Let me add that I do not say that she practices black magic. I do not
believe that she #could# practice it, even if she wanted to--I do not
believe in black magic. My purpose is merely to show how theosophists
quarrel: going back to the days of Anu and Baal and the bronze Image
of the Babylonian fire-god:

  Let them die, but let me live!
  Let them be put under a ban, but let me prosper!
  Let them perish, but let me increase!
  Let them become weak, but let me wax strong!

#Mental Malpractice#

This is the other side of the fair shield of religious faith. Why, if
there be a power which loves and can be persuaded to aid us, may there
not also be a power which hates, and can be persuaded to destroy? No
religion has ever been able to answer this, and therefore none has
ever been able to escape from devil-terrors. Even Jesus was pursued by
Satan, and the Holy Catholic Church has its ceremonies for the
exorcising of demons, and a most frightful formula for cursing. And
here are our friends the Christian Scientists, proclaiming the
unreality of all evil, their ability to banish disease by convincing
themselves that they are perfect in God--yet tormented by a squalid
phobia called "Mental Malpractice", or "Malicious Animal Magnetism".

Christian Science is the most characteristic of American religious
contributions. Just as Billy Sunday is the price we pay for failing to
educate our base-ball players, so Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is
the price we pay for failing to educate our farmer's daughters.

That she had a power to cure disease I do not doubt, because I have a
little of it myself. At first my opinion was that her "Science" made
its way by curing the imaginary ailments of the idle rich. If a person
has nothing to do but think that he is sick, you can work easy
miracles by persuading him to think that he is well; and if he has
nothing to do but think that he is well, he will help you to build
marble churches and maintain propaganda societies. But recently I have
experimented with mental healing--enough to satisfy myself that the
subconscious mind which controls our physical functions can be
powerfully influenced by the will.

I told the story of some of these experiments in Hearst's Magazine for
April, 1914. Suffice it here to say that if you will lay your hands
upon a sick person, forming a vivid mental picture of the bodily
changes you desire, and concentrating the power of your will upon
them, you may be surprised by the results, especially if you possess
anything in the way of psychic gifts. You do not have to adopt any
theories, you do not have to do it in the name of any divinity,
ancient or modern; the only bearing of such ideas is that they serve
to persuade people to make the experiment, and to make it with
persistence and intensity. So it has come about that "miracles" of
healing are associated with "faith"; and so it comes about that
scientists are apt to flout the subject. But read of the work of Janet
and Charcot and their followers at the Salpetriere; they have proven
that all kinds of seeming-organic ailments may be entirely hysterical
in nature, and may be cured by the simplest form of suggestion.
Understanding this, you may find it more easy to credit the fact that
cripples do sometimes throw away their crutches in the grotto of
Lourdes. For my part, I can believe that Jesus performed all the
miracles of healing attributed to him--including the raising up of
people pronounced to be dead by the ignorance of that time. I am
convinced that in the new science of psycho-analysis we have a
universe as vast as the universe of the atom or of the stars.

The Christian Scientists have got hold of this power; they have mixed
it up with metaphysic and divinity, and built some four or five
hundred churches, and printed the Mother Church alone knows how many
million pamphlets and books. I once invested three of my hard-earned
dollars for a copy of the Eddy Bible, and let myself be stunned and
blinded by the flapping of metaphysical wings. It is unadulterated
moonshine--as the Platonist and Berkeleyan and Hegelian and other
orthodox collegiate metaphysical magi can prove to you in one minute.
What interests me about the phenomenon is not the slinging of
tremendous words, but the strictly Yankee use which is made of them.
There is no nonsense about saving your soul in Christian Science; what
it is for is to remove your wen, to nail down your floating kidney,
and to enable you to hustle and make money. We saw in our politics the
growth of a Party of the Full Dinner-Pail; contemporaneous therewith,
and corresponding thereto, we see in our religious life the
development of a Church of the Full Pocket-Book.

It is a strict religion--strictly cash. The heads of the cult do not
issue cheap editions of "Science and Health, With Key to the
Scriptures", to relieve the suffering of the proletariat; no--the work
is copyrighted, in all its varying and contradictory editions, and the
price is from three to seven-fifty, according to binding. Treatments
cost from three dollars to ten, whether you come and get them or take
them over the telephone. And we have no nonsense about charity, we
don't worry about the poor who fester in our city slums; because
poverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to all men a way to
get rich right off the bat. You may; come to our marble churches and
hear people testify how through the power of Divine Mind they were
enabled to anticipate a rise in the stock-market. If you don't avail
yourself of the opportunity, the fault is yours, and yours also the
punishment.

As to the management of the Church, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is a
Bolshevik democracy in comparison. The Church is controlled by an
absolutely irresponsible self-perpetuating body of five men, who alone
dictate its policy. I have in my hand a letter from a Christian
Science healer who was listed as an "authorized practitioner", and who
withdrew from the Church because of its attitude on public questions.
He sends me a copy of his correspondence with the editors of the
"Christian Science Monitor", containing a detailed analysis of the
position of that paper on such issues as the Ballinger land-frauds. He
writes:

     I am thoroughly convinced now that the policy of the Church
     is consciously plutocratic. The only recommendation I have
     heard of the latest appointee to the Board of Directors is
     that he is one of the richest men in the movement.

After the Titanic disaster, Senator La Follette brought in a carefully
drawn bill to compel steamship companies to provide life-boats and
trained crews. The "Christian Science Monitor" opposed this bill; and
when my correspondent cited the fact, he brought out a quaint bit of
metaphysical logic, as follows:

     One would prefer to travel on a vessel without a single
     boat, rather than on some other vessels which were loaded
     down with life-boats, where the government of Mind was not
     understood!

#Science and Wealth#

The truth is that the brand of Mammon was on our Yankee religion from
the day of its birth. In the first edition of her new Bible "Mother"
Eddy dropped the hint to her readers: "Men of business have said this
science was of great advantage from a secular point of view." And in
her advertisements she threw aside all pretense, declaring that her
work "Affords an opportunity to acquire a profession by which one can
accumulate a fortune." When her pupils did accumulate, she boasted of
their success; nor did she neglect her own accumulating.

It has been a dozen years since I looked into this cult; in order to
be sure that it has not been purified in the interim, I proceed to a
street corner in my home city, where is a stand with a sign:
"Christian Science Literature." I take four sample copies of a
magazine, the "Christian Science Sentinel", published by the Mother
Church in Boston, and turn to the "Testimonials of Healing". In the
issue of August 11, 1917, Mary C. Richards of St. Margarets-on-Thames,
England, testifies: "Through a number of circumstances unnecessary to
relate, but proving conclusively that the result came not from man but
from God, employment was found." In the issue of December 2, 1916,
Frances Tuttle of Jersey City, N.J., testifies how her sister was
successfully treated for unemployment by a scientist practitioner.
"Every condition was beautifully met." In the same issue Fred D.
Miller of Los Angeles, Cal., testifies: "Soon after this wonderful
truth came to me, Divine Love led me to a new position with a
responsible firm. The work was new to me, but I have given entire
satisfaction, and my salary has been advanced twice in less than a
year." In the issue of January 27, 1917, Eliza Fryant of Agricola,
Miss., testifies how she cured her little dog of snake-bite and
removed two painful corns from her own foot. In the issue of August 4,
1917, Marcia E. Gaier, of Everett, Wash., testifies how it suddenly
occurred to her that because God is All, she would drop her planning
and outlining in regard to real estate properties, "upon which for
nine months all available material methods were tried to no effect."
The result was a triumph of "Principle".

     While working in the yard one morning and gratefully
     communing with God, the only power, I suddenly felt that I
     should stop working and prepare for visitors on their way to
     look at the property. I obeyed this very distinct command,
     and in about an hour I greeted two people who had searched
     almost the entire city for just what we had to offer. They
     had been directed to our place by what to material sense
     would seem an accident, but we know it was the divine law of
     harmony in its universal operation.

After this no one will wonder that John M. Tutt, in a Christian
Science lecture at Kansas City, Mo., should proclaim:

     My friends, do you know that since the world began Christian
     Science is the only system which has intelligently related
     religion to business? Christian Science shows that since all
     ideas belong to Mind, God, therefore all real business
     belongs to Him.

As I said, these people have the new-old power of mental healing. They
blunder along with it blindly, absurdly, sometimes with tragic
consequences; but meantime the rank and file of the pill-doctors know
nothing about this power, and regard it with contempt mingled with
fear; so of course the hosts of sufferers whom the pill-doctors cannot
help flock to the healers of the "Church of Christ, Scientist".
According to the custom of those who are healed by "faith", they
swallow line, hook, and sinker, creed, ritual, metaphysic and
divinity. So we see in twentieth-century America precisely what we saw
in B.C. twentieth-century Assyria--a host of worshippers; giving their
worldly goods without stint, and a priesthood, made partly of fanatics
and partly of charlatans, conducting a vast enterprise of graft, and
harvesting that thing desired of all men, power over the lives and
destinies of others.

And of course among themselves they quarrel; they murder one another's
Mortal Minds, they drive one another out, they snarl over the spoils
like a pack of hungry animals. Listen to the Mother, denouncing one of
her students--a perfectly amiable and harmless youth whose only
offense was that he had gone his own way and was healing the sick for
the benefit of his own pocket-book:

     Behold! thou criminal mental marauder, that would blot out
     the sunshine of earth, that would sever friends, destroy
     virtue, put out Truth, and murder in secret the innocent,
     befouling thy track with the trophies of thy guilt--I say,
     Behold the "cloud" no bigger than a man's hand already
     rising on the horizon of Truth, to pour down upon thy guilty
     head the hailstones of doom.

And again:

     The Nero of today, regaling himself through a mental method
     with the torture of individuals, is repeating history, and
     will fall upon his own sword, and it shall pierce him
     through. Let him remember this when, in the dark recesses of
     thought, he is robbing, committing adultery and killing.
     When he is attempting to turn friend away from friend,
     ruthlessly stabbing the quivering heart; when he is clipping
     the thread of life and giving to the grave youth and its
     rainbow hues; when he is turning back the reviving sufferer
     to his bed of pain, clouding his first morning after years
     of night; and the Nemesis of that hour shall point to the
     tyrant's fate, who falls at length upon the sword of
     justice.

#New Nonsense#

In a certain city of America is a large building given up entirely to
the whims of pretty ladies. Its floors are not floors but
"Promenades", and have walls of glass, behind which, as you stroll,
you see bonnets from Paris and opera cloaks from London, furs from
Alaska and blankets from Arizona, diamonds from South Africa and beads
from the Philippines, grapes from Spain and cherries from Japan,
fortune-tellers from Arabia and dancing-masters from Petrograd and
"naturopaths" from Vienna. There are seventy-three shops, by actual
count, containing everything that could be imagined or desired by a
pretty lady, whether for her body, or for that vague stream of emotion
she calls her "soul". One of the seventy-three shops is a
"Metaphysical Library", having broad windows, and walls in pastel
tints, and pretty vases with pink flowers, and pretty gray wicker
chairs in which the reader will please to be seated, while we probe
the mysteries of an activity widely spread throughout America, called
"New Thought."

We begin with a shelf of magazines having mystical titles: Azoth;
Master Mind; Aletheian; Words of Power; Qabalah; Comforter; Adept;
Nautilus; True Word; Astrological Bulletin; Unity; Uplift; Now. And
then come shelves of pretty pamphlets, alluring to the eye and the
purse; also shelves of imposing-looking volumes containing the lore
and magic of a score of races and two score of centuries--together
with the very newest manifestations of Yankee hustle and graft.

As in the case of Christian Science, these New Thoughters have a
fundamental truth, which I would by no means wish to depreciate. It is
a fact that the mysterious Source of our being is infinite, and that
we are only at the beginning of our thinking about it. It is a fact
that by appeal to it we can perform seeming miracles of mental and
moral regeneration; we can stimulate the flow of nervous energy and of
the blood, thus furthering the processes of bodily healing. But the
fact that God is Infinite and Omnipotent does not bar the fact that He
has certain ways of working, which He does not vary; and that it is
our business to explore and understand these ways, instead of setting
our fancies to work imagining other ways more agreeable to our
sentimentality.

Thus, for example, if we want bread, it is God's decree that we shall
plant wheat and harvest it, and grind and bake and distribute it.
Under conditions prevailing at the moment, it appears to be His decree
that we shall store the wheat in elevators, and ship it in freight
cars, and buy it through a grain exchange, with capital borrowed from
a national bank; in other words, that our daily bread shall be the
plaything of exploiters and speculators, until such a time as we have
the intelligence to form an effective political party and establish
Industrial Democracy. But when you come to study the ways of God in
the literature of the New Thought, do you find anything about the
Millers' Trust and the Bakers' Trust and how to expropriate these
agencies of starvation? You do not!

What you find is Bootstrap-lifting; you find gentlemen and lady
practitioners shutting their eyes and lifting their hands and
pronouncing Incantations in awe-inspiring voices--or in Capital
Letters and LARGE TYPE: "God is infinite, God is All-Loving, #GOD WILL
PROVIDE.# Bread is coming to you! #Bread is coming to you!! BREAD IS
COMING TO YOU!!!"

You think this is exaggeration? If so, it is because you have
never entered the building of the pretty ladies, and sat in the
gray wicker chairs of the metaphysical library. One of the highest
high-priestesses of the cults of New Nonsense is a lady named
Elizabeth Towne, editor of "The Nautilus"; and Priestess Elizabeth
tells you:

     I believe the idea that money wants you will help you to the
     right mental condition. Be a pot of honey and let it come.

I look over this Priestess' magazine, and find it full of testimonials
and advertisements for the conjuring of prosperity. "Are you in the
success sphere?" asks one exhorter; the next tells you "How to enter
the silence. How to manifest what you desire. The secret of
advancement." Another tells: "How a Failure at Sixty Won Sudden
Success; From Poverty to $40,000 a year--a Lesson for Old and Young
Alike." The lesson, it appears, is to pay $3.00 for a book called
"Power of Will." And here is another book:

     Master Key: Which can unlock the Secret Chamber of Success,
     can throw wide the doors which seem to bar men from the
     Treasure House of Nature, and bids those enter and partake
     who are Wise enough to Understand and broad enough to Weigh
     the Evidence, firm enough to Follow their Own Judgment and
     Strong enough to Make the Sacrifice Exacted.

#"Dollars Want Me"#

I turn to the shelves of pamphlets. Here is a pretty one called "All
Sufficiency in All Things," published by the "Unity School of
Christianity", in Kansas City; it explains that God is God, not merely
of the Soul, but also of the Kansas City stockyards.

     This divine Substance is ever abiding within us, and stands
     ready to manifest itself in whatever form you and I need or
     wish, just as it did in Elisha's time. It is the same
     yesterday, today and forever. Abundant Supply by the
     manifestation of the Father within us, from within outward,
     is as much a legitimate outcome of the Christ life or
     spiritual understanding as is bodily healing.... "Know that
     I am God--all of God, Good, all of Good. I am Life. I am
     Health. I am Supply. I am the Substance."

And here is W.W. Atkinson of Chicago, author of a work called "Mind
Power". Would you like to be an Impressive Personality? Mr. Atkinson
will tell you exactly how to do it; he will give you the secret of the
Magnetic Handclasp, of the Intense, Straight-in-the-eye Look; he will
tell you what to say, he will write out for you Incantations which you
may pronounce to yourself, to convince yourself that you have #Power#,
that the INDWELLING PRESENCE with all its #MIGHT# is yours. Mr.
Atkinson rebukes mildly the tendency of some of his fellow
Bootstrap-lifters to employ these arts for money-making; but you
notice that his magazine, "Advanced Thought", does not decline the
advertisements of such too-practical practitioners.

Next comes a gentleman with the musical name of Wallace Wattles, who
tells in one pamphlet "How to Be a Genius", and in another pamphlet
"How to Get What you Want". The thing for you to do is--

     Saturate your mentality through and through with the
     knowledge that YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.... Look upon
     the peanut-stand merely as the beginning of the department
     store, and make it grow; you can.

And Mr. Wattles wattles on, in an ecstasy of acquisitiveness:

     Hold this consciousness and say with deep, earnest feeling:
     I CAN succeed! All that is possible to any one is possible
     to me. I AM success. I do succeed, for I am full of the
     Power of Success.

Imagine, if you please, a poor devil chained in the treadmill of the
capitalist system--a "soda-jerker", a "counter-jumper", a book-keeper
for the Steel Trust. His chances of rising in life are one in ten
thousand; but he comes to the Metaphysical Library, and pays the price
of his dinner for a pamphlet by Henry Harrison Brown, who was first a
Unitarian clergyman, and then an extra-high Bootstrap-lifter in San
Francisco, an Honorary Vice-President of the International New
Nonsense Alliance. Mr. Brown will tell our soda-jerker or
counter-jumper exactly how to elevate himself by mental machinery. All
calculations of probabilities are delusions of the senses; if you have
faith, you can move, not merely mountains, but Riker-Hegeman's,
Macy's, or the Steel Trust. "How to Promote Yourself" is the title of
one of Mr. Brown's pamphlets, in which he explains that--

     Your wants are impressed on the Divine Mind only by your
     faith. A doubt cuts the connection.

A second pamphlet, which we are told is now in its thirtieth edition,
bears the thrilling title of "#Dollars Want Me#!" In it Mr. Brown lays
claim to being a pioneer:

     I believe that this little monograph is the first utterance
     of the thought that each individual has the ability so to
     radiate his mental forces that he can cause the Dollars to
     feel him, love him, seek him, and thus draw at will all
     things needed for his unfoldment from the universal supply.

"What are Dollars?" asks our author; and answers:

     Dollars are manifestations of the One Infinite Substance as
     you are, but, unlike you, they are not Self-Conscious. They
     have no power till you give them power. Make them feel this
     through your thought-vibrations as you feel the importance
     of your work. They will then come to you to be used.

"What is Poverty?" Mr. Brown asks, and answers himself:

     Poverty is a mental condition. It can be cured only by the
     Affirmation of Power to cure: I am a part of the One, and,
     in the One, I possess all! Affirm this and patiently wait
     for the manifestation. You have sown the thought seed.

And our author goes on to hand out packages of these
thought-seeds--"Affirmations" as they are called, in the jargon of the
New Conjuring:

  I desire a deep consciousness of financial freedom.
  I desire that the flow of prosperity become equalized.
  I desire a greater consciousness of my power to attract the dollar.
  The Indwelling Power cares for my purse.
  I own whatever I desire.

  I can afford to use dollars for my happiness.
  I always have a good bank account. I actually see it.
  My one idea of the law is to use, use, USE.

#Spiritual Financiering#

If the symbolism of the Episcopal Church is of the palace, and that of
the non-conformist sects of the counting-house, that of the
International New Nonsense Alliance is of Wall Street and the
"ticker". "What is your rating in the Spiritual Bradstreet?" asks
William Morris Nichols in the publication of the "'Now' Folk", San
Francisco:

     Is it low or high? Is your credit with the Bank of the
     Universe good or poor? If you draw a spiritual draft are you
     sure of its being honored?

     If you can answer that last question affirmatively, you are
     on the road to become a Master in Spiritual Financiering.

     Have you an account with the First (and only) Bank of
     Spirit? If not, then you should at once open one therewith.
     For no one can afford to keep less than a large deposit of
     spiritual funds with that Bank.

And how do you proceed to open your account? It is very simple:

     Intend the mind in the direction indicated by your desire.
     Seek for the Light and Guidance by which you may open up the
     way for your Spiritual Substance, which governs material
     supply, to reach you and make you as rich as you ought to
     be, in freedom and happiness. All this you can, and when in
     earnest, will do.

I turn over the advertisements of this publication of the "'Now'
Folk". One offers "The Business Side of New Thought." Another offers
"The Books Without an If", with your money back IF you are not
satisfied!

Another offers land in Bolivia for two dollars an acre. Another quotes
Shakespeare: "Tis the mind that makes the body rich." Another offers
two copies of the "Phrenological Era" for ten cents.

There is apparently no delusion of any age or clime which cannot find
dupes among the readers of this New Nonsense. One notice commands:

     Stop! A Revelation! A Book has been written entitled
     "Strands of Gold" or "from Darkness into Light!"

Another announces:

     The Most Wonderful Book of the Ages: The Acquarian Gospel of
     Jesus the Christ, Transcribed from the Book of God's
     Remembrance, the Akashic Records.

And here is an advertisement published in Mr. Atkinson's paper:

     Numerology: the Universal Adjuster! Do you know: What you
     appear to be to others? What you really are? What you want
     to be? What would overcome your present and future
     difficulties? Write to x, Philosopher. You will receive full
     particulars of his personal work which is dedicated to your
     service. No problem is too big or too small for Numerology.
     Understanding awaits you.

And looking in the body of the magazine, you find this Philosopher
imparting some of this Understanding. Would you like, for example, to
understand why America entered the War? Nothing easier. The vowels of
the Words United States of America are uieaeoaeia, which are numbered
2951561591, which added make 45, or 4 plus 5 equals 9. You might not
at first see what that has to do with the War--until the Philosopher
points out that "9 is the number of completion, indicating the end of
a cosmic cycle." That, of course, explains everything.

And here is a work on what you perhaps thought to be a dead science,
Astrology. It is called "Lucky Hours for Everybody: A True System of
Planetary Hours--by Prof. John B. Early. Price One Dollar." It teaches
you things like this:

     Saturn's negative hours are especially good for all matters
     relating to gold-mining.... The Sun negative rules the
     emerald, the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The
     lunar hours are a good time to deal in public commodities,
     and to hire servants of both sexes....

     A recent lady visitor informed me that she had made several
     vain attempts to transact important business in the hours
     ruled by Jupiter, usually held to be fortunate, while she
     was nearly always fortunate in what she began in the hours
     ruled by Saturn. Upon investigation I found her name was
     ruled by the Sun negative, and that she had Capricorn with
     Saturn therein as her ascendant at birth, which explains.

And finally, here is a London "scientist", reported in the "Weekly
Unity" of Kansas City, who proves his mental power over two-horse
power oil engines which fail to act. "Going a little apart, he came
back in a few minutes and said: 'The engine is all right now and will
work satisfactorily.' and without any further difficulty it did." We
are told how Dr. Rawson gave a demonstration of his method to a
newspaper reporter the other day. Fixing his gaze as though looking
into space, he apparently became absorbed in deep contemplation and
said aloud: "There is no danger; man is surrounded by divine love;
there is no matter; all is spirit and manifestation of spirit."

You might at first find difficulty in believing what can be
accomplished by "demonstrations" such as this; not merely are
two-horse power oil engines made to work, but the whole gigantic
machine of Prussian militarism is prevented from working. You may
recall how Arthur Machen's magazine story of the Angels of Mons was
taken up and made into a Catholic legend over-night; now here is a
New-Nonsense legend, complete and perfect, going the rounds of our
Nonsense magazines:

     London, Dec. 14.--Shell-proof and bullet-proof soldiers have
     been discovered on the European battle-fronts. Heroes with
     "charmed lives" are being made every day, according to
     Frederick L. Rawson, a London scientist, who insists he has
     found the miraculous way by which they are developed. He
     calls it "audible treatment". "Practical utilization of the
     powers of God by right thinking," is the agency through
     which Dr. Rawson declares he can so treat a man that he will
     not be harmed when hundreds of men are being shot dead
     beside him. This amazing treatment includes a new type of
     prayer. It is being administered to hundreds of men audibly,
     and to hundreds more by letter. Nothing since the war began
     has aroused so much talk of modern miracles as have many of
     the statements of Dr. Rawson....

     At the taking of a wood there were five hundred yards of "No
     Man's Land" to be crossed. Our troops could not get across.
     Then Capt.----, who practices this method of prayer, treated
     them for an hour before they started, and not a man was
     knocked out. He was the only officer left out of eighty in
     his brigade. He simply held onto the fact that man is
     spiritual and perfect and could not be touched. A bullet
     fired from a revolver only five yards away hit him over the
     chest, tore his shirt and went out at the shoulder. But it
     never penetrated his chest. He was frequently in a hail of
     shells and bullets which did not touch him.

#The Graft of Grace#

All this is grotesque; but it is what happens to religions in a world
of commercial competition. It happens not merely to Christian Science
and New Thought religions, Mazdaznan and Zionist, Holy Roller and
Mormon religions, but to Catholic and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and
Methodist and Baptist religions. For you see, when you are with the
wolves you must howl with them; when you are competing with fakirs you
must fake. The ordinary Christian will read the claims of the New
Thought fakers with contempt; but have I not shown the Catholic Church
publishing long lists of money-miracles? Have I not shown the Church
of Good Society, our exclusive and aristocratic Protestant Episcopal
communion, pretending to call rain and to banish pestilence, to
protect crops and win wars and heal those who are "sick in
estate"--that is, who are in business trouble?

The reader will say that I am a cynic, despising my fellows; but that
is not so. I am an economic scientist, analyzing the forces which
operate in human societies. I blame the prophets and priests and
healers for their fall from idealism; but I blame still more the
competitive wage-system, which presents them with the alternative to
swindle or to starve.

For, you see, the prophet has to have food. He has frequently got
along with almost none, and with only a rag for clothing; in Palestine
and India, where the climate is warm, a sincere faith has been
possible for short periods. But the modern prophet who expects to
influence the minds of men has to have books and newspapers; he will
find a telephone and a typewriter and postage-stamps hardly to be
dispensed with, also in Europe and America some sort of a roof over
his meeting place. So the prophet is caught, like all the rest of us,
in the net of the speculator and the landlord. He has to get money,
and in order to get it he has to impress those who already have
it--people whose minds and souls have been deformed by the system of
parasitism and exploitation.

So the prophet becomes a charlatan; or, if he refuses, he becomes a
martyr, and founds a church which becomes a church of charlatans. I
care not how sincere, how passionately proletarian a religious prophet
may be, that is the fate which sooner or later befalls him in a
competitive society--to be the founder of an organization of fools,
conducted by knaves, for the benefit of wolves. That fate befell
Buddha and Jesus, it befell Ignatius Loyola and Francis of Assisi,
John Fox and John Calvin and John Wesley.

A friend of mine who has made a study of "Spiritualism" describes to
me the conditions in that field. The mediums are people, mostly women,
with a peculiar gift; whether we believe in the survival of
personality, or whether we call it telepathy, does not alter the fact
that they have a rare and special sensitiveness, a new faculty which
science must investigate. They come, poor people mostly--for the
well-to-do will seldom give their time to exacting and wearisome
experiments. They come, wearing frayed and thin clothing, shivering
with cold, obviously undernourished; and their survival depends upon
their producing "phenomena"--which phenomena are capricious, and will
not come at call. So, what more natural than that mediums should
resort to faking? That the whole field should be reeking with fraud,
and science should be held back from understanding an extraordinary
power of the subconscious mind?

Ever since we came to Pasadena, various ladies have been telling us
about the wondrous powers of a mulatto-woman, a manicurist at the
city's most fashionable hotel. The other day, out of curiosity, my
wife and I went; the moment the "medium" opened her mouth my wife
recognized her as the person who has been trying for several months to
get me on the telephone to tell me how the spirit of Jack London is
seeking to communicate with me! The #sГ©ance# was a public one, a
gathering composed, half of wealthy and cultured society-women, and
half of confederates, people with the dialect and manners of a
vaudeville troupe. A megaphone was set in the middle of the floor, the
room was made dark, a couple of hymns were sung, and then the spirit
of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke through the megaphone with a Bowery
accent, and gave communications from relatives and friends of the
various confederates. "Jesus is with us", said Dr. Holmes. "The spirit
of Jesus bids you to study spiritualism." And then came the voice of a
child: "Mamma! Mamma!" "It is little Georgie!" cried Dr. Holmes; and
one of the society ladies started, and answered, and presently burst
into tears. A marvelous piece of evidence--especially when you recall
that the story of this mother's bereavement had been published in all
the papers a couple of months before!

And this kind of swindling is going on every night in every city of
America. It goes on wholesale for months every summer at Lily Dale, in
New York State, where the spiritualists hold their combination of
Chautauqua and Coney Island. And the same thing is going on in the
field of mental healing, and of all other "occult" forces and powers,
whether real or imaginary. It is going on with new spiritual fervors,
new moral idealisms, new poetry, new music, new painting, new
sculpture. The faker, the charlatan is everywhere--using the mental
and moral and artistic forces of life as a means of delivering himself
from economic servitude. Everywhere I turn I see it--credulity being
exploited, and men of practical judgment, watching the game and seeing
through it, made hard in their attitude of materialism. How many men I
know who sit by in sullen protest while their wives drift from one new
quackery to another, wasting their income seeking health and happiness
in futile emotionalism! How many kind and sensitive spirits I
know--both men and women--who pour their treasures of faith and
admiration into the laps of hierophants who began by fooling all
mankind and ended by fooling themselves!

In each one of the cults of what I have called the "Church of the
Quacks", there are thousands, perhaps millions of entirely sincere,
self-sacrificing people. They will read this book--if anyone can
persuade them to read it--with pain and anger; thinking that I am
mocking at their faith, and have no appreciation of their devotion.
All that I can say is that I am trying to show them how they are being
trapped, how their fine and generous qualities are being used by
exploiters of one sort or another; and how this must continue, world
without end, until there is order in the material affairs of the race,
until justice has been established as the law of man's dealing with
his fellows.

       *       *       *       *       *




#BOOK SEVEN#

#The Church of the Social Revolution#

  They have taken the tomb of our Comrade Christ--
    Infidel hordes that believe not in man;
  Stable and stall for his birth sufficed,
    But his tomb is built on a kingly plan.
  They have hedged him round with pomp and parade,
    They have buried him deep under steel and stone--
  But we come leading the great Crusade
    To give our Comrade back to his own.

  Waddell.

       *       *       *       *       *




#Christ and Caesar#

In the most deeply significant of the legends concerning Jesus, we are
told how the devil took him up into a high mountain and showed him all
the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; and the devil said unto
him: "All this power will I give unto thee, and the glory of them, for
that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If
thou, therefore, wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Jesus, as we
know, answered and said "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And he really
meant it; he would have nothing to do with worldly glory, with
"temporal power;" he chose the career of a revolutionary agitator, and
died the death of a disturber of the peace. And for two or three
centuries his church followed in his footsteps, cherishing his
proletarian gospel. The early Christians had "all things in common,
except women;" they lived as social outcasts, hiding in deserted
catacombs, and being thrown to lions and boiled in oil.

But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for
he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for
him. He failed to get Jesus, but he came again, to get Jesus' church.
He came when, through the power of the new revolutionary idea, the
Church had won a position of tremendous power in the decaying Roman
Empire; and the subtle worm assumed the guise or no less a person than
the Emperor himself, suggesting that he should become a convert to the
new faith, so that the Church and he might work together for the
greater glory of God. The bishops and fathers of the Church, ambitious
for their organization, fell for this scheme, and Satan went off
laughing to himself. He had got everything he had asked from Jesus
three hundred years before; he had got the world's greatest religion.
How complete and swift was his success you may judge from the fact
that fifty years later we find the Emperor Valentinian compelled to
pass an edict limiting the donations of emotional females to the
church in Rome!

From that time on Christianity has been what I have shown in this
book, the chief of the enemies of social progress. From the days of
Constantine to the days of Bismarck and Mark Hanna, Christ and Caesar
have been one, and the Church has been the shield and armor of
predatory economic might. With only one qualification to be noted:
that the Church has never been able to suppress entirely the memory of
her proletarian Founder. She has done her best, of course; we have
seen how her scholars twist his words out of their sense, and the
Catholic Church even goes so far as to keep to the use of a dead
language, so that her victims may not hear the words of Jesus in a
form they can understand.

     'Tis well that such seditious songs are sung Only by
     priests, and in the Latin tongue!

But in spite of this, the history of the Church has been one incessant
struggle with upstarts and rebels who have filled themselves with the
spirit of the Magnificat and the Sermon on the Mount, and of that
bitterly class-conscious proletarian, James, the brother of Jesus.

And here is the thing to be noted, that the factor which has given
life to Christianity, which enables it to keep its hold on the hearts
of men today, is precisely this new wine of faith and fervor which has
been poured into it by generation after generation of poor men who
live like Jesus as outcasts, and die like Jesus as criminals, and are
revered like Jesus as founders and saints. The greatest of the early
Church fathers were bitterly fought by the Church authorities of their
own time. St. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was turned out of
office, exiled and practically martyred; St. Basil was persecuted by
the Emperor Valens; St. Ambrose excommunicated the tyrannical Emperor
Theodosius; St. Cyprian gave all his wealth to the poor, and was
exiled and finally martyred. In the same way, most of the heretics
whom the Holy Inquisition tortured and burned were proletarian rebels;
the saints whom the Church reveres, the founders of the orders which
gave it life for century after century, were men who sought to return
to the example of the carpenter's son. Let us hear a Christian scholar
on this point, Prof. Rauschenbusch:

     The movement of Francis of Assisi, of the Waldenses, of the
     Humiliati and Bons Hommes, were all inspired by democratic
     and communistic ideals. Wiclif was by far the greatest
     doctrinal reformer before the reformation; but his eyes,
     too, were first opened to the doctrinal errors of the Roman
     Church by joining in a great national and patriotic movement
     against the alien domination and extortion of the Church.
     The Bohemian revolt, made famous by the name of John Huss,
     was quite as much political and social as religious.
     Savonarola was a great democrat as well as a religious
     prophet. In his famous interview with the dying Lorenzo de
     Medici he made three demands as a condition for granting
     absolution. Of the man he demanded a living faith in God's
     mercy. Of the millionaire he demanded restitution of his
     ill-gotten wealth. Of the political usurper he demanded the
     restoration of the liberties of the people of Florence. It
     is significant that the dying sinner found it easy to assent
     to the first, hard to assent to the second, and impossible
     to concede the last.

#Locusts and Wild Honey#

This proletarian strain in Christianity goes back to a time long
before Jesus; it seems to have been inherent in the religious
character of the Jews--that stubborn independence, that stiff-necked
insistence on the right of a man to interview God for himself and to
find out what God wants him to do; also the inclination to find that
God wants him to oppose earthly rulers and their plundering of the
poor. What is it that gives to the Bible the vitality it has today?
Its literary style? To say that is to display the ignorance of the
cultured; for elevation of style is a by-product of passionate
conviction; it is what the Jewish writers had to say, and not the way
they said it, that has given them their hold upon mankind. Was it
their insistence upon conscience, their fear of God as the beginning
of wisdom? But that same element appears in the Babylonian psalms,
which are as eloquent and as sincere as those of the Hebrews, yet are
read only by scholars. Was it their sense of the awful presence of
divinity, of the soul immortal in its keeping? The Egyptians had that
far more than the Hebrews, and yet we do not cherish their religious
books. Or was it the love of man for all things living, the lesson of
charity upon which the Catholics lay such stress? The gentle Buddha
had that, and had it long before Christ; also his priests had
metaphysical subtlety, greater than that of John the Apostle or Thomas
Aquinas.

No, there is one thing and one only which distinguishes the Hebrew
sacred writings from all others, and that is their insistent note of
proletarian revolt, their furious denunciations of exploiters, and of
luxury and wantonness, the vices of the rich. Of that note the
Assyrian and Chaldean and Babylonian writing contain not a trace, and
the Egyptian hardly enough to mention. The Hindoos had a trace of it;
but the true, natural-born rebels of all time were the Hebrews. They
were rebels against oppression in ancient Judea, as they are today in
Petrograd and New York; the spirit of equality and brotherhood which
spoke through Ezekiel and Amos and Isaiah, through John the Baptist
and Jesus and James, spoke in the last century through Marx and
Lassalle and Jaures, and speaks today through Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky and Israel Zangwill and Morris Hillquit and
Abraham Cahan and Emma Goldman and the Joseph Fels endowment.

The legal rate of interest throughout the Babylonian Empire was 20%;
the laws of Manu permitted 24%, while the laws of the Egyptians only
stepped in to prevent more than 100%. But listen to this Hebrew law:

     If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee,
     then thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger or
     a sojourner, that he may live with thee: Take thou no
     interest of him, or increase; but fear thy God that thy
     brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him any
     money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.

And so on, forbidding that Hebrews be sold as bond servants, and
commanding that at the end of fifty years all debtors shall have their
debts forgiven and their lands returned to them. And note that this is
not the raving of agitators, the demand of a minority party; it is the
law of the Hebrew land.

There has been of late a great deal of new discovery concerning the
early Jews. Conrad Noel summarizes the results as follows:

     The land-mark law, which sternly forbids encroachment upon
     peasant rights; consideration for the foreigner; additional
     sanitary and food laws; tithe regulations on behalf of
     widows, orphans, foreigners, etc.; that those who have no
     economic independence should eat and be satisfied; that
     loans should be given cheerfully, not only without any
     interest, but even at the risk of losing the principal. To
     withhold a loan because the year of release is at hand in
     which the principal is no longer recoverable, is described
     as a grave sin. When you are compelled to free your slaves,
     you must give them sufficient capital to embark upon some
     industry which shall prevent their falling back into
     slavery. A number of holidays are insisted upon. There must
     be no more crushing of the poor out of existence, for God
     cares for these people who have been driven to poverty, and
     they shall never cease out of the land. Howbeit there shall
     be no poor with you, for the Lord will bless you, if you
     will obey these laws.

But then prosperity came, and culture, which meant contact with the
capitalist ideas of the heathen empires. The Jews fell from the stern
justice of their fathers; and so came the prophets, wild-eyed men of
the people, clad in camel's hair and living upon locusts and wild
honey, breaking in upon priests and kings and capitalists with their
furious denunciations. And always they incited to class war and social
disturbance. I quote Conrad Noel again:

     Nathan and Gad had been David's political advisers, Abijah
     had stirred Jeroboam to revolt, Elijah had resisted Ahab,
     Elisha had fanned the rebellion of Jehu, Amos thunders
     against the misrule of the king of Israel, Isaiah denounces
     the landlords and the usurers, Micah charges them with
     blood-guiltiness; Jeremiah and the latter prophets, though
     they strike a more intimate note of personal repentance,
     strike it as the prelude to that national restoration for
     which they hunger as exiles.

     The first chapters of Isaiah are typical of the Old
     Testament point of view. Just as the prophets of the
     nineteenth century thundered against the "Christian"
     employers of Lancashire, and told them their houses were
     cemented with the blood of little children, so Isaiah cries
     against his generation: "Your governing classes companion
     with thieves; behold you build up Sion with blood." Their
     ceremonial and their Sabbath keeping are an abomination to
     God. "When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes
     from you. Your hands are full of blood." The poor man is
     robbed. The rich exact usury. "Woe unto you that lay house
     to house and field to field, that ye may dwell alone in the
     midst of the land." "Wash you, make you clean, put away the
     evil of your doing from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
     learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,
     judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us
     reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be
     blood-colored, they shall be as white as snow; though they
     be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing
     and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. But if ye
     refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword.

#Mother Earth#

And nowadays we have the Socialist and Anarchist agitators, following
the same tradition, possessed by the same dream as the ancient Hebrew
prophets. I have mentioned Emma Goldman; it may be that the reader is
not familiar with her writings, and does not realize how very Biblical
she is, both in point of view and style. Let me quote a few sentences
from a recent issue of her paper, "Mother Earth", on the subject of
our ruling classes and their social responsibility:

     Yes, you idle rich, you may howl about what we mean to do to you!
     Your riches are rotten and your fine clothes are falling from your
     backs. Your stocks and bonds are so tainted that the ink on them
     should turn to acid and eat holes in your pockets and your skins. You
     have piled up your dirty millions, but what wages have you paid to the
     poor devils of farm hands you have robbed? And do you imagine they
     won't remember it when the revolution comes? You loll on soft couches
     and amuse yourselves with your mistresses; you think you are "it" and
     the world is yours. You send militiamen and shoot down our organizers,
     and we are helpless. But wait, comrades, our time is coming.

Doubtless the reader is well satisfied that the author of this tirade
is now in jail, where she can no longer defy the laws of good taste.
They always put the ancient prophets in jail; that is the way to know
a prophet when you meet him. Let me quote another prophet who is now
behind bars--Alexander Berkman, in his "Prison Memoirs of an
Anarchist", discussing the same subject of plutocratic pretension: