Love, Life & Work - Being a Book of Opinions Reasonably Good-Natured Concerning - How to Attain the Highest Happiness for One's Self with the - Least Possible Harm to Others by Elbert Hubbard
page 22 of 103 (21%)
page 22 of 103 (21%)
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and second, liberate himself from the phantoms of his own mind. On
neither of these points does the revivalist help or aid in any way. Effervescence is not character and every debauch must be paid for in vitality and self-respect. All formal organized religions through which the promoters and managers thrive are bad, but some are worse than others. The more superstition a religion has, the worse it is. Usually religions are made up of morality and superstition. Pure superstition alone would be revolting--in our day it would attract nobody--so the idea is introduced that morality and religion are inseparable. I am against the men who pretend to believe that ethics without a fetich is vain and useless. The preachers who preach the beauty of truth, honesty and a useful, helpful life, I am with, head, heart and hand. The preachers who declare that there can be no such thing as a beautiful life unless it will accept superstition, I am against, tooth, claw, club, tongue and pen. Down with the Infamy! I prophesy a day when business and education will be synonymous--when commerce and college will join hands--when the preparation for life will be to go to work. As long as trade was trickery, business barter, commerce finesse, government exploitation, slaughter honorable, and murder a fine art; when religion was ignorant superstition, piety the worship of a fetich and education a clutch for honors, there was small hope for the race. Under these conditions everything tended towards division, dissipation, disintegration, separation--darkness, death. But with the supremacy gained by science, the introduction of the |
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