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“ TR U TH BEARS T H E TORCH IN T H E SEARCH FOR T R U T H .” — L llC retillS-
SILVERTON, OREGON, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1899.
VOL. 3.
NO. 37.
expiate their love of truth in the
also take into the account those
Fifteen Centuries of Church
Domination.
flames of the stake.
types of man which approach most'
BY M IN N IE M. PRESTO N .
The systematic suppression of
nearly to the animals, and which J
BY FELIX L. OSWALD.
freedom, in the very instincts of
have had no opportunity of raising
Torch of R eason, b rig h tly glow
the human mind, turned Christian
themselves from the rude, primitive, i
On forever ag ain st th e foe.
|OR fifteen centuries the pilot Europe into a universal slave-pen
natural state to the grade of the,
R ig ht and Reason m u st p r e v a il;
C ourage soldiers! T ru th c a n ’t fail!
of the church lured our of bondage and tyranny; there
civilized man.
' Hold aloft th e Torch so b r i g h t ;
forefathers to a whirlpool were only captives and jailors, ab
In such a study as this, just as in
O n w ard! U pw ard! W in th e fight I
the investigation of the animal j °f mental and physical degenera- ject serfs and their inhuman mas
F a lte r not, for foes are near.
mind, we at once arrive at the | tion, till the storms of the Protest- ters. Freedom found a refuge only
R ight will win, so never fear,
E rro r m ust re tre a t ere long,
knowledge of quite different things ant revolt enabled them to break in the fastnesses of the mountains;
And th e e a rth to tr u th belong;
from what the closet-philosophers the spell of the fatal eddies, and, in the wars against the pagan
Science reign from shore to shore.
O ut th en e rro r! Close th e door,
in their pretentious but hollow wis- like a swimmer saving his naked Saxons the last freemen of the
N e’e r give up till th e b a ttle ’s o ’er.
dom have hitherto endeavored to .life, mankind has struggled back to plains were slain like wild beasts;
make us believe, and we ascertain ^he rescuing rocks of our mother a thousand of their brave leaders
immediately that the human being earth. Lured by the twinkle of re were beheaded on the market
False Conceptions of Human
in his deepest degradation or in his flected stars, we have plunged into square of Quedlinburg, thousands
Nature.
rudest primitive state approaches the maelstrom of anti-naturalism, were imprisoned in Christian con
BY DR. L. BUCHNER.
the animal world so closely that we and after regaining the shore, by vents, or dragged away to the bond
involuntarily ask ourselves, where utmost efforts, it seems now time to age of feudal and ecclesiastic slave
T is sufficiently well known, that the boundary line is to be drawn? estimate the expenses of. the ad farms, where they learned to envy
the peace of the dead aud the free
the intellectual life of animals Whoever then wishes to form a venture.
The suppression of science has re dom of the lowest savages. “One
has hitherto been greatly un judgment as to the true nature of
derestimated or falsely interpreted, man or his true position in nature tarded the progress of mankind by sees certain dark, livid, naked, sun
simply because our closet-philos must not, as our philosophers and a full thousand years. For a cen burnt wild animals, male and fe
ophers always started, not from an soidisant ‘‘great-thinkers” usually tury or two the Mediterranean pe male, scattered over the country
impartial and unprejudiced observa do, leave out of consideration the ninsulas still lingered in the even and attached to the soil, which they
tion anb appreciation of nature, but primeval origin and developmental ing twilight of pagan civilization, root and turn over with indomit
from philosophical theories in history of man, and looking merely but with the confirmed rule of the able perseverance. They have, as
which the true position both of man at his own little self in the delusi; • ••hurch the gloom of utter darkness it were, an articulate voice; and
and animals was entirely misunder mirror of self-esteem, abstract there overspread the homes of her slaves, when they rise to their feet they
stood. But as soon as we began to from a pitiable portrait of a man and the delusions of that dreadful show’ a human face. They are, in
strike into a new path it was seen after the philosophical pattern. He night far exceeded the worst super- fact, men; they creep at night into
that intellectually, morally and art must on the contrary, grasp at na sti'ions of pagan barbarism. “The dens, where they live on black
istically the animal must be ture itself with both hands, and cloud of universal ignorance,” says bread, water and roots. They spare
placed in a far higher position than draw’ his knowledge from the in Hallam, “ was broken only by a few other men the labor of plowing,
was formerly supposed, and that numerable springs which flow there glimmering lights, who owe almost sowing, and harvesting, and, there
the whole of their distinction to the fore, deserve some small share of
the germs and first rudiments even in the richest abundance.
N o w h ere do we find these sp rin g s surrounding darkness. We cannot the bread they have grown. Yet
o f the highest intellectual faculties
o f man are existent and easily de richer and more copious than in the conceive of any state of society they were the fortunate peasants—
monstrable in much lower regions. reports of travellers in distant more adverse to the intellectual those who had bread and work
The pre-eminence of man over the lands as to the savage men and improvement of mankind than one and they were then the few” (while
_____ __________
r_ relative tribes which they have met with, which admitted no middle line be- half the arable territory of France
animal
is therefore rather
han absolute, that is to say it con-' and especially in those simple nar- tween dissoluteness and fanatical was in the hands of the church.)
ists chiefly in the greater perfec- —
ratives which often in a few words mortification. No original writer “Feudalism,” says Blanqui, “was a
concentration of all scourges. The
Lion and more advantageous devel give ns a deeper insight into human of any merit arose, and learning
opment of those characters which nature and its near relationship to may be said to have languished in peasant, stripped of the inheritance
he possesses in common with ani the great outer world than the a region of twilight for the greatei of his fathers, became the property
mals, all the faculties of man being study of the thickest volumes pro- part of a thousand years. In 992 of ignorant, mexorahle, indolent
in it
iv were prophetically
f ' r _____ ______
as
foreshad duced by our closet-philosophers, it was asserted that scarcely a sin-, masters. He was obliged to travel
»wed in the animal world, hut in All the definitions of these learned gie person was to be found, in Rome j fifty leagues with their carts when
lim more highly developed by gentlemen, all their tenets and ar- itself, who knew the first elements they required it; he labored for
neans of natural selection. On guments, all the deductions from of letters. Not one priest of a them three days in the week, and
loser consideration all the sup- the so-called “highest principles of thousand in Spain, about the age of surrendered to them half the pro
>osed specific distinctive characters science” which they profess to have Charlemagne, could address a com- duct of his earnings during the
jetween man and animals fall discovered, are broken by the force letter of salutation to another.” In other three; without their consent,
iway, and even those attributes of of these simple facts, like soap bub- that midnight hour of unnatural j he could not change his residence
lumanity which are regarded as bles against the objects which they superstitions every torch-bearer was or marry. And why,indeed, should
nost characteristic, such as the in- strike.—[Man in the Past, Present, persecuted as an enemy of the hit- he wish to Hurry, if he could
ellectual and moral qualities, the and Future.
man race.
Bruno, Campanella, scarcely save enough to maintain
ipright gait and free use of the
-----------------
Kepler, \ anini, Galilei, Copernicus, himself? The Abbot Alcuin had
lands, the human physiognomy
New’s from Manila says 35 schools Descartes and Spinoza had to force twenty thousand slaves called serf.-,
ind articulate language, social ex- with a probable attendance of 5,- their way through a snapping and who were forever attached to the
stence and religious feeling, etc., 000 pupils were opened in that city howling pack of monkish fanatics soil. This is the great cause of the
ose their value or become merely On .July 3, by order of the provost "bo beset the path of eveiy reform- rapid depopulation observed in the
relative as soon as we have recourse marshal. One hour each day is to er> anf^ overcame the heroism of ail Middle Ages, and of the prodigious
o a thoroughgoing comparison be given to teaching the English but the stoutest champions of light multitude of convents which sprang
:ounded upon facts In this, how- language. If Sectarianism is ex-
freedom. From the tenth to up on every side. It was doubtless
jver, we must not, as is usual, con- eluded from those schools then this tbe end of the sixteenth century not a relief to such miserable men to
ine our attention to the most high- move is in the right direction, oth- less than 3,000,000 heretics i.e,, find in the cloietere a retreat from
('.included on rtth page.
y cultivated Europeans, hut m ust1 erwise not.—[Progressive Thinker. 1 scholars and free inquirers, had to
Torch of Reason—Acrostic.
I
j