For Those Inclined to too Much Reason
This is a nice poem particularly for those too bound to their own notions of what constitutes acceptable data in the argument for or against religion. Really a bit of doggerel, but it makes the point amusingly and lightly.
The Positivists Edward James Mortimer Collins Life and the Universe show Spontaneity; Down with ridiculous notions of Deity! Churches and creeds are all lost in the mists; Truth must be sought with the Positivists.Wise are their teachers beyond all comparison,
Comte, Huxley, Tyndall, Mill, Morley, and Harrison;
Who will adventure to enter the lists,
With such a squadron of Positivists?Social arrangements are awful miscarriages;
Cause of all crime is our system of marriages;
Poets with sonnets, and lovers with trysts,
Kindle the ire of the Positivists.Husbands and wives should be all one community,
Exquisite freedom with absolute unity;
Wedding rings worse are then manacled wrists,
Then he was a MAN - and a Positivist.If you are pious, (mild form of insanity,)
Bow down and worship the mass of humanity,
Other religions are buried in mists;
We're our own gods, say the Positivists.
Just as a side note, the Huxley mentioned here is T.H. Huxley, relative in some fashion or another of the quasi-mystical Aldous Huxley (who, along with C.S. Lewis had the misfortune to die on the day of the Kennedy Assassination).