Аннотация:
His end on St. Helena (not the code Napoleon, or the hieratic and ultra economic arrangement of his material forces) was supposed to have achieved something for society! Similarly Socrates and his death were descanted on as having almost a religious, if not a Christian import. His death was painted as having been brought about by his higher moral views — not his private deeds! The true significance of the man as illustrated by the exact details of his life were utterly ignored. I could go on by the hour, the day, the week. Personally, because my father was a Catholic, and I was baptized in that faith, I was supposed to accept all the dogma, as well as the legends of the Church, as true. In the life around me I saw flourishing the Methodist, the Baptist, the United Brethren, the Christian, the Congregationalist, the what-not churches, each one representing, according to its adherents, the exact historic and truthful development and interpretation of life or the world. As a fourteen or fifteen year old boy, I listened to sermons on hell, where it was, and what was the nature of its torments. As rewards for imaginary good behavior I have been given colored picture cards containing exact reproductions of heaven! Every newspaper that I have ever read, or still can find to read, has had an exact code of morals, by the light of which one might detect at once both Mr. Bad Man and Mr. Good Man, and so save one’s self from the machinations of the former! The books which I was advised to read, and for the neglect of which I was frowned upon, were of that naive character known as pure. One should read only good books — which meant, of course, books from which any reference to sex had been eliminated and what followed as a natural consequence was that all intelligent interpretation of character and human nature was immediately discounted.
