Christian socialism; Owen, Robert, 1771-1858. Book of the new moral world; Socialism -- Great Britain
On another subject, too, Mr. Owen has spoken plainly. He says, “The love
of truth is an instinct of human nature which would be always exercised
in simplicity, were not individuals praised and blamed for particular
feelings,” p. 11. The Bible tells us that “man goeth astray from the
womb, speaking lies.” Now, which is to be believed, Robert Owen, or God?
But I ought to beg Robert Owen’s pardon; according to his doctrine, there
is no personal God: this is his language: “The error respecting this law
of human nature, viz., the 14th, has led man to create a personal Deity,
author of all good; and a personal devil, author of all evil. * * * * And
yet, when the mind can be relieved from the early prejudices which have
been forced into it on these subjects, it will be discovered that there
is not a single fact known to man, after all the experience of the past
generations, to prove that any such personalities exist, or ever did
exist; and, in consequence, all the mythology of the ancients, and all
the religions of the moderns, are mere fanciful notions of men, whose
imaginations have been cultivated to accord with existing prejudices, and
whose judgments have been systematically destroyed from their birth.”
(Book of the New Moral World, p. 46.) And his idea on this awful subject
he explains, when he says, “Without a shadow of a doubt, that truth is
nature, and nature God; that ‘God is truth, and truth is God,’ as so
generally expressed by the Mohammedans,” p. 65; and yet he tells us that
“man is a wonderful and curiously contrived being;” and that, “in the
formation of man and woman there is the most evident harmony and unison
of design,” p. 70. How truth, which is an abstract quality, can be a
power, can contrive and create, is what I do not understand; but, no
doubt, Robert Owen, who, if persons will take his testimony, and follow
his notions, can perform much more wonderful feats than this, will be
able to explain it; especially as he tells us that “it is only now, for
the first time, in the known history of mankind, that the mind has been
permitted to examine facts, in order to discover truth, upon the subjects
which have the greatest influence upon the human race.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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