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Conventional Lies of our Civilization. Max Simon Nordau
reflection when we are taking part in a church service, and we avoid any exact comparison of its outward observances with our convictions, taking especial pains to close our eyes and minds to the disgraceful treason which we are committing by these acts against all our knowledge, our convictions, and everything that we recognize and cling to as truth. Historical investigations have revealed to us the origin and growth of the Bible; we know that by this name we designate a collection of writings, as radically unlike in origin, character and contents, as if the Nibelungen Lied, Mirabeau's speeches, Heine's love poems and a manual of zoology, had been printed and mixed up promiscuously, and then bound into one volume. We find collected in this book the superstitious beliefs of the ancient inhabitants of Palestine, with indistinct echoes of Indian and Persian fables, mistaken imitations of Egyptian theories and customs, historical chronicles as dry as they are unreliable, and miscellaneous poems, amatory, human and Jewish—national, which are rarely distinguished by beauties of the highest order, but frequently by superfluity of expression, coarseness, bad taste and genuine Oriental sensuality. As a literary monument the Bible is of much later origin than the Vedas; as a work of literary value it is surpassed by everything written in the last two thousand years by authors even of the second rank, and to compare it seriously with the productions of Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare or Goethe, would require a fanaticized mind that had entirely lost its power of judgment; its conception of the universe is childish, and its morality revolting, as revealed in the malicious vengeance attributed to God in the Old Testament and in the New, the parable of the laborers of the eleventh hour and the episodes of Mary Magdalen and the woman taken in adultery. And yet men, cultivated and capable of forming a just estimate, pretend to reverence this ancient work, they refuse to allow it to be discussed and criticised like any other production of the human intellect, they found societies and place enormous sums at their disposal to print millions of copies of it, which they distribute all over the world, and they pretend to be edified and inspired when they read in it.
The formulas used in public worship by all established religions are founded upon ideas and customs which originated in the most ancient barbaric periods, in Asia and northern Africa. We can see the traces of the worship of the sun by the Aryans, of the mysticism of the Buddhists and of the worship of Isis and Osiris by the Egyptians, in the observances and prayers of public worship and in the festivals and offerings of Jews and Christians of the present day. And the people of the Nineteenth Century assume a reverent and solemn expression as they repeat the kneelings, gestures, ceremonies and prayers invented thousands of years ago, on the hanks of the Nile or the Ganges, by the miserable, undeveloped human beings of the stone or bronze ages, to manifest in some material was their conceptions of the universe, its origin and its laws—all, conceptions of the rankest heathenism.
As we study this disgraceful comedy, the more we expose to view the grotesque contrast between the modern tone of mind and the established religions, the more difficult does it become to speak calmly and dispassionately on this subject. The inconsistency is so superhumanly nonsensical, so gigantic, that the arguments set forth in detail against it, appear as inadequate and inefficient as a broom to sweep out the sands of Sahara; only the satire of a Rabelais or the inkstand of a Luther thrown against it, could do it justice.
It is impossible to describe all the details of this sham structure of Religion. We must be content to accept a few of the most significant. Diplomatists make use of all possible means and threats to induce the Cardinals to elect a Pope to suit them; but after the tedious and obstinate intrigues have been led to the wished-for conclusion, these same diplomatists, who have been pulling the strings of the puppet show, manifest a sudden and fervent reverence for the Pope's authority and person, which is founded upon the fiction that the Holy Ghost had selected him as the successor of St. Peter. This election of a Pope is regarded by thousands upon thousands of people as a solemn and important occurrence who would laugh at a description of the ceremonies attending the installation of a new Grand Lama in Thibet, upon the death of his predecessor, and yet these ceremonies bear a striking resemblance to each other. The Governments of various countries maintain diplomatic relations with a man whose importance is due to the fact that he supplies God with new saints, and can guarantee to men celestial privileges and blessings, and liberate sinners from the torments of being burned after death; they conclude diplomatic treaties with him and set forth in laws and decrees that the Pope has great influence with God, and consequently that a person standing in such intimate intercourse with the Supreme Being, and sharing his infallibility to such an extent, should receive reverence and homage beyond that which any other man on earth is entitled to. And yet, these same Governments send out expeditions to the Soudan, and laugh at the pretensions of the black Prophet there, who forbids their emissaries to enter into his domain, and declares that he will strike them, if they disobey him, with the anger of the Supreme Fetish, whose prophet and favorite he is. Who can point out to me the difference between that poor negro and the Pope at Rome? Each claims to be the high priest of God, whose thunder and lightning he can control, with the privilege of recommending certain people to God's favor or vengeance, who acts upon their suggestions. Where is the logic of the cultivated European who looks upon one as an absurd pretender, and the other as an imposing figure worthy of all reverence?
Every separate act of a religious ceremony becomes a fraud and a criminal satire when performed by a cultivated man of this Nineteenth Century.
He sprinkles himself with holy water, and expresses by the act his conviction that the priest who said certain words over it, accompanied by certain gestures, had conferred some mysterious virtues upon it, changing its nature in some way, although a chemical analysis of it would show that it differs in no respect from any other water, except in being a little more dirty. He repeats prayers, kneels, goes to church services with all their ceremonies, and thus asserts his conviction that there is a God, who enjoys prayers, gestures, incense and anthems, if the prayers are in certain stereotyped words, the gestures in certain prescribed forms, and the ceremonies presided over by persons in odd clothing, with robes and capes of such peculiar colors and shapes as no sensible man would ever dream of wearing. The fact that a liturgy or form of public worship once established, is observed with painful minuteness, can only be explained to a rational mind somewhat in this way: the priests learned from some good source, and acted upon this knowledge, that God not only had the vanity to insist upon praises, compliments and flattery being offered to Him as well as glorifications of His goodness, His wisdom and His greatness, but combined with this vanity was the whim that He would only accept these praises and glorifications when they were offered according to a certain formula, never to be deviated from. And the men of our age of natural science pretend to reverence these liturgies, and will not allow any one to speak of them with the contempt they deserve.
More revolting and insufferable even than the lie of Religion as acted by the individual, is the same lie of Religion as acted by the community. The individual citizen although he belongs ostensibly to some established religion, and takes part in its ceremonies, often makes no secret of his disbelief in its superstitions, and refuses to be convinced that a certain form of words, repeated in concert by the congregation will suspend or alter the laws of nature, that the devil is driven out from an infant when sprinkled with holy water, or that the chanting and speech of a man in a black or white robe beside a corpse, will open the gates of Paradise to the soul of the dead man. But, as a member of the community and of the body politic, this same citizen does not hesitate to declare necessary all the points claimed by the established religions, and he offers up to them all the substantial and spiritual sacrifices which the salaried minister of this superstition, recognized and supported by the State, may demand. The same Government that builds universities, schools and libraries, builds churches too; the same Government that pays salaries to professors, supports the ministers also; the same code of laws that compels children to go to school, forbids blasphemy and any expression of scorn or defiance of established religions. What do these incongruities mean? This is their meaning: we say that the earth stands still and the sun revolves around it, although science has proved the contrary beyond a doubt; that the earth is only about five thousand years old, and no monuments from Egypt or anywhere else, known to be thousands of years older, will be accepted as contradicting this fact. We are not imprisoned in lunatic asylums for asserting these incongruities to be reconcilable truths; we are not declared incapable of filling office and carrying on our business, although we have certainly given the most striking