Frances Wright

“ The lion pursues the lamb; the vulture, in his rage, tears the dove from her nest. Man, the universal enemy, triumphs even in the sufferings of his fellow-beings; in their pain finds his own joy; in their loss, his gain; in the frenzy of his violence, working out his own destruction; in the folly of his ignorance cursing his own race, and blessing its cruel author! Your deity is the author of evil, and you call him good; the inventor of misery, and you call him happy! What virtuous mind shall yield homage to such a Being? Who shall say, that homage, if rendered, degrades not the worshipper? ”

“ May the sage fall the victim of the ignorance he combats?—He may; he often has. But ere he engage, knows he not the risk?—The risk is to himself; the profit to mankind. To a benevolent soul, the odds is worth the throw; and though it be against him at the present, he may win it in the future. The sage, whose vision is cleared from the mists of prejudice, can stretch it over the existing age, to the kindling horizon of the succeeding, and see, perhaps, unborn generations weeping the injustice of their fathers, and worshipping those truths which they condemned. ”

“ Ah! my sons, here is indeed a pain, a pain that cuts into the soul. There are masters who will tell you otherwise, who will tell you that it is unworthy of a man to mourn even here. But such, my sons, speak not the truth of experience, or Philosophy, but the subtleties of sophistry and pride. He who feels not the loss, hath never felt the possession. He who knows not the grief, hath never known the joy. See the price of a friend in the duties we render him, and the sacrifices we make to him, and which, in making, we count not sacrifices, but pleasures! ”

“ Surely the absurdity of all the doctrines of religion, and the iniquity of many, are sufficiently evident. To fear a being on account of his power, is degrading; to fear him if he be good, ridiculous. Prove to us his existence; and prove to us his perfections; prove to us his parental care; love springs up in our bosoms, and repays his bounty. If he care not to show us his existence, he desires not the payment of our love, and finds in the contemplation of his own works, their reward.
“But, says the Theist, his existence is evident—and, not to acknowledge it, a crime. ”

“ Is it to seek happiness, or to seek virtue and knowledge?—Attend, and I will show you that in finding one, you shall find the three. To be happy, we must be virtuous; and when we are virtuous, we are wise. Let us then begin: and first, let us for awhile hush our passions into slumber, forget our prejudices, and cast away our vanity and our pride. Thus patient and modest, let us come to the feet of Philosophy; let us say to her, ‘Behold us, scholars and children, gifted by nature with faculties, affections, and passions.—Teach us their use, and their guidance. ”

“ Let Epicurus be your guide. The source of every enjoyment is within yourselves. Good and evil lie before you. The good is—all which can yield you pleasure: the evil—what must bring you pain. Here is no paradox, no dark saying, no moral hid in fables.
“We have considered the unsound fabric of religion. It remains to consider that, equally unsound, of morals. The virtue of man is false as his faith. What folly invented, knavery supports. Let us arise in our strength, examine, judge, and be free!” ”

“ Imagine a Deity under any fashion of existence; how are our dreams concerning him in an imaginary heaven to affect our happiness or our conduct on a tangible earth? Affect it indeed they may for evil, but how for good? The idea of an unseen Being, ever at work around and about us, may afflict the human intellect with idle terrors, but can never guide the human practice to what is rational and consistent with our nature. Grant that, by any possibility, we could ascertain the existence of one god, or of a million of gods: we see them not, we hear them not, we feel them not. ”

“ The united experience of mankind has pronounced virtue to be the great good: nay, so universal is the conviction, that even those who insult her in their practice, bow to her in their understanding. Man is for the most part more fool than knave, more weak than depraved in action, more ignorant than vicious in judgment; and seldom is he so weak and so ignorant, as not to see his own interest, and value him who promotes it. But say, that he often slanders the virtuous, and persecutes the wise; he does it more in error than from depravity. ”

“ Let all men,” and he turned his eye upon Theon, “be above flattery; but let not a sage be above praise. He that is so is either arrogant or insincere. For myself, I own that the commendations of my friends fill me with triumph, as the assurance of their affection does with satisfaction. The approbation of our familiars, who are with us in our secret hours, hear our private converse, know the habits of our lives, and the bent of our dispositions, is, or should be to us, far more pleasing and triumphant than the shouts of a multitude, or the worship of the world.” ”

“ Let us not quarrel with fate, for perhaps in our evils lie the seeds of our good. Were our body never subject to sickness, we might be insensible to the joy of health. Were our life eternal, our tranquillity might sink into inaction. Were our friendship not threatened with interruption, it might want much of its tenderness. This, then, my sons, is our duty, for this is our interest and our happiness: to seek our pleasures from the hands of the virtues, and for the pain which may befall us, to submit to it with patience, or bear up against it with fortitude. ”

“ Epicurus called him from his diagrams, to open to him the secrets of physics, and the beauties of ethics; to show him the springs of human action, and lead him to the study of the human mind. He taught him that any single study, however useful and noble in itself, was yet unworthy the entire employ of a curious and powerful intellect: that the man who pursued one line of knowledge, to the exclusion of others, though he should follow it up to its very head, would never be either learned or wise: that he who pursues knowledge, should think no branch of it unworthy attention ”

“ Of our love, because being benevolent in his own nature, he must have intended to produce happiness in forming ours; of our pity, because we see that he has failed in his intention. I cannot conceive a condition more unfortunate than that of a deity contemplating this world of his creation. Is he the author of some—say, of much happiness? of what untold misery is he equally the author? I cannot conceive a being more desperately—more hopelessly wretched than that we have now pictured. The worst of human miseries shrink into comparative insignificancy before those of their author. ”

“ Nature levels us with death; but how mild is the death of nature, with Philosophy to spread the pillow, and friendship to take the last sigh, to the protracted agonies of debauchery, subduing the body by inches, while Philosophy is not there to give strength, nor friendship consolation, but while the flames of fever are heated by impatience, and the stings of pain envenomed by remorse! And tell me, my sons, when the body of the sage is stretched on the couch of pain, hath he not his mind to minister delight to him? ”

“ To find none of all these things, but, in their stead, a smooth road through a pleasant country, with a familiar guide to direct our curiosity, and point out the beauties of the landscape, disappoints us of all exploit and all notoriety; and our vanity turns but too often from the fair and open champaign, into error’s dark labyrinths, where we mistake mystery for wisdom, pedantry for knowledge, and prejudice for virtue. ”

“ Fatal impressions, vicious example, operating on the plastic frame of childhood, may have perverted all the fair gifts of nature, may have distorted the tender plant from the seedling, and crushed all the blossoms of virtue in the germ. Say, shall we not compassionate the moral disease of our brother, and try our skill to restore him to health? But is the evil beyond cure? Is the mind strained into changeless deformity, and the heart corrupted in the core? ”

“ Is his power directed against our happiness? Does your god amuse himself by awakening the terrors of more helpless beings? Fear him then indeed we may; and, let our conduct be what it will, fear him we must. ‘He is good as well as powerful,’ says the Theist; ‘therefore the object of love.’—How do we ascertain his goodness? I see indeed a beautiful and curious world; but I see it full of moral evils, and presenting many physical imperfections. Is he all-powerful? perfect good or perfect evil might exist. Is he all-powerful and all-good? perfect good must exist. ”

“ I still sometimes visit the Lycæum and the Academy, and still the young Pythagorean is my friend. A pure mind should, I think, respect virtue wherever it be found: and if then in the Lycæum and the Academy, why not the Gardens? Zeno, in teaching austerity, does not teach intolerance; much less, I am sure, does he teach ingratitude: and if I did not feel for the sage of Gargettium both respect and love, I were the most ungrateful soul in Athens ”

“ Methinks I cast a prophet’s eye on the map of futurity, and I see the sage of Gargettium standing on the pinnacle of fame, and a world at his feet. The world is prepared for this: the Macedonian, when he marched our legions to the conquest of Persia, struck the death-blow at Greece. Persian luxury, and Persian effeminacy, which before crept, now came with strides upon us. Our youth, dandled on the lap of indulgence, shall turn with sickened ears from the severe moral of Zeno, and greedily suck in the honied philosophy of Epicurus. You will tell me that you too teach virtue. ”

“ Man alone, the most gifted of all known existences, doubts the evidence of his superior senses, perverts the nature and uses of his multiplied faculties, controls his most innocent, as well as his noblest impulses, and turns to poison all the sources of his happiness. To what are we to trace this fatal error, this cruel self-martyrdom, this perversion of things from their natural bent? In the over-development of one faculty and neglect of another, we must seek the cause. ”

“ Let us now concede in argument the union of all the enumerated attributes. Let us accord the existence of a being perfect in goodness, wisdom, and power, who shall have made all things by his volition, and decreed all occurrences in his wisdom. Such a being must command our admiration and approval: he can command no more. As he is good and wise, he is superior to all praise; as he is great and happy, he is independent of all praise. As he is the author of our happiness, he has ensured our love; but as he is our creator, he may command from us no duties. ”

“ Go to the man of Gargettium—he who calls himself philosopher, and who loves and teaches folly! Go, go to him, and he shall encourage and soothe you. He shall end your pursuit, and give you your ambition! He shall show you virtue robed in pleasures, and lolling in ease! He shall teach you wisdom in a song, and happiness in impiety!—But I am told, that Timocrates hath lied; that Epicurus is not a libertine; nor Leontium a prostitute ”

“ The splendor of action, the daring of enterprise, or the glitter of majesty, may seize their imagination, and so drown their judgment, but never is it the tyranny of power, the wantonness of cruelty, the brutality of vice, which they adore, any more than it is the innocence and usefulness of virtue, which they despise. ”

“ He that loses temper with the folly of others, shows that he has folly himself. In which case they have as much right to complain of his, as he of theirs. And have I not been trying to show you, that when you are wise you will be independent of all that you cannot command within yourself? You say you are not so now. I admit it, but when you are wise you will be so. And till you are wise, you have surely no title to quarrel with another’s ignorance.”
“I can never be independent of my friends,” returned Theon. ”

“ Disciples of Zeno and of virtue. Give me your ears, and awake your faculties! How shall I tell the dangers that surround you? How shall I paint the demon that would ensnare you; Timocrates hath escaped from his enchantments, and told us that riot and revelling were in his halls, that impiety was in his mouth; vice in his practice; deformity in his aspect: and we thought that none but souls born for error, already steeped in infamy, or sunk in effeminacy, could be taken in his toils and seduced by his example. ”

“ The Sage turned his gaze slowly around, and with a countenance, pure and serene as the skies which shone above him, proceeded:—
“We have named the leading error of the human mind,—the bane of human happiness—the perverter of human virtue! It is Religion—that dark coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion—that poisoner of human felicity! It is Religion—that blind guide of human reason! It is Religion—that 200dethroner of human virtue! which lies at the root of all the evil and all the misery that pervade the world! ”