1861

[one_third padding=”0 10px 0 0px”] [/one_third][two_third_last padding=”0 0px 0 10px”] RELIGIO-POLITICAL PHYSICS: OR, THE SCIENCE AND ART OF MAN’S DELIVERANCE FROM IGNORANCE-ENGENDERED MYSTICISM, AND ITS RESULTING THEO-MORAL QUACKERY AND GOVERNMENTAL BRIGANDAGE. BY CALVIN BLANCHARD. “Nature is all-sufficient; man’s fancied “supernatural” longing is her index to the perfection to which development, including science and art, irrepressibly tend. All evil is consequent on ignorance, skepticism and despair, with respect to the power of the substantial, through spontaneity and practical organization, and combination, to complete the all-important half of its undertaking; to create supply, adequate to demand; to inaugurate Heaven on Earth.” — […]

In 1854, Comte’s Positive Philosophy and Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity fell under my observation. Many years before I had read Fourier. His system, by itself, however, seemed to me to lack foundation. But Comte furnished that foundation, and Feuerbach’s demonstration of the naturalness of “supernaturalism” precluded the possibility of my coming to any other conclusion in the premises than that the religious idea was the index to, and nature’s guaranty for, that Heaven on earth, of which Fourier was the prophet, but which he, unfortunately, attempted to minutely describe at too great a distance, and thus fell into vagaries, with respect to particulars, which did much to obscure, and bring into contempt, his most profound and transcendently brilliant discoveries.