Chapter 22

The hour of the decision is now; for this we can see plainly, and as scientists we can proclaim it--the human race is in a swift current of degeneration, which a new morality alone can check. The struggle is at its height in our time; if it fails, if the fibre of the race continues to deteriorate, the soul of the race to be eaten out by poverty and luxury, by insanity and disease, by prostitution, crime and war--then mankind will slip back into the abyss, the untamed giants of Nature will resume their ancient sway, and the tides, the tempest and the lightning will sweep the earth clean again. I do not believe that this calamity will befall us. I know that in the diseased social body the forces of resistance are gathering--the Socialist movement, in the broad sense--the activities of all who believe in the possibility of reconstructing society upon a basis of reason, justice and love. To such people this book goes out: to the truly religious people, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness here and now, who believe in brotherhood as a reality, and are willing to bear pain and ridicule and privation for the sake of its ultimate achievement.

From discord and defeat, From doubt and lame division, We pluck the fruit and eat; And the mouth finds it bitter, and the spirit sweet.... O sorrowing hearts of slaves, We heard you beat from far! We bring the light that saves, We bring the morning star; Freedom's good things we bring you, whence all good things are....

#Envoi#

I have come to the end of my task; but one question troubles me. I think of the "young men and maidens meek" who will read this book, and I wonder what they will make of it. We have had a lark together; we have gone romping down the vista of the ages, swatting every venerable head that showed itself, beating the dust out of ancient delusions. You would like all your life to be that kind of lark; but you may not find it so, and perhaps you will suffer disillusionment and vexation.

I have known hundreds of young radicals in my life; they have nearly all been gallant and honest, but they have not all been wise, and therefore not so happy as they might have been. In the course of time I have formulated to myself the peril to which young radicals are exposed. We see so much that is wrong in ancient things, it gets to be a habit with us to reject them. We have only to know that a thing is old to feel an impulse of impatient scorn; on the other hand, we are tempted to welcome anything which can prove itself to be unprecedented. There is a common type of radical whose aim in life is to be several jumps ahead of mankind; whose criterion of conduct is that it shocks the bourgeois. If you do not know that type, you may find him--and her--in the newest of the Bohemian cafes, drinking the newest red chemicals, smoking the newest brand of cigarettes, and discussing the newest form of #psycopathia sexualis#. After you have watched them a while, you realize that these ultra-new people have fallen victim to the oldest form of logical fallacy, the non sequitur, and likewise to the oldest form of slavery, which is self-indulgence.

If it is true that much in the old moral codes is based upon ignorance, and cultivated by greed, it is also true that much in the old moral codes is based upon facts which will not change so long as man is what he is--a creature of impulses, good and bad, wise and foolish, selfish and generous, and compelled to make choice between these impulses; so long as he is a material body and a personal consciousness, obliged to live in society and adjust himself to the rights of others. What I would like to say to young radicals--if there is any way to say it without seeming a prig--is that in choosing their own path through life, they will need not merely enthusiasm and radical fervor, but wisdom and judgment and hard study.

It is our fundamental demand that society shall cease to repeat over and over the blunders of the past, the blunders of tyranny and slavery, of luxury and poverty, which wrecked the ancient societies; and surely it is a poor way to begin by repeating in our own persons the most ancient blunders of the moral life. To light the fires of lust in our hearts, and let them smoulder there, and imagine we are trying new experiments in psychology! Who does not know the radical woman who demonstrates her emancipation from convention by destroying her nerves with nicotine? Who does not know the genius of revolt who demonstrates his repudiation of private property by permitting his lady loves to support him? Who does not know the man who finds in the phrases of revolution the most effective devices for the seducing of young girls?

You will have read this book to ill purpose if you draw the conclusion that there is anything in it to spare you the duty of getting yourself moral standards and holding yourself to them. On the contrary, because your task is the highest and hardest that man has yet undertaken--for this reason you will need standards the most exacting ever formulated. Let me quote some words from a teacher you will not accuse of holding to the slave-moralities:

Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thoughts will I hear, and not that thou hast escaped a yoke.

Art thou such a one that can escape a yoke? Free from what? What is that to Zarathustra! Clear shall your eye tell me: free to what?

Canst thou give to thyself thy good and thine evil, and hang thy will above thee as thy law? Canst thou be thine own judge, and avenger of thy law?

Fearful it is to be alone with the judge and the avenger of thy law. So is a stone flung out into empty space and into the icy breath of isolation.

Out of the pit of ignorance and despair we emerge into the sunlight of knowledge, to take control of a world, and to make it over, not according to the will of any gods, but according to the law in our own hearts. For that task we have need of all the resources of our being; of courage and high devotion, of faith in ourselves and our comrades, of clean, straight thinking, of discipline both of body and mind. We go to this task with a knowledge as old as the first moral impulse of mankind--the knowledge that our actions determine the future of life, not merely for ourselves but for all the race. For this is one of the laws of the ancient Hebrews which modern science has not repealed, but on the contrary has reinforced with a thousand confirmations--that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations.

I get letters from the readers of my books; nearly always they are young people, so I feel like the father of a large family. I gather them now about my knee, and pronounce upon them a benediction in the ancient patriarchal style. Children and grandchildren of my hopes, for ages men suffered and fought, so that the world might be turned over to you. Now the day is coming, the glad, new day which blinds us with the shining of its wings; it is coming so swiftly that I am afraid of it. I thought we should have more time to get ready for the taking over of the world! But the old managers of it went insane, they took to tearing each other's eyes out, and now they lie dead about us. So, whether we will or not, we have to take charge of the world; we have to decide what to do with it, even while we are doing it. Let us not fail, young comrades; let us not write on the scroll of history that mankind had to go through yet new generations of wars and tumults and enslavements, because the youth of the international revolution could not lift themselves above those ancient personal vices which wrecked the fair hopes of their fathers--bigotry and intolerance, vindictiveness and vanity, envy, hatred and malice and all uncharitableness!

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INDEX

A

Abbott, Lyman 175-191 Abbott, L.F. 189 Adams 214 Adventists 237 Amberley 52 Anglican Church 47-88 Appeal to Reason 144 Archer 133 Assyria 32 Atkinson 267 Austria 155 Aztecs 32

B

Babists 254 Babylonia 26, 32, 50 Baxter 183 Beilhardt 254 Berkman 288 Besant 250 Bible-students 246 Bismarck 153 Black Magic 253 Blavatsky 23, 256 Blougram 109 Bonzano 121, 126 Booth 298 Bootstrap-lifting 11, 266 Brougher 209 Brown 268 Buchanan 68, 159 Buckle 41 Burns 75

C

Cæsar 161 Cannon 143 Carlyle 163 Carnegie 177 Catholic Church 27, 105-157, 295 Catholic Encyclopedia 67 Centrum 152 Charcot 258 Chatterton-Hill 220 Chinese 74 Christian Endeavor World 216 Christian Science 254-264 Churchman 101, 102 Clark 23 Clough 235 Columbus 115 Conway 127 Curates 71

D

Darwin 56 Day 205 Debs 289 Dixon 204, 205 Dowie 242 Durham 80

E

Eastman 140 Eddy 257, 261 Education 81 England 49, 73, 75 England, Church of 47-88 Episcopal Church 89-102 Eucharist 59

F

Ferrer 51, 133 Fish 65 Flint 78, 79 Fogazzaro 298 Foraker 143 Frederick 163

G

Galileo 51 Gallipoli 61 Garrison 167 Gladstone 57, 58, 81 Goldman 287 Goode 59, 61 Green 63 Gurney 254

H

Hagen 219 Hale 213 Hammurabi 85 Hampton 181 Ha'nish 250 Hanna 122, 142, 153, 213 Harris 72 Harrison 304 Haywood 288 Hebrew 36, 173, 284, 285 Henry the Eighth 66, 67 Hill, Joe 219 Hill, Rev. J.W. 204 Holmes 276 Holy Rollers 242, 243 Hubbard 190 Huss 38, 41 Huxley 56, 58 Hyndman 256 Hyslop 223

I

Inquisition 39, 51 Ireland 43 Isaiah 287

J

Janet 258 Jastrow 32 Jehovah 35, 36 Jesuits 148 Jesus 74, 100, 101, 161, 172, 174, 175, 176, 197, 221, 258, 281, 282, 290, 291, 292 Jews 284, 286 Job 25, 26, 55 Joshua 37 Jowett 54 Jungle 190, 194, 197 Junker 152

K

Kaiser 164-166 Kant 303 Kemp 19 King Coal 137 Kingsley 34 Knights of Columbus 123 Koreshanity 248

L

La Follette 260 Landor 34 Lankester 306 Lea 39 Leeky 136 Leo XIII 119, 123 Ligouri 174 Li Hung Chang 75 London 276 Los Angeles 149, 150, 208, 209, 217 L.A. Examiner 149 L.A. Times 44, 151 Lourdes 258 Luther 161, 163

M

MacGill 42 Machen 273 Mallock 77 Malthus 77 Manning 118 Manu 285 Markham 302 Marx 71, 173 Massey 55 Mazdaznan 250 McCabe 148 McDonald 139 Mellen 185 Menace 135 Milton 199 Morality 308 More 85 Morgan 99, 101 Mormon 239, 240 Moses 36, 37

N

Nazarite 29 New Haven 180, 181 New Thought 264 N.Y. Evening Post 223 N.Y. Sun 193 N.Y. Times 211 Nichols 270 Noel 83, 286 Northcliffe 72 Numerology 271

O

Oahspe 248 O'Connell 120 Opium 74 Outlook 175-198

P

Paine 87 Paley 87 Pasadena 150, 208, 276 Patent Medicine 214 Patterson 139 Paul 56, 161, 207 Peabody 99 Peters 204 Phelan 119 Pillsbury 167 Pius IX 116 Plowman 64 Pope 67, 121, 143 Positivists 304 Post 216 Potter 98 Prescott 32 Preston 127 Protestant 201 Prussia 153, 163

Q

Quakers 177 Quay 212 Quigley 129

R

Rauschenbusch 163, 283 Rawson 272 Reformation 163, 201 Religion 16, 17 Rig-Veda 30 Robinson 228 Rockefeller 138, 177, 190, 192, 211 Roosevelt 142 Russell, C.E. 95, 181 Russell, G. 82 Russell, Pastor 247 Ryan 105

S

Sacred Heart 113 Salpetriere 238 Salvation Army 298 Sanday 78 Segur 117 Shaftesbury 74, 82 Shakers 244, 245 Shelley 87, 183 Siam 34 Sinn Fein 295 Smith, Gipsy 217 Smith, Goldwin 223 Soap Box 290 Socialist Movement 311 Spain 131 Spiritualism 275 Stalker 78 Sterling 45 Sunday 207, 210 Swinburne 103 Syracuse 205

T

Tablet 157 Tacitus 170 Taft 142-144 Tammany 93, 143 Thackery 68, 212 Theosophists 254, 255 Thirty-nine Articles 54 Tingley 256 Torrey 203 Tractarian 55 Trinity 94 Trinity Corporation 95 Trowbridge 29

V

Vedder 76 Voltaire 53

W

Waddell 279 Wagner 219 Wall Street 181 Wanamaker 203 Ward 55 Wattles 268 Wesley 170 Westcott 79 White, A.D. 52 White, Bouck 192 Wilberforce 56, 88 William 63 Wilson 169, 186

Y

Yogi 255 York 76

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