Excerpt from First Principles
To hint at such a thing as the cure of physical and moral evil on the first principles of the present received theory of man, or to entertain the most remote idea of any considerable improvement in human life, far less to dream of millennial bliss, is not only very wrong, but the height of folly, and would justly entitle the person broaching such a chimera to a residence in the nearest lunatic asylum.
Although such a view is tolerated in the teachings of every sect, and although the soul of man has through every generation for ages been looking for the realisation of the bliss thus solemnly promised, yet it has so long since ceased to hope on the subject, or the period is placed always so far in the future, that when the teacher refers to it, every one, himself included, knows he does not mean it - that he really means nothing by it - that he is only preaching, and therefore must be allowed to say then and there what he chooses.
Notwithstanding this flourish of trumpets under the sacred name of religion, the induced state of the minds of men and their early culture have a great deal to do with their condition, the nature, quality and turn of their thoughts, feeling, language, disposition and action, as well as with the health of their bodies, and the peace and well-being of the body politic. This no one can dispute, because it is the state of the mind which makes the difference between savage and civilized life, between one nation and another, between the sects, between one man and another, even between the same man at one time and at some other, and between health and sickness. It is, then, not only mind, but the state of the mind that makes the man.
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