the intellect appears to be a fault in one being, she in another being creates a power to counteract it. A criminal is as much the ingenious work of nature as the highest moralist ; the one is a necessity for the existence of the other, for were the one not created, there would be no need of the other. 6. So great is the force of the laws of nature, that she absorbs the whole infinite number of thoughts of the greatest thinker merely to the aim of the existence of man as a civilized being. Not one moment's time is given us to meditate for the sake of our own amuse- ment; the whole pure reasoning of Kant and the phi- losophical speculations of Plato are as much necessary thinking for man in his civilized state, as the thinking where he will get his next food, is for the common man; the one is mediate, the other immediate. 7. All writers agree that it is only the wise and learned man that clearly sees the divinity of God; HIS OBJECT AS MAN. 171 that the vulgar have no idea or conception of hiin, and therefore need to be taught and instructed by the former. Thus it follows, that what the preceptor be- lieves to be true, is really true. It is without doubt true that the wise man's ideas, in the sense of intellect- uality, are superior to those of the vulgar ; but that he alone is to see the attributes of God himself, is noth- ing but conceit. Moses knew well the purpose for which nature had created him, namely, to instruct his people. If there be a divinity, and it must be comprehended to save the human soul, all mankind undoubtedly have a fac- ulty to comprehend it, otherwise all mankind but the extremely few that have been specially gifted, are lost. The wise man alone is moral, but from a natural standpoint ; as all things appear in the universe, he is not a preference over the rest of mankind. The wise man is better capable of seeing the salutary effects of morality than the ordinary man, but this all refers only to the intercourse of mankind in this world as civilized beings, and beyond that there is no superiority. 8. From this it is evident, that the superiority of the wise man is given him to instruct, to civilize and keep civilized the human family; and that all those who are not here for ttm^ purpose, are not, in the strictest sense, men. 9. The German thinker is theoretical ; the French thinker is semi-theoretical and semi -practical; the English thinker is practical; those of the other na- tions compare better with the French. The greatness )f the German thinker being of the highest order, he 172 A TREATISE ON MAN. will necessarily produce but few; but, so that all things work well and there be no preference, on the whole, the other nations will produce so many more of their respective kinds. 10. Every nation produces thinkers, especially the political ones, to suit the needs of its people, to a greater or less extent, although a Genius, strictly speaking, is born for all mankind. If it could be his- torically ascertained, it would be seen that every thinker who existed, existed during his time because at that time he was needed as such, and therefore performed his part as necessarily as the soldier who fought the battles of his time. 11. The statesman's works and good deeds are en- joyed immediately after they have been performed, but after his death there is nothing left of his great- ness but the testimony of history ; especially is this true of the military man. It is with the statesman and general as it is with everything that is more or less superficial; their works resulted from very little thinking, with the military man sometimes no think- ing at all; they rise chiefly from the spur of the moment, and then even influenced by their natural prejudice or religious bias. Such men are therefore confined to their own country and their own age. But to be a genuine Genius, requires the whole world as a subject for study; and a statesman who makes the welfare of mankind his study, as Frederick the Great and others have done, is a Genius. 12. There is one class of men, and that unfortu- nately has always been in the majority, that are HIS OBJECT AS MAN. 173 neither capable of begetting a great thought nor of comprehending and availing themselves of it when it is begotten. This class, it will often be noticed, make remarks, the truth of which is sublime ; having heard or read them, they now use them to the great admira- tion of the hearer. Divines are a great imposition in this respect; divinity itself being so sublime, any remark on it with eloquence causes admiration. Another class of men, who are more limited, com- prehend great thoughts, but are not able themselves to be the authors of great works. To the extent that education can have influence on the mind and char- acter, such men are benefited, though this can never be very great, for a mind is influenced by exterior objects and thoughts only so far as it is by nature related to them. Yet such men may be good in- structors. The last, the greatest, have always been the fewest. In a whole century, all the fingers of probably only one hand are not necessary to count them by. The first mentioned have their material blessings, the second material blessings and honor divided, the third material bitterness, but eventually, everlasting honor, approaching that of divinity. CHAPTER II. MAN IS BY NATURE BASE. 1. That mankind are originally base, is clearly seen from the fact that when a base proposition is made to an individual, he is almost always inclined to accept it; if it be not accepted, it is because of the fear of the law or the being ejected from the society of his fellow men. It is only the moralist who will reject a base proposition voluntarily for the very reason that it is base. Many men will scorn a vile proposition, but this is done only to impose on the credulity of mankind; give such men sufficient scope to escape being judged by their fellow men, and then see the result. There is a class of men, but very few^ who act hon- estly, in a general sense, in their dealings; they have found from experience that such a course is advanta- geous, for it enriches their purse and gives them an honorable standing amongst their fellow men. Be- sides, they have a certain feeling of humanity for their fellow beings, and know that as they would not want to be impo&ed upon, so their fellow beings also should not be imposed upon. 2. It is especially another evidence of man's base- ness, that the greatest part of mankind will feel them selves flattered when it has been discovered that certain of their transactions were perpetrated with fraud and covin; they are willing to let their char- 174 HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 175 acter suffer for the benefit of their intelligence, in practicing their rogueries, providing they feel them- selves safe from the law. Some men act honestly from instinct, and therefore still stand on the same basis as the lower animal, a dog, for instance, that will not steal his master's meat. 3. The very fact that man relies so much on secrecy, and that, in order to be able to deal with his fellow men, it is necessary, is conclusive that he or the one he is dealing with is not moral, because morality is of itself sufficient not to require that anything be hidden. But the truth is, that man requires something of de- ception, to take his opponent unawares. Furthermore, as the degree of morality decreases in a certain indi- vidual, the degree of secrecy and deception increases, and the greater degree of morality decreases the degree of secrecy. All this is based upon the reasoning in nature, that all these faculties are a necessity to the respective individual in his struggle for existence as an animal. 4. Mankind are so incapable as to their own salva- tion, that they always have to depend upon a savior or redeemer ; this is very noticeable in the fact that people are continually invoking God to save them from the perdition into which they have voluntarily thrown themselves, or, else, rely upon a Christ to make intercession for them. Now, a good man is the savior of his own soul, in the same manner as the bad man is the destroyer of his. It is instinctive consciousness that makes man feel that there is more bad than good in him, and therefore he feels the necessity of one that is greater 176 A TREATISE ON MAN. and better than himself to save him. Christ knew that the world was too corrupt to save itself, and therefore taught that he was necessary to be sent to save it. 5. To know a man's inward character, his original nature, is an impossibility. It is only by outward actions that his character can at all be judged ; but how much of his real character can be known from his acts, when we consider that it is the nature of all animals to act by deception, and that all their doings are merely to impose upon the rest of mankind ? 6. Prostitution seems to be in order with a great part of mankind. Even if it be true that morality has some fine beings to show up, it is still mortifying to see that the majority of the human family do not blush at being willing, probably not always exterior- ly, but inwardly, to erase that little chastity from the records of mankind that is in the world. It is humil- iating to a man of high morality that the desire too exists in him ; but when it comes, it comes with an ab- horrence to his soul. Not so is it with the man of the world ; he bids it welcome, and even solicits its com- ing. With his money he enters into a bargain, the carrying out of which regards the other sex as but instruments of satisfying man's sin. 7. From practice and inheritance, man's concupis- cence has grown so great, that he is compelled to re- sort to all kinds of means, natural or unnatural, to sat- isfy it : he uses violence on the other sex, which can probably be said also of a few of the lower animals; the other sex have to do with men when not in a con. HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 177 dition to procreate, which I do not know of any other animal; he satisfies his desires without the aid of the other sex, which evil too can be said, I believe, of the ape; he has venereal diseases, and he invents various and different means of preventing birth. Such a de- praved and distorted nature must be the result of a course of existence that is certainly not evident to man's eyes in the rest of creation. As certain as it is that it is physical, so certain it is that it is not moral. 8 It is the moral part of man that is not in order according to the direct laws of nature; morality is apparently against the laws of nature; it is impos- sible to find a man that is moral in the strictest sense.* The world is beset with traps and snares to prevent man from carrying out what would be to the philoso- pher and genius the greatest object that man could boast of— a perfect moral being. We have no sooner taken a vow of abstinence than the next object that meets our eyes or ears tempts us to break it. The correct way to regard one's self is as Christ re- garded man, namely, as being beset with sins and evils on all sides, and he should therefore always be on his guard; there will then be no disappointment when disgrace does come. 9. If we want to see how very little genuine morali- ty there is or has been in the world, we have only to compare the number of moralists that may exist or have existed with the millions upon millions of human * Luke xviii : 19, 20, 12 178 A TREATISE ON MAN. beings that exist and have existed, and then man's genuine morality dwindles into nothing. 10. Hatred and love control man. It is as hard to give up an enemy as it is to give up a mistress. In these two passions man lowers himself. Whoever falls into either, for the time sacrifices that much of Ms dignity as a being of intellectuality and morality, whilst the absence of both of them presents something of the god-like. 11. If man were man, the friendship that he would have for his fellow men would be all that would be necessary to secure peace and protection, and there- fore Christ taught that men should love one another, even so far as to extend to their enemies. But men, as it is, in all their dealings with one another, are at nothing but war, the one contending to get the advan- tage over the other. 12. The general love and friendship of mankind for one another is so unreliable, that, in order to be sure and safe in obtaining the assistance and charity of one another, men form secret orders and societies, by which they mutually pledge to aid and assist one another in time of need. This is nothing but a self- love which extends only as far as the order itself, and no farther; every member seeking ouly to assist a fellow member, and this is only done because it is mutual. Besides, after the death of any member, if payment of any monies can be avoided, it is even done, such societies being like individuals, namely, they stand by one another as long as their co-operation is needed, but as soon as this is not to be had, the HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 179 sooner the poor fellow member is disposed of, the better. 13. Mankind possess enough virtue to keep them- selves out of the penitentiary and from the gallows, and but very little more, not to say anything of the hundreds of individuals that are annually convicted. If we were to closely scrutinize every man's conduct as it shows itself in his heart, not in his exterior, it would be found that there is not a single individual in the whole moral world who would not be subject to more or less criminal convictions of some kind or other. The moral institutions of man are merely in the ideal, having that before the eyes which should be, but which never is. That man in general possesses something originally moral, and that he is a god and not a thief, are arguments that well serve to sufficient- ly flatter the vanity of egotistic man, who is willing to pay the speaker of them liberally ; but when we look at the history of mankind, both in the past and the present, we find that, whilst creed after creed has changed, because its adherents lost faith in it, yet the necessity and the utility of a prison for the punishment of offenders have never been questioned. In other words, religions have been wiped out of ex- istence, and are continually changing, yet crime and immorality hold their head as high now as they did in the days of prosperous Babylon ; religions have been only a chimera, but vice a reality, because the blood of man is so. It is owing to the fact that man's morality has only been assumed since he has become intellectual, that the philosophers have been unable to find a reliable 180 A TREATISE ON MAN. basis for it to rest on. Besides, how can it be expect ed that an animal can be a god? 14. Man, through the whole course of his life, lives in a state of fear either as against famine, the laws of the state, the laws of nature, or as against the encroach- ments of his own fellow men, or of the lower animal. There is one continual dread of one superior power or other in every being from the time of his birth up to the time of his death, all worldly possessions not being able to put him a safer condition than if he lives a life of poverty. By this means man is tamed and the brutal nature that is in him bridled ; this is what civilizes him. Man might thus be said to be a civilized being against his own will. I do not believe that the average man, as you see him on the street, has the least desire to be a civilized being, unless it be some instinctive incitement ; morality has no such hold on man in his original nature. Morality and civilization are a struc- ture in regard to the laying of whose corner stone, the ordinary man is not to be questioned; the thinker lays it, and when the building is finished, the common man is to occupy the subordinate apartment intended for him, whether he will or not. The people themselves are never even interested as to whether the corner stone be rightly laid, whether it be able to support the burden or not; there is merely a blind supposition with them that it is all in order. 15. It is not the moralist that lowers the human family ; he merely philosophizes on their moral traits; it is mankind themselves that place themselves in a position that makes it a duty in the moralist to de- HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 181 nounce their character. Vice is something that requires no violence whatever; everyone who falls into it, does so, because he sought it, not that any one compelled him. Who makes a gambler, a pander, an adulterer, a thief, a usurer or a perjurer out any man, but him- self? who makes a harlot, a procuress, an adulteress, a kleptomaniac, a liar or a termagant out of any woman, but herself? How many of the human family can be said to be free from all of these greatest vices? who, at all, can be said to be free from the minor ones ? They are not guilty of them in secrecy, which would evince a certain shame; it is done openly, with a certain boast. Sin, in the sense of the world, has no meaning in the practicing of it, but in reminding another of it ; not yourself, who tells the lie, do you call a liar, but him who reminds you of it; hence you shout " crucify him." 16. Even some of the moralists and saints, in their youth, led a fast and reckless life, such a hold the base principles of human nature had on them. These principles could only be conquered after the mind had deliberated on them, and found that they were actual evils. 17. If man were by nature moral, what need would there be of a police, criminal code and a church ? Are they not established for the very reason that he is vile and base? All other animals steal to obtain a sub- sistence, why should not man ] for he too belongs to the animal kingdom. But inasmuch as he wants to be civilized, he feels the need of the command 4 -Thou shalt not steal," purposely to counteract his base nature. 182 A TREATISE ON MAN. The command " Thou shalt live" is so great in hu- man nature as well as in all other animals, that the most men will obey it at the hazard of everything else. 18. If man we*e a moral being by nature, his whole life would be so pure that he could not help but be recognized as such, for he would then follow his moral inclinations as palpably as he now follows his base inclinations. 19. If every individual were to be punished and imprisoned for every offense that he commits against morality and the law of the land, our buildings would all have to be converted into jails, and there would be no one left to execute the process of the law 20. The character of a man is surrounded and influ- enced by evil to such an extent, that when speaking well of one's character, we are always forced to remark further, using language beginning with " But. " 21. Morality being a secondary nature with man, it is y in its results, as secondary as all his works; and when it is considered that he has only the short period of his life to teach and practice it, it is not difficult to see how it is that it is so limited. But the greatest imposition that man has made on himself, is that he believes that it is possible, at least in certain individuals, for him to be a perfectly just being. Man always has the highest before him as a model ; and, with his store-house of conceit, it is not difficult to see how it is that he believes himself equal to this model. HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 183 22. There are innumerable men who take a delight in being inhuman, whose hearts, at certain times, actu- ally yearn after doing their fellow men an evil, or practicing on them or the lower animal a cruelty or barbarity that actually deprives them of the epithet of "moral" and "human." Sine-tenths of mankind take more delight and have more satisfaction in the suffering or misery of their fellow men or fellow animals than they have in their happiness or peaceful state ; in fact, the most men feel miserable at the prosperity or happiness of others, and will, if it can be done with impunity, even ruin and destroy this prosperity or happiness. LaEochefou- cauld says that in the misfortunes of even our best friends, there is always something that does not dis- please us. 23. That man is a moral imposition and a burden to himself and all the rest of mankind, with the few ex- ceptions to whom his existence is either directly or indirectly of benefit, and that every other man except- ing these, would wish that he would go and hang himself, are two undeniable truths, verified by daily experience. The man that engages himself in his affairs alone, and in no wise interferes with those of others, has always been an object of praise; we speak of him as being no imposition, because he does not force his existence on his fellow men. But he that is continually intermeddling with the world, either with his tongue or otherwise, has always been an object of contempt. If non-interference and silence, like death, command respect, the opposite must follow, namely, that interference and life must cause disrespect. 184 A TREATISE ON MAN. So far as man is a mere propagator for nature's sake, it is right to feel rejoiced at the birth of a hu- man being ; but so far as he is man, birth is an impo- sition on him, because it brings its burdens and vices. As long as he remains a child— mere animal— he him- self and those surrounding him, are delighted at his existence ; but as soon as he has grown up to reflect upon his position in the world, and the unnatural and artificial parts he is to play as relates to morality and the rest of mankind, he finds that it were better if he had not been born. 24. The more a man approaches manhood, in its philosophical sense, the less he resorts to dishonest practices to obtain a subsistence; and the more he resembles the lower animal, the more he resorts to such practices. The former will never succeed finan- cially, for to succeed in this world is to be semi-honest and semi-dishonest; to succeed a man must have enough honesty to keep up his reputation among his fellow men, to be able to carry on his business, the rest is fraud. To become rich, one must make his temple a den of thieves, but if one wants to follow Christ, he must overturn his money-tables. No one who has succeeded in becoming extremely, or even moderately, rich was an entirely honest man ; hence the difficulty for such a man to enter the kingdom of heaven. All this arises from a fact deeply rooted in nature, namely, that man is dishonest and that he can not, even in spite of a particular moral calling and the moral injunctions that are laid on him, be actually indifferent as to riches and the worldly gains, because they tempt the animal nature that is in him. There HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 185 are many men whose conscience is troubled at such a state of affairs, but still the remorse is not strong enough to control them so that they will throw their money-bags into the sea, or reject their standing among their fellow men; there is an inclination, more or less, in this direction, but it is the evil Genius, not Christ, that boasts of the victory. 25. If man were by nature good, he would neces- sarily remain so, for what is natural, always retains its nature. It is only that which is invented, by the in- tellect, that is not permanent, and as the intellect always more or less changes, so will its object. What exists originally by nature, is common to all men, but morality is by no means common to all men ; if it were, there would be no need of endless disputes in regard to it. It would, in such a case, be as evident as any member of the body. Morality undoubtedly exists, but it exists only intellectually. 26. Every individual has his character indelibly stamped in him; it is often so evident that it is legi- ble in his bodily appearance, especially in the eyes and mouth. It is this original natural law in him that superinduces all his actions and doings; in fact, all his actions and doings are simply the operation itself of this law; this is his very existence, and therefore, to say that the will is free, is to say that the individ- ual has in his control what nature herself necessarily requires as a means to preserve this very individual, or through him to propagate others. From this it follows, that every act of every being, no matter how intellectual he may be, is natural. There are different avenues through which nature 186 A TREATISE ON MAN. produces her effects; we call that artificial and not natural, which is a result of the brain directly, but if we were to trace it to its original source, we would find that it is nature that does it ; that it took its rise there, and that we ourselves are only the instruments through which nature carries it into effect, and that, therefore, what we call immorality in man being more conducive to him as a being subject to these laws, he is by nature base. 27. There are three classes of men that are different- ty affected by the will; the one is that highest class, whom we call Geniuses, in whom the will is partly to serve the animal and partly the man ; their acts are two-fold, firstly, as they relate to their own individu- ality, they are physical, secondly, as they relate to the rest of the world, they are intellectual, and therefore have an unnatural appearance; these are mundane gods. The second class are those who follow the dic- tates of the body more than they do those of the mind, but yet make the body submissive more or less to the mind; these might be called men. The third class are those who have no mind, and who are therefore entire- ly subject to the animal dictates; these are the human beasts. 28. Were it not for the threats of the law, I find that I should have no sooner left my threshold, than the first man that I should meet, would deprive me of the contents of my purse, and, should I resist, the most men, to accomplish the act, would add my life to it. 29. The natural dishonesty that I ascribe to man is very noticeable in children in their daily conduct of HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 187 playing with one another, and in the manner in which they avoid their superiors in what is wrong. 30. Man is always guarding against wrong and any means that may tempt him to do an immoral act. Good men always have a certain rule of moral con- duct , thus evincing their own knowledge that the pre- dominant principle in them is to do evil ; they feel that to he able to do good, there is some active means neces- sary, namely, to keep off the evil, but not that the good would follow as a matter of course, but, rather, that the evil would follow as a matter of course. So conscious is man of his own moral weakness, that he even pre- vents the mere disclosure of an act, which, if it were carried into effect, would be immoral. All improper conduct is rightly kept from the presence of women and children, because it is from their weakness that their character may suffer from it. 31. The criminal does not think at the time that he commits the act, that it is criminal in itself; he is prob ably only conscious that it is against the law of the land; he feels that he is justified in committing the act because his natural inclinations are such, which, he feels, are stronger than the threats of future punish- ment. If he had never believed that in the sense of nature he was justified, he never would have commit ed the act. The daily cheats practiced by men of business are acts that seem at the time to themselves to be justifia- ble; their conduct is not criminal so far as it relates to these particular individuals. And what the judge condemns as guilt, the perpetrator always maintains he was justified in doing from natural principles; the 188 A TREATISE ON MAN. former is justified in his condemnation because the laws make it imperative, the latter in his criminal act because his nature so dictated. The dishonest prac- tices of persons of a weaker intelligence are all based on this reasoning ; but here, as it is with women and children, punishment does not always follow, because the natural inclination was too clearly and evidently predominant over the intelligence, to prevent it. 32. What we commonly call dishonesty is in every existence, whether animate or inanimate; it is an ab- solute necessity in the strife for existence ; in every being, could we only see its operation in every other existence as we can in man. What we call punish- ment in man, is doubtless the same as the resistance that every existence meets with, by which it is com- pelled to undergo a change in its existence. 33. With man considered as an intellectual being, it is easier to be moral than it is to be immoral, be- cause here his uprightness of character is a result of the particular individuality that is in him; his moral acts are a necessary consequence of his nature. It is therefore as difficult for a truly moral man to do an immoral act, as it is for the immoral man to do a mor- al one when the temptation is to do an immoral one. 34. The animal principle must first arise before the intellectual principle can establish itself; the latter must wait until the former chooses to give it a hear- ing, thus agreeing with the general tone of the world, namely, that the weak great and good must beg an existence from the powerful low and base, knowing well that if the former once gets a foothold, the latter HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 189 will be completely powerless, the human intellect be- ing so great when it is allowed its proper freedom e 35. Xature will allow self-denial only in such a man in whom it can be tolerated — that it will not interfere with his existence. To live is therefore the injunction that nature puts on all animals, and as the means for living can be obtained by man, as he now exists, only on such principles as morality can not sanction, as long as he remains an animal, and I see no hopes of his ceasing to be it, he will be a liar and a thief. 36. To make man a moral being would require a complete transformation of the order of things, one that would be directly opposite to that of the present. The present affinity of flesh and blood of the human body with the rest of the world, has its origin and preservation in exterior substances and relations that man brands as vile and base, and until such a separa- tion and disconnection and freedom and independence from the rest of all substances in nature takes place, if such an order of things could be imagined, man will be subject to the same laws of nature as every other existence; there is no escape from this, and there is no need of escape, because it is intended that he should be what he is. 37. If one wants to avoid being daily disappointed, know that in this world kindness is met with ingrati- tude, and rascality with kindness. How much soever we may conscientiously feel that it is one of our first duties to meet that with proper recognition which it is entitled to, yet this is doubtless one of the last things that men think of doing. For the present, at 190 A TREATISE ON MAN. least, there is more honor reaped by those who are least entitled to it, and more dishonor by those who are most honorable. Therefore, if honor depended upon present advantages to be derived, there would be no inducement to be honorable. Democritus laughed at people who seek riches and honor, not only because such people, if they obtained them, de- rived no good from either, but also because he saw that they are almost inevitably bestowed upon those who least deserve them. 38. Not to do another an injury is recommendable, and yet this is doing nothing, and therefore a man who is merely passive will not be rewarded. But a scoundrel who occasionally does do a good act, the world will applaud; he will receive more ad- miration than the man who is always doing good acts, doubtless going on the same principle as what Christ says of the sinner, namely, that when hk is saved, all heaven and earth rejoice, because there has that much been gained what was supposed to be lost. 39. Good and great acts in the beginning meet with disapproval, rejection and contempt; and bad and vicious acts meet with approval and acceptance in the beginning; their beginnings are opposite, and so are their ends opposite, the good being eventually recog- nized, even by those who do not practice it, and the bad rejected, even by those who do practice it. As soon as I hear of a man who is disliked by the popu lace, I entertain a secret opinion that there is some- thing good or great in him ; and as soon as I hear of a favorite of the people, I begin to suspect him. Phocion felt this. HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 191 Thus it might, without having further evidence, be laid down as a general maxim: What mankind at first accept, that you at first reject, and what man- kind at first reject, that you at first accept. Schopenhauer says that every being, and be it the Devil himself, represents his cause as resting on per- fect principles of reason and justice. People who deceive, think, at the time, that they are justified in their conduct, for they feel that they too have a right to present their case, howsoever egotistic and selfish their principles may be ; they therefore get their pres- ent standing; were they not allowed so much, they would not get a sufficient hold on civilization to be able to make their struggle for existence. Where such principles prevail with the majority of mankind, a redeemer appearing every generation could not check them, for his moral power, great and wonderful as it might appear in him as a human be- ing, would be nothing, for he has only a power bor- rowed and limited, whilst they have all of nature's laws to assist them in their struggles for self preser- vation and existence. 40. Men vrill commit an unjust act or crime without having any other object in view than to commit it; as Pascal says, one can not infer that a man is telling the truth merely from the fact that he has no interest in the matter, because, as he says, men will lie merely to be lying. Many people of enormous wealth, mere- ly from their avarice to keep increasing it, even in old age when it can no longer be enjoyed, practice their unjust acts, sometimes actually to the extent of mak- ing old men, widows and orphans penniless ; and in certain cases where the victim in his honesty and in- 192 A TREATISE ON MAN. tegrity disclosed the secrets of his affairs, and thereby laid himself bare to such a villain, the latter will pocket the ducats that he has thus unjustly gained with a smile in his countenance at his victory and the credulity of mankind. Shoplifting does not arise in one case out of ten from any pressure of need; it takes place simply be- cause the baseness of the human heart so dictated it; it is even an inward boast with many ladies that they had the shrewdness to accomplish it. 41. Among the millions of human beings that exist, can there not, at the least, be a half hundred found who are actually moral ? 42. You never demand of a man that he carry a load for which his shoulders are not strong enough; how then can you demand of him that he be so moral as never to commit a vice, when in fact you are aware from your own nature that such a thing is an impossibility ? 43. X had what the most people have, namely, the fault of converting to himself what properly belonged co others. 44. A peculiarly moral world in which those who act upright in their affairs with others, which causes them to practically fail, are said to be too honest 45. There is nothing bad but that it has something good in it, and nothing good but that it has something bad in it, so necessary are both for the universal wel- fare. Man, no matter who he is, has at least so much satisfaction in knowing that he is of some use. HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 193 46. The reason why certain writers so strongly in- veigh against a particular evil that was probably a trait of their own character, is because they see from their own experience that it was actually an evil ; and therefore warn others against also falling into it — probably the best warning there is. 47. So moral are mankind that the pretty face of a whore can accomplish more with the majority of them than the finest Sermon on the Mount can. 48. The reason why a man blushes or casts his eyes downward when sharply looked at, is because he be- lieves he is being held responsible for his bad acts ; in other words, he adjudges his own character to be a guilty one. 49. How can it be expected that a man's friends should be reliable, when it is considered that he is not reliable to himself, not even in those undertakings that are his greatest favorites. 50. The worst of all is that certain thoughts con- tinually remind even a noble soul of the beastly nature of its body. 51. Blood is no tie of friendship. In all matters with relatives, treat them on strict principles of busi- ness; this is a tie that can be more depended on than the former. 52. At the house of X, who was a single man, some- what gray, one could always find three of the Devil's favorite tools : a fast horse, a demijohn and a woman. 13 194: A TREATISE ON MAN. 53. The human race is so given to lying that in a transaction where both parties are interested, the one mistrusting the veracity of the other, the corroboration of a third party not interested is required to give cred- ence to the statement of both of them. 54. Probably there is no better example of the crue- lty of man to his fellow men, than when a prison keeper will punish beyond all principles of humanity a victim that the law has placed in a helpless state of self- defence, and there is therefore probably no man whom the law should so carefully watch and supervise as such a keeper; besides, it being a position rather un- worthy of a man of higher and nobler principles, the additional danger is that it may fall into the hands of a petty despot. 55. He felt that there is no good will in the world. Whenever a thing is given or presented to him, be it never so insignificant, he always considers how dear lie may yet have to pay for it. 56. With all the presumption of his individual worth to the world, A did not know that after his death, or a mere removal to a neighboring district, he would not be missed as much as he supposed he would. 57 > He always maintained that his fellow men were little and unmanly; that they lacked the higher prin- ciple of fellow-ship as civilized beings, and therefore his independence of spirit has always kept him aloof from the good will, such as it is, of his fellow men. But even there where he did apply for a favor, be- cause it could very easily be granted without au injury HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 195 or detriment, or there where humanity and charity would require that it should even be offered, he found that it was wanting and not forthcoming. 58. He knew that he too had his failings, so he made it a rule to be in the world's way as little as is possible. 59. The reason why the common part of mankind respect a man who contemns them, is because they feel and are aware that the greatest part of mankind deserve to be contemned, and that he must evidently be a man of judgment to be able to notice their insig- nificance. 60. Since we know that the character of man in general is unreliable, and that our friends and relatives, even tiiose of our own family, belong to the human race as well, why should we not suspect them as well as the rest of mankind, and thus avoid being made their dupes, and preventing much evil. 61. A genuine man will never settle an affair with long arguments, contention, disputes or at law, but where his opponent is incapable of recognizing what is apparently right, he makes it an imperative com- mand on the latter; if this do not succeed, the only way left is to simply give way by silence. When all moral principles have failed, such a retreat is honor- able ; he feels that there is no equality between him- self and his opponent, and that there is therefore also no satisfaction to be had. 62. The reason why we fear the coming of a mis- fortune, is because we do not know whether or not we 196 A TREATISE ON MAN. can meet it ; and the reason why we are often entirely at peace and at rest when it has occurred, is because we see that we are entirely able to meet it. The truly wise man does not wait for the coming of the event to prove to him that he will be able to meet it, but he knows before hand that, when the event does occur, other events will also occur in connection with it that will regulate a man's course in life better than he could have regulated it himself, as relates to material losses and misfortunes. In regard to the character of a man it is the oppo- site with men in general; here the fear of the conse- quences for an immoral act are less than the punish- ment is that follows ; the ordinary man plunges into vice and evil voluntarily, but repents involuntarily. This proves that he has no moral character of his own; nothing but an exterior moral influence can put an end to his sin. But the fears of the philosopher for the consequences of an immoral act are greater than the force of the act itself, and thus when it does take place, he is at ease with himself, for he is able to meet it. If we will but carefully notice how, when a good or evil proposition is made to a man, he will re- regard it in the beginning, we can generally distin- guish his moral character, with such infallibility will the moral or immoral principle control him, which is noticeable in his exterior. But there must be no re- straint to influence him. 63. God blesses those he loves a little, and punishes those he loves most; at least so it is in this world. This is doubtless the reason why men in general are more subject to temptations of the former than to tempta- tions of the latter. HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 197 64. H could lie when he did. not want to, and could not tell the truth when he did want to. 65. Continually bear this in mind : Mankind in gen- eral bear more enmity towards one another than they do friendship. 66. What a filthy lie X could tell merely to be able to accomplish a filthy end ! 67. To see how strong man is morally, just consider how easily the wound made by the arrow of a blind infant can prove mortal in him. 68. If there be any worth whatever in a man, it is better to be alone and be like himself, than be with others and be like them. 69. Money was invented for the vulgar, not for the anointed or the elect. 70. Everything has its proportionate opposite. A man's contempt after sexual intercourse is as great as his love was before the intercourse. 71 He was one of the extremely few men who, in any undertaking, inquired of himself, how it would effect good morals. 72. What is very good remains, and what is very bad remains also. 73. It seems to be with man as it is with the lower animal, namely, the commoner, the more they live in flocks and herds. 198 A TREATISE ON MAN. 74. Morally speaking, lie never wanted a woman to look at Mm with an eye of inclination, because, as he said, there was always a temptation connected with it. 75. He preferred a woman's calling him her enemy to having her call him her lover. 76. The fact alone that man protects only his own interests, or those of persons in whom he is interested, is evidence sufficient that he is a selfish, dishonest and base being, 77. It is clear how low morally man in general stands, when it is considered that those who do pos- sess a moral character, the highest, are counted as heroes, and therefore entitled to worship. 78. Whenever B wanted his moral or intellectual disgust raised, all that was needed, was to familiarly associate with his fellow men. 79. There are only three things that mankind in general want, namely, satisfaction of the body, the other sex and lucre ; all the rest is nothing to them. 80. A noble soul finds no companions in its pilgrim- age through life; it simply has to make its travels alone, 81. Whenever weary, disappointed or disgusted with men and things in general, he still had left an inward consolation that made him feel like a better and more innocent man, than if he took a part in the search after wealth, politics or familiar intercourse with his fellow men. HE IS BY NATURE BASE. 199 82. Not even the anointed escape the vituperations of the world. 83. All men are very thoughtful as to whether they are considered popular, rich or shrewd, but it annoys the peace of very few men as to whether they are con- sidered honest and upright in character. 84. A man always talking well of his fellow men is a more dangerous man than one who is always talking evil of them. 85. People of fashion use that as show and ornament, which, if necessity required them to use in their daily life, they would condemn. What excellent means such people themselves are to warn us as to our rela- tions with them ! 86. At the masquerades they have what they call fools, who pretend to act as such ; this is superfluous, since any man who will make pretence to folly must ipso facto be a fool. 87. "If I have said to corruption, Thou art my fath- er; to the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister; where then is my hope t 77 * It is in this sense of cor- ruption and sin that is in the human blood, that all great thinkers have regarded the human family= * job. xvii, 14. CHAPTER III. THE CONSCIENCE. 1. Some ancient philosopher says that what a man is not ashamed to do, he should not be ashamed to have known, going on the principle that the shame does not lie in its being known, but it lies in the con- science — the guilty character of the individual him- self. This is entirely correct so far as the individual himself is concerned; but so far as the welfare, the decorum and propriety , of a community are concerned, it is highly necessary to keep that a secret that would otherwise act as a bad example for others. A man and woman will never commit adultery in the public streets, even though their conscience does sting them, and they know that it is generally known that they lead an adulterous life. What are matters, therefore, of the conscience are not always required to be known, even of the most conscientious man, because to have them known is probably a greater damage to the general welfare and himself than a benefit to either. 2, So great is the compunction in regard to having committed a crime or an immoral act, especially when the world is cognizant of it, that, in some cases, it causes the body to undergo a complete change, that is, from life to death, by suicide or through grief. This is possible only of an intelligent being. In such 200 THE CONSCIENCE. 201 a case the unfortunate being feels that he can no longer exist even as an organic existence, 3. What we call conscience in regard to having committed a crime or in regard to our misconduct to others, is nothing else than the self rebuke that we find with our faults, as elation is when we feel that we have done something good or great; they both arise from the fact that man has been taught from his infancy that what is bad is detrimental, and what is good is advantageous to his fellow men ; though this conception arises clearly only in the mind of a thinker, ordinary men and children know it only from precepts, and their knowledge is therefore only secondary, and they can therefore give no reason why a law, for in- stance, must be obeyed. This is the reason why per- sons entirely ignorant of the fundamental principles of a state, have a weaker sting of the conscience. 4. Eight is enforced by might only ; it has no power of itself to make itself prevail. The conscience serves as a governor and judge, and may control, in many cases, the individual sufficiently to make him do that which he ought to do. But man is not a being that does right merely because it is right to do so ; noth- ing but an exterior force will compel obedience— the sword and the prison 5. Self rebuke must be greater to the conscientious man than the rebuke of his fellow men, for an im- proper act This comes from the fact that the reform that a good man will undertake will always, as he X>robably knows himself, still fall short of the rebuke; hence it must be strong to accomplish anything at all. 202 A TREATISE ON MAN. 6. X had that fault about his character that most men have, namely, of repenting at their acts; but from his repentance never any reform was seen to follow. He simply had no conscience in him. CHAPTER IV, REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT. 1. In the man of high intelligence and long exper- ience in this life, accountability for an immoral or criminal act is well founded and established; his mind never thinks of questioning the right of punish- ment in a given case, arising from the fact that his high intelligence and long experience have taught him that retribution with man is a necessity. But with an individual lacking sufficient intelli- gence, there is no accountability felt for an improper act ; in such a case the punishment is meted out by the state or his fellow men without his being aware of the propriety of the punishment ; he simply submits, as the dog does to the lashes of his master c 2. Christ's principle that no one has a right to pun- ish (except for self-defence), is in every sense correct, and even for self-defence Christ will not allow punish- ment if an injury result to the aggressor, especially where the injury would be greater than the benefit derived by the victim. Even in cases of self-defence the person so defending himself feels, after the pas- sions have cooled, that he would probably not like to do it again under the same circumstances. But es- pecially does remorse come, unless the individual be wholy depraved, after a lapse of time where nothing has been gained for an act of defence; in some cases the individual even feels that he would have rather 203 204 A TREATISE ON MAN. taken the attack of the aggressor than to have defend- ed himself; so does the human heart rise against vengeance. 3. Every being, the state as well, has a right to de- stroy its opponent when in self-defence. But if the principle, that only he must be held accountable for his acts who has reason, were correct, the right of self- defence to the extent of killing the opponent could not exist, and yet no one doubts but that such a right does exist in a state of nature, and even law, excepting, probably, the law of morality. A man has a right to kill his opponent when in self-defence, ev&i though the latter be intoxicated, or be a woman or a child; one life is as dear as another to one's self. And now take the state, on whose existence depends the civilization of millions of subjects, and it is easily seen that to destroy the life of a single being (culprit) to keep this civilization preserved, is a mere trifle compared to the benefit that is to be derived from it; especially, when we consider that a king is justified in sacrificing the lives of thousands of human beings merely for the sake of preserving a particular form of government, as he in fact djes in wars. 4. There are three kinds of law to which man is answerable, those of nature, those of the state and those of morality ; the first concern him as an animal, the second as a citizen, the third as an intellectual being. The laws of nature are the most effective and receive the greatest obedience and submission directly, for thejr concern him as an existence, and to this end nature brings all her force to bear to cause compli- ance; it is of no consequence to her whether the other REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT. 205 two are so directly obeyed or not. In fact, they are all only natural laws. Next conies the law of the land, the written code. Here the object is the existence of the state. The state being an institution necessary for man to be able to assist, in part, his existence as an animal, its obedi- ence from him is limited, secondary, only so much as is consistent with the natural obedience. This law, belonging in part to the first kind and in part to the last kind, is partly natural and partly moral. The last, and the greatest, is the law of morality, the dictates of the conscience, which is always in pro- portion to the intellect; this law punishes all offenses against morality, against the state and against na- ture; the two last kinds are comprised in this, and whoever takes it as his guide will never be subject to either of the first two, and whoever violates either of the first two, and though he be punished by them, will also be held accountable to this, this not being two punishments for one offence, but only one, for the first two laws being only subordinate branches of the last. No offense whatever escapes this tribunal, there is no trifling with justice here, for all those offenses that escape the first two, will here be tried. The laws of the universe are moral laws, and not merely physical; consequently, every act that occurs, is subject to them. Eeligion and the different courts that judge of our acts are only based on these laws, and therefore are only subordinate institutions to morality. A moralist will therefore pass by a church with as much indiffer- ence as he would a house of correction, they being only the subordinate branches of the one (morality) that he has founded, and therefore have no application as to him j his God is this morality itself, his heaven is 206 A TREATISE ON MAN. the peaceful state of the conscience, and his hell is the stinging of the conscience; and whoever has not the first, will not have either of the two others, for they are only a result of the first. 5. As man is a mere means, as everything else, it is as consistent that he should lose his life through the state for a crime that he has committed, as it is that he should die a natural death; the committing the crime is not his act any more than his birth is; it is the act of nature that through her laws has compelled him to do it ; he does not stand under his own domin- ion, but under the dominion of nature. It is upon this principle, namely, that nature so wants it, that retri- bution is meted out, the state being only the machine for fulfilling the natural dictates. It follows from this, that morality is nothing in- dependent from nature herself ; it is not an institution that man is the originator of, consequently, to demon- strate it, is as difficult as metaphysics; it is a conse- quence of man, as such, as much as digestion of his food is a consequence of him considering him as an organic being. 6. The punishment that man suffers for his sins is endured during his sojouxn in this world; it would be unjust and only in accordance with the highest prin- ciples of tyranny, and therefore inconsistent with the idea of a God, that men like Christ have, to punish a man twice for the same offence. Even in this world, man suffers by far more directly for the offences that he does commit, than he receives a benefit from them ; besides, one offence brings on a train of others, which is of itself sufficient evil and punishment. REWARDS AXD PUNISHMENT. 207 Punishment inevitably follows where a sin or crime is committed, though it be not effected by visible ex- ternal force or authority, for it lies in the laws of na- ture to punish or reward in one way or other. So thor- oughly do mankind, instinctively as I would call it, feel the necessity of punishment for a crime that, even though it be not openly known, they will in many cases voluntarily disclose their own guilt. 7. For every crime and fault that man commits, he meets with its proper punishment, and every meritor- ious action meets with its proper reward in the author of it, in one way or other, and sooner or later. This is the natural justice, and in this natural justice lies the secret of the justice of all things created ; it is by virtue of it that they are brought into existence. The tribunal that administers justice in the creation of an insignificant worm, is the same tribunal that sits and judges of man's conduct as a member of the community in which he lives, executing its own pro- cess through its own created object, man, who pos- sesses the necessary functions for this purpose. 8. There is a law in the criminal code of nature, that he who cheats will in the end be cheated: thus we see, that men who have acquired their wealth by dishonest practices, either lose the whole estate in the end, or in particular transactions are imposed upon by one who is as shrewd as themselves. Eascality al- ways has its equal, especially when we consider that in this calling most men delight to excel. In those cases where an unjust act does not meet its proper punishment by the law of the land, nature takes the matter into hand, and does it in an indirect 208 A TREATISE ON MAN. way. Could we have an accounting at the end of a man's life of all the good and bad acts committed by him during his life, we would find that his account is equally balanced ; that, for every good act, he receiv- ed a proportionate benefit, and for every bad act a proportionate punishment ; if it could not be balanced, act for act, it would be that for the total amount of good, he received a total amount of benefit, and for the total amount of bad, he received a total amount of punishment. Bribery is out of the question here. a Eevenge is mine, says the Lord," is well founded, because the retributive justice that Christ everywhere recognized will sooner or later be meted out, would not be properly meted out by the individual who has been wronged, if it were left to him, because this would be allowing him to be his own judge, and he would therefore transcend his power, or, a man's for- giving nature would not, in certain cases, punish at all, and the ends of justice would thereby be defeated. Evidently justice leaves it to the victim to punish when in a particular case the circumstances are such as to compel him to deal according to its principles. 9. The state is indifferent as to the victim, it takes notice only of the offence, and that only so far as it has affected the dignity of the state ; the victim is only a means of leading to a proper punishment as to the offence. 10. If the victim demand why punish him for an act that he is not the author of, the only answer that can be given, is, that the punishment follows as necessarily as his crime did, because the laws of nature so demand it. We even find that it is true, that man must sub- REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT. 209 mit to punishment or loss of property, in many cases, without even being guilty directly of any criminal conduct. What answer can a general give, why he ordered a whole regiment of soldiers into battle to lose their own lives, against their own will, except- ing, because the country demanded it ? The criminal is no more answerable for committing the crime than the soldier is for the cause of war ; both become vic- tims for a higher good (the prosperity of the state ), and as this is of greater importance than the single existence of one being, he must yield, the same as an individual physically inferior must submit to one phys- ically superior. What excuse will a giant give for slaying a dwarf f What the ultimate end may be in nature in so ordering things, is not the question here ; nor could it be answered, if it were. 11. All people seeing that a man is sooner or later rewarded for his good acts, and prayers being only a consideration in return for the good that has been re- ceived, the ordinary man thinks that the good that is in him is owing to his prayers ; he does not see that it was nature that had created him good as much as it was nature that dictated to him that he must propa- gate, or eat or drink. A good man naturally feeling grateful because he has been created good, and thus has the advantage over most men, he, for this reason, offers up prayers. Lichtenberg says, the prayers fol- low from his good character, but the good character does not follow from the prayers. 12. Whatever we enjoy beyond the necessaries of life, we have to suffer for; this is true of all animals. 14 210 A TREATISE ON MAN. The general laws of nature as to propriety run through every existence, and any violation of them either in the individual himself, or from an exterior source, calls for retribution. The beggar, who receives from charity only such eatables as are necessary for his actual maintenance, is a more obedient subject to the natural laws than the sumptuous glutton ; the former lives in a manner to prolong his life; the latter lives in a manner to shorten it. 13. Only so far as our existence, either as natural beings or civilized beings is concerned, have we any- thing to employ us. To create or to preserve this existence we reward (create) that which is good, and to preserve this good we punish (destroy) that which is bad. 14. The accountability for an improper act lies in the fact that it is supposed to have been brought about by the intellect; the punishment follows because the act was brought about meditatively. It is not that the feeling exists to commit an unlawful act that accountability is called for, for feeling alone is a mat- ter of the heart. It is upon the principle that beasts have no reason, that they are not held accountable to the same extent as a rational being is. But might it not be claimed that the unlawful acts of most men rest on but very little more reason than those of the brute ? The desire to do an act that is improper, with the wish to commit it added to it, makes a man, morally, accountable in the same manner as if he had actually REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT. 211 committed it.* But the mere desire to do an improp- er act, which is meditatively conquered, does not lead to punishment, because here the mind gloriously shows itself to be innocent. 15. Christ always forgave, upon the principle that the act not being able to be recalled, the best next way was to clear the way for a better future course, by as- suring the offender that the present offense should be no obstacle to a reformation. He would punish only where reformation was out of the question, and where the offender misused his mercy. To forgive should be as cautiously practiced as punishment, for to forgive where it will have no benefit, is to add to the present danger, for it gives the offender to understand that his acts will meet with no more punishment in the fu- ture than the present one did; this is even a more dangerous course than where the offender is over- punished for his acts. There are more criminals made by affection, than by a state of indifference or even hatred. 16. The moral character and degree of intelligence having been fixed and determined by notice in every being, without questioning the individual himself, the two come under and are subject to the same principles, respectively, of praise or vituperation ; this is because they both have great consequences, a moral character and wisdom in advancing, and an immoral character and folly in destroying the principles on which civiliza- tion rests. But as long as the character or the intel- lect is not active, neither praise nor vituperation can * Matthew v, 28. 212 A TREATISE ON MAN. be meted out, because neither the one nor the other has done any good or any bad. 17. If Schopenhauer be correct, which he very prob- ably is, in saying that, when men do justice towards one another voluntarily, it rests on the principle of sympathy for one another, for they feel that they are all one, and that therefore they are only doing what they owe to themselves, then it also follows that there- morse that a man has at an improper act of his own, rests on the same principle — he feels that he has done himself the injury. 18. The reason why an offense that is left unreveng- ed, punishes the offender more than if revenged, is because now the conscience can act on the offender, his thoughts being taken up with nothing else; but if revenge be meted out against him, his thoughts are taken up with counter-revenge, and now believes that his victim is entitled to no mercy, since he sees that he too will do an injury. 19. From the fact that man since he has been civi- lized, has found it necessary to reward what is good and great, and punish what is bad and evil, men feel that honor should be bestowed when a good act is done T and punishment meted out when a bad one is done; hence the disappointment if their good acts be not recognized. But not so is it with the Genius; he does not do good and great things to be able to obtain praise ; but he does them because it is his nature so to act ; it is a duty with him ; he therefore seeks the side and unfrequented streets where there will be no one to hail him and over-load him with praises ; he REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT. 213 feels that this would be bestowing on him what he is not entitled to, he having acted as he did act because he could not have acted otherwise. On the same prin- ciple, he does not punish the poor offender ; he rather gives him his pity and humanity, for he feels that this poor fellow also acted as he did act, because he could not have acted otherwise. It is on the same principle, namely, that a man's not being the author of his own acts, and that for the good that he does do in one way or other, he will also suffi- ciently otherwise receive full compensation, his fellow men never erect a statue to him during his life-time, but they erect it to his memory, nor do they write his biography until he has passed away; honor is not done to the man himself, but to the good and great cause that he only represented. Dr. Johnson once having occasion to be in the work-shop of a carpenter, the latter undertook to show and explain to him cer- tain things relating to his craft; and having afterwards been reminded by one of his friends how even a com- mon workman had honored him, he said that the com- pliment was shown to literature, not to himself. It is only the common mass of people who never as- sist man to rise from his brute state, because they them- selves have more or less of this state still about them, who never founded a state, because they had no moral system to base it on, and who therefore never did and never will understand on what principles reward and punishment rest, that are the ones that misuse and abuse their power of rewarding or punishing, and that are always complaining when their own good acts arc left unnoticed, or the bad acts of others left unpunished. Take the whole English nobility, as an instance, and I suppose there is hardly a single one among them who 214: A TREATISE ON MAN. knows why he should have a star on his breast, and, for that reason alone, hardly a single one among them who is entitled to it. If the world has agreed that a man for his excellent services to the state should be rewarded with a dis- tinction of honor, if he be a true hero, he can not con- scientiously accept it, because these acts were the re- sult of the dictates of his nature as well as his dishon- orable ones would be. The most that he will be allow- ed to do is to accept it nominally, in order to encourage the good and the great, but not as a benefit to himself. It was in this sense that Christ accepted the ointment on his head, or that genuine heroes accept a title or a reward, but it is seldom that they avail themselves of it. Besides, the value of a title or reward coming from one who possesses nothing but the power to con- fer it, is mere filth compared to the heroic or intellec- tual services of a man who by them evinced that he stands far above the individual that gives it. But, also, the reason why a genuine and great man who might be entitled to some compensation will generally reject a title or reward, is because he knows he will be classified with those who are not entitled to it, and yet who have it. 20. The superior must always govern, whether it be superiority of body or of mind; it is upon this princi- ple that the stronger animal devours the weaker. - This is so in regard to all substances ; that substance that has the stronger properties, absorbs that which has the weaker properties. As there is a progression^ a continual operating, in nature, no animal or sub- stance could otherwise exist as such ; it would simply disappear and vanish, or at the most, remain in its REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT. 215 present state. So it is with the state ; if it did not devour its victims (culprits), it would vanish ; anarchy would take its place. 21. Punishment is meted out to men only so far as it is necessary to preserve the state, and as the preserva- tion of society is the preservation of the state, moral laws are necessary. But as everything must have its boundaries, vengeance has its counterpart in human- ity, otherwise it would take the form of revenge, and this would frustrate the aim of justice — preservation of the state. The lower animal, which follows the direct laws of nature, and therefore recognizes all its acts as being in order, does not avenge as man does, consequently, it has no need for humanity. 22. The fact that in one age there is more depravity than in another, arises from the fact that the laws are not properly executed, or it has been the misfortune of such an age to have more scoundrels than other ages; but it is not owing to any fact that the moral character is a different one from what it is in other ages. When the head of a government is depraved, the mass of the people will also become depraved generally, for there is nothing so deductive *for the commoa man to commit a bad act as it is when he sees that his sur- perior commits the same act. The moral teachings of great men reach only a few; but if the monarch be moral, and strictly carry out his laws, then it will have its good effect on the nation, and this is doubtless the best practical effect and in- fluence that can be exercised over the mass of the people. 216 A TREATISE ON MAN. 23. The temptations to do evil are always greater than those to do good. Only where one sees it is to his benefit to do good, will he do good; but as the struggle for existence, whose propensities are those of an animal, is more powerful than the intellect is, the great difficulty lies in getting the individual to see what is really good for him. 24. An individual who possesses no sympathy, and therefore commits acts that are injurious to his fellow men, but which probably can not be reached by the law, should be instructed and reformed. If this fail, excepting with children, I know of no authority to punish him actively; it must be done passively — by avoiding him. 25. An act that now occurs from necessity by which another is damaged, will, sooner or later, be met by one, also coming from necessity, that will set it right again. The wheel of nature turns perpetually, and there is therefore no escape for the wicked part of us from punishment, and no danger that the good part of us will be without reward. Christ therefore, than whom no man ever better knew the effects of mor- ality, so beautifully says " So the last shall be first, and the first last." * Herein probably lies the greatest consolation of the justice of all things that man in his misfortunes can have, and at the same time shows how inevitably the laws of nature work. 26. The harlot instinctively feels the necessity of being one. When I see a woman voluntarily abandon * Matthew xx, 16. REWAEDS AND PUNISHMENT. 217 a respectable mode of life, and willingly submit to the contempt that the world hurls at her, I can not but feel that there is a purpose here, however degrading it may be to man as a moral being. Nature creates everything with proper functions to perform its duties, and it is therefore that every other being is as posi- tively allotted to his position in the state as the statesman is in his cabinet. The soldier must sacrifice his life for the state ; it is demanded of the hero that he willingly submit to death if the prosperity of the state require it, how shocking soever it may appear to humanity. Now why not other means to reach, indirectly, the same end ? In the state all existences that are merely physical, must yield and be sacrificed for the benefit of the intellectual. 27. On what principle does it rest in nature, that certain lower animals^ such as the elephant and camel, avenge or revenge themselves for an injury done them? It is on the same principle as that of man, when he punishes for a private offence against himself or for one against the state. Jurists are at a loss to ac- count for the punishment that they mete out against an offender that appears before them; it is probably therefore also more or less instinctive with them, as it is with the elephant and camel. Does the lowest brute of the human family know why he gives you a blow when you take his loaf of bread, any more than the elephant does when you misuse him? The statesman lays out certain punishments for certain offences, because, so much as he is animal, he possess- es the same instinctive punishment, and, so much as he is man, he sees by his intellect the necessity of pun- 218 A TREATISE ON MAN. ishnient if the state is to exist. To maintain that it is something inspired, or that it is man's abstract reason- ing that establishes it, is nothing but an abortive and bastard outgrowth of religion, never warranted by Christ himself, who everywhere seems to recognize that everything that occurs is amply provided for, and occurs independent of man, he being but subject to the necessity of things himself. So Buddha teaches that sooner or later the bad meets with its punishment and the good with its reward ; that our acts stand in con- nection and are a part of the acts of the whole universe. 28. If punishment and reward depended upon man, what a miserable world this would be ! The man, for instance, that is the greatest ornament to his race — the moralist— is the man that is most disrespected by even those whom he has come to serve morally; he is the last man that is considered a benefactor to his race, and he is the man that is most subject to the devilish annoyances and abuses of his fellow men. Who was it that gave his whole life for the benefit of his fellow men, and yet who was it that suffered most from the hands of those very fellow men ? No, such a victim does not expect that a race that can so abuse what is great and good when it is held directly before their eyes, can either be capable of setting such a state of things right again; he feels that there is a higher power that has an object in all this ; that this is only its means, and that keeping this same object in view, it will bring about an opposite state of things — a means also. 29. The reason that a sick or otherwise helpless man receives the assistance and protection of his fel- REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT. 219 low men, although he be a man that is otherwise con- temned and despised, is because he is entitled to compensation for his suffering ; when his suffering is very great, and he willingly submits, it has something heroic in it, and he is therefore entitled to even re- ward and honor. There is a submission and indiffer- ence to pain that brutes also disclose, which is often but this is not heroic. 30. Acts that are private and intended for the bene- fit of the individual himself, but which are of a good character, such as industry in business, for instance, are always praiseworthy, because they set a good ex- ample for others, and keep the individual himself, for the time at least, out of vice and evil. An honest, in- dustrious, hard-working man, he who plies his trade in earnest, and without avarice, has always an appear- ance of respect about him, even though all that his labors yield him scantily is absorbed by himself, for one feels that his integrity is a good example for the youth growing up around him; besides, it impresses one that if such a man is faithful to himself, he will be faithful also to the rest of mankind. 31. The reason why an insult, offense or other mis- fortune, if not heeded at the time that it occurs, does not affect us afterwards, is because the mind considers that if it did not affect us at the time that it occurred, it must evidently be of no consequence. And this is the proper way of treating the common offenses in a man's life, because it brings about great peace of mind, and prevents an injury being done in return, to the offender, who probably has since repented of his act. Only such offenses as may result in a future damage, 220 A TREATISE ON MAN. should be taken notice of, and then only to the extent of avoiding the damage. 32. He cared not a fig when his friends reminded him that his coat was a fine one, but, as it is so excep- tional that not one man in ten thousand can say the same, he did rejoice in his soul, when they reminded him that he was an honest man, because an honest man is the noblest work of God, as Pope beautifully says. 33. As Christianity, Buddhism and moralists teach it, life itself is a sin ; hence the manifold sufferings. If our existence were in order morally, why should a man be insulted or offended by one to whom he did no evil or injury, in fact, probably, whom he has never before seen ? Is it not that the offender, seeing that his victim is a human being, from this concludes that he therefore sins, and thus, instinctively feeling that he is to be the avenger, punishes him for his sinful nature? As everything is in order, according to natural principles, why should not this insult, this offense, also be in order ? how could it otherwise occur ? it certainly has reference to something that is in the victim, that deserves it. CHAPTER V. KELIGION. 1. Philosophy always remains what it is; the phi- losophy taught by Plato is the philosophy taught by the Genius of to-day ; wisdom never changes ; in all ages and all countries it is the same. But it is not so with religion; this changes every century or two, somtimes oftener, and is different in different countries. Even the manner of governing a state is nearly the same in different countries, and justice is administered nearly in the same manner, so that the person and property of a Chinaman is as well protected in Amer- ica as it is in China, and vice versa. But as they are different nations, so do they have different relig- ions. Now, among such a variety of different creeds and sects, which can be said to be the true one? They all have more or less able supporters, and the truth there- fore is, that every one is correct for its particular clime and particular people, but not any particular one to be preferred above all the rest. The peculiarity of a religion to a particular country simply arises from ne- cessity and prejudices; it is not that there is any par- ticular or special wisdom in that particular creed, but it is because the adherents of it have so been reared and instructed; and as there is nothing so foolish and absurd, but that it can be imposed upon the vulgar, especially when the imposition is begun in infancy, it is very plain how one man will maintain the correct- 221 222 A TREATISE ON MAN. ness of the principles of his religion with obstinacy against those of his opponent. But Christianity, Buddhism and Brahminism claim the universal admiration of philosophers to the extent that they partake of wisdom. Christ was a philosopher and a mendicant as those of the East, and is there- fore revered by all men whether they be religious or philosophical. But strong as Christ's religion, as it is called, may have taken hold, it must suffer the vicis- situdes that all doctrines suffer that Kant proves can not be demonstrated, for it is confined to its particular teachings, and therefore applicable only to Europeans and Americans. It is not so with his morality ; that is applicable in the whole Orient as well as in the whole Occident. His religious teachings, even as he himself main- tains them, are of so general a character as to be con- sistent with morality; but as his religion is now taught and become divided and subdivided, to the extent even that wars and revolutions, especially individual persecutions, have occurred from mere forms and cere* monies, thus neglecting and ignoring its genuine spirit, its own adherents and followers have become his greatest falsifiers and enemies, for the antagonis- tic attitude that they assume towards one another, their pharisaical hypocrisy and observance of the Sab- bath, their converting his religion into a means of busi- ness and politics, are precisely in letter and in spirit what he contended against. 2. All of man's institutions, such as religion, politics and morality, are not as reliable as nature's institutions j their origin is generally grand and noble, but in order that man do not leave his original state, nature com- RELIGION. 223 pels them to undergo a continual change as well as everything else ; and in order to reach this end in re- ligion, she produces the worst kind of hypocrites, both to stand behind the pulpit and to sit in the pew; in politics she reaches this end by letting the worst demagogues get hold of the reins of government, and in ethics, by placing the worst sophists on the cathe- dra; and for this purpose no better material could be found. 3. All that part of the teachings of Christ that has anything of the divine and supernatural in it, should be taken in an allegorical sense, as Schopenhauer says. When, for instance Christ represents himself as the representative of God, he means that he is the repre- sentative of morality ; he takes God as his figure of representation in order to make it clearer to the un- lettered multitude, and thereby makes a stronger im- pression on them than if he used the word morality, since the word God imposes greater fear and rever- ence; merely to teach something that is human, would cause no more heed to be given to it than he himself received honors in the place of his birth, for there they knew him only as a human being. Besides, we should consider how unreliable the au- thorities through which we know anything of the man, really are, and we can, therefore, not safely assume even that he did actually represent himself as the vicegerent of God either in reality or allegorically, or that he ever claimed to have in fact performed a miracle. The great misfortune of the teachings of this man is, that they fell into religious hands; the church, which is always an unreliable source of truth, was thus in a condition to make them correspond 224 A TREATISE ON MAN. with the prophecies of the Old Testament. How much purer and more edifying would they probably not appear, had his history and teachings fallen into the hands of some honest and learned compiler, to deliver them to us, as the writings of those great men do, who have had the better fortune of finding admir- ers devoted to truth and wisdom rather than to the egotistic views of a particular religion. 4. The Christian church has always been on the ag- gressive, evidently arising from the condition of its own weakness ; it has from the earliest ages attacked and persecuted every man of genius that has not seen fit to adhere to its doctrines. Its followers speak of the persecution that it had to suffer in the first centu- ries, and condemn and execrate everything under the Boinan empire that resisted its progress, but do not see that, in the same manner as they were resisted, they themselves resisted all progress of philosophy that threatened in any wise to overthrow their fabric, for no sooner had the Christian religion obtained the temporal power in Europe, than they resorted to perse- cutions that sometimes beggar description. After the reformation, the Protestant religion pursued a milder course, to be able to obtain a foot-hold, and as long as its founder's influence lasted. Bat were it not for the strides that science has taken since the time of Bacon, the bigoted followers of the church would com- pel religious observance in this age, as we see that a part of them still, although a disgrace to their master, make efforts to force the observance of the Jewish Sab- bath on every man. In fact, the one would overthrow the other if possible, so do they quarrel amongst them selves. Christ and Buddha were both tolerant, and RELIGION. 225 never forced their doctrines on any man; so was Luther ; with them religion was a matter of the con- science ; with them wisdom was a blessing, no matter in what form it came. 5. Every being and every institution has its faults and errors ; to deny this is simply to bring under still greater doubt, the excellences of such a being or in- stitution. In the whole history of Christ, there is not a blemish or a fault attributed to him, although he himself confessed a more or less erring nature ; either his historians did not know his true biography, which is probable, or their prejudice and dishonesty were too great to admit what was palpable, which too is proba- ble. So also theologians will not admit of any error or fault in their creed, which is of itself sufficient to cause suspicion in the minds of its followers ; it is this unyielding stubbornness as to the complete perfection of Christ and his church, that causes even the most common mind to hesitate, and it can never succeed in bringing over the people of the Orient as its followers. 6. The theologians are not strict teachers of moral- ity ; they use their religion to threaten their adherents with punishment if they do not live virtuously, and promise them rewards if they live virtuously. In other words, religion is used as a terror and a fool's paradise. Instead of using moral instruction to their followers, and showing them how virtue leads to the greatest happiness of a man's life, and vice to his ruin and destruction, they use nothing but threats and promises, which serve to some purpose as long as people will allow themselves to be treated as women 15 226 A TREATISE ON MAN. and children, on whom we use threats that can never be carried out, and promises that can never he kept. To appeal to a man's reason, such as he may have, and base the punishment of a vice and the reward of virtue on that, will last as long as this reason lasts, and, although he will more or less deviate from the correct course, yet he will always return to it, because he finds it based on wisdom, unless he be a man whol- ly depraved and entirely beyond the reach of salva- tion, in which case mere threats will have a still less effect. To compel a man to act virtuously by invoking supernatural powers, fails of its desired effect either because it can not be comprehended, or because it is afterwards ascertained that the whole theory is noth- ing but a pious fraud. It may be that these gentle- men are better versed from experience in what manner the human family is best governed, whether by fraud and deceit or by wholesome teachings based on wis- dom, and therefore give them what they believe is most conducive to their welfare, as Solon gave the Atheni- ans not the best laws, but such as were best suited for them, as he said, and thus do as despots do, namely, not govern their people on principles of abstract law, but by threats of superior physical force. But as for myself, I feel as Schopenhauer did, namely, that not much good can be expected from that which is false and wilfully based on erroneous principles. I agree with the theologians, in regarding the human family as con- sisting chiefly of children, with whom one can not accomplish much by reasoning with them, and there- fore, generally speaking, they should probably simply be made to do a thing without appealing to the little reason that they do possess. But I never did believe that any such structure could stand any longer than RELIGION. 227 they could be blindfolded and kept in ignorance ; and this is certainly not very long, for we find that all religions based on supernatural principles do not live many centuries. 7. Alexander said, to cut means to untie, in regard to the Gordian knot. He knew that with the common class of mankind it was not a matter of truth in ob- taining their faith and confidence, it was simply a matter of telling them that it was so, and therefore cutting meant untying. The founder of a religion sees the necessity of estab- lishing a creed, and, feeling that his aim is for the good of mankind, he thinks himself justified to use such means as will reach it; knowing the incapacity of the ordinary man to reason on a subject so sublime, he does not enter into discussion or argument with his disciple, who is to become his adherent, as to its wis- dom; he simply lays his principles down as establish- ed, to be categorically followed and obeyed. Furthermore, to give them better entrance, by inspir- ing fear and respect, he maintains to the ignorant and believing multidude that he receives them through divine interposition, which may be true, if taken alle- gorically. As the decrees of a court of judicature or the man- dates of a king are not to be questioned, whether they be founded on reason or folly, so does the man of superior learning and ability impose and enforce his principles. Could the believer look behind the curtain, he would wholly reject the theory because of the im- position practiced on his understanding ; his disgust at having himself regarded as a man incapable of rea- soning would be so great that it would now become 228 A TREATISE ON MAN. contempt, which before was credulity, as it would have been with the common soldier had he been able to see what the word untying meant with Alexander. The Eoman church has best understood this means of imposing belief, namely, by not letting its adherents look where, if they did look, they might see something. Such strategies may be justified in politics, where it is impossible to leave the reason of an undertaking to every subject, because there would be no unity suffi- cient to carry out the project, but as to religious and moral salvation, the founder of the Christian church left it to every man's own conscience. Although he might have maintained, that his doctrines were more than what was ordinarally human, by this he meant that they bore a similarity to divinity ; he used no arts, strategies, fraud or imposition to cause adherence; force was the last thing that he thought of. In all great monarchs, although they demand blind adher- ence in matters of politics or war, yet in this the subject is a free being; as Frederick the Great said, in his country every man could seek his salvation in his own manner. 8. The oracles of the ancients were nothing but state machines, as religion is with the moderns ; they were undoubtedly instituted to incur respect and obe- dience to the state. In other words, the ancients felt the same necessity of imposing on the ignorance and credulity of the people, in order to control them, as the moderns do. 9. When a man becomes religious, as he calls it, it is because he sees social advantages, progress iu busi- ness, honor, respect, etc., that follow from it. But tell RELIGION. 220 him that, to be a true Christian, his lot will be some- what similar to that of Christ and of his apostles, and not even threats of punishment can force him into it. Mankind are not sufficiently given to truth and the love of virtue to be contented and die for its sake; so seldom does this occur, that when it does in fact hap- pen, it entitles the hero to immortality. To pay church dues without receiving a material profit in return, is not sufficient for the pious Sabbath observer; from the church dues that he pays, he ex- pects the increase of his purse, soft bed, good meals, etc. Let Christ see how he carries his heavy cross up steep Calvary as best he can. Such a man does well enough in his own conceit, but such a man is not a Christian. 10. Whether the resurrection that Christ preaches be not to take away the dread of death that the ordi- nary man has? To induce man to die, because this life is of no benefit, it might be very probable that Christ felt the necessity of giving something for that which he was taking away. Or did he mean the res- urrection in a physical sense, that is, that all beings again come into existence, under another form, as soon as they have left a previous one ? The man was too honest to be an impostor, and such of his teachings as have anything of the supernatural about them, supposing that he preached them at all, must always be taken in an allegorical sense, which he used as the best means of conveying his ideas, as he did his parables. 11. Hume says, that it is more in accordance with the moral character of human nature, that his histori ans should lie as to the miracles of Christ, than that 230 A TREATISE ON MAN. it is according to the laws of nature that they should have happened. This is the best answer that can be given. But Dr. Johnson answers that the divine power of Christ had been predicted and prophesied; by this he would say that not only have we the word of the Evangelists for the truth of their occurrence, but that the prophets had agreed centuries before that they could and would occur. And if the Evangelists can be supposed to be prejudiced enough to tell what never occurred, they can just as well be supposed to be pre- judiced enough to make their description of Christ entirely conform with the prophecies, in order to give them the better impression of truth, as we see that they are always careful to say that the occurrence took place just as it had been predicted. Excepting to a man fallen soul and body into the Jewish religion, the prophets themselves are nothing but religious moralists, who might have predicted the coming of a Christ to reform and liberate their people, who did then, as they do now, stand under the great- est contempt of all contemporary nations, and there- fore needed a redeemer most of all, and, in an allegor- ical sense, they vested him with supernatural powers. Besides all this, the Jews themselves maintain that the prophecies as told in the Old Testament, as to the coming of a Messiah, have not yet been verified. The Jews, as a people strictly adhering to their Old Testament and their traditions, did entirely right in rejecting Christ; he was not Jew sufficiently for them; he had too much of the fine moral feeling of the Greek, or as a follower of Gaudania would have; he did not punish as the Mosaic law enjoined, which he disap- proved of; he did not advise wars, seditions and the slaughtering of human beings to impose his religion RELIGION. 231 on his fellow men ; he preached resurrection and im- mortality, which he probably had through the Greeks or Egyptians, for he could not find in the Old Testa- ment anything but that man came from nothing and would go to nothing, which was abhorrent to him; he preached truth whether it was in accordance with the Old Testament or Jewish traditions or not, and no- where confined his theories to those of the Jews mere- ly to be able to have them agree with theirs. 12. As the Old Testament states it, the Sabbath shall be a day of rest, to recover the body from the work of the previous days of the week. Sow, as a day of rest, as a day the most desirable and welcome, the Mosaic law teaches that this day shall be regarded in the same manner as if it had something holy in it, and on that day man can feast and rest, for which it is more used than as a day of worship even by the most superstitious fanatic. It was not at all intended to convey tlie sense, by the Mosaic law, that this day actually had something holy in it. Besides, Saturday is the Sabbath of the Bible, and not Sunday, and therefore the injunctions of the Bible as to sabbath has no meaning as to the first day of the week, but only as to the last, because it is the resting day. Under such a construction, which is the only correct one, the greatest bigot can take as his day of worship any other day of the week, wholly disregard Sunday as a special day of holiness, and nevertheless be en- tirely in conformity with the Bible as to properly worshiping his God. In this sense it is that Christ regarded the Sabbath, as we see that he preached and worshiped on any other day of the week as well as the Sabbath; besides 232 A TREATISE ON MAN. his extreme contempt for the Pharisee, whom we have still in our midst, and to whom, when he visits his house of worship in his frock, under the pretence of sanctity and holiness, without daring to give the world an account of his moral character, but pre- sumptuous enough to denounce the just man who honestly plies his trade on a Sunday, Christ would apply the epithet that he did to the money-changers in the TemjDle, and would reject him with scorn as a Pharisee, as one whose religion lies in nothing but outward ceremony. Christ himself does not appear to have enjoined any particular day as being more sacred than the others for religious worship. 13. The English are the greatest idolaters of the Sabbath of any people in existence, to eradicate which disgrace from a people of enlightenment, Schopen- hauer has justly laid his lash unmercifully on them. Even in this country, the states have their so called Sunday laws ( a mere dead letter and not observed in the cities ); although they may be outwardly based on conventional principles, taking Sunday as a day of rest and not as arising from any religious influence, yet it is this same Sabbath superstition that is in fact the cause of their enactment, and, on either principle, are entirely derogatory to the spirit of our form of govern- ment. By the deception, namely, that it is a day of rest, does the church succeed in obtaining from the legislature what is an open violation of the constitu- tion of the United States. But it is like every measure that is based on blind and stupid bigotry and fanatic- ism; it leads to a greater violation of public laws and an incitement to disorder ; for although the mass of mankind are blind and superstitious, and who can RELIGION. 233 be imposed upon as long as anything is not detrimen- tal to their private interests, yet let it reach that height that it ruins their practical advantages, and in- fringes on their rights as free human beings, and any laws either legislative or religious to enforce such measures, are simply not observed, and if violence be used to enforce them, they Trill be resisted by counter- force still greater, as would occur at an earlier or later date if the state, at the command of the church, undertook to enforce strictly the law relating to the observance of Sunday. 14. As the scientist and philosopher look at the creation of the universe, namely, that they are brought into life, and then destroyed by death ; that it exists for the one as well as for the other; that nature has her object and not man ; agrees and is consistent with the principles of all thinkers of all ages and of all countries. But with the Jewish religion God proceeds to create all beings, such as birds of the air, beasts of the forest and fishes of the sea, etc ; thus far it is all well; it shows good workmanship ; then, it seems, having exhausted his best material, he makes a being which is said to resemble himself, but is in fact one- twentieth god and nineteen-twentieths beast and brute. Finding that there was something wrong, he tries to make it good by creating a womb-man, formed partly out of this god and beast combined, and partly out of nothing, so that what was wanting in the god and beast combined, might be set right by the influence of this secondary man; but seeing that things were al- ways getting worse, he simply had to cease from his labors. 234 A TREATISE ON MAN. This is the Jewish account of things. In all coun- tries where the Jewish religion is not prevalent, al- though they too may have their dogmatic faith, their religion, I dare say, is more in accordance with the di- rect laws of nature, recognizing the necessary connec- tion that there is between man and all the rest of nature's productions, and not that man is a self- existing being, free from fate by the special will and favor of an Almighty, who creates things out of nothing, as Schopenhauer laughs at it. Neither, besides, do I know of any religion that un- dertakes to so particularly describe the creation of the universe ; it certainly evinces great ignorance. 15. The Devil has control of things in this world, as Christ knew, and therefore the necessity of his com- ing. As for those men who did and may occasionally still exist in whom there is true morality, I find that they inevitably reject the attributes of an Almighty as he is taught by the Christian religion ; they do not have faith sufficient in him to rely on to be able to save themselves morally. There is therefore no mere passive reliance on an Almighty, for a man to be able to save himself from perdition. Man should subdue the Devil himself, for here lies his only salvation, and then he will in fact be a moral being, and will need no farther ceremonies. The being of an Almighty is a sublime figure, and well adapted for the unthinking class, but beneficence in this world is too little seen by those who see far, to justify relying on his attributes; ' he is very beautiful in certain respects, as an exam- ple of goodness and greatness, but in practice he is less applicable than the Republics of Plato and More are in politics. When mankind cease to be beasts, such RELIGION. 235 divine institutions are feasible; but from all present appearances, the bad will continue to control the good, and every individual should rely on strengthening his own resources for evicting the evil genius from his heart. It is by virtue of his own struggles that every hero is such ; without them all the smiles of a mighty monarch could not make him such. And so it is with one's own salvation. 16. The theories of a God and immortality of the soul are not at all results of the vulgar mind, whose thoughts are fixed to this world; they are the produc- tions of men who sought to raise the human family from this sinful place of abode to a region of innocence and bliss. They took their rise from the fact that some- thing greater and better than what was to be found here, was wanting for him whose angelical desires could not be supplied in this world. The really good and great man feels that, as compensation, there ought to be some being above earth with whom he can com- municate, and some place where the labors that he has had for the whole human family in trying to reform it, will cease. The being of a God with the attributes of omni- science, omnipresence and omnipotence, is a thought of which the vulgar mind can have no adequate com- prehension, and therefore it is to be conveyed to the common people in an allegorical sense, as Christ used his parables to make his teachings understood. With the moralist it serves as a model to be imitated as near as the power of man will allow; it is an image of in- spiring respect and reverence. 3Ian himself, with all his bodily weaknesses of concupiscence, avarice, glut- tony, murder, theft, etc., is not a sufficiently moral 236 A TREATISE ON MAN. example; not even Christ would answer the purpose. As Socrates had his demon by which to be guided, so do mankind require the allegory of a superhuman being to direct it. 17. In consequence of the state, it has become nec- essary that every individual should answer for his con- duct to a superior, and from this has arisen the idea of a God. In the state the subject is answerable to the king, and, according to the doctrine of the middle ages, when religion dictated principles of state, the king is answerable to God. It is the same with the words "Maker" and "Cre- ator", which have arisen from the fact that man himself is a maker and a creator ; man always makes an analogy between himself and what is outside of himself. For instance, Helvetius says, that when an astronomer let a young unmarried woman view in his telescope the shadows of the two principal objects in the moon, she immediately drew the conclusion that they resembled the shadows of two lovers standing near each other, and when he let a priest view the same shadows, he immediately remarked that they resembled the shadows of two steeples of a church. 18. If all mankind were to simultaneously rise from a sleep, having slept out of existence all the ideas, knowledge and prejudices that they before professed, there would not be a single individual of all of them that would, immediately after rising, advance ideas of a God or of the immortality of the soul as they ape now taught. A mind that is free from all superstitions and the dogmas impregnated into it from childhood, will draw conclusions only from those things immedi- RELIGION. 237 ately surrounding it. The greatest experience in the objects immediately surrounding the greatest mind, could not warrant the conclusion of a living God as he is taught ; this could, at the best, only be done by drawing an analogy between the works of nature and those of man. But this even would only prove a designer or creator, not a living God. Man, as every other being of at least some intelli- gence, always conscientiously feels that there must be something superior to himself, because he knows that he is not the creator of himself. Besides, it is an un- erring instinct that makes every animal respect that which it feels is superior to itself, even though it be against its own inclination. And it is out of this that man feels that he owes adoration to a being, call it what you will, that is the cause of his own creation, and the preserver of his own existence. There has no creature yet existed that has not looked with awe and reverence to the irresistible power that controls us ; a threatening storm at sea will make the knee of the roughest sailor bend. The two ideas of God and the soul arose in the hu- man intellect only after ages of gradual instruction and cultivation of the father to the son, and as the mind draws its conclusions from that which surrounds it and is next to it, so does every child now grow up with them, simply taking them for granted, as much as he does the fashions, customs and manners of his age and country. The church-going of his fellow men, and the mere custom of its being generally recognized, are powerful enough with the common mind to silence any opposition. 19. Among all nations there are certain rules of life 238 A TREATISE ON MAN. as to religion or morality that are so established from length of time, that they- are regarded by such nations as divine and supernatural laws, and a violation of them meets with the indignation of the whole nation. Upon close examination, we generally find that at a remote period there existed among such nations a wise and learned law-giver, and that either he represented that his laws came from the divinity, in order to cause greater obedience and veneration, or that the people themselves regarded him as something supernatural, standing so high above themselves, or, because, as it is with wine, the older they grew, the better qualities such laws were supposed to possess. 20. As man and many of the lower animals have a ruler, a chief, it is also natural and would follow that they should both, even instinctively, have some con- ception, more or less strong, of a necessary being greater and sublimer than themselves, for they all feel that some superior power or other must exist to enable themselves to come into existence. Now, as civilization became more developed, and all the principles of a particular state became more subtile from abstract reasoning, this Being in the same manner as the earthly ruler, also became more sublime in his attributes in the eyes of mankind. 21. The soul, with its rewards and punishments, is a theory to impress on the human mind the fact that the good meets with its compensation, and the bad with its vengeance, and the latter should therefore be ab- horred as the former is to be encouraged ; mere human rewards and punishments not being a sufficient incite- ment or dread for the practice of the one, or the ab- RELIGION. 239 staining from the other. It shows the actual presence of morality. These two allegories, of God and the soul, are there- fore no more to be scorned or rejected by the most atheistical mind, than are the Eepublics of Plato and More by the most monarchical statesman. Even though, as Kant says, their existence can not in fact be demonstrated, they serve as assumptions on which to base our theory of morality until a better can be established. They were not brought forward by mere theologians, and therefore do not belong originally to religion, as such, but are the results of minds that built higher and firmer than any founder of a mere religious creed does; they certainly are nothing that the Christain religion can exclusively claim for itself. Philosophers who have no religion, as such, gener- ally accept, in one sense or other, a God and a soul ; they existed and still exist with thinkers of countries that have hardly any resemblance in any of their moral institutions with the European religions. That there should such a resemblance exist in the minds of men of different ages and different countries as to a God and the soul, arises from the necessity of such an idealistic theory on which to base man's moral conduct in this world, the religious part being con- fined to each particular country as their legal forms are. A God, in one form or other, can be said to be as necessary for civilized man as a king is, hence the same similarity as there is between earthly rulers of different nations. 22. But the evil lies, not in the ideas of God and the soul, but in theology that has undertaken to make other images of them than those they were originally 240 A TREATISE ON MAN. intended for; the church is continually using the old Testament as an authority in preaching that God is a jealous god; that he visits with the most brutal vengeance any lack of respect towards him as the giv- er of everything that is great and good, ( without be- ing answerable for the vicious part ), or for the viola- tion of any of his commandments ; that when it suits his whim and humor, he slays thousands of human beings, who are said to be his favorite creatures, with- out any cause but that he so desires it, all of which, like others of the same kind, are teachings that Christ himself never approved, for he accepted God as a be- ing that forgives when repentance shows itself, and only punishes when there is no hope for repentance. Christ forgave his own persecutors and slayers with- out its being even solicited. Nothing so angelical is to be found in any God that is taken from the Old Testament. As Christ's own theory of morality has been turned and twisted to answer the purposes of daily uses and aims, so have the theories of a God and the soul been distorted and abused. Not such ideas as the old Testament teaches, could Pythagoras, Plato and his followers, Aristotle and his followers, not even Christ, who was born a Jew, and his true followers, such as Paul, have had of the term God ; consequently we find that Christ and Paul seem to have entirely ignor- ed the Jews 7 Jehovah ; he suited the Jew, but could not answer the aims of a man who was something more than Jew. 23. As the Old Testament teaches it, the Jewish religion is a very common one; it is fit for animals, not men. It says that man, the animal, shall increase RELIGION. 24:1 and multiply, thereby encouraging the beast part of man, not his morals. Xo other religion, to my know- ledge, teaches the like. It is not astonishing that the moral Jesus should reject such a religion. 24. It must rest on the fact that the Jews in the time of Moses stood under the same contempt that they do now, that, in order to have some standing as human beings, they assumed to themselves the divine preference of being the chosen people of God. How if God, in the whole list of his human family, could make no better choice ( for there must have ex- isted nations in those ages that were far superior to the Jews), or had no patience to wait until a people did come into existence who would be more suited for a divine choice, it is bad evidence of the correctness of his judgment. Properly speaking, the whole religion taught in the Old Testament is a religion that was founded exclu- sively by Jews, was practiced originally only by Jews, and is to-day a religion only fit for Jews, based on their particular Jewish nature ; and when other races teach and practice it, they are simply teaching and practicing common Jewism, as Schopenhauer says Inasmuch as they had founded this religion, they had a right to make it suitable to their own vanity, and, of course, to assume all divine preference for themselves, which, when we consider the egotism of man, is no more than other nations, in their religion, assumed for themselves, only in other respects. Their Jehovah owed his existence to them, as Schopenhauer says, and consequently they had a right to expect his special benefaction in their favor. 16 242 A TREATISE ON MAN. 25. By God they are the chosen people ; by men they are the rejected people. How the divine mind and the human mind do disagree about this ! 26. For man to possess immortality of the soul and all the other animals to be without it, is, one of the greatest pieces of vanity that man could have as- sumed. Theology admits that the whole rest of cre- ation is as well the work of God as man is, and that everything created was so done out of the wisdom of God ; then the existence of the most insignificant creature is of as much importance to itself as that of the highest is to itself, Man in his intellectual qual- ities does not surpass the dog to such an extent as to give him this preference, or to confer attributes upon him that his own dog, from the honesty and fidelity that he bears to his master, is as well entitled to share. It has not yet been demonstrated satisfactorily that this separate existence, the animal, has now be- come endowed with such attributes as to be entitled to possess immortality, which is said to have become a part related to the animal, merely because the ani- mal has chauged from the brute into the man. The crop must certainly be the same as the seed. Immor- tality can very well be attributed to that soul or spirit which creates and which is the vital part, the very essence of every being, but to say that this soul became a relative part of man only since he has become such, is drawing an unwarranted line of dis- tinction between man and the lower animal. Transformation is always going on and never ceases, but it takes a great period of time for a race of animals to be transformed into another race ; and RELIGION. 243 it then, at the most, only assumes a higher stage as an animal, but it is still the original substance that has undergone the change. In all our changes we reach the highest stage when we become man, but this only in regard to the in- tellect, it having improved in size and quality as compared to the lower animal. Man, as every being, is immortal as to the spirit, Kant's "Ding an sich" and Schopenhauer's "Will," and has therefore always existed and always will exist, only under different forms ; and it is this immortality that has given rise to the soul's immortality in the minds of men ; but what may have been understood in the beginning to mean this universal immortality, has, by degrees, be- come to be confined to an individual soul, from a perverse construction of the works of philosophers or from the theory of metempsychosis. And as every- thing that we now do will affect us in the future in this life, so all the acts of this life will affect us after death, because our existence before our birth, at present and in the future is but one. In this sense all things are immortal. 27. If the salvation of the soul of a good man after death were as unequivocal as the theologian main- tains, there would be no need for the fear of death, but, on the other hand, such a man would regard the moment of his departure from this world of misery and wickedness as the most desirable of all his exist- ence. All preaching of immortality, however grand and sublime it may be to a being of a higrh moral charac- ter, is not sufficient to eradicate the fear of death from the common mind. A man at the point of death 244 A TREATISE ON MAN. can console himself that he will after his death be as much as he was before birth, as Schopenhauer says ; besides, he will not then be subject to the ills of a being of intelligence. This theory of indestructibility is a truth that applies to every being or creature in the universe, and is not a point dependent upon a particular religious creed, and directly contradicted by another. With religion, a man whose soul accord- ing to his own creed will be without doubt saved, is f according to another creed, entirely beyond redemp- tion, and thus religious people at the point of death are in a state of contradiction, caused by theologians quarreling on a subject that they know nothing about. 28. The mere fact that man fears death, and at the hour of death becomes serious, is no evidence what- ever that it rests upon the principle that in another world he will have to account for his conduct in this world. The lower animal resists and fears death as well as man ; it is also true in regard to the infant, yet it has no conception of what is right and what is wrong, and therefore has nothing to fear; and if man's ideas are not innate, the infant can have no thought whatever of immortality. Besides, the man whose life has left behind it as unspotted a character as it is possible for a man to leave, will, with all his might and power, resist death, as well as the worst man does. The fear of death is because the individual feels that the body is about to be dissolved. Every body, animate and inanimate, resists a dissolution of its parts, because it is upon the principle that all parts RELIGION. . 245 are held together and refuse to be severed, that the body can exist at all and have a form. The non-willingness of death is love, for this is a connection, either of the parts of one's own body or of the bodies of two lovers; they have an attachment for each other ; this attachment is the very cause of their preservation. The two bodies of lovers is but one body, and their issue is the succession of this body. Man and wife are very properly called one. The disagreements that occur between man and wife, are not those of two bodies, but the disagreements of the different parts of one body with each other, as it is the case with its different parts during sickness of a single body. It is upon this principle, namely, that all bodies, to be able to preserve their existence, resist a dissolution of their parts, that two lovers can not be separated. Love, either itself or that existing between two bodies, is the contraction of the body or bodies ; it is voluntary. Death is the dissolution of the body ; it is involuntary. The mind is incapaple of seeing any other existence than the present one, and therefore fears that by death it may become wholly extin- guished. The wise man is not quite so blind, and will therefore not show such great resistance, but will, in many cases, even bid it welcome. And as existence has only propagation or self-preservation in view, evidently the eunuch or the old man whose power of propagation has left him, will not resist death as much as a man will who is in his prime. What tends to keeping the body united, as eating or the taking of medicine, for instance, is done volun- tarily, whilst everything that tends to the dissolution of the body, as hungering or receiving a wound, for 246 A TREATISE ON MAN. instance, is involuntary. This at the same time shows the close resemblance there is between the intellect, which resists death — dissolution — and the adhering parts of a body, animate or inanimate. 29. As it is impossible to say why man should at all be born, so it is impossible to say why he should resist death. As it has never been maintained that it was a religious principle that produced him, so neither can it be maintained that it is because of any religious principle that he fears death. 30. Schopenhauer thinks it peculiar that a man should not be permitted to preach and teach what he himself does not practice. He who has practiced the different vices, is most capable of teaching their evil results ; and especially if he has ceased to practice evil, there is no better teacher. Yet for a man to tell others not to do what he himself continually does, has the appearance of being hypocrisy, which is still more dangerous. If his vices be such that his nature wall not allow him to separate himself from them, why should not yet such a man, who is so thoroughly conscious of their bad influences, be allowed to w r arn the rest of mankind to shun them ? A virtuous girl's being warned by an old bawd of the evil and vicious consequences of an adulterous life, will have more effect to make such a life abhorrent to such a girl than all religious threats can. Or how could a boy, having the inclination to drink, find a better means of being w r arned against its evil consequences than the instructions of an habitual drunkard ? The objection rests on the principle that practical influences are greater than those of theory ; a man's RELIGION, 247 teaching therefore is, unless the contrary appear, mere mockery when contradicted by his practice, and in this sense the objection is well founded. But if the moral teaching be a result of the conviction that the practice is an evil, and if the evil-doer do not cease from his bad practices merely because it is now too late, and there be a genuine sincerity in him for the welfare of mankind, in warning them against it, such teachings can not too often be laid before youth that is still inexperienced in such a field. Consid- ering, besides, how imperfect human nature is, a particular failing in the character of a man, who may be otherwise a moralist, does not deprive him of this term; such a man even generally judges such a failing stricter than the world itself does, and with his ability how fit is he not now to handle the subject! 31. The great dread and fear that the ordinary part of mankind have for death arises from their ignorance to see that when the body dies, the brain, which is dependent on the body for its functionary parts, also dies, and is therefore not capable of comprehending the fact of death. People mourn over a dead body as if it were the individual himself, forgetting that his brain has ceased to exist, and that, therefore, he is not an object of sorrow and grief, because it was only by virtue of his brain that he was at all an object of love and affection; his body, consequently, is nothing but a mass of unliving flesh, in a state of preparation for worms. The common man has his mind fixed on nothing but his body ; he does not know that to exchange this life for an existence that lias not the intelligence to see the evils necessarily connected with our pres- 248 A TREATISE ON MAN. ent existence, must be an advantage, in the same manner as sleep is if there be no dreams. Although great men seeing that death deprives man of his earthly burdens, yet do not hasten death any more than they do sleep, letting the laws of nature have their course, and do not rebel against a decree ordered by more than human intelligence; but they do teach that, as we must live as long as the desire is so (otherwise the desire would not exist), on the same principle must we accept death when it does come, teaching obedience in the one case as well as in the other. 32. Man has no right to suppose that this world is where he belongs, and that therefore he must never consent to leaving it; the time passed before his birth and the time that is to run after his death, throws his insignificant three score and ten years into nothing. Man is therefore but a sojourner in this world, a visitor, to see and hear the little good that is in it, and then to travel farther. As when he is on an ordinary visit, he holds himself ready to start at any moment, so in this life, his baggage should always be packed, his fare paid for a journey that takes him to a better home of peace and rest. 33. What man wants is not what cannot be demon- strated, but rules and maxims, so that he may be able to lead a moral and upright life. The theologian undertakes to make his hearers intelligible on the subject of a God and the immortality of the soul, and thereby thinks to make a moral being of man. When Christ's own teachings are carefully consid- ered, it will be seen that this is more than he himself religion. 249 undertook to do. He assumed a God and immortality, and what lie particularly meant by either, he was too honest to presume to undertake to tell us ; he seems to have merely taken them for granted; in regard to their particular principles, he left it to every man to draw his own conclusions from the circumstances surrounding him. Christ's mission was to make man a better being, and he therefore taught him moral conduct, and knew that, when a man is moral, this is all that can be demanded of him, and that salvation would follow as a matter of course, even though the individual have no belief in matters of any particular religion. He evidently regarded any particular religion as only accidental, dependent on nationality, etc. 34. The coming of Christ was the reforming of man, and so was he in earnest about his object that he took every insult, indignity and abuse that was offered him, and eventually even gave up his life for it. This is why he receives sublime honors; it gives his char- acter something of the divine; it is unlike that of the rest of mankind, and therefore common and credulous minds actually attribute supernatural powers to him ; but he himself always reminds his hearers that he is but a man, and therefore subject to the evils of the world, aware only of a superiority of intellect and morality in himself. The modern theologian does not keep this object in view, and thus lead his flock; besides being a spirit- ual adviser, he wants to be a metaphysician, logician, politician, man of society, servant of Mammon, even a lover, a propagator, forgetting what Christ really was and what his object is, by throwing his godlike 250 A TREATISE ON MAN. teachings into the same pot with the nastiness of this world. Let the theologian first set an example in this, and then teach his followers to cease whoring, stealing, cheating, gaming,- drunkenness, maligning, backbiting and all the other evils to which human nature is heir, and when he has performed this, he has assisted his master, and has not been an obstacle to him as he is now. In this sense the objection not to teach what is not practiced, is well founded. Gold- smith's Vicar of Wakefield is a beautiful example of what a practical Christian shepherd should be. 35. Morality is of itself godliness ; and, therefore, does a man possess morality, he is godly. 36. A man who leaves this world with an unblem- ished character, need have no fear for his soul, no matter what his religion may be, or whether he had any at all, such as is called religion. In such a being all has been accomplished that the highest institution of God or of man can claim. It is not religion that is the cause of a peaceful state of mind in a moral being; it is the consciousness that he has done no wrong; the culprit who has confessed his sins and repented, and has become an undeviating devotee of a particular creed, does not, in spite of his religion, enjoy the same peaceful state of mind that the moral man does, who has no religion ; for, although he may feel that he has now accomplished everything that can be demanded of him, and to which repentance it is in fact that he owes the peaceful state that he does enjoy, and not to religion, he still feels that the wrongs that he has com- mitted can never be recalled ; he therefore withdraws from the face of the world. His repentance is the next RELIGION. 251 best thing that he could do as a guilty man. In the case of Kance, religion never could eradicate his sins from his memory ; his mortification makes one shud- der to think of it; it excites our pity for him ? and was, simply, uncalled for. Of course, to prevent sin from coming on shows greater wisdom than to resist it when it has been brought on, but to turn against the monster and show such fight as actually to overcome him, certainly evinces great heroism, so great that it is of itself sufficient to quiet any conscientious scru- ples that might otherwise ruin the complete happiness of a man's life, even though the unfortunate victim himself, to whom the evil was done, can not be fully restored. 37. What is merely moral influence is very unrelia- ble; its force lasts only so long as the individual sees his personal advantages in it; then lie again falls into his natural course, and this no religion on earth can prevent. 38. We can very well reprove a highly intellectual man for being superstitious, because we know that his morality can exist without religion as it is. But as concerns the multitude, who are of such limited in- telligence that they must reach in an indirect way what the wise man reaches in a direct way, supersti- tion and deception in religion generally have in all ages been more or less practiced. When superstition is connected with morality, the intellect becomes so enclowded that it is incapable of seeing and compre- hending the principles on which morality is based; hence any man that practices it, thereby lowers his 252 A TREATISE ON MAN. intellectual powers, or evinces that lie has no intellect, which latter is generally the case with such a man. 39. Just a little patience, and the fellow that you see at the head of politics or religion, and with a loud voice, requires but a short time to be thrown from his prominence, and have his mouth stopped. Everything that you see before you that pretends to religion, poli- tics or morality, is nothing but confusion and delusion; it has no intrinsic worth. When I look around me on this day (Easter Sunday), and see the efforts that are being made for religious worship, with the bells ringing, all to celebrate the suffering, the meekness, the goodness and the great- ness of the founder of the Christian religion, it appears to me, that after having experienced so many ruinous lessons (of accepting the bad and rejecting the good), the time has at last arrived at that stage of civiliza- tion and humanity when it is actually the intention of mankind to be humble and moral. But when I look around again, and see under what circumstances this is all done, what the object is that is in view, I find that, in fact, there is no genuine love for Christ and his moral teachings; that the attending religious worship to hear the hallejujahs and a ser- mon that is interesting as a pastime, connected with the scenery there displayed, all of which makes hearts mirthful and glad, and the social and business stand- ing that a recognition and practice of religion give a man, are all the cause of these demonstrations; in short, that it is only the valuable self that is continu- ally kept in view in such matters. And if a man occasionally be found who, from the sincerity of his heart, would like to have this grand RELIGION. 253 structure of Christ's restored to its original simplicity, any action in this direction on his part, will immediate- ly be voted down. It is in this, as it is of everything that is great and good 5 Schopenhauer says that when- ever a great thing is undertaken, something that would elevate the human race, soon the rabble, the vulgar, this over-powering majority in the human family, get control over it, and then farewell to all its greatness. Nothing can avoid this state of things; therefore Quand le bon ton arrive, le bon sens se re- tire. The rich pretend to be Christians to make it appear that they possess good judgment; the poor are Chris- tians because their bread depends upon it. The for- mer Christ himself would have driven from his temple as thieves, and the latter would have been spared by his mercy only. 40. In religion neither the shepherd nor the sheep sees, that if the latter possess no morality, all the efforts of the former can not save him from perdition, because if the character be bad, it is bad even though it do not disclose itself in outward acts; the most that can be done is, through influence or fear, to make the adherent conduct himself so that he do not violate any of the laws of the land or of society. And herein lies the theologian's vocation. A man who feels the necessity of continually attend- ing church, and requires the spiritual counsel and advice of his parson, lays himself open to the contempt of the world as possessing neither intelligence nor vir- tue. A man can call in a physician or a surgeon to cure his disease or dress his wound, because in that he can frankly confess that he is ignorant, without 254 A TREATISE ON MAN. any detriment to bis character, but what is a man who makes no claims to intelligence and virtue, the only two characteristics that separate man from the brute? And though he praise God and sing the Psalms of David every hour of the twenty -four in the day, is he a safe man with whom to trust your wife or your purse f ]N*o more can his immoral nature be altered than that a physician can cure a complaint of the body that is fixed there and become a part of it. 41. Freedom of thought is a blessing not alone for the free-thinker, but it is as well a blessing for the adherents and followers of any religious creed or denomination ; by it alone is every man at liberty to pursue such a religious course as his conscience may dictate. Were there no freedom of thought, as soon as any particular creed obtained the majority in num- ber or had the power, all the other creeds would be tyrannized, and, probably, eventually completely rooted out. The theologian, who sees no farther than to the boundaries of his own well-paying trade, does not know that the prohibiting of free thought, that he would have the infidel or atheist, as he calls him, de- prived of, would sooner or later also deprive him of X>ursuing the religious dictates of his own conscience, and, what is still dearer to hiin, of his own daily bread. As long as it does not lead to disorder or anarchy, every man should be allowed to pursue his own course of moral or religious conviction. Such was the political maxim of Frederick the Great, and such I find to have been the political maxim of every great Frederick, that loved his people and sought their welfare. Nothing but a monarch subject to the influ- . RELIGION. 255 ences of a religious gown or a petticoat, will interfere with the inward thoughts of any man as long as they are not detrimental to his state. And yet it is this class of nionarchs, this vulgus of mankind, with noth- ing to boast of but their prerogative right to the throne, these defensores fidei, as they are termed and call themselves, that the church has to parade its power with, kings on whom a Plato, a Spinoza, a Kant or a Schopenhauer would not clean his feet. Not freedom of thought and religious worship are what the church counsels them, but compulsion and absolute obedience to the principles of their own creed. The grandest monarchical power that a king can boast of, is when his political acts are approved by the greatest thinkers of his time, and to obtain this is by letting the subject exercise those rights that are his by the grace of both God and man, as well as de- manding obedience from him by virtue of this grace. A king is nothing but a sublime servant; thereon his high throne he is to overlook and superintend his whole kingdom, and see the different and various wants of his whole subjects; that is what he is there for. The subject is not for the king, but the king is for the subject; but generally the ruler mistakes the object for the means and the means for the object. This duty great kings see into, and therefore, at the end of their political career, their only boast is, like that of a dutiful servant, that they have consulted the interests of and labored industriously for the welfare of their people. Under such monarchs alone can every religion, art, science and philosophy prosper. 42. The theory of Bacon that the pursuit in philos- ophy will in the end lead to the knowledge of God, 256 A TREATISE ON MAN. and that philosophy is the handmaid to religion, have both already been shown by Schopenhauer and other thinkers to be fundamentally false. Philosophy existed long before the Christian relig- ion took its rise; in fact Christ's God-head and his immortality of the soul are both supposed to have been derived through the Greeks and the Egyptians ; besides, there is the same moral philosophy as ours with all other civilized nations that have no Christian religion, or no religion resembling it. But what is most striking of all, is, that Christ, through John the Baptist and his followers, is supposed to have been instructed in the teachings of Gaudama, whose doc- trines are maintained to be entirely atheistical, and therefore to be exclusively resting on moral prin- ciples. It is impossible to imagine that any people would make a leap directly from bruteism to the idea of a God or of the soul, before having experienced the minor premises that alone can lead to this conclusion; this would be leaving a void between the brute state and the divine state, that religion is unable to account for, excepting by answering that it is through inspir- ation — a dishonest and tricky evasion of the main point at issue, merely to avoid being silenced. From the fact that philosophy and the sciences civilize man, he gradually established principles of a supreme Being and immortality; and in proportion as the human intellect developed itself with a partic- ular people, its belief in a God or the soul also developed itself. So we find that such thoughts as barbarous or wild nations have of God are derived through natural objects that surround them, such as the sun, trees, rocks, etc. To comprehend anything RELIGION. 257 like Plato's or Christ's God or the soul, requires an idea, which is a result of the training and developing of the human intellect, requiring thousands of years. If it were true that religion had to be the founder of philosophy, men who have no religious belief, in the common acceptation of the word, would have no morals. 43. But now comes Kant, as the necessary counter- part to the theory of a God-head and the soul, and shows us that they can not be demonstrated by rea- son a priori, and thus throws the whole fabric, as a reality, over-board. And if he does admit that God's non-existence can also not be demonstrated, Schopen- hauer maintains that this was a mere concession in him, arising out of fear. But may he not be right in this ! It must now be accepted by every man in his own conscience, whether the imagination or imperfect and immature knowledge of a more or less wild and sav- age people, based on the general observations of all thiugs in the universe, be a reliable principle for the demonstration of the actual existence of God and the soul ; or whether the result of the thinking of gigantic Intellects be not a more consistent authority for the origin of these two ideas. We know as a fact that our moral and civilized system is at its highest in men of the greatest intellect, even the Christian religion boasting of its superiority, which is a result of this intellect, over the religion of barbarous nations, and we must therefore accept as its guide what are its great- est productions. This is what we do do by letting the works of the greatest thinkers become standard by 258 A TREATISE ON MAN. handing them down to posterity. Naturally, if God and the soul took their rise from the intellect, they are also in the the mean time always subject to it, and it is therefore as consistent to say where their boundary is, as it is consistent to say where their origin is. Although philosophers may have an Idea of God or the soul, and which, as such idea, is very consistent ivith man's moral conduct, yet I find that they always break through the boundaries of what is mere theolo- gy. As they take the perfectly wise man and the perfect Christ, both of whom never existed, to have the ordinary man model himself by, so do they find the need of having a Being by whom these should have been modeled, and that is God, whether he can, any more than the two former, be demonstrated or not. The soul is the imperishability of all things. Cer- tainly philosophers believe in immortality. 44. Where great men have written, and at the same time had to stand in awe of the religion of their coun- try, their thoughts were maimed to such an extent that that which otherwise might have been a work of enlightenment, turns out to be an abortion. Eeligion requires that its adherents be adherents both accord- ing to the spirit and the letter, and any violation or digression will be met with expulsion. A writer and supporter of religion will reject everything that is dif- ferent from his own religion, and immediately brand it as paganism, forgetting entirely that all his theories of a God-head, immortality of the soul and the great- est principles of morality come from the pagans, com- pared to whose great writers, he himself is nothing. RELIGION. 259 And I therefore believe, that, had not the great writers of antiquity already a firm footing in the minds of men when Christianity took its rise in Europe, its defend- ers would not have tolerated them, and certainly not introduced them into their universities, so strong is the religious zeal, even as against the highest wisdom, merely because it does not regulate itself according to its doctrines. 45. Christ taught a creed, but no creed that required the follower to observe particular formalities. Differ- ent minds will arrive at the same truth by different ways. The mind can never be compelled and forced against its own natural inclination; it will therefore pursue its own course, although apparently it may fol- low particular religious forms. Besides, the founder of a religion may himself have been in error, because his creed was more or less based on prejudice and individual benefit, which is generally the case, and the consequence is, that his follower will fall into the same error, if he be confined to particular forms. A follower of a religion can only then have a full scope of thought when the creed that he adheres to is a, result also of his own thinking, which is seldom the case. So far is theology itself from possessing original thinkers that can be considered standard writers, that theologians are compelled to resort to pagan and infi- del writers of original thought to find some mention of God and the soul, and if anything relating to them can be found in such writers, they invoke them as authorities, although the authors themselves probably meant by these ideas something entirely different from what theologians mean by them; or, if they had 260 A TREATISE ON MAN. a theological tenor at all about them, the use of them was probably a mere condescension, acting under the influence of the times. Or it happens, that that part of the works of great writers that do make mention of theological principles- that are unfounded, is rejected and ignored by men who may be their followers in other respects; for instance, I can admire Dr. Johnson's moral senti- ments, but in his fanaticism, I regard him as nothing but what Voltaire regarded him , "a superstitious dog." 46. Neither the Christian nor any other religion has ever had, nor ever will have, a true philosophical Genius to follow it from beginning to end. A religion, as such, is simply inconsistent with free thought. But the moral teachings of Christ being consistent and in accordance with the philosophy of the Genius, he boasts of being a follower of Christ as he may boast that he is a follower of Plato or of Kant, and seeing that his own moral principles agree better with those of Christ than those of religion, his claims to him are better founded, than those of the theologian. 47. In politics any form of government can be im- posed on the multitude, even when it will throw them into a complete subjection, simply because they are unfit to reason on principles of state, in which they daily live and whose workings they continually see. Now how much more so are they not unfit to reason on matters of God and the soul! Therefore, that idolatry should prevail with certain nations, is not at all astonishing. In the Christian religion itself there are principles that are nothing but idolatrous. The veneration paid to the Bible is as great a piece of RELIGION. 261 idolatry as that paid to the Koran by the Moham- medans is idolatry. Take any article, for instance, a staff, and tell the vulgar that a certain saint, philosopher or great statesman was, during his lifetime, in the habit of using it, and it is the easiest thing to get the ignorant human family actually to pay divine honors to it. This is not all ; so can the ordinary man be made a dupe of, that if the imposition be headed by a man of any public authority at all, he will actually worship a man that has been the cause of the greatest atrocity, brutality or treachery to his fellow men, a man whom the law ought to dispose of in the most summary manner. Fetichism, for one who believes that every work that he sees is the work of a supreme Being, is no more out of order than to worship the Christian cross because it is the representative of Christ and his church ; so is every creation in the universe a very fit object through whose instrumentality to communicate with that being, whose attributes are so sublime that direct communication cannot be had with him. The crude and barbarous nations all have a simpler mode of religious worship ; the intercourse with their God is more direct; it is built upon principles that are drawn from the direct works of nature as they behold her, and not encumbered and obscured by school divinity or sophistry. In former centuries (and it is still done by egotistic and bigoted theologians and people whose knowledge of mankind is confined to their own parish), it was the custom to laugh at everything that was Asiatic. But, as I said, only give the matter a start, and there will be no lack of followers, even of that at which 262 A TREATISE ON MAN. twelve months before they laughed. For instance, the religious aud philosophy of the Buddhist and Brahmin, which to the theologian is nothing but idol- atry, are receiving a degree of attention from learned and thinking men in Europe and America that has nothing to equal it in all the missionaries that they have sent to Asia. The converts that Buddha makes here, are the thinkers, who seek it themselves ; the converts that the missionaries make there, are the illiterate and unthinking class, who are talked and persuaded into it by the missionary who is paid for it, whilst the learned Orientalist treats him and his whole theory with contempt. 48. Had the Christian religion continued in its sim- ple mode of worship as it took its rise, there would have been no need of a reformation ; but as ignorance and credulity increased after the fall of the Eoman Empire, it always became more of a means of subjec- tion of the people, and, to reach this, there was no better way than by artificial and forced ceremonies of religious worship. The mode and manner in which the Christian religion is taught and impressed on its adherents is nothing consistent with the plain and simple way of preaching and admonishing that Christ himself resorted to. Every thing that is great and good is such in its own simplicity ; but as soon as it requires the aid of art, and being continually propped up by subtility in terms, and resorting to wars, then it looses its own stamp of sincerity and truth, and, like everything that is false, eventually falls. That very openness and frankness of Christ's teaching is the cause of its whole grandeur and beauty, and strikes the most atheistical mind with a certain awe and rev- RELIGION. 263 ereuce of the god-like intentions of its founder. Christ himself never resorted to disputations on his religion; he taught it as a doctrine to be received or rejected on the strength of its own representation ; whoever could not see that such a religion was not consistent with human reason and morality, was allowed to reject it; he considered that it was not a subject of arguing pro and contra. Besides, I suppose he regarded the common people as being entirely un- fit to determine for themselves the merits of such a sublime subject, and therefore all metaphysical specu- lations on it should be entirely withheld from them. 49. The religious part of a man does not take its beginning in him until he is born ; it must be preached into him, and if he be born where there is no such preaching, he will have no religion. But the moral part of a man is already in the blood that the father deposits in the mother's womb, and the child's moral character is therefore formed before it leaves its mother, and has the stamp of a moral or immoral being fixed in it before it is old enough to listen to religious instruction. 50. It is also true that it is of no matter how differ- ent the religion of one country may be from that of other countries, yet the morality of these different countries is all the same. It is evident from this alone that morality has the same origin, no matter in what region of the world it may be. If the morality of a par- ticular people were owing to the character of their religion, the characteristics of their religion would be evident in every feature of its morality, and the result would be that the teachings of the most moral Bud- 2GJ: A TREATISE ON MAN. dhist would not suit the character of the European, which in, fact, they do, and the writers of the Old Tes- tament being Jews, their moral teachings would not at all be consistent with the morality of Christians. 51. It seems that all the arguments of men whose morality is not based on religion, can never completely annihilate and overturn superstition in the minds of the vulgar, who never think, and therefor seem to re quire superstition or something like it, to impose on their ignorance ; for even if the state established reg- ular schools of morality for the people in general, it is a question whether they would not in the end also fall into a misuse and abuse from the fact alone that it would be difficult to find men who would be able and upright enough to answer its purposes, as it is verjr difficult to find men who are able and upright enough to preach and practice the religion of Christ as he preached and practiced it ; to prevent this might be as difficult a task as it is to prevent a republican form of government from being transferred into a monarchy; for mankind will eventually abandon the simple and pure mode of worship in morals as they abandon the simple and pure mode of politics, and resort to pomp and ceremony in both. But as man naturally comes back to the shortest and best route, after having found that the man in the pulpit and the man on the throne were men like himself, and no more in their position by the grace of God than he himself is in his work- shop, it is perfectly consistent with the rights of human nature as civilized beings, to again make the attempt and keep making it, since otherwise both institutions would eventually enslave man. Eeligion and the state require a purging as well as the body ; sometimes RELIGION. 265 their condition is so filthy that nothing but a revolu- tion can bring either of them back to its original purity. 52. It shows a lack of thought to suppose that the age of reason has or ever will come, and that man- kind will be completely free from ignorance and superstition. Truth can only expect to find hospit- able shelter in the quarters of the philosopher, not in palaces, not in churches. There are certain ages in the history of mankind in which there are more sages than in other ages, but no age in which there are more sages than asses. 53. Kant demonstrates no particular theory of the universe ; he merely shows that things are merely ap- pearances; that their original cause of existence can not be demonstrated. Kant, knowing very well that the solution of the problem of the universe was to be a mystery to man, does not undertake to impose on the reader a theory of it that is merely a chimera of his brain ; but like a great thinker he proceeds to show to what extent the human reason can reach. And as his object is only to show the capacity of the human intellect, all theories and speculations on the uni- verse, as to its original cause, can very well exist, as long as they confine themselves within these bounda- ries — so far as he is concerned. Schopenhauer thinks Kant to be the most original thinker that ever lived. I believe also, that no think- er, either of antiquity or of modern times, has done so much to arrive at what the real capacity of the human intellect is, as Kant has; he has set a barrier, and thereby prevented those illusions and chimeras 266 A TREATISE ON MAN. that every j)hilosopher is otherwise apt to fall into from prejudice or otherwise. No bird undertakes to fly further than his wings will allow. It is only roan that has assumed to himself the power of answering all things. And now to have this honest and unas- suming thinker step forward and forever put an end to this sublime conceit, which, especially, Schopen- hauer says, he has done as to the church, has made the most men reject his theory, merely because it was detrimental to their personal interests or their preju- dice, which was too great before to enable them to see straight. But no man who has any pride in the proper conduct of his mental powers as well as the proper conduct of his morals, can refuse to Kant the reward of having led man back to his natural mode of thinking, unshackled by school divinity and prac- tical superstition, to which every man is more or less chained from infancy, at least in this part of the world. 54. Schopenhauer's Will in nature, with Kant's theory (they being the same), has always appeared to me to be some explanation of the universe, so far, I mean, as any is possible. It is free from religious prejudice and personal motives, both men pursuing their course with a true philosophical candor and earnestness, out of pure love to truth and the enlight- enment of mankind; and in spite of their great claims to some of the greatest, probably actually to the great- est, human intellectuality, both are just enough to admit the limits and boundaries of their thought. But it is not so with other theories of the universe in general, for we find that they are always more or less superinduced either by religious, national or other RELIGION. 267 prejudices that makes tkeni entirely unsavory to a man reared under different customs and manners. 55, In fact we find something original in the nieta, physical theory of every great thinker, which seems to want to creep out and make itself known, but the dread for the majority, whose very brutal outward appearance is almost enough to scare into silence the lips of men, who, in their humanity and intellectuality, are more entitled to associate with gods, has prevent- ed the birth of many a thought that would otherwise have ennobled the race. There is, it appears, an intention in nature not to allow the greatest civiliza- tion to become absolutely predominant. Schopen- hauer thinks that the human race has reached its highest stage. I do not see that civilization and morality have any better hold on man now than they had two or three thousand years ago. The wave of ignorance will again drown mankind in its depth, as it did in the middle ages, and in that manner we make a step backward as soon as we make a step forward. The brutal religious fanaticism of these ages is as apparent in single individuals, even of this enlightened century, as it was in the middle ages; but science has so completely separated and divided the different creeds that not one of them singly is sufficient to become complete master. There is not a creed or faith in modern times that would not resort to every available means to cause adherence and be- lief, and, to this end, threaten with death and bodily torture any subject who would dare to raise his head against its religious zeal, were it within its power. We find that all great men, although their works were afterwards received, rewarded and honored, 268 A TREATISE ON MAN. were originally rejected, scorned and brutally dealt with, from the common insult on the street to the bodily pain and anguish on the cross. So the common son of nature, that to-day earns his bread by shouting at the top of his voice in preaching the gospel of Christ, would have been one of the first to have cried, " Crucify him ! crucify him!" had his bread in Christ's time depended on it. 56. The salvation or loss of the soul depends upon the moral or evil nature that the possessor has, not upon an empty belief that it will be rewarded or pun- ished. Theology maintains that, in order to be saved, the belief 'must exist, taking it for granted that a man cannot lead a moral course of life unless he believe in its doctrines. Now, if morality had no better basis to rest its principles upon than an empty religious belief, it would have fallen ages before this, and, with it, all civilization. The natural character, whether it be good or bad, is not here taken into consideration; and all that is relied upon to make man a moral being is in putting him in a state of fear of future punishment or into a state of desire for future reward. It is this vague thinking of theologians who want to answer everything that occurs in nature, that makes it im- possible for them to account for all the souls of good men who existed before Christianity, and all the souls of good and moral infidels. With the ancients, mor- ality was a system independent of a man's religious views; but since Christianity has taken its rise, all mankind of Europe have been blindfolded into the belief that morality could not exist without the Christian religion. Upon such reasoning there is no morality in Asia. RELIGION. 269 As to salvation, there is but one of two ways that can be followed, the one is that of virtue, and the other is that of vice ; they both have their respective terminations. The effects of the laws of nature are a fixed fact, independent of what a man's belief in regard to them may be ; if a man's fate, either as an animal or as a moral being, were dependent upon what he believes, considering what the belief of the common man is, his position in the world would be a very deplorable one, as it even is. Certainly,belief is necessary in the earnest search after morality and salvation, otherwise it would not be sought, and it is doubtless true that it is this genuine belief that religion has reference to, but it is not this belief that theologians exact from their followers. 57. I have never been able to understand upon what reasoning it was, that the theologians could justify themselves in preaching Christ's Gospel for money. Not even the philosophers as such are allowed to re- ceive money, and if they do take it, they are immedi- ately called sophists. Even lawyers would not be justified in receiving money for their services, if this profession had not become a public necessity in our state of civilization, and it is very questionable even then. To preach the Gospel for money is the best evidence that religion has become a business, and has ceased to be a religion as such. Is it not more like a true follower of Christ, and does it not better serve as an example for the adherents, to earn a living, which needs to be only scanty, in a more honest way, or re- ceive money as a charitable gift, and thereby assume a little of the dignity and divinity that the genuine 270 A TREATISE ON MAN. Christian must necessarily have ? But to pre ct the Gospel once or twice a week, and for it draw a hand- some salary, is much more easy and more according to the fashion of the age, than to rely on wild honey and locusts for victuals, as John the Baptist did. But here it is as in all cases where mankind have to pay him the most who knows the least; for if it he taken right ly, it will be seen that these men, as a general thing, are not fit and capable of discoursing on the immor- tality of the soul and a God ; there is hardly one in a hundred that is even capable of discoursing on a prop- er mode of life. 58. Christ's houses of prayer and devotion have be- come to be miserable theatres and opera houses. It is only necessary to visit on a Sunday a church support- ed by a rich congregation, to be able to see that the devotion that Christ teaches to worship the Creator of all goodness and beneficence, is actually there convert- ed into operatic singing; regular singers are employed, used as actors, receive a high salary, and who, in some cases, even belong to an entirely different creed. Thus it is, that the very day (Sunday) onVhich religion teaches man shall rest from his toils and labors, and which shall be devoted to his God, is used to carry on the worst kind of prostitution of Christ's Gospel. Christ himself had no place to lay his head, but his Gospel has been, and continues to be, a very conven- ient trade for thousands to earn a comfortable and even luxurious living by; somebody is getting hand- some profits by his misfortunes and martyrdom. 59. The difference between the God of the religious man, as he calls himself, and the God of the genuine RELIGION. 271 Christian, is, that the former sits on his money bags, and the latter sits on the throne of grace. 60. The people in general, whose chief employment lies in obtaining the necessaries of life, when these are satisfied, allow their imagination to carry them into a region that their vanity persuades them is eternal bliss; seeking nothing but happiness in this world, it is entirely natural that they should also expect it after death, especially when they consider that genuine happiness is not to be found in this world; a man who is more or less virtuous, would suppose that what he could not possess in this life, he ought to have in another life. There is nothing therefore that is so at- tractive to man as happiness; this is well and better seen in people who are continually seeking happiness through pleasure, for in old age, finding that the satis- faction of the world is nothing, they try to make it good by seeking the satisfaction of heaven, and thus become as great devotees to religion now as probably before they were distant from it. According to vulgar interpretation, Mohammed promises in heaven, among others, the highest earthly pleasure— sexual pleasure, — and he therefore has so many adherents, for it is on pleasure that the common mind is fixed. If a correct interpretation, however, were given to the Koran in regard to the passage that promises this, Mohammed, doubtless, would not have so many beleivers in it, because their animal desires would not be flattered by it, for he can hardly mean, that heaven would engage itself in such filthy pleas- ures as originate in this world. The common man draws his heavenly bliss from his earthly happiness. Then, if heaven be superhuman, 272 A TREATISE ON MAN. it floes not lie within reach of the human intellect to comprehend its beatitude. And if it be a fact that its beatitude is consistent with the stretch of the hu- man intellect, to go there can certainly not be a great advantage over the advantages of this world. But above all, what has man done in tins world, that he should receive everlasting bliss? 61. Every man follows that religion that is best suited for his individual character, and as nature knows his character better than he does himself, his religion, so far as any religion may be necessary for his character, is fixed in him by nature, as all his acts are. What the immediate service of religion is to moral- ity, we know — civilization 5 but in what manner a particular religion may be most advantageous to a particular people, or a particular individual, we do not know. When the individual or a people change in their surroundings, their religion changes. The Chinese, who have always remained stationary in their country, have changed their religion the least ; whilst the European, who migrates from one country to another, does not know of a religion, but of relig- ions. This is all more or less owiDg to climate and the country in general in which a people live. It follows very clearly from this that, of all the religions that have been established, and that are continually undergoing changes, no particular one of them is correct, and all the others false ; one people is as much an object on which God should exercise his good-will as any other. Therefore the different re- ligions from the most uncivilized to the most enlight- RELIGION. 273 ened, is not a matter of laughter, but it is actually a matter of practical wisdom. Of all Europeans, the Jews have changed their re- ligion the least, although it is true that they have scattered themselves nearly over the whole globe; but this is probably owing to the fact that their nature being so repellant, other nationalities have never felt it desirous to have such close intercourse with them as would spread their influence over them; but to the extent that such influence has been had, their religion has also changed. 62. That the Christian religion has salutary effects in leading the common people more or less from vice and keeping them from evil, besides the inward con- solation and satisfaction that the true Christian feels, is a truth that I would no more deny, than I would the fact that even in the worst and most vicious man there are some good characteristics. But that this vicious man is charitable or humane, is no evidence that he is a fit member of society ; he has probably stolen the money with which he is charitable, and can therefore very well afford to be so ; his vicious char- acter necessarily forces some good traits on him, otherwise he would be completely rejected. So with the church, its good material standing enables it to be exteriorly effectual in its morals, its members here- in finding their own happiness. But take away this pecuniary prosperity, and ask theologians and their most devoted adherents, to sacrifice their personal interests, estates, liberty, even their lives to propa- gate Christ's Gospel, and then you will see St. Peter's and St. Paul's cathedrals, in spite of the faithful work of the mason, crumble into dust. 17 274 A TREATISE ON MAN. Look over the history of that part of the world where the Christian religion prevails ; see the blood that has been shed in its holy cause, as it is called; every revolution since the Christian era can probably be more or less traced for its cause to the Christian religion. Not even the vainest patriotic Frenchman will so quickly grasp the sword to save his country, as the religious man will to defend his religion and faith. Has the Christian religion then been the cause of more peace on earth, than it has of war and private contention and strife ? 6 Has the religious gown a greater effect on the youth in inculcating virtue and moral conduct, than the immoral conduct of which it itself is known to be guilty, has a bad effect? Have not the hood and cowl, especially during the middle ages, when the church was at its highest, so disgraced themselves that their mere appearance raises more a suspicion and doubt of their integrity, than they impose respect? The whole monk system, sublime and grand as it is for those whom nature instituted into it, was known in former centuries to be a source of secret moral de- pravity and indolence, and its followers were used for nothing but revolutionary purposes. Take the results, both good and bad, of the church, weigh them, consider which of the two has the greater effect on the common people, who are so unfit to rule themselves, and therefore have to depend upon exam- ples. Is it not true that the vices and evils, such as revolutions, wars, private quarrels and contentions, extorting the last cent from a man (to support and maintain religious idlers and vagabonds), adultery ? lying, idling, cheating and all other offences with which men of a religious character more or less stand RELIGION. 275 convicted in the history of the world, (because I am not only attacking the Christian religion, but every system based on superstition and error), have proba- bly a more damning effect on the youth growing up and the rest of mankind, than that religion has a sal- utary effect ? This effect is so much the greater be- cause it proceeds from religious men, than it is when it proceeds from men not under religious restraint. The moralist, on the other hand, aware of the con- tinual snares that beset a man in this world, lays out, as Christ did, a moral course of life as is best for the individual ; teaches him that to be moral, requires him to be continually on his guard, and that the merely putting a hood or cowl on his head, is not sufficiently cladding himself with steel to protect his weakness of flesh against worldly temptations, as the religious man thinks it is. Then if a man momentarily do yield to Venus, Bacchus or Mammon, it is pardon- able. It is only the moralist, the Christ, the Buddha, that nature produces as saviors, after she has let her sons fall into a state of moral decay, that can save man from returning to the brute state; and as these are so extremely limited in the number of millions of human beings, the best system must eventually become mis- used and abused, although there are more or less faith- ful followers belonging to every creed whose good in- fluence on the common man is undeniable. 63. Schopenhauer says rightly, that, to show a man that this religion is based on error and falsehood, is taking nothing from him, but is giving him something, namely, truth. Religion, as it is called, having volun- tarily placed itself in its present position, it becomes 276 A TREATISE ON MAN. the duty of the moralist to show what its dangerous consequences are, and thus it will be enabled to take another course, by rearing a structure based not on national customs and individual interests, but on moral principles. 64. People of religion have a manner of accounting for a bad or evil man's sudden or horrible death by attributing it to his irreligious character. The charge in such a case that such an individual has met his fate in such a manner because his course of life was an im- moral one, may be correct, based on the general princi- ples in the laws of nature in regard to accountability as to all our actions to nature. But to see this far theologians never were, and never will be, sufficiently gifted. For what reason nature may destroy a particular man in a particularly brutal manner, cannot be dis- cerned any more than it can be seen for what pur- pose she incited him to be vicious and evil, they all being her own acts, it being indifferent by or through whom they are performed, or in what manner. Besides, we do not see that the good part of man- kind are spared from cruelty either ; on the contrary, we are in the habit of saying that God punishes those he loves. 65. It is amusing to see how science has, since the time of Bacon, gradually been making inroads into re- ligion, and leaving it behind to find its way along as best it could. As soon as some scientific problem has been solved, demonstrating that nature proceeds in her course, on principles wholly contradicting those of theology, we find the gentlemen of this pleasant RELIGION. 277 and easy profession following close behind, patching up their much trodden road as well as their scanty material will allow. If theology be based on principles of actual divini- ty, and therefore be not the work of man, the church need have no fear, because, on such reasoning, if it required something greater than the human intellect to rear the structure, it would also require more than human power to overthrow it. But as they see that everything is changeable, and that there were ages before Christ, and have since been ages, when the light of Christian wisdom never shone, they fear, and I fear, that their fear is well grounded in sup- posing that the age is approaching when the man Christ will no longer be worshiped as such, but be worshiped as the holy and wise Jesus (Joshua). In consequence of philosophy's having undermined the church, the different sects are no longer maintain- ing that the old structure was properly supported, but are quarreling about the distribution of the ruins out of which to form a new one, too blind to see that everything based on mere human speculation is not lasting, and must therefore fall as well as the first. But, probably, the argument with themselves is, that the agony caused in the meantime is compensated by the material prosperity that the body receives through it. And, taking the world in a business sense, they are undoubtedly correct. 66. Has any other religion been so much disputed and controverted as the Christian religion ! 67. Sleep being a short death, whether the idea of the immortality of the soul, or that man will resur- rect, do not originate from that I 278 A TREATISE ON MAN. 68. Everybody appears to be religious, but nobody wants to be a Christian. Evidently to be a Christian means something entirely different from merely ap- pearing to be religious. 69. As we laugh at the plurality of the gods of an- tiquity, if taken in earnest, so will posterity laugh at the Old Testament theory of the universe, if taken in earnest. 70. God belongs to the whole universe j what right, therefore, has the Christian religion to assume him for themselves only, by placing Christ, who is recog- nized chiefly in Europe and America, next to him, and thus excluding all pagan nations, who are God's favor- ites as well, from his especial favor ? The impudence of the proposition is characteristic of the religion. 71. If a man have actual thoughts, his eloquence follows as a matter of course ; studied eloquence is therefore evidence of lack of thoughts. Christ is very correct in admonishing his disciples not to study be- forehand as to what they are to say, but to leave it to the occasion. It is not upon the principle of this admonition of Christ's that his Gospel is preached now-a-days; for want of thoughts, the theologian, to make an impression on his hearers, resorts to elo- quence that has been trained into him either by him- self or an elocutionist. In most cases the manner of delivery is more studied than the subject matter. AYhen an institution is to be kept on its legs by resorting to such artificial means, it is evident that it is not worthy of very great respect. From this it is evident that religion has sunk as low as the politics RELIGION. 279 of the rabble, that, in order to be able to obtain their votes, require the popular speaker to make efforts at eloquence that the genuine statesman would blush at. Religion, according to its original signification, is something sublime, and must therefore be taught with all earnestness and sincerity, as coming from the soul and not from the tongue, and when it ceases to come from that source, it ceases to be religion, and becomes hypocrisy. 72. How can men be said to be religious, when it is considered that they never meditate on the subjects of God and the soul ? And yet is not this the class of people that religion has as its adherents ? for those who do actually meditate on God (the Good ) and the soul (Eternity), will not confess to an institution that, at its best, is but a practical machine. 73. How much veneration can be said is had for the Scriptures, when it is considered that those who teach from them, those who read them, those who manufacture them, and those who deal in them, value them only to the extent of the material profit that they expect to derive from them ? 74. The Protestant theologians inveigh against po- lygamy, but by what right or authority according to the letter, especially the spirit, of Christianity, are they themselves entitled to a single wife ? To be a genuine follower of Christ, even to have a single wife is a moral sin, because this is serving one's bestiality. Christ regards our life, as it is, a sin in itself, as an existence that it were better, if it were not; now, by having intercourse with a wife, and thus begetting 280 A TREATISE ON MAN. children and thereby prolonging the bestial existence, is simply striving and working directly against his moral sentiments. St. Paul directly forbids marriage, even as regards the people in general, and allows it in them only as a matter of preventing a greater sin, and it is only to this end that Christ allows of a single wife. The Eomish religion is a much truer follower of Christ in this respect, and, also, in regard to Mam- mon, than the Protestant religion is. The Moham- medan religion is a filthy religion, it is a true follower of the Old Testament, it " increases and multiplies ; w its founder regarded woman only as a means to satisfy his beastly desires ; it lacks the purity and holiness that surrounds the religions of Christ and of Gauda- ma, who abandoned his wife, if that of the latter can be called a religion at all in the strict sense of the word. 75. Although the Protestant theologians preach against a plurality of gods, yet they and the ordinary people can be said to worship three Deities : Cupid, Mammon and God. God himself takes in the last place ; he gets so much as the worship of the others have left— the remnant. 76. Being religious, as it is called, is no evidence of a moral character, for as religion is followed mere- ly because another so dictates it, such a man can as easily be led astray when the opposite tempts him ; what God easily acquires, that the Devil can as easily deprive him of. 77. How can the Old Testament be called " holy," when it is considered that Eance, the reformer of the RELIGION. 281 order of Trappists, forbade, and very correctly, cer- tain parts of it to be read by nuns? And how can woman be said to ever reach tlie highest state of re- ligion when her virtue is of such a delicate nature as to have such parts forbidden ? 78. Christ can not be said to be meant by the pro- phecies of the Old Testament, because they had reference probably even more to a political than to a moral deliverer of the Jewish people, who were al- ways in subjection. This is verified by the fact that in this light the Jews themselves regarded Christ, for when he answered them " JKender unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," they seem to have had no further use for him. 79. It is not the consequences of death, in the relig- ious sense, that is feared, but it is the means, the pain that is caused to superinduce it. Death itself is to many very welcome, and even sought. 80. Just as the realization of a misfortune is gene- rally by far not equal to the fear of its expectation, so is death itself not equal to the fear of its approach. It is in this as it is in poverty; the rich man seeing that poverty will come from the losing of his wealth, from this imagines that his condition when poor will be one of complete want and destitution, in fact star- vation; but when it has arrived, he generally finds, to his own surprise, that nature has full}' equipped him also for the struggle for existence, and as the necessaries of life are limited, his care to obtain and preserve them is also limited ; he often actually finds himself, in the end, in a much more peaceable 282 A TREATISE ON MAN. state of mind, and wonders why be did not even seek this state of affairs. If such fears were well founded, the greatest part of mankind would be absolutely miserable, because the greatest part of mankind are actually poor, some even in want. So it is with death ; if the fear of death were well founded, the horrible condition of those that have preceded us, could not be imagined; but they are simply where they belong, their substance and spirit working in the element for which each is suited and adapted. So when Death has actually arrived, his presence is as much in order as our birth. It is as natural that we should resist death, as it was that we should, without its being apparent, resist birth; in both cases we were unwilling to change our condition, but the force from behind compelled submission. Therefore confront Death as you would your enemy, with coolness and deliberation, and you will find that he is not so horrible as you supposed; on the contra- ry, he will show himself, as men do in such cases — he will be your best friend, — as I believe all those that have preceded us, would admit 81. The dog is probably the only animal in the world, that fully obeys Christ's commandment that we shall love our enemies as ourselves, for no matter how great an enemy his master is to him, yet he will love him. 82. The Eoman religion is the religion of business, and the Protestant religion is the religion of fashion. Did their founder suppose that there was anything like this to be the result of his teachings ? RELIGION. 283 83. A religion that teaches that only its followers are sure of salvation, is no religion at all; neither did Christ preach any such religion. 84. God probably conies from Good ; it is similar in the German language, Gott and Gut] it means the ruling power of nature, for whatever is proper accord- ing to natural laws, is good. The old German work called " Die Deutsche Theologie " very beautifully identifies God with Good, and Good with God. Now the saying of Christ, who was always only seeking the Good, that what God has put together, let no man put asunder, means that when two lovers are by nature inclined towards one another, and by that become connected, this is simply in order, according to the laws of the universe (God) and the prosperity of the state, and should, therefore, not be interfered with ; and, especially as Christ had refer- ence to it, it leaves the relations to one another in a peaceful and harmonious state. He did not mean that, merely because a man had complied with the law of the land, namely, in being legally married, this made marriage advisable or recommendable; this is a mere ceremony that the law requires to preserve the order and regulation of the state. 85. The Christian religion as it is taught, is an insti- tution that can accommodate itself to all practical and political purposes ; for instance, before the emancipa- tion of the American negro, it was maintained that he had no soul; since his emancipation, it is main- tained that he has a soul. How can it be expected that an institution that will trifle with one of its high- est principles, that on the immortality of the soul, as 284 A TREATISE ON MAN. a sophist would with the principles of reason merely to gain his cause, can be an institution of the highest morality? 86. B thought that, if his own wishes are to be consulted, and the human family is to look and act anything in a future life as they do in this, he should prefer not meeting them again. 87. Even death is trifled with ; what our good sense or our poverty forbade us during life, we often get when dead, namely, pomp and elegance. But I fear that it does not generally arise from love and affec- tion for us during lifetime, but because our death is a source of rejoicing, at least, considerable satisfac- tion, to those that survive us. 88. Christianity: Uprightness, Humility, Charity, Poverty, Chastity. Where are they to be found ? 89. God declines to disclose himself to men ; he is right, for if he did, he would have no honor in his own country. 90. Beligion is like paper money, which has value only so far as the credit of the country in which it is current, is good. Morality is like gold and silver, which have a standard value in all parts of the world. 91. The Christian makes Christ his God ; the Bud- dhist makes Buddha his God; the Brahmin makes Brahma his God, and so it is with other religious systems. Thus it follows that every religion has RELIGION. 285 a God according to its own taste and manufacture ; if lie be not at first taken as the original Creator of tlie universe, from time immemorial, lie becomes to be regarded as a part of such a Being, or is even consid- ered in an indefinite and obscure light to be this Being itself. It is evident from this that every relig- ious creed adopts, as its Supreme Being, an object that is best suited and adapted to its particular needs, wants and conveniences, and, therefore, for all nations to undertake, among themselves, to be able to agree on a particular Being to be worshiped, would be a far greater impossibility than for them to be able to agree on what would be a proper temporal ruler to govern them. 92. Either the accountability follows that has been maintained in a previous part of this work,* or the result of a good or bad or indifferent act is continued in a following existence, or the act itself is a result of a previous existence. It appears from all religious theories that the Good always has a tendency up- wards, Heaven, as it is called; and the Bad a tendency downwards, Hell. This undoubtedly arises from the fact that a future state is based on reason judging from facts of a present state; and as the Intellect, from which follows the Good, is the cause of our being elevated amongst our fellow men, and Folly, from which follows the Bad, is the cause of our being debased, it is entirely consistent that the Intellect should draw the same conclusion as to the consequences in a future existence. So, that the soul of a man that has elevated himself entirely beyond *208, 8. 286 A TREATISE ON MAN. the evil and sinful in this world, will be liberated and freed from a future animal existence, and will become Nirvana, or enter Heaven, has as much of a psychol- ogical satisfaction about it as the theory of Heaven and Hell of Christ has. What can be safely assumed is, that Metempsychosis, as well as the true Christian theory, teaches that our condition, either of the pres- ent or of the future and, it can be said, of the past, is always in proportion to our character, and whatever particular images the founders, or their followers, may have used is in an allegorical sense, which they adopted as a necessary means to convey a meaning ; so when, for instance, they state the particular kind of animal that the soul that continues on in its trans- migration will enter into, it must be taken figura- tively. 93. Christ and G-audama were spiritual brothers, nationality and time to the contrary notwithstanding, and I can therefore not help but believe that as the former may have been a follower of the latter, wheth- er consciously or unconsciously, in certain respects, but especially as they both have the highest princi- ples of humanity, their theories of God and immortal- ity are, fundamentally, the same. The Greek authors were well acquainted with Metempsychosis ; they had doubtless brought it from Egypt, where it very probably had been brought from India, and through the Greeks it is probable that Christ had gotten his thoughts of immortality and resurrection. The Trinity seems to be without doubt derived from the Hindu Trimurti ; even the words themselves have an affinity. It is even evident that the religion and RELIGION. 287 certain laws of Moses are of Hindu origin.* We therefore find that all mankind are but one family in matters of religion and morality as well as physically, governed and controlled by but one fate. 94. Without doubt Metempsychosis is the oldest religious theory on record 5 it has for centuries pre- vailed in the Orient, the original seat of mankind, and, even with the modern thinker, in spite of all the progress of the human family in science, it is the best solution that he can make as to the immortality of the soul. It is an explanation, so far as explanation is at all possible, of what man and other existences were before their birth, what they now are, and what they will be. This, the theory of a souPs arising probably only simultaneously with reason in man, does not do. But so much of the Christian theory of an individual soul's being accountable for all its actions, undoubt- edly rests on the same principles as Metempsychosis ; it corresponds and agrees, in general terms, beauti- fully with the theory of the resurrection that Christ teaches. * Among the lowest class of Hindus, the Sudras, if a man dies leaving a widow and no child, his brother is authorized to propagate on her. Where else but from a similar source could the law of Moses mentioned in Mark 12, 19, have been taken ? So the prohibition to eat swine flesh, and that of certain other animals, must have a Hindu origin. Vide Khode, Ueber relig- ioese Bildung der Hindus, vol. 2, p. 391. Also the custom of being in one's bare feet whilst in the performance of certain religious duties must have its predecessor in the fact that a Hindu is not allowed to wear his shoes whilst attending to his religion, or whilst eating. Vide same, vol. 2, p. 437. Even the I AM THAT I AM is similar to the definition of Brahma. 288 A TREATISE ON MAN. It is such a satisfactory theory that, were it not for its oriental origin, and the fact that it is not under- stood, and because it is not apparently the same as Christ's, which has probably only a different complex- ion because of the Jewish nature of its founder, it would be instantly accepted and propagated; the spirit of the God-head and the almost nothing of the immortality of the soul that the Old Testament does teach, both of which Christ himself seems to have carefully ignored, have thrown such a cloud over his doubtlessly-correct theory that it will require ages to eradicate it from the minds of common men. Metempsychosis is a consoling thought; it tells man that he existed before birth, and not that he came from nothing; it tells man that he is a necessary part of the universe and, consequently, will always exist with it. Its being recognized so generally throughout the civilized world, arises from the fact that its principles agree better with the principles of natural laws, because it relates to every existence, than do the principles of a particular divinity that has only special reference to man. #*' ! C f ( ■au ^jCJt/ ^4*; 35?E Krfr j*i -v-f^ fcfc .-■ ,'.« ' yggABY OF CONGRESS Ifflm ■SSMP HHHHH tiMiati