The New Gospel

For just as children tremble and fear all things in blind darkness, so we in the light, fear, at times, things that are no more to be feared than what children shiver at in the dark and imagine to be at hand.  This terror of the mind, therefore, and this gloom must be dispelled, not by the sun’s rays nor the bright shafts of day, but by the aspect and law of nature.

[Men fall] foully groveling on the ground, crushed beneath the weight of superstition [false religion, under which gods are said to govern the world] ... And with reason; for if men saw that a limit has been set to tribulation, somehow they would have strength to defy the superstitions and threatenings of priests; but, as it were, there is no way of resistance and no power, because everlasting punishment is to be feared after death. 

[I will explain] all else that men see happening in earth and sky, when they are often held in suspense with affrighted wits—happenings which abuse their spirits through fear of the gods, keeping them crushed to the earth, because their ignorance of causes compels them to refer events to the dominion of the gods, and to yield them to the place of kings.

But nothing is more delightful than to possess lofty sanctuaries serene, well fortified by the teachings of the wise, whence you may look down upon others and behold them all astray, wandering abroad and seeking the path of life [though not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy]: —the strife of wits, the fight for precedence, all laboring night and day with surpassing toil to mount upon the pinnacle of riches and to lay hold on power.  O pitiable minds of men, O blind intelligences!  In what gloom of life, in how great perils is passed all your poor span of time!  not to see that all nature barks for is this, that pain be removed away out of the body, and that the mind, kept away from care and fear, enjoy a feeling of delight!