This, then, being impossible, we have no other means of arriving at the
truth than by concluding that Brain created God. Every brain cannot
create God; the great nervous centers may be insufficient, either in
quantity or quality, to enable the brain to acquire qualifications
that will give expression to more than the instinctive number of
sensations and emotions.
Creatures generally are limited to the instinctive number of
sensations and emotions; and act, move, and have their being in
harmony with these. Animals of all classes belong to this category,
and not infrequently man, too. By that is meant, man in an uncultured
state, and even among them the degree of experience and the power of
observation make the difference between one set of savages and another.
Intelligence, understanding, and reasoning power depend on some kind of
experience. The repetition of experience constitutes, in some measure,
the training of the senses, and through the senses and the cerebral
hemispheres the intellect is thus formed and mind developed.
The intellectual acquirements may be limited by the ascendency of some
predominating ideas or opinions that check progress. As for example,
the absence of schools in communities, the forcible prevention of
education, the prohibition of education by priestly authority of
the church, and the suppression by ecclesiastics of all ideas except
their own.
This we may term limitation of brain culture by undue interference
of the ascendent idea or ideas that limits the range of intelligence
and subjects the will power to the control and direction of what the
people presumed to be a greater right than their own.
Prescribed limits of education check or stunt the natural progress, and
if any progress is made, the people must break through the prescribed
limits, as was the case with Luther, Spinoza, Voltaire, Renan, etc.
The ascendency of man over animals checks their further progress
in the way of intelligence. The superior hostile intelligence holds
possession and will not permit further development. As regards animals,
we have taken possession of the earth, and have put a stop to all
further advancement.
Supposing a man develops an idea, it is not an easy matter to persuade
his next-door neighbor, who is his equal perhaps in intelligence;
but, it is not difficult to inculcate his pet idea into his child. It
is, as it were, virgin ground, and he plows it to his liking. He
has complete control. He is master. He directs it as he wishes,
and prevents others from planting strange ideas or ideas hostile or
antagonistic to his own.
In this manner we commence breeding ideas, and we continue breeding
the same ideas, on the same principle as breeding pigeons or chickens;
they are all of the same kind, if you don't cross them; and the more
eggs you lay the more chickens you get, and if they multiply rapidly,
especially if you have many hens to one rooster (as the Jews had),
what a multitude to spoil a garden-patch!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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