The Bible of nature : $b or, The principles of secularism. A contribution to the religion of the futureOswald, Felix L. (Felix Leopold)
Religion
The Bible of nature : $b or, The principles of secularism. A contribution to the religion of the future
Oswald, Felix L. (Felix Leopold)
Secularism
and after intrusting their eggs to the protection of the deep drift
sand, will reënter the water and quietly float off with the seaward
currents. In the virgin-woods of Southern Mexico, where the harpy-eagle
fills the maws of her hungry brood by incessant raids on the small
denizens of the tree-tops, the traveler D’Armand once witnessed a
curious scene. An eagle had pounced upon a nursing mother monkey, who
at first struggled desperately to free herself from the claws of the
murderer; but, finding resistance in vain, she loosened her grasp on
the branches, and, just as the eagle carried her off, she disengaged
the arm of her baby from her neck, and shaking off the little creature
with a swing of her arm, she deliberately flung it back into the
sheltering foliage of the tree-top, thus taking the last possible
chance of surviving in her child.
The “dread of annihilation” reveals itself in the instincts of a dying
philosopher as plainly as in the instincts of a wounded animal; but, on
self-examination, that fear would prove to have but little in common
with a special solicitude for the preservation of material forms or
combinations—conditions which the process of organic change constantly
modifies in the cradle as well as in the grave. It is rather the type
of the body and its correlated mental dispositions which the hope of
resurrection yearns to preserve, and even childless men have often
partly realized that hope by impressing the image of their soul on a
younger mind, and transmitting their cherished projects and theories
through the medium of education. In the consciousness of that
accomplished task Socrates could as calmly die in the arms of his
disciples as the Hebrew patriarch in the arms of his children and
grandchildren. “You kill a sower,” cried St. Adalbert under the clubs
of his assassins, “but the seed he has planted will rise and survive
both his love and your hatred.”
Even the influence of a great practical example has often impressed the
mental type of a reformer or patriot on a series of subsequent
generations. The Buddhist Calanus, preaching the doctrine of
renunciation to an audience of scoffers, deeply affected the most
thoughtless of his witnesses by proving his personal convictions in the
flames of a funeral pile. “I leave no sons,” were the last words of
Epaminondas, “but two immortal daughters, the battles of Leuctra and
Mantinea.” Rousseau smiled when he learned the intrigues of his enemies
who were trying their utmost to enlist the coöperation of a violent
pulpit-orator. “They are busy recruiting their corps of partisans,”
said he, “but Time will raise me an ally in every intelligent reader of
the next generation.”
B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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