Disease Traced to the Early Ages and Its Causes-Religion. [Final]

To see where I differ from any living man that I ever heard of is to show what others believe. Disease is something outside of man's opinions as the people believe. This belief makes disease not dependent on man's belief, but existing independent of it. To prove it, they quote a child and say the child has no mind yet it has a disease, so of course some remedies must be applied to cure a phenomenon which has no connection with mind. Thus error called disease is admitted by almost every human being and no one denies the phenomenon, and the whole civilized world agree that disease is something that exists independent of the mind. But in the causes and mode of cure they differ and this makes all the varieties of practice.

Since the priests lost the power of curing, the causes of disease have changed. Under the priests, God was the author of disease which was the punishment for some crime or misdemeanor and the priests judged of the disease according to the crime. All through the Old Testament disease followed some sin that the people had committed as it did in the cases I have mentioned. The gout, leprosy, scrofula and rheumatism were all diseases that were cured by the priests. Now how did they cure? The people in those days would answer, By the power of God. Here was their cause and remedy; the priests had made the people believe that unless they followed after their wisdom, some trouble would come. All that was needed when some phenomena occurred was to attribute it to some wrong which they had done and the priest would ask God to forgive them and their forgiveness was the cure. This was their religion and to make all healthy and good, all must believe; but there were some who would not believe in this way and instead of calling on the priest, they called on the magicians or on some other craft, for they believed in disease. Every person that cured or attempted to cure uses the means in which they have faith. The medical men make the people believe that certain medicines will cure. The Spiritualist makes the people believe that they have some gift or power from the dead which directs them what to do. The Catholic priests, although they have lost their power, still claim to cure through the agency of God. These all admit disease. I stand alone on this ground that the phenomenon, disease, is the punishment of our belief.

The priests commenced the evil and they are at the bottom of all this. One need not go back further than Moses to show that restrictions put upon the people made them nervous and the phenomenon that followed they called a sin or disease, instead of the fear of the priests, for any simple thing that happened was some sin and the punishment, disease. Upon my theory, all disease can be accounted for by explaining the cause. Disease was the great evil that people were afflicted with and various modes of getting rid of it were introduced. These include the people's religion, and just as that changed, so the evils or disease changed; but since the medical men have established their belief, they have the people more in their power than ever the priests had. Just as the latter lose their hold on the people, the doctors catch them. The people are just as superstitious in regard to the origin of disease as they were in Moses' time, and instead of correcting the evil, they have increased it. The Catholics are freer from disease than the Protestants for the latter having lost their faith in the priests have regained it in the medical faculty. The causes are not explained, and until they are, people will believe and put their lives in the hands of these humbugs: priests, doctors, mediums, mysteries or something else, and they will continue to do so till they learn wisdom. Wisdom will teach them that everything we see is a phenomenon, and the cause that produces it is outside of it. Every thought that takes form in mind or matter has its cause outside of it, and man stands outside of all the above. To believe a thing is to make it.

To believe a thing is to make it in the mind, for believing is understanding. If you believe what a person tells you, you create in your own mind the thing, and when you have created the thing, you are either in it or outside of it. For instance, I will tell you of some new disease. If I can explain it to you so you believe it, you have got it in your mind, ready to spring up at any time when your system is in the right condition, so you are in danger of the disease. If you had wisdom, the lie or disease would be in your wisdom as a lie, and be a dead letter; but if you believed it, your wisdom would be confined in your belief and your punishment is the disease. I am in no belief but am outside of them all. I look upon the medical and religious beliefs as the offspring of heathen mythology and priestcraft. The fear of death is the cause of nine-tenths of all disease. Rewards and punishments make men sick and bring on disease. The first origin is putting restrictions on children in the form of religious instruction. Take two children and bring them up in this way. Put restrictions on one, teach it if it does wrong God will punish it and give it religious instruction. Take the other and let it learn everything scientifically. Use no deception; never use the word God or religion but be kind and reason with it; then see which of the two will make the best man. One will be free from superstition, easy in manners, kind in disposition. The other will be fault finding, crabbed and overbearing, for just as you measure out to a child, just so the child will measure out to others. If you want to make a child good, be good yourself; and if you want him to be honest and respected, respect yourself and do not try to make your children believe what you do not believe yourself.

The idea that the Bible teaches another world is all false; the New and Old Testaments were written to make man better and civilize him. The leaders like politicians varied in the mode of instruction. In the Old Testament, the people were governed by the rod, and in the New, Jesus introduced reason and sympathy. Disease was the consequence of civilization, not that it is impossible that man might advance without it, but the principle on which such a civilization is grounded would be scientific reasoning and analysis about every phenomenon of life and would not contain any religious belief, for that contains the seed of all man's error and misery.

PPQ December 1861