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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
**** ****
This file, its printout, or copies of either
are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
**** ****
AN INTIMATE VIEW
of
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
by
I. Newton Baker, A.M.
More than any man of his day he wrote and spoke and labored
for an unshackled healthy brain, an untrammelled truthful tongue.
New York
C.P.FARRELL
1920
**** ****
PUBLISHER'S NOTE.
This well-entitled "Intimate View," although really a grateful
Tribute, was originally prepared by Mr. Baker shortly after Mr.
Ingersoll's death, as a memorial for the private possession of the
Ingersoll family. By their permission, and on urgency of friends,
it is now given to the public in a revised and somewhat enlarged
form. It speaks eloquently for itself, and is submitted in the
confident belief that it will be warmly welcomed and highly
appreciated in a wide circle of readers. It will certainly be
regarded as a thoughtful and true if necessarily partial exposition
of the views of Mr. Ingersoll, and a finely drawn portrait of the
personality of the Great Agnostic of the century.
C.P.FARRELL.
New York, Nov. 1, 1919.
**** ****
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL
AN INTIMATE VIEW.
I.
Since the passing of this great and good, this loving and
lovable man, many eloquent tributes to his memory have been written
and spoken. These tributes have come from all parts of the world
and from all classes and conditions of men. They have reflected
through the press, the platform, the pulpit and private
correspondence the general and genuine esteem and admiration in
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
which Mr. Ingersoll was held. Many who opposed, or seemed to
oppose, his religious views, and resented, or seemed to resent, his
manner of expressing them, have in their finer moods, unheated by
the fires of controversy, admitted and admired the strength and
sincerity of his convictions, the wonderful way in which he
maintained them, and the purity and exaltation of his character and
purpose. Even theological bitterness was silenced in the presence
of death, or turned, as in some instances, into generous eulogium.
Magnanimous foes whom he had defeated in the forum of debate,
conceded the greatness and goodness of the man and acknowledged the
magnitude and value of the work he did in the world.
NO ADEQUATE PORTRAITURE.
It would seem, therefore, that little can be added, that
nothing more can be said worth the saying, that the field has been
harvested. It is only in the hope of garnering grains ungathered by
other gleaners that the present sketch has been attempted. It does
not aspire to the rank of extended biography. Its simple purpose is
to show Mr. Ingersoll as he appeared to one who had unusual
opportunities of knowing him, -- to one whose high privilege it was
to be in almost daily contact with him for many years. The writer
is only too conscious that even with this advantage what skill he
may have must fall far short of any adequate portraiture. He covets
a fineness of perception, a keenness and breadth of intellectual
vision, a balance of judgment, a strength of statement and a grace
of style he has not, fitly to undertake the study. Only a genius
can portray a genius. Only a master of expression can express a
master. and the writer has been but sitting at a great master's
feet. Any faithful sketch of such a man from such a source must
therefore be an eulogy. Admiration cannot be restrained, feelings
cannot be repressed, nor can the flow of truthful phrase be checked
when a loving pupil wields the brush or guides the pen. No matter
from what point of view he sees the subject, the same commanding
figure is before him. All the rays of white light focussed on Mr.
Ingersoll reveal him as a man of the highest, strongest, finest
mental and moral fibre, -- such a man, indeed, as Nature bears but
once among countless millions of her human children.
My acquaintance with Mr. Ingersoll began soon after the death
of his brother Ebon, and while the immortal word spoken at the
funeral were still thrilling through the world. Literature has no
parallel to this tribute by a brother living to a brother dead.
these brothers were lovers, and never failed each day on reaching
their office to give a warm embrace. The sign they first hung out
law partners became a sacred thing to Robert, and in all his
changes of location, from Peoria to Washington, to New York, --
wherever he chanced to be, -- he kept that modest little sign in
constant view from the desk in his private office.
I entered this office in 1879 as Mr. Ingersoll's. secretary,
and remained with him continuously until in 1892, a period of
nearly fourteen years. During all this time it was my privilege to
be with him in business hours, in days of leisure, of travel and of
social intercourse, to be honored by his friendship, entrusted with
his confidence, and, with my wife, enrolled almost a member of that
beautiful family of which he was creator and inspirer, sun and
shield.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
II.
AS A LAWYER.
As a young lawyer in Illinois Mr. Ingersoll quickly rose to
eminence. In a few short years he attained to the highest office in
his profession, the Attorney-Generalship of the State, -- a State
that has given to the Nation many of her legal and intellectual
giants. He won wide fame in his trial of the celebrated Munn case
and of other legal contests in Illinois. Coming to the Nation's
capital his ability as a lawyer was at once recognized and he
entered upon a large and lucrative practice. This practice was for
the most part and by preference in the Executive Departments,
although he was frequently in the United States Supreme and
District Courts.
THE STAR ROUTE CASES.
In the much misunderstood Star Route Cases Mr. Ingersoll was
leading counsel for the defense, and by unanimous consent was
chosen chairman of the defendant's attorneys in all their
conferences. His masterly conduct of those cases through a
prolonged and intricate trial covering two and more years, is a
matter of history and record. His associates were filled with
admiration and amazement at the legal ability he displayed. His
knowledge of the law, his almost infallible judgment, his
prodigious memory of the facts extending to the minutest details
and rendering him for the most part independent of the record, his
impregnable logic, his lucid statements of the law and the
testimony and his forensic power -- all marked him as easily chief
among the eminent counsel in that contest.
JURISTS' ESTIMATES.
The late Judge Jeremiah Wilson, one of the, brightest lights
of the Washington bar, said to the writer: "What most impressed me
in Col. Ingersoll's course throughout the trial and compelled my
profound admiration, was not his legal learning, wide and accurate
as I knew that to be, but his inimitable tact, his unerring
judgment of the course to be pursued day by day, the witnesses to
be examined, the weight to be given to their testimony, the points
to be included and emphasized as vital and the parts to be excluded
as irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial, -- in short, his
marvelous management of the entire case. He absolutely made no
mistakes, as the outcome proved. We seldom overruled him, and when
we did found later that he was right and we were wrong."
The Honorable Walter Davidge, dean of the Washington bar, who
had been selected by his associates to follow Mr. Ingersoll's
closing address to the jury, said: "May it please your Honor, it
was understood among counsel that both Colonel Ingersoll and myself
should have the privilege of addressing the jury if in the judgment
of either it should be thought necessary. I have felt such a deep
interest in this case that I have almost hoped he might leave
unoccupied some portion of the field of argument. I have listened
to every word that has fallen from his lips. He has filled the
whole area of the case with such matchless ability and eloquence,
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
that I have no ground upon which I could stand in making any
further argument. I can add nothing whatever to what he has said.
I need not add that every syllable he has uttered receives my
grateful endorsement."
The Capital, a leading journal in Washington, commenting on
Colonel Ingersoll's closing address to the Jury in the first Star
Route trial, said:
"The most characteristic feature of the trial was the
marvelously powerful speech of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll before
the Jury and the Judge. People who knew this gifted gentleman only
superficially, had supposed that he was merely superficial as a
lawyer. While acknowledging his remarkable ability as an orator,
and his vast accomplishments as a speaker, they doubted the depth
of his power. They heard him, and the doubt ceased. It can be said
of Ingersoll, as was written of Castelar, that his eloquent
utterances are as the finely-fashioned ornamental designs on a
Damascus blade, -- the blade cuts as keenly, and the embellishments
beautify without retarding its power."
AN EPISODE.
On one occasion the venerable Judge Wylie refused a motion
made by Mr. Ingersoll on the ground that he had already decided and
denied it. "But your Honor twice ruled the other way."
"Impossible!" said the Court. "I think the record will show," and
the Colonel handed the book to the Judge, with page and lines
indicated. The Court reddening replied: "Well, the fact that I
ruled in defendants' favor ought to be satisfactory to them, and
that I twice so ruled should not weaken the ruling nor lessen their
satisfaction."
The triumphs he scored over opposing counsel in their many
legal tilts, the heated and sometimes bitter attacks and retorts,
-- never invited by Mr. Ingersoll, but out of which he emerged
victorious, -- his uniform fairness and candor, the accuracy of his
statements when challenged, showing his thorough command of every
detail, and finally his matchless summing up, made their
irresistible impression on court and jury alike, and in the teeth
of popular opinion and clamor fomented and fed by false press
reports, and against all the power, prestige and pursuit of two
National Administrations, won the case.
HIS RESPECT FOR THE LAW.
Though by choice a lawyer and in practice an eminently
successful one, he did not seem, in later life, at least, to have
retained his early ardor for the profession. For the law itself he
never lost respect and reverence. To him it was the bulwark of
Justice, the safeguard of Liberty, and he gloried in its history
and achievements. But for the perversions of the law he felt only
contempt and indignation. He hated all dishonest and degenerate
methods in its practice. The law, he held, should be invoked only
in the interest of truth and justice, but was too often made the
tool of injustice, oppression and wrong. He scorned to resort to
the sophistries and subterfuges employed by many in the profession.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
He did not care to win a case merely for the fee involved or for
the glory of winning it. He wanted the Right to triumph and could
rejoice only when Victory perched on the heights of Truth.
Again, he chafed under the fetters and limitations of the
modern practice. He believed that justice was often entangled in
the net of technicalities. He could not endure the mechanical
reliance on books, the cast-iron molds, the cut and dried forms,
canned and labelled processes, papers and preparations ready-made
for every case and all occasions. Most of these so-called helps he
considered hindrances that crippled the law and made it limp and
halt where it ought to leap and run. "The law's delay" he said, "is
more often the lawyer's delay and should not be tolerated." Modern
methods he believed consumed time, stifled originality, repressed
individual initiative and tended to make of the law a mere puppet,
an echo of old opinions, rulings and decisions, a slave to
precedent. He hated the shackles of precedent. He hated all
shackles. He wanted to be free to decide for himself in the law no
less than in religion and in all other realms of thought and
action. He was original, creative, independent. He examined rulings
of courts but did not necessarily follow them. He has said to me,
"One Judge contradicts another and between them I make my own
decisions. If the law is not my way in this contention, it ought to
be," and on this line he fought and won many a legal battle.
DRUDGERY OF THE LAW.
Quite naturally it followed that he could not submit to the
drudgery of the law, the loss of valuable time poring over State
and Federal Reports, and while his library was a rich storehouse of
all legal lore he yet often displayed impatience when obliged to
resort to it. His clerks relieved him of that drudgery.
Nevertheless, in spite of his natural antipathies, and fully
conscious of his quick mental perceptions his genius for all
acquisition -- he acknowledged his debt to that early study and
application which had so thoroughly drilled and equipped him for
his profession. In his young manhood he had read and studied with
industry and enthusiasm, even to the breaking down of his physical
health. He knew the law in all its phases, -- its history,
principles and interpretations -- as few men knew it. And he knew
how to apply it. He was a maker of opinion and its interpreter in
nearly every continent and province of human thought.
HIS QUICK PERCEPTION.
His marvelously quick and clear perception of any problem or
proposition, no matter how intricate or involved, seemed little
less than miraculous. A prospective client once came to him with a
budget of typewritten matter and asked if he would go through it.
"Certainly; let me see it." "Very well, Colonel, I'll leave it and
call in a day or two for your answer." "Nonsense; wait a minute."
Then turning over the pages one by one he handed back the screened,
saying, "You have a good cause, and if you wish I will undertake it
for you." "But you don't know it yet, Colonel?" "Oh yes I do."
"Why, it includes a good many knotty questions and has lots of
figuring in it." "To be sure; I have gone over them; haven't I just
read it all? To convince you, I will restate it, and then point by
Bank of Wisdom
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
point Mr. Ingersoll rehearsed the subject-matter, not omitting the
figured calculations. "Amazing, Colonel; I believe you could see
through a brick wall! It has taken me and my assistants days to
prepare that statement, and you have mastered it in a few minutes!"
He tried the case and got the verdict.
INGERSOLL AND CONKLING.
Another incident will illustrate this X-ray faculty of Mr.
Ingersoll's mind. In a telegraph suit before Judge Wallace at
Syracuse, New York, the late Roscoe Conkling and the Colonel were
associate counsel. On the train from New York, Mr. Conkling said:
"I'm ashamed to confess it, Colonel, but I really haven't had time
properly to examine the papers in this case and I don't feel
prepared to argue it; you must do it, or we will have to move a
postponement." "No, no, that won't do, it will damage our suit; let
me see the papers." Mr. Conkling produced them. The Colonel
examined them. Before reaching Syracuse he handed them back,
saying: "Conkling, I will argue this case, although, as you know,
my throat is bad to-day and I'll have to whisper my argument in the
Court's ear." "I'm extremely sorry, Colonel, to put this burden on
you, but I see no other way. Do you think you understand the case
with this brief inspection?" "Perfectly; as well as if I had
studied it for weeks," and for the next few miles he laid it all
out before his astonished auditor. "Is that the way you prepare
your briefs, Colonel?" "Why not? If I can't catch on to a case by
reading it, as soon as the Court does by hearing it, I'd make a
nice Judge or lawyer, wouldn't I?" "You're a strange man, Colonel,
I can't fathom you!" The case was argued in a whisper, and won.
This remark of the Senator was meant as a compliment -- the
highest he could pay to the ability and genius of a brother lawyer.
I cannot forget his look and manner of unfeigned admiration, as he
expressed himself. Not long after -- alas, too soon! -- when the
New York Legislature requested Colonel Ingersoll to deliver before
them a memorial address on Senator Conkling, the Colonel delivered
the noblest tribute to his departed friend and associate ever heard
in a legislative hall.
When urged sometimes by nervous clients to defer his summing
up of their case a reasonable time after all the evidence was in
and the arguments heard, he would say: "I want no adjournment, I am
ready to go right on; I have heard it all as fully as the Court and
jury, and that's enough." A readier, more alert mind than Robert G.
Ingersoll's never practiced in a court of law.
BEFORE A JURY.
In the trial of a case before a jury Mr. Ingersoll was
probably at his best in the examination of a witness. He was so
patient, though persistent, in getting at the facts, so considerate
and so fair, that he often compelled the truth from hesitating and
unwilling lips. He did not brow beat or hector a witness. He did
not resort to cheap arts to entrap him. He did not abuse his
privilege as a lawyer and treat a witness on the stand as if he
were a criminal in the dock: No one under his searching cross-
examination had ever to appeal to the Court for protection. Before
a jury he was persuasive and convincing, not only by the power of
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
his eloquence, but by the force of his cogent reasoning, and the
skillful marshalling of the evidence to sustain his case. He
appealed to the reason and conscience of his jury, not to their
prejudices or passions. He was truly entitled to the reputation he
bore as one of the greatest jury lawyers of his time.
BEFORE COURT AND COUNSEL.
Before Court and counsel he was always the courteous
gentleman, never impugning motives or flinging epithet or
invective. He was always sure of his subject and object. He had
perfect poise, was always erect, self-contained and self-
controlled. He was never in a hurry, never flurried, never
flustered. He was always at himself, never taken by surprise or off
his guard. In all the many legal encounters he fought I never knew
him to be worsted in ready and apt attack and defense. The fitting
retort was always at the door of his lips, waiting to leap into
utterance, One instance will serve for many:
"ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA."
In a Toledo, Ohio, terminal suit, counsel for the other side
interrupted Mr. Ingersoll in the midst of his argument by asking:
"Colonel, did you ever read the story of Ananias and Sapphira?"
"Yes," came the reply, quick as a flash, "and while you were
speaking this afternoon I looked to see you drop dead every min-
ute!" The hit was so palpable, so perfect, that even the dignified
Court of a Federal District joined in the general convulsion and
tilted so violently in his chair that he came perilously near
toppling over.
In short, those in a position to know and qualified to judge,
-- those at all acquainted with Mr. Ingersoll's legal attainments
and career, -- accorded to him the highest honors. In nearly every
court in which he practiced he was regarded as the leading figure.
In any important case in which he appeared, only the greatest
champions ventured in the lists against him; no lesser knight of
the law could hope to cope successfully with him. He was in truth,
with all his other claims to greatness, one of the really great
lawyers of his day.
III.
IN HIS OFFICE.
He was in his office always the genial, patient, "dear old
Colonel." His clerical force and the students under him were
trusted and treated as friends. He put on no airs, assumed no
authority, affected no superiority. No arbitrary rules or
restrictions hampered his employees. He never scolded, rebuked, or
ordered, -- simply kindly requested. He was silent if displeased,
but never said a harsh, or mean, or cutting word. The air around
him was free; all the discipline was self-imposed, all the duties
self-appointed and performed with the one animating purpose, -- "to
please the Colonel." Office work in his employ was a pleasure, not
a task, -- a glad service faithfully rendered and just as
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
faithfully and fully recognized. There never was a kinder, juster,
or more generous employer. He used to say: "Do you want to know one
real test of a man? How does he treat his employer; how does his
employer treat him?"
Interruptions when he was busy in his office, did not seem to
disturb or distract him. In the midst of dictation of
correspondence or argument he would welcome a caller and after a
chat or "interview" resume his dictation at the point of leaving
it. Sometimes an hour, a day, or even days, would intervene; he did
not lose the thread but went on weaving as though the loom had not
for an instant stopped. He shut no visitor, although his clerks of
their own motion excluded many a freak or crank, notwithstanding
his repeated request to deny no decent person on audience.
The Colonel was fond of bright newspaper men. He liked to
answer questions. Interviewers flocked to him. They were always
welcomed and never disappointed if they asked sensible and proper
questions. "Fire away!" was his cheery invitation, and to their
queries a flood of wit, wisdom, humor, philosophy, logic and sense
would pour out as from a strong fountain. The files of many
metropolitan journals were enriched by these spontaneous effusions.
HIS DAILY MAIL.
His dally mail was heavy. All sorts of people wrote to him on
all conceivable subjects. This correspondence was sifted; only a
tithe reached his eye, -- those letters absolutely requiring his
attention. Requests to lecture and appeals for pecuniary help were
of course multitudinous. Many were granted, though of necessity
more were denied. Aside from his large business and professional
correspondence, letters on religious questions poured in upon him.
Advice, argument and appeal, more or less sincere, and sad to say,
abuse, slander and defamation of the most scurrilous kind, were not
uncommon, while now and then anonymous threats of his life were
received. Whenever possible, and wherever sincerity and
intelligence were manifest and abuse and malice absent, these
letters received reply. They were copied, and the letter-books
containing these replies would make a rich mine of material for
extended biography.
SENSE OF LOCALITY.
He had little order in the care of papers; his desk was for
the most part in confusion. And yet he had a method of his own,
with all the apparent disorder. When his desk reached the limit of
congestion, letters and papers were carefully collected, classified
and filed for him and the coast thus cleared. "I put that paper
just where I wanted it, why did you remove it?" was his usual
comment on this desk-clearing process. His sense of locality was so
keen that many times I have seen him produce a needed document from
a large bundle, or a letter from beneath a scattered pile, without
a moments hesitation. He could have found that celebrated needle if
he had had anything to do with putting it in the hay. His volume of
Shakespeare usually served as a paper-weight on his office desk. It
was always in sight and often taken up even in busy hours. He
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
needed for it no index or concordance. Page, column and line were
instantly turned to. He has said to me, "I know where to find that
passage in Hamlet; it is on page 432, on the right hand side, left
hand column, and at the bottom of the column."
Equally remarkable was his far-reaching accuracy of vision.
His eagle eye could take in more at a single glance than most men's
after close inspection. Very little going on around him escaped his
notice. Once, in a trial out West, he was to open the case. Counsel
for the other side sat to the front and left of him, several feet
removed, going over his notes prior to oral presentation. The
Colonel's quick eye caught the paper, and as he assured me, without
intention or purpose -- before he could help it -- he had taken in
several points of his adversary's argument. He was bothered, he
said, in making his opening, by the necessity of avoiding the
suspicion that he had in any way gained possession of his
opponent's brief. He made no unfair use of the accident. In fact,
he said, the knowledge hampered more than helped him.
A STAINLESS RECORD.
Nothing was, nothing could be, further from Mr. Ingersoll than
deceit, indirection or double-dealing. He was the very soul of
truth, of honor, and of candor. He was, indeed, a modern Bayard, "a
knight without fear and without reproach." His escutcheon was
unstained, and never in any court was his veracity impeached, or
his professional honor successfully assailed. He was high-soled,
high-minded, high-acting and incapable of a grovelling thought, or
a mean or low initiative. His professional antagonists, everywhere
encountered, admitted that he always fought in the open and were
often surprised at the large admissions and generous concessions he
made. His clients sometimes quaked as they feared he was giving
away their case. He was not. The outcome proved that his method was
the highest art, the wisest wisdom.
AN ORACLE.
His intuitions were like a woman's -- often infallible. In
many an instance they were as unerring as his judgment was sound,
-- amounting almost to prophecy fulfilled. On that fatal morning in
July when the assassin's bullet laid low the lamented Garfield, Mr.
Ingersoll was one of the first at the stricken President's side. He
said to me: "I know he will not live. I feel it. He may rally, and
linger a few days, but he cannot recover." Despite all that human
skill could do, all means that science could employ, or all that
Christendom on its knees could implore, the end came.
It was this gift or endowment, added to his clear judgment and
knowledge of human nature, that made him the seer and prophet he
really was. This rare combination in him was recognized by many who
sought his advice and counsel. Statesmen, politicians, men of
affairs in public and private life resorted to him as to an oracle,
and his "guesses," as he called them, frequently came true. He
never claimed to have soothsaying or clairvoyant powers, -- for he
was absolutely without a superstition -- but he was none the less
one whose predictions were often justified by the events.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
PRINCELY GENEROSITY.
He extended to young lawyers and students of the law a most
encouraging hand. He liked young men. He helped them by counsel, by
opening doors of opportunity, and with pecuniary aid. Many a
new-fledged attorney and many an aged, stranded one "on his
uppers," as he would say, went from his presence with a gladder
heart and fuller pocket. A hundred dollar bill was a frequent gift
from his open hand, to say not a word of the thousands scattered in
larger and smaller sums. He gave his advice freely to hundreds, --
especially to the widow, the poor and defenseless, and tried many
a case to a happy conclusion, not only without a fee, but himself
paying all costs and disbursements.
As a matter of fact, he was seldom richly remunerated in the
celebrated cases undertaken by him. The Star Route trials cost him
more than he received in actual compensation. He cared too little
for money to insist even on his rights. His office books were
filled with accounts never collected, with charges never paid, and
yet this did not cheek the flow of his extravagant generosity. He
loved to give. He was princely in giving. In one case where a
thirty-thousand dollar fee came to him he instantly gave half of it
to a young assistant to whom two or three thousand dollars would
have been an ample and satisfactory return for the service
rendered. In another case, on receiving a fee of fifteen thousand
dollars, he immediately wrote a cheek for one third of the amount
to the friend who had simply urged his selection as the best lawyer
for the case. The unexpected gift enabled this friend to lift a
mortgage that had long encumbered her home.
IV.
AS ORATOR AND WRITER.
Here his fame is fixed beyond all cavil, all criticism, all
calumny. His Christian censors admitted it. His fair-minded
contemporaries in every intellectual field conceded it. It was
world-wide. Appeals came to him from nearly every civilized country
for a visit and a series of addresses and lectures. An offer from
Australia guaranteed him one thousand dollars a night for as many
nights as he chose to speak, and all expenses of himself and family
paid. He was unable, though not unwilling, to accept the offer. As
a platform orator he was great. He had few if any peers in that
realm. The judgment of his rivals accords him this preeminence.
Henry Ward Beecher, who certainly may be quoted as competent
authority, once said in introducing him to a Brooklyn audience, "He
is the most brilliant speaker of the English tongue of all men on
this globe." The lamented Garfield, who himself was a distinguished
orator, once wrote to Mr. Ingersoll, who spoke for him in his
campaign for the Presidency: "I have followed with intense interest
your brilliant campaign in my behalf. You have appeared to me like
a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Your path has been one
broad band of blazing light. I give you my profoundest admiration
and gratitude." In the famous Davis Will Case in Montana both Judge
and prosecuting attorney cautioned the jury to be on their guard
lest they be carried away by Colonel Ingersoll's eloquence,
"which," the attorney remarked, "is famed over two continents and
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
in the islands of the seas, rivalling that of Demosthenes and
transcending the oratory of Greece and Rome." And this warning was
not an infrequent one to juries before whom Mr. Ingersoll appeared
as advocate.
LARGE LECTURE RECEIPTS.
His audiences on his frequent lecture tours were nearly
everywhere large and enthusiastic. "Standing Room Only" was the
sign often displayed at the entrance of the hall or theater where
he was to speak. His lecture receipts were extraordinary. In a trip
West at one time they amounted to more than fifty thousand dollars,
net, in one month. Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco
always gave him a warm and sympathetic welcome. Two or three
thousand dollars for a single lecture was not an unusual sum
received from Boston, while one great assemblage in the Auditorium
at Chicago yielded exactly seven thousand and one dollars, -- the
highest sum, we may well believe, ever realized for a single
lecture in the history of the platform.
The most thoughtful, intelligent and highly cultivated people
of a community thronged to hear him. Even hearers who hesitated to
accept all he said could not help admiring the way he said it, and
if not convinced, never left the auditorium but in a thoughtful
mood. instances were common where men and women travelled long
distances to listen to his eloquent words, and one ardent admirer
-- a young lawyer from Boston -- followed him thousands of miles
that he might not lose an opportunity of hearing him.
GREAT SPEECHES.
Most Americans are familiar with his speech nominating Mr.
Blaine for the Presidency, in which he invested that brilliant
statesman with the title "Plumed Knight," a sobriquet that remained
with him to the end of his career. His great speech at the "Grant
Banquet," his thrilling epic "A Vision of War," or "The Past Rises
Before me Like a Dream," delivered at a soldiers' reunion in
Indianapolis; his wonderful "Decoration Day Oration," in New York,
his tribute to his brother Ebon, his matchless memorial to his
friend and associate, Roscoe Conkling, and the laureate crown he
laid on the tomb of his friend and leader, the martyred Lincoln,
together with many other eulogies of the noble dead that sprang
from his generous and passionately patriotic heart, are to-day the
treasured possessions of his countrymen. His lips dropped polished
pearls that will adorn and enrich the language of his day and of
all time.
A MEMORABLE SCENE.
The tribute paid by Mr. Ingersoll to his beloved brother Ebon
was everywhere acknowledged to be the most profoundly tender and
beautiful in English literature. It has become classic. The scene
of its utterance, in its whole setting, was solemnly dramatic.
Around the bier, gathered as mourners, were many of the first men
of the Nation. They had come, not only in sympathy with the
grief-stricken brother, but to mingle their tears with his in
homage of their late friend and associate. The Hon. Ebon C.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
Ingersoll was well known in social and official circles in
Washington. He was a Member of Congress, a staunch Republican and
true patriot, and well and faithfully served his Illinois
constituency. He was a wise legislator, a man of unbending
integrity, a true and loyal friend. As a lawyer he was able and
well equipped, and while a forceful speaker, was not as "dearly
parted" as his brilliant brother although he was a wise and safe
counsellor. In religious belief he was a firm Agnostic, an ardent
supporter of Robert in all campaigns against superstition and
fanaticism, and he gloried in his fame as the greatest orator of
the day. As Mr. Ingersoll has said: "It was from his lips I heard
the first words of encouragement and praise." Ebon C. was a worthy
companion of Robert G., and an honor to the family whose name he
bore.
The following vivid description of the scene attending the
delivery of the Tribute, and of the funeral obsequies, is taken
from the National Republican of Washington, published the day after
the funeral:
"The funeral of the Hon. E. C. Ingersoll took place yesterday
afternoon at four o'clock, from his late residence, 1403 K
Street. The spacious parlors were filled to overflowing, and
hundreds were unable to obtain admittance. Among those who were
present to pay their homage to the distinguished and beloved dead
were Secretary of the Treasury Sherman, Assistant-Secretary of
the Treasury Hawley, Senators Blaine, Voorhees, Paddock, David
Davis, John A. Logan, the Hon. William M. Morrison, Hon. William
M. Springer, Hon. Thomas A. Boyd, Governor Pound, Hon. J. R.
Thomas, Hon. Thomas J. Henderson, Hon. Jeremiah Wilson, Adlai E.
Stevenson, Col, Ward H. Lamon, Col. James Fishback, General
Farnsworth, General Robert C. Schenck, General Jeffries, General
Williams and the Hon. H.C. Burchard, Judge Shellbarger, General
Birney, Governor Lowe, Acting Commissioner of Internal Revenue H.
C. Rogers, General Williamson of the Land Office and a great many
other prominent members of the bar and also a large number of
Illinoisans were present. It was the largest gathering of
distinguished persons assembled at a funeral since that of
Chief-Justice Chase.
"The only ceremony at the house, other than the viewing of
the remains, was a most affecting, pathetic and touching address
by Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, brother of the deceased. When he
began to read his eloquent characterization of the dead man his
eyes at once filled with tears. He tried to hide them, but he
could not do it, and finally he bowed his head upon the dead
man's coffin in uncontrollable grief. It was only after some
delay, and the greatest efforts at self-mastery, that Colonel
Ingersoll was able to finish reading his address. When he had
ceased speaking, the members of the bereaved family approached
the casket and looked upon the form which it contained, for the
last time. The scene was heartrending. The devotion of all
connected with the household excited the sympathy of all, and
there was not a dry eye to be seen. The pall-bearers -- Senator
William B. Allison, Senator James G. Blaine, Senator David Davis,
Senator Daniel Voohees, Representative James A. Garfield, Senator
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
A.S. Paddock, Representative Thomas Q. Boyd, of Illinois, the
Hon. Ward H. Lamon, ex-Congressman Jere Wilson, and
Representative Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois -- then bore the
remains to the hearse, and the lengthy cortege proceeded to the
Oak Hill Cemetery, where the remains were interred, in the
presence of the family and friends without further ceremony."
THE TRIBUTE.
"Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft
promised he would do for me.
"The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend, died
where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the
shadows still were falling toward the west.
"He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks
the highest point; but being weary for a moment, he lay down by
the wayside, and using his burden for a pillow, fell into that
dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in
love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence
and pathetic dust.
"Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest,
sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing
every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant
hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid sea
or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must
mark the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its
every hour is rich with love and every moment jewelled with a
joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and
dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death.
"This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak
and rock; but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the
friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights, and left all
superstitions far below, while on his forehead fell the golden
dawning of the grander day
"He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music
touched to tears. He sided with the weak, the poor and wronged,
and lovingly gave alms. With loyal heart and with the purest
hands he faithfully discharged all public trusts.
"He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed.
A thousand times I have heard him quote these words: 'For Justice
all place a temple, and all season, summer.' He believed that
happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the
only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only
priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to
whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave,
he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers.
"Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of
two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We
cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry.
From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no
word; but in the night of death Hope sees a star and listening
Love can hear the rustle of a wing.
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
"He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of
death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath,
'I am better now.' Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas,
of fears and tears, that these dear words are true of all the
countless dead.
"The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the
memory of our dead, and every sweet, unselfish act is now a
perfumed flower.
"And now, to you, who have been chosen from among the many
men he loved, to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his
sacred dust.
"Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there is, no
gentler, stronger, manlier man.
A VISION OF WAR.
What patriot can read without emotion the following thrilling
epic of the civil war, delivered at a soldiers' reunion in
Indianapolis:
"The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the
great struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of
preparation -- the music of boisterous drums -- the silver voices
of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the
appeals of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women, and the
flushed faces, of men; and in those assemblages we see all the
dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of
them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the great army
of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are
walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the
maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of
eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending
over cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the
blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold and
press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses
and tears, tears and kisses -- divine mingling of agony and love!
And some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words,
spoken in the old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear.
We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the
babe in her arms -- standing in the sunlight, sobbing. At the turn
of the road a hand waves -- she answers by holding high in her
loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.
"We see them all as they march proudly away under the
flaunting flags, keeping time to the grand, wild music of war --
marching down the streets of the great cities -- through the towns
and across prairies -- down to the fields of glory, to do and to
die for the eternal right.
"We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the
gory fields -- in all the hospitals of pain -- on all the weary
marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the
quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running with blood -- in
the furrows of old fields. We are with them between contending
hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
away among the withered leaves. We see them pierced by balls and
torn with shells, in the trenches, by forts, and in the whirlwind
of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of steel.
"We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but
human speech can never tell what they endured.
"We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see
the maiden in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered
head of the old man bowed with the last grief.
"The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human
beings governed by the lash -- we see them bound hand and foot --
we hear the strokes of cruel whips -- we see the hounds tracking
women through tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts of
mothers. Cruelty unspeakable! Outrage infinite!
"Four million bodies in chains -- four million souls in
fetters. All the sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child
trampled beneath the brutal feet of might. And all this was done
under our own beautiful banner of the free.
"The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the
bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. These heroes died. We
look. Instead of slaves we see men and women and children. The wand
of progress touches the auction-block, the slave-pen, the whipping-
post, and we see homes and firesides and school-houses and books,
and where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear, we See the
faces of the free.
"These heroes are dead. They died for liberty -- they died for
us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under
the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad
hemlocks, the tearful willows and the embracing vines. They sleep
beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of
storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red
with other wars -- they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in
the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one
sentiment for soldiers living and dead: Cheers for the living;
tears for the dead.
V.
HIS METHOD IN COMPOSITION.
Mr. Ingersoll's method in the composition Of his written and
spoken words was singularly spontaneous and unmechanical. He was
not a phrase-tinker or word-carpenter. His pictures flashed from
his brain as finished products. They were fixed on the canvas
without correcting touches of form or color, completed as created.
What his artist-soul saw and felt he instantly communicated as
visible and audible images to others' eyes and ears. No matter what
the theme, his tongue responded to his thought in instant and
perfect epigram, illustration, simile, or metaphor.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
Excepting social letters, and memoranda found on scattered
scraps of paper, he wrote little with his own hand. Nearly
everything he gave for publication was dictated. His legal briefs
and papers, his magazine and review articles, editorials, press
interviews, monographs, speeches, lectures, -- everything he wished
to say -- were delivered in faultless form through the portals of
his facile lips. Where-ever he happened to be, -- in his office, at
his home, on the boat, in the train, in the cab rattling through
noisy streets, sitting, standing, reclining -- he spoke the
splendid words that the stenographer's art caught and reproduced
for him. His famous Replies to Judge Black in The North American
Review were dictated at the billiard table in his home, with cue in
hand. A sentence and a paragraph, then a run with the balls, --
another paragraph, another run, -- and so on to the end. His
Replies to Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Field, Cardinal Manning, and other
champions in the religious arena, were 'Composed under like
distractions, as most would deem them. To Mr. Ingersoll, however,
who had as few men ever had it, the faculty of thinking on his
feet, these distractions seemed only to stimulate and concentrate
his thought.
AS A CONVERSATIONALIST.
In conversation, whether in private or social circles, he was
beyond expression delightful, versatile, great. The favored guests
at his fireside often found themselves dumb in his presence --
struck into listening silence -- so that only the one magnetic
voice was heard. He was at his best in his own home circle. Here he
showed his shining self as nowhere else. Here his abandon was
complete. Here he threw off all trammels of convention, all
reserve, all consciousness of power, and spoke and acted as he
felt, -- with the exuberance of youth, forgetful of his mature
years and ripe experience. Around his hospitable board his chosen
friends feasted on food for mind and body, heart and soul. Those
table-talks day after day, joined in by his family and guests whom
he stimulated by question and rally and the force of his genial,
gentle leadership, -- who could forget them?
And those informal Sunday evening receptions held week after
week in his Washington home! Here distinguished men and women, --
scientists, scholars, philosophers, thinkers, judges, lawyers,
merchants, bankers, capitalists, clerks, artists and artisans,
religious and nonreligious professors, and even theologian --
saints and sinners -- gathered in his parlors and drawing-room and
joined in the discussions which he led on all topics of human
interest. It is fair to say that no social or intellectual
functions of the day in Washington were better attended, more
attractive and distinguished, or so truly cosmopolitan, as those
enjoyed in the home of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. On one occasion
no less than five Presidential aspirants mingled in the throng. It
was a frequent wish of his auditors on these occasions that he had
had an audience of thousands to hear him. He spoke as no man living
spoke.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
GREAT IN STORY-TELLING.
There never was a better teller of a story" than Mr.
Ingersoll. Like Lincoln, he always had his quiver full, and never
one missed its mark. He was in constant demand as an after-dinner
speaker, and the chief attraction at many a social feast and club
banquet. He knew just where and when to stop in the narration of
any fact or fancy. His faultless allegories, similes, metaphors and
epigrams were faultlessly used. As we have seen, he was also a king
in repartee. In swift reply he always returned much better than was
sent. Those rash opponents who ventured to attack him when they
thought him off his guard repented of their temerity, for they
found him fully armed to meet them. The retort courteous or keen,
gentle or severe, grave or gay -- always fitting -- was ready at
command for every time and place, every season and occasion. Two
incidents only out of many need be here recalled.
On a train going through California a pompous clergyman
proclaimed aloud his faith to all the travellers in the car. He
passed along the aisle, and when he reached the seat in which the
Colonel sat, cried out with strident voice, "The fool hath said in
his heart, there is no God; thank God, I'm not a fool!" Before he
could strut out, the Colonel sent the swift reply, "That depends on
what the people think who know you!" At another time a pious
maiden, thinking to entrap him, brought a nosegay and handing it to
him suddenly said: "Colonel, who made these beautiful flowers?"
"The same, my dear young lady, that made the poison of the ivy and
the asp!"
HIS WEALTH OF INFORMATION.
When, or where, or how this full man acquired the treasures of
knowledge at his command has been the puzzle of his friends. As I
knew him and observed him he did not seem to be a great reader, or
student of books, and yet he was acquainted with most worth-while
books. He was not a classical scholar, so-called, yet he knew the
classics. He was not a historian, yet he knew history. He was not
a scientist or philosopher, according to the schools, and held no
college diploma, yet he knew much of nearly all the sciences and
philosophies. Colleges and universities under the patronage and
control of religious denominations, he used to say were generally
institutions where "pebbles were polished and diamonds dimmed. He
often quoted Bruno, who called Oxford "the window of learning."
Nor was he a theologian, yet he knew theologies, and could and
did successfully contend with the greatest in that field. He
claimed that they never answered his arguments. He had such a power
of ready assimilation, that everything he saw or read or heard was
instantly appropriated and became his own. He seemed to forget
nothing that he ever knew. He was always acquiring from countless
sources of knowledge. He read with the greatest eagerness and
rapidity. I have known him to glance over the pages of even
metaphysical treatises, and without apparent hesitation possess
himself of their contents.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
HIS VERSATILITY OF TALENT.
Keeping abreast of the times as he did, he knew the latest
theories, discoveries, and inventions, -- all that was going on in
the world of science and art, of men and measures. Nothing seemed
to escape his notice, or to be beyond his grasp. His range of
information was truly encyclopedic. It was said of him, as of
another eminent publicist -- I think it was of Col. Theodore
Roosevelt: -- "He had the greatest and most accurate knowledge on
the largest number of subjects, of any man I ever knew." He had a
mathematical knowledge that made him an adept in figures and much
more than an amateur in astronomy. He knew the names of all the
constellations with their principal stars, and loved by night to
sweep the heavens with his powerful telescope, and observe the
phases of the moon and movements of the planets and their
satellites. This love of astronomy and aptness with figures, he
said, "ran in the family," was an inherited gift from his mother.
He was also a well-known student of sociology and a past-master in
domestic and political economy, a wise and far-seeing publicist and
an enlightened statesman -- an ardent Republican, but not an office
-- seeker, or politician, out for the spoils.
If his role as a lawyer required a knowledge of diseases and
their symptoms and treatment, by the study of medical treatises
bearing on his case he became, for the nonce, a pathologist; of
surgery a surgeon; of finance a financier, -- and so with many of
the applied and useful arts. The many railway, telegraph and patent
suits he tried made of him a railroad organizer, director, and
president, an electrician and industrial expert. He once tried a
case in which the plaintiff had been injured in a railroad
accident, and so astonished the Court and experts that a surgeon in
attendance, surprised at his technical knowledge of anatomy, asked
him when and where he had experimented, and from what institution
he had graduated. His wonderful capacity for acquiring knowledge
needed on any subject accounts for this versatility.
A DEVOURER OF BOOKS.
While, as I have said, he did not in his later years seem to
be a great reader of books, yet in early life he had laid the
foundations well. As a boy and in his young manhood he was an
inquirer and observer. Even as a child he was a lover of books, and
later on it became with him a fascination and passion. He read
everything of value he could lay his hands on, -- knew every book
in his father's library. He read thoughtfully, voraciously,
constantly. Night after night, and all the night through, he has
told me, he has read until mentally and physically exhausted. Nor
did he wish merely to go through a book. He wanted to understand
it. He read with a purpose. He was eager to search, to find, to
know. His thirst for knowledge was insatiate. He has said: "Banish
me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of
the tree of knowledge." He was hungry for facts, for truths, for
reasons. He absorbed and assimilated, combined, separated and
classified, criticized and compared until he could reach a
decision. He never left a subject until he thought he understood
it.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
A WONDERFUL MEMORY.
His memory, as we have noted it in his career as a lawyer, was
truly a marvelous gift. Whatever once left its impress on the
tablets of his sensitive brain seemed fixed there for all the
future, to be retained until recalled. Shakespeare and Burns were
so familiar to him that he had them by heart, as we say, and he
could and did quote whole scenes and acts almost without an error,
as one would read it from the printed page. I have heard him say if
most of the plays of the one and poems of the other should be lost
of record, he could substantially restore them. And it was the same
with countless selections he had acquired from the world's greatest
thinkers and writers.
He almost deified Shakespeare, and among other tributes to
that wonderful genius, said: "Shakespeare was an intellectual
ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought; within which
were all the tides and waves of destiny and will; over which swept
all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge; upon which fell the
gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the sunlight of
content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit with
the eternal stars -- an intellectual ocean -- toward which all
rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought
receive their dew and rain."
It was a favorite saying of his, "Shakespeare is my Bible and
Burns my Hymn-book."
Upon his library table he kept two magnificent folio volumes
-- one of Shakespeare, the other of Burns; -- but unlike the
traditional "parlor ornament! -- the fetich in so many Christian
homes, -- they were there not for display, but for use, and were
constantly resorted to for, reading and reference.
A FERTILE IMAGINATION.
Added to his other gifts and qualifications, natural and
acquired, and crowning them all, was his splendid imagination. This
faculty in him: was richly developed. He seemed by its power to
mount to the loftiest heights and to see into the soul and
substance of things, -- to penetrate far beyond and below all
surfaces. He has said that he shrank from passing a cemetery, --
not through fear, for there never was a more fearless soul, -- but
because beneath the mounds and monuments he could see the faces of
the dead and clothe the moldering forms with throbbing life. This
power filled in for him all vacant spaces, supplied all missing
links. Given a bone, a scale, a root, a leaf, and the man of
science will construct for you the bird, the fish, the flower and
tree that were. So the constructive Colonel needed but the hints
and fragments of a fact to enable him to group together all related
facts and complete the structure as it was and should be. But he
went a great way farther. With "imagination's wondrous wand," as he
styled it, and with his poetic soul, he made his tree a mighty
forest, his flower a garden of Eden without its serpent, his fish
a sporting multitude peopling happy seas, and his woods and groves
a fairy land vocal with the notes of warbling birds and teeming
with all forms of joyous life. He was a poet -- a real creator --
a prophet of the truth and love and joy to be.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
HIS EARLY RELIGIOUS TRAINING.
They greatly err who think and say that Mr. Ingersoll as a
child was not, could not have been, properly trained in religious
truths and duties. He was the son of loving and praying parents.
His father was a Presbyterian and Congregational minister, beloved
and honored by all who knew him. His sweet and noble mother died
when Robert was a babe of only two years. Her loving task fell to
the father. By precept and example he strove with all his might,
fervently invoking divine assistance, tenderly and truly to train
his child in the way he should go, relying on the promise that when
old he would not depart from it. Robert was brought up on the Bible
and the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and taught a strict
observance of the Sabbath day. He was admonished to search the
Scriptures. He did search them, but found them wanting, and frankly
said so. They did not solve his childish doubts, answer his many
questions, or satisfy the awakening yearnings of his large and
affectionate heart. "Something wrong, somewhere," was his frequent
comment, even as a boy, as he read the Bible. His father was
troubled in spirit. He could not comprehend such skepticism in one
so young, -- the child of his own heart and hopes, of his own faith
and prayers. How could he, in his wildest dreams, ever have
foreseen that this bright and beautiful boy would one day ripen
into the most famous Agnostic of the century? Yet, with all his
fears and misgivings, this good father was wise and just and broad
enough to say: "My boy, be true to yourself; tell your honest
thought; never be a hypocrite!" He never was.
HIS FATHER'S TUTOR.
As he advanced in years and "grew in wisdom and stature" he
became his father's tutor in religious research. He was to him a
veritable commentary, concordance and index of Bible texts and
passages. He discussed intelligently with him the creeds, histories
and theologies, the doctrines and dogmas of Jewish, Heathen and
Christian religions. His father was proud of him although he could
not answer him, and wept over his heterodoxy, while he could not
help admiring his wonderful defense of it. While yet a boy Robert
knew the Bible from cover to cover, having read it through more
than once, and by his gift of memory retained it. He had also gone
through the Commentaries of Scott, Henry and Clarke. He knew every
book in his father's library and could quote at will from most of
them. "Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress" interested and its dramatic
style pleased him, while "Fox's Book of Martyrs" fascinated but
terrified him; it burned into his soul and filled his days with
fear and nights with horrid dreams. "Milton's Paradise Lost" with
its "heavenly militia," as he termed it, fed but failed to entrap
his imagination, and he said that Mr. Jenkyn needed to atone for
his book "On The Atonement." "Alleine's Alarm" did not frighten
him; "Baxter's Call" met no response from his intellect or heart,
and his "Saints' Rest" was not the kind of rest he thought he could
enjoy, "where congregations neer break up and Sabbaths have no
end," while Jonathan Edwards' frightful sermon, "Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God," excited only his indignation, pity and
disgust.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
The simple truth is that Mr. Ingersoll was an unbeliever from
his childhood. He has said to me as to others, that he never
remembered the time when his mind did not reject and his heart
resent what he believed to be the cruelties and falsehoods of many
of the Bible doctrines and narratives, and when he did not hate
with all his soul the injustice and savagery of the man-made God of
the Scriptures.
A WORTHY FATHER OF A NOBLE SON.
He often joined in the conversations and controversies of the
clergymen who made his father's home a favorite place of assembly.
As a youth he was remarkable for his debating powers and his
ability to define and defend his views on religion and other
subjects under discussion. His father not only respected his
convictions, but sought his opinions on disputed points of doctrine
and belief, and while he might not be able to accept his
conclusions, always accorded his son the right of private judgment
and freedom of expression. He was the worthy father of a noble son.
Long before his death, this loving and tender man who, as Mr.
Ingersoll has told me, often walked the floor at nights weeping and
agonizing over the condition of lost worlds of souls; at last,
learning "out of the mouth of his own babe and suckling," gave up
his belief in eternal torment and died abhorring it.
IN MUSIC AND THE DRAMA.
As may well be inferred from what has been said, Mr. Ingersoll
was a many-sided man. Though not a musician he was a most
discriminating judge and passionate lover of music. His ear and
heart were "finely tuned to all the harmonies." He attended all the
great operas, heard all the famous songsters, and knew familiarly
many of the masters of the baton. His own home was a temple of
music and its music-room the shrine of his dwelling. Here was his
family altar. His wife and daughters were the divinities. His two
children had been thoroughly educated in music and song, so that
under the tenderly sweet voice of the one and the exquisitely deft
touch of the other, the happy father sat as one entranced, his
sorrows soothed, his cares dismissed, his strength renewed and his
soul satisfied. Surely never was sweeter music heard in any home
than in the home of Robert G. Ingersoll.
Having such "music in his soul" he naturally gathered about
him congenial spirits. He was widely recognized as the friend and
patron of singers and musicians, of artists and actors, poets and
painters, and workers in every field of fine expression. Many of
the brightest lights in these professions were his intimates, who
sought his counsel and accepted his criticisms and suggestions on
their work. He loved the drama, was the intimate of Booth and
Barrett and their legal counsellor, the admired and admiring friend
of Joseph Jefferson, and of nearly all the popular actors of the
day. He was a contributor to the leading dramatic, musical and art
journals, a frequent visitor at artists' studios, in constant
demand and the chief attraction as a speaker in entertainments for
the benefit of the Actors' Fund, and by voice and pen showed his
sympathy with every movement for the elevation and improvement of
the actors' profession.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
In his musical taste he was passionately fond of Wagner, and
revelled in his "music of two worlds," as he styled it. He called
him "the Shakespeare of music." Beethoven's "Sweet and dim
symphonies" appealed deliciously to his sympathetic ear, and indeed
the great creations of most of the masters of song stirred him to
the depths. They thrilled, ravished, transported him. The perfect
affected him to tears. He loved in certain moods the riot of
melody, the wild and chaotic chorus, the "wolf-tone" effects of
full orchestration, as well as in placid moods he enjoyed the
quieter melody of the solo and duet. Anton Seidl as an artist in
harmony captivated him completely and won his personal regard. His
memorial tribute to that great wielder of the baton is one of the
finest in musical literature.
The violin was his special favorite among instruments. All
night long in his home he has sat entranced under the spell of
Remenyi's bow. He loved the sudden contrasts, the ascending notes
of triumph to the heights of the erescendo, and then the fall to
the diminuendo -- notes that softly floated down like snow-flakes
and like them melted in the noiseless air. The organ, unless a
master touched the keys, seldom satisfied him, -- it too often
suggested ecclesiastic service and ceremony. For a like reason the
tolling bell and metallic chime failed to please him. Beauty,
sweetness, joy, and the married harmony of form and motion, sound
and color, appealed to his aesthetic and artistic self in countless
ways, and found wide open portals at every avenue of his
art-attuned senses. He was not only a lover of art, but himself an
artist, weaving, painting, sculpturing with words, and acting his
splendid part in the drama of life, -- a drama that ended, he said,
in a tragedy for all.
CONCERNING HIS LECTURING.
Mr. Ingersoll, as we have seen, was first of all, a lawyer.
This profession was his early choice, and its pursuit through life
his chief reliance. In it he rose to eminence and won enviable
recognition. But he was more than a lawyer. He was so many-sided,
so "dearly parted, so much in having, or without or in" that one
pursuit alone could not fill his measure or provide a scope wide
and broad and full enough for all his virile powers. His brain was
large, but his heart was larger, so that while he had views and
opinions on most subjects, he had something higher, deeper,
stronger, -- he had deep-seated convictions on the side of Truth,
Justice, Freedom, Honor, Courage, Candor of the soul, and all the
human virtues.
He was an ardent patriot. He loved country and its free
institutions with a passionate fervor. He hated slavery and
oppression in every form; so we early find him in the Army of
Freedom and the Union where he earned his title of Colonel by
raising a regiment of Illinois cavalry. But the horrors of war were
too appalling to his gentle and tender spirit. He could not bear
the sight of suffering even of dumb animals, and he soon resigned
the sword of war to fight with tongue and pen the battles of the
weak, the ignorant and enslaved. And so eloquent and convincing was
this tongue, that when a prisoner in General Forrest's camp, his
influence was so marked upon the Confederate troops that the
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
General soon paroled him, saying that if he did not, Ingersoll
would convert all his men into Yankees! He was everywhere and
always a mighty champion of Liberty, Justice and Truth, of the
rights and privileges of mankind.
"WOE IS ME IF I PREACH NOT THE GOSPEL!"
Endowed as he was, and knew himself to be, he deemed it a
crime against his nature to be silent when he felt he ought to
speak. He used to say, with an arch smile at his use of a Scripture
quotation: "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel!" "The average
man," he said, "is afraid to utter his real thought." "He is the
prey of Tyranny and Superstition." "The Throne and Altar were twins
-- two vultures from the same egg." "The race is under the dominion
of Fear, -- fear of men, of ghosts, of hells. I do not fear. I will
speak what I think." "Somebody ought to tell the truth about the
Bible. The preachers dare not, because they would be driven from
their pulpits. Professors in colleges dare not, because they, would
lose their salaries. Politicians dare not. They would be defeated.
Editors dare not. They would lose subscribers. Merchants dare not,
because they might lose customers. Men of fashion dare not, fearing
that they would lose caste. Even clerks dare not, because they
might be discharged. And so, I thought I would do it myself."
Thus as a young lawyer, still studying and practicing his
profession, he gave his thought to wide and yet wider themes, to
large and yet larger audiences, and entered upon his triumphant
lecturing career.
So many thousands have seen and heard him, in so many places
and on so many subjects, that it seems hardly worth while here to
speak of his manner and method on the platform -- only to say that
as an orator he was the embodiment of natural ease and grace, poise
and power. He used few gestures, -- was not a desk-pounder, an
air-sawyer, or a stage-strutter. He was not declamatory, -- did not
rant, or rage, or "tear a passion to tatters, to very rags," as the
manner of some is, but following Hamlet's advice to the players, he
"used all gently, acquiring and begetting a temperance that should
give all smoothness." His aim was to "hold the mirror up to
nature," and he did it wonderfully. In his flights of eloquence he
carried his audiences with him, lifting them to the highest
pinnacles of enthusiasm, or stirring them to the deepest recesses
of their being. With his pathos he melted them to tears and ere the
drops were dry, by his sparkling wit and humor, transformed the
pearls of pity into smiles of joy, or peals of laughter. He was
indeed a master-musician who played upon every human heart-string.
It was a fine study to note him in the ante-room both before
and after the giving of a lecture. Before, he was eager, expectant,
almost exultant at the prospect of again delivering his message.
His mood was cheerful and happy, his countenance radiant with the
anticipated pleasure. He seemed at peace with himself and with all
the world. After, when many of his friends gathered to offer their
congratulations and express their admiration, he accepted their
praise with unfeigned satisfaction and the candor of a happy child
pleased with the praise of a parent over some worthy performance.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
It was no task for him to speak. He loved to speak. It was to
him an exultation. He knew he had something to say and that he knew
how to say it. He usually carried his notes to the platform. These
notes were often in mere outline prepared from dictation to his
secretary, but sometimes quite fully printed in large type. He was
not a slave to his manuscript -- seldom followed it closely any
distance. No one lecture was precisely the same in its repeated
deliveries. After one or two presentations of a new lecture he had
it by head and tongue and heart and, needed no prompting
thereafter.
ALL MASTERPIECES.
The lectures that perhaps most fully satisfied him were: "The
Liberty of Man, Woman and Child," "The Gods," "The Ghosts,"
"Orthodoxy," "Some Mistakes of Moses," "Which Way?" "Myth and
Miracle," "What Must We do to be Saved?" "The Great Infidels,"
"Some Reasons Why"' "About the Holy Bible" and "Shakespeare," --
although he rarely expressed a preference, simply accepted the
'Verdict of his friends.' The truth is, that every one of his more
than sixty famous lectures and his hundreds of great speeches,
controversies, interviews, tributes, orations, prose-poems and
legal addresses was a masterpiece. The "Liberty" lecture, however,
was received with such popular acclaim, and was so frequently
demanded, that he was disposed to regard it as probably the most
effective of his efforts.
On one occasion after its delivery in Washington, a United
States Senator sought him and said: "Colonel, you have converted
me. For years I have been estranged from my only daughter because
she did not marry to please me, but now I shall go to her to-night,
and beg her forgiveness for allowing a selfish pride to keep her
from my arms and heart!" Father and daughter were reconciled, and
the peace and joy then born in a happy home remained a seal to the
efficacy of the Colonel's teachings. Some said to him: "That is a
great sermon of yours, Colonel," referring to the "Liberty"
lecture.. Others said, "What a great preacher he would have made!"
He never considered the remark a compliment.
ATTACKING CHERISHED BELIEFS.
His Christian admirers sometimes said: "Colonel, why don't you
moderate your expressions, qualify your speech, and be more careful
not to offend the susceptibilities of many of your hearers, -- your
views would be so much better received even if they were not
adopted?" "I'll tell you why. I do not attack persons, but their
superstitions. I deal with opinions, not with those who hold them.
I do not war against men. I do not war against persons. I war
against certain doctrines that I believe to be wrong. But I give to
every human being every right that I claim for myself.
"I have not the slightest malice, no hate. A victor never
feels malice. I tell my honest thought, my sincere belief, my
earnest convictions."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
To a preacher who urged him to deal more gently with the
beliefs cherished by many in his audiences, he replied: "You do not
exactly appreciate my feeling. I do not hate Presbyterians, I hate
Presbyterianism. I hate with all my heart the creed of that church,
and I most heartily despise the God described in the Confession of
Faith. Some of the best friends I have in the world are afflicted
with the mental malady known as Presbyterianism. They are the
victims of the consolation growing out of the belief that a vast
majority of their fellow-men are doomed to suffer eternal torment,
to the end that their Creator may be eternally glorified. I have
said many times, and I say again, that I do not despise a man
because he has the rheumatism; I despise the rheumatism because it
has a man" "They tell me to use gentler expressions, and more
cunning words. Do they really wish me to make more converts? If
their advice is honest, they are traitors to their trust. If their
advice is not honest, then they are unfair to me. Certainly they
should wish me to pursue the course that will make the fewer
converts, and yet they tell me how my influence could be
increased!"
THE MERCENARY BOGY.
His enemies called him mercenary, saying that he lectured only
for money, and cited the unselfish example of the priests and
preachers who gave the gospel freely, "without money and without
price." To such he replied: "Is it possible that, after preachers
have had the field for eighteen hundred years, the way to make
money is to attack the clergy? Is this intended as a slander
against me, or against the ministers?
"The trouble is that my arguments cannot be answered. All the
preachers in the world cannot prove that slavery is better than
liberty. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to
think. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to express
their thoughts. They cannot show that a decent God will punish a
decent man for making the best guess he can."
Not one of the orthodox ministers dares to preach what he
thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation thinks otherwise.
He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his
brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is
not expected to search after the truth, but that he is employed to
defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a
hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment."
"I do not depend upon lecturing for my living. I am free, and
my audiences are free. They are under no obligation to attend. They
want to hear me and cheerfully pay the price. If I did not charge
for admission, Christians would say, as some envious one have said,
that only the lowest and vilest in a community flock to hear me.
Just the contrary, of course, was true, and these very slanderers
-- many of them -- wrote from every part of the land begging him to
lecture for the benefit of this or that church or "cause" and give
them the "proceeds."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
The pastor of a colored Baptist church in Texas once asked a
contribution to help put a new roof on his church, to replace one
that had been carried away by the wind. The Colonel wrote that it
looked to him as if God did not want a new roof there, or he would
not have blown the old one off. Besides, he did not see why any
Baptist church should need a roof; -- "The wetter the better."
Nevertheless, he sent some help out of sympathy for the race that
was struggling to rise, and that he had so often and so earnestly
befriended; but he said it passed his comprehension, -- except on
the ground of their well-known superstition, -- how an enslaved
race could love a book that favored slavery, or a God worshiped by
a slave-holder, -- how an intelligent colored man or woman could
ever be a Christian!
Replying further to those who said, "He can afford to preach
his blasphemy, -- it brings him applause as well as pecuniary
reward," he use to say that it was the greatest of compliments, --
an admission -- that his views were getting popular and worth
paying to hear. As we have seen, he was not an avaricious man, but
magnificently otherwise. He was ever more a spendthrift than a
miser. There never lived a more prodigally generous soul. There was
not a mean or sordid drop of blood in all his veins. Nor did he
care for mere personal popularity, -- avoided rather than courted
it. He did delight in noting year by year the growing acceptance of
his teachings. Once, after a visit to New England, he said: "If I
had spoken as freely in Salem thirty years ago, as I have spoken in
Salem to-night, they would have burned me at the stake." He was
fond of saying that since he had been trying to extinguish the
flames, the climate of hell had grown perceptibly cooler.
WHAT HIS VIEWS COST HIM.
The world little knows how much it cost Mr. Ingersoll to speak
his honest thought, to utter the sincere and profound convictions
of his conscience, the voice of his inmost soul. If sacrifice of
earthly honors and emoluments, of place and power, -- prizes as
dear to most men as their lives, -- is evidence of sincerity and
devotion to principle, Mr. Ingersoll was sublimely sincere,
unselfish, and self-sacrificing, and truthful history will so
record him.
His heterodoxy cost him the Governorship of Illinois. A
delegation made up of friends and admirers of both political
parties, urged his acceptance of the nomination, which meant
certain election, but coupled the offer with the condition that he
pledge himself not to touch on religious topics during the
campaign. He declined the nomination. He would have made an ideal
Governor. His large acquaintance with public men and measures, his
own experience as a public official -- as Attorney-General of the
State -- his fame as a campaign orator, his recognized ability and
integrity, his ardent patriotism and fearless advocacy of the
rights of man, and his world-wide human sympathies, -- all his
great gifts and endowments, -- marked him as one worthy of the
highest civic honors.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
But he did not covet office. He rejected all overtures in that
direction. His friends often broached the subject. He refused to
consider it. He was offered the post of Minister to Germany in
1877, but declined it. In 1882 a delegation in Washington waited on
him seeking his consent to be a candidate for the Presidency of the
United States. He declined the honor, saying that on no account
would he permit the use of his name. "I do not wish," he said, "to
bring the heat and rancor of religious discussion and dissension
into polities." No office would have been too great or high for him
to reach and fill had he consented to conceal his real thought, to
be a time-server and a hypocrite.
NOT A LEADER.
He, in fact, aspired to no personal leadership of any kind.'
He asked for no "disciples," sought no "followers." He wanted men
to think his way, but to carry out their convictions in their own
way; he would not lead them. He was not a proselytist or a
propagandist. He could have founded a school, a sect, a system. He
would not. He disliked and discourage the use of the term
"Ingersollism" that some applied to his views, and disavowed and,
so far as he could, prevented the spread of it. He was, and wanted
to be known as, an "Individualist."
He did not fully favor organizations on the lines of religious
or anti-religious belief; was not always in sympathy with
Freethought or Liberal organizations, as such. Although he agreed
in the main with their principles and aims he could not always
endorse or commend their methods, and because of such disagreement
at one time resigned the presidency of the Liberal League. His
trouble with these societies was that like most fraternal
associations, with all their merits and uses, they tended to foster
exclusiveness, class distinctions and sectarianism. He did not
believe in caste, he did not divide society into sheep and goats,
good and bad, sinners and saints, but into plain men and women
without their emblems or regalia. Many of his friends thought him
wrong in this attitude of aloofness, considered him unduly
sensitive and ideal, but he was satisfied with his ideal; he only
wished as an individual unit in society to act his own part well,
to think and speak and act from the best and highest in him, and to
help others do the same. While not condemning orders and unions and
fraternities, but recognizing their value and the need of
combination and cooperation to effect certain ends for the general
welfare, he yet felt that in the individual lay the real power to
improve and regenerate society. His broader membership was with the
race. Each man he held a brother, if he could find in him a man,
and he despised no one, however lowly, for the mere accident of
birth or circumstance.
His charity and compassion were unbounded. He could see and
condone the faults and frailties of others. "He does as he must,"
was his theorem explaining all human action. He was broad and
universal enough to announce this splendid creed: "The firmament
inlaid with stars is the dome of the real cathedral. The
interpreters of nature are the true and only priests. In the great
creed are all the truths that lips have uttered, and in the real
litany will be found all the ecstasies and aspirations of the soul,
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
all dreams of joy, all hopes for nobler, fuller life. The real
church, the real edifice, is adorned and glorified with all that
Art has done. In the real choir is all the thrilling music of the
world, and in the starlit aisles have been, and are, the grandest
souls of every land and clime.
"There is no darkness but ignorance."
"Let us flood the world with intellectual light."
VI.
LIBERTY.
Here let me state in his own unequalled words and way a few of
his many lofty sentiments. Of Liberty he said: "O Liberty, thou art
the god of my, idolatry!" It was one of his most fervent
apostrophes. He worshiped at its shrine. It was his dream, his
ideal, his hope for man. He was one of its greatest apostles. More
than any man of his day he wrote and spoke and labored for an
unshackled healthy brain, an untrammelled truthful tongue.
His attitude concerning freedom of thought, and its
expression, he gives us in these emphatic words, taken from the
opening of his "Liberty" lecture:
"There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of
intelligence."
"Only a few years ago there was a great awakening of the human
mind. Men began to inquire by what right a crowned robber made them
work for him. The man who asked this question was called a traitor.
Others asked by what right does a robed hypocrite rule my thought?
Such men were called infidels. The priest said, and the king said,
where is this spirit of investigation to stop? They said then and
they say now, that it is dangerous for man to be free. I deny it.
Out on the intellectual ocean there is room enough for every sail.
In the intellectual air there is space enough for every wing.
"The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is
a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.
"Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the
infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man.
"Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all have the same
right to think, and all are equally interested in the great
questions of origin and destiny. All I claim, all I plead for, is
liberty of thought and expression. That is all.
"I do not pretend to tell all the truth. I do not claim that
I have floated level with the heights of thought, or that I have
descended to the very depths of things. I simply claim that what
ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who
denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber. That
is all."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
I swear that while I live I will do what little I can to
preserve and to augment the liberties of man, woman, and child.
"It is a question of justice, of mercy, of honesty, of
intellectual development. If there is a man in the world who is not
willing to give to every human being every right he claims for
himself, he is just so much nearer a barbarian than I am. It is a
question of honesty. The man who is not willing to give to every
other the same intellectual rights he claims for himself, is
dishonest, selfish, and brutal."
"This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right
you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to influences of
nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance."
"As far as I am concerned I wish to be out on the high seas.
I wish to take my chances with wind, and wave, and star. And I had
rather go down in the glory and grandeur of the storm, than rot in
any orthodox harbor."
"As a man develops, he places a greater value upon his own
rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner thing. As he values
his own rights he begins to value the rights of others. And when
all men give to all others all the rights they claim for
themselves, this world will be civilized."
"We have, advanced. We have reaped the benefit of every
sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of every divine and brave act;
and we should endeavor to hand the torch to the next generation,
having added a little to the intensity and glory of the flame."
"With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate every form of
tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty.
"What do I mean by liberty? By physical liberty I mean the
right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of
another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think right
and the right to think wrong. Thought is the means by which we
endeavor to arrive at truth.
"Should I not give the real transcript of my mind? Or should
I turn hypocrite and pretend what I do not feel, and hate myself
forever after for being a cringing coward.
"Above all creeds, above all religions, after all, is that
divine thing, -- Humanity; and now and then in shipwreck on the
wide, wild sea, or mid the rocks and breakers of some cruel shore,
or where the serpents of flame writhe and hiss, some glorious
heart, some chivalric soul does a deed that glitters like a star,
and gives the lie to all the dogmas of superstition. All these
frightful doctrines have been used to degrade and to enslave
mankind.
"Away, forever away, with the creeds and books and forms and
laws and religions that take from the soul liberty and reason. Down
with the idea that thought is dangerous! Perish the infamous
doctrine that man can have property in man. Let us resent with
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
indignation every effort to put a chain upon our minds. If there is
no God, certainly we should not bow and cringe and crawl. If there
is a God, there should be no slave."
"O Liberty, thou art the god of my idolatry! Thou art the only
deity that hateth bended knees. In thy vast and unwalled temple,
beneath the roofless dome, star-gemmed and luminous with suns, thy
worshipers stand erect! They do not cringe, or crawl, or bend their
foreheads to the earth. The dust has never borne the impress of
their lips. Upon thy altars mothers do not sacrifice their babes,
nor men their rights. Thou askest naught from man except the things
that good men hate -- the whip, the chain, the dungeon key. Thou
hast no popes, no priests, who stand between their fellow-men and
thee. Thou carest not for foolish forms, or selfish prayers. At thy
sacred shrine hypocrisy does not bow, virtue does not tremble,
superstition's feeble tapers do not burn, but Reason holds aloft
her inextinguishable torch whose holy light will one day flood the
world."
TRUTH.
He exalted Truth -- pure, unadulterated, unmasked. "Sacred are
the lips," he said, "from which has issued only truth."
"Truth is the intellectual wealth of the world.
"The noblest of occupations is to search for truth.
"Truth is the foundation, the *superstructure, and the
glittering dome of progress.
"Truth is the mother of joy. Truth civilizes, ennobles, and
purifies. The grandest ambition that can enter the soul is to know
the truth.
"Truth gives man the greatest power for good. Truth is sword
and shield. It is the sacred light of the soul.
"The man who finds a truth lights a torch."
"Sacred are the lips from which has issued only truth. Over
all wealth, above all station, above the noble, the robed and
crowned, rises the sincere man. Happy is the man who neither paints
nor patches, veils nor veneers! Blessed is he who wears no mask."
LOVE.
He exalted and enthroned the god of Love, -- of sacred human
love. In words that elsewhere have no counterpart, he has embalmed
for us his thought in this marvelous piece of literary amber:
"Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the Morning
and the Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and
sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of Art --
inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light
of every heart -- builder of every home -- kindler of every fire on
every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
the world with melody, for music is the voice of Love. Love is the
magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and
makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the
perfume of that wondrous flower -- the heart -- and without that
sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts -- but
with it, earth is heave and we are gods."
LIFE.
Has any one but the immortal bard ever produced a parallel to
this living portrait of human life, -- Of his own life, -- from the
cradle to the grave?
"Born of love and hope, of ecstacy and pain, of agony and
fear, of tears and joy -- dower with the wealth of two united
hearts -- held in happy arms, with lips upon life's drifted font
blue-veined and fair, where perfect peace finds perfect form --
rocked by willing feet and wooed to shadowy shores of sleep by
siren mother singing soft and low-looking with wonder's wide and
startled eyes at common things of life and day -- taught by want
and wish and contact with the things that touch the dimpled flesh
of babes -- lured by light and flame, and charmed by color's
wondrous robes -- learning the use of hands and feet, and by the
love of mimicry beguiled to utter speech -- releasing prisoned
thoughts from crabbed and curious marks on soiled and tattered
leaves -- puzzling the brain with crooked numbers and their
changing, tangled worth -- and so through years of alternating day
and night, until the captive grows familiar with the chains and
walls and limitations of a life.
"And time runs on in sun and shade, until the one of all the
world is wooed and won, and all the lore of love is taught and
learned again. Again a home is built with the fair chamber wherein
faint dreams, like cool and shadowy vales divide the billowed hours
of love. Again the miracle of a birth -- the pain and joy, the kiss
of welcome and the cradle -- song drowning the, drowsy prattle of
a babe.
"And then the sense of obligation and of wrong -- pity for
those who toil and weep -- tears for the imprisoned and despised --
love for the generous dead, and in the heart the rapture of a high
resolve.
"And then ambition, with its lust of pelf and place and power,
longing to put upon its breast distinction's worthless badge. Then
keener thoughts of men, and eyes that see behind the smiling mask
of craft -- flattered no more by the obsequious cringe of gain and
greed -- knowing the uselessness of hoarded gold -- of honor bought
from those who charge the usury of self-respect -- of power that
only bends a coward's knees and forces from the lips of fear the
lies of praise. Knowing at last the unstudied gesture of esteem,
the reverent eyes made rich with honest thought, and holding high
above all other things -- high as hope's great throbbing star above
the darkness of the dead -- the love of wife and child and friend.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
"Then locks of gray, and growing love of other days and
half-remembered things -- then holding withered hands of those who
first held his, while over dim and loving eyes death softly presses
down the lids of rest.
"And so, locking in marriage vows his children's hands and
crossing others on the breasts of peace, with daughter's babes upon
his knees, the white hair mingling with the gold, he journeys on
from day to day to that horizon where the dusk is waiting for the
night. -- At last, sitting by the holy hearth of home as evenings'
embers change from red to gray, he falls asleep within the arms of
her he worshiped and adored, feeling upon his pallid lips love's
last and holiest kiss."
Nor has this autograph of his own life ever been supplemented
with a finer touch than he gives us in these lines: "Life is a
shadowy, strange, and winding road on which we travel for a little
way -- a few short steps -- just from the cradle, with its lullaby
of love, to the low and quiet way-side inn, where all at last must
sleep, and where the only salutation is -- Goodnight!" Or that
other peerless paragraph, which I here re-quote, from the tribute
to his brother Ebon: "Life is a narrow vale between the cold and
barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond
the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our
wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there
comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and
listening love can hear the rustle of a wing."
HOPE.
Of Hope he has beautifully said: "Hope is the only bee that
makes honey without flowers."
"Hope is the consolation of the world.
"The wanderers hope for home. -- Hope builds the house and
plants the flowers and fills the air with song.
"The sick and suffering hope for health. -- Hope gives them
health and paints the roses in their cheeks.
"The lonely, the forsaken, hope for love. -- Hope brings the
lover to their arms. They feel the kisses on their eager lips.
"The poor in tenements and huts, in spite of rags and hunger,
hope for wealth. -- Hope fills their thin and trembling hands with
gold.
"The dying hopes that death is but another birth, and Love
leans above the pallid face and whispers, 'We shall meet again.'
"Let us hope, that if there be a God, he is wise and good.
"Let us hope that if there be another life, it will bring
peace and joy to all the children of men.
"And let us hope that this poor earth on which we live, may be
a perfect world -- a world without a crime -- without a tear."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
And following this, to express his own feeling and purpose in
his work, he said: "I would not for anything blot out the faintest
star that shines in the horizon of human despair, or in the sky of
human hope; but I will do what I can to get the infinite shadow of
eternal torment out of the heart of man."
Of the hope of a future life he said: "The idea of
immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human
heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear beating against
the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book,
nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human
affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists
and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of
death. It is the rainbow, Hope, shining upon the tears of grief."
HOME.
Who, with lip or pen or brush, save only Robert Burns, has
ever given us as graphic or exalted pictures of the fireside as
Robert G. Ingersoll? He glorified, even as he exemplified, the joys
and virtues of domestic life. He said, "The home where virtue
dwells with love is like a lily with a heart of fire -- the fairest
flower in all the world." "The holiest temple beneath the stars is
a home that love has built. And the holiest altar in all the wide
world is the fireside around which gather father and mother and the
sweet babes."
"If in this world there is anything splendid, it is a home
where all are equals."
"Around the fireside cluster the private and the public
virtues of our race."
"The home, after all, is the unit of civilization, of good
government."
"Without the family relation there is no life worth living.
Every good government is made up of good families."
"Nothing is more important to America than that the babes of
America should be born around the fireside of home."
"If upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven, it is
when we pass a home in winter, at night, and through the windows,
the curtains drawn aside, we see the family about the pleasant
hearth; the old lady knitting; the cat playing with the yarn; the
children wishing they had as many dolls or dollars or knives or
somethings, as there are sparks going out to join the roaring
blast; the father reading and smoking, and the clouds rising like
incense from the altar of domestic joy. I never passed such a house
without feeling that I had received a benediction."
"Honor, place, fame, glory, riches -- they are ashes, smoke,
dust, disappointment, unless there is somebody in the world you
love, somebody who loves you; unless there is some place that you
can call home, some place where you can feel the arms of children
around your neck, some place that is made absolutely, sacred by the
love of others."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
AMBITION.
Mr. Ingersoll was ambitious. He considered true ambition to be
the father of progress. Every man, he said, should have a worthy
ideal, and strive to attain it by all the best and highest in him.
But his ambition was not for place or power, -- he did not want to
rule anybody. He craved no laurels won on fields of conquest or
aggression. His ideals were higher. His goal was human happiness --
"the greatest good of the greatest number," and he welcomed and
extolled everything that contributed to it. He sought the richer
prizes of life in the private and civic virtues -- in the fields of
art and thought, invention and discovery, and in the fruits of
skilful industry of hand and brain. Above all, he placed the
aristocracy of the fireside, and esteemed the kind and just man,
the loving father and husband, the peer of prince and potentate. He
loved to quote these lines of Burns on domestic felicity: "To make
a happy fireside clime, For weans and wife, Is the true pathos and
sublime Of human life."
And by way of contrast he paints for us this vivid picture of
Napoleon the Great and the humble but happy French peasant:
"A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon
-- a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a deity dead
-- and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble,
where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over
the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier
of the modern world.
"I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating
suicide. I saw him at Toulon -- I saw him putting down the mob in
the streets of Paris -- I saw him at the head of the army of Italy
-- I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his
hand -- I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the Pyramids -- I saw
him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the
eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo -- at Ulm and Austerlitz.
I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry
of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered
leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster -- driven by a
million bayonets back upon Paris -- clutched like a wild beast --
banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the
force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of
Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of
their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands
crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.
"I thought of the orphans and widows he had made -- of the
tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who
ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition.
And I said, I would rather have been a French peasant and worn
wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine
growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses
of the Autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant, with
my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky
-- with my children upon my knees and their arms about me -- I
would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless
silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial
impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
SCIENCE.
Everywhere and always he glorified the Deity of Science --
child of the blessed Trinity, Reason, Observation and Experience.
His works abound in eloquent praise of its achievements. Among
other passages he gives us this:
"Science took a handful of sand, constructed a telescope, and
with it explored the starry depths of heaven. Science wrested from
the gods their thunderbolts; and now, the electric spark, freighted
with thought and love, flashes under all the waves of the sea.
Science took a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it
into steam and created a giant that turns with tireless arm the
countless wheels of toil."
"Science is the providence of man, the worker of true
miracles, of real wonders. Science has 'read a little in Nature's
infinite book of secrecy.' Science knows the circuits of the winds,
the courses of the stars. Fire is his servant, and lightning his
messenger. Science freed the slaves and gave liberty to their
masters. Science taught men to enchain, not his fellows, but the
forces of nature, forces that have no backs to be scarred, no limbs
for chains to chill and eat, forces that have no hearts to break,
forces that never know fatigue, forces that shed no tears. Science
is the great physician. His touch has given sight. He has made the
lame to leap, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, and in the
pallid face his hand has set the rose of health. Science has given
his beloved sleep and wrapped in happy dreams the throbbing nerves
of pain. Science is the destroyer of disease, builder of happy
homes, the preserver of life and love. Science is the teacher of
every virtue, the enemy of every vice. Science has given the true
basis of morals, the origin and office of conscience, revealed the
nature of obligation, of duty, of virtue in its highest, noblest
forms, and has demonstrated that true happiness is the only
possible good. Science has slain the monsters of superstition, and
destroyed the authority of inspired books. Science has read the
records of the rocks, records that priestcraft cannot change, and
on his wondrous scales has weighed the atom and the star.
"Science has founded the only true religion. Science is the
only Savior of this world."
And so I might go on quoting and quoting. It is difficult to
forbear. It is a feast, mental and spiritual, to sit at the banquet
spread so bountifully for us in the thirteen beautiful Volumes
containing the published works of Mr. Ingersoll in their "Dresden"
setting, -- so-call after the little village in New York State
which was the author's birthplace. I am tempted to linger at the
feast for more of the delicious bits of poetry, philosophy,
feeling, wit, wisdom, humor and loving-kindness that abound on
every page and in almost every line. The limits of this sketch
forbid the indulgence. What he has said on Education, Art, Science,
-- on Poetry Music and Fiction, -- on Justice, Liberty, Equality
and the Rights of Man, -- On Worship, Reverence and True Religion,
-- on Orthodoxy and Agnosticism, -- on Government, Finance,
Domestic and Political Economy, and on a thousand other living
human topics -- for he has vibrated every chord -- would take many
more books to hold, and every book a glittering mine.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
OPTIMISM vs. PESSIMISM.
Some called him a pessimist. He was not. He enjoyed more than
suffered, hoped more than despaired. It is true that when he
considered the agonies and miseries of life, the sickness and
disease, the poverty and crime, the ignorance and superstition, the
follies and failures, the human wrecks on every shore; when he
thought of the savagery of tooth and beak and claw; of the fury of
the elements, -- of wind and fire of flood, of earthquakes,
lightnings and volcanoes, of drought, and pestilence and famine and
all the evils that afflict the race from without or within, and of
the final tragedy awaiting all, he groaned in spirit and felt and
said that this was not a good world. He went further and had the
courage that some called audacity, and others blasphemy, to say
what millions think but fear to say, that if, as a man he had been
given the power and commission to make a world, he certainly would
have made a better one than this, or gone out of the business! This
was said seriously, not vaingloriously. To one who asked him what
improvement he would suggest in the order of things, he immediately
replied: "Well, for one thing, I would make health catching instead
of disease."
On the other hand, when he considered the beautiful, good and
true; the sunshine and the flowers, the blossoming spring and
ripening harvest; the warm and fructifying showers, the cool and
shady glens, the vine-clad hills and richly verdant vales and all
the varying charms of Nature in her gentler moods; when he saw the
roses on the cheeks of health, heard the songs of happy birds and
hum of busy bees in sweet pursuit, and merry shouts of children at
their play; when he saw the many open hands of sympathy and aid,
the generous and noble deeds of great heroic souls, the glorious
triumphs of genius in fields of art and song, the wonderful
achievements of science in invention and discovery and the many
marvelous products of industrial skill; and when he thought of
happy homes and loving hearts and helpful hands through all the
years, -- when he looked and thought on these he hoped, he dreamed,
he prophesied, a brighter future for his race. He believed the
world was growing better, freer, happier, every day, and he was
doing what he could to make it so. In prophetic vision he saw "Our
country filled with happy homes, with firesides of content, -- the
foremost land of all the earth."
Looking into the future with unclouded eye, he said:
"I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are
dust. The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.
"I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's
forces have by Science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and
wave, frost and flame, and all the secret, subtle powers of earth
and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
"I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with
music's myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of
love and truth; -- a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner
mourns; -- a world on which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; --
a world where labor reaps its full reward; where work and worth go
hand in hand; where the poor girl trying to win bread with the
needle -- the needle that has been called 'the asp for the breast
of the poor,' -- is not driven to the desperate choice of crime or
death, of suicide or shame.
"I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the
miser's heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid
lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.
"I see a race without disease of flesh or brain, -- shapely
and fair, -- the married harmony of form and function, -- and, as
I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and
over all, in the great dome, shines the eternal star of human
hope."
For himself, he said that when he struck the balance, this
life had been to him worth living. This was optimism.
HIS INTELLECTUAL INTIMATES.
Mr. Ingersoll dwelt with all the great and noble souls that
ever lived. They were his acquaintances, his friends, his
intimates. With them he held constant mental intercourse. He
studied their words and works, admired and eulogized their lofty
deeds, their high ideals. He rescued from the obloquy of spite and
hate the illustrious names of noble martyrs to the truth, of whom
the world was not worthy, -- the names of Bruno and Spinoza,
Voltaire and Paine, Hume and Elizur Wright, with those of other
great infidels and reformers of their day and time. He gloried in
the fame of all the great and good scientists and philosophers,
philanthropists and patriots who, in the realms of thought, and by
heroic deeds in fields of action, have enlarged, enriched and
ennobled life, -- names that were ever in his mind and often on his
lips of praise, -- names that will not die, -- the names of Darwin,
Huxley, Spencer and Tyndall; of Humboldt and Haeckel; of Socrates,
Plato and Epictetus; of Buddha, Brahma and Confucius, Aristotle and
Aurelius; of Lincoln and Washington, Franklin and Jefferson; of
Draper and Gibbon; of Buckle and Locke and Lecky; of Wilberforce,
Howard, Burke and Bright; of Kossuth, Lafayette and Rochambeau; of
Grant and Sherman and Sheridan, Farragut and Ericsson -- with other
heroes, in great strifes for the Right and the Rights of Man.
In the realms of space he took his flights with Newton and
Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo, Herschel and Laplace, with Proctor
and Mitchell, and other dwellers in the infinite skies, companions
of the stars, who "drew from them their secrets and told them down
to men." He sailed the unknown seas with Columbus and the Cabots,
with Magellan and the other brave mariners of the dawn, and with
them landed on the shores of a new and wide and glorious world.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
He rejoiced and shared in the inventions and discoveries of
Stephenson and Watt, of Guttenberg and Arkwright, of Galvani and
Marconi, of Morse and Field, of Edison and Bell, and all the minds
whose thought has widened out the world to commerce, fellowship and
final peace. And above all, and before all, he placed his
Shakespeare among the immortals, with Burns singing by his side the
sweetest of Nature's songs. He believed that George Eliot, Harriet
Martineau and Mrs. Browning were the greatest of female thinkers
and writers of the English world, and that Charles Dickens was the
greatest novelist.
He was strongly emotional in temperament. A man of his fine
feeling and tender susceptibility could not be otherwise. With such
a nature, joined to a clear judgment and keen appreciation of the
beautiful and great in art and men, it is small wonder that he was
the ardent admirer of his intellectual comrades, and in eloquent
eulogy extolled their words and works. He was enraptured with the
music of Wagner, Beethoven, Verdi and Schubert; devoted friend of
those mimic artists who held the mirror for him on the stage, --
his Forrests, Booths and Barretts, and his Rip Van Winkle --
Jeffersons. He exalted, if he could only hope to emulate, the
silver tongues of his brother orators, the Ciceros, Demosthenes'
Lincolns, Phillips' and Beechers -- and who will say he was not the
worthy peer of them all?
He held in very high regard those masters of the brush who
painted his pictures for him, his Angelos and Raphaels, Rembrandts
and Corots, and, in truth, all the other shining stars in his
heavens -- the writers, singers, sculptors, artists and artisans --
a glorious company -- performers with him in the wonderful drama
who by their genius have added to the beauty, worth and joy of
life. His companionship was with them all, and he had hope, he
said, for the race that could produce and admire, exalt and emulate
such souls.
HIS PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPY.
Mr. Ingersoll never lost sight of his kinship with men.
Recognizing the grades and classes of humanity, he was ready at all
times to meet the demands of human sympathy and brotherhood.
Knowing sadly enough the many impositions practiced by the unworthy
poor, nevertheless, his heart and hand instinctively opened to the
appeal of suffering and want. His quick sympathies and generous
impulses guided him, and were for him better guides than cold and
calculating judgment. He did not stop to inquire, to investigate,
-- he gave. He relieved the present necessity, and did not lecture
or preach to any recipient of his bounty. He did not reproach the
weak, the ignorant, or depraved, -- he pitied and forgave. His
attitude toward the sinful and sorrowful was ever like that of the
Peasant of Palestine: "Neither do, I condemn thee."
He gave freely of the treasures of his mind. He counseled,
criticized and encouraged many in their literary and artistic
aspirations. His home and office were often like editorial
sanctums, -- piled with authors' manuscripts submitted for his
opinion and revision. Scores of introductions, reviews of books,
plays and poems, were written by him for those who requested it.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
Recognized as an art connoisseur of fine perception and rare
judgement, painters and sculptors submitted their work to his
inspection. He welcomed and aided them.
"LET US SMOKE IN THIS WORLD."
Commercial travellers were fond of him and he of them. The
"smoker" in the Pullman car, the hotel lobby and his private room
were mildly invaded by them, seeking his acquaintance and regard.
Once in the Southern Hotel in Saint Louis a young man told his tale
of discouragement. "I am travelling for a tobacco house," he said,
"and have been in very poor luck, -- haven't made a decent living
for my wife and little family; won't you allow my firm to name a
brand of cigars for you; I'm sure they'd sell like hot cakes?" "No
objection, if you make it a good, honest cigar." "Will you give me
your photograph, and permit us to get out a handsome lithograph to
advertise the brand?" "No objection, if you make it a real portrait
and not a daub." "Once more, Colonel, will you give me a
'sentiment' to accompany the brand?" "Very well, how will this do:
Let us smoke in this world -- not in the next?" The young man went
on his way rejoicing. Two years after he came from New York to
Washington and in grateful terms thanked the Colonel for his
goodness. "The cigar has sold all over the country," he said, "and
my commissions have amounted to hundreds and hundreds of dollars;
in fact, Colonel, you have put me on my feet and in the way to
comfort and success in life."
"GOING TO DENVER."
At another time, Mr. Ingersoll was traveling with a party of
capitalists who with him were inspecting cattle ranches in New
Mexico. They were in a private car going to Denver. One evening
after dinner, while they were enjoying their cigars, the conductor
announced, "Gentlemen, a tramp has curled himself up on the rear
platform of your car; shall I stop the train and put him off?"
"Certainly," replied the leader of the party, a man many times a
millionaire, "put him off, and do it without ceremony." "You will
do no such thing," quickly interrupted Colonel Ingersoll; "Let him
alone, he is doing no harm." "But he's an intruder, stealing a
ride, and how do you know he isn't a 'road-agent,' with accomplices
further on?" "No matter, let him be; I will go and speak to him."
Accompanied by the writer, he went to the rear platform. The man at
once begged pardon for his intrusion, said that necessity alone
impelled him, that he was out of work and out of money, that he was
a good mechanic and wanted to go, to Denver, where he hoped to get
employment. "Don't apologize or explain any further; I understand;"
said the Colonel. "I have been hard up myself. Are you hungry."
"Very." "Come with me;" and calling to the cook he said: "Give this
man all he wants to eat," and turning to his astonished guest,
"When you're through eating here's a good smoke for you," handing
him a perfecto. "And here's a little boost for you when you get to
Denver," drawing from his pocket a ten dollar greenback. "Never
mind," -- noticing a look of hesitation, -- "it's all right, good
luck, and don't go out on the platform again; sit on this
camp-stool till you reach Denver." Returning, he quietly resumed
his seat with the party. "Well," asked the capitalist, "how about
your hobo guest; have you invited him to keep us company the rest
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
of the way?" "Yes; to Denver." "I am surprised at you, Colonel;
here you are, a distinguished lawyer, -- a railroad lawyer, at
that, -- not only winking at, but actually aiding and abetting a
gross violation of the law! You have a great big heart, I know, and
a head to match, but I think this time you have let your heart run
away with your head." "If all our heads and hearts were only half
as big as your pocket-book, we might all be wealthier men," was the
Colonel's quiet retort.
CONSCIENTIOUS.
He believed in rendering a just and ample reward for all labor
performed. He could not bear to profit by the ill-paid toil or the
dire necessities of others. He was not satisfied to pay only the
cheap market price for goods required. He went back of the merchant
to the worker, and inquired into the original cost of many things.
In his purchases of garments for personal wear, I have known him to
go to the maker direct, wherever he could, and pay an enhanced
price -- what he believed to be nearest an equivalent for the
article bought. He said he did not want "something for nothing," he
wanted to pay his way. He could not and would not accept a money
favor, even from a friend, without making an adequate return. For
years he was complimented by railroad officials with "free passes"
over their lines. He never solicited one of them. They were freely
offered. He did not, out of politeness, refuse them, but he did not
use them. He could not travel as a "dead-head." He has shown me
bunches, of these passes, some of them beautifully executed, and in
one instance handsomely engraved on a small sterling-silver plate.
He kept them as souvenirs, so he called them -- reminders that at
one time he was himself president of a railroad in Illinois. No
remuneration in any shape would he ever accept from any corporation
or interest, or from any individual, except in acknowledgment of
service rendered.
MISTAKES AND SLANDERS.
It is not the purpose of this sketch to enter at large upon a
definition or defense of Mr. Ingersoll's religious or non-religious
views. He alone could rightly define and defend them. In the
popular mind, however, there is such ignorance, misinformation and
error, and such misrepresentation both of his person and his
teachings, that true statements, taken from his own lips, and an
intimate view of his character and actions gained by a long
acquaintance and exceptional opportunities, qualify the writer to
make a record entitled to more than passing attention. As for his
views on nearly all questions of human interest, they are amply set
forth in his writings and sayings, and happily extant and available
in the authorized form before referred to. They speak for
themselves, and in no feeble or faltering voice. He was ready to
stand by them, confident of the enlightened judgment of the fair
and free.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
His character, motives, and meanings have, however, been sadly
mistaken, perverted and maligned. The slanders of ignorance and the
lies of malice have too often aimed at him their poisoned shafts.
To show how he received and repelled these attacks, and if possible
to furnish an antidote for their virulence, is but an act of
loyalty to truth, to justice, and to right, no less than to
personal friendship and affection.
ABUSE vs. ARGUMENT.
Mr. Ingersoll knew well enough that a strong man using his
strength to combat prevailing error -- no matter on what subject --
would make enemies. This he expected in his own case from the
ignorant, prejudiced and unfair; but that professed champions of
justice, love, and truth, divinely called to speak, should welcome
every hateful rumor and give it credence and circulation from
pulpit, press and platform, sometimes amazed and grieved him, but
oftener excited his pity and compassion. "And yet, after all," he
would say, "it is but natural that those who expect their God to
damn me hereafter, should want to do a little of it here
themselves! Why do they not answer my arguments? Why do not my
orthodox foes fight fairly?"
"I want to say, that if there is anything I like in the world
it is fairness. And one reason I like it so well is that I have had
so little of it. I can say, if I wish, extremely mean and hateful
things. I have read a great many religious papers and discussions
and think that I now know all the infamous words in our language.
I know how to account for every noble action by a mean and wretched
motive; and that in my judgment, embraces nearly the entire science
of modern theology."
"It does seem to me that if I were a Christian, and really
thought my fellow-man was going down to the bottomless pit, that he
was going to misery and agony forever -- it does seem to me that I
would try to save him. It does seem to me, that instead of having
my mouth filled with epithets and invectives; instead of drawing
the lips of malice back from the teeth of hatred, it seems to me
that my eyes would be filled with tears. It seems to me that I
would do what little I could to reclaim him. I would talk to him,
and of him, in kindness. I would put the arms of affection about
him. I would not speak of him as though he were a wild beast. I
would not speak to him as though he were a brute. I would think of
him as a man, as a man liable to eternal torture among the damned,
and my heart would be filled with sympathy, not hatred -- my eyes
with tears, not scorn."
"It is a mystery to me why the editors of religious papers are
so malicious, why they endeavor to answer argument with calumny. Is
it because they feel the scepter slowly slipping from their hands?
Is it the result of impotent rage? Is it because there is being
written upon every orthodox brain a certificate of intellectual
inferiority?"
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
THE CLERGY.
It is only natural to expect that with this personal
experience he could have no very high regard for the clergy. He
could not see why a stripling just fledged from a theological nest
should be called "Father" and "Reverend." He knew how ministers
were made. It used to be, more than it is now, considered an honor
to have at least one member of a family "called' to preach the
gospel. Usually, he said, it was the one with a delicate
constitution, the petted and spoiled child, of indolent habits,
averse to manly and athletic sports, who was picked out by the
parents and friends as the candidate for "holy orders." He did not
see why such a one should be "divinely chosen" and "set apart,"
while the latent lawyer, or doctor, or business man, or mechanic,
should be left without a "call." To him, the choice was simply a
very human one and often a great mistake, He thought a good workman
at the bench better than a poor parson in the pulpit.
"Schoolhouses," he said, "are the real temples, and teachers are
the true priests."
He knew only few, very few, clergymen whom he could call his
friends, and instanced Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Henry M. Field, and
the Rev. Alexander Clark as among the number. They were fair-minded
and kindly-spoken, and respected his personality even if they could
not accept his teachings.
As above stated, he knew how most of those in the ministerial
"profession" came to be there -- how they were "ordained" by the
"laying on Of hands," and "anointed" with "holy oil," the "divine
petroleum," as he termed it, of ecclesiastical ceremony. One
verified instance came to his knowledge, that he thought might well
enough illustrate the motive of many who accept the call to preach.
It was that of a young man in an Eastern university, whose
reputation for honor and decency was so tainted that he was
"black-balled" when seeking entrance into the Greek fraternity of
his fellow-students. In a class meeting before graduation the boys
were invited to tell what calling they intended to pursue in life.
This young man said: "Boys, I'm going to be a minister!" They
hooted him. "All right; you wait and see. Short cut! First you get
a call to some little country church. Then, if you have the gift of
gab, you are called to the city, get a big church, marry the
richest girl in the congregation, and you're fixed for life!" He
actually made good this forecast, in every particular.
HIS EARLY LIFE MALIGNED.
Mr. Ingersoll's orthodox enemies spread the report that his
early life was dissolute and depraved. It was untrue. He was
genial, jolly, good-natured and companionable -- liked by all who
knew him. Those competent to judge, who knew him well from boyhood
to manhood, -- mayors, city and county officials, friends,
neighbors and prominent citizens -- over their own signatures
attested by their sworn affidavits, united in indignant denial of
the cheap calumny.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
Another report industriously circulated and designed to
belittle his honor as a soldier and his courage as a man and
officer, was that he tamely surrendered his regiment of cavalry to
the confederate General Forrest, and was taken prisoner in a
cowardly attempt to escape. It is maliciously false. His force was
surrounded by greatly superior numbers, and after a gallant but
futile resistance, like the wise and humane officer he was, he
decided to yield rather than cause useless bloodshed. For this act
he was to be commended, not condemned. It is enough to say that in
all after years the surviving veterans of his command loved,
honored and almost idolized him.
Continuing the campaign of miserable lies, a newspaper
paragraph widely circulated, stated that Mr. Ingersoll's daughters
were "maudlin drunkards!" A clergyman from his pulpit repeated the
infamous story. When asked to retract, he took refuge, like a moral
coward, behind the newspaper scrap and made no manly apology. He
should have been indicted! Right on the heels of this unholy
slander, and quite naturally following it, came the statement in a
religious journal that Mr. Ingersoll's daughters had repudiated
their father's views on religion, and joined a Presbyterian church!
The truth is that with the exception that as a compliment to Mr.
Beecher, whom their father esteemed, they once went to hear him
preach, they never entered the door of an orthodox church, and said
that they never wished to.
HIS "ONLY SON."
Mr. Ingersoll seldom took the trouble to answer these stories.
Once in a while at the urging of friends, he would reply to an
accusation, especially if there was an element of humor in the
situation. A prominent religious weekly published the following
news for the enlightenment of its readers: "We are told, on good
authority, that Colonel Ingersoll's only son was so addicted to
cheap novel reading that his mind became affected thereby; that he
was quietly removed to a private asylum, where he shortly afterward
died." To an inquirer who sent him the clipping he wrote: 1. My
only son was not a great novel reader; 2. He did not go insane; 3.
He was not sent to an asylum; 4. He did not die; and 5. I never had
a son!"
"The truth is," he said, "that arguments cannot be answered by
personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the
long run, defeats itself."
"There was a time when a falsehood, fulminated from the
pulpit, smote like a sword; but the supply having greatly exceeded
the demand, clerical misrepresentation has at last become almost an
innocent amusement. Remembering that only a few years ago men,
women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for
having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas
entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the
pulpit's last resort."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
THE "OBSCENE LITERATURE" CHARGE.
A more serious and vital attack on his moral character came
from an influential clergyman in Brooklyn, who from his pulpit made
the assertion that Colonel Ingersoll was in favor of the
circulation of "obscene literature, that corrupted the morals and
debauched the minds of the youth of the land." He cited in evidence
the untrue report that the Colonel once signed a petition to
Congress favoring such circulation. It was not so. The preacher did
not give the facts. He was not honest. If he did not know, the
circumstances of the case, and the intention of the signers, he
still was culpable, for the facts were all of record and of easy
access; but the preacher intended to leave, and did leave, the
impression that Mr. Ingersoll advocated the circulation through the
mails of impure and licentious literature. Of course, the very
thought of such advocacy was foreign and abhorrent to him.
Briefly stated, all there was to the hateful charge is this:
When certain self-appointed censors -- religious fanatics --
presumed to decide that liberal or infidel literature was
"obscene," and on that pretext endeavored to have it excluded,
together with his own writings, from the United States mails, the
Colonel denounced such an attempt as an infringement on religious
liberty. He fought for the inviolability and freedom of the mails
from pharisaical intrusion, and challenged the moral or legal right
of Christian inquisitors to commit the Government to an Act
declaring Infidel, or Agnostic, or Atheistic literature "obscene."
If any further word were needed to show Mr. Ingersoll's attitude on
this question, listen to this emphatic, even passionate
declaration:
"I despise, I execrate, I denounce, with every drop of my
blood, any man or woman who would engage, either directly or
indirectly, in the dissemination of anything that is not absolutely
pure; any man or woman who would stain with lust the sweet and
innocent heart of youth. Such a one I despise with all my heart.
One of my objections to the Old Testament is that it is not a fit
book to be read by either old or young. It contains passages that
no minister in the United States would read to his congregation for
any reward whatever. There are chapters that no gentleman would
read in the presence of a lady. There are chapters that no father
would read to his child. There are narratives utterly unfit to be
told; and the time will come when mankind will wonder that such a
book was ever called inspired."
"I was and am in favor of the destruction of every immoral
book in the world. I was and am in favor, not only of the law
against the circulation of such filth, but want it executed to the
letter in every State of this Union."
HIS FORBEARANCE AND SYMPATHY.
Let us now see how this patient and forgiving man received and
endured these things. He was generally silent, even under great
provocation. His friends were often indignant and urged reply and
retaliation. He would not gratify them. Only in the slanderous
attack upon his moral character involved in the "obscene
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
literature" charge, did he consent to take legal action, which
resulted in a "Plea of avoidance" by the clerical defendant; and he
pursued the case only far enough to reveal the facts and establish
his unclouded reputation. All slander and abuse he endured with a
calm philosophy. He always held himself open to conviction, and
there never was a man readier to, acknowledge an error, admit a
truth, or right a wrong. I have known him to do it many times, and
to do it gladly, gracefully, beautifully.
He had pity and forbearance for the weak and erring. He was
tender, compassionate, merciful. He pleaded for the criminal, for
reform in the method of treating him, and urged before State and
National conventions the duty of society toward him. He did not
think that all criminals were always and only irretrievably bad. A
convict whom he had caused to be released from the Joliet
penitentiary was certainly not incorrigible. The Colonel gave him
a suit of clothes and some money. In a few months a fine-looking
man, with the bearing of a gentleman, came to the Colonel to thank
him again and again, and to return the money which he said he had
only borrowed.
In Mr. Ingersoll's view, the object of all punishment should
be reformation, not retaliation -- rescue, not revenge. Only such
punishment should be inflicted as the safety of society demanded.
He was bitterly opposed to the whipping-post, -- believed that it
degraded the whipper as well as the whipped, and disgraced the
State that resorted to it. As for capital punishment, he regarded
it as legal murder, pure and simple, and believed that it made more
criminals than it ever dropped from the scaffold, or seated in the
electric chair.
INTELLECTUAL HOSPITALITY.
Mr. Ingersoll emphasized the necessity of free thought. Every
man should do his own thinking, and he should not be hindered or
hampered in the exercise of it. Not only had he the right, but it
was his duty as well as privilege, to form honest opinions and give
honest expression to them. He claimed this right for himself and
accorded it to all others. He persistently upheld the right of
private judgment as against all powers, systems, creeds and
opinions. Only by its fearless exercise, he held, could the best
and highest in man be developed. Claiming no infallibility for
himself, he was tolerant of the views and opinions of others. He
invited criticism and argument, loved debate, but was not
disputatious or offensive -- not excited or heated in voice or
manner, but "slow-pulsed and calm," and deferential toward those
who differed with him. It was, indeed, a treat to argue with him.
He not only respected but he admired the one who honestly opposed
him if he could give a reason for the faith that was in him."
HIS AGNOSTICISM.
As before remarked, it is not the purpose of the writer to
enter into a discussion of Mr. Ingersoll's position on religious
and theological questions, but simply, and in merest outline, to
attempt worthily to state it. He was an Agnostic, and wanted to be
recognized as such. "I do not know," was his reply to many of the
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
great problems of life and destiny. "I wish I did know, but will
never pretend, or say, that I do, when I know that I do not. I have
the same sources of information that others have, -- all they have
-- and I know that others do not know." "The clergy know that I
know that they know they do not know."
This was not said in a facetious or boastful way, but as
expressing his sincere and earnest conviction.
"I do not deny. I do not know -- but I do not "believe." I
believe that the natural is supreme -- that from the infinite chain
no link can be lost or broken -- that there is no supernatural
power that can answer prayer -- no power that worship can persuade
or change -- no power that cares for man.
"I believe that with infinite arms Nature embraces them all --
that there is no interference, no chance; that behind every event
are the necessary and countless causes, and that beyond every event
will be and must be the necessary and countless effects.
"Man must protect himself. He cannot depend upon the
supernatural, upon an imaginary Father in the skies. He must
protect himself by finding the facts in Nature, by developing his
brain, to the end that he may overcome the obstructions and take
advantage of the forces of Nature.
LIBERTY WITH RESPONSIBILITY.
"Thought and speech must be free. The man or men who would put
a chain upon the brain or a padlock on the tongue are heirs of the
Inquisition, the enemies of society, the foes of human progress."
This liberty of thought and speech did not with him mean license.
He was always careful to make this distinction and to emphasize it.
"Liberty with Responsibility" was his doctrine. Men must bear the
consequences. They do bear them. We reap what we sow. Act and
consequence are inseparable, and no power, human or divine, can
step between to change this law." "My liberty ends where yours
begins," was his constant definition of the limit of freedom.
ON A FUTURE LIFE.
As to a future conscious existence of the individual ego after
death he said: "I do not know." "I never have denied the
immortality of the soul. I have simply been honest. I have said: 'I
do not know.'"
"One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor
fear, nor belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is,
and it will be as it must be.
"We wait and hope."
"There is in death, as I believe, nothing worse than sleep."
To those who asked, "Why, if there be no conscious future
state, should the hope be so universally, implanted in the human
breast?" he replied: "Love was the first to dream of immortality,
-- not Religion, not Revelation. We love, therefore we wish to
live."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
"The hope of immortality is the great oak round which have
climbed the poisonous vines of superstition. The vines have not
supported the oak, the oak has supported the vines. As long as men
live and love and die, this hope will blossom in the human heart."
He has repeatedly declared: "I would not destroy the faintest
ray of human hope, but I deny that we get our idea of immortality
from the Bible. It existed long before the time of Moses. We find
it symbolized through all Egypt, through all India. Wherever man
has lived he has made another world in which to meet the lost of
this,
"The history of this belief we find in tombs and temples
wrought and carved by those who wept and hoped. Above their dead
they laid the symbols of another life.
"We do not know. We do not prophesy a life of pain. We leave
the dead with Nature, the mother of us all. Under the bow of hope,
under the seven-hued arch, let the dead sleep."
His attitude on this question he has put in these rhythmical
lines, -- one of his many prospoems:
We do not know, we cannot say, whether death is a wall or a
door; the beginning or end Of a day; the spreading of pinions to
soar, or the folding forever of wings; the rise or the set of a
sun, or an endless life that brings rapture and love to every one."
ON THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD.
On the existence of a God he was again Agnostic. In one short
sentence, every word a monosyllable, he has stated a whole
philosophy of the subject: "We go as far as we can, and the rest of
the way we say -- God." Could it be, has it ever been, put in
clearer, shorter, simpler form? When we have reached the limit of
human knowledge, of human thought, "the rest of the way," the
Infinite Beyond, the Unknown and Unknowable, the Eternal Mystery,
we call -- "God." On this vague and shadowy conception as a
foundation, on this human Guess, have been built all the creeds and
systems, doctrines and dogmas, of all religions that have bound and
blinded, bewildered and cursed the race. For himself, when he
reached the limit of the known he stopped, and waited for further
light, refusing to follow "blind guides leading the blind" into the
labyrinths of fear and superstition, of faith and despair.
Of one thing he was sure: there could not be a God such as the
Bible describes and the orthodox worship. There could not be a God
of the Jews any more than of the Gentiles, -- of the Egyptians, the
Hindus, the Assyrians, or any other of the races of men. Vishnu and
Brahma, Isis and Osiris, Jupiter and Junoi -- all the Gods of
Grecian and Roman mythology were alike the creatures of human hopes
and fears, ambitions and assumptions, and an equally divine and
worthless. He was careful, however, in deference to those who
mistook and misstated his ideas of God, to make this declaration:
"Let me say once for all, that when I speak of God, I mean the
being described by Moses, the Jehovah of the Jews. There may be for
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
aught I know, somewhere in the unknown shoreless vast, some being
whose dreams are constellations and within whose thought the
infinite exists. About this being, if such an one exists, I have
nothing to say, for I know nothing."
There may be a God, he further held, but if so, he cannot be,
he is not, the infinite fiend that ignorant, barbarous and savage
men have created and worshipped, -- a God who made the world,
pronounced it "good," and then permitted it to become bad, so bad
that he had to destroy it and begin over again, repeopling it,
however, with beings whom he knew would be just as wicked. He could
not conceive of a good or just God who would order his children to
slay one another; who waged wars of conquest and extermination;
tolerated slavery and polygamy; commanded religious persecution;
laughed at the calamity of his enemies and mocked at their fears;
a God who slaughtered old men and women, young men and maidens,
innocent babes at their mothers' breasts, and tortured even dumb
cattle for the sins of their owners; who in his wrath sent fire and
sword, pestilence and famine, lightnings and tempests, earthquakes
and volcanoes, snakes and vermin, upon his chosen people and his
enemies, to make them fear and love him! Such a conception of deity
was to him simply monstrous. To his mind it was but the deification
of all the weaknesses and passions of men -- their anger, jealousy,
cruelty, hatred and revenge, -- a being invested with infinite
power and wisdom to carry out his will; and to crown all, and more
infamous than all, a God who at the last would punish any of his
erring creatures with consuming fire and be himself "the keeper of
an eternal penitentiary!" He labored all his life and with all his
powers to free mankind from the thraldom of such a conception of a
Supreme Being. He used to say: "From the aspersions of, the pulpit,
from the slanders of the church, I seek to rescue the reputation of
the Deity." "It has been said, An honest man is the noblest work of
God.' I say, "An honest God is the noblest work of Man!
RELIGIONS DECAY AND DIE.
Mr. Ingersoll believed, from the history of all ages past,
that religions, like individuals and nations, have their periods of
youth and maturity, decay and death; and he recalls for us this
history in the eloquent passage from his lecture on "The Gods:"
"In that vast cemetery called the past, are most of the
religions of men, and there, too, are nearly all their gods. The
sacred temples of India were ruins long ago. Over column and
cornice, over the painted and pictured walls, cling and creep the
trailing vines. Brahma, the golden, with four heads and four arms;
Vishnu, the somber, the punisher of the wicked, with his three
eyes, his crescent, and his necklace. of skulls; Siva, the
destroyer, red with seas of blood; Kali, the goddess; Draupadi, the
white armed, and Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the
thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile,
Isis no longer wandering weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The
shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun
rises as of yore, and his golden beams still smite the lips of
Memnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fakes
are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still waiting for
the resurrection promised by their priests, and the old beliefs,
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a
language lost and dead. Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and
Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the icy halls
of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer,
dashes mountains to the earth no more. Broken are the circles and
cromlechs of the ancient Druids; fallen upon the summits of the
hills, and covered with the centuries' moss, are the sacred cairns.
The divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs have died out in the
ashes of the past, and there is none to rekindle, and none to feed
the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still; the drained cup of
Bacchus has been thrown aside; Venus lies dead in stone, and her
white bosom heaves no more with love. The streams still murmur, but
no naiads bathe; the trees still wave, but in the forest aisles no
dryads dance. The gods have flown from high Olympus. Not even the
beautiful women can lure them back, and Dance lies unnoticed, naked
to the stars. Hushed forever are the thunders of Sinai; lost are
the voices of the prophets, and the land once flowing with milk and
honey, is but a desert waste. One by one, the myths have faded from
the clouds; one by one, the phantom host has disappeared, and one
by one, facts, truths and realities have taken their places. The
supernatural has almost gone, but the natural remains. The gods
have fled, but man is here.
AS TO THE BIBLE.
It is hardly necessary to add, that with the views already
expressed, Mr. Ingersoll could not believe the Bible to be the
"inspired word of God." He regarded it as simply a human book -- a
very human book, -- a history more or less fragmentary of the
Jewish nation and people. As such it was the product of the times
when its different parts were written. It reflects, naturally, the
faults and follies, the weaknesses and errors, the customs and
habits and opinions of its writers and of the people for whom they
wrote. It contains, along with its traditions and religious
teachings, many wise and moral maxims and exhortations appealing to
the higher and nobler in man. With all its admitted beauties and
excellencies, however, there is so much that is trivial and false
and contradictory and impossible, that its claim to divine
inspiration seems to many to be an absurdity. To Mr. Ingersoll's
mind all the earmarks show its human origin. Its history and
chronology, its astronomy and geology, its science and philosophy,
its biology, anthropology, theology and demonology -- all its
"ologies" -- are ignorant, crude and impossible. Its myths and
miracles, childish traditions and superstitions, its immoral and
anti-natural precepts and examples, show absolutely its purely
human origin. He thought and said that, in his judgment, Adam was
not a perfect gentleman, according to the nineteenth century
standard; and that Moses and Aaron; Joshua and Jephtha; Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob; David and Saul and Solomon; Jonah, Samson,
Jeremiah and Elisha, with other "worthies" of the Old Testament,
were "a sorry lot," most of whom, if living to-day, would probably
be in the penitentiary.
Besides, he said, there are many bibles and bibles, as there
are many religions, -- sacred scriptures of other races and peoples
-- some of them of a civilization superior to and an antiquity
greater than the Jewish; to say nothing of the many differing
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
manuscripts and translations, -- "books" lost that have not been
found, "books" left in that should have been left out, and that
were admitted or excluded into or from the "sacred canon" by the
"votes" of human councils, often by narrow majorities and after
heated and angry discussions -- together with the many
interpolations, anachronisms and contradictions that mark these
sacred books, -- all these testify to their very natural earthly
origin.
MY BIBLE.
"For thousands of years men have been writing the real Bible,
and it is being written from day to day, and it will never be
finished while man has life. All the facts that we know, all the
truly recorded events, all the discoveries and inventions, all the
wonderful machines whose wheels and levers seem to think, all the
poems, crystals from the brain, flowers from the heart, all the
songs of love and joy, of smiles and tears, the great dramas of
Imagination's world, the wondrous paintings, miracles of form and
color, of light and shade, the marvelous marbles that seem to live
and breathe, the secrets told by rock and star, by dust and flower,
by rain and snow, by frost and flame, by winding stream and desert
sand, by mountain range and billowed sea.
"All the wisdom that lengthens and ennobles life -- all that
avoids or cures disease, or conquers pain -- all just and perfect
laws and rules that guide and shape our lives, all thoughts that
feed the flames of love, the music that transfigures, enraptures
and enthralls, the victories of heart and brain, the miracles that
hands have wrought, the deft and cunning hands of those who worked
for wife and child, the histories of noble deeds, of brave and
useful men, of faithful loving wives, of quenchless mother-love, of
conflicts for the right, of sufferings for the truth, of all the
best that all the men and women of the world have said, and thought
and done through all the years, -- these treasures of the heart and
brain -- these are the Sacred Scriptures of the human race."
VIII.
ON ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.
We come now to a statement, feebly inadequate, of Mr.
Ingersoll's position on this question. It was to him the
culminating point of all his objectives. It mattered little to him,
comparatively, what people believed on abstruse and disputed
questions of theology, science, or philosophy. But on the vital
question of the destiny of the human soul he stood firm as a rock.
Here he would admit no compromise, make no concession. In this, he
was no longer an Agnostic, -- he knew. Everlasting punishment of
the "unrepenting sinner," of the "wicked," of anybody, was to his
mind and heart an unspeakable horror -- a frightful insanity. This
doctrine it was that first opened his eyes to the falseness of
Christian theology, and separated him forever from all confidence
in, and sympathy with its teachings, and made him one of its most
implacable foes. This dogma he despised and execrated. He denounced
it as a "doctrine, the infamy of which no language is Sufficient to
express."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
He said that, "While the Old Testament threatens men, women
and children with disease, famine, war, pestilence and death, there
are no threatenings of punishment beyond this life. The doctrine of
eternal punishment is a dogma of the New Testament. This doctrine,
the most cruel, the most infamous, is taught, if taught at all, in
the Bible -- in the New Testament. One cannot imagine what the
human heart has suffered by reason of the frightful doctrine of
eternal damnation. It is a doctrine so abhorrent to every drop of
my blood, so infinitely cruel, that it is impossible for me to
respect either the head or heart of any human being who teaches or
fears it. This doctrine necessarily subverts all ideas of justice.
To inflict infinite punishment for finite crimes, or rather for
crimes committed by finite beings, is a proposition so monstrous
that I am astonished it ever found lodgment in the brain of man.
Whoever says that we can be happy in heaven while those we loved on
earth are suffering infinite torments in eternal fire, defames and
calumniates the human heart."
And who can doubt that among the foremost factors in chasing
this black shadow from the earth has been the gentle, loving, brave
and fearless Ingersoll.
TRUE CONSOLATION.
His teachings were a consolation to many a sorrow in heart.
Many a heavy burden has by them been lifted from timid and troubled
souls. In San Francisco, his cousin Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, the
philanthropist, brought to his attention the case of a devoutly
pious friend, a widow, whose only boy had been suddenly taken from
her side. He was a good and loving son, the idol of her heart, the
pride and prop of her life, but he was not a Christian, and she
feared for his eternal fate, -- felt that heaven would be no heaven
to her without her boy. Her grief was inconsolable. The
"consolations" of the gospel failed to satisfy her heart, or dispel
her fears. The visits of her pastor brought no comfort, left behind
no peace. Christian friends came in vain to her relief. Appealed to
by his cousin, Colonel Ingersoll wrote a letter to this sorrowing
heart. He urged her not to fear, saying:
"Mrs. Cooper has told me the sad story of your almost infinite
sorrow. I am not foolish enough to suppose that I can say or do
anything to lessen your great grief, your anguish for his loss; but
maybe I can say something to drive from your poor heart the fiend
of fear -- fear for him.
"If there is a God, let us believe that he is good, and if he
is good, the good have nothing to fear. I have been told that your
son was kind and generous; that he was filled with charity and
sympathy. Now, we know that in this world like begets like,
kindness produces kindness, and all goodness bears the fruit of
joy. Belief is nothing -- deeds are everything; and if your son was
kind he will naturally find kindness wherever he may be. You would
not inflict endless pain upon your worst enemy. Is God less
merciful than you? You could not bear to see a viper suffer
forever. Is it possible that God will doom a kind and generous boy
to everlasting pain? Nothing can be more monstrously absurd and
cruel.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
"The truth is, that no human being knows anything of what is
beyond the grave. If nothing is known, then it is not honest for
anyone to pretend that he does know. If nothing is known, then we
'Can hope only for the good. If there be a God your boy is no more
in his power now than he was before his death -- no more than you
are at the present moment. Why should we fear God more after death
than before? Does the feeling of God toward his children change the
moment they die? While we are alive they say God loves us; when
will he cease to love us? True love never changes. I beg of you to
throw away all fear. Take counsel of your own heart. If God exists,
your heart is the best revelation of him, and your heart could
never send your boy to endless pain. After all, no one knows. The
ministers know nothing. All the churches in the world know no more
on this subject than the ants on the ant-hills. Creeds are good for
nothing except to break the hearts of the loving. Have courage.
Under the seven-hued arch of hope let your boy sleep. I do not
pretend to know, but I do know that others do not know. Listen to
your heart, believe what it says, and wait with patience and
without fear for what the future has for all. If we can get no
comfort from what people know, let us avoid being driven to despair
by what they do not know.
"I wish I could say something that would put a star in your
night of grief -- a little flower in your lonely path -- and if an
unbeliever has such a wish, surely an infinitely good being never
made a soul to be the food of pain through countless years."
To this letter came the prompt reply:
"Dear Colonel Ingersoll: I found your letter inclosed with one
from Mrs. Cooper at my door on the way to this hotel to see a
friend. I broke the seal here, and through blinding tears --
letting it fall from my hands between each sentence to sob my heart
out -- read it. The first peace I have known, real peace, since the
terrible blow, has come to me now. While I will not doubt the
existence of a God, I feel that I can rest my grief-stricken heart
on his goodness and mercy; and you have helped me to do this. Why,
you have helped me to believe in an all-merciful and loving
creator, who has gathered (I will try to believe) my poor little
boy -- my kind, large-hearted child -- into his tender and
sheltering arms. There is a genuine ring in your words that lifts
me up.
"Your belief, so clear and logical, so filled with common
sense, corresponds, so far back as I can remember, with my own
matter-of-fact ideas; and I was the child of good and praying
parents, and my great wondering eyes, questioning silently when
they talked to me, my strange ways, while I tried to be good,
caused them often great anxiety and many a pang -- God forgive me.
"I am writing, while people are talking about me, just a line
to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the comfort you have
given me to-day. You great, good man; I see the traces of your
tears all over your letter, and I could clasp your hand and bless
you for this comfort you have given my poor heart."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
ON SPECIAL PROVIDENCE.
Colonel Ingersoll did not believe in a special Providence
caring for each human soul, answering prayer and extending his
almighty arm in rescue of the innocent and helpless and in reward
of the faithful and righteous; nor did he believe that this
Providence ever heard or answered the most horrible prayer ever
offered by human lips or written by human hand -- David's 109th
imprecatory Psalm.
A minister called on him once to say: "Colonel, I understand
you do not believe in a special providence." "I do not." "Well, I
want to prove it to you beyond all question, in my own case. Some
years ago I engaged passage on a steamer, to go abroad. Before she
sailed, I had a fear, a presentiment, or feeling -- call it what
you will -- that something would happen to that steamer. I got so
worked up over it, that I took it to the Lord in earnest prayer. As
the result, I gave up my stateroom. Colonel, that steamer never
reached port. She went down, and every one of the four hundred
souls on board sank to a watery grave. Will you tell me that that
was not a divine interposition in my behalf, in answer to my
prayer? Is it not proof positive that God cared for me in a
special, personal way?" "But, my dear sir," was the Colonel's
reply, "what do you suppose the families and friends of the four
hundred drowned thought of your special providence? Do you think
that God cared only for your one little soul and forgot to warn all
the rest? It won't do. Besides, do you feel comfortable at the
thought that having such a warning from the Lord you did not, day
and night, beseech the captain of that ship to postpone his
sailing, at least till you could get word from heaven that it was
safe to go?" The minister did not reply. "Now, let me tell you my
case," continued the Colonel. "Providence cared for me a little
while ago in a striking way, though you may not believe it. A
thunder-bolt struck the Young Men's Christian Association's
building which adjoined my own office in Washington, and I escaped!
If that shaft was aimed at me, I certainly think your providence
was a very poor marksman!"
ON MIRACLES.
When the subject of miracles was broached, he could hardly
repress a smile, -- the belief in them seemed to him so hopelessly
unworthy of an intelligent, thinking mind. He could find no warrant
in Nature, or experience, for such a belief. He held that the
belief had its foundation in the ignorance, credulity and fear of
the superstitious savage. That these lowest elements in man should
be played upon by designing priests to extort reverence for their
persons and their office and obedience to their authority, -- to
say nothing of the revenue extracted from the poor and toiling
millions, -- Seemed to him a monstrous crime. He could not argue
the question seriously, it was to him altogether outside the pale
of rational thought. Belief in miracles has always been the mother
of superstition, and he held the church responsible for upholding
and perpetuating it.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
"Believers in miracles," he said, "should not endeavor to
explain them. There is but one, way to explain anything, and that
is to account for it by natural agencies. The moment you explain a
miracle, it disappears. You should depend not upon explanation, but
upon assertion. You should not be driven from the field because the
miracle is shown to be unreasonable. You should reply that all
miracles are unreasonable. Neither should you be in the least
disheartened if it be shown to be impossible. The possible is not
miraculous. You should take the ground that if miracles were
reasonable, and possible, there would be no reward paid for
believing them. The Christian has the goodness to believe, while
the sinner asks for evidence. It is enough for God to work
miracles, without being called upon to substantiate them for the
benefit of unbelievers."
The efforts of otherwise intelligent men, the so-called or
miscalled Christian scientists, to reconcile the miracles of the
Old and New Testaments with the facts and laws of Nature were to
Mr. Ingersoll simply amusing. "We must remember," he said, "that
the priests of one religion never credit the miracles of another
religion. Is this because priests instinctively know priests? Now,
when a Christian tells a Buddhist some of the miracles of the Old
and New Testaments, the Buddhist smiles. When the Buddhist tells a
Christian the miracles performed by the Buddha, the Christian
laughs."
Continuing, he said in substance: the truth is, that in common
belief we call that "miraculous" which is simply mysterious or
wonderful. We speak of the "miracle" of sand and star, of life and
growth, of decay and death, but they are only the immutable and
uniform operations of the laws of Nature. To suspend these laws,
even for a moment, would result in confusion, wreck and universal
doom. According to the account, General Joshua commanded that "the
sun and moon stop in the heavens in order that General Joshua might
have more time to murder; the shadow on a dial goes back ten
degrees to convince a petty king of a barbarous people that he is
not going to die of a boil." We now know that if these "miracles"
had been wrought, the world would have been instantly plunged into
the night of chaos and ruin. Nature's laws are uniform and
inexorably persistent in their operation. They obey no master,
suffer no interference. Like causes always and everywhere produce
like effects, and no mandate from earth or sky, no "miracle,"
however attested, can change this law.
Miracles are simply the product of the unenlightened human
imagination, stimulated and perverted by the mistaken zeal of
sincerity, or by the designing craft of religious hypocrisy or
fanaticism. No miracles are wrought to-day.
On the Sunday question he was equally emphatic. He did not
believe that that day, or any day, could be "holy" or "sacred" in
the theological sense. That day was holy to him in which some kind
thought was expressed, or loving deed done for others. "How," he
asked, "can a space of time be holy? You might as well talk of a
pious multiplication table, a moral triangle, or a virtuous
vacuum." He regarded the day as a good civil institution, as a day
of rest from unnecessary toil, and if sacred for anything, to be
devoted to individual, family and social joys.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
His views on slavery and polygamy; on inspiration, the
trinity, the divinity of Christ, -- whom he regarded as a good,
kind and gentle man, a reformer and an infidel in his day; on the
incarnation; on the fall of man, the atonement, the resurrection of
the body and other doctrines of orthodox Christianity, are too
generally known to need rehearsal here. He rejected them all, and
in his works has given manifold reasons therefor.
ON NATURE AND MAN.
He believed that Nature, or the Universe, is all there is;
that it is the only God. In this he was pantheistic, yet not
professedly a Pantheist. nor was he a Deist. He said:
"Let us be honest with ourselves. In the presence of countless
mysteries; standing beneath the boundless heaven sown thick with
constellations; knowing that each grain of sand, each leaf, each
blade of grass, asks of every mind the answerless question; knowing
that the simplest thing defies solution; feeling that we deal with
the superficial and the relative, and that we are forever eluded by
the real, the absolute, -- let us admit the limitations of our
minds, and let us have the courage and the candor to say: We do not
know." "The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The
Agnostic says: "I do not know, but I do not believe there is any
God." The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he
knows there is a God; but we know that he does not know. He simply
believes. He cannot know. The Atheist cannot know that God does not
exist."
As we have seen, he was an Agnostics -- he did not know, nor
pretend, nor profess to know. He did not personify Nature as God.
Nature to him had no moral qualities or attributes, -- neither
loved nor hated; held no scepter like a king dispensing favors and
rewards, no power like a judge inflicting penalties and pains. He
believed that man himself is king and judge, victor and victim, his
own master, his own slave, that he reaps what he sows, gathers his
own harvest.
He held that Nature or the elements, the Universe or God
cannot be the person, with "body, parts and passions," that man in
his ignorance and faith has created. Man in his vain search for the
Infinite has simply personified the forces of Nature and given to
them qualities and attributes in accord with his own highest and
lowest conceptions. Nature, according to Mr. Ingersoll, has no
mental, moral, or physical embodiment of a human type -- is not an
exaggerated and sublimated man, to be feared and worshiped. It has
no appetites, no wants, and cannot therefore be entreated by
prayer, flattered by praise, melted by tears, or bribed by
offerings and sacrifices. He believed that nothing we know can be
higher or lower than the natural -- can be either supernatural or
infranatural, -- that there are no gods, no angels, no devils, no
heavens, no hells. "The Universe is all there is, or was, or will
be. It is both subject and object; contemplator and contemplated;
creator and created; destroyer and destroyed; preserver and
preserved, and hath within itself all causes, modes, motions, and
effects."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
He taught that man only could be the providence of man; that
if man is to be helped, man must be the helper; that he will look
in vain to the mountains or the clouds, -- that he himself must be
and make his own heaven, as he sadly enough makes his own hell.
Summing up his philosophy of human life he said: "Happiness is the
only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is
now. The way to be happy is to make others so."
"ICONOCLASM."
Many, by way of reproach, called him a "rude Iconoclast,"
shattering the images worshipped by devout souls and setting up no
others in their places. They cried, "You take away our 'idols,' as
you call them, and give us nothing in return." To these he would
say:
"We do not want creeds; we do not want idols; we want
knowledge; we want happiness.
"And yet we are told by the Church that we have accomplished
nothing; that we are simply destroyers; that we tear down without
building again.
"Is it nothing to free the mind? Is it nothing to civilize
mankind? Is it nothing to fill the world with light, with
discovery, with science? Is it nothing to dignify man and exalt the
intellect? Is it nothing to grope your way into the dreary prisons,
the damp and dripping dungeons, the dark and silent cells of
superstition, where the souls of men are chained to floors of
stone; to greet them like a ray of light, like the song of a bird,
the murmur of a stream; to see the dull eyes open and grow slowly
bright; to feel yourself grasped by the shrunken and unused hands,
and hear yourself thanked by a strange and hollow voice?
"Is it nothing to conduct these souls gradually into the
blessed light of day -- to let them see again the happy fields, the
sweet, green earth, and hear the everlasting music of the waves? Is
it nothing to make men wipe the dust from their swollen knees, the
tears from their blanched and furrowed cheeks? Is it a small thing
to relieve the heavens of an insatiate monster and write upon the
eternal dome, glittering with stars, the grand word -- Freedom?
"Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the,
holy tears of pity -- to unbind the martyr from the stake -- break
all the chains -- put out the fires of civil war -- stay the sword
of the fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the Church from the
white throat of Science?
"Is it a small thing to make men truly free -- to destroy the
dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power -- the poisoned fables of
superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the
fiend of Fear?"
Do not be frightened, he urged; "Fear is the dungeon of the
soul." "Do not be afraid to doubt; your doubts are the smartest
things about you.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
"The destroyer of weeds and thistles is a benefactor, whether
he soweth grain or not. I cannot, for my life, see why one should
be charged with tearing down and not rebuilding, simply because he
exposes a sham, or detects a lie. I do not feel under any
obligation to build something in the place of a detected falsehood.
All I think I am under obligation to put in the place of a detected
lie, is the detection."
"I have not torn the good down. I have only endeavored to
trample out the ignorant, cruel fires of hell. I do not tear away
the passage: 'God will be merciful to the merciful.' I do not
destroy the promise: 'If you will forgive others, God will forgive
you.'
"There is no darkness but ignorance, no light but
intelligence," he asserted over and over again. "On the ruins of
ignorance the splendid temple of intelligence must be reared. In
the pace of darkness the light must be made to shine."
"Some may ask, 'Are you trying to take our religion away?'
"To such I answer, No. Superstition is not religion.
"To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to
pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and
remember benefits -- to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter
honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against
slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to
make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to
cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that
genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to
cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill
life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving
words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new
truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the
storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done
and then to be resigned -- this is the religion of reason, the
creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart."
What did Mr. Ingersoll think of Christ?' That he was simply a
man, -- not "God incarnate," as theologians express it. He was not,
could not have been, miraculously conceived. He was the son, the
first-born, of Jewish parents, naturally begotten, He learned and
followed his father's trade and lived in the home with the rest of
the family. We know nothing of his boyhood aside from apocryphal
tales told of wonders he wrought for the amusement and amazement of
his playmates, and the gospel story of confounding the doctors in
the temple by his precocious wisdom. His mother, as a woman, and
the wife of Joseph, must have believed in her heart that Christ was
the child of their union, and not the offspring of Jehovah. Once
when they feared their boy was lost, she said on finding him, "Thy
father and I" -- thy parents -- "have sought thee, sorrowing."
The writer of Matthew's gospel believed, with other Jews, that
the Christ of prophesy and of their hopes was to be an earthly
king,' who should "sit on the throne of his father David." He
therefore traces the ancestry of Joseph, "as was supposed," not of
Mary, to show that the blood of David was in Joseph's veins. Christ
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
was a human being -- could have been none other. The claim of
divinity was not made for him by the early Church until years after
his death, for the epistles and gospels were not known, or accepted
as authority until at least a century-and-a-half later.
In his review of the four gospels, Mr. Ingersoll shows that
there was not agreement. This want of harmony was apparent, more
perhaps in the omission of important events and doctrines than in
the interpolations and errors of translation. He points out
especially that the most vital message of all, the Atonement, is no
definitely set forth by either of the three evangelists. Only John
tells us that we must "believe?' and be "born again" in order to be
saved. The other three had not heard of it, or did not regard
salvation by faith as an essential teaching of their Master, else
they would, all of them have said so. Instead, they exalted and
emphasized the moral precepts, the practice of goodness, mercy,
purity of heart, forgiveness, charity -- the doctrines preached by
Christ in his "Sermon on the Mount." This sermon was to be for his
hearers their guide and chart through life and the key to open for
them the portals of heaven.
Of course he discarded all miracles, myths, legends and false
records of the words said to have been spoken and deeds said to
have been done by Christ. He regarded these as the source and cause
of the beliefs of his misguided and deluded, even though sincere
and devout, followers. He could understand and account for their
credulity, and their reverential homage, and did not wonder at it.
Did not they see, this kinsman of theirs, their neighbor and
countryman, "going about doing good?" Was he not healing their
sick, causing their lame to leap, their sightless eyes to see,
their silent lips to utter speech, their closed ears to hear
melodious sounds, and marvel of marvels! their dead to be raised
from "cold obstruction" to warm and throbbing life? And all for
them! Could they be other than grateful for his kindness, his
sympathy and compassion? They looked upon him as a wise and
powerful friend, who took their part against rich and heartless
oppressors, and were overwhelmed with pity and anguish at his cruel
and pathetic death. And for their sakes! No wonder that they
worshipped him!
The early Church, growing in numbers and power, taking
advantage of this loving adoration, added the forces of mystery and
command to complete its mastery of souls. Thus did Christianity as
a system begin, and thus for centuries did it continue to be, like
all other religions since the world has been. We have found many
Christs in many races, many lands. We have seen many systems of
religion appear and disappear -- arrive, flourish, decay and die.
These all had their miraculous births, superstitious beliefs,
sacred books, cunning priests, formal ceremonies, and often cruel
and inhuman rites -- with millions of devoted followers to attest
to their divine mission and authority.
Mr. Ingersoll believed, in all sincerity, that Christ was a
good man, not an imposter, not a hypocrite, but one of the best of
men that ever "touched this bank and shoal of Time." He was kind,
tender and compassionate. He loved little children and gathered
them in his arms. In his ministry he was intensely earnest, self-
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
denying and indefatigable. He preached and labored for no salary,
-- gave his gospel freely, "without money and without price," and
was so poor that "he had not where to lay his head," and lived on
the hospitality and alms of his followers. Very like, Mr. Ingersoll
thought, the itinerant preachers of the early Methodist. Church who
were more or less warmly welcomed in the homes of their flocks.
This reminded him of the pious woman who entertained several
ministers of her denomination attending quarterly conference. On
the first morning of their stay she asked her husband for an extra
supply of money to do the marketing, saying, -- "You know them
religiouses eats orful!" Apropos of this question of Christian
hospitality, so often abused, a minister once visited a "brother"
living in another city. He prolonged his stay beyond a reasonable
time. Hints that his early departure would not greatly grieve the
family, were not taken. At last, provoked, the goodman of the house
invoked the help of the Lord. At family worship one morning he
prayed: "When our brother leaves us today, go with him, bless him
in basket and in store," -- and so on. The prayer was quickly
answered, and preacher and carpet-bag disappeared before the hour
for luncheon had arrived. Another case was that of a Christian
worker who late at night, and without notice, brought himself and
his two boys to a "brother's" home, saying frankly that it was too
expensive for him to stop at the hotel! Mr. Ingersoll did not mean
to condemn or disparage the hospitality of the early Christian
disciples, but he thought the modern practice of "Pious billeting,"
as he termed it, somewhat overdone.
In the story of Mary and Martha -- probably apocryphal -- Mr.
Ingersoll thought that Christ as a guest was hardly fair to Martha
-- not as appreciative as he might have been of her "careful"
concern for his bodily comfort. His extravagant praise for Mary
should have been equally shared by both sisters. He seemed to have
been more pleased with the loving attentions of Mary, who sat at
his feet anointing them with oil, bathing them with tears, an
wiping them with her flowing tresses, than he was with the "poorer
part" that Martha "chose" in entertaining him. Martha stood in the
kitchen as we might say in modern parlance, cooking, baking and
then serving the food, and really loving him, while Mary stayed in
the parlor kneeling and adoring. As one has put it: "Mary wept,
Martha swept." Mr. Ingersoll's choice was for Martha as the better
hostess.
Christ was serene, serious, sad and solemn, as befitted his
great mission. "Jesus wept." He could not be jovial, gay, or
flippant, lighthearted or humorous. We do not know that he ever
enjoyed a joke, or indulged in a hearty laugh. He attended a
wedding feast, and may have been merry over the wine he made out of
water, but we do not know. We do know that he was terribly severe
in his denunciations of wrong and of wrong-doers, and sometimes
displayed impatience and temper when displeased, and administered
unmerited and unjust rebuke. On one occasion, being hungry, he
approached a fig tree expecting fruit, although "the time of figs
was not yet," and finding "nothing but leaves" he "cursed" the
innocent tree, saying, "Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward
forever," and instantly the poor thing "withered away." Mr.
Ingersoll could not reconcile this transaction with goodness or
greatness, and thought that a "miracle of blessing" rather than of
cursing should then and there have been performed. He thought and
hoped that the story, like others, was an interpolation.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
The simple truth, as believed by Mr. Ingersoll, is that Christ
was an oriental Prophet, a religious Reformer, an Evangelist, a
Protestant against the evils and abuses, the false teachings and
formal rites of the Jewish synagogue and altar. He was an Infidel
and Heretic in the eyes of the orthodox of his day, and was put to
a cruel and shameful death on the cross because he dared to oppose
and expose the errors of the church of his fathers. In this he was
fearless, courageous, heroic, and truly one of the greatest of the
"glorious army of Martyrs."
He must have been attractive and magnetic in his person,
speech and manner, and capable of strong and enduring attachments
-- in short, an altogether loving and lovable man. These fine
traits in him Mr. Ingersoll fully understood and appreciated. He
had no aversion, no hatred, only praise, for the Peasant of
Palestine. He was not an enemy, but a friend of the human Christ,
notwithstanding the calumny and slander of orthodox priests and
teachers. He said:
"And let me say here, once for all, that for the man Christ I
have infinite respect. Let me say, once for all, that the place
where man has died for man is holy ground. And let me say, once for
all, that to that great and serene man I gladly pay the tribute of
my admiration and my tears. He was an infidel in his time. He was
regarded as a blasphemer, and his life was destroyed by hypocrites,
who have in all ages, done what they could to trample freedom and
manhood out of the human mind. Had I lived at that time I would
have been his friend, and should he come again he will not find a
better friend than I will be.
"That is for the man. For the theological creation I have a
different feeling. If he was, in fact, God, he knew there was no
such thing as death. He knew that what we called death was but the
eternal opening of the golden gates of everlasting joy; and it took
no heroism to face a death that was eternal life.
"But when a man, when a poor boy sixteen years of age, goes
upon the field of battle to keep his flag in heaven, not knowing
but death ends all; not knowing but that when the shadows creep
over him, the darkness will be eternal, there is heroism. For the
man who, in the darkness, said: "My God, why hast thou forsaken
me?" -- for that man I have nothing but respect, admiration, and
love. Back of the theological shreds, rags, and patches, hiding the
real Christ, I see a genuine man."
While thus recognizing and applauding the high moral character
of Christ, and his many virtues, Colonel Ingersoll could not see
from the record that he was "intellectually at the summit" of the
race. He certainly had but a narrow field of observation and a
limited experience. He lived but a few years, and in a very small
and poor country, and his "world" was confined to Palestine and the
lands bordering on the Mediterranean sea. He had not heard of
America, and knew nothing of the great islands and continents
peopled with millions of his fellow creatures, that lay beyond the
scope of his narrow vision. He had no true conception of the, size
and shape of the earth, knew little of geography, geology,
ethnology, or cosmogony, and still less of astronomy. He was
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
ignorant of the motions of the planets, of the suns, moons and
stars, wheeling in their orbits through the infinite spaces. He
perhaps had heard of "The Wise Men" and the "Star" that heralded
his birth, but made no mention of it. Matthew is the only
evangelist who records it. He was not a great philosopher. Most of
his philosophy was provincial, puerile, crude and impossible. He
did not value worldly wisdom -- his "Kingdom was not of this
world." He was not an inventer, voyager, or discoverer of new facts
and forces in nature. He practiced none of the fine arts, -- was
not a painter, sculptor or musician, although he was poetic,
dramatic and highly imaginative, -- traits common to the Oriental
temperament. He was not a historian -- wrote nothing -- left not a
line or word, not even a signature of his name. He said nothing
about education, the rights of man, popular sovereignty or
statesmanship. He did not encourage industry, thrift and economy,
or the habit of saving for the future, telling his followers to
"take no thought, for the morrow," that it was useless to lay up
treasures on earth for the end of all things was at hand. He was
the enemy of the rich and prosperous, for in his allegory he
consigned Dives to Hades, "not because he was bad, but because he
was rich," and comforted Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, "not because
he was good, but because he was poor." He did not grow eloquent
over the sacredness of home, or the blessedness of maternity. He
never married. The Church that followed him and bore his name
regarded and still regards "the priest as better than a father, the
nun holier than a mother."
His was supremely a heavenly mission. He subordinated the
material to the spiritual, the joy of living here to the promise of
greater joy hereafter. He believed the end was near, and said,
"This generation shall not pass away," that those who heard him
"should not taste of death, till all that he had prophesied had
been fulfilled. The things he did not say, but might have said, if
he had been the Divine Teacher knowing all things, past, present
and future, seemed more important to Mr. Ingersoll than the things
he did say.
"If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before him
like a panorama moved the history yet to be. He knew how his words
would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what
infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the hungry
flames of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless
martyrs. He knew that thousands and thousands of brave men and
women. would languish in dungeons in darkness, filled with pain. He
knew that the church would invent and use instruments of torture;
that his followers would appeal to whip and fagot, to chain and
rack. He saw what creeds would spring like poisonous fungi from
every text. He saw the ignorant sects waging war against each
other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests,
building prisons for their fellow-men. He saw thousands of
scaffolds dripping with the best and bravest blood. He saw his
followers using the instruments of pain. He heard the groans -- saw
the faces white with agony. He heard the shrieks and sobs and cries
of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries
would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light
of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of the
teachings attributed to him.
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"He saw the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would
write and tell. He saw all wars that would be waged, and knew that
above these fields of death, these dungeons, these rackings, these
burnings, these executions, for a thousand years would float the
dripping banner of the cross.
"He knew that hypocrisy would be robed and crowned -- that
cruelty and credulity would rule the world; knew that liberty would
perish from the earth; knew that popes and kings in his name would
enslave the souls and bodies of men; knew that they would persecute
and destroy the discoverers, thinkers and inventors; knew that his
church would extinguish reason's holy light and leave the world
without a star.
"He saw his disciples extinguishing the eyes of men, flaying
them alive, cutting out their tongues, searching for all the nerves
of pain.
"He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human
flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women's breasts unbabed for
gold.
"And yet he died with voiceless lips.
"Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not. tell his disciples,
and through them the world: 'You shall not burn, imprison and
torture in my name. You shall not persecute your fellowmen.'
"Why did he not plainly say: I am the Son of God,' or, 'I am
God?' Why did he not explain the Trinity? Why did he not tell the
mode of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not write a
creed? Why did he not break the chains of slaves? Why did he not
say that the Old Testament was or was not the inspired word of God?
Why did he not write the New Testament himself? Why did he leave
his words to ignorance, hypocrisy and chance? Why did he not say
something positive, definite and satisfactory about another world?
Why did he not, turn the tear-stained hope of heaven into the glad
knowledge of another life? Why did he not tell us something of the
rights of man, of the liberty of hand and brain?
"Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to
misery and to doubt?
"I" will tell you why. He was a man, and did not know."
Notwithstanding Mr. Ingersoll's pronounced views of the
character and teachings of the man Christ, and his emphatic denials
and denunciations of orthodox theology, he repeatedly expressed,
both in his public utterances and private conversations, these
thoughts:
"I admit that there are many good and beautiful passages in
the Old and New Testaments; that from the lips of Christ dropped
many pearls of kindness, -- of love. Every verse that is true and
tender I treasure in my heart. Every thought behind which is the
tear of pity I appreciate and love. But I cannot accept it all.
Many utterances attributed to Christ shock my brain and heart. They
are absurd and cruel.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
"Take from the New Testament the infinite savagery, the
shoreless malevolence of eternal pain, the absurdity of salvation
by faith, the ignorant belief in the existence of devils, the
immorality and cruelty of the Atonement, the doctrine of non-
resistance that denies to virtue the right of self-defense, and how
glorious it would be to know that the remainder is true! Compared
with this knowledge, how everything else in nature would shrink and
shrivel! What ecstacy it would be to know that God exists, that he
is our father and that he loves and cares for the children of men!
To know that all the paths that human beings travel, turn and wind
as they may, lead to the gates of stainless peace? How the heart
would thrill and throb to know that. Christ was the conqueror of
Death; that at his grave the all-devouring monster was baffled and
beaten forever; that from that moment the tomb. became the door
that opens on eternal life! To, know this would change all sorrow
into gladness. Poverty, failure, disaster, defeat, power, place and
wealth would become meaningless sounds. To take your babe upon your
knee and say: 'Mine and mine forever!' What joy! To clasp the woman
you love in your arms and to know that she is yours and forever --
yours though suns darken and constellations vanish? This is enough:
To know that the loved and dead are not lost; that they still live
and love and wait for you. To know that Christ dispelled the,
darkness of death and filled the grave with eternal light. To know
this would be all that the heart could bear. Beyond this joy cannot
go. Beyond this there is no place for hope."
In the foregoing statement of Mr. Ingersoll's view of Christ
and his teachings, the writer has given only a few extracts and
attempted only the merest outline, the most meager and superficial
survey, of the subject. He feels that he has only touched the hem
of a wonderfully woven intellectual garment, reached but the
boundary line and not explored the interior, the heights and widths
and depths of Mr. Ingersoll's universal genius. Who would penetrate
further must be referred to his published works in their complete
"Dresden" offering.
While never professing or pretending to be a "poet" in the
accepted meaning of the term, Mr. Ingersoll was yet highly poetic
in temperament, thought and expression. What he modestly called, or
his admirers called, "Prose Poems," abundantly show this. All his
writings and sayings display it. Sometimes he would invoke the muse
and jot down on bits of paper his vivid imagery in metrical
numbers. Many of these scraps, most of them very beautiful, were
found in his literary remains. He thought it worth while, in
summing up his views, to put them in verse, and so he gave us this
comprehensive rhythmical summary, called his creed, or his:
X.
DECLARATION OF THE FREE.
"We have no falsehoods to defend --
We want the facts;
Our force, our thought, we do not spend
In vain attacks.
And we will never meanly try
To save some fair and pleasing lie.
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"The simple truth is what we ask,
Not the ideal;
We've set ourselves the noble task
To find the real.
If all there is is naught but dross,
We want to know and bear our loss.
"We will not willingly be fooled,
By fables nursed;
Our hearts, by earnest thought, are schooled
To bear the worst;
And we can stand erect and dare
All things, all facts that really are.
"We have no God to serve or fear,
No hell to shun,
No devil with malicious leer.
When life is done
An endless sleep may close our eyes,
A sleep with neither dreams nor sights.
"We have no master on the land --
No king in air --
Without a miracle we stand,
Without a prayer,
Without a fear of coming night;
We seek the truth, we love the light.
"We do not bow before a guess,
A vague unknown;
A senseless force we do not bless
In solemn tone.
When evil comes we do not curse,
Or thank because it is no worse.
"When cyclones rend -- when lightning blights,
'Tis naught but fate;
There is no God of wrath who smites
In heartless hate.
Behind the things that injure man
There is no purpose, thought, or plan.
"We waste no time in useless dread,
In trembling fear;
The present lives, the past is dead,
And we are here,
All welcome guests at life's great feast --
We need no help from ghost or priest.
"Our life is joyous, jocund, free --
Not one a slave
Who bends in fear the trembling knee,
And seeks to save
A coward soul from future pain;
Not one will cringe or crawl for gain.
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"The jeweled cup of love we drain,
And friendship's wine
Now swiftly flows in every vein
With warmth divine,
And so we love and hope and dream
That in death's sky there is a gleam.
"We walk according to our light;
Pursue the path
That leads to honor's stainless height,
Careless of wrath
Or curse of God, or priestly spite,
Longing to know and do the right.
"We love our fellow man, our kind,
Wife, child, and friend.
To phantoms we are deaf and blind,
But we extend
The helping hand to the distressed;
By lifting others we are blessed.
"Love's sacred flame, within the heart's
And friendship's glow;
While all the miracles of art
Their wealth bestow
Upon the thrilled and joyous brain,
And present raptures banish pain.
"We love no phantoms of the skies,
But living flesh,
With passion's soft and soulful eyes,
Lips warm and fresh,
And cheeks with health's red flag unfurled,
The breathing angels of this world.
"The hands that help are better far
Than lips that pray.
Love is the ever gleaming star
That leads the way,
That shines, not on vague worlds of bliss,
But on a paradise in this.
"We do not pray, or weep, or wail;
We have no dread,
No fear to pass beyond the veil
That hides the dead.
And yet we question, dream, and guess
But knowledge we do not possess.
"We ask, yet nothing seems to know;
We cry in vain.
There is no 'master of the show'
Who will explain,
Or from the future tear the mask;
And yet we dream, and still we ask:
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
"Is there beyond the silent night
An endless day?
Is death a door that leads to light?
We cannot say.
The tongueless secret locked in fate
We do not know. -- We hope and wait."
XI.
HIS PERSONALITY.
Mr. Ingersoll was physically a handsome man. His form was
large and well proportioned, his carriage erect and firm. His
manners were unaffected, easy and natural, gracious and engaging.
Whether in motion or at rest he had the air and poise that denote
the man of mark. He was stout and muscular -- weighing sometimes as
much as two hundred and thirty pounds, which he thought was perhaps
a little excessive for his height of five feet ten and a half
inches. His shoulders were broad and strong, well suited to support
the splendid head they carried. His every feature was most facile
in expression, -- all his thoughts and feelings seemed reflected
there. So open, frank and unconcealing was his countenance, he
could not without an effort hide from view a single passion or
emotion, and even his thoughts sometimes revealed themselves to
close observers. When lighted with the smile that played so often
round his mobile mouth, his presence was illuminated as with
sunshine. There never was a more glowing personality. His entrance
into any social circle was like a sun-burst, -- he radiated life
and light and joy. In truth, none could long be with him, and come
to know him well, but felt that here he saw a "combination and a
form indeed, where every god did seem to set his seal to give the
world assurance of a man."
UNSUSPICIOUS.
He was not suspicious. He used to say that Suspicion was the
blackest imp in the pit. He was simple, direct, guileless and
unsuspecting as a child, and was often imposed upon on this
unarmored side of his nature. Designing men too often found in him
an easy prey, -- not always or so much, perhaps, because he did not
sometimes detect their duplicity as that he did not wish harshly to
judge and tax a man with falseness to his face. He preferred
himself to suffer rather than to cause suffering to others. He
preferred to pity more than punish. He could not cherish anger,
gave no harbor to revenge. He was considerate, forgiving,
compassionate.
Even when he knew that favors scattered by him would never be
returned, he kept on showering them; that pledges made would not be
redeemed, that monies loaned would never be repaid, he kept on
giving. He could not bear to deny a request. He would say: "Poor
fellow, he needed it; it is so good to get a boost when one is
trying to climb. I would rather lose what I give than lose the
desire to give. I would sooner give than beg, loan than borrow, be
cheated than cheat, be wronged than wrong another."
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His time, his services and his means were given to others in
a lavish way. Money was to him but leaves to be scattered. He
rebuked his wealthy friends for hoarding and said: "The rich should
be extravagant, for that gives work; the poor economical, for thus
they may one day become rich."
He denounced the miserly spirit, the passion for mere
possession, indulged by too many of the rich, and said: "What would
you think of a man who had a thousand neckties, lying awake nights
contriving how he might add one more tie to his collection?" In his
family his purse belonged to all. He kept no secret drawers, no
locks or keys, no bolts or bars, on his possessions. For them to
want a thing was to have it, to express a wish to fulfill it, so
that many a costly longing was concealed from him lest he should
discover and indulge it.
SOMETIMES SAD.
Although his outward mien was, as the rule cheerful and happy,
he yet at times, and many times, was serious and even sad. He bore
the burdens of others. His sympathies were so deep and wide and
strong, that while he "laughed with those who laughed" he "wept
with those who wept," and often have I seen him touched to tears at
the tales of woe freely poured into his listening ears. The sights
and sounds of suffering profoundly moved him. He could not go down
into the homes of the sorrowful, the wretched and distressed, -- it
overcame him, unnerved him -- but he sent relief by other hands,
and was in his quiet, unobtrusive way a large and frequent almoner
of the poor. His tender sympathies embraced not only human kind but
all the world of sentient life. He was an early and devoted friend
of Henry Bergh, and by voice and pen did valiant service in the
crusade against cruelty to animals. He waged war against
vivisection, believing that the useful ends of science could be
well enough attained without the need of touching all the nerves of
pain. The discoverers of anaestheties he enrolled among his
aureoled saints.
AN IDEAL DOMESTIC MAN.
He had hosts of friends and choice acquaintances, but few
intimates to whom he opened out, his heart. He commanded admiration
and esteem, but did not encourage undue familiarity. His manner was
always cordial but never effilsive or obtrusive. He was a social
but not a society man, so-called; not a frequent visitor, --
preferred his own home -- to be the host rather than the guest. His
friends called on him oftener than he on them, but they always
found a welcome warm and hearty when they came. In fact, his own
home circle, with its chosen few, made for him the center and
circumference of his social world. He was an ideal domestic and
family man, loving his hearthstone and dwelling beside it happy and
satisfied.
This favored fireside, with its glowing comforts and true
refinements, its adornments of art and nature, its growing plants
and flowers, its books and pictures, paintings and statues, its
precious mementoes from friends and admirers in all lands, its
music and its songs, its conversations and readings, its games and
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
pastimes, its mirth and laughter, its all pervading air and light
of love and joy, -- this fireside, was as near paradise as man and
woman and child can make on earth. Can we wonder that they who made
it loved to linger by it? The husband and father never left it for
a business or lecture tour without reluctance, nor returned to it
without delight. When away on such a tour, never a day passed but
he sent his love message home by wire and got back the quick
response, "all well, love from all."
In every place he visited his admirers entreated him to become
their guest, but out of consideration for them he declined, and
stopped at the hotel instead. He did not wish to accept a
hospitality be could not, under the circumstances inseparable from
lecturing, return. When away from home and in the busy world Mr.
Ingersoll was not a distant, solitary and unsocial being whom
strangers, even, hesitated to approach. It was just the other way.
He could scarcely walk the streets without accepting greetings from
every side. He was one of the most approachable of men, the
humblest as well as the greatest finding equal access to his
attention.
A GENEROUS LIVER.
He loved a genial companion and could not bear to be alone;
some one always walked or rode with him. I never knew him to eat a
solitary lunch or meal. At mid-day in his office, when the hour
arrived, he did not leave without inviting his secretary, or one of
his clerks or students or a friend -- sometimes several -- to go
with him and share his steak or chops, his terrapin or game. 'He
was a generous liver, fond of all good things, and did not hesitate
to join his friends in a social glass. He made no apology for this
and wished none made for him. On this question he was moderate and
temperate. He believed that in the abuse and not the rightful use
of stimulants lay the harm. Liberty in this as in other things he
held high and paramount. Without liberty to use there could be no
abuse, no responsibility. Excess should be restrained, liberty
never. No one has more faithfully or eloquently portrayed the
frightful dangers of the cup, nor any one more glowingly pictured
its fascinations.
As for himself, he governed well his appetite, and could and
did refrain from any and every indulgence when his physician
advised, or he himself believed, his health required it. Even his
loved cigar he laid aside, or its use restricted, when he thought
he would be the better for it. In the effort to reduce his flesh he
denied himself for weeks and months all luxuries of the table --
confined his diet to the narrowest regimen, and declined all sweets
and fat-producing foods with resolute firmness and apparently the
greatest ease.
A STEADFAST FRIEND.
He was a staunch and loyal friend. Those honored with his
confidence and favored with his esteem found him true to the
highest ideals, the best traditions, of friendship. To them he was
as true as steel, as steady as a fixed star. He wanted in his
friend the qualities of naturalness, frankness and openness of
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speech and manner. To such he was a rare companion, a
whole-hearted, generous, noble comrade. He hated deceit,
indirection, sham and false pretension. He did not like solemnity
and so-called dignity -- thought them mostly masks for vanity or
hypocrisy. He knew he was superior to most men, but made no boast
of it. He had great consideration, unbounded charity, for the
faults, and frailties of his fellow-men, and pitied oftener than
blamed.
As before stated, his philosophy of human conduct was
expressed in his simple dictum,"he does as he must." All man needs
is light; his darkness is but ignorance; when his horizon broadens
his view will be clearer.
He wondered at the cheerful assent accorded by the religious
world to the musty maxims, dusty dogmas, decrees and traditions of
the superstitious past; at the "dominion of the cemetery" over the
progressive and more enlightened present; at the "thoughtless yes"
so readily yielded to the creeds of the churches, and at the
sycophantic deference shown towards the persons and office of the
priesthood, and the servile obedience to its commands. He marvelled
at the credulity of men, the ease with which their minds were
swayed, their judgment warped, their selfhood bartered, their
freedom surrendered, and he labored to restore to them their
birthright.
A MODEST MAN.
Colonel Ingersoll was an unaffectedly modest man. He disliked
notoriety, and avoided, so far as he could, every manifestation of
it. Many requests came to him from publishers of encyclopedias and
compilers of biographical volumes, for a sketch of his life. He
invariably declined to furnish it, saying: "A life should not be
written until it has been lived." He discouraged the calling of
children after him, although hundreds bear his name to-day. Albums
without number were sent to him for his autograph, and a
"sentiment," and literally thousands of requests were made for his
signature. Many of these he granted out of an obliging spirit, but
the practice did not please him overmuch or meet his full approval.
As all the world knows, he spoke his mind freely, fully,
without fear, without reserve. What he thought and felt he said,
and his meaning was always plain; but he was not arrogant or
dogmatic, only positive, in his speech. The language of deference
and inquiry was as often on his lips as that of mere assertion.
"Don't you think?" or "Isn't it so?" were frequent phrases in his
daily conversation and remark. He was, in truth, the mouthpiece and
advocate, the prophet and reformer, of his day and generation.
HIS RESPECT FOR WOMAN.
Mr. Ingersoll had a knightly reverence and respect for
womanhood. In the presence of women, and in all his relations with
them, he was always the courteous, affable, gallant gentleman.
They, in turn, admired and esteemed him greatly, -- looked upon him
as an ideal man. It may be worthy of note in this connection to
say, that in all the hundreds of letters he received from women,
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
everywhere, -- and it was my privilege to read them all -- I never
saw one, not one, that contained a suggestive or compromising word
of a doubtful or double meaning -- an honor to their -- womanhood
and a compliment to his manhood. He rejoiced to note the ever-
widening avenues for the employment of women and the better
appreciation of their talents and capabilities, and believed that
they were entitled to receive and should receive equal pay with men
for equal work. He keenly enjoyed the society of the refined and
cultivated among them, and freely admitted and said that woman, the
world over, in all that made for the uplifting of the race, was
man's superior. He regarded her, to use his own words, as "the true
aristocrat of the world."
HIS LOVE FOR CHILDREN.
It is hardly necessary to say, that with such a nature as his,
Mr. Ingersoll was fond of children. He loved to have them near him,
enjoyed their innocent prattle, their merry laugh, and they
instinctively turned to him, opening up the treasures of their
guileless hearts as to a great and sympathizing friend. More than
once have I seen the tired mother on a train relieved of her
fretful babe, and when other passengers looked, if they did not
say, "stop the brat!" he, the gentle man, took the child in his
arms and with the equal of a mother's art soothed it to peaceful
sleep. He pleaded for justice, patience, liberty and love for
childhood. He could not see how a father, not to think a moment of
a mother, could strike a blow with hand or rod or whip to smart the
flesh of a helpless, tender child. To him, such an act, whether
done through impatience, ungoverned passion, or from a mistaken
"sense of duty," was a mean and cowardly deed. He believed that
oftener the parent than the child deserved the whip and rod.
THE LAUGH OF A CHILD.
He was indeed a worthy champion of children's rights. To him
their merry laughter was music. Was ever a finer thing on the laugh
of a child put in words, than this by Robert G. Ingersoll? --
"The laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred
still. Strike with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp strung
with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with
symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow,
bugler, blow, until the silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit
waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid the vine-clad hills. But
know, your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with
childhood's happy laugh -- the laugh that fills the eyes with light
and every heart with joy. O rippling river of laughter! thou art
the blessed boundary line between the beasts and men; and every
wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O
Laughter! rose-lipped daughter of Joy, there are dimples enough in
thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief."
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
DEVOTION TO HIS FAMILY.
Mr. Ingersoll's devotion to his family, so tender, loving and
gallant, was beautiful to see. There surely never lived a more
affectionate brother, a truer, nobler husband, a dearer, fonder
father, or a more precious grandfather -- He was always the lover,
adoring and adored. He deified wife and children. The noble mother
was a goddess, their children cherubs, their home a heaven. A
holier, sweeter, happier home was never built and kept beneath the
stars than Robert Green Ingersoll's. The open secret of it all was
Liberty and Love. There were no commands, no threats, no penalties,
no punishments. Errors were corrected with caresses, carelessness
rebuked with kisses, faults remedied with favors, and accompanying
these were reasonable requests, right precepts, wise counsels, and
rising over all a shining, glorious example.
A friend once said to the younger daughter, Mrs. Maud
Ingersoll Probasco: "Your father was a great man." Out of the
impulsive eagerness of her heart she exclaimed: "My father was not
a man, he was a god!" and this exalted feeling was shared by all
the members of his family.
"RECANTING."
A false rumor widely spread toward the close of his life, and
repeated with added particulars since his death, is that he
"recanted" as he drew near the end of his career and embraced
Christianity. It is not so. He did not weaken or waver for an
instant. It was just the opposite. He said that the longer he lived
the more convinced and confirmed he was in the truth of his
teachings and the stronger became his convictions regarding
religion. He has so expressed himself to me and to others many
times. He died as he had lived, a confident and ardent Agnostic.
Since his death, the attempt has been made in many quarters to show
that he -- as fabled of his illustrious predecessors Paine and
Voltaire -- died cursing and blaspheming. History has been
distorted and perverted by priestly prejudice and malice, and by
orthodox meanness and mendacity, in their cases, and the
probability is that in the case of Mr. Ingersoll, unless the real
facts are known, and even after they are known, error will continue
to deny and despise the truth, "world without end."
POST-MORTEM TALES.
As a matter of fact, the crusade of falsehood and calumny has
already begun. One report now in circulation is, that Colonel
Ingersoll called for a "religious confessor," and that a Roman
Catholic priest was present at his deathbed, and on his
"repentance" gave him "absolution." Unqualifiedly false!
As another illustration of the reliance to be placed on these
post-mortem tales about great men and their dying testimonies, let
me here cite a personal experience. A gentleman whom I recently met
in Southern California, told me in all earnestness the true story,
as he called it, of Mr. Ingersoll's last moments. He said that
these moments were filled with fear and remorse; that over and over
again he expressed regret that he had spent so much of his life in
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
opposing Christianity, and that he called on God for pardon and
mercy. I asked for his authority. he said that both himself and
wife were acquainted with the nurse, a lady who attended the
Colonel during the last days of his illness, and that they had the
account directly from her. Such testimony, he said, could not be
gainsaid or denied. He was astonished when he found who I was and
what I knew, and was silent if not convinced.
The simple truth is, that no physician, no priest, no
minister, no nurse was present either before or at his death, --
none could be called, nor could any have been of the slightest use,
-- his illness was so short and the end so unexpected, so
startlingly sudden. Not even the beloved members of his family
could be with him, so quickly and without warning did the end come.
Only his adored and adoring wife heard his last playful word and
saw his last loving look.
Let me here tell briefly the real facts as they were told to
me by Mrs. Ingersoll, -- facts which the family subsequently made
the subject of an affidavit duly executed and filed for
preservation and reference:
It was learned after his death, that he knew, or suspected he
had not long to live, and that his thread of life would be suddenly
snapped, the golden bowl be broken. It was said by one of the
servants of his family that he heard the doctor -- months before
the fatal day -- ask the Colonel if he realized that he might die
at any moment, and he replied: "perfectly."
XII.
HIS LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH.
The night before his death had been a restless one. He
suffered considerably from indigestion, but recovered sufficiently
to be able to join his family at breakfast in the morning. After
breakfast he sat in his easy chair on the broad piazza enjoying the
soft summer air and viewing the landscape with the Hudson River
placidly flowing at his feet. He sat thus for more than an hour,
gazing, reading and quietly conversing with those of his family who
were about him. No portent of the swiftly advancing shadow appeared
in either his look or manner. Beginning to feel a little drowsy, he
rose from his chair at half-past ten o'clock, saying that he felt
like taking a nap up-stairs, but that he would be down before
luncheon and challenge his son-in-law, Mr. Brown, and his brother-
inlaw, Mr. Farrell, to a game of pool in the billiard room. He
retired to his own chamber, his wife accompanying him. He slept
naturally and peacefully for nearly an hour; Mrs. Ingersoll
watching by his side while he slept. About a quarter before noon he
awoke and left his bed to dress, and needing no assistance sat in
his chair to put on his shoes. Mrs. Farrell, his sister-in-law, and
Miss Sharkey, a life-long and devoted member of his household,
entered the room. Mrs. Ingersoll said: "Do not dress, papa, to go
down to luncheon; I will eat here with you." "Oh, no," he replied,
"I don't want to put you to that trouble." "How foolish, Robert,"
said Mrs. Farrell, smiling; "you know it's never a trouble to us;
you know you have often eaten up-stairs with Eva." The Colonel did
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
not speak, but looked his grateful reply. Mrs. Farrell and Miss
Sharkey then left the room. Mrs. Ingersoll, returning to her
husband, said: "Papa, you are not feeling well; let me see your
tongue." He put it out with a smile, saying, "You are always
wanting to see my tongue!" "Why, papa, it is coated; I must give
you some medicine." He looked at her with a loving gaze, slowly
closed his eyes, dropped his head upon his breast, and without a
struggle, without a tremor, or the slightest sign of suffering,
like one falling peacefully to sleep, passed away.
This was on the 21st day of July, 1899. Had he lived but three
weeks longer, he would have completed his sixty-sixth year. The
immediate cause of his death was angina pecton's, a foe that for
more than two years had threatened his life. He sedulously kept the
knowledge of his real condition from his family and friends lest he
should unduly alarm them, and went bravely on, thinking, writing,
speaking, and doing to the very end.
The manner of his going was well. It was, a fitting close to
such a life, a peaceful ending of his day of toil. It was as he
wished. He. always said he. would prefer a sudden quenching of the
spark. If he had chosen the manner of its going out, he would not
have had it otherwise. In their beautiful mansion on the Hudson,
overlooking from its height a panorama of exquisite loveliness; in
the peaceful quiet of his own chamber; sitting in his accustomed
easy chair; his last word a smiling benediction; his last look, a
love-flash in the answering eyes of her whom he worshipped above
all gods -- above all other beings -- he passed into "the
tongueless, silence of his dreamless sleep."
HIS BODY CREMATED.
His body was cremated. The quick, refining fires rendered back
at once the uncorrupted and incorruptible residue. This, too, was
as he wished, although he made no positive request, leaving the
matter, entirely with his family. And now his inured ashes form the
holy altar of their home temple. Around this they gather and
worship. Here they offer the oblation of undying adoration. Here
they hold the holiest of communions, the purest of soul
interchanges, the vocal dust responding to their listening love in
sweetest antiphonies. All the wealth of all the worlds would not
measure for them the worth of this casket that holds all that was
earthly of the greatest, gentlest, dearest, best of souls that ever
lived, -- their husband, father, lover, Robert Green Ingersoll.
HIS MEMORY CROWNED.
His memory will be crowned with neverfading laurels. His fame
will shine with evergrowing lustre as the years go on. To countless
thousands he will be linked with all their, highest and noblest
ideals. When they dream of true greatness, his career will inspire
them. When they covet the richest prizes of life, -- truth, candor,
kindness, "honor bright," his precepts will guide them. When they
look for an, example of manly virtue, knightly courage, moral
exaltation, his presence will rise before them, the champion of
freedom the lover of his kind, the holder of a lighted torch.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
BOUNDLESS.
Standing by the sea, hoping to fill the vision with the
boundless view, one strains the eager gaze around, before, beyond,
but fails to grasp the complete whole. Only the curving lines of
near or farther shore, bits of the smooth or shelving beach, here
and there a jutting rock, a million crested waves and myriads of
merry rippling crestlets meet the sight, while the infinite expanse
lies far and far without, beyond the reach of finite eye. So partly
only can the farthest reaching human ken perceive and know the
boundless Ingersoll.
TOWERING.
At sunrise, on a lofty peak, I have seen a mighty mountain
cast its shadowed profile on the western plain far out to the
horizon's bound, whence, having no farther earthward scope for its
projecting form, it has mounted to the sky and lifted its majestic
outline to the zenith, -- a pyramid rising from earth to heaven. So
it has seemed to me Mr. Ingersoll's genius, shone upon by the
rising sun of Truth, has filled the intellectual plain and mounted
to the highest human heights. From such a summit he has looked upon
the world beneath, -- seen all life, known all men, scanned all
facts, weighed all faiths, all fancies, all philosophies, and sent
his message down of Love and Hope and Truth, -- of perfect Love
that casts out Fear, of Hope that maketh not ashamed, and Truth
that when perceived shall make man free.
PEERLESS.
When the record is made up, and truthful history shall assign
to each his niche of honor in the Hall of Fame it will be found
that Robert G. Ingersoll fills a place high up among the mightiest
of the race. It will surely write him first of orators, -- the
Demosthenes of his day; prince of righteous satire, -- the American
Voltaire; Emancipator of the minds of men, -- the Intellectual
Lincoln of his time; himself "The Plumed Knight" flinging down the
gauntlet of enlightened Truth to ignorant Error; piercing with
shining lance the armor of Superstition; unmasking with trenchant
blade the face of, Falsehood, and with heavy battle axe shattering
dungeon doors and opening wide at last the way "Liberty for Man,
Woman and Child."
TRULY RELIGIOUS.
In a beautiful tribute by one of his grandchildren, Eva
Ingersoll-Brown, that "daughter's babe upon his knees," -- we may
read a faithful record, a true echo of his own voice. In a preface
to "The Ingersoll Birthday Book," published by The Truth Seeker
Company, this "babe," while yet a maiden, wrote:
"Ingersoll was, I believe, the most profound ethical, the most
deeply spiritual, the most truly religious of men. His was the only
real religion, -- the religion of goodness, of justice and of
mercy, -- the religion of Humanity and His whole life was one
heroic consecration to the furtherance of his religion. I beg leave
to repeat this all-important fact: Ingersoll was a religious man --
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
religious in the highest and holiest, the only true sense of the
term, -- religious in his irrepressible and matchless zeal for
truth, -- religious in his love for and trust in humanity, --
religious in his fine, intrepid fealty to facts, to justice and to
rectitude, -- religious in his temperament of storm and fire, --
religious in his splendid scorn of wrong, in his superb capacity
for wrath and for rebellion, -- and religious in his peerless power
for tenderness, for pity, and for love; religious even in his
fearless enmity to creed and cant, to every form of futile dogma,
ignorant theology and childish faith -- to base hypocrisy that
masquerades as virtue and as truth."
Quoting his own words which we have already given, but which
cannot be too often repeated or emphasized, she gives us this
summary of what he believed true religion to be:
"To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to
pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and
remember benefits -- to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter
honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against
slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to
make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to
cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that
genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to
cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill
life with the splendor of generous deeds, the warmth of loving
words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new
truths in gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the
storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done
and then to be resigned -- this is the religion of reason, the
creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart."
Following this she writes:
"A more inspiring, noble and complete declaration of faith was
never born of human heart and brain. And, above all, be it said, to
the eternal glory of this transcendent man, that he lived in
absolute accord with these high ideals. His life was one unbroken
melody of thought and deed, of heart and hand, of will and act, --
one sublime symphony of conscience and of conduct, of precept and
practice -- one lofty consecration to the service of his
fellow-men."
L'ENVOI.
And now, "thou great and complete man," farewell! Wher'eer
thou art, in all the "Shoreless vast," it must be well with thee,
for thou thyself did'st well, and now hast got thy meed. Believe
and know, O lofty soul! that loyal friends remaining here still
cherish thee and all thy words and deeds, and fondly hope that when
it comes their turn to go, thou wilt with open arms receive and
clasp them to thy waiting heart; that they and thou, with all true
souls that loved thee here together joined, mayst be and go for aye
through all the worlds! This Hope sustains and blesses them, --
completes, fulfills thy Joy. Again, farewell! Farewell!
**** ****
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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