The Creation of God - Jacob Hartmann (readict TXT) 📗

All the organs in the body are capable of performing their functions the moment the child is born. Most organs have performed their functions prior to the child’s birth. Circulation, respiration, digestion, secretion, and excretion—these functions are performed at once. These are involuntary, and require no educational training. They are performed while the organism is otherwise entirely helpless.

1. The first few weeks.—

The nervous system is not developed. The special senses are not responsive—neither sight, hearing, taste, nor smell. There are no voluntary muscular movements, no coördinations of muscles. Nervous and muscular tissues undeveloped. Special senses undeveloped, no recognition. It has no mind—no faculties, morality, intellect, memory, reason, judgment. In short, it has nothing innate—no principle of either God, soul, or religion. No will power. The muscular and nervous tissues are not yet able to perform their functions, except such as are reflex and of an involuntary character. No expression.

2. A few weeks after birth.—

Impressions of light perceptible. Sensations slightly improved. Expression still blank. No volition. No recognition. Cry the only sound.

3. Three months.—

Special senses improved. The eye steadier. The child begins to recognize its mother, etc. Utters sounds of satisfaction. Perceives sounds indistinctly. No coördinate movement. Upper extremities more active. Expression of face improved—smiles.

4. Six months.—

Muscular tissues more developed—crawls. No coördination of muscular action. Sight improved—recognizes mother, father, etc. Excretions involuntary. Expressions of pain and satisfaction more palpable. Hearing improved—listens to sounds. Playfulness. Makes sounds of satisfaction and dissatisfaction more distinctly. No articulation.

5. One year.—

Special senses more developed. Coördination still imperfect. Excretion involuntary. Upper extremities more active. Fear manifested. The dawn of want. Recognizes a few objects. Pleasure expressed as well as anger. Likes and dislikes exhibited in some degree. Beginning of articulation. Sounds more distinctly recognized. Sight more perfect. Taste slightly developed. Smell—no discrimination.

A child one year old—(a) Recognizes its parents imperfectly. Has slight coördinate movement of the upper extremities, and beginning of coördination of the lower extremities. Manifests its wants by making noises, but has no articulation. Sensations of pleasure, pain, and anger are more plainly expressed. Playfulness is greater. Fear is exhibited. (b) It has no mind, no intellect, no will power. No God, no religion, no soul. No thought, no idea, no conscience. No faculties, no memory, no judgment. No knowledge of objects, or numbers. It knows nothing of comparison, relation, liberty, morality, love, hate, shame, joy, sorrow, despair, envy, ambition, pride, etc., etc.

6. Second year.—

The master tissues begin to perform their functions—the muscular and nervous tissues. Digestive apparatus more completely developed by the appearance of teeth. All the special senses more susceptible. Voluntary muscles begin to act, though imperfectly. Coördination still uncertain. Muscles of articulation attempt to produce articulate sound—beginning to imitate. Recognizes some objects; cannot discriminate. The sense of taste shows signs of development. The sense of smell—no discrimination. The sense of hearing recognizes simple sounds—voice. The sense of sight more distinct. The sense of feeling slightly improved. Attracted by bright-colored objects. Selfishness exhibited—seizes objects indiscriminately. Shows fear; knows nothing of danger. Manifestation of affection toward those who care and provide for its comfort. Excretions still pass involuntarily. Responds feebly to calls. Playful. Cognizant of light and darkness, indoors and out of doors. Shows signs of preference. Training begins; involuntary acts checked to a slight extent only.

At the end of the second year the child (a) recognizes its parents and others about it. Has coördinate movements comparatively correct of both lower and upper extremities. May manifest its wants by imperfect articulation. The sensations of pleasure, pain, and anger are more emphatic. (b) The will power is slight. The memory is very feeble. Discrimination begins in simple matters.

7. Third year.—

Training progresses. Coördination complete. Nerve centers formed. Will power attempted. It depends at this age upon the surroundings—the guidance, attention, direction given to the child. It is more susceptible to impression. Memory improving. Perception manifested, but little discrimination. Articulates more perfectly. Imitates to some extent. Excretion controlled. Playful, active. All the senses work. More subject to discipline—obeys more readily. Teachable in right and wrong of a simple character. Likes and dislikes more prominent. Recognizes objects. Begins to pronounce.

At the end of this period there is no manifestation of anything innate. The child knows nothing. Only the muscular tissues are more active, and the nervous tissues more susceptible to teaching. It has no faculty of any kind.

The functions of the brain are more distinctly manifest through the organs of special sense. The child will become just what you make it; though the latent inherited qualities will give impulse to some directions more than others. Thus inclinations and susceptibilities are awakened that may lead to greater or less distinction.

All that the child thus far has developed is instinctive, checked and modified by those in whose care it is. The animal nature predominates, and the child at this stage will become a brute if left to itself.

If the proper training, teaching, discipline, or education is from this time forth properly applied and the latent power judiciously brought out, mind and intellectual qualities may be developed—differing in degree and intensity—by the bias or bent given to the functions of the great nervous center. On the culture of this organ depends the kind of creature we may have when full grown in the shape of either man or woman. Any kind of sentiment, belief, or superstition, prejudice, hate, brutality, humanity or inhumanity, good or bad habits, vicious or benign—with no end to the variety, such as we witness among ourselves and among the various nations upon earth—may be inculcated.

It is brain function, brain culture, brain education, that produces greater or lesser minds, that evolves from mere intelligence the highest intellectual powers, that marks the difference between man and man from the meanest savage to the greatest philosopher and scientist.

Brain may exercise will power without training, culture, or education. The muscles may exercise strength without training, culture, or education. It is the systematic attention of the one as of the other, the frequent repetition, steady practice, that produces skill in the one, as in the other; it is the patient application and perseverance in the one as in the other, sustained by constitutional endurance, that makes the expert in the one as well as in the other.

It is the united forces of the master tissues that have produced all that is and was, and will continue to produce all that ever will be.

Soul is the product of the imagination. It has no immortality, because it has no existence.

There are a class of men that are interested in sustaining the delusion; these are the priesthood.

What we want is not the salvation of souls, but the salvation of man.

If soul is the collective name of brain product, or combined result of brain function and education, we need not disagree about the word. But if it is insisted upon that the word soul means something distinct and apart from the animal body, a supernatural manifestation, a supernatural gift or endowment, given to man at birth and to man only, and that this piece of supposed God enters the body at some period during birth and quits the body at death, it is not true! On the contrary, it is false. Man has no soul, nor has any other animal, except that power that is produced by the nervous material. The brain has a function to perform, like every other tissue in the body. The muscular tissue, the liver tissue, etc., each perform their function. The great nervous centers and the special senses, being intimately connected, carry all impressions direct to the brain; the retention of impressions, the memorizing, the recollection, the formation of ideas, of thought, imagination, are the immediate functions of the nervous substance. These are secreted in a similar manner as the pancreas secretes pancreatin; with this distinction, that pancreatin is a fluid, while the quality of nerve function is a force, a power, a manifestation, or phenomenon if you choose. Electricity is a product of a similar nature. There are other forces of a nature similar in character, the result of chemical combinations.

Let the blood be overcharged with carbonic acid and circulate in the brain, the nerve tissue will at first act irregularly, next very erratically, and finally stop its function altogether. The function of the brain is partially suspended in certain diseases, as in hysteria, epilepsy, and chorea or convulsions. And where there is no brain, or little brain, there is no function or very little function. The variety of brain, with its inequality of size, quantity, quality, the hereditary failings, opportunity, training, education, all, and much more, make up the sum total of mind. As you educate the brain, so the mind will be. It will exhibit energy and endurance, and perform its functions, in proportion as the nervous structure is healthy, the chemical constituents evenly balanced, and the equilibrium of all the organs and tissues of the body evenly and smoothly maintained, so that the molecular and chemical or vital and nervous elements of the brain perform each and every one its proper office.

There is no immortality of the soul, nor is there such a thing as death of instinct. There is nothing immortal except the elementary substances, proper; they cannot be destroyed. All live bodies function, no matter how small or how simple; complex bodies also function, and each and every organ that enters into the composition performs its function.

Every phase, every phenomenon, is a manifestation of matter. Thunderstorm, lightning, electricity, or thought—whatsoever it may be, call it by any other name, designate it or describe it how you will, we cannot separate any object from this terrestrial globe of matter. The elements composing this world gave birth to life, life manifests its energies in many forms, then returns again to the great ocean of elements whence it came.