Our Name & Purpose – Moses Harman, 1893

Republished from our predecessor publication Lucifer the Light Bearer

As the etymology of the word indicates, Lucifer’s purpose—Lucifer’s object—is to bring light. Light
is the emblem, the synonym, of truth, of wisdom, of progress, of life; while darkness is the emblem,
the synonym, of error, of ignorance, of stagnation, decay, and death. Whoever, then, and whatever
brings light is a friend, a benefactor, an evangel. To the scholar, the name Lucifer brings no suggestion
of sulphur, or of the horned and hoofed creations of mythology, theology, and demonology, but instead
recalls the beautiful and inspiring astronomic legend: “Son of the Morning”—“Herald of the Dawn”
—brightest jewel in the galaxy, the tiara of the heavens. But if, by mistake or through sheer ignorance,
anyone should associate the ancient name of the morning star with the devil of theology—the so-called
tempter in the fabled Eden—the mistake would cast no discredit upon the pedigree, the honorable
prestige, of the name Lucifer. The tempter aforesaid is represented in the Edenic story as the patron
of learning, of intelligence and knowledge—the “knowledge of good and evil.” He is also represented
as the champion and exemplar of truth-telling as against paternalistic falsehood and deception. In brief,
then, Lucifer stands for light against darkness, for knowledge against ignorance, for honesty against
deception, for truth-telling against falsehood. Alexander Pope says: “’Tis education forms the common
mind, Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined; But education never yet supplied What ruling nature
has denied.” We spend vast sums of money to educate the young; we build prisons, asylums, and
reformatories to restrain, shelter, and reform the criminal, the imbecile, and the vicious; but we do
almost nothing in the way of removing the bad conditions that prevent “ruling nature” from doing her
work so well that expensive education, prisons and asylums, wars and scaffolds will not be needed.
Emerson says: “To reform a man we must begin with his grandmother.”

That is to say, it is hopeless to expect to reform the present generation of men; but if we begin now with
the mothers and the prospective mothers of the oncoming generations of men—if we give these mothers
what they need in the way of education in all that pertains to heredity, and if we supply them with the
conditions necessary to perfect motherhood—we shall then have rational ground of hope that the
grandchildren of the present generation will need no reforming, will be so well born that they will not
need to be born again. By thus striking at the root, we hope to do more effective work than is possible
by merely lopping off a branch here and there; and though the full fruition of these efforts will not be
seen by those who now try to lay the axe at the root of the tree of evil, we feel assured that so long
as nature’s methods remain the same—so long as the law of causation holds, and so long as human
solidarity is a fixed fact—we cannot miss our reward.