reality only
distinguished between his brain and himself. Man is a purely physical
being. All so-called spiritual phenomena are functions of the brain,
special cases of the operation of the universal forces of nature. Thought
and volition are sensation, sensation is motion. The moving forces in the
moral world are the same as those in the physical world; in the latter they
are called attraction and repulsion, in the former, love and hate;
that which the moralist terms self-love is the same instinct of
self-preservation which is familiar in physics as the force of inertia.

As man has doubled himself, so also he has doubled nature. Evil gave the
first impulse to the formation of the idea of God, pain and ignorance have
been the parents of superstition; our sufferings were ascribed to unknown
powers, of which we were in fear, but which, at the same time, we hoped to
propitiate by prayer and sacrifice. The wise turned with their worship and
reverence toward a more worthy object, to the great All; and, in fact, if
we seek to give the word God a tenable meaning, it signifies active nature.
The error lay in the dualistic view, in the distinction between nature and
itself, _i.e._ its activity, and in the belief that the explanation of
motion required a separate immaterial Mover. This assumption is, in the
first place, false, for since the All is the complex of all that exists
there can be nothing outside it; motion follows from the existence of the
universe as necessarily as its other properties; the world does not receive
it from without, but imparts it to itself by its own power. In the second
place the assumption is useless; it explains nothing, but confuses the
problems of natural science to the point of insolubility. In the third
place it is self-contradictory, for after theology has removed the Deity
as far away from man as possible, by means of the negative metaphysical
predicates, it finds itself necessitated to bring the two together again
through the moral attributes--which are neither compatible with one another
nor with the meta-physical--and crowns the absurdity by the assurance that
we can please God by believing that which is incomprehensible. Finally, the
assumption is dangerous; it draws men away from the present, disturbs their
peace and enjoyment, stirs up hatred, and thus makes happiness and morality
impossible. If, then, utility is the criterion of truth, theism--even in
the mild form of deism--is proven err