Today I have been reading from the writings of John Dewey with much pleasure. I find that he had a rational grasp of the larger movements in history right down to the present. There has probably never been a philosopher less dogmatic than Dewey. One of his most memorable warnings is that tradition can offer no solutions for contemporary problems. This assumption is characteristic of his audacity. All that tradition can do, he insists, is demonstrate what will not work, since it never worked in the past. In contrast to Tolstoy, he suggests a possible method for freeing ourselves from our quagmires by an intense application of intelligence to national and international affairs (in the realm of technology this method has boosted us into first place among the nations of the world). Perhaps it would be a lot easier to apply ourselves to this general principle of medicinals than to follow the recommendations of the Sermon on the Mount. Tolstoy no doubt would throw up his arms in horror at Dewey’s suggestion, yet if he were alive today he would have to admit that non-violent Christian love has virtually lost its battle in the hearts of men. If modern man’s devotion to science can once be converted from its exaggerated preoccupation with the physical world to the world of ethics and morals Dewey may turn out to be the very messiah that mankind has been anxiously awaiting for the past twenty centuries.

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A word on Crime and Punishment. Roskolnokov is pre-Nietzschean. Christian love and sympathy do triumph in the book, yet not really. As the story winds down the homestretch, Sonia sure enough, as the embodiment of Christ’s shepherd (or shepherdess), leads her lamb into the fold. The reader is led to believe he repents and for the rest of his days will walk in the paths of Christian righteousness. And yet the real triumph of the book, philosophically speaking, is the prevailing Nietzschean impact which it makes. The brutality of Roskolnokov’s crime causes me to wince. And inwardly, perhaps he winces himself although he appears throughout most of the novel to feel more anguish over the possibility of being caught than over any sense of guilt he might be harboring. I wonder whether Roskolnokov’s arrogant intellectual justification of axing two innocent women to death is a genuine reflection of Dostoyevsky’s own Russian Orthodox attitude?

Since Christianity long ago absented itself from the affairs of men, our so-called civilization has in truth become a dense jungle of terrifying contradictions where what is right is determined soley by the most powerful. Even in Roskolnokov’s case, despite his philosophic casuistry, he would have been thwarted by his victims had they been superior to him in weaponry and strength. My guess is that Roskolnokov does express Dostoyevsky’s own point of view and that even though he probably longed for the conquest of Christian idealism he realized, like Ivan Karamazov’s Grand Inquisitor, that Christian idealism was beyond the capacity of the majority of men. Such a conclusion coincides perfectly with the rationale later propounded by Nietzsche.

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We spend most of our lives avoiding happiness because we are always preparing for it in the future. Gide says that we devote three-quarters of our life to this preparation and yet in the last quarter do not eat of the fruits of our efforts. The source of our belief in immortality is undoubtedly closely related to this failure. We look toward the blank eternity of our post-mortal existence with hopeful eyes. We assure ourselves that the happiness we have prepared for will be realized then. Thus we are better able to swallow the bitter herbs of mortal life.

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There is a growing acceptance among people of the idea of death. The question is whether this acceptance is solely theoretical. Men can talk blandly about many things so long as they are not faced with their own theory turned fact. The fangs of a famished tiger two inches from one’s throat is something quite different from a genial discussion among friends of the lethal potentialities of certain members of the cat family when beset with hunger. The word chaos is frequently used nowadays by men who are masters of their own souls within the boundaries of absolute tranquility. Confront them with the reality of chaotic circumstances and their philosophic tones will more than likely degenerate into hysterical decibels of visionless fear. Actually man has much territory to traverse before he becomes truly reconciled to his own death.

*

Voltaire once said that as long as there are fools in the world there will be religion. It might be added that as long as the majority of mankind are afflicted with ignorance, stupidity, greed, and perhaps worst of all, a severe cerebral paralysis which makes serious thinking virtually impossible, fanaticisms of all kinds will have a perpetual field day. Yet there is another side to this coin which enables mankind to continue to preserve itself as a civilization even under the most dire circumstances. When the majority of the human race are in a state of distress while the minority of their brethren are feasting in the lap of luxury, the tables must invariably be turned. The panacea mongers take their cue from such a condition as this and the one among them who is the most convincing collects the largest number of adherents and is eventually able to conquer the world with his particular doctrine of hope. In a sense, this is only plain and simple justice. And if history is a teller of only half-true tales, we know that once the new doctrine has engendered a sufficient weightage of its own brand of obesity and corruption, and bred the inevitable incongruities between rich and poor, the contented and the miserable, it will in turn be itself deposed and supplanted by a newer order of hope for the suffering majority. It is like a slightly mad dog running around and around in a circle until it finally catches up to its own tail only to lose it again and thus be compelled once more to resume the same frantic rounds in order to catch the same elusive tail between its teeth.

*

The pagan world was a tolerant world. It was taken for granted that each of the various sects within the Roman imperial hoop would abide by this unwritten code of human decency towards each of its competitors. Because the Jews first and their spiritual offspring, the Christians, later, not only refused to adhere to this rule but used the most vile and vituperative language every other existing sect the Roman political policeman was often compelled to step in with his billy club to quell the recalcitrant religionists even though he was ordinarily the most patient of men. Like the Communists of our own era, the early Christians were firmly convinced that the final victory would be theirs. Their overconfidence filled them with supernatural courage even when the odds against them portended unavoidable disaster if they did not alter their course. No power on earth could dissuade them once their fit was on. An ironic sidelight of their fanaticism is that the imperial authorities who were themselves pagans condemned the Christians as atheists because of their rejection of the traditional deities of the Empire. In the eyes of their enemies, the primitive Christians and the early Communists of the twentieth century seemed possessed of the same failings. The Christians were the godless ones of their day just as the Communists are today. The question which still remains to be answered is whether the parallel will continue into the future until Communism becomes tomorrow’s orthodoxy. The Christian-Capitalist world says No, but did not the pagan-monarchy world say No just as emphatically to Christianity?

*

Tomorrow is Easter, a holiday more indicative of paganism’s survival down into our own era than Christian piety. The Lord has arisen! But what we are really celebrating is the reappearance of green grass, purple violets and golden daffodils. All these glories of the soil are suddenly raised up before our eyes by the indefatigable Mother Earth. Annually we are made joyous by this simple, dependable act of hers. The Emperor Julian outshone even Gibbon in his perceptiveness of this fact. He preferred the straightforward natural honesty of paganism even after Christ’s followers had completed their conquest of the Empire.

*

Both Christianity and Judaism command us to prove our love for God by fearing him. I have often wondered why this inconsistency has been accepted by each new generation with such docile piety. How can we simultaneously love and fear the same object or person? It would be difficult to convince me that love rather than fear is the fundamental tenet of orthodoxy in the two religions. We are told that our lives are ruled by an almighty hand belonging to a fiercely jealous being. Furthermore, we are warned that unless we constantly cater to the pride of this being, he will cast terrible calamities upon our heads. We must love him, it appears, not because we truly adore him or possess any genuine feelings of passion towards him, but because we wish to hide our contempt for him (a contempt which can be likened to that felt for a policeman who is ceaselessly bullying us) which, if he detected it, might arouse his anger. We use our love as camouflage, as if this almighty being could not see through the deception. We love him because we fear him. And we fear him because we are convinced that he can hurt us if he is displeased with our conduct. We sound off in our praises of him until our throats grow hoarse. We fear him since we have converted ourselves to the belief that, in the event of war between him and the inhabitants of the earth, he is sure to be the winner. We want to be on his side not necessarily because he is right but merely to place ourselves behind his invincible might. This we call piety or the love of God.

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J.M. Bury in A History of Freedom of Thought confirms Gibbon’s idea on the contrast between Greek and Roman tolerance, credulity, etc. Saint Augustine was one of the fathers of all subsequent Christian persecutions of heretics. Saint Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, was strongly inclined towards skepticism while under the influence, as was the whole of the University of Paris, of a 12th century Moorish free thinker by the name of Averroes. While attempting to repudiate the latter’s doctrines he actually convinces more readily by the examples of un-Christian beliefs he holds up to ridicule than by his dialectical efforts to cut the ground from under them. If this is really true then St. Thomas pulled off one of the subtlest deceptions in the history of Western thought. Perhaps, after all, the father of all Church fathers and the Popes’ own mentor must be ultimately judged as one of the chief Christian heretics. Of course, if this accusation were publicly espoused as a widely accepted verdict, the Church would do battle with it, for if Aquinas is its enemy, then who in heaven or on earth is its friend? If the most important architect of the modern Roman Church falsified his blueprint, then will not the steeples themselves soon come tumbling down? Why hasn’t more been made of this potential booby trap in the machinery of Christendom before?

*

Has Christianity engendered peace on earth and good will towards men in all its two thousand years of existence? Does its own internal evidence give proof of its having been a boon to mankind? If the facts of history speak to us with even a semblance of truth, Christianity must stand forever condemned. Its doctrinal professions have remained since the time of its founder a rather precariously thin thread which it has been hanging on to. The practical application of its doctrine to the everyday life of those who profess to believe in it forms a record of irrefutable evidence not only against its beneficence but, in some instances, even exposes its criminality.

Christianity’s deepest roots are embedded in the soil of the Old Testament, which was produced by a semi-barbarian people whose smattering of wisdom and poetry I firmly believe amazes us primarily because it was nurtured in such an uncongenial environment. These semi-barbarians had a capacity for intolerance towards outsiders that was positively insatiable. Out of this atmosphere sprang the godhead of Christianity. Armed with the weapons of fanaticism, intolerance and cruelty it broke through the narrow geographical limitations of its origin and descended on the unsuspecting pagan world to begin the most vicious campaign of proselytizing ever undertaken by any human institution. It anathematized all who refused to accept its mission as holy and join its ranks, relegating them eternal damnation, which has something to do with roasting thousands of miles below the surface of the earth for ever and ever without actually burning up or losing consciousness.

The Roman intelligensia, who for the most part were the political mentors of the Empire, at first regarded the early Christians as pestilential ignoramuses, especially since their initial inroads were made almost exclusively among the pariahs of the kingdom. They viewed them as being as harmless as the fanatical lunatics of Judea. But what they seemed to forget was that the latter had little if any influence beyond their own borders. Yet as the number of converts increased and the doctrine of intolerance towards the traditions of pagan worship reached out with its tentacles to touch the higher levels of society, the new religionists began to be viewed with alarm. This threat to the status quo of the flexible, easygoing habits of paganism soon became a threat to the very structure of the political framework of the Empire. Reluctantly, the persecution of Christians was begun, though generally it was extremely mild despite the later claims of the descendant Christian world seeking material evidence of its own heroic martyrdoms. The Christians themselves protested vehemently, declaring their right to worship as they pleased according to the dictates of their consciences. They pleaded for toleration. However, once they succeeded in conquering the Empire and placing on the throne a Christian emperor, the pleas of toleration were suddenly dealt a coup de grace. In fact, to continue to utter them became a heresy.

Thus the conquest of the Roman Empire by the Christian Church marks the commencement of one of the most heinous bloodbaths known to the history of mankind. Not only pagans and non-pagan-non-Christians felt the cold steel of this higher religion being thrust into their breasts, but dissenting Christians as well. When Church corruption, mainly due to its confidence in its own security as the supreme ruler of the Western World, allowed for the development of national states dominated by purely national interests and only loosely connected with the welfare of the Roman papacy, the road was already being paved for the advent of the Reformation. To return Christianity to its original idealism, to the professed intentions of its doctrines, and divorce it from the decadent edifice which was currently housing it was the declared goal of the leading exponents of the Reform movement. The Church had already established the Inquisition to root out every form of heresy. It encouraged friends to inform on each other and children to inform on parents. It did all in its power to maintain its unchallenged supremacy through fear if not through its good works. Nevertheless the virus of rebellion had spread and the new secular princes, especially in northern Europe, who were hungry for riches and political domination saw opportunity knocking at their doors by aligning themselves with the oratorical geniuses of the Reformation. The schism in the Christian Church soon became permanent.

Although the Protestant reformers once again sang the old moldy melody of tolerance in the states where they achieved their most overwhelming triumphs, they invariably reinstituted the familiar Christian pattern of persecution. Adherents to the Church of Rome in northern Germany and England as well as in parts of France suddenly found themselves being victimized alongside dissenters. On the other side of the religious fence, the Counter-Reformation helped to reinvigorate the inquisitorial machinery in those areas which remained within the Roman fold. Fortunately the primary effect of this crack in the Christian wall was never intended by those who swung the sledge hammers which caused it, for through this crack seeped an ever increasing flow of dissenters. So great was this flow, in fact, that it eventually became a torrent that was to undermine the traditional Christian habit of intolerance as practiced by both Protestants and Catholics.

The Christian churches, consequently, have been compelled to fall in line or, to put it more succinctly, cling to the coattails of secular enlightenment in order to save their own institutions from becoming extinct. Yet despite this alienation of traditional Christianity from the modern world, the misguided frenzy of Church medievalism continues to keep a superficial grip on the respectability of those people living in countries where dissent is still the unacknowledged legislator. Wherever and whenever possible, however, the hoary head of Church intolerance persists in lending support to conservative fanaticism hoping against hope that the moss covered road back to the Dark Ages of its own scepter-wielding might be reactivated in the throes of a new rebirth of pious enthusiasm.

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Copernicus was a poet of numbers. In his imagination resided the universe which all of his descendants believe in as certainly as the shape of their own hands and feet. But Copernicus was a poet, and like all true poets, capable of flights of the imagination. Also, he very probably was amused by the credulity of his fellowmen. And let us assume further that the priestly father of our solar system was a notorious prankster. Combining his poetic fancy with both an extraordinary genius for numbers and a devilish flair for trickery he imprisoned mankind in an arbitrary frame to which he attached a celestial ultimatum.

He provided a science of distant externalities for Church-wombed believers in metaphysical divinities on whom no one could lay eyes until he crossed over into the next world. In all fairness to the intelligence of this much maligned, in his own day (1473-1543), Polish priest who invented a celestial chart for our convenience, let us picture him as an elderly man who upon the hard-won acceptance of his plan by the officialdom of his day immediately began snickering up his sleeve. If from some high portico in heaven he still happens to be looking down on us, he very probably, by this time, has grown thoroughly intoxicated from his own laughter.