A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and EssaysBradlaugh, Charles
Religion
A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays
Bradlaugh, Charles
Free thought
knows--nobody can tell you. This is really that which they do. What is
this doctrine of spirituality? What does it present to the mind?
A substance unsubstantial that possesses nothing of which our senses
enable us to take cognizance." Theologians urge that each of us has a
soul superior to all material conditions, and yet a man who speaks can
not communicate by his speaking soul so freely with that man who is deaf
and dumb; the conditions cramp that which is said to be uncontrolled
by any conditions. If you cut out a man's tongue, the soul no longer
speaks. If you put a gag in his mouth, and tie it with a handkerchief,
so that he can not get it out, his soul ceases to speak. The immaterial
soul is conquered by a gag, it can not utter itself, the gag is in the
way. The orthodox say that the soul is made by God; and what do you know
about God? Why just as much as we know about the soul. And what do you
know about the soul? Nothing whatever. How is it that if the soul
is immaterial, having nothing in common with matter, that it is only
manifest by material means? and how is it that it is incased
and inclosed in my material frame? They affirm that my soul is a
spirit--that I receive the same spirit from God. How is it that
my spirit is now by myself, and by my mortal body, denying its own
existence? Is my mortal soul acting the hypocrite, or is it ignorant of
its own existence, and can not help itself to better knowledge? And if
it can not help itself, why not, if it is superior to the body? and if
you think it a hypocrite, tell me why.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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