[Transcriber's note: The spelling inconsistencies of the original
are retained in this etext.]
The Profits of Religion
An Essay in Economic Interpretation
By
UPTON SINCLAIR
CONTENTS
NEW YORK
VANGUARD PRESS
VANGUARD PRINTINGS
First-January, 1927
Second-April, 1927
Third-June, 1928
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
OFFERTORY
This book is a study of Supernaturalism from a new point of view--as a
Source of Income and a Shield to Privilege. I have searched the
libraries through, and no one has done it before. If you read it, you
will see that it needed to be done. It has meant twenty-five years of
thought and a year of investigation. It contains the facts.
I publish the book myself, so that it may be available at the lowest
possible price. I am giving my time and energy, in return for one
thing which you may give me--the joy of speaking a true word and
getting it heard.
Note to fifth edition, 1926: "The Profits of Religion" was first
published early in 1917. The present edition represents a sale of over
60,000 copies, without counting a dozen translations. In this edition
a few errors have been corrected, but otherwise the book has not been
changed. The reader will understand that references to the World War
are of the date 1917, prior to America's entrance.
This book is the first of a series of volumes, an economic
interpretation of culture, which now includes "The Brass Check," "The
Goose-step," "The Goslings," and "Mammonart."
* * * * *
#CONTENTS#
#Introductory#
Bootstrap-lifting
Religion
#Book One: The Church of the Conquerors#
The Priestly Lie
The Great Fear
Salve Regina!
Fresh Meat
Priestly Empires
Prayer-wheels
The Butcher-Gods
The Holy Inquisition
Hell-fire
#Book Two: The Church of Good Society#
The Rain Makers
The Babylonian Fire-God
The Medicine-men
The Canonization of Incompetence
Gibson's Preservative
The Elders
Church History
Land and Livings
Graft in Tail
Bishops and Beer
Anglicanism and Alcohol
Dead Cats
"Suffer Little Children" The Court-circular
Horn-blowing
Trinity Corporation
Spiritual Interpretation
#Book Three: The Church of the Servant Girls#
Charity
God's Armor
Thanksgivings
The Holy Roman Empire
Temporal Power
Knights of Slavery
Priests and Police
The Church Militant
The Church Triumphant
God in the Schools
The Menace
King Coal
The Unholy Alliance
Secret Service
Tax Exemption
Holy History
Das Centrum
#Book Four: The Church of the Slavers#
The Face of Caesar
Deutschland ueber Alles
Der Tag
King Cotton
Witches and Women
Moth and Rust
To Lyman Abbott
The Octopus
The Industrial Shelley
The Outlook for Graft
Clerical Camouflage
The Jungle
#Book Five: The Church of the Merchants#
The Head Merchant
"Herr Beeble" Holy Oil
Rhetorical Black-hanging
The Great American Fraud
Riches in Glory
Captivating Ideals
Spook Hunting
Running the Rapids
Birth Control
Sheep
#Book Six: The Church of the Quacks#
Tabula Rasa
The Book of Mormon
Holy Rolling
Bible Prophecy
Koreshanity
Mazdaznan
Black Magic
Mental Malpractice
Science and Wealth
New Nonsense
"Dollars Want Me!" Spiritual Financiering
The Graft of Grace
#Book Seven: The Church of the Social Revolution#
Christ and Caesar
Locusts and Wild Honey
Mother Earth
The Soap Box
The Church Machine
The Church Redeemed
The Desire of Nations
The Knowable
"Nature's Insurgent Son" The New Morality
Envoi
* * * * *
#INTRODUCTORY#
#Bootstrap-lifting#
Bootstrap-lifting? says the reader.
It is a vision I have seen: upon a vast plain, men and women are
gathered in dense throngs, crouched in uncomfortable and distressing
positions, their fingers hooked in the straps of their boots. They are
engaged in lifting themselves; tugging and straining until they grow
red in the face, exhausted. The perspiration streams from their
foreheads, they show every symptom of distress; the eyes of all are
fixed, not upon each other, nor upon their boot-straps, but upon the
sky above. There is a look of rapture upon their faces, and now and
then, amid grunts and groans, they cry out with excitement and
triumph.
I approach one and say to him, "Friend, what is this you are doing?"
He answers, without pausing to glance at me, "I am performing
spiritual exercises. See how I rise?"
"But," I say, "you are not rising at all!"
Whereat he becomes instantly angry. "You are one of the scoffers!"
"But, friend," I protest, "don't you feel the earth under your feet?"
"You are a materialist!"
"But, friend, I can see--"
"You are without spiritual vision!"
And so I move on among the sweating and groaning hordes. Being of a
sympathetic turn of mind, I cannot help being distressed by the
prevalence of this singular practice among so large a portion of the
human race. How is it possible that none of them should suspect the
futility of their procedure? Or can it really be that I am
uncomprehending? That in some way they are actually getting off the
ground, or about to get off the ground?
Then I observe a new phenomenon: a man gliding here and there among
the bootstrap-lifters, approaching from the rear and slipping his
hands into their pockets. The position of the spiritual exercisers
greatly facilitates his work; their eyes being cast up to heaven, they
do not see him, their thoughts being occupied, they do not heed him;
he goes through their pockets at leisure, and transfers the contents
to a bag he carries, and then moves on to the next victim. I watch him
for a while, and finally approach and ask, "What are you doing, sir?"
He answers, "I am picking pockets."
"Oh," I say, puzzled by his matter-of-course tone. "But--I beg
pardon--are you a thief?"
"Oh, no," he answers, smilingly, "I am the agent of the Wholesale
Pickpockets' Association. This is Prosperity."
"I see," I reply. "And these people let you--"
"It is the law," he says. "It is also the gospel."
I turn, following his glance, and observe another person
approaching--a stately figure, clad in scarlet and purple robes,
moving with slow dignity. Ha gazes about at the sweating and grunting
hordes; now and then he stops and lifts his hands in a gesture of
benediction, and proclaims in rolling tones, "Blessed are the
Bootstrap-lifters, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." He moves on,
and after a bit stops and announces again, "Man doth not live by bread
alone, but by every word that cometh out of the mouth of the prophets
and priests of Bootstrap-lifting."
Watching a while longer, I see this majestic one approach the agent of
the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association. The agent greets him as a
friend, and proceeds to transfer to the pockets of his capacious robes
a generous share of the loot which he has collected. The majestic one
does not cringe, nor does he make any effort to hide what is going on.
On the contrary he cries aloud, "It is more blessed to give than to
receive!" And again he cries, "The laborer is worthy of his hire!" And
a third time he cries, yet more sternly, "Render unto Caesar the
things which are Caesar's!" And the Bootstrap-lifters pause long
enough to answer: "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to
keep this law!" Then they renew their straining and tugging.
I step up, and in timid tones begin, "Reverend sir, will you tell me
by what right you take this wealth?"
Instantly a frown comes upon his face, and he cries in a voice of
thunder, "Blasphemer!" And all the Bootstrap-lifters desist from their
lifting, and menace me with furious looks. There is a general call for
a policeman of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association; and so I fall
silent, and slink away in the throng, and thereafter keep my thoughts
to myself.
Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and
incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting
impulse. There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a long
time ago--no man can recall how far back--the Wholesale Pickpockets
made the discovery of the ease with which a man's pockets could be
rifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual exercises, and they
began offering prizes for the best essays in support of the practice.
Now their propaganda is everywhere triumphant, and year by year we see
an increase in the rewards and emoluments of the prophets and priests
of the cult. The ground is covered with stately temples of various
designs, all of which I am told are consecrated to Bootstrap-lifting.
I come to where a group of people are occupied in laying the
corner-stone of a new white marble structure; I inquire and am
informed it is the First Church of Bootstrap-lifters, Scientist. As I
stand watching, a card is handed to me, informing me that a lady will
do my Bootstrap-lifting at five dollars per lift.
I go on to another building, which I am told is a library containing
volumes in defense of the Bootstrap-lifters, published under the
auspices of the Wholesale Pickpockets. I enter, and find endless
vistas of shelves, also several thousand current magazines and papers.
I consult these--for my legs have given out in the effort to visit and
inspect all phases of the Bootstrap-lifting practice. I discover that
hardly a week passes that some one does not start a new cult, or
revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all
the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and
liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting.
There are the Holy Roman Bootstrap-lifters, whose priests are fed
by Transubstantiation; the established Anglican Bootstrap-lifters,
whose priests live by "livings"; the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters,
whose preachers practice total immersion in Standard Oil. There
are Yogi Bootstrap-lifters with flowing robes of yellow silk;
Theosophist Bootstrap-lifters with green and purple auras; Mormon
Bootstrap-lifters, Mazdaznan Bootstrap-lifters, Spiritualist and
Spirit-Fruit, Millerite and Dowieite, Holy Roller and Holy Jumper,
Come-to-glory negro, Billy Sunday base-ball and Salvation Army
bass-drum Bootstrap-lifters. There are the thousand varieties of "New
Thought" Bootstrap-lifters; the mystic and transcendentalist,
Swedenborgian and Jacob Boehme Bootstrap-lifters; the Elbert Hubbard
high-art Bootstrap-lifters with half a million magazinelets at two
bits apiece; the "uplift" and "optimist," the Ralph Waldo Trine and
Orison Swett Marden Bootstrap-lifters with a hundred thousand volumes
at one dollar per volume. There are the Platonist and Hegelian and
Kantian professors of collegiate metaphysical Bootstrap-lifting at
several thousand dollars per year each. There are the Nietzschean
Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves to the Superman, and the
art-for-art's-sake, neo-Pagan Bootstrap-lifters, who lift themselves
down to the Ape.
Excepting possibly the last-mentioned group, the priests of all
these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of
Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that
they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any
other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate
tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of
the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the
poor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist
Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves.
But for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting
walk haughtily erect, many of them being so swollen with prosperity
that they could not reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their
role in life is to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at
self-elevation, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets'
Association may ply their immemorial role with less chance of
interference.
#Religion#
The reader, offended by this raillery, asks if I mean to impugn the
sincerity of all who preach the supremacy of the soul. No; I admit the
honesty of the heroes and madmen of history. All I ask of the preacher
is that he shall make an effort to practice his doctrine. Let him be
tormented like Don Quixote; let him go mad like Nietzsche; let him
stand upon a pillar and be devoured by worms like Simeon Stylites--on
these terms I grant to any dreamer the right to hold himself above
economic science.
Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about
himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny
his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its
weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be
harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the
formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic
self-indulgence? What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to
the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? What are we to
say when we see idealism become hypocrisy, and the moral and spiritual
heritage of mankind twisted to the knavish purposes of class-cruelty
and greed? What I say is--Bootstrap-lifting!
It is the fate of many abstract words to be used in two senses, one
good and the other bad. Morality means the will to righteousness, or
it means Anthony Comstock; democracy means the rule of the people, or
it means Tammany Hall. And so it is with the word "Religion". In its
true sense Religion is the most fundamental of the soul's impulses,
the impassioned love of life, the feeling of its preciousness, the
desire to foster and further it. In that sense every thinking man must
be religious; in that sense Religion is a perpetually self-renewing
force, the very nature of our being. In that sense I have no thought
of assailing it, I would make clear that I hold it beyond assailment.
But we are denied the pleasure of using the word in that honest sense,
because of another which has been given to it. To the ordinary man
"Religion" means, not the soul's longing for growth, the "hunger and
thirst after righteousness", but certain forms in which this hunger
has manifested itself in history, and prevails today throughout the
world; that is to say, institutions having fixed dogmas and
"revelations", creeds and rituals, with an administering caste
claiming supernatural sanction. By such institutions the moral
strivings of the race, the affections of childhood and the aspirations
of youth are made the prerogatives and stock in trade of
ecclesiastical hierarchies. It is the thesis of this book that
"Religion" in this sense is a source of income to parasites, and the
natural ally of every form of oppression and exploitation.
If by my jesting at "Bootstrap-lifting" I have wounded some dear
prejudice of the reader, let me endeavor to speak in a more persuasive
voice. I am a man who has suffered, and has seen the suffering of
others; I have devoted my life to analyzing the causes of the
suffering, to find out if it be necessary and fore-ordained, or if by
any chance there be a way of escape for future generations. I have
found that the latter is the case; the suffering is needless, it can
with ease and certainty be banished from the earth. I know this with
the knowledge of science--in the same way that the navigator of a ship
knows his latitude and longitude, and the point of the compass to
which he must steer in order to reach the port.
Come, reader, let us put aside prejudice, and the terrors of the cults
of the unknown. The power which made us has given us a mind, and the
impulse to its use; let us see what can be done with it to rid the
earth of its ancient evils. And do not be troubled if at the outset
this book seems to be entirely "destructive". I assure you that I am
no crude materialist, I am not so shallow as to imagine that our race
will be satisfied with a barren rationalism. I know that the old
symbols came out of the heart of man because they corresponded to
certain needs of the heart of man. I know that new symbols will be
found, corresponding more exactly to the needs of our time. If here I
set to work to tear down an old and ramshackle building, it is not
from blind destructfulness, but as an architect who means to put a new
and sounder structure in its place. Before we part company I shall
submit the blue print of that new home of the spirit.
* * * * *
#BOOK ONE#
#The Church of the Conquerors#
I saw the Conquerors riding by
With trampling feet of horse and men:
Empire on empire like the tide
Flooded the world and ebbed again;
A thousand banners caught the sun,
And cities smoked along the plain,
And laden down with silk and gold
And heaped up pillage groaned the wain.
Kemp.
* * * * *
#The Priestly Lie#
When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he
fell down upon his face in terror. He had no conception of natural
forces, of laws of electricity; he saw this event as the act of an
individual intelligence. To-day we read about fairies and demons,
dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vulcan, Freie and
Flora and Ceres, and we think of all these as pretty fancies,
play-products of the mind; losing sight of the fact that they were
originally meant with entire seriousness--that not merely did ancient
man believe in them, but was forced to believe in them, because the
mind must have an explanation of things that happen, and an individual
intelligence was the only explanation available. The story of the hero
who slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and
night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the
phenomena, it was the science of early times.
Men imagined supernatural powers such as they could comprehend. If the
lightning god destroyed a hut, obviously it must be because the owner
of the hut had given offense; so the owner must placate the god, using
those means which would be effective in the quarrels of men--presents
of roast meats and honey and fresh fruits, of wine and gold and jewels
and women, accompanied by friendly words and gestures of submission.
And when in spite of all things the natural evil did not cease, when
the people continued to die of pestilence, then came the opportunity
for hysterical or ambitious persons to discover new ways of
penetrating the mind of the god. There would be dreamers of dreams and
seers of visions and hearers of voices; readers of the entrails of
beasts and interpreters of the flight of birds; there would be burning
bushes and stone tablets on mountain-tops, and inspired words dictated
to aged disciples on lonely islands. There would arise special castes
of men and women, learned in these sacred matters; and these priestly
castes would naturally emphasize the importance of their calling,
would hold themselves aloof from the common herd, endowed with special
powers and entitled to special privileges. They would interpret the
oracles in ways favorable to themselves and their order; they would
proclaim themselves friends and confidants of the god, walking with
him in the night-time, receiving his messengers and angels, acting as
his deputies in forgiving offenses, in dealing punishments and in
receiving gifts. They would become makers of laws and moral codes.
They would wear special costumes to distinguish them, they would go
through elaborate ceremonies to impress their followers, employing all
sensuous effects, architecture and sculpture and painting, music and
poetry and dancing, candles and incense and bells and gongs
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high and anthem clear,
As may with sweetness through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstacies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.
So builds itself up, in a thousand complex and complicated forms, the
Priestly Lie. There are a score of great religions in the world, each
with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its
complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its
thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of "true believers";
each damns all the others, with more or less heartiness--and each is a
mighty fortress of Graft.
There will be few readers of this book who have not been brought up
under the spell of some one of these systems of Supernaturalism; who
have not been taught to speak with respect of some particular priestly
order, to thrill with awe at some particular sacred rite, to seek
respite from earthly woes in some particular ceremonial spell. These
things are woven into our very fibre in childhood; they are sanctified
by memories of joys and griefs, they are confused with spiritual
struggles, they become part of all that is most vital in our lives.
The reader who wishes to emancipate himself from their thrall will do
well to begin with a study of the beliefs and practices of other sects
than his own--a field where he is free to observe and examine without
fear of sacrilege. Let him look into Madame Blavatsky's "Secret
Doctrine", or her "Isis Unveiled"--encyclopedias of the fantastic
inventions which terror and longing have wrung out of the tortured
soul of man. Here are mysteries and solemnities, charms and spells,
illuminations and transmigrations, angels and demons, guides, controls
and masters--all of which it is permissible to refuse to support with
gifts. Let the reader then go to James Freeman Clarke's "Ten Great
Religions", and realize how many billions of humans have lived and
died in the solemn certainty that their welfare on earth and in heaven
depended upon their accepting certain ideas and practicing certain
rites, all mutually exclusive and incompatible, each damning the
others and the followers of the others. So gradually the realization
will come to him that the test of a doctrine about life and its
welfare must be something else than the fact that one was born to it.
#The Great Fear#
It was not the fault of primitive man that he was ignorant, nor that
his ignorance made him a prey to dread. The traces of his mental
suffering will inspire in us only pity and sympathy; for Nature is a
grim school-mistress, and not all her lessons have yet been learned.
We have a right to scorn and anger only when we see this dread being
diverted from its true function, a stimulus to a search for knowledge,
and made into a means of clamping down ignorance upon the mind of the
race. That this has been the deliberate policy of institutionalized
Religion no candid student can deny.
The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or
modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it--and that
it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived. "The
fear of divine anger", says Prof. Jastrow, "runs as an undercurrent
through the entire religious literature of Babylonia and Assyria." In
the words of Tabi-utul-Enlil, King of ancient Nippur:
Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven?
The plan of a god is full of mystery--who can understand it?
He who is still alive at evening is dead the next morning.
In an instant he is cast into grief, in a moment he is crushed.
And that cry might be duplicated from almost any page of the Hebrew
scriptures: the only difference being that the Hebrews combined all
their fears into one Great Fear. "The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom," we are told by Solomon of the thousand wives;
and the Psalmist repeats it. "Dominion and fear are with Him," cries
Job. "How then can any man be just before God? Or how can he be clean
that is born of a woman? Behold, even the moon hath no brightness, and
the stars are not pure in His sight: How much less man, that is a
worm? And the son of man, which is a worm?" He goes on, in his lyrical
rapture, "Sheol is naked before Him, and Destruction hath no
covering.... The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His
rebuke. ... The thunder of His power who can understand?" That all
this is some of the world's great poetry does not in the least alter
the fact that it is an abasement of the soul, an hysterical perversion
of the facts of life, and a preparation of the mind for the seeds of
Priestcraft.
The Book of Job has been called a "Wisdom-drama": and what is the
denouement of this drama, what is ancient Hebrew wisdom's last word
about life? "Wherefore I abhor myself," says Job, "and repent in dust
and ashes." The poor fellow has done nothing; we have been told at the
beginning that he "was perfect and upright, and one that feared God,
and eschewed evil." But the Sabeans and the Chaldeans rob him, and
"the fire of God" falls from heaven and burns up his sheep and his
servants, and "a great wind from the wilderness" kills his sons and
daughters; and then his body becomes covered with boils--a phenomenon
caused in part by worry, and the consequent nervous indigestion, but
mainly by excess of starch and deficiency of mineral salts in the
diet. Job, however, has never heard of the fasting cure for disease,
and so he takes him a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and he sits
among the ashes--a highly unsanitary procedure enforced by his
religious ritual. So naturally he feels like a worm, and abhors
himself, and cries out: "I know that Thou canst do all things, and
that no purpose of Thine can be restrained." By which utter,
unreasoning humility he succeeds in appeasing the Great Fear, and his
friends make a sacrifice of seven bullocks and seven rams--a feast for
a whole templeful of priests--and then "the Lord gave Job twice as
much as he had before.... And after this Job lived an hundred and
forty years, and saw his sons and his sons' sons, even four
generations."
You do not have to look very deeply into this "Wisdom-drama" to find
out whose wisdom it is. Confess your own ignorance and your own
impotence, abandon yourself utterly, and then we, the sacred Caste,
the Keepers of the Holy Secrets, will secure you pardon and
respite--in exchange for fresh meat. Here are verses from a psalm of
the ancient Babylonians, which "heathen" chant is identical in spirit
and purpose with the utterances of Job:
The Sin that I have wrought, I know not;
The unclean that I have eaten, I know not;
The offense into which I have walked, I know not....
The lord, in the wrath of his heart, hath regarded me;
The god, in the anger of his heart, hath surrounded me;
A goddess, known or unknown, hath wrought me sorrow....
I sought for help, but no one took my hand;
I wept, but no one harkened to me....
The feet of my goddess I kiss, I touch them;
To the god, known or unknown, I utter my prayer;
O god, known or unknown, turn thy countenance, accept my sacrifice;
O goddess, known or unknown, look mercifully on me, accept my sacrifice!
#Salve Regina!#
And now let the reader leap three thousand years of human history, of
toil and triumph of the intellect of man; and instead of a Hebrew
manuscript or a Babylonian brick there confronts him a little
publication, printed on a modern rotary press in the capital of the
United States of America, bearing the date of October, 1914, and the
title "Salve Regina". In it we find "a beautiful prayer", composed by
the late cardinal Rampolla; we are told that "Pius X attached to it an
indulgence of 100 days, each time it is piously recited, applicable to
the souls in purgatory."
O Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, cast a glance from Heaven,
where thou sittest as Queen, upon this poor sinner, your
servant. Though conscious of his unworthiness.... he blesses
and exalts thee from his whole heart as the purest, the most
beautiful and the most holy of creatures. He blesses thy
holy name. He blesses thy sublime prerogatives as real
Mother of God, ever Virgin, conceived without stain of sin,
as co-Redemptress of the human race. He blesses the Eternal
Father who chose you, etc. He blesses the Incarnate Word,
etc. He blesses the Divine Spirit, etc. He blesses, exalts
and thanks the most august Trinity, etc. O Virgin, holy and
merciful.... be pleased to accept this little homage of your
servant, and obtain for him also from your divine Son pardon
for his sins, Amen.
And then, looking more closely, we discover the purpose of this
"beautiful prayer", and of the neat little paper which prints it.
"Salve Regina" is raising funds for the "National Shrine of the
Immaculate Conception", a home for more priests, and Catholic ladies
who desire to collect for it may receive little books which they are
requested to return within three months. Pius X writes a letter of
warm endorsement, and sets an example by giving four hundred dollars
"out of his poverty"--or, to be more precise, out of the poverty of
the pitiful peasantry of Italy. There is included in the paper a form
of bequest for "devoted clients of Our Blessed Mother", and at the top
of the editorial page the most alluring of all baits for the loving
hearts of the flock--that the names of deceased relatives and friends
may be written in the collection books, and will be transferred to the
records of the Shrine, and these persons "will share in all its
spiritual benefits". In the days of Job it was with threats of boils
and poverty that the Priestly Lie maintained itself; but in the case
of this blackest of all Terrors, transplanted to our free Republic
from the heart of the Dark Ages, the wretched victims see before their
eyes the glare of flames, and hear the shrieks of their loved ones
writhing in torment through uncounted ages and eternities.
#Fresh Meat#
In the days when I was experimenting with vegetarianism, I sought
earnestly for evidence of a non-meat-eating race; but candor compelled
me to admit that man was like the monkey and the pig and the bear--he
was vegetarian when he could not help it. The advocates of the reform
insist that meat as a diet causes muddy brains and dulled nerves; but
you would certainly never suspect this from a study of history. What
you find in history is that all men crave meat, all struggle for it,
and the strongest and cleverest get it. Everywhere you find the
subject classes living in the midst of animals which they tend, but
whose flesh they rarely taste. Even in modern America, sweet land of
liberty, our millions of tenant farmers raise chickens and geese and
turkeys, and hardly venture to consume as much as an egg, but save
everything for the summer-boarder or the buyer from the city. It would
not be too much to say of the cultural records of early man that they
all have to do, directly or indirectly, with the reserving of fresh
meat to the masters. In J.T. Trowbridge's cheerful tale of the
adventures of Captain Seaborn, we are told by the cannibal priest how
idol-worship has ameliorated the morals of the tribe--
For though some warriors of renown
Continue anthropophagous,
'Tis rare that human flesh goes down
The low-caste man's aesophagus!
I suspect that we should have to go back to the days of the cave-man
to find the first lover of the flesh-pots who put a taboo upon meat,
and promised supernatural favors to all who would exercise
self-control, and instead of consuming their meat themselves, would
bring it and lay it upon the sacred griddle, or altar, where the god
might come in the night-time and partake of it. Certainly, at any
rate, there are few religions of record in which such devices do not
appear. The early laws of the Hebrews are more concerned with
delicatessen for the priests than with any other subject whatever.
Here, for example, is the way to make a Nazarite:
He shall offer his offering up to the Lord, one he lamb of
the first year without blemish for a burnt offering, and one
ewe lamb of the first year without blemish for a sin
offering, and one ram without blemish for peace offerings,
and a basket of unleavened bread, cakes of fine flour
mingled with oil, and wafers of unleavened bread anointed
with oil, and their meat offerings.
And the law goes on to instruct the priests to take certain choice
parts and "wave them for a wave offering before the Lord: this is holy
for the priest." What was done with the other portions we are not
told; but earlier in this same "Book of Numbers" we find the general
law that
Every offering of all the holy things of the children of
Israel, which they bring unto the priest, shall be his. And
every man's hallowed things shall be his: whatsoever any man
giveth to the priest, it shall be his.
In the same way we are told by Viscount Amberley that the priests of
Ceylon first present the gifts to the god, and then eat them. Among
the Parsees, when a man dies, the relatives must bring four new robes
to the priests; if they do this, the priests wear the robes; if they
fail to do it, the dead man appears naked before the judgment-throne.
The devotees are instructed that "he who performs this rite succeeds
in both worlds, and obtains a firm footing in both worlds." Among the
Buddhists, the followers give alms to the monks, and are told
specifically what advantages will thereby accrue to them. In the
Aitareyo Brahmanam of the Rig-Veda we read
He who, knowing this, sacrifices according to this rite, is
born from the womb of Agni and the offerings, participates
in the nature of the Rik, Yajus, and Saman, the Veda (sacred
knowledge), the Brahma (sacred element) and immortality, and
is absorbed into the deity.
Among the Parsees the priest eats the bread and drinks the haoma, or
juice of a plant, considered to be both a plant and a god. Among the
Episcopalians, a contemporary Christian sect, the sacred juice is that
of the grape, and the priest is not allowed to throw away what is left
of it, but is ordered "reverently to consume it." In as much as the
priest is the sole judge of how much good sherry wine he shall
consecrate previous to the ceremony, it is to be expected that the
priests of this cult should be lukewarm towards the prohibition
movement, and should piously refuse to administer their sacrament with
unfermented and uninteresting grape-juice.
#Priestly Empires#
In every human society of which we have record there has been one
class which has done the hard and exhausting work, the "hewers of wood
and drawers of water"; and there has been another, much smaller class
which has done the directing. To belong to this latter class is to
work also, but with the head instead of the hands; it is also to enjoy
the good things of life, to live in the best houses, to eat the best
food, to have choice of the most desirable women; it is to have
leisure to cultivate the mind and appreciate the arts, to acquire
graces and distinctions, to give laws and moral codes, to shape
fashions and tastes, to be revered and regarded--in short, to have
Power. How to get this Power and to hold it has been the first object
of the thoughts of men from the beginning of time.
The most obvious method is by the sword; but this method is uncertain,
for any man may take up a sword, and some may succeed with it. It will
be found that empires based upon military force alone, however cruel
they may be, are not permanent, and therefore not so dangerous to
progress; it is only when resistance is paralyzed by the agency of
Superstition, that the race can be subjected to systems of
exploitation for hundreds and even thousands of years. The ancient
empires were all priestly empires; the kings ruled because they obeyed
the will of the priests, taught to them from childhood as the word of
the gods.
Thus, for instance, Prescott tells us:
Terror, not love, was the spring of education with the
Aztecs....Such was the crafty policy of the priests, who, by
reserving to themselves the business of instruction, were
enabled to mould the young and plastic mind according to
their own wills, and to train it early to implicit reverence
for religion and its ministers.
The historian goes on to indicate the economic harvest of this
teaching:
To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed for the
maintenance of the priests. The estates were augmented by
the policy or devotion of successive princes, until, under
the last Montezuma, they had swollen to an enormous extent,
and covered every district of the empire.
And this concerning the frightful system of human sacrifices, whereby
the priestly caste maintained the prestige of its divinities:
At the dedication of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, in 1486,
the prisoners, who for some years had been reserved for the
purpose, were ranged in files, forming a procession nearly
two miles long. The ceremony consumed several days, and
seventy thousand captives are said to have perished at the
shrine of this terrible deity.
The same system appears in Professor Jastrow's account of the
priesthood of Babylonia and Assyria:
The ultimate source of all law being the deity himself, the
original legal tribunal was the place where the image or
symbol of the god stood. A legal decision was an oracle or
omen, indicative of the will of the god. The power thus
lodged in the priests of Babylonia and Assyria was enormous.
They virtually held in their hands the life and death of the
people.
And of the business side of this vast religious system:
The temples were the natural depositories of the legal
archives, which in the course of centuries grew to veritably
enormous proportions. Records were made of all decisions;
the facts were set forth, and duly attested by witnesses.
Business and marriage contracts, loans and deeds of sale
were in like manner drawn up in the presence of official
scribes, who were also priests. In this way all commercial
transactions received the written sanction of the religious
organization. The temples themselves--at least in the large
centres--entered into business relations with the populace.
In order to maintain the large household represented by such
an organization as that of the temple of Enlil of Nippur,
that of Ningirsu at Lagash, that of Marduk at Babylon, or
that of Shamash at Sippar, large holdings of land were
required which, cultivated by agents for the priests, or
farmed out with stipulations for a goodly share of the
produce, secured an income for the maintenance of the temple
officials. The enterprise of the temples was expanded to the
furnishing of loans at interest--in later periods, at
20%--to barter in slaves, to dealings in lands, besides
engaging labor for work of all kinds directly needed for the
temples. A large quantity of the business documents found in
the temple archives are concerned with the business affairs
of the temple, and we are justified in including the temples
in the large centres as among the most important business
institutions of the country. In financial or monetary
transactions the position of the temples was not unlike that
of national banks....
And so on. We may venture the guess that the learned professor said
more in that last sentence than he himself intended, for his lectures
were delivered in that temple of plutocracy, the University of
Pennsylvania, and paid out of an endowment which specifies that "all
polemical subjects shall be positively excluded!"
#Prayer-wheels#
These priestly empires exist in the world today. If we wish to find
them we have only to ask ourselves:
What countries are making no contribution to the progress of the race?
What countries have nothing to give us, whether in art, science, or
industry?
For example, Gervaise tells us of the Talapoins, or priests of Siam,
that "they are exempted from all public charges, they salute nobody,
while everybody prostrates himself before them. They are maintained at
the public expense." In the same way we read of the negroes of the
Caribbean islands that "their priests and priestesses exercise an
almost unlimited power." Miss Kingsley, in her "West African Studies",
tells us that if we desire to understand the institutions of this
district, we must study the native's religion.
For his religion has so firm a grasp upon his mind that it
influences everything he does. It is not a thing apart, as
the religion of the Europeans is at times. The African
cannot say, "Oh, that is all right from a religious point of
view, but one must be practical." To be practical, to get on
in the world, to live the day and night through, he must be
right in the religious point of view, namely, must be on
working terms with the great world of spirits around him.
The knowledge of this spirit world constitutes the religion
of the African, and his customs and ceremonies arise from
his idea of the best way to influence it.
Or consider Henry Savage Lander's account of Thibet:
In Lhassa and many other sacred places fanatical pilgrims
make circumambulations, sometimes for miles and miles, and
for days together, covering the entire distance lying flat
upon their bodies.... From the ceiling of the temple hang
hundreds of long strips, katas, offered by pilgrims to the
temple, and becoming so many flying prayers when hung
up--for mechanical praying in every way is prominent in
Thibet.... Thus instead of having to learn by heart long and
varied prayers, all you have to do is to stuff the entire
prayer-book into a prayer-wheel,
and revolve it while repeating as fast as you can four words meaning,
"O God, the gem emerging from the lotus-flower." ... The attention of
the pilgrims is directed to a large box, or often a big bowl, where
they may deposit whatever offerings they can spare, and it must be
said that their religious ideas are so strongly developed that they
will dispose of a considerable portion of their money in this
fashion.... The Lamas are very clever in many ways, and have a great
hold over the entire country. They are ninety per cent of them
unscrupulous scamps, depraved in every way and given to every sort of
vice. So are the women Lamas. They live and sponge on the credulity
and ignorance of the crowds; it is to maintain this ignorance, upon
which their luxurious life depends, that foreign influence of every
kind is strictly kept out of the country.
#The Butcher-Gods#
In this last sentence we have summed up the fundamental fact about
institutionalized religion. Wherever belief and ritual have become the
means of livelihood of a class, all innovation will of necessity be
taken as an attack upon that class; it will be literally a
crime-robbing the priests of their age-long privileges. And of course
they will oppose the robber--using every weapon of terrorism, both of
this world and the next. They will require the submission, not merely
of their own people, but of their neighbors, and their jealousy of
rival priestly castes will be a cause of wars. The story of the early
days of mankind is a sickening record of torture and slaughter in the
name of ten thousand butcher-gods.
Thus, for example, we read in the Hebrew religious records how the
priests were engaged in establishing the prestige of a fetish called
"the ark"; and how the people of one tribe violated this fetish and
wakened the wrath of Jehovah, the god. And he smote the men of
Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord, even
he smote of the people fifty thousand and three score and ten men; and
the people lamented, because the Lord had smitten many of the people
with a great slaughter. And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able
to stand before this holy Lord God?
This terrible old Hebrew divinity said of himself that he was "a
jealous god". Throughout the time of his sway he issued through his
ministers precise instructions for the most revolting cruelties, the
extermination of whole nations of men, women and children, whose sole
offense was that they did not pay tribute to Jehovah's priests. Thus,
for example, the chief of his prophets, Moses, called the people
together, and with all solemnity, and with many warnings, handed down
ten commandments graven upon stone tablets; he went on to set forth
how the people were to set upon and rob their neighbors, and gave them
these blood-thirsty instructions:
When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither
thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations
before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the
Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the
Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and
mightier than thou; And when the Lord thy God shall deliver
them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy
them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy
unto them: ... But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall
destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut
down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.
For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord
thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto
himself, above all people that are upon the face of the
earth.
The records of this Jehovah are full of similar horrors. He sent his
chosen people out to destroy the Midianites, and they slew all the
males, but this was not sufficient, and Moses was wroth, and commanded
them to kill all the married women, and to take the single women "for
themselves". We are told that sixteen thousand single women were
spared, of whom "the Lord's tribute was thirty and two!" In the Book
of Joshua we read that he had an interview with a supernatural
personage called "the captain of the Lord's host", and how this
captain had given to him a magic spell which would destroy the city of
Jericho. The city should be accursed, "even it and all that are
therein, to the Lord"; every living thing except one traitor-harlot
was to be slaughtered, and all the wealth of the city reserved to the
priestly caste. This was carried out to the letter, except that
"Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the
tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing"--that is, he hid some gold
and silver in his tent; whereupon the army met with a defeat, and
everybody knew that something was wrong, and Joshua rent his clothes
and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the Lord, and
got another message from Jehovah, to the effect that the guilty man
should be burned with fire, "he and all that he hath."
And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of
Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of
gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his
asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and
they brought them unto the Valley of Achor. And Joshua said,
Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble thee this
day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them
with fire, after they had stoned him with stones.
We have no means of knowing what was the character of the unfortunate
inhabitants of the city of Jericho, nor of the Hittites and the
Girgashites and the Amorites and all the rest of the victims of
Jehovah. To be sure, we are told by the Hebrew priests that they
sacrificed their children to their gods; but then, consider what we
should believe about the Hebrew religion, if we took the word of rival
priestly castes! Consider, for example, that in this twentieth century
we saw an orthodox Jew tried in a Russian court of law for having made
a sacrifice of Christian babies; nevertheless we know that the Jews
represent a considerable part of the intelligence and idealism of
Russia. We know in the same way that the Moors had most of the culture
and all of the scientific knowledge of Spain, that the Huguenots had
most of the conscience and industry of France; and we know that they
were massacred or driven out to death by the priestly castes of the
Middle Ages.
#The Holy Inquisition#
Let us have one glimpse of the conditions in those mediaeval times, so
that we may know what we ourselves have escaped. In the fifteenth
century there was established in Europe the cult of a three-headed
god, whose priests had won lordship over a continent. They were
enormously wealthy, and unthinkably corrupt; they sold to the
rich the license to commit every possible crime, and they held
the poor in ignorance and degradation. Among the comparatively
intelligent and freedom-loving people of Bohemia there arose a
great reformer, John Huss, himself a priest, protesting against
the corruptions of his order. They trapped him into their power
by means of a "safe-conduct"--which they repudiated because no
promise to a heretic could have validity. They found him guilty
of having taught the hateful doctrine that a priest who committed
crimes could not give absolution for the crimes of others; and they
held an auto de fe--which means a "sentence of faith." As we read
in Lea's "History of the Inquisition":
The cathedral of Constance was crowded with Sigismund (the
Emperor) and his nobles, the great officers of the empire
with their insignia, the prelates in their splendid robes.
While mass was sung, Huss, as an excommunicate, was kept
waiting at the door; when brought in he was placed on an
elevated bench by a table on which stood a coffer containing
priestly vestments. After some preliminaries, including a
sermon by the Bishop of Lodi, in which he assured Sigismund
that the events of that day would confer on him immortal
glory, the articles of which Huss was convicted were
recited. In vain he protested that he believed in
transubstantiation and in the validity of the sacrament in
polluted hands. He was ordered to hold his tongue, and on
his persisting the beadles were told to silence him, but in
spite of this he continued to utter protests. The sentence
was then read in the name of the council, condemning him
both for his written errors and those which had been proven
by witnesses. He was declared a pertinacious and
incorrigible heretic who did not desire to return to the
Church; his books were ordered to be burned, and himself to
be degraded from the priesthood and abandoned to the secular
court. Seven bishops arrayed him in priestly garb and warned
him to recant while yet there was time. He turned to the
crowd, and with broken voice declared that he could not
confess the errors which he never entertained, lest he
should lie to God, when the bishops interrupted him, crying
that they had waited long enough, for he was obstinate in
his heresy. He was degraded in the usual manner, stripped of
his sacerdotal vestments, his fingers scraped; but when the
tonsure was to be disposed of, an absurd quarrel arose among
the bishops as to whether the head should be shaved with a
razor or the tonsure be destroyed with scissors. Scissors
won the day, and a cross was cut in his hair. Then on his
head was placed a conical paper cap, a cubit in height,
adorned with painted devils and the inscription, "This is
the heresiarch."
