Onanism

“ Now this curious Observation upon the efficacy of Custom being introduc’d in a Paragraph treating of Modesty and Chastity, I appeal to all Persons of any sense or discernment, whether it does not imply, that all Modesty and Virtue is establish’d only by Custom, and whether it does not entirely destroy the notion of an innate Principle. ”

“ We cannot doubt, but that we are all strictly engag’d to cleanse our selves from Filthiness, both of Flesh and Spirit, and to perfect Holiness. And what a monstrous Incongruity must it be, for such to indulge themselves in any carnal and sensual Immoralities, in direct opposition to the Vow, so solemnly made against them! ”

“ Do you think that I, who have the same faith in the same God that you have, could look at you now if I were guilty, and too, when this fearful storm is raging, which you call the voice and anger of God? No, Onrai; you and your people have a mistaken idea when you think we knew your life, customs and laws before we came to your world. We did not even know that your people existed ”

“ Walking straight to the fountain, Onrai mounted the dais and glancing about him for a moment at the hushed, bewildered Onians, said:
“It has pleased our great God to give us a warning; this warning admonishes us to be careful, watchful and diligent. If any among you have sinned or are sinning, this fearful storm tells you to turn from the evil of your ways; if you have intentions of sinning, it speaks to you a warning, but I cannot believe that my people are sinning. I look among you to-day and see not one guilty face. You are bewildered, in wonderment, 146but this is not guilt. ”

“ They were no more than those social rates and taxes, registrations, commitments, undertakings, contracts, all the rest of the paper business of our lease of life on which he had lately poured his scorn. The infinitude of passion and suffering of a single human soul seemed to me to dwarf them all. And if a man must sin, let him sin at the fringe and circumference of things, not at their centre. ”

“ But I can learn so little about it all, that I cannot, from my own judgment, determine which must be right.'
'Perhaps,' thoughtfully responded Ænone, 'it may be that if you tell me all you know about it, I may be able to assist your conclusions. Who knows what light I myself need, or how much of good we may borrow from this new religion? It cannot be wrong to examine for one's self, and the gods will not be angry if we gain good doctrine even from wrong sources, so long as it may make us better. ”

“ No doubt in the end it was one man who believed he was right against another man who equally believed he was right. And it made no difference that the one protagonist was Chairman of the Council and a preacher who could make two tears flow where another preacher could hardly have started one, and the other a drunken vagabond of a harbour loafer who began the day with pints and finished it with quarts. ”

“ It was not only her florid superfluity of build that he had approached in the attitude of criticism; he was conscious also of the wide differences between her mind and his own. He felt no thankfulness that up to a certain point their natures had ever run companionably side by side; he was now full of questions beyond that point. Their intellects diverged ”

“ Can you imagine anything more impotent than an unworshiped god? Man creates gods; not gods man. Men are absolutely indispensable to gods; but men can do very well without gods if it pleases them to do so.”
“Has it pleased you to do so, Captain Brack?” I asked.
“Decidedly so. I sail light. Men make a slavery of this job of existence because they encumber themselves with laws, gods, and so on. I decided long ago not to be a slave to gods or anything.” He turned upon me with his devilish smile. “Now, Mr. Pitt, it is easy to see, is a slave to his gods.” ”

“ Bruce.
“Stealing, murder?” asked Onrai.
“Yes, taking from another that which belongs to him, either property or life.”
“These are unknown to us,” said Onrai. “We are all equal; we have the same duties to perform, the same garments to wear, the same things to eat and drink. Why should we take from another that which we have ourselves?” ”

“ My writing of this manuscript may be considered quite a big cheat, as it details my direct involvement with Onan, the Lord of the Past, and the general circumstances of the end of life on earth, for the current age at least, but still I am allowed to write it. Onan told me just a few moments ago that I could write it and tell all that I want, to which I was taken aback. When I asked why he would allow me to break the law of the council of the gods, he replied that there was no rule against a human agent from detailing his involvement in the actions of the divines. ”

“ As for me, who have not received from nature the turbulent qualities of an apostle, and never sustained in Europe the character of a dissenter, I am come to America neither to agitate the conscience of men, nor to form a sect, nor to establish a colony, in which, under the pretext of religion, I might erect a little empire to myself. I have never been seen evangelizing my ideas, either in temples or in public meetings. ”

“ There is not a young man, and for the matter of that an old one, more than Mr Onions, capable of anatomical psychology. There may be autobiography in some of Mr Onions's work, but there is in his trilogy no more than should colour any man's book.
Yet Mr Onions has his devil, and it takes the form of a rage against the world, of a hatred that seems to shed a bilious light over his puppets. His [Pg 83] strong men are hard, almost brutal, inconsiderate, dominant only by dint of intellect, and arrogant in their dominance; his weak men are craven, lying, incapable of sweetness ”

“ I tell you that the entire modernist movement is but a celebration of The Black Mass. Crazy and sane, that is what the leaders in this school are doing. Their god is Anti-Christ; their ritual destruction. And I do not believe that Christ, all merciful, will ever say to the least guilty among these—‘Absolvo te.’”
There was a long silence. Finally Annan said: “On your side you are more savage than I on mine. I am no missionary——”
[158] “I am. The human being who is not is negligible. I tell you that beauty is good and right. It is salvation. It is the goal. ”

“ He glanced at their disfigured faces.
“Nay, what the devil have you got yourselves up this way for?” he exclaimed, and they began to dance again, like vain children when overmuch notice is taken of them. “Let's begin, let's begin!” they cried, and already some had set their lanterns down before the furnace-doors. ”

“ A civilization in which such things as I have mentioned can be thought or done, is guilty to the core. It is not purity, it is impurity, and of the shallowest kind, which calls clothes more decent than the naked body—thus inanely conferring upon the work of the tailor or milliner a modesty denied to the work of God. It is not innocent but guilty thought which attaches shame, secrecy, baseness, and horror to great and august parts and functions of humanity. ”

“ How should men know her, this Fair One of Oleron's, until Oleron himself knew her? Lovely radiant creations are not thrown off like How-d'ye-do's. The men to whom it is committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken. ”

“ And that infamous one is not only the Catholic religion but religion itself. I do not want to raise an argument as to what is religion: in the sense in which Anatole France attacks it it is a precise faith in some creative and conscious spirit which manifests itself, not only in this world, but in some conceptive other world. Of that Anatole France will hear nothing. He can do without it; he is strong enough to stand alone, and to meet death “as one about to seek a great perhaps.” ”

“ Consequently, ontologism, as a system, prevailing among Catholics and in Catholic schools, is dead, and rapidly passing into oblivion—a great gain for science, as well as for religion, since it removes a great obstacle in the way of the revival of the genuine and sound philosophy which alone contains the real and solid wisdom of the Grecian sages, the fathers of the church, and the gigantic masters of the mediæval schools, combined, harmonized, and reduced to method. ”

“ In the æsthetic and ethical realms they conflict with its order—the early Christian with his kingdom of heaven, and the contemporary anarchist with his abstract dream of justice, will tell you that the existing order must perish, root and branch, ere the true order can come. ”

“ I have seen that all the science of government was to oppress prudently; and the refined servitude of polished nations appeared to me only the more irremediable.
One obstacle above all has profoundly struck my mind. On looking over the world, I have seen it divided into twenty different systems of religion. Every nation has received, or formed, opposite opinions; and every one ascribing to itself the exclusive possession of the truth, must believe the other to be wrong. ”

“ I will sing to them of fearful heart, be strong and fear not; for the high ones of authority shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall lick the dust like serpents. The proud lords amongst us buy up the dastard hirelings with gold and silver, and they clothe them in their livery! They wear the badge of cruelty and oppression in their hats; but we shall tread them down like the mire in the streets. Our king, too, is in bondage, and heareth not the groans of them that are in fetters!—for he is encompassed by the cold and the cruel—but the cold and the cruel shall be swept away. ”

“ I asked Onan, ‘If both the past and the future lead to ruin?”
“The answer is in the present, my dear Jehu, for if one focuses on the spiritual laws that bring good or evil, and acts according to them, instead of their physical counterparts and manifestations, then things will thrive and become prosperous. What is evil brings evil consequences, and what is good brings good consequences, over time. ”

“ Now to maintain such a right against the inroads of custom you have to refuse the privilege from time to time, and that was exactly what Back o' th' Mooin did one day to two men who had come up out of Lancashire. ”

“ And a man is not in the grip of remorse who, asked whether he would do his deed again, can reply with a deep "By heaven—yes!"
Nevertheless, I was perilously open. I alone among men could not rebuff the freedom of a Christian name without bringing my soul into the transaction; nay, I could not even buy a dining-table without having (as I had just had) to check an utterance and to turn away. For at Aunt Angela's words, "How do you know I haven't had a legacy?" ”

“ Altogether, I find opening before us, vistas of heresies to which I, for one, must shut my eyes. I have always been in sympathy with the dogmatists and exclusionists: that is plain in our opening lines: that to seem to be is falsely and arbitrarily and dogmatically to exclude. ”

“ To have done so wouldn't have altered matters, and it might have depressed Oleron. He had chosen his path, and was committed to it beyond possibility of withdrawal. Perhaps he had chosen it in the days when he had been easily swayed by something a little disinterested, a little generous, a little noble; and had he ever thought of questioning himself he would still have held to it that a life without nobility and generosity and disinterestedness was no life for him. ”

“ For ourselves, we have come little in contact with Nonconformity, but, if what is accepted generally, to-day, as to the religious situation, be true—that the curse of the Ritualism of the ‘Establishment,’ finds its parallel in the Rationalism, Unitarianism, Socialism, etc., of Nonconformity—then I shall expect to find as many Nonconformists, lay and ministerial, left behind from this mysterious, spiritual translation, as churchmen. ”

“ I have accomplished my purpose of reaching his audience. The class of people who should come to me stand off on account of the old prejudices, while the devil they make of me frightens others. The Owenites are the best class, yet they are sectarian and fanatical, hating all professed reformers who are not Owenites. Shall we ever see mankind, or will future ages see them, working together for common good? I begin to doubt it, still I would have no effort relinquished toward it. To save some, if we cannot save all, is something. This discussion with Stephens is not likely to be printed ”

“ We are not unfamiliar with stories of children of noble, perhaps of royal, descent, who have been abducted and brought up among people of low tastes and habits. But ever and anon, in gesture or inclination or bent of life, the blood shows itself, and to an attentive eye tells of the gentler and loftier sphere from which it came. ”

“ Every religion prefers its own priests and ministers before all other.
Truth. I must deny that position: for light of nature leadeth men to hear that only which nature conceiveth to be good for it, and therefore not to hear a messenger, minister, or preacher, whom conscience persuades is a false messenger or deceiver, and comes to deceive my soul: as millions of men and women in their several respective religions and consciences are so persuaded, conceiving their own to be true.
Jonah’s preaching to the Ninevites, and their hearing of his message, examined. ”

“ Have we treated lightly our teachings? No; but our God is great. He sees all things, and goes deep into the hearts of his people, and he knows even if they contemplate doing wrong. Oh!——” Onrai raises his hand to his forehead, and pressing it tightly against his throbbing temples, he staggers and almost falls.
“Can this thing be?” he gasped. “Is this a warning to me, the King of the Land of On? Is this to show me that God knows my sinful thoughts and would check them before it is forever too late? Oh, 109my God, spare me!” he cries, and sinks into one of the onyx chairs near him. ”