The spiritual arsenal of Plato having thus supplied the human animal with what is called an "immortal soul,"* our Christian priests have ever since found it an excellent foundation for their scheme, and a secure medium through which to make permanent their riches and power. * As the word soul, heaven, spirit, hell, metaphysio, ghost, immaterial, etc., are not representatives of things which exist in reality, why are they suffered to confound common sense? Because, in serving that purpose, they are the most useful auxiliaries of priest-mare delusion. The Theologian's definition of them is his best refutation. Plato would not at this day know his foster-child, disfigured as it now is by a train of hideous inventions, the theory of which is, that death is the only way to a new and eternal life; that all who believe in this paradoxical speculation of the priest shall be rewarded, and that all who believe him _not_ shall be tortured by an eternal roasting in that life. Considering the weak and credulous nature of the human mind in a state of ignorance, we must acknowledge the bold ingenuity which invented this tremendous dogma; it is calculated to confound even the strongest intellect; for the terrors of death, under so frightful a predicament, utterly debase and enslave the prostrate mind, making it a prey to all the combined efforts of sacerdotal fraud. By this pernicious fiction, the morality of nations has been destroyed, the blackest crimes that man can commit have been pardoned,* and the priest has filled his coffers to the glory of the three divinities! Theology, in its vain attempts to raise man above that sphere in which nature has placed him, as a link in her animated chain, hath thus created for him an imaginary futurity; but, in so doing, by a strange incongruity, the creature so exalted above himself, and made the exclusive object of divine clemency, has against him, nevertheless, 999 chances in the 1,000 that he is predestined to everlasting torments, (yet even this inexorably forlorn hope flatters his pride) whilst the remaining unit only shall enjoy the beatitude of celestial bliss:-- No matter, Better to be in hell, it seems, than Not to be at all. We say negatur. * Oh, Plato! Plato! you have paved the way With your confounded fantasies, to more Immoral conduct, by the fancied sway. Your systems feign o'er the controlless core Of human hearts, than all the long array Of poets and romances; you're a bore, A charlatan, a coxcomb, and have been, At best, no better than a go-between.--Byron.