_ 1_1_--~~111~~--~1~-~-~-L------------
1- 9 i,

SIX LETTERS
TO A
PIOUS MAN.
WITH AN

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO A JESUIT,
AND A
SUPPLEMENTARY ONE TO A IHUMBUGGER.
BY
KARL ILEINZEN.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,
BY AN AMERICAN LADY.
PUBLISHED BY THE "ASSOCIATION FOR THE DIFFUSION OF RADICAL PRINCIPLES."
Price, 25 cents. $10 for 100 Copies.
ADDRESS:
II. LIEBER, LOCK-BOX 93, INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

1869.!--------



1



SIX LETTERS
TO A
PIOUS MAN.
WITH AN
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS TO A JESUIT,
AND A
SUPPLEMENTARY ONE TO A HJUMBUGGER.
BY
KARL HEINZEN.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,
BY AN AMERICAN LADY.
PUBLISHED BY THE "ASSOCIATION FOR THE DIFFUSION OF RADICAL PRINCIPLES."
Price, 25 cents. $10 for 100 Copies.
ADDRESS:
H. LIEBER, LOCK-BOX 93, INDIANAPOLIS, IND.
1869.



I -9



INTRODUCTORY ADRESS TO A JESUIT.
You know the old adage " Extremes meet ". Whether by
the word meet is understood a hostile collision, or certain capacities of appiroximation which commonly presents the sharpest contrasts, the adage will always prove true. While I, to
please you, exhibit myself as the representative of one
"extreme ", I appear before you the representative of the
opposite one as an opponent who, while he challenges your
weapons, also willingly acknowledges their strength in
such of your qualities as "meet" mine. These qualities are
pie-eminently, a fundamental abhorrence of all half-way-measures and an unwavering consistency in the prosecution of
your aims. You have rightly recognized that belief and reason mutually exclude each other; and that the slightest recognition of the rights of reason is death to belief; therefore
you entirely exterminate reason by belief. You have also
rightly recognized that your belief is not secure so long as it
tolerates another beside it; hence you strive for the universal
supremacy of the One True Catholic Church. You have not
less justly recognized that for the accomplishment of your
aim, you need a supreme authority on earth; hence you make
the Pope the infallible vicegerent of God.
In this position of extreme hostility to reason, you stand
nearer me than you think. For by exacting requirements of
believers, such as only the dullest brain can forever fulfil, you
at last drive all those whose powers of thought you cannot
completely destroy over the boundary-line of belief into the
domain of reason. A Catholic is sooner made an unbeliever
than a Protestant of equal capacity, because he has not,



-4--

like the latter, prostituted and enervated his reason by the
hypocritical business of maintaining in the name of reason,
that which is hostile to reason. With a niive renunciation,
he has only allowed reason to be deprived of its functions
through a dictation, against which, with the slightest enlightenment, he rebels and is driven into direct opposition.
Protestantism or Rationalism creates no revolutions in thought;
for it is an unfruitful hybrid; Catholicism needs for the producing of revolutions only the arousing of its suppressed
creative powers.
You will now be astonished and perhaps indignant that I in
this manner stamp you as my ally or assistant. If you are
unwilling to be so regarded, there is a simple means for declining this honor. It consists in proving through a public debate
that belief can directly contend against unbelief without endangering itself. If I by this demand of you, that you transfer
the battle-field from the ground of belief to the ground of unbelief or reason, I beg you to find in this no contradiction of
my recognition of your consistency. For I do not expect of
you the hazardous inconsistency of defending your belief with
the weapons of reason, but I simply expect you to annihilate
my unbelief with the weapons of belief. Since, according
to your teaching, reason stands below belief, you can have no
hesitation in turning your superior weapons against my
weaker ones. But should you even call to your assistance
the weapons of reason, I will admit of this excuse for you,
that "the end sanctifies the means." I will concede everything
to you; only refute me, confound me. Destroy my arguments
and show at the same time the defectiveness of my morality.
Perhaps you will make proselytes of me and other unbelievers, und this meritorious work you can accomplish through
the simple test, of what impression my confessions under the
blows of your sword makes upon your'believers.
We live in a time in which all questions tend towards Parrhesy, find themselves under the necessity of drawing their



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final consequences, summing up their conclusions and requiring of their representatives to play their last trump. In this
crisis of development, Revolution and Re-action, Radicalism
and Conservatism, in all departments, stand in sharply defined
opposition, and all intermediate positions must be abandoned*
as untenable. As at the present time in the political sphere,
nought but royal absolutism and democratic republicanism
can have any importance as opposing elements, so in the religious sphere nought but Atheism or Materialism and Catholicism or Jesuitism have any serious significance. Materialism
is the Parrhesy of the laws of reason; Catholic Jesuitism, the
Parrhesy of hostility to reason. Jesuitism is the citadel in
which religious belief must find its last defence and its grave.
No wonder therefore that every effort is made to fortify it,
and so much more urgent is the summons to capture it or
blow it in the air. Now, sir, I approach you not as an impetuous assailant with storming-ladder, nor do I steal upon
you like a subterranean foe, through mining passages. I am
honest and human enough to operate openly before the eyes
of all, and, surrounding the citadel with a simple chain of arguments, demand of you the commander, either to break the
chain, or to surrender. If you do not do the first, then I must
regard the second as tacitly accomplished.
Sound common sense enjoins on us to secure the extermination of a tree by destroying the roots and not to attempt it by
simply cutting off the branches. It were a vain undertaking
to contend with Jesuitism on the ground of belief. On the
ground of belief, Jesuitism is master and must remain victorious; there it alone is justifiable and consistent, while Protestantism is nothing but the vain and fruitless disobedience
of the child against its father. He who will combat Jesuitism
must follow it beyond Father Loyola, and with other weapons
than those of a Luther; he must attack the roots of its existence out of which it grows even without the help of the
Jesuit Father. This root is belief and the fountain of this



from whom all existent and all non-existent things derive their
origin - that universal authority so wonderfully founded on
the authority of those who derive their own from it, and which
itself never demands their regard, but only allows it to be de*manded by others - that power represented now in the light
of benign greatness, and now in the light of awful terror, which
can do all and every thing and still must be guarded like a
helpless child - that stern Lord and Judge who with unerring
glance tries the hearts and reins of all, yet quietly suffers it,
that certain persons in black coats, with fat or lean paunches,
with long or short fingers, with mountains of infamy behind
them, and a hell of vileness within them, without any written
authorization or any kind of document from his private cabinet, give themselves out as his vice-gerents, ambassadors, ministers, generals, police-officers, tax-gatherers, private-councillors, adjutants, jailers, even executioners, in order that they,
according to their pleasure, may govern, discipline, censure,
superintend, watch, fleece, torture, and even hang and roast
in his name, all the world.
It is evident that so long as this wonderful sovereign, so
tolerant to his servants, but so hardhearted towards the rest
of humanity, exists and is revered, his ministers, generals &c.
&c. find it an easy task to command brains and purses by
their fictitious cabinet-orders and impositions of taxes. But
as aoon as the sovereign is resolved into nothing, or is recognized as a creation of his so-called servants, then an end is also
made to these servants from vice-gerent down to executioner,
and they may esteem themselves happy, if their dismissal from
office is their only punishment.
You see, reverend sir, that I oppose you with all possible
honesty. You will not declare him an ordinary opponent who
challenges you to kill him, in order that you may live. But
do not thereby be misled by the belief, that the avowals in
the following letters are made only for the purpose of being
maintained in a controversy with you, and that I am only an



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maintained in a controversy with you, and that I am only-an
Atheist because you are a Jesuit. The sun does not shine for
the special purpose of changing earthly night into day. It
must become day because the sun shines; it would still shine
though our earth should disappear in the infinite space of the
universe, or though it had never existed.
Well, let us test the sun. Let it become either everywhere
day or everywhere night, let the whole humanity become
either Atheist or Catholic; for at last there remains no other
choice. He who vanquishes Atheism can spare himself the
trouble of combating Protestantism and Rationalism. You
see, I open to you the prospect of a great prize. Do you think
it worth the trouble of striving for it?

-o0---



Six Letters to a Pious MIan.

I.
First clear sky, then clear ground I
You condemn me as an infidel. I will give you the opportunity to prove the justice'of your condemnation by disclosing
to you my inmost sentiments, with all human frankness. Let
us begin with the main-point, with the cause of all things, as
also of our dispute, with your God. But I must precede this
point itself with some remarks on the manner in which you
are accustomed to treat this subject.
If you are as consistent in thought as in act, then you must
allow me to refer to the contradiction between your manner of
worshipping God, and your representation of him. For if you
really think of your God as you seek to represent him, then I
must ask you who commits the greater offence against him, I
who deny him or you who take him under your protection
against me? What kind of a God is that who must be protected
by his creature who grovels helpless and humble on his knees before him? What kind of a God is that who can be endangered
by being denied? What kind of a God is that who is believed
to be angry, if one of his creatures is too blind to recognize
him? What kind of a God is that who needs the help of the
police or the mob to save him? What kind of a God is that
who has no truer guards than the enemies of reason and
liberty? Venerable father, have I not a right from the very
outset to dispute your truthfulness or your honesty when you



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maintain that you believe in such a God? He who believes
in a God must form a conception of him, and he who does this
must form a worthier conception of a God, than to represent
him as one needing the protection of priest, mob, or police.
How can you expect me to believe in a God, whom you exbibit as the essence of hatred and at the same time of impotency? You can produce no stronger testimony of the deficiency of your God than the anxiety and animosity with
which you watch and persecute the doubts of his existence.
You maintain that you are as firmly convinced of God's existence as of your own. If it occurred to me to deny your existence you would laugh at me; but if I deny your God, you
regard him as endangered and persecute me. What does this
striking contradiction denote? You unconsciously allow it
to be seen, that you assume the possibility, that your God and
with him the foundation of your spiritual existence and world
of belief may be d e st r o ye d. You betray your consciousness that you are not the creature of a God, but that God is
your creature. In this creature and the belief in the same, you
keep.guard not over God who cannot need guarding by you,
but over your office, your influence, your means of authority,
in short your priestly interests. So long as your God exists,
you are a powerful personage; as soon as he falls, you fall also;
the richly-endowed priest becomes perhaps a beggar; the proprietor of great estates a vagabond; the high church-offiicial
a hireling; the general a subaltern; the model of virtue a
knave - that is, a declared one.
Dou you wish to prevent my declaring that I cannot believe
in your God? Do you wish, for the honor of your God, to
prove me a liar towards him? Will you pay him the compliment of saying that the renunciation of thought and speech
is the first essential for belief in him? Are you the censor of
your God? When and through what means has he thus appointed you? Think what you will, believe what you can, and say
what you believe; but allow me the same liberty; otherwise you



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must confess that I without the support of a God conduct myself more tolerantly and in more godlike a manner than you
with the help and in the name of your God. But be as intolerant as you will and prevent what you can, as little as you
can hinder a woman from bringing forth the child conceived
within her, just as little can you hinder my nature from also
following out its necessity and setting before you, in cqmprehensible words, as its mental fruit the creed of a new age.
According to Christian  principles, pre-supposing their
honesty, it may be consistent, to p it y me for being deprived
of the "comfort " of believing in your God; but when you
are angry with me on that account, you are inconsistent to
the highest degree; for to force a man to a belief in God
means to strengthen him in doubts of a God.
As regards the comfort, leave it to me to conduct my suit
against God face to face. If you fear as little for your God
as I for myself, you can easily grant me this favor. But you
must grant it; for if it is a crime not to believe on a God,
then at the most you are entitled to come forward as a witness in the suit but not as a j u d g e. How will you act as
judge in the affairs of a being whom you cannot comprehend
and who according to your assertion will judge you yourself?
If this being is constituted as you represent him, you must
allow that he alone is capable of being judge in his own affairs,
and needs not even your testimony.
As with your God, so do you practise with the religion
which you build upon the belief in a God. You boast of its
power, its stability, its imperishableness, yet cry out in
alarm, and bewail the destruction of all divine things as soon
as they are touched with the weapons of an unbelieving criticism. Can there be a more ridiculous contradiction than
this, and at the same time a more speaking testimony against
the firmness of your own belief? When a boy boasts to you
that he will shatter Chimborazo with a pebble, will you prevent his making the trial? Will you be angry with him because



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he gives you the opportunity to convince him of his folly?
Very well, you represent your God and your religion as a
Chimborazo and affect to regard criticism as of no more importance than the boy's pebble. Why do you not allow the
critic to obtain a conviction of the stability of Chimborazo
through his own experience, and impart the same to others
through his fruitless efforts? Would you not rather desire
criticism than shun it if you believe in its inefficiency? Do you
not perceive that you stamp yourself a liar against your God
and your religion when you preach outlawry against those
who give you the opportunity to prove what you assert you
believe? Untiringly you repeat the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it, but scarcely do the gates of reason open,
than the whole world of belief falls into confusion and despair With your heavenly things it stands exactly, as with
the things of the earthly gods, who also as arrogantly vaunt
their impregnable firmness, yet would not feel themselves sure
of their preposterous existence for even a week's duration,
did they not through censorship of the press and other expedients of falsehood and violence, prevent the exposure of their
weakness. Take as an example, all from me and my associates. What we believe and are, that we place, without fear
and without reserve, at the command of every criticism, if
this criticism but disdains the one asssistant which we on our
side as little desire as possess, and which, as you will concede,
is nowhere worse applied than in behalf of a God; I mean
the assistance of gens-darmes and the fists of the
mob.
You say, we dare not handle holy things. But what is
holy? What constitutes it? How is it to be recognized?
How does this holiness verify itself? How will it effect a
recognition, if from the first it withdraws itself from all criticism through its unapproachibility and intangibility? How
can its power be tried against the gates of hell when I from
the first declare that it dare not be brought near them? Is



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the assertion of this holiness anything else than a naked
attestation of poverty? On what does this holiness rest? On
the nature of the Holy thing itself? Impossible; for if the
Holy one itself is conscious that it can bear no contact, then
in reality it is not worth being regarded as holy. On what
then? On the will of those who reverence the Holy? Then
I ask again, on what does this will found itself? It is impossible that it should be upon the confidence that the holy one
is really trial-proof. Against this assertion, what have you
now remaining but to let the trial be made? If you will not,
if this holiness must depend solely upon your arbitrary will,
then I for myself claim the same freedom as you for yourself;
and therefore I demand of you the same respect for the holiness of my unbelief that you demand for the holiness of
your belief. You speak of freedom of conscience; will you
have it for yourself alone? Believe me, my convictions are
no less holy to me, than is your belief to you. The difference
is only this; I claim for my convictions the right to be tested;
while for your belief you claim the right of escaping the test.
For me there is nothing holier in the world than Truth; and
truth wishes and even demands that it shall be tested. Not
until it has withstood every trial, has it a claim, or does it lay
claim to be esteemed holy by its professors.
Pious sir, stand off from me with your holiness; for this holiness is nothing but an intimidating shield for the despotism
of falsehood. There is nothing holier in the world than Right
on the one hand and Duty on the other. These sanctuaries,
built on the ground of truth, you may criticise and- assail as
you will; they remain what they are; and reason always rebuilds whenever falsehood has overthrown them. But that
I understand something else, by the words right and duty,
than you do, you will learn hereafter.

-o----



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LETTER II:
So long as man was not in the condition to attain a consciousness of himself and a more intimate knowledge of things
existing and operating outside of himself, he could ascribe
all the phenomena and effects of nature, observed by him, to
a mysterious power alone; and having no other measure for
this power, he must form his conception of it, from his own
nature, but naturally with magnified powers. Thus everything received in his eyes, an origin and character derived
from human nature, and yet super-human. Since every living
being judges things according to the benefit or the injury
which they do him, it follows simply and naturally that man
in his ignorance regarded all which met his senses, as subservient to some purpose which concerned himself and through
which the imaginary higher power, ruling behind these things
revealed his relations to him. The fine weather which ripened
his fruits announced the good intentions of the higher power,
and he thanked him; the hail-storm, which destroyed his
fruits, announced a hostile intention, and he prayed for mercy.
Thus man arrived at the belief in a God. Not the heart, as
has been maintained, but interest and ignorance, first manifesting themselves through fear, have created what is commonly called God. God is then in reality nothing but the
unknown cause and nature of things, behind which man assumed an exalted human, that is, super-human being. This
conception was gradually so modelled that man entered into
an imaginary relation with this being, not only with his living
interests, hopes and fears, but also with his ideas and feelings.
Thus arose not only God, but also the Father, the King of the
World, &c &c.
You will at once perceive that with this view of the origin
of the idea of God, it is an impossibility for my reason to



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make any compromise with the belief in your God. Therefore you must bring forward for your belief tenable, indestructible arguments. If you would convert me, you must first
convince me; and that you can do, only when you overthrow
my leading arguments by striking counter-arguments.
The arguments generally advanced for the existence of a
God do not deal with the doubt in a God, but only with the
belief in a God, therefore to me they are no arguments at all.
From the stand-point of reason I must commence with the
right to doubt everything which I cannot comprehend and
then make my convictions depend upon the arguments given
pro and con. Not belief but d o u b t is to me the divining-rod
of truth. Till now belief in a God has predominated in the world
and unbelief now appears in opposition to belief. Had unbelief
till now predominated, and did belief wish to supplant it, then
the course of argument would be an entirely different one. Suppose that you had not the support of a wide-spread belief, but
that you wished to fo u n d one, to found one in a cultivated
society, which had from the first recognized only that which
I introduce in the place of a belief in a God, then ask yourself what arguments you would bring forward for this belief?
Ask yourself this question a single time seriously, and you
will at least have gone so far as to exert your reason more
actively than the habit of belief has hitherto made it necessary.
He who would prove the existence of a God must first of all
consider how he would, convince a company of a t h e ists
and not a company of b eli v er s. Would you demand of me
belief, in return I demand of you that you produce unequivocal proofs ofthe existence of a God and de finite
views of his nature, - meanwhile I deny him in contumaciam.
There is said to be no effect possible without a cause, therefore no creation without a creator. That is the main apparent argument, and really the only one worth testing, upon
which you like others support yourself, and can support yourself. On this point, I must first of all simply remark, that I



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can accept no creation, where nothing has been, therefore
can conceive only of a change in what already existed, wether it be through a transformation, a dissolution, a
combination, or a development from a germ. From the outset, a creation has no meaning, since it signifies the establishing of an existence without the materials for it. With
your doctrine you would prove that there was once no universe and that this same universe has been created by a being
whom you call God. - This being must then necessarily have
existed before the universe. But now I ask you, w hore did
this being, without a universe or outside of a universe, exist?
And again what existed before this being? Who created this
being? You answer, he has existed from eternity. Very
well, if you have no other resource but to fall back upon eternity beyond which I can go as little as you, and which does
not really admit the question of an original cause, tell me,
why you do not make the argument much shorter, and at
once declare that the universe has existed from eternity?
If God could exist without a cause, so could the universe also
exist without a cause. If you can conceive of a God who has
existed from eternity without a universe, you can surely
much more easily conceive of a universe existing from
eternity without a God. I maintain that you can as little
conceive of a God without a universe as of a God
o u t. s i d e of the universe. Outside of the universe, you
find just as little place for him as without any universe.
Consequently you are constrained to let your God
and the universe exist together and that from eternity.
But thereby your God falls again into a dilemma because, he
existing in the universe, could not be independent of it, and
therefore is no God. I spare him this embarrassment, I make
no distinction between this God and this universe; but simply
conceive of a universe existing from eternity, but which in its
development has passed through many changes, and will
pass through still more. I cannot imagine that this universe



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and the material of the same, once did not exist, and that in
the course of time it arose as you say out of nothing; for out
of nothing something can or could never arise. If I once accept the doctrine, that the univierse, this great organism of suns
and stars, can have arisen out of not hi n g, then there is
really nothing that prevents me from conceiving them
to have arisen without the assistance of a God.
But if I will absolutely maintain that the universe was born
from a God, a God who, since out of nothing nothing can arise,
must necessarily hav had all the material for a universe within himself, I see then no reason why, instead of a God whom
outside of the universe I do not even know how to admit, I
shall not rather accept the universe itself, and in God
conceive the universe; and simply declare that the universe
was born out of itself, that is, developed The simple solution
of the problem is therefore this, cause and effect coincide; creator and creature are the same, namely
the universe.
Farther inquiries, for example, conceiving the manner of
the universe's development, and the original matter lead me
into the chemical, geological and astronomical sciences; as
regards the beginning, the primeval impulse, I come back
again to eternity, before which you with your God must stand
silent as well as I without a God. Theology in general has
simply borrowed all its ideas from ordinary common sense, in
order to force them back upon it again in a mysterious form
as something higher. It then no longer condescends to notice
the doubts of common-sense, and its questionings are haughtily
evaded. For example simply ask yourself where your God
really retired after he had created, or brought forth the universe? Once again this question: can you conceive of him
somewhere outside of the universe? Do you perhaps assume
that the universe has separated itself from him, as a child
from its mother? Then I must ask you what became of the
mother? You will not assert that there exists a separate uni


- 17 -

verse, into which the creator of ours has retired as into a pa.
"lace, and from which he issues his commands.
Rather you yourself say, he is "omnipresent", which again is
a suggestion of common sense. But if he is omnipresent, if
he is present in all parts of the universe, then can he not go
out ofit - then is he simply a part of all parts of it,
inseparable from it, himself the universe. There remains, if the word God is retained, only a Universal God or a
Godly Universe, but not a God a n d a universe. This little
word "and" decides all. Therefore say rather with common
sense, God is the universe, or the universe is God; or be consistent and say, the universe is-the universe and
God is a fantasy.
While I thus reduce the universe to itself, I certainly have
not solved the riddle which you are in the habit of proposing
to us, when you extol the wonderful guidance and preservation, through which you introduce in the place of the laws of
nature an independent supreme will, as if the universe were
an empire after a Solomonic pattern. In a word, I have not
yet explained or fathomed the laws of nature. But
apart from the fact, that in general not all things can be fathomed, because time, space anddevelopment being infinite,
every discovery only prepares the way for new discoveries,
and that the solution of all problems would be equal to a cessation of all development - to death, I simply ask you, c an
you conceive of a departure from the laws of
natur e? Can you conceive of a ruler of the universe, in
whose will it lay to remove one single power of nature or to
condemn it to produce another effect than that which it had
hitherto produced? Let your God once change water to
fire and earth to water, and he will in a few hours have nothing more to guide and preserve, not even himself. But if
you must concede that your ruler of the universe cannot derange the laws of nature, that he is ruled by them instead of
ruling them, then before the necessity of nature, crumbles to



- 18 -

dust all the supreme wisdom which you would assign to a monarch standing outside of nature.
Now as I cannot conceive of anything outside of the universe, so also I cannot conceive of more than one universe.
Of this one universe - this all-embracing unit, I can as little
conceive it to be finite in space, as in time, and even as little
in development. This development culminates in self-conscious mind; and this mind manifests itself in the human race.
I suppose indeed that in the other bodies of the universe, in a
similar manner, perhaps in still higher potency, mind also
manifests itself as in the human race; but so long as the human race does not come in contact with those other beings (a
contact which moreover would lead to no disclosures running
counter to his development, otherwise this development could
not have led to those disclosures) it has no other basis for its
knowledge t h a n itsel f; as it has also no other aim than
its development, which coincides with the development of the
universe.
The universe is one infinite whole, existing from eternity,
and composed of physical matter and powers. This definition
is not invalidated by the fact that matter has combined itself
out of chaotic masses and that its powers not have found the
sphere of action in which we now see them operating till after various revolutions. These powers acting in matter exhibit themselves partly as under constraint; partly as free, -
therefore partly as so-called powers of nature and partly as
so-called spiritual powers, but they are such, not through an
original difference between nature and spirit founded upon a
separate existence, but the so called spirit originates in the
co-operation of various powers of nature in fitting forms.
Through this co-operation, nature after having progressively
developed itself in the inferior formations, the beasts, comes
to consciousness, to freedom, to reason in the form of the later arisen man, and now directs itself, studies itself, cultivates
itself, and perfects itself, through the spirit. When man once



- 19 -

learns thoroughly to know and to rule his existence and his
spirit in its origin and its faculties, then will he also have succeeded in penetrating so far into nature and bringing it under
his power that he learns to exchange the feeling of a creature
dependent upon nature for the consciousness of its ruling creator. It was the presentiment of this perfection, which already
at an early period gave him the conception of Omnipotence,
Ominscience, &c; but not seeing this yet realized in himself,
and not having the courage to anticipate it, he transferred it
for the time to that imaginary being whom he called God.
Just so he had the presentiment of Omnipresence, which signifies nothing more than his subsequently recognized connexion with the whole of nature, whose noblest powers meet, as it
were, in him.
As I have already said, I am silent with you as regards eternity; I accept it, I pre-suppose it; but with it I do not pre-suppose a nonentity, a ghostly power, having no beginning, but the
eternity of existing matter and its powers with the germ of
everlasting development. A reason existing be for e matter
and its powers, into which it shall have infused the law of
their existence and development, is to me nonsense. First,
because I cannot conceive of reason as something existing
alone without that matter and those powers; secondly, if this
matter and these powers appeared first after reason, and
through it were called into existence in order from it to receive the laws of reason, then must I assume that reason has
originally produced them as something destitute of reason,
which is a contradiction; thirdly, reason would be n o t re asonable if, being able to exist in itself, it yet made itself
dependent upon matter and its powers without reason, being
the only means to manifest itself.
These observations will also make it clear to you, how absurd is your doctrine of a so-called Providence. You assume
as it were, a government existing from eternity, which nevertheless could not exist so long as it had nothing to govern,



- 20 -

and therefore created a kingdom for itself, which is called the
universe. From hence arose its need of governing before anything to be governed existed? Still more absurd than that
assumption is the farther conclusion that a government which
as all-wise and all-knowing must know beforehand through
all eternity what it will do and how it will govern, yet makes
itself the endless trouble of governing, therefore in fact carries on the business of a fearful eternal, god-like ennui. As
omnipotent, this government would act far more sensibly by
immediately, from the very first, establishing a perfection instead of revolving eternally around its own wisdom, at most,
with the aim of taking as it were godlike exercise on the
boundless wastes of Omniscience. Should this senseless revolving of omniscient Providence perhaps cause the revolution of
the heavenly bodies?
---o--
LETTER III
As you well know, there exist so-called Pantheists, who
make the whole universe a God. You yourself become partially such a Pantheist, by teaching the doctrine that God is
omnipresent. Pantheism is in truth a nonentity; being in
substance the same as the so-called atheism. It hesitates openly and honestly to deny a God; and believes it contents both
parties by placing God everywhere, instead of supplanting
him through that in whi ch it places him. It believes that
it saves God by abolishing him in a round-about way. It appears to me like one who not wishing entirely to abolish the
distinctions of the nobility, and at the same time desiring not
to offend the common citizens, makes all the citizens, noblemen. If I make the whole universe a God, consequently



- 21 -

transfer God partly and chiefly into men also; this is in reality,
the same thing as if I make God partly a man; but if I do this,
the personal God, existing above and outside of mankind and
the universe, and specifically different from them,
is ab o lish ed; and this is just the decisive point. The subterfuge that there could be in the universe a central point, a
heart as it were (which moreover does not agree with the idea
of infinity) in which the spirit of the universe has its primeval
seat of life, and in which it arrived at consciousness sooner
than in mankind, in no way alters the case. Therefore, to
enter into such an assumption, it is not denied that as the human spirit concentrated in the head forms with the human body an indivisible whole, so the so-called spirit of the
universe also forms one with the body of the universe, and
that from this whole, humanity forms an inseparable, necessary, equally-entitled part. This is just the decisiue point.
If this power or combination of powers which I, to please you,
will call the spirit of the universe has developed itself and
has manifested itself consciously in another part of the
universe in other beings or through any other means, perhaps already before the existence of the human race, this can
concern us as little as when within humanity, spirit has arrived at consciousness sooner in Europe than in Africa. The
Africans are on that acount even as good human beings as we.
In the same manner is our spirit even as much the spirit of
the universe as that active on Sirius or elsewhere, and perhaps already active before us. Wether we call this spirit,
this exhibition of power, God, and therefore the human spirit
godlike, or wether we call it man and the godlike spirit human, amounts to the same thing. The name is of no importance; and I reject the name Pantheism simply because with
tbe theological word is always connected that old idea of a
particular, mysterious, domineering being that confuses all
conceptions of right and annihilates all clear views of the universe, and to whom mankind is placed in a relation of dissimi


- 22 -

larity, dependence, subordination, reverence, slavery, humiliation, unworthiness, degradation and sacrifice. Neither would
I make use of the word atheism (non-belief in God) could I
introduce another suitable term, because atheism expresses
merely something negative, merely the opposition to something non-existent. No one calls a living person a not-dead
person, but merely a living person. So an atheist should simply be called a man believing in nature, or briefly - a man
instead of an unbeliever in God or a godless man.
If God as I have before said, is nothing but an expression
for the unrevealed cause and nature of things, then an atheist
is nothing else than a friend of the revelation of that cause
and nature. This must be kept constantly in view, in order
to measure the absurdity of those who make the word atheism
a word of reproach. Moreover the different points of view
must be borne in mind from which believers hurl down that
abusive word like the thunder of excommunication. There
exists a Catholic, a Protestant, a Mormon, a Jewish, a Turkish,
an Indian, a Chinese, a Russian, a New-Zealand God, in short,
there are a thousand different Gods who of course are all the
true ones; therefore who mutually deny each other, therefore towards each other all are atheists, not to
speak of those who believe on them. To which of all these
Gods must I now adhere, in order not to be an atheist? To
the true one, you will say; and the true one is naturally yours;
and yours is the offspring of your imagination or your falsehood. Then in reality, I must believe in you or your associates, in order not to be an atheist; yet I know among them a
goodly number for whom the name blockhead and hypocrite
would be flattery. In the last instance then, in order not to
be an atheist I must believe in a blockhead or a hypocrite.

-0 -


- 23 -

LETTER IV.
You see that I cannot conceive nor admit of a personal
being, standing outside of the universe, or separable from and
independent of the universe and humanity. I utterly reject
the idea as well as the name of God and conceive only a un iv e rs e; myself and my fellow-men (like the flowers, beasts &c.)
I conceive to be parts or forms of this universe in which its
life is developed and continued; and as the acme of this life
of the universe, I must recognize the so-called spirit, manifesting itself in earthly humanity, and as I suppose, in other
humanities also on other stars. Above the human spirit, I
can know nothing, and acknowledge nothing, because what I
know is not above me, and what I do not know, for me has
as yet no existence. All which exists for me, I must learn to
know, and this learning to know is human development, - is
human life, and the way to human happiness. Just on account
of the nature of the spirit there is and can be no higher aim
for the human race, than knowledge and happiness; or if you
will, only happiness, since knowledge constiutes the chief attribute and especial value of happiness. The knowledge of the
cause of things and of the necessity of their effects is the sum
of all wisdom and the foundation of all human satisfaction.
While I therefore banish entirely from my conceptions all
which you connect with the name of God and consequently
no theological world exists for me, I also of course banish all
which the human mind in the course of its imperfect development has connected with that theological world- consequently
all which from without is presumed to have been imparted to
the mind, and to flow outward from it to a particular fountain; namely, revealed religion and immortality. If no God
exists or can exist outside of humanity or the universe, then
he also can not have revealed anything to men from without;



- 24 -

to the human mind nothing reveals itself b ut w hat it
develops out of itself or out of the universe.
Moreover, as the spirit cannot have come into the universe
from without, but must itself, or at least its causes, have always been within it, then it cannot return to a God, from
whom it did not proceed; it remains therefore quietly in the
universe. In so far, do 1 also believe in immortality, since I
believe in the immortality of the universe with all its matter
and its powers. In the continuation of the personal life of
man (and of this only can we speak here) I of course do not
believe, cannot believe; besides, it no longer interests me, after
having once recognized its impossibility. Even to you, it
must become indifferent, if you do not believe in a full resurrection of the body in flesh and blood. For what other
reason do you wish to continue to exist, but because you hope
after death to be able to continue your individual life
and ifpossible to do this with other persons whose individuality has become precious to you? But what constitutes
your individuality? It is the union of your flesh, your blood,
your nerves, etc. Dissolve this union, destroy only a part of
this organized bodily connexion, and the product of the same,
the - Father N-  has slso disappeared or changed. Even
if you will accept a separate exitence of the spirit
after this dissolution, yet you can only conceive of this spirit
as perfectly indifferent, so long as you do not combine
it again with the other parts of your personality. I do not
conceive of mind or spirit as something separate either in man
or in the whole universe; but I do not conceive of mind without existence, nor existence without life, nor life without
matter, nor matter again without life, under which title I
understand all powers and all motion.
"But this is Materialism I" you will. exclaim. Yes, this is
Materialism I Materialism, like Atheism  has become a word
which ignorance and malice use to scoff at that which they
do not comprehend or which is objectionable to them. I main


- 25 -

tain there can be nothing immaterial in the world. And what
is lost thereby? Is that which we call soul, thought, feeling,
thereby less soul, thought, feeling, because I do not separate
them from matter? Would you have the fragrance of the
flower without the flower? Among all the manifestations of
stupidity, there has never been a greater one than the abuse
of Materialism. So long as it is necessary to demand recognition and respect for that which is perceived by the senses, the
material, that is, the existent, so long can we not speak
of a universal happiness and a universal rationality. So long
as man need the spectres of things instead the reality of
things, so long will they torture themselves with nonentities.
The mind is nothing but the result of an organized combination and co-operation of physical and physiological powers.
The whole universe is, as it were, a physical and chemical
laboratory in which material powers carry on an unceasing
change and transformation. Where the one formation ceases
there the other begins. Even the corps of a human being
lives; but it is no longer human life, it is only the life, the
changing process of inorganic nature to which the human
form returns after its dissolution, and out of which organic nature reproduces itself. Anything dead, that is unchangeable,
does not exist in the universe; and dying means merely
changing again into the material of general life. But if the
special spirit of which we are now speaking, consequently the
spirit of one single human being shall apper again upon the
earth, then must an organized human form develop itself out
of that material by the circuitous method of conception and
nourishment; and how you will conceive of the resurrection
of all the thousand millions of individual human forms which
have returned to that material, I leave it to you to decide.
Where does the fragrance of the flower remain, when the
flower is withered? Where does the mind of man remain,
when he is dead? By the same right whereby you claim a
resurrection of man, can you also claim a resurrection of the



- 26 -

flowers; and that to your immortality the beasts have as good
a claim as you is understood of itself.
Moreover, the desire for a resurrection after death must
diminish in proportion as men learn to fill up and use their
lives rationally. If they do this, they will with equanimity
depart from this life. In sixty or seventy years can a man live
and experience so much, that he departs perfectly satisfied,
pre-supposing of cource that humanity has first arranged its
social relations in a thoroughly humane manner. Now, the
life of most men consists only of a succession of troubles, privations and pains which have been unnecessarily inflicted
upon them by their fellow men. When the despots, priests,
and blood-suckers have disappeared and the conditions of a
truly human life are secured for all, then those who must prematurely depart from life without having humanly fulfilled its
requirements - without having anticipated their immortality,
will belong to the ax ceptions, whereas they now form the
rule. Bliss in heaven is the daughter of the unhappiness on
earth.
-oLETTER V.
In a manner unexpected to me, you have conquered yourself so far as at least to allow me to state briefly the chief
points of what I believe and what not, although perhaps your
tolerance would not have sufficed for a more minute demonstration of the same, in opposition to your religious doctrines.
This moreover will not be necessary, since, for example, the
criticism of your Christianity has already been entirely exhausted. You now ask me what I have in reality gained after I have rejected your God, your religion and immortality,



- 27 -
after I have reduced the universe and humanity to itself and
have shut off from men the prospect of a better life.
What have I gained? All that I need  First, I can think
of no greater gain for humanity than the loss of your theological conception of the universe and all that you understand
by religion and immortality. Do not think that I treat the
subject frivolously; I take it very seriously. I beg of you also,
calmly to overcome for the time being your horror at my denial of a God, and to forego the narrow-minded illiberal conception, that a so-called atheist must with malicious pleasure
prosecute infernal plans against humanity. Such a conception
attaches itself easily to everything that presents itself as something new in opposition to existing conceptions and institutions, or that stands alone. But also your Christ stood at
first alone, and now half of mankind still worship him, although he has brought to them nothing but a universal love
which makes nobody happy and a univeral cross which weighs
everybody to the earth. Thereforejust as a Christian you must
be forced to confess that the standing alone serves as no argument, and you must know that there can be times when one
single man constitutes humanity. Estimate not the worth of a
man by the size of his party, nor the worth of a creed by the number of its followers. Learn to recognize the possibility that an
atheist may mean better toward his fellowmen than thousands
and thousands of the worshippers of God. Yes, that he must
mean better; because he only recognizes the real natural rights
of man. Let me now briefly point out what is the positive result of my negations.
I. The belief in a ruler over the mind is the father of all
mental slavery; the discarding of this belief is the mother of
all mental freedom. As soon as mind recognizes a master, it
is no longer master of itself but becomes simply the servant
of the fantastic conception which it forms of such a master.
It has thus ceased to be really mind; for the legitimation of
mind consists in the masterless free judgment. There is no



- 28 -
greater contradiction than mind and God. There is but one
mind.  If it exists above humanity, then it does not
exist in humanity; but if it exists i n humanity, then humanity cannot be subordinated to it. The highest thing
in humanity, as everywhere, is mind; it may, so to speak,
be divided into various quantities, but qualitatively it
must be of one kind. Were there two qualitatively different minds then would the one know nothing of the
other; the one would stand in no relation to the other; therefore each one would exist only for itself. He who does not
recognize this, consequently accepts the doctrine of a mind
foreign to his own, with which he however stands in relaiton, renounces his own mind in order to make himself the
slave of a fantasy. Whoever renounces even a hair-breadth
of his mind, has at once destroyed it, and is the slave of him
who makes use of his weakness; and since the believing man,
in forming a conception of the possessor of that mind which,
as something of a higher nature, not human, he places above
himself, can still conceive of a man only, can recognize one
of his fellow-creatures only, therefore the belief in a God becomes in practice simply the belief of a slave, and the worship of God, the worship of the priest.
II. If humanity turns its eyes away from a being and a
world which do not exist, and directs its glance only on itself
and the real world, then it learns to recognise its position, its
task, and its worth, and applies its care to itself alone. It
learns to see that it is an authorized, independent power in the
world, and not an unauthorized, subject race, barely existing
through favor, and having to thank an imaginary ruler for
their claims to happiness or even being obliged to sacrifice
these to him. It learns to recognize itself as its own master,
and also as its own aim. It learns to direct its efforts only
toward its happiness, when it has discarded the doctrine that
unhappiness is to be regarded as a higher obligation; it learns
to seek this happiness here, when it sees that otherw i se it



- 29

is never and nowhere to be found. It learns to know
that it is folly and crime to exclude the masses from a happiness which has its source in itself alone; and that this crime
may cease, it will make the happiness of mankind the common
cause of humanity. It will learn to cling together, after it
has recognized that it is limited to itself, and it will strive to
accomplish its tasks with self-consciousness, as soon as the
circle of these tasks is circumscribed in a perceptible nearness,
removed from the misty undefined domains of a fantastical
conception. The love, which you insist on devoting to an
inaccessible being (a being to whom, if he could exist, such
love must evidently be very indifferent) it will know how to
direct upon itself, and in the idea of its own perfection and
ennoblement will reverence the highest being.
III. When the believe in a God ceases, then ceases also
every obligation towards God which you would impose upon
man, and only the duty of man to man remains.
Morality is therefore simplified, in some cases perfectly reversed; theological morality is made human morality -
the highest, most valuable prize whichthevictory over belief will bring to humanity. This
human morality, will no longer know any other
duties than those which one man has to fulfil
to others; equal, universal, human rights will
be recognized as the source of these; and the appeal or even
reference to higher duties will no longer be allowed as the
excuse for the non-fulfilment of the former. No longer will socalled higher duties come in collision with the duties towards
one's fellow-creatures; and just as little will the so-called
higher right clash with human right. No longer will despot
or priest appeal to God's Grace or God's will, when he wishes
to deny to man equality of rights, when he wishes to mislead
them 'and lure them to other aims than those which stand
prescribed at the path to human happiness. The theological
gradations among men which raise certain individuals, like



- 30 -

demi-gods in an artificial nimbus above others, will be robbed
of their ground-work and crumble to ruins. Is that disgraceful worship of human idols, called Majesties, anything else
than a reflection of the belief in a God? Does not the depressing and degrading effect of the belief in a God extend
from the man in Rome as from the man in St. Petersburg, and
from all the other men of the Majesty-class down through all
grades of society even to the sexton and the Life-Guardsman?
Does the degradation of the European people rest in reality
on a different basis than, for example, the degradation of the
Chinese? Is not the political like the social life of the whole
civilized world in its conceptions and institutions still imbued
and corrupted by the fictions and degradations of theology?
Is not theology the means through which everywhere one portion of humanity has placed itself in a position a bov e men,
in order to be able to debase the other portion be ow men?
Would there be an Emporor of Russia if there were no imperial Russian Lord God? Would the people be guilty of the
disgrace of sacrificing their liberty and their happiness to such
a bugbear, if they had destroyed the nimbus in which it exists
and sanctifies itself? This whole structure of human degradation must and will be torn down. Down will fall with its
whole scaffolding and appendages, the thousand-year old puppet-box in which the proud puppets called Majesty, Holiness,
Highness, Eminence, Excellency, &c. suspended on godlike
strings, in order to sustain their comedianlike existence, extort
from the gaping multitude the slavish tribute of a sacrificing
admiration.
If there were but one single man in the world, could this man
commit a wicked action? With the best will to do it, he could
not; since he could violate no other man's rights, nor misuse
them for objects hostile to man. Against trees and stones, no
man commits an injustice, a perfidy, a wicked act. Only in
the relation of man to man is this conceivable. H11u man
morality then is nothing but the law           ofmu


- 31 -

tual regard for universal, equal, human rights,
in order to secure universal human happines s; while religious morality feels perfectly satisfied when,
on the ruins of these rights and this happiness, it has erected
an altar to a pretended sovereign, around which his servants
rule and revel.
IV. NV hen morality is no longer connected with an imaginary being to whom are imputed all sorts of unnatural demands, then will the law of nature be emancipated and the
way to happiness freed from all hindrances consisting in anything else than regard for our fellowmen and human honor.
As soon as morality is reduced to the ground of human rights,
sin consists simply in the degeneration or
encroachments ofhuman egotism, which turns
against one's fellow beings; and that mysterious sin, that sin in itself, which has given
you and your fellow-thinkers so much trouble, and with which you haveso long tormented human nature, is abolished. But the art of
making sin something which is necessary and natural, has also
ceased with this. In order to be clear on this point, call to
mind only the renowned fall of your ancestor Adam. If you
will be honest, you must confess that by this fall nothing in
truth is to be understood but the sexual act, through which
Adam and Eve (allowing that these mythical persons were
our progenitors) laid the foundation for their posterity. Now
ask yourself why and in what measure was this act a sin?
God had implanted in the first pair who should people the
world with his worshippers the impulse of love, and when they
followed this impulse, they sinned against him who had created it. Ilad they not sinned, what then? Without the fall
the good Adam would not have been able to place in the
world the posterity, which through him is said to have inherited the sin of propagation. In order to avoid the fall, must
he not have renounced posterity to whom this avoidance



- 32 -

should be a benefit? Is it not the greatest absurdity when
this posterity demands of its progenitor that he should have
set them in the world without making use of the only means
which could have served him for this purpose? Does not the
stamp of this nonsense, this immoral morality, which defiles
even the most beautiful relation of human life, L o v e, with
its mire, rest even to this very day on the ideas of millions of
anxious believers, who at the command of the priests would
be capable of seeing a sin in eating and drinking, yes even in
bare existence? With what confidence and what pride can
he rely upon humanity, who makes its origin a sin? Through
this single conception the whole life and the whole world to a
believer is poisoned. Therefore such vile doctrine is an actual moral poison. Ay, pious sir, it is real atrocity to brand
mankind with the stamp of sinfulness in order for gold and
slavish service to earn the merit of their purifying. In this
example, may you recognize what point we reach, when the
coarse fables of a childish world are made the dogmas of an
advanced one, and use sin as the cloak for the want of knowledge or as the means for speculation. But the source of all
this error and vileness is the belief in a God to whom man
transfers alike his follies and passions, in order first to sanctify them in him and then with them to tyrannize over others.
You will know that the fall of man marks not the single absurdity and inhumanity of your theological morality. But
h u m an morality never thinks of shackling and deforming
nature; it rather makes nature the 1 a w, under control of the
common rights of man and human h o n o r (reason) which
it adorns with the wreath of B e a u t y.
V. As morality consists alone in a regard for human rights
and human dignity, then immoral ity consists alone
in the violation of these ri'ghts and this dign ity. Therefore those must be the worst men, who from
selfish motives abridge the rights or the means of happiness
of their fellowmen and degrade them to instruments for selfish



- 33 -

aims. Henceforth will the sinners be sought elsewhere than
they have hitherto been. The egotists will be the greatest
sinners; and those the greatest egotists who, for personal
interests, rob the greatest number of men of their rights and
means of happiness. But human rights and means of happiness consist in liberty and in an adequate share of the goods
of this earth. iHe who robs us of our freedom and abridges
our means of life and happiness, commits the highest
crime which can be committed; he is an enemy to
humanity and the friendship of God can no longer save him.
A " higher" tribunal no longer absolves him, and we alone form
the tribunal which judges him. Look around in your circle, enumerate your pious men and your enemies of freedom, and you
will be terrified at the mountain of indictments which arises
at the moment when theological morality is abolished and
human morality is introduced in its place  You will be terrified at the number of those who, in the name and under the
protection of God, have oppressed, abused, plundered, enslaved, tortured, murdered their fellowmen; in short, have
defrauded them of life and human destiny. You will recognize
that the colossal and nevertheless legitimated crimes of these
enemies of humanity, measured by the usual criminal standard
must call down upon them a fearful judgment. Thinking
of them, we see the beam on Themis' scale spring in the air,
high as the heavens, and all the guillotines of the earth fall
into convulsions. Not in vain does Themis carry the balance,
and as little her sword, and she will hold her day of judgment.
On this fearful day will a reckoning be held with all those
criminals against humanity, who thought they could authorize
and save themselves through a God. Has there ever been a
criminal, a knave, a tyrant, a bandit, great or small, whose
legitimation and support was not named God? God plundered the pockets of the oppressed, God sucked out their very
blood, God cast them into prison, God swung the scourge of
the jailer, God directed the stroke of the executioner; God
3



- 34 -

was the authorizer, the protector, the sustainer, the recruiter,
the agent; God was the sanctifier of all the vileness, all the
perjury, all the robbery, all the vengeance, all the bloody
deeds, all the bestialities, all the abominations which ever
were practised, and are yet daily practised. On this godlike
way we have travelled so far that the greatest man on earth
according to your doctrine, the Vicegerent of God, has become
the greatest criminal on earth - that holy patron of all
tyrants and bandits, to whom the power only is wanting, in
order to command that every free life draw its last breath in
prison, on the bloody scaffold or at the stake; and who, as a
compensation for this deficiency in his power, seeks to preserve at least the vocation of blessing those tyrants who come
nearest to his ideal of a man-tormentor.
In India, there are hereditary bandits who are specially
skilled in the art of strangulation, and commit the most fearful murders in masses. Before the Court, they make this plea,
" Pr o v i d e n c e has indicated to them their business, and they
are tools in the hand of God." Exactly so is it with the
hereditary and consecrated bandits wearing crown and tiara,
who through armies of murderers and executioners command
whole nations to be trodden under foot, plundered, and
slaughtered in the name of God. There comes a day which
will drawn this abominable God in the blood of his abominable
favorits who have invented him as a medium of fraud and a
protector of crime; there comes a real day of final judgment,
on which all men shall arise and all tyrants descend into
the pit, and before this day, pious man, you also may
tremble.
To believing men, it must by and by become clear why
their pious enemies have taken such zealous care to educate
them in the " fear of God ", to make them what is called " religious ", and to keep them in the belief in a "better life".
It will become clear to them, why just in the worst states and
by the worst governments, God and Religion are mostly



- 35 -

placed under the protecton of the police; why despots and
priests persecute with imprisonment and excommunication
those who will raise man to a true manhood and free him
from the tyrannizing belief in a mysterious power, in whose
name he through its earthly representatives is robbed of his
happiness and his dignity. It will become clear to them that,
with the removal of the belief in that power, the ground will
be also removed from under the feet of these pretended representatives, and that, so long as this ground gives them a
firm foothold, all strife against despots as against priests,
against oppressors of the people as against Jesuits, is a fruitless one, not touching the root of the evil.
VI. The belief in a God has hitherto been the seed of all
the bloody dissensions among men. The various ways of
worshipping an imaginary being have caused more wars and
ruin than all the varieties of other interests. With the disappearance of belief in God, disappears the foundation of all
religious hostility and in its place arises the foundation of
human equality and universal peace. All wars have
sprung from two grounds: on the political field, the monarchical subjects fight for their earthly despots, on the religious,
the godly subjects fight for their heavenly ones and as on the
political field the abolition of Royal Majesty and its subjects
lays the foundation for a union of the nations, so on the religious domain, the abolition of the Divine Majesty and its believers lays the foundation for the union of humanity.
----oLETTER VI.
After having thus briefly heard what I have won by discarding the belief in a God etc. you wish also to know how



- 38 -

hell, the last judgment and simular nonsense, but the fear of
the believers in such godly absurdities or the hypocritical
speculators in this belief which restrains thousands from leaving the ranks of the believers. And this you call satisfaction?
From my heart, I pity the poor satisfied ones who in their
everlasting fear of their God and their fellowmen, keep account of the sins which they do not commit, and those which
they do commit, hold for virtues. Be sure that the progressive humanity will not miss a God when it is no longer educated in the belief in him; and that it will become so much the
more satisfied, the more it learns to seek the source of satisfaction in itself. It will indeed need a long time before this
will universally be achieved, for you and yours have so peopled the world on all sides with bugbears that a whole ocean
of the Lethe water of a better knowledge must be drunk, before these will all be forgotten. Your God you have made
the hobgoblin of the whole universe, and your belief is nothing
but a universal belief in hobgoblins. Yes, in relation to mankind God is to you like the Chief-of-Police for the universe
and your morality is nothing but the fear of a godly police.
Through a belief in hobgoblins and a fear of police will you
bring satisfaction to humanity endued with reason and born
to freedom?
On the other hand, you think the weak and unfortunate lose
their last support, so soon as the belief in a heavenly Father is
taken from them. But, overlooking other points, consider that
as humanity withdraws from that helief into itself, it makes a
corresponding progress not only in knowledge but also in the
effort to diminish the unhappiness to which that belief shall
serve as a support. When we, as I above remarked, have once
succeeded in gaining the means for universal happiness, namely
freedom and a share in the goods of this earth, the greater part
of those, who in misery and destitution are referred to the
other world will have disappeared, and they will rest more
contentedly in the bosom of humanity than in Abraham's



- 39 -

bosom. I beg of you to recognize, it is humanity itself which
creates the unhappiness for whose endurance it takes refuge
in an imaginary world. But if we speak of unavoidable and
unmerited misfortune which befals individuals and will always
befal them, then again it is humanity which consoles and compensates, so far as it can; and such compensation of human
love guaranted to a fellow man through a commanding right,
a right acknowledged by reason, not by capricious impulse, is
methinks something more real and effective than the vague
belief in a compensation through an unknown being after
death.
How little the true human love, in spite of, or by reason of
this reference to higher instances, has till now gained a foothold or been operative, you may see in the condition of h uman rights. At every turn and corner, do you not hear
love preached by weaklings and knaves, while they approve
or effect the annihilation of human rights in millions of individuals? Has not the so-called human love been hitherto the
hidden enemy of human rights whose realization or forerunner it should be? What isthis human love without
the guarantee of human rights? A lie -alie deserving all abhorrence and destructive to all humanity, the most
atrocious lie in the world. But this lie will be destroyed as
soon as humanity returns to itself. We shall and we must
awaken another love than that confused, sickly, grievous,
weakly, sentimental or even perfidious creed-love consisting
either in barren words, or ascetic exaggerations, or a disguised
love-lessness which makes men miserable. We must have a
fresh love; a love become flesh and blood, proceeding from a
free consciousness and standing on firm ground; a love which
is the expression of a common feeling of right and duty in a
human society founded upon itself. Can there be a greater
and truer human love than that which will demand the recognition and realization of all just claims of all men? which has
in view, yes which makes it even a categorical law that to



- 40 -

every man the conditions of all happiness shall be secured of
which he is capable without impairing the happiness of his
fellow men? Yet that is not done by the Christian love, but
only by the purely human, the Atheistic human love which
banishes all not human conceptions and duties and strives to
reconstruct society on the foundation of equal rights of all. M an
will not become really human in his disposition
until he becomes really human in his ideas. All
not human, all theological conceptions are repulsive to humanity, are radically i n h u m a n, and can also lead only to
inhumanities. To pretend to be human in the name or with
the idea of a God means to pretend to be free in the name or
with the idea of a despot. Purge humanity from all theological fantasies; that is conceive of nothing above it which is
not in existence - then does man first become humanly free
and purely human, learns to esteem man as man, imputes to
him nothing evil and nothing sinful, and makes him his own
master, ideal and aim. What is sacrificed to a God is withdrawn from humanity. Sacrifice the God and man is gained.
Only by discarding the belief in a God is that reached which
man hoped to gain through that belief.
Be not anxious therefore while I dispute your theological
human love, I have in view a love which in truth amounts to
the same. I will even confess to you that the love which I
mean is founded not on actual self-sacrifice, but on selfishness,
not on a warm brotherly feeling but on cold reason. Only
on this ground is love something steadfast and enduring. A
real love I know only in the relation of single individuals;
an universal human love is to me something incomprehensible.
Yet do I preach it? Yet after fighting against egotism and reproaching others for it, will I make egotism the rule? Yes! Egotism is the soul of the universe. It is the first necessity, it is life,
it is existence itself. Can you conceive of a man who should
have no idea of himself, should not be active for himself,
should not make himself the starting-point, or act according



- 41 -

to his own motives, and yet should live? I cannot. He would
be a stone and not a man. Therefore egotism is the base of
existence; it is as we have said, existence itself. But by thus
recognizing this for my own person, I am through reason
absolutely compelled to recognize it also for my fellowmen, having the same nature and the same rights. Reason,
which says this to me, makes known to me farther, as the law
of its being, that it cannot act against its own knowledge -
cannot direct itself against itself; that it finds satisfaction
only in the realization of its knowledge. Recognizing every
man as having the same nature and the same rights, reason
cannot make peace with itself till the egotism of every individual has gained its rightful vindication. If on this motive
alone I found my human love, then it stands firmer than on
your divine commandments. Thus according to my doctrine
of egotism I allow to every person the freedom which I desire
for myself, and by these individual freedoms coming to a
mutual understanding and uniting on a common basis, arises
a moral - a human relationship. For example, I cannot be
made happy by loving a woman who is not made happy by
loving me; I can have no man for a friend who at the same
time would be my servant; I cannot wish to exercise an
authority over my fellow men which they have not voluntarily
transferred to me, for a common aim; I cannot be happy with
superfluities while my fellow men with equal rights are in
want; I cannot rejoice in my own freedom if my fellow man
languishes in slavery. I must see him also happy, also free,
even if it were only on account of my own person. My reason, my egotism will have it so, must have it so..
Or shall reason with its demands not be considered as belonging to the man, to the person, to the egotism? Shall my stomach only have wants and not my reason? That the egotism
shall become sensible and human, why, in that consists the
whole art, and the whole task. If the egotism of all men
were so cultivated and educated that it could only be satis


- 42 -

fled with justice toward all, should we then still declaim
against egotism? Napoleon's egotism impelled him to enslave
men; Robespierre's egotism impelled him to free them; Christ's
egotism impelled him to "love" and "save" them. It de
pends always only on the kind and purpose of the egotism;
namely whether it pursues an aim which benefits itself only,
or whether it pursues one which also benefits all. As much as
my egotism desires that I shall be free and happy myself, so
much will it also desire that all other men shall be free and
happy. You see therefore that my love of man and my egotism are as different as possible from that theological love and
that coarse egotism which know so well how to reconcile with
themselves the subordination, subjection, and sacrifice of millions of other egotisms, millions of other lives, having the same
natures and the same rights. A man of your kind could undisturbed be an Emperor of Russia or any similar friend of
humanity; a man of my kind would, as Emperor of Russia, be
compelled to be the first rebel against himself.
The secret of universal human ennoblement, and human
happiness consists therefore not in the extermination of egotism, which is an unnatural and impossible task, but in an
education impregnating the same with the principles of reason, freedom and humanity. Instead of the morality of subjection and belief let the principles of universal equality of
rights be inculcated in the schools and public assemblages of
the new generation, and then you will see an entirely new
race rise up around you, who can no longer have an idea of
the miseries and sufferings of the old one.
You fear that with the downfall of belief will fall also the
basis of conscience. I maintain that the true conscience
will now for the first time arise. Remember what has just
been said. What do you understand by conscience? Your
conscience is imagination and fear; my conscience is reason and honor. The freer and the more
responsible the man is placed upon his own feet, the more



-43 -

faithfully and proudly will he himself guard the responsibility
which reason and honor enjoin upon him. But therefore also
is he doubly unworthy of freedom who sees it in the atmosphere of frivolity. Freedem is not only liberation from restraint, it is also humanization; there is no free man who
would be rude or base.
Aye, the frivolous man also does not escape the condemnation^of conscience, for reason cannot itself annul its own effects. By conscience I understand the sensation of the inconsistency with himself into which a man falls as soon as he
transgresses against reason and human dignity or against universal human rights. This contradiction disturbs and agitates the reasoning and morally cultivated man, as a chemicheterogeneous infusion does fluids; and the disposition and necessities of his nature urge him, must urge him, to rid himself
again of this inconsistency. As feeling struggles against pain,
so does reason struggle against irrationality. It must struggle against it. This the reasoning man would perceive even
did not the contradictions against reason repeat themselves in
the social incongruities into which a transgressor against reason
and right places himself towards his fellow men - incongruities which will first exercise their full chatising force when the
offenders against right, like the offended, can no longer be prevailed upon through falsehood and belief in authority to smother the laws of nature. With your conscience I can smother
the greatest crimes against men, if I only succeed in fastening
upon them as legitimation some passage from your medley of
dogmas; but the purely human conscience, whose control is
the free, never silent reason, smothers nothing, nothing at all,
which comes into its domain. You must date your religious
conscience directly back to the devil, instead of God, when
you consider what inhumanities and atrocities it has not only
tolerated, but has even sanctified and still daily sanctifies.
The purely human conscience, so long as the world has stood,
has never approved of an act of inhumanity and



- 44 -

its only sin has at all times consisted in the rejection and
abandonment of the basis of your execrable theological conscience.
Narrow-mindedness sometimes expresses its apprehension
that the people, when they no longer believe in a theological
world and in immortality, will brutishly squander this life,
and give the reins to the coarsest passions. I say nothing of
the coarseness of referring mankind in general, for their morality, not to reason but to fear; but I ask you to consider how
foolish is the supposition that the people, when they no longer
believe on those things, will be still the same people who are
now feared. The total discarding of such a belief does not
take place in a day. But where it does occur, there it is necessarily connected with a transformation of the whole manner of thought and with a cultivation which excludes all fear
of unbridled bestiality. Of this be assured, the rabble will
never be made licentious through unbelief, because it will no
longer be a rabble, when it really abandons its belief. Only
religion and the rabble belong together; atheism and the rabble
are a contradiction. This the pious guardians of morality
should better bear in mind, apart from the fact that even in
the worst case, an atheistic population would- be capable of
no greater vices and crimes than the most religious of all commit daily before our eyes. Look back in history, pious sir,
and tell me what brutality, what barbarity, what inhumanity,
what crime, what bestiality the pious christian humanity with
its temporal and spiritual tyrants has left remaining to be
committed by the most horrible monster of whom you can conceive under an atheist!
Still farther, you fear that with the belief in a God &c.
man will also lose higher views, higher aims, higher development. I maintain he will first come into possession of them
through the abolition of belief. Ask yourself if your belief
can yet conceive of anything higher than what the human
mind has brought to light in the State, in Science and in



- 45 -

Art? In what consists these boasted higher views in your
domain of belief? What is then the substance of these? Tell
me that! The highest point to which you have attained is,
beside your Carnival-like buffoonery in ceremonies alike repulsive to taste and reason, the misty conception of a being,
to whom you attribute the highest degree of human qualities
and by whom you hope to be led farther than your belief, namely to knowledge. But I tell you that, even supposing the existence of a God, you have not even the slightest claim to that hope, to say nothing of a reasonable ground
for it, since you forcibly suppress knowledge
in order some day to obtain it. Why notrather
abandon belief and begin at once to know so far as
you can? How do you come to the absurd division and conclusion, according to which one shall here renounce knowledge in order there to become capable of it? If your religion
promises a revelation of God, why not begin at once to advance towards this revelation? It will be shown that by the
revelation of God, nothing can be understood but the knowledge of the universe, and this knowledge it is forsooth of
which you wish to have none. You adhere to the theological
principle that one must strive in life to be a stupid-fellow in
order after death to become a shrewd one. Such a principle
would be called very astonishing, were it not known that the
shrewd ones support it just in order to have the desired number of stupid ones at their disposal. Those are to me beautiful higher revelations by which from the outset all revelations
are suppressed. But I have other ideas of the way for human
development. I know that man is of no account except during life, that nothing can exist but the universe, that consequently man can have no other aim, as no other object of
knowledge, than again the universe and the life in this universe, and that nothing can afford higher revelations than,
once more, the universe. But Science is the stream on
which the discovering human mind is borne through the uni


- 46 -

verse; the State is the ground on which men give expression to the general consciousness of their position and secure
the common conditions of their existence; Art is the domain
for the infinite creative power of the spirit of beauty. Now
what more do you still wish, worthy man? What can you
still wish when you have wholly cultivated and exhausted
those three domains? Look around you and ask yourself if
in these a worthy field is not offered for the work of your
mind? (How many a one of your kind is too mentally indolent to understand the rule of two times two, and still by
virtue of his belief he lays claim to the future revelation of
God!).
But now look not only into the past but also into the futurel Glance at the history of human inventions, discoveries,
progress, in short, the intellectual development of the human
race in all directions and domains, and recognize that after
these preparatory works and acquisitions, still an endless succession of progressive work as the exalting task of the human
mind lets us anticipate, that to this mind no limit of development is set, and that on every height of knowledge to
which it climbs, a loftier and more beautiful one presents itself
to the viewl But keep two things in mind. First demand
no conclusive, complete knowledge, for with that you simply
demand a condition of death, something impossible, which
alone should already have induced you to doubt in a perfect
and all-knowing God; secondly, value properly the visible and
palpable universe, outside of which you are always assuming a mysterious world of spirits or ghosts. Consider how
much there yet is in this palpable world for men to think and
to do. Lose yourself, for example, in the innumerable host of
stars, which revolve in the infinite spaces of the universe, think
that an acquaintance with these stars, yes perhaps a connection
and correspondence with their inhabitants *) is in prospect for
*) The projects for air-voyages &c. have been laughed at.



- 47 -

man, in short give your fancy free course whither you will, considering the progress which human knowledge has already
made, you need in no direction have a fear that your sphere
is too narrow and that for its worthy extension the belief in
a supernatural or superhuman help is requisite.
But what knowledge you acquire or conceive as yet acquirable, let it suffice you, that it comprises something belonI regard the laughers as very short-sighted. I can very well
conceive that when once mankind have more entirely filled up
the sphere of knowledge, which this earth offers to them, they
will, with the help of new inventions which always keep pace
with other knowledge, more minutely inspect the rest of the
universe also, on which it has likewise an indirect claim. Nil
mortalibus arduum est. If we one day read in the newspaper that some one has invented a telescope, which brings the
inhabitants of a star within a thousand paces - if then through
observation of the doings on this heavenly body all kinds of
unexpected disclosures are made-if its inhabitants at the same
i..ne also make inventions through which the earth is brought
within their sphere of vision - if then gradually an intelligible
language of signs should grow up between the inhabitants of
the earth and the stars, &c. &c., then men, instead of laughing,
will find this progress very natural, and will give the credit
of it to the mind, which now affects to be too humble to accept
this as possible. Thereby will only be repeated what has already so often been the case. That America would be discovered, that with a thimble-ful of gunpowder, one should have
the life of another in his power at the distance af a thousand
paces, that a louse should be magnified to an elephant, that
steam should be made a race-horse, that through an iron wire
thought should be sent thousands of miles in the world with
the swiftness of lightning, that the sun should be weighed on
a piece of paper &c. - who formerly believed this or regarded
it as possible? Now we regard it as so natural that we no
longer comprehend the former unbelief. But certainly it comports with the business of certain people always to preach humility and impotency of the mind and those who once would
order the earth to stand still, would all too willingly have
brought the intellect to a stand-still also



- 48 -

ging to the universe, and reject the childish expedient
of attributing all which you observe to a particular impulse
or particular support instead of the life and laws of nature.
Likewise reject the unworthy weakness of forming a world of
belief, because there is still a world of probl ems.
That childishness which cannot see the lightning without
thinking of a spirit-hand which hurls it, nor hear the thunder
without attributing it to the angry voice of God, nor witness the sunset without seeing in its splendors a Creators coquetry for the adoration of his human children - that childishness which can accept nothing for itself and in its true
existence and connection with nature, but behind all must assume a ghostly or theatrical mystery, has become in the course
of time too absurd to be still made the retreat for the lofty
views of a belief in God. Fear is the mother of your God and
the lack of thought and knowledge is the father of your fear.
Do you also seek a godlike mystery behind the roast beef
which you eat? Do you think perhaps that in it a portion of
the wisdom, goodness &c. of the creator is revealed and sinks
into your stomach? Daily custom and palpable familiarity
have freed you from the veneration of a theological roast beef
and ham, they have become to you something very natural
and explicable, although in truth they have the same claim to
higher views as any other object in nature. Very well, there
is nothing to prevent your becoming as familiar with the
lightning, the thunder, the sun and the whole universe in a
similar manner as with the meat. If there once exists the familiarity, the knowledge, yes even only the presentiment of
knowledge which has no limit, then theology also disappears,
as the removal of theology is the way to that knowledge. The
abolition of theology is the entrance of the free man as the
proprietor into the infinite universe in which he has hitherto
been only the slave in the ante-chamber. With this, is the
pathway to the mental conquest of the universe, to higher revelations and development, opened and not as you think, closed.



- 49 -

Not the lower a man is degraded, but the higher he is elevated, the higher does he stand. This truth is comprehended
by the dullest school-boy, but not by the wisest theologian.
Pious man, let us forget for a moment our hostile position
in sight of the infinite universe out of which we have both
arisen, give me your hand and let us wander together through
the immensity of nature. See the lightning, it shoots harmlessly down into the clods which we through an iron rod, have
pointed out as its burial-place. Listen to the thunder, it is
but the music of nature and only fitted to terrify children.
Hear the storm, it roars in vain around our ship which flies
through the towering billows, and to which the storm can
only lend its wings. Look at the sun, it is our lamp and must
be this; it cannot be otherwise and if we ourselves kindled its
fire, it would not belong more nearly to us than now, when
nature ignites its flame. Penetrate the hosts of stars, they
wait only for the hour for when a new invention to lay them
open before our eyes. Wherever you look, man is at home.
All nature is his property so far as he conquers it, and to his
conquest no limits are set. Although the power of the elements still hems him in in a thousand ways, yet there dwells
within him the infinite capacity to conquer it, and the more
he progresses in his development, the more does nature itself
lend him a helping hand. But where the rude power of the
elements is still the master of man, where an earthquake yet
swallows him, and a plague yet sweeps him away, shall he
there humble himself before an imaginary Lord who intrudes
upon him in the form of volcano or plague-spot? No, never!
He submits, as the religious man must no less do in spite of
his belief, to the inevitableness of nature's laws, as part of this
nature he consciously fulfils his destiny and what can thereby
befall him worse than - death?
Pious man, learn to live and you will also know how to die.
Learn to become master of your situation and you will also
know how to remain so. Learn to be a true man and you
4



- 50 -

will be a God. He who boldly dares to know all that can be
known is capable of quietly accepting all that cannot be averted. And if that should stand written in the laws of the development of the universe which your belief prophesies and
science deduces, that the earth will burst into fragments, still
herein lies no reason for a man to lose his consciousness as
part of the universe and his bearing as lord of the same. As
the individual man lays himself in a grave of the earth, so
may the whole humanity and the earth with it plunge into a
grave of the universe. It produces thus only material for a
farther continuance of the life of the universe, and by this
should man be terrified?
Si fractus illabitur orbis, impavidum ferient
ruinae.

-'0--O--l



SUPPLEMENTARY ADDRESS TO A HUMBUGGER.
Before any King, have you the right, to style yourself by
the Grace of God, and a King stands only equal with you,
when he assumes your title. I will prove to you that this is
the oldest title which the title-loving world has to show.
It sounds paradoxical, yet it is true, that Humbug is older
than the world itself. The first and greatest Humbug, the
father and originator of all other humbugs, was the Creation
of the World, which as is well known was made out of nothing.
Before the world was, according to the reports of pious people,
there existed only a nothing, an immense, boundless nothing.
In this immense nothing, conceive now a second nothing, still
greater and older than the universal nothing in which it dwells,
since it is the father of this, and has existed from eternity.
Besides this second, but really first nothing, conceive still
another nothing, somewhat smaller than the father one. The
first nothing is the father nothing, the other is the mother
nothing, and with this mother nothing, the father nothing in
the house of the universal nothing begot that wonderful child
which we call the universe. But in the primeval darkness of
nothingness, to avoid making any mistakes in his work, which
naturally demanded close inspection, the father nothing at the
commencement of his labor drew a match from his pocket,
struck it on the wall of the house nothing, and said to nothing,
"' Let there be light!" Since there were no hearers at the time
when these words were spoken, it cannot be proved what reporter took notes of this. Probably the speaker himself in



- 52 -

some divine original correspondence imparted them to the editor of the Bible which reports them. Enough, that when the
command was issued to the nothing " Let there be light ", the
invisible lucifer match obeyed on the instant, and truly there
was light. Thus was the father nothing in truth also the first
Locofoco.
This origin of humbug, which I have just shown has brought
me on the right track to find for this same thing what has
been so often vainly sought, a fully appropriate definition.
Braggadocidism, Rant, Bluster, Exaggeration, Lies, Cheating
- all these expressions denote Humbug in this or that special
case, but they do not denote it in general. I know no more
exhaustive definition than this: Humbug is the art of
making Something out of Nothing.
Holding to this definition, cast a glance back into history,
and you will find that the chief humbuggers trace back their
origin to that artist, who created the universe out of nothing,
and that their existence rests on the same artifice. In that
time when from their brute-like isolation men associated themselves into tribes, then was first developed, on the foundation
of the creation-humbug, the humbug of monarchy and priesthood. Monarch and priest were united in the person of the
patriarch. Since he by the strenght of his arm or by his age
was the wisest, he was asked, for instance, concerning the
cause and the origin of things. He knew as much about these
as the others, namely, nothing; but with a turn of the hand,
he made this nothing into a dogma, through the discovery that
everything has arisen out of nothing. In the sudden gathering of the clouds a thunder storm developed itself which filled
the tribe with terror. The storm arose on the previously serene sky, apparently out of nothing. " Do you see" said the
patriarch, " how this thunder and rain arose out of nothing, so
has the lord of the storm also made the whole universe out of
nothing". After imposing this humbug upon his subordinates,
he very naturally connected with it the assurance that the



- 53 -

Lord of the storms had personally visited him in order to impart to him the secret. The storms multiplied, other extraordinary phenomena followed, and then arose the renowned
Deluge. The patriarch Noah, who understood fishing and
owned a ship, succeeded in saving himself with a little colony,
while others were drowned, and he ascribed this rescue to the
account of this same nothing, namely the especial favor of him
who out of nothing had allowed the great flood to go forth.
Noah was through a nothing a made man, also without his renowned ark into which he took with him "a male and a female " of all animals, that is, his ox and his cow, his he-goat
and she-goat, his cock and hen. Drawing from the great fountain of nothing, he had with nothing puffed himself out to a
demigod, and the inheritance of his nothing descended to his
sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet. Out of the same fountain
which had now already become the source of higher suggestions, predictions, authorisations &c., were created Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob and all the great nothing-men on the background of history till at last, the greatest of all the old nothing-artists, Moses, reduced the science of iothing to a system
which still forms always the foundation of the authority of all
humbuggers, and of the belief of all the humbugged.
Since Moses' time it has become clear to all the world that
they arose out of nothing; miracle, the pet child of humbug, began to govern the world, and that it has understood
the art of making something out of nothing we shall not dispute when we take into consideration all the thousand humbuggers who under the name of Founders of religion, Princes,
Priests &c. were more or seemed more than simple men, constructed out of the same material of which all bipeds without
feathers consist. The nothing out of which the super-human
something was constructed which governed ordinary men assumed various names which find nowhere in the domain of
something a corresponding object, for example, Majesty, Holiness, Prince, King, Pope, Cardinal, Bishop, Eminence, Excel


- 54 -

lency, Right Reverend &c. For the words eating, drinking,
loving, man, animal, tree, air, water, life, death, going, sitting,
swimming, thinking &c. &c. we find everywhere and at all
times, in the domain of nature as in the domain of history, the
designated object or condition as something actual and real;
but without the art of making something out of nothing, who
is able to discover in the whole world a thing which could be
called Majesty, Holines, Eminence, Right Reverend &c.? This
whole motley heaven of humbug has naturally proceeded out
of the first, the pioneer humbug of the creation of the universe
out of nothing. Without this bold invention no man would
have ever had the courage to maintain that he is more than
his fellow man; the idea would never have occured to him that
the artifice of constructing out of nothing an addition, through
which he suddenly became the Lord and Saviour of all other
men, could find recognition. He who through belief in an
origin through nothing, that is, a miracle, is once disposed
and educated to become deceived, is also no longer secured
against any deception; he who believes in miracles is the slave
of all humbugs. Whoever can once be induced to believe
in the brain-destroying nonsense that out of nothing, something, even a whole universe could arise, will also be capable
of believing that I out of nothing can magnify myself to- be
his lord and owner -to be a prophet, priest &c. Not the degradation of the one man to a nothing, but the elevation of
the other through a nothing is the sourse of inequality and
deprivation of rights; for the degraded man always rises
against his degrader, so long as he believes he stands equal
with him and is not frightened by the humbug of holiness and
intangibility. Does one subject box the ears of another - it
is promptly returned to him; does a Majesty box his ears-then
he fervently thanks him, because the blow comes from God's
Grace. The origin out of nothing and the fear of the nothing
resulting from it there you have the simple ingredients for the
power which has hitherto governed nations and the whole



- 55 -

world. Out of nothing has the world been created and
t h r o u g h nothing has it been ruled. Will it not then be
worth the trouble of making this nothing really nothing?
The most striking illustration of this assertion has been
given by the heir of the great Moses, the great Christ. The
son of three fathers, namely God the father, the Holy Spirit,
and the innocent carpenter, that is, three nothings, he had
also a nothing for a mother, namely an immaculate virgin,
and theologians still contend to this day over the point whether he himself was a nothing or a something. I am astonished that tbe religious physiologists have not yet in good earnest applied themselves to the task of proving medically and
anatomically how one can become a mother without a father
and a son without a mother.
As the origin, so also do the life and works of the said Jesus
Christ rest upon pure nothing. His kingdom was not of this
world and - the other is nothing. He fed the souls of all
mankind with love, and love has proved itself to be-nothing.
He fed the bodies of five thousand hearers with a few loaves
of bread, which were as good as-nothing. He lived forty
days in the wilderness upon-nothing. He wore a coat without a seam*), consequently sewed with--nothing. He ordered
the evil spirits to go into the swine and the swine perceived
-nothing. He made the dead live again and the lame walk
with-hothing. He died on the cross for-nothing. He was
laid in a grave, and when it was opened again, there was
found-nothing. He passed into hell, into purgatory, into
heaven, and into other regions of nothing, and continues to
live as the universal, immortal nothing. Through his inexhaustible legacy of nothing, every good-for-nothing peasant,
every brutish glutton, every disgusting hypocrite, called
priest becomes a holy man through-nothing. Also his body
*) This pretended coat is preserved as a sacred relic in
Treves, a Prussian city.



- 56 -

and blood, unbaked and unboiled, is eaten daily by a million
of black-coated harlequins without disordering their stomachs,
for besides the bread and wine they swallow-nothing. In his
name the priests as exterminators of moral stains obliterate
their own and others sins through-nothing. In his name
dwells in Rome a blood-stained holy man as the Lord of
Christendom who displays his authority as Vicegerent ofnothing. In his name an association of crowned IHolinesses,
called Majesties torture all mankind outwardly and inwardly, and their right, like the power of the Pope, rests on the
mighty basis of the-sacred nothing. In short, the religion
of miracles, the religion of love, the religion of nothing has
destroyed not only human reason but also human rights, for
the religion of universal love without one single unversal
right in a monstrous lying, enervating--nothing. Finally,
the compendium of all this wise and valuable nothingness,
whose great teachers were Moses and Christ, namely the
Bible, serves all the world as a source from which all things
are proved, and who proves every thing, says the adage,
proves-nothing.
A greater mass of nothings than Christianity presents to us,
all history cannot display; the art of making something out
of nothing has been brought by Christianity to the highest perfection. Therefore Christianity denotes the highest
grade of humbug, the universal propaganda of nothing. One
shudders in looking down into this yawning abyss of nothing,
which for two thousand years has been regarded by humanity
as the fountain of life. If Christianity can excite any comforting reflection, it is only this, that humanity must have a
long live before it and that the end of the world is not yet to
be feared. For if it could squander two thousand years
on an empty nothing, then must its development have millions of years at its disposal. Had that nothing presented as
least any attractive cheering life-awakening side! But no:
humbug, privation, tears, humiliations, torture and dead-these



- 57 -

are the only constituent parts of Christianity. Instead of a
blossoming, spirit-exhaling tree as was the Greek Mythology,
only dead wood set up in the form of a cross, on which a
man, spit upon, refreshed with vinegar, and crowned
with thorns hangs between two crucified     criminals I A
very attractive and very expressive picture and simbol
Crucifixion, thorny crown, criminals, lepers, spit upon, sponge
with vinegar, scourged back, pierced side, seven swords in
the breast, saints transfixed with arrows, men in glowing
stoves, a man of God sawed in two from the head down,
ears cut off, crucified with the head downwards, a holy
woman with teeth wrenched out, a holy man with tongue
torn out, a man flayed alive, and for farther illustration some
hundred millions of men murdered, massacred, slaughtered,
starved, tortured, and burnt alive, all out of pure tendernessthere you have the humane and at the same time the aesthetical side of Christianity, the religion of love, of peace and of
-beauty! In all Christianity not one single free and fresh,
cheerful and beautiful picture of life. One thinks that this
must be a religion for grave-diggers, murderers, executioners
and flayers; and certainly those who interest themselves the
most for it are the grave-diggers, murderers, executioners and
flayers in wholesale or of higher stamp. If Christianity had to
appropriate to itself the beautiful Greek mythology, it would
use nothing of it, except perhaps the flayed Marsyas, Acteon.torn by dogs, Prometheus with the gnawed liver, Laocoon
dying in the coils of snakes, Proserpine in the cellar of the infernal-world, Ixion bound with snakes to a' wheel &c. &c. But
the nine Muses, Minerva, Venus, Dionysus and Apollo it would
have sent forthwith to hell, or for greater security have nailed
them to the cross. If all the folly, absurdity, unnaturalness
falsehood, hypocrisy, insipidity, loathsomeness, cruelty, barbarity, vileness, abomination of the world, could be seethed
in one great cauldron, then would the extract remaining be a
thing like Christianity with its results.



- 58 -

But how was it possible, must we ask, for this hideous humbug called Christianity to have gained such universal sway?
The answer is simple; just because it was the greatest humbug which mind could not immediately exhaust, but which in
its wide flight a more ripened insight first could overtake and
destroy. The humbug of Christianity with its universal love,
its unbounded endurance, its endless prospects in the other
world, its eternal view of God, &c. was just the long spiritual
lightning-rod for the true humbuggers, who deceived the people without end; it was the great whale-buoy with which humanity was allowed to play when it was to be caught, and it
plays now already 18 centuries with it; it was the voluminous
wind-egg, offered to the hungry nations, while the full eggs
were taken out of the nest.
But the universal supremacy of Christianity was only possible through the universal supremacy of despotism. In a
free and happy time, the son of the virgin would probably
have been confined as a madman in bedlam, or as an imposter
in a House of Correction. But in his time the whole world
was a bedlam or a House of Correction. Rome with a standing army of 400,000 soldiers and several fleets ruled on a domain of 600,000 square miles, 120,000,000 men, including
60,000,000 slaves and 40,000,000 who had been slaves. The
wealth, like the power was in the hands of a few; luxury and
immorality were reeling on a dreary'waste of misery and degradation. All selfconsciousness and guiding principle were lost
to men, and the world's wisdom was at an end, as well as the
world. This was the work of Roman despotism. For reason
there was no basis, for right no sense any longer to be found.
The only thing which could excite and charm enervated degraded humanity was humbug. Despairing of reality, they
plunged into the realm of the emptiest and most repulsive fantasy. This opened to the despairing souls a prospect into another world; and the enfeebled "ninds saved themselves out of
the desolation of their hopeless surroundings, in a dreamy



- 59 -

realm of renunciation. Or else renunciation, suffering despair
already existed and accepted willingly the sacred stamp, which
a humbugger with his assistants impressed upon it. There
were for humanity only two courses possible; revolution or
resignation. Christ anticipated revolution through the enervating religion of humiliation which once inculcated will rule
humanity so long as we do not introduce the humiliated into
the new world of right and truth, the full, entire truth.
The whole significance of. Christianity is expressed in the
circumstance that Rome, once the centre of universal despotism, has remained also the centre of universal humbug. Its
aim is still ever the same; as it has formerly ruled the world
through despotism, so it now seeks to rule it through Jesuitism. Christianity is the first enemy of revolution and Christ
the God of reaction; therefore also the systematic revolutionist
begins his work by combating Christianity and its whole theological basis. And as Romish Jesuitism unlike its predecessor, Romish despotism, chooses intellectual means for its government of the world, so is it also the opposite intellectual
pole, from which the systematic revolutionist begins his operations, and not the mere military or brutal one.
For 1800 years, has the Christian humbug ruled, stupefied,
impoverished the world, and has prepared mankind through
misery, blood and slavery, for everlasting happiness and the
sight of God. How far have we advanced at the present time
with this universal happiness system which begins with nothing and ends with nothing? Through this has not the whole
world, all society become a humbug, which makes our very
hair stand on end? Folly like wickedness loses its deterring
effect as soon as it once becomes universal. Otherwise how
were it possible that the world should a moment longer endure on its neck this yoke of the most disgusting nonsense
and shameless falsehood I Were there no Christianity in the
world and a man should suddenly arise, calling himself pope,
and a hundred others calling themselves bishops, and a hun


- 60 -

dred thousand others calling themselves priests, and this whole
band of harlequins should perform before our eyes the juggling tricks which in the church, on the street &c. they daily
exhibit, devouring besides a million times their beloved God,
and another band with crowns on their heads should make
common cause with them, and would found on the will of the
daily ruminated beloved God, and his crucified son who travelled around in hell, in the wilderness, and everywhere else,
the right to plunder us, scourge us, hang us; garrote us -
should we not look upon this whole company as a band of
vagabond savages, African idolators, Asiatic fakirs, Nukahiwa
or New-Zealand cannibals? Should we not have laughed at
them as apes, or confine them in bedlams as madmen, or kill
them as wild beasts? And now? Even enlightened men,
even pioneers of development, even revolutionists p a r e x -
celle nce help to maintain this whole world of hobgoblins,
nonsense and barbarism, as if it were founded on right, only
because it once exists. At all events they make no objections
when the whole humbug is presented in democratic forms and
under delusive names.
With the help of Christianity we have in 1800 years attained to a time and a condition of the world which has much
similarity to that for which Christianty is indebted for its origin. We experience again a universal supremacy of despotism, only it is now by far more extensive. The square miles
have increased by some hundred thousands, the slaves by some
hundred millions, and the soldiers by several millions. The
depravity is almost as deep as the Roman was, and the helplessness seems to be not less. All that is lacking is that the
world again, as at that time, shall obey a single imperial
crown. The disagreements and collisions of the different
cowned heads is the only hindrance to mankind's being again
kneaded, as it were, into such a homogeneous mass, as to fit
it once more for the hand of a Savior. Who will now become the savior? Has the time pehaps come, when the cru


- 61 -

cified will again decend from heaven? Or must Christianity
be first forced to its highest potency, and have we then to expect salvation perhaps from the Spiritual Rappers, the iMormons, and the Shakers?
The savior of the present world must be he who will free us
from the savior of the former. The new savior has various
names, which however are all in equally bad repute, because
those whose duty it was above all things to acknowledge him
are afraid on account of hypocrites and dunces, to take his
name upon their lips. His common name is Reseason, but
he is not accustomed to sign himself with this name always,
because now-a-days every rascal calls himself reason. The
real name of the savior is Atheism or Unbelief, in other words,
the belief in reason, the spirit of truth and the will to make
these the ruling powers. It signifies the doctrine of making,
instead of something out of nothing, all out of everything.
Yes, the new savior of the world is the spirit of truth - is
radical heathenism - is the sovereign human nature. This
armed with the besom of knowledge and science first sweeps
the broad spaces of the universe clear of the spectres and
harpies which have hitherto tortured poor mortals on this
very tolerable earth, where no Lord God, and no devil, but
only the reasoning, free, human being has anything to say,
then makes its household arrangements as a democratic Republic and provides for all humanity, woman as well as man,
food, lodging and education. This Savior does not change water into wine, he does not feed the whole company with five
loaves, he does not wander around in the desert, he does not
drive the devil into the swine, he does not let himself be nailed
upon the cross, he does not preach patience and love - no,
he changes the barren hills into vineyards; seats the hungry at
the table of the revellers; sets up his seat in the public markets; drives the devil out of the swine; crucifies all crucifiers;
crosses patience out of the dictionary, and quietly leaves love
to the enamored.



- 62 -

Do you know how the new savior will come to the world?
He will neither be born of an immaculate virgin in the oxen's
stall, nor will a holy dove be his father. In stillness suckled
to full growth at the breast of reviled knowledge, he will suddenly appear as the full armed warrior among the crowds on
the public market-place, and his father is the holy wrath of
revolution. What is Revolution? It is truth in action. Without truth no revolution, without revolution no victory of
truth, so long as power holds her down. First in a revolution
does a people throw of all constraints of falsehood, all masks of
dissimulation, all fetters of slavish fear, which tyrannical power has forced upon it, in order to manifest its unadulterated
human nature with all its represssd wishes and ideas. A true
revolution leaves no cause of prevailing evil unquestioned, no
saving principle undiscussed; it sums up the whole radical
contents of the ideas of its time in order to find the programme
for its activity. In its stormy agitations, the billows of the
age part, yawning to the very ground, in order to unveil every
hostile force concealed in its bosom, while a mock-revolution
stirs up nothing but a little superficial foam, over whose empty uproar socalled revolutionists like screaming sea-gulls hover till the unmolested monsters of the deep again emerge and
swallow them down.
Have we yet had a true revolution? Not in this century.
What made the rising in 1789 a true, the only true revolution
was not the recklessness with which it shed so much blood -
to that have its enemies forced it - also not the resoluteness
with which it drew through the neck of a King the boundary
line between the people and the monarchs by the " Grace of
God" - in that had England anticipated it - but it was the
intellectual power and the moral courage with which it summoned before its forum the whole spirit of the past, proclaimed
the principles for the regeneration of humanity and sought
to put all its thoughts into deeds. It had the intelligence and
the courage, reaching backward through the chaos of the past



- 63 -

centuries to seize the source of things, on the fountain-head of
knowledge, on the root of all false views, on the foundation of
the whole previous development, and to point out the leading
features of the fundamental and universal platform for all humanity. It was through no mere chance sport that it dethroned " God" and officially set " reason" in his place, but it
was the result of a deep although as yet isolated recognition
that all efforts for the lasting freedom and happiness of humanity are vain without the rejection of all theological fantasies
and the return of mankind to simple reason. That the French
nation in general was not yet capable of maintaining this
change, can as little, as the error of letting the new goddess
be represented by a naked woman, detract from the greatness
and boldness of the resolution, in the name of a great nation,
and before the whole believing world,to cast from its throne
as a fictitious nothing, the almighty, world-ruling bugbear
above the clouds, even though for four-and-twenty hours only.
If this great example - great in spite of its follies of attempting to destroy a phantom of belief through a govermental decree- were understood by all who take part in the work
of liberating, then would the coming revolution be able to
leave the dethroning quietly to reason alone, and secure her
supremacy by the simple removal of her official enemies.
Since 1789, in spite of all reactions, civilization has progressed, susceptibility of the ideas of freedom become more
general, and the intellectual fundament for their realization
broader, deeper and firmer. If a new revolution comes, its
hopes will be better founded, and its tasks still greater, than
those of the French. It will not only have to remove princes
and aristocrats, it will not only have to go back to 1848 and 1789,
no, it has to deal with the history of the whole present development, to the origin of the prevailing views and traditions;
it has to renounce entirely the religious development, back to
Christ and Moses, as the political back to the Roman empire
and Raman jurisprudence. It must from every side with



- 64 -

philosophical spirit comprehend the whole domain of social
improvement, and just as little stand still before the boundaries of a nation.
I have here sketched for you the task and the character of
a true revolution, in order on the other hand to prepare for
you the consolation of finding among revolutionists your colleagues as well as in your usual associates. With this I refer
you to the year 1848. What at that time was called revolution, was in every respect a pure humbug, hence it also has
passed away without trace or effect. The old artifice by which
the world was created, the making all out of nothing, was
practised in the year 1848 most skilfully by all the world.
Every creature at that time became a Creator, and accomplished his work even without the Old-Testament conditions;
"let there be light". He who went to bed an inoffensive subject, arose a finished revolutionist; every liberal mayor became during the night a national phenomenon, every local
speechmaker an historical man, every club-president a leader of
the people, every loquacious weakling a leading power. What
was wanted, that remained the greatest mystery just to those
who represented the general wants, till the time for " wanting"
was fully past. Where they had the means, they had no aim;
where they had an aim, they could find no means. Only one
thing was clear to all; Every one wished to assert his own
so-suddenly emancipated greatness, or in some other way to
use the revolution as a means of business for his invaluable
person. They talked about democracy and would have no
democrats; they demanded freedom, and gave the power to
their enemies; they dreamed of victory and entrusted the leadership to traitors; they strove for union and made every parish-boundary a line of disunion. They made arrangements
to create a great future, and left the whole structure of the
past with its inhabitants untouched. At the same time in
France, the people were put off with on empty phrase, the
humbug of fraternity, and in Germany they were terrified



- 65 -
with a repulsive apparition, the humbug of Communism. In
short, everywhere men who as revolutionists were nothing,
made revolution out of nothing and through nothing.
That the people, who at that time stopped short before palaces, also stopped short before churches, is a matter of course.
He who spares kings does not attack priests, and he who needs
priests, honors kings. Both stand and fall with one another;
if the one remains standing, it failes not, that he sets the other
also on his feet again. This is an indisputable truth which
follows from the simplest reflection as well as from historical
experience. But those who even today do not yet know or
acknowledge this truth are the revolutionary leaders. Yes
we still live to see today, that the most glorified chiefs of the
revolution contend against the men of God's Grace, in the
name of God who protects them. From Petersburg to Paris,
from Berlin to Vienna, it is God and Providence who secures
the authority of tyrants and gives them the power to imprison or shoot their revolutionary opponents; still the most
praised revolutionists place their affairs under the protection
of the same God and thd same Providence who so obstinately
turns his back upon them, and pray with their God-favored
mortal enemies at the same altar! Today the all-wise, almighty, and all-benignant God through one of his crowned
favorites let rebels be slaughtered by thousands, and tomorrow the leaders of the slaughtered plead to the same God for
his succor, or thank him for his favorl
I leave it to you, the expert judge, whether you will find in
this strange fancy an exemplary stupidity or an exemplary
humbug. Perhaps out of it you will derive the consolation
that your end is not yet come, and pride yourself on your
wide-spread colleague-ship, from kings even to revolutionists.
God preserve you all, one with another, so long as you are
able to preserve God!



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