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THE PROFITS OF RELIGION
An Essay in Economic Interpretation
By UPTON SINCLAIR
The Profits of Religion
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.
The present volume is the first of a series, which will do for
Education, Journalism and Literature what has here been done for
the Church: the four volumes making a work of revolutionary
criticism, an Economic Interpretation of Culture under the
general title of "The Dead Hand."
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," hie 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. He 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
to-day 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 winnows 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 Brahmairiarn 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