Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers Part 9

Their everlasting and unchanging laws Reproached thine ignorance.

Awhile thou stood'st Baffled and gloomy; then thou did'st sum up The elements of all that thou did'st know.

The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign, The budding of the heaven-breathing trees, The eternal orbs that beautify the night, The sunrise, and the setting of the moon, Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, And all their causes, to an abstract point, Converging, thou did'st bend, and called it G.o.d; The self-sufficing, the omnipotent, The merciful, and the avenging G.o.d!

Who, prototype of human misrule, sits High in Heaven's realm, upon a golden throne, Even like an earthly king: and whose dread work, h.e.l.l gapes forever for the unhappy slaves Of fate, whom he created in his sport, To triumph in their torments when they fell!

Earth heard the name; earth trembled, as the smoke Of his revenge ascended up to Heaven, Blotting the constellations: and the cries Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence, And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths,

Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land; Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear, And thou did'st laugh to hear the mother's shriek Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel Felt cold in her torn entrails!

Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime; But age crept on: one G.o.d would not suffice For senile puerility; thou fram'dst A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend Thy wickedness had pictured might afford A plea for sating the unnatural thirst For murder, rapine, violence, and crime, That still consumed thy being, even when Thou heard'st the step of fate:--that flames might light Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks Of parents dying on the pile that burned To light their children to thy paths, the roar Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries Of thine apostles, loud commingling there, Might sate thy hungry ear Even on the bed of death!

But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs; Thou art descending to the darksome grave, Unhonored and unpitied, but by those Whose pride is pa.s.sing by like thine, and sheds Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun Of truth, and s.h.i.+nes but in the dreadful night That long has lowered above the ruined world."

Speaking of the Atheist's martyrdom in answer to the spirit of "Ianthe,"

Sh.e.l.ley makes his fairy say:--

"There is no G.o.d!

Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed.

Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;

Let every part depending on the chain That links it to the whole, point to the hand That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls In silent eloquence unfold its store Of argument. Infinity within, Infinity without, belie creation; The exterminate spirit it contains Is nature's only G.o.d: but human pride Is skilful to invent most serious names To hide its ignorance.

The name of G.o.d Has fenced about all crime with holiness, Himself the creature of his wors.h.i.+ppers, Whose names and attributes and pa.s.sions change, Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, Goa, or Lord, Even with the human dupes who build his shrines.

Still serving o'er the war-polluted world For desolation's watch-word; whether hosts Stain his death-blus.h.i.+ng chariot wheels, as on Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans; Or countless partners of his powers divide His tyranny to weakness: or the smoke Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness, Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, Horribly ma.s.sacred, ascend to heaven In honor of his name; or, last and worst, Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, And priests dare babble of a G.o.d of peace, Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, Murdering the while, uprooting every germ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, Making the earth a slaughter-house."

"Ianthe's" spirit, however, asks still further, and the ghost of Ahasuerus having been summoned, the question is repeated, "Is there a G.o.d?"

"_Ahasuerus_.--Is there a G.o.d? ay, an Almighty G.o.d, And vengeful as Almighty! Once his voice Was heard on earth: earth shuddered at the sound, The fiery-visaged firmament expressed Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawned To swallow all the dauntless and the good That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, Girt as it was with power. None but slaves Survived,--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work Of tyrannous omnipotence: whose souls No honest indignation ever urged To elevated daring, to one deed Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.

These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend, Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked With human blood, and hideous moans rung Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts Had raised him to nis eminence in power, Accomplice of omnipotence in crime, And confidant of the all-knowing one.

These were Jehovah's words: "From an eternity of idleness, G.o.d, awoke: in seven days toil made earth From nothing; rested, and created man.

I placed him in a paradise, and there Planted the tree of evil, so that he Might eat and perish, and my soul procure Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn, Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth, All misery to my fame. The race of men, Chosen to my honor, with impunity, May sate the l.u.s.ts I planted in their heart.

Here I command thee hence to lead them on, Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood, And make my name be dreaded through the land.

Yet ever burning flame and ceaseless woe Shall be the doom of their eternal souls, With every soul on this ungrateful earth, Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,--even all Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge Which you, to men, call justice, of their G.o.d."

The murderer's brow Quivered with horror.

G.o.d omnipotent!

Is there no mercy? must our punishment Be endless? will long ages roll away, And see no 'term? Oh! wherefore hast thou made In mockery and wrath this evil earth?

Mercy becomes the powerful--be but just: O G.o.d! repent and save.

"One way remains!

I will beget a son, and he shall bear The sins of all the world: he shall arise In an unnoticed corner of the earth,

And there shall die upon a cross, and purge The universal crime; so that the few On whom my grace descends, those who are marked As vessels to the honor of their G.o.d, May credit this strange sacrifice, and save Their souls alive. Millions shall live and die Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name, But, unredeemed, go to the gaping, grave.

Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale, Such as the nurses frighten babes withal.

These in a gulph of anguish and of flame Shall curse their reprobation endlessly.

Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, Even on their beds of torment, where they howl, My honor, and the justice of their doom.

What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts Of purity, with radiant genius bright, Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?

Many are called, but few I will elect.

Do thou my bidding, Moses!"

In his poem of "Rosalind and Helen," the poet indulges in the following prophecy, which he puts in the mouth of Helen:--

"Fear not the tyrants shall rule forever, Or the priests of the b.l.o.o.d.y faith; They stand on the brink of that mighty river, Whose waves they have tainted with death.

It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells, Around them it foams, and rages, and swells; And their swords and their sceptres I floating see, Like wrecks on the surge of eternity.?"

Beside the poems mentioned, Sh.e.l.ley wrote "The Cenci," "Alastor,"

"Prometheus Unbound," and many others, including a beautiful little ode to a "Skylark," and the well-known "Sensitive Plant."

Sh.e.l.ley was a true and n.o.ble man--no poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced aspiration.--De Quincey says, "Sh.e.l.ley would, from his earliest manhood, have sacrificed all that he possessed for any comprehensive purpose of good for the race of man. He dismissed all insults and injuries from his memory. He was the sincerest and most truthful of human creatures.

"If he denounced marriage as a vicious inst.i.tution, _that_ was but another phase of the partial lunacy which affected him: for to no man were purity and fidelity more essential elements in the idea of real love. Again, De Quincey speaks of Sh.e.l.ley's "fearlessness, his gracious nature, his truth, his purity from all flesh-liness of appet.i.te, his freedom from vanity, his diffusive love and tenderness." This testimony is worth much, the more especially when we remember that it is from the pen of Thomas de Quincey, who, while truthfully acknowledging the man, hesitates not to use polished irony, rough wit, and covert sneering, when dealing with the man's uttered thinkings.

"That Sh.e.l.ley understood the true mission of a poet, and the true nature of poetry, will appear from the following extract from one of his prose essays:--"Poetry," he says, "is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling, sometimes a.s.sociated with place and person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen, and departing unbidden, but elevating stud delightful beyond all expression. Poets are not only subject to these experiences, as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all they combine with the evanescent lines of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or pa.s.sion will touch the enchanted cord, and reanimate in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanis.h.i.+ng apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide--abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things."

Sh.e.l.ley's beautiful imagery and idealistic drapery is sometimes so acc.u.mulated in his poems, that it is difficult to follow him in his thinkings. In his verse he wishes to stand high as a philosophical reasoner, and this, together with his devotion to the cause, which even men of De Quincey's stamp call "Insolent Infidelity," has prevented Sh.e.l.ley from becoming so popular as he might have been.

Sh.e.l.ley lived a life of strife, pa.s.sed his boyhood and youth in struggling to be free--misunderstood and misinterpreted: and when at last in his manhood happier circ.u.mstances were gathering around him, a blast of wind came, and the waves of the sea washed away one who was really and truly "a man and a poet."

On Monday. July 8th, 1822, being then in his 29th year, Sh.e.l.ley was returning from Leghorn to his home at Lerici, in a schooner-rigged boat of his own, with one friend and an English servant; when the boat had reached about four miles from the sh.o.r.e, the storm suddenly rose, and the wind suddenly s.h.i.+fted. From excessive smoothness, all at once the sea was foaming, and breaking, and getting up in a heavy swell. The boat is supposed to have filled to leeward, and (carry-ins: two tons of ballast) to have sunk instantaneously--all on board were drowned. The body of Sh.e.l.ley was washed on sh.o.r.e eight days afterwards, near Via Reggio, in an advanced state of decomposition, and was therefore burned on a funeral pyre in the presence of Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, Mr.

Trelawney, and a Captain Shenley.

Thus died Sh.e.l.ley in the mid day of life, and ere the warm sun of that mid-day could dispel the clouds that had gathered round the morning of his career. The following comparison made between the personal appearance of Sh.e.l.ley and of Byron, by Gilfillan, has been called by De Quincey "an eloquent parallel," and we therefore conclude the present number by quoting it:--

"In the forehead and head of Byron there is more ma.s.sive power and breadth: Sh.e.l.ley has a smooth, arched, spiritual expression; wrinkle there seems none on his brow; it is as if perpetual youth had there dropped its freshness. Byron's eye seems the focus of pride and l.u.s.t: Sh.e.l.ley's is mild, pensive, fixed on you, but seeing you through the mist of his own idealism. Defiance curls on Byron's nostril, and sensuality steps his full large lips. The lower features of Sh.e.l.ley's face are trail, feminine, flexible.--Byron's head is turned upwards as if having risen proudly above his contemporaries, he were daring to claim kindred, or demand a contest with a superior order of beings.

Sh.e.l.ley's is half bent, in reverence and humility, before some vast vision seen by his own eye alone. Misery erect, and striving to cover its retreat under an aspect of contemptuous fury, is the permanent and pervading expression of Byron's countenance. Sorrow, softened and shaded away by hope and habit, lies like a 'holier day' of still moons.h.i.+ne upon that of Sh.e.l.ley. In the portrait of Byron, taken at the age of nineteen, you see the unnatural age of premature pa.s.sion; his hair is young, his dress is youthful, but his face is old. In Sh.e.l.ley you see the eternal child, none the less that his hair is grey, and that sorrow seems half his immortality."

"I."

CLAUD ARIAN HELVETIUS.

If France, at the present day, has not reason to be proud of its "leading man," it has in former times produced those minds that shed l.u.s.tre upon the country, and who, by their literature, add immortality to its renown. During the eighteenth century, when religious persecution and intolerance were rampant throughout Europe, France furnished men to check oppression and expose superst.i.tion, while others followed to lay the foundation of excellence and greatness in the examination and cultivation of its true source--the mind. Heivetius sought to direct men's attention to self-examination, and to show how many disputes might be avoided if each person understood _what_ he was disputing about.

"Helvetius on the Mind" is a work that ought to be read widely, and studied attentively, especially by "rising young men," as it is one of those _Secular_ works too rarely found among our literature.

Claud Arian Helvetius was born in Paris in the year 1715. After his preparatory studies, he was sent to the College of Louis le Grand, having for his tutor the famous Poree, who bestowed additional attention upon Heivetius, perceiving in him great talent and genius. Early in life Heivetius formed the friends.h.i.+p of some of the leading minds of France, Montesquieu being his intimate friend. Voltaire, too, sought his correspondence when at the age of twenty-three, calling him his "Young Apollo," and his "Son of Parna.s.sus." The first literary attempts of Helvetius consisted of poetry--"Epistles on Happiness," which appeared as a posthumous production, with the "lavish commendations" of Voltaire.

After ten years' thought and study Helvetius in 1758, published a work ent.i.tled "De L'Esprit," which brought upon him a great amount of persecution. The Parliament of Paris condemned it, and Helvetius was removed from the office he held of "Maitre d'Hotel to the Queen."

Voltaire remarks:--"it is a little extraordinary that they should have persecuted, disgraced, and hara.s.sed, a much respected philosopher of our days, the innocent, the good Helvetius, for having said that if men had been without hands they could not have built houses, or worked in tapestry. Apparently those who have condemned this proposition, have a secret for cutting stones and wood, and for sewing with the feet.... I have no doubt that they will soon condemn to the galleys the first who shall have the insolence to say, that a man cannot think without his head; for, some bachelor will tell him, the soul is a pure spirit, the head is nothing but matter: G.o.d can place the soul in the nails, as well as in the skull, therefore I proscribe you as impious."

During the persecution raised against him, Helvetius visited England in 1764. In 1765 he visited Prussia, being well received by Frederick, in whose place he lodged. Voltaire strongly advised Helvetius to leave France in these words:--"In your place, I should not hesitate a moment to sell all that I have in France; there are some excellent estates in my neighborhood, and there you might cultivate in peace the arts you love." About this period Hume became acquainted with Helvetius, whom he styles, in writing to Dr. Robertson, "a very fine genius and worthy man." In 1765, Helvetius returned from Prussia, and retired to his estate at Vore. The sight of misery much affected him; and when relieving distress, he enjoined strict secrecy. Sometimes, when told he relieved those undeserving his aid, he would say, "If I were a king I would correct them, but as I am only rich and they are poor, I do my duty in relieving them." An attack of gout in the head and stomach terminated his life in December, 1771, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.

In "De L'Esprit, or, Essays on the Mind," chap. I.. Helvetius makes the following remarks on the "Mind considered in itself":--

"We hear every day disputes with regard to what ought to be called the Mind; each person delivers his thoughts, but annexes different ideas to the word; and thus the debate is continued, without understanding each other. In order, therefore, to enable us to give a just and precise idea of the word Mind, and its different acceptations, it is necessary first to consider the Mind in itself. We consider the Mind either as the effect of the faculty of thinking, and in this sense the Mind is no more than an a.s.semblage of our thoughts, or, we consider it as the very faculty of thinking. But in order to understand what is meant by the Mind, in the latter acceptation, we ought previously to know the productive causes of our ideas. Man has two faculties; or, if I may be allowed the expression, two pa.s.sive powers whose existence is generally and distinctly acknowledged. The one is the faculty of receiving the different impressions caused by external objects, and is called Physical Sensibility. The other is the faculty of preserving the impressions caused by those objects, called Memory; and Memory is nothing more than a continued, but weakened sensation.--Those faculties which I consider as the productive causes of our thoughts, and which we have in common with beasts, would produce but a very small number of ideas, if they were not a.s.sisted by certain external organizations. If Nature, instead of hands and flexible fingers, had terminated our wrist with the foot of a horse, mankind would doubtless have been totally dest.i.tute of art, habitation, and defence against other animals. Wholly employed in the care of procuring food, and avoiding the beasts of prey, they would have still continued wandering in the forests, like fugitive flocks. It is therefore evident that, according to this supposition, the police would never have been carried in any society to that degree of perfection, to which it is now arrived. There is not a nation now existing, but, with regard to the action of the mind, must not have continued very inferior to certain savage nations, who have not two hundred different ideas, nor two hundred words to express those ideas; and whose language must consequently be reduced, like that of animals, to five or six different sounds or cries, if we take from it the words bow, arrow, nets, etc., which suppose the use of hands. From whence I conclude, that, without a certain exterior organization, sensibility and memory in us would prove two sterile faculties. We ought to examine if these two faculties, by the a.s.sistance of this organization, have in reality produced all our thoughts. But; before we examine this subject, I may possibly be asked whether these two faculties are modifications of a spiritual or a material substance? This question, which has formerly been so often debated by philosophers, and by some persons revived in our time, does not necessarily fall within the limits of my work.---What I have to offer, with regard to the Mind, is equally conformable to either of these hypothesis. I shall therefore only observe that, if the church had not fixed our belief in respect to this particular, and we had been obliged by the light of reason alone to acquire a knowledge of the thinking, principle, we must have granted, that neither opinion is capable of demonstration; and consequently that, by weighing the reasons on both sides, balancing the difficulties, and determining in favor of the greater number of probabilities, we should form only conditional judgments. It would be the fate of this problem, as it hath been of many others, to be resolvable only by the a.s.sistance of the calculation of probabilities."