Knowlton Biography Chapter 30
Thirty: Three Remarkable Lectures
Superstition, O thou graceless offspring of ignorance and knavery! What of evil hast thou not done? The life’s blood of how many millions hast thou caused to flow upon the field of battle? How many weeping widows, destitute orphans, and disconsolate lovers hast thou not made? The thousands thou hast consigned to the dungeon, the scaffold, the rack, the blazing faggot, who can tell? The money, thought, and time devoted to thee, what good might they not do in a better cause?
Charles Knowlton was released from the East Cambridge Jail on March 31st, 1833. He was met at the prison gates by a small group of freethinkers, and taken to Boston for a bath and a decent meal, possibly at Abner Kneeland’s home. Then Charles went to Julien Hall and gave two lectures, one in the afternoon and another in the evening. These had been announced in the Investigator, which said “We know not the subject; but whether it will have any relation to the doctor’s late imprisonment or not, we are decidedly opposed to any and all attempts to suppress knowledge of any kind by law. If any may be suppressed, all may ultimately be suppressed, except what mother Church will graciously permit.” So the hall was probably filled both with Knowlton’s supporters and with people curious to see the notorious doctor who had just been let out of jail.
Charles talked for hours, and Abner Kneeland published the transcript of his lectures as a pamphlet titled Two Remarkable Lectures Delivered in Boston, By Dr. C. Knowlton, On the Day of His Leaving the Jail at East Cambridge, March 31, 1833, Where He Had Been Imprisoned, For Publishing a Book. In the first talk, Charles began with a short attack on the superstition he said was behind his recent imprisonment. Superstition, Charles said, “is a belief in that, of which our experience gives us no knowledge; and which cannot stand the test of reason and free inquiry.” It was used by the powerful to control society with threats of eternal punishment and a promise of eternal bliss. But fear of damnation and faith in salvation were both illusions, Charles said. The strong feelings “religionists” had about these matters didn’t prove their beliefs to be true. “They are only evidence that they do believe. Only inform a man that he has drawn a prize of $10,000, in such a manner that he will believe, and his feelings will be the same, whether in reality he has or has not.”
If religion meant nothing more than morality, Charles said, then there would be no problem. But superstition was used to end public discussion about morality—and especially to silence social critics and reformers—by claiming that only one party had the authority to voice an opinion. Then religion became “a kind of hobby-horse, upon which…low, selfish, time-serving hypocrites…the crafty, and even the numbskull have jumpt—yes, jumpt, and rode triumphant into public favor and patronage.” Religious opinions enforced by law were nothing more than the ruling class’s most effective tool for preserving their power. Science challenged the superstitions that gave religion its voice of authority. Moral reform challenged the claim that only the church had anything to say about how people and societies ought to behave. Freethought contained both, Charles said, so “every effort to hinder and obstruct free inquiry, is a downright acknowledgment” of religion’s weakness, “for actions speak truer than words.”
After this introduction, Charles proposed to “attack—and perhaps I shall rend—the very vitals of superstition, by explaining the phenomena of thought upon the principle of Materialism, and by so doing, remove that which has most led men to believe in spiritualities; which belief is, indeed, about as essential to the continuance of superstition, as the heart is to animal life.” By materialism, Charles said, he meant “the doctrine that the thinking part of man is material—not immaterial or spiritual.” There was no soul for the religionists to threaten in the afterlife, Charles said. All moral choices had to do with increasing happiness and decreasing misery for people now. And everyone was equally qualified to think about these choices.
In spite of having just been released from a prison cell where he had no access to books, and in spite of not being a public speaker, Charles lectured for several hours to an audience of freethinkers and curious Bostonians. In the first lecture, he described the organization of the brain and nervous system. In the second, he explained his theories of sensation, thought, memory, imagination, and choice. This was basically the same material he’d covered in Elements of Modern Materialism, but Charles probably reached more people with his theories on that day than had ever seen his book. And he put the ideas in a compelling new context, making materialism the basis for challenging social authority. “Is it not strange,” Charles asked at the end of the second session,
that a class of men should have so long presumed to tell us how we are made, what sort of things we are, and what will become of us when we are dead, when they have never made man their study. A knowledge of man, as an animal, ought to lie as a foundation upon which all systems of morality, and all laws relating to the moral conduct of individuals, are founded.
Although Charles had planned to go home to Ashfield immediately after these lectures, he was detained for several days in Boston. On the spur of the moment, Charles and Abner decided to host a third lecture, and Charles dashed off some ideas about morality to answer the questions left in people’s minds by his previous talks. Kneeland published a transcript in the Investigator.
“I adopt the principle of utility,” Charles announced, “and say that whatever is useful, that is, whatever is conducive to happiness, is right—and it is right because it is conducive to happiness, and for no other reason.” Utilitarianism was well known to philosophy students who read Jeremy Bentham—Knowlton claimed the idea for Bostonians more accustomed to hearing threats of divine punishment from the pulpit. And Charles had a challenge for society. “Only let reformers of the present day have the field one tenth part so long as christianity has had,” he said, “and I verily believe mankind would be much more enlightened, moral, and happy, than at present.”
Superstition and religious authority wasn’t a legitimate source of moral truth. People would have to learn to think for themselves, Charles said. “I know no better method of removing these difficulties, than to give mankind an enlightened education, and then let them judge for themselves.” Of course, some of the moral discoveries people made wouldn’t be comfortable for the powers that be, Charles admitted. “The organization of society will never be perfect so long as some persons have more than enough to make them as happy as property can make them, while others, by their best exertions, cannot obtain enough for this purpose.”
Determining right and wrong, Charles warned, was not about applying rigid principles. It was about understanding circumstances. “There is nothing for the word virtue to signify,” Charles said, “but virtuous conduct; that is, conduct which secures or promotes your own happiness, or that of others. Sin signifies nothing but sinful conduct; and sinful, wicked, evil, vicious, or bad conduct is only such as is productive of misery.” For example, temperance leagues were springing up everywhere, Charles observed. But they were not really advocating the temperate—that is, moderate—use of alcohol. They were advocating abstinence. “Now what shall we say?” Charles asked:
Shall some wholly deprive themselves of a thing capable of exciting agreeable consciousness, because others misuse it? I will tell you what I say. I say every man has a natural right to make a temperate use of those things which give rise to agreeable consciousness; and that it argues much against the old order of things, that the priests, who have so long had the steering of the social car should let it get so stuck in the mud, that they are now under the necessity of calling upon temperate men to relinquish a natural right—to relinquish their luxuries, entirely, for the good of others. It seems to me that if society was organized upon just and natural principles, there would be no necessity of calling upon men to relinquish any of their natural rights for the public good.
People could easily learn to make their own moral choices, Charles concluded optimistically. There was no need for abstract theorizing about virtue and sin. “I know of no higher incentive to virtue than our own happiness, and the happiness of mankind, in this life,” Charles said. “If mankind in general stand in need of other motives to do right,” he concluded, it was only “owing to their attention having been so much directed to unseen things beyond the clouds.”