2406 lines
116 KiB
Plaintext
2406 lines
116 KiB
Plaintext
37 page printout
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Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
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INTERVIEWS
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Contents of this file page
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THE BIBLE AND A FUTURE LIFE. 1
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MRS. VAN COTT, THE REVIVALIST. 3
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EUROPEAN TRIP AND GREENBACK QUESTION. 4
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THE PRE-MILLENNIAL CONFERENCE. 7
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THE SOLID SOUTH AND RESUMPTION. 8
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THE SUNDAY LAWS OF PITTSBURGH. 9
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POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 10
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POLITICS AND GEN. GRANT. 15
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POLITICS, RELIGION AND THOMAS PAINE. 19
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REPLY TO CHICAGO CRITICS. 21
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THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY. 25
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INGERSOLL AND BEECHER. 26
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BEECHER ON INGERSOLL. 27
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POLITICAL. 28
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RELIGION IN POLITICS. 32
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MIRACLES AND IMMORALITY. 34
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**** ****
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This file, its printout, or copies of either
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are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
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**** ****
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THE BIBLE AND A FUTURE LIFE.
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QUESTION: Colonel, are your views of religion based upon the
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Bible?
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ANSWER: I regard the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the
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same as I do most other ancient books, in which there is some
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truth, a great deal of error, considerable barbarism and a most
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plentiful lack of good sense.
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QUESTION: Have you found any other work, sacred or profane,
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which you regard as more reliable?
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||
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ANSWER: I know of no book less so, in my judgment.
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QUESTION: You have studied the Bible attentively, have you
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||
not?
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ANSWER: I have read the Bible. I have heard it talked about a
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good deal, and am sufficiently well acquainted with it to justify
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my own mind in utterly rejecting all claims made for its divine
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origin.
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QUESTION: What do you base your views upon?
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ANSWER: On reason, observation, experience, upon the
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discoveries in science, upon observed facts and the analogies
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||
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||
Bank of Wisdom
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||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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THE BIBLE AND A FUTURE LIFE.
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properly growing out of such facts. I have no confidence in
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anything pretending to be outside, or independent of, or in any
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manner above nature.
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QUESTION: According to your views, what disposition is made of
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man after death?
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ANSWER: Upon that subject I know nothing. It is no more
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wonderful that man should live again than that he now lives; upon
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that question I know of no evidence. The doctrine of immortality
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rests upon human affection. We love, therefore we wish to live.
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QUESTION: Then you would not undertake to say what becomes of
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man after death?
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ANSWER: If I told or pretended to know what becomes of man
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after death, I would be as dogmatic as are theologians upon this
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question. The difference between them and me is, I am honest. I
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admit that I do not know.
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QUESTION: Judging by your criticism of mankind, Colonel, in
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your recent lecture, you have not found his condition very
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satisfactory?
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ANSWER: Nature, outside of man, so far as I know, is neither
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cruel nor merciful. I am not satisfied with the present condition
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of the human race, nor with the condition of man during any period
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of which we have any knowledge I believe, however, the condition of
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man is improved, and this improvement is due to his own exertions.
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I do not make nature a being. I do not ascribe to nature intention.
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QUESTION: Is your theory, Colonel, the result of investigation
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of the subject?
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ANSWER: No one can control his own opinion or his own belief.
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My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product
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of all circumstances that have in any way touched me. I believe in
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this world. I have no confidence in any religion promising joys in
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another world at the expense of liberty and happiness in this. At
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the same time, I wish to give others all the rights I claim for
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myself.
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QUESTION: If I asked for proofs for your theory, what would
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you furnish?
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ANSWER: The experience of every man who is honest with
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himself, every fact that has been discovered in nature. In addition
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to these, the utter and total failure of all religionists in all
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countries to produce one particle of evidence showing the existence
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of any supernatural power whatever, and the further fact that the
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people are not satisfied with their religion. They are continually
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asking for evidence. They are asking it in every imaginable way.
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The sects are continually dividing. There is no real religious
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serenity in the world. All religions are opponents of intellectual
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||
liberty, I believe in absolute mental freedom. Real religion with
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||
me is a thing not of the head, but of the heart; not a theory, not
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a creed, but a life.
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||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
2
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||
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THE BIBLE AND A FUTURE LIFE.
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QUESTION: What punishment, then, is inflicted upon man for
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crimes and wrongs committed in this life?
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||
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ANSWER: There is no such thing as intellectual crime, No man
|
||
can commit a mental crime. To become a crime it must go beyond
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||
thought.
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||
|
||
QUESTION: What punishment is there for physical crime?
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||
|
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ANSWER: Such punishment as is necessary to protect society and
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for the reformation of the criminal.
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||
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QUESTION: If there is only punishment in this world, will not
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some escape punishment?
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||
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ANSWER: I admit that all do not seem to be punished as they
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||
deserve. I also admit that all do not seem to be rewarded as they
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||
deserve; and there is in this world, apparently, as great failures
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||
in matter of reward as in manner of punishment. If there is another
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life, a man will be happier there for acting according to his
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highest ideal in this. But I do not discern in nature any effort to
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do justice. --
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||
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The Post, Washington, D.C., 1878.
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||
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MRS. VAN COTT, THE REVIVALIST.
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||
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QUESTION: I see, Colonel, that in an interview published this
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||
morning, Mrs. Van Cott the revivalist;, calls you "a poor barking
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dog." Do you know her personally?
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||
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ANSWER: I have never met or seen her.
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||
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||
QUESTION: Do you know the reason she applied the epithet?
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||
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ANSWER: I suppose it to be the natural result of what is
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called vital piety; that is to say, universal love breeds
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||
individual hatred.
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||
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||
QUESTION: Do you intend making any reply to what she says.
|
||
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||
ANSWER: I have written her a note of which this is a copy:
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Buffalo, Feb. 24th, 1878.
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Mrs. Van Cott:
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Mr dear Madam: -- Were you constrained by the love of Christ
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to call a man who has never injured you "a poor barking dog"? Did
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||
you make this remark as a Christian, or as a lady? Did you say
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||
these words to illustrate in some faint degree the refining
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||
influence upon woman of the religion you preach?
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||
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||
What would you think of me if I should retort, using your
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language, changing only the sex of the last word?
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I have the honor to remain,
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||
yours truly,
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||
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||
R.G. Ingersoll.
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||
3
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||
|
||
MRS. VAN COTT, THE REVIVALIST.
|
||
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||
QUESTION: Well, what do you think of the religious revival
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||
system generally?
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||
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||
ANSWER: The fire that has to be blown all the time is a poor
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||
thing to get warm by. I regard these revivals as essentially
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||
barbaric. I think they do no good, but much harm, they make
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innocent people think they are guilty, and very mean people think
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they are good.
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||
|
||
QUESTION: What is your opinion concerning women as conductors
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||
of these revivals?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I suppose those engaged in them think they are doing
|
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good. They are probably honest. I think, however, that neither men
|
||
nor women should be engaged in frightening people into heaven. That
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||
is all I wish to say on the subject, as I do not think it worth
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talking about. --
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||
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The Express, Buffalo New York, Feb., 1878.
|
||
|
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**** ****
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EUROPEAN TRIP AND GREENBACK QUESTION.
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QUESTION: What did you do on your european trip, Colonel?
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||
ANSWER: I went with my family from New York to Southampton,
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England, thence to London, and from London to Edinburgh. In
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||
Scotland I visited every place where Burns had lived, from the
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cottage where he was born to the room where he died. I followed him
|
||
from the cradle to the coffin. I went to Stanford-upon-Avon for the
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||
purpose of seeing all that I could in any way connected with
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Shakespeare; next to London, where we visited again all the places
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of interest, and thence to Paris, where we spent a couple of weeks
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in the Exposition.
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QUESTION: And what did you think of it?
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ANSWER: So far as machinery -- so far as the practical is
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concerned, it is not equal to ours in Philadelphia; in art it is
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incomparably beyond it. I was very much gratified to find so much
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||
evidence in favor of my theory that the golden age is in front of
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||
us; that mankind has been advancing, that we did not come from a
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||
perfect pair and immediately commence to degenerate. The modern
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||
painters and sculptors are far better and grander than the ancient.
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||
I think we excel in fine arts as much as we do in agricultural
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||
implements. Nothing pleased me more than the paintings from
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Holland, because they idealized and rendered holy the ordinary
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||
avocations of life. They paint cottages with sweet mothers and
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children; they paint homes. They are not much on Ariadnes and
|
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Venuses, but they paint good women.
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||
|
||
QUESTION: What did you think of the American display?
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||
|
||
ANSWER: Our part of the Exposition is good, but nothing to
|
||
what it should and might have been, but we bring home nearly as
|
||
many medals as we took things. We lead the world in machinery and
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||
in ingenious inventions, and some of our paintings were excellent.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
4
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||
|
||
EUROPEAN TRIP AND GREENBACK QUESTION.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Colonel, crossing the Atlantic back to America, what
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||
do you think of the Greenback movement?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: In regard to the Greenback party, in the first place,
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||
I am not a believer in miracles. I do not believe something can be
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||
made out of nothing. The Government, in my judgment, cannot create
|
||
money; the Government can give its note, like an individual, and
|
||
the prospect of its being paid determines its value. We have
|
||
already substantially resumed. Every piece of property that has
|
||
been shrinking has simply been resuming. We expended during the war
|
||
-- not for the useful, but for the useless, not to build up, but to
|
||
destroy -- at least one thousand million dollars. The Government
|
||
was an enormous purchaser; when the war ceased the industries of
|
||
the country lost their greatest customer. As a consequence there
|
||
was a surplus of production, and consequently a surplus of labor.
|
||
At last we have gotten back, and the country since the war has
|
||
produced over and above the cost of production, something near the
|
||
amount that was lost during the war. Our exports are about two
|
||
hundred million dollars more than our imports, and this is a
|
||
healthy sign. There are, however, five or six hundred thousand men,
|
||
probably, out of employment; as prosperity increases this number
|
||
will decrease. I am in favor of the Government doing something to
|
||
ameliorate the condition of these men. I would like to see
|
||
constructed the Northern and Southern Pacific railroads: this would
|
||
give employment at once to many thousands, and homes after awhile
|
||
to millions. All the signs of the times to me are good. The
|
||
wretched bankrupt law, at last, is wiped from the statute books,
|
||
and honest people in a short time can get plenty of credit. This
|
||
law should have been repealed years before it was. It would have
|
||
been far better to have had all who have gone into bankruptcy
|
||
during these frightful years to have done so at once.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What will be the political effect of the Greenback
|
||
movement?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: The effect in Maine has been to defeat the Republican
|
||
party. I do not believe any party can permanently succeed in the
|
||
United States that does not believe in and advocate actual money.
|
||
I want to see the greenback equal with gold the world round. A
|
||
money below par keeps the people below par. No man can possibly be
|
||
proud of a country that is not willing to pay its debts. Several of
|
||
the States this fall may be carried by the Greenback party, but if
|
||
I have a correct understanding of their views, that party cannot
|
||
hold any State for any great length of time. But all the men of
|
||
wealth should remember that everybody in the community has got, in
|
||
some way, to be supported. I want to see them so that they can
|
||
support themselves by their own labor. In my judgment real
|
||
prosperity will begin with actual resumption, because confidence
|
||
will then return. If the workingmen of the United States cannot
|
||
make their living, cannot have the opportunity to labor, they have
|
||
got to be supported in some way, and in any event, I want to see a
|
||
liberal policy inaugurated by the Government. I believe in
|
||
improving rivers and harbors.
|
||
|
||
I do not believe the trans-continental commerce of this
|
||
country should depend on one railroad. I want new territories
|
||
opened. I want to see American steamships running to all the great
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||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
5
|
||
|
||
EUROPEAN TRIP AND GREENBACK QUESTION.
|
||
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ports of the world. I want to see our flag flying on all the seas
|
||
and in all the harbors. We have the best country, and, in my
|
||
judgment, the best people in the world, and we ought to be the most
|
||
prosperous nation on the earth.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Then you only consider the Greenback movement a
|
||
temporary thing?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes; I do not believe that there is anything permanent
|
||
in anything that is not sound, that has not a perfectly sound
|
||
foundation, and I mean sound, sound in every sense of that word. It
|
||
must be wise and honest. We have plenty of money; the trouble is to
|
||
get it. If these Greenbackers will pass a law furnishing all of us
|
||
with collateral, there certainly would be no trouble about getting
|
||
the money. Nothing can demonstrate more fully the plentifulness of
|
||
money than the fact that millions of four Per cent. bonds have been
|
||
taken in the United States. The trouble is, business is scarce.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: But do you not think the Greenback movement will
|
||
help the Democracy to success in 1880?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think the Greenback movement will injure the
|
||
Republican party much more than the Democratic party. Whether that
|
||
injury will reach as far as 1880 depends simply upon one thing If
|
||
resumption -- in spite of all resolutions to the contrary --
|
||
inaugurates an era of prosperity, as I believe and hope it will,
|
||
then it seems to me that the Republican party will be as strong in
|
||
the north as in its palmiest days. Of course I regard most of the
|
||
old issues as settled, and I make this statement simply because I
|
||
regard the financial issue as the only living one.
|
||
|
||
Of course, I have no idea who will be the Democratic
|
||
candidate, but I suppose the South will be solid for the Democratic
|
||
nominee, unless the financial question divides that section of the
|
||
country.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: With a solid South do you not think the Democratic
|
||
nominee will stand a good chance?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Certainly, he will stand the best chance if the
|
||
Democracy is right on the financial question; if it will cling to
|
||
its old idea of hard money, he will. If the Democrats will
|
||
recognize that the issues of the war are settled, then I think that
|
||
party has the best chance.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: But if it clings to soft money?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Then I think it will be beaten, if by soft. money it
|
||
means the payment of one promise with another.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: You consider Greenbackers inflationists, do you not?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I suppose the Greenbackers to be the party of
|
||
inflation. I am in favor of inflation produced by industry. I am in
|
||
favor of the country being inflated with corn, with wheat, good
|
||
houses, books, pictures, and plenty of labor for everybody. I am in
|
||
favor of being inflated with gold and silver, but I do not believe
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
EUROPEAN TRIP AND GREENBACK QUESTION.
|
||
|
||
in the inflation of promise, expectation and speculation. I
|
||
sympathize with every man who is willing to work and cannot get it,
|
||
and I sympathize to that degree that I would like to see the
|
||
fortunate and prosperous taxed to support his unfortunate brother
|
||
until labor could be found.
|
||
|
||
The Greenback party seems to think credit is just as good as
|
||
gold. While the credit lasts this is so; but the trouble is,
|
||
whenever it is ascertained that the gold is gone or cannot be
|
||
produced the credit takes wings. The bill of a perfectly solvent
|
||
bank may circulate for years. Now, because nobody demands the gold
|
||
on that bill it doesn't follow that the bill would be just as good
|
||
without any gold behind it. The idea that you can have the gold
|
||
whenever you present the bill gives it its value. To illustrate: A
|
||
poor man buys soup tickets. He is not hungry at the time of the
|
||
purchase, and will not be for some hours. During these hours the
|
||
Greenback gentlemen argue that there is no use of keeping any soup
|
||
on hand with which to redeem these tickets, and from this they
|
||
further argue that if they can be good for a few hours without
|
||
soup, why not forever? And they would be, only the holder gets
|
||
hungry. Until he is hungry, of course, he does not care whether any
|
||
soup is on hand or not, but when he presents his ticket he wants
|
||
his soup, and the idea that he can have the soup when he does
|
||
present the ticket gives it its value, And so I regard bank notes,
|
||
without gold and silver, as of the same value as tickets without
|
||
soup. --
|
||
|
||
The Post, Washington, D.C., 1878.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
THE PRE-MILLENNIAL CONFERENCE.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What do you think of THE Pre-Millennial Conference
|
||
that was held in New York City recently?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Well, I think that all who attended it were believers
|
||
in the Bible, and any one who believes in prophecies and looks to
|
||
their fulfillment will go insane. A man that tries from Daniel's
|
||
ram with three horns and five tails and his deformed goats to
|
||
ascertain the date of the second immigration of Christ to this
|
||
world is already insane. It all shows that the moment we leave the
|
||
realm of fact and law we are adrift on the wide and shoreless sea
|
||
of theological speculation.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you think there will be a second coming?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: No, not as long as the church is in power. Christ will
|
||
never again visit this earth until the Freethinkers have control.
|
||
He will certainly never allow another church to get hold of him.
|
||
The very persons who met in New York to fix the date of his coming
|
||
would despise him and the feeling would probably be mutual. In his
|
||
day Christ was an Infidel, and made himself unpopular by denouncing
|
||
the church as it then existed. He called them liars, hypocrites,
|
||
thieves, vipers, whited sepulchers and fools. From the description
|
||
given of the church in that day, I am afraid that should he come
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
THE PRE-MILLENNIAL CONFERENCE.
|
||
|
||
again, he would be provoked into using similar language. Of course,
|
||
I admit there are many good people in the church, just as there
|
||
were some good Pharisees who were opposed to the crucifixion. --
|
||
|
||
The Express, Buffalo, New York, Nov. 4th 1878.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
THE SOLID SOUTH AND RESUMPTION.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Colonel, to start with, what do you think of the
|
||
solid South?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think the South is naturally opposed to the
|
||
Republican party; more, I imagine, to the name, than to the
|
||
Personnel of the organization. But the South has just as good
|
||
friends in the Republican party as in the Democratic party. I do
|
||
not think there are any Republicans who would not rejoice to see
|
||
the South prosperous and happy. I know of none, at least. They will
|
||
have to get over the prejudices born of isolation. We lack direct
|
||
and constant communication. I do not recollect having seen a
|
||
newspaper from the Gulf States for a long time. They, down there,
|
||
may imagine that the feeling in the North is the same as during the
|
||
war. But it certainly is not. The Northern people are anxious to be
|
||
friendly; and if they can be, without a violation of principles,
|
||
they will be. Whether it be true or not, however, most of the
|
||
Republicans of the North believe that no Republican in the South is
|
||
heartily welcome in that section, whether he goes there from the
|
||
North, or is a Southern man. Personally, I do not care anything
|
||
about partisan polities. I want to see every man in the United
|
||
State guaranteed the right to express his choice at the ballot-box,
|
||
and I do not want social ostracism to follow a man, no matter how
|
||
he may vote. A solid South means a solid North. A hundred thousand
|
||
Democratic majority in South Carolina means fifty thousand
|
||
Republican majority in New York in 1880. I hope the sections will
|
||
never divide, simply as sections. But if the Republican party is
|
||
not allowed to live in the South, the Democratic party certainly
|
||
will not be allowed to succeed in the North. I want to treat the
|
||
people of the South precisely as though the Rebellion had never
|
||
occurred. I want all that wiped from the slate of memory, and all
|
||
I ask of the Southern people is to give the same rights to the
|
||
Republicans that we are willing to give to them and have given to
|
||
them.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How do you account for the results of the recent
|
||
elections?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: The Republican party won the recent election simply
|
||
because it was for honest money, and it was in favor of resumption.
|
||
And if on the first of January next, we resume all right, and
|
||
maintain resumption, I see no reason why the Republican party
|
||
should not succeed in 1880. The Republican party came into power at
|
||
the commencement of the Rebellion, and necessarily retained power
|
||
until its close; and in my judgment, it will retain power so long
|
||
as in the horizon of credit there is a cloud of repudiation as
|
||
large as a man's hand.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
THE SOLID SOUTH AND RESUMPTION.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you think resumption will work out all right?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I do. I think that on the first of January the
|
||
greenback will shake hands with gold on an equality, and in a few
|
||
days thereafter will be worth just a little bit more. Everything
|
||
has resumed, except the Government. All the property has resumed,
|
||
all the lands, bonds and mortgages and stocks. All these things
|
||
resumed long ago -- that is to say, they have touched the bottom.
|
||
Now, there is no doubt that the party that insists on the
|
||
Government paying all its debts will hold control, and no one will
|
||
get his hand on the wheel who advocates repudiation in any form.
|
||
There is one thing we must do, though. We have got to put more
|
||
silver in our dollars. I do not think you can blame the New York
|
||
banks -- any banks -- for refusing to take eighty-eight cents for
|
||
a dollar. Neither can you blame any depositor who puts gold in bank
|
||
for demanding gold in return. Yes, we must have in the silver
|
||
dollar a dollar's worth of silver. --
|
||
|
||
The Commercial, Cincinnati, Ohio, November, 1878.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
THE SUNDAY LAWS OF PITTSBURGH.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Colonel, what do you think of the course the Mayor
|
||
has pursued toward you in attempting to stop your lecture?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I know very little except what I have seen in the
|
||
morning paper. As a general rule, laws should be enforced or
|
||
repealed; and so far as I am personally concerned, I shall not so
|
||
much complain of the enforcing of the law against Sabbath breaking
|
||
as of the fact that such a law exists. We have fallen heir to these
|
||
laws. They were passed by superstition, and the enlightened people
|
||
of today should repeal them. Ministers should not expect to fill
|
||
their churches by shutting up other places. They can only increase
|
||
their congregations by improving their sermons. They will have more
|
||
hearers when they say more worth hearing. I have no idea that the
|
||
Mayor has any prejudice against me personally and if he only
|
||
enforces the law, I shall have none against him. If my lectures
|
||
were free the ministers might have the right to object, but as I
|
||
charge one dollar admission and they nothing, they ought certainly
|
||
to be able to compete with me.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Don't you think it is the duty of the Mayor, as
|
||
chief executive of the city laws, to enforce the ordinances and pay
|
||
no attention to what the statutes say?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I suppose it to be the duty of the Mayor to enforce
|
||
the ordinance of the city and if the ordinance of the city covers
|
||
the same ground as the law of the State, a conviction under the
|
||
ordinance would be a bar to a prosecution under the State law.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: If the ordinance exempts scientific, literary and
|
||
historical lectures', as it is said it does, will not that exempt
|
||
you?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
THE SUNDAY LAWS OF PITTSBURGH.
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes, all my lectures are historical; that is, I speak
|
||
of many things that have happened. They are scientific because they
|
||
are filled with facts, and they are literary of course. I can
|
||
conceive of no address that is neither historical nor scientific,
|
||
except sermons. They fail to be historical because they treat of
|
||
things that never happened and they are certainly not scientific,
|
||
as they contain no facts.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Suppose they arrest you what will you do?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I will examine the law and if convicted will pay the
|
||
fine, unless I think I can reverse the case by appeal. Of course I
|
||
would like to see all these foolish laws wiped from the statute
|
||
books. I want the law so that everybody can do just as he pleases
|
||
on Sunday, provided he does not interfere with the rights of
|
||
others. I want the Christian, the Jew, the Deist and the Atheist to
|
||
be exactly equal before the law. I would fight for the right of the
|
||
Christian to worship God in his own way just as quick as I would
|
||
for the Atheist to enjoy music, flowers and fields. I hope to see
|
||
the time when even the poor people can hear the music of the finest
|
||
operas on Sunday. One grand opera with all its thrilling tones,
|
||
will do more good in touching and elevating the world than ten
|
||
thousand sermons on the agonies of hell.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Have you ever been interfered with before in
|
||
delivering Sunday lectures?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: No, I postponed a lecture in Baltimore at the request
|
||
of the owners of the theater because they were afraid some action
|
||
might be taken. That is the only case. I have delivered lectures on
|
||
Sunday in the principal cities of the United States, in New York,
|
||
Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, San Francisco, Cincinnati and many other
|
||
places. I lectured here last winter; it was on Sunday and I heard
|
||
nothing of its being contrary to law. I always supposed my lectures
|
||
were good enough to be delivered on the most sacred days. --
|
||
|
||
The Leader, Pittsburgh, Pa. October 27, 1879.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What do you think about the recent election, and
|
||
what will be its effect upon political matters and the issues and
|
||
candidates of 1880?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think the Republicans have met with this almost
|
||
universal success on account, first, of the position taken by the
|
||
Democracy on the currency question; that is to say, that party was
|
||
divided, and was willing to go in partnership with anybody,
|
||
whatever their doctrines might be, for the sake of success in that
|
||
particular locality. The Republican party felt it of paramount
|
||
importance not only to pay the debt, but to pay it in that which
|
||
the world regards as money. The next reason for the victory is the
|
||
position assumed by the Democracy in Congress during the called
|
||
session. The threats they then made of what they would do in the
|
||
event that the executive did not comply with their demands, showed
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS.
|
||
|
||
that the spirit of that party had not been chastened to any
|
||
considerable extent by the late war. The people of this country
|
||
will not, in my judgment, allow the South to take charge of this
|
||
country until they show their ability to protect the rights of
|
||
citizens in their respective States.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Then, as you regard the victories, they are largely
|
||
due to a firm adherence to principle, and the failure of the
|
||
Democratic party is due to their abandonment of principle, and
|
||
their desire to unite with anybody and everything, at the,
|
||
sacrifice of principle, to attain success?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes. The Democratic party is a general desire for
|
||
office without organization. Most people are Democrats because they
|
||
hate something, most people a Republicans because they love
|
||
something.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you think the election has brought: about any
|
||
particular change in the issues that will be involved in the
|
||
campaign of 1880?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think the only issue is who shall rule this country.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you think, then, the question of State Rights,
|
||
hard or soft money and other questions that have been prominent in
|
||
the campaign are practically settled, and so regarded by the
|
||
people?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think the money question is, absolutely. I think the
|
||
question of State Rights is dead, except that it can still be used
|
||
to defeat the Democracy. It is what might be called a convenient
|
||
political corpse.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Now, to leave the political field and go to the
|
||
religious at one jump -- since your last visit here much has been
|
||
said and written and published to the effect that a great change,
|
||
or a considerable change at least, had taken place in your
|
||
religious, or irreligious views. I would like to know if that is
|
||
so?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: The only change that has occurred in my religious
|
||
views is the result of finding more and more arguments in favor of
|
||
my position, and, as a consequence, if there is any difference, I
|
||
am stronger in my convictions than ever before.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: I would like to know something of the history of
|
||
your religious views?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I may say right here that the Christian idea that any
|
||
God can make me his friend by killing mine is about as great a
|
||
mistake as could be made. They seem to have the idea that just as
|
||
soon as God kills all the people that a person loves, he will then
|
||
begin to love the Lord What drew my attention first to these
|
||
questions was the doctrine of eternal punishment. This was so
|
||
abhorrent to my mind that I began to hate the book in which it was
|
||
taught. Then, in reading law, going back to find the origin of
|
||
laws, I found one had to go but a little way before the legislator
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS.
|
||
|
||
and priest united. This led me to study a good many of the
|
||
religions of the world. At first I was greatly astonished to find
|
||
most of them better than ours. I then studied our own system to the
|
||
best of my ability, and found that people were palming off upon
|
||
children and upon one another as the inspired word of God a book
|
||
that upheld slavery, polygamy and almost every other crime. Whether
|
||
I am right or wrong, I became convinced that the Bible is not an
|
||
inspired book; and then the only the question for me to settle was
|
||
as to whether I should say what I believed or not. This really was
|
||
not the question in my mind, because, before even thinking of such
|
||
a question, I expressed my belief, and I simply claim that right
|
||
and expect to exercise it as long as I live. I may be damned for it
|
||
in the next world, but it is a great source of pleasure to me in
|
||
this.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: It is reported that you are the son of a
|
||
Presbyterian minister?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes, I am the son of a New School Presbyterian
|
||
minister.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: About what age were you when you began this
|
||
investigation which led to your present conventions?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I cannot remember when I believed the Bible doctrine
|
||
of eternal punishment. I have a dim recollection of hating Jehovah
|
||
when I was exceedingly small.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Then your present convictions began to form
|
||
themselves while you were listening to the teachings of religion as
|
||
taught by your father?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes, they did.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Did you discuss the matter with him?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I did for many years, and before he died he utterly
|
||
gave up the idea that this life is a period of probation. He
|
||
utterly gave up the idea of eternal punishment, and before he died
|
||
he had the happiness of believing that God was almost as good and
|
||
generous as he was himself.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: I suppose this gossip about a change in your
|
||
religious views arose or was created by the expression used at your
|
||
brother's funeral, "In the night of death hope sees a star and
|
||
listening love can hear the rustle of a wing"?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I never willingly will destroy a solitary human hope.
|
||
I have always said that I did not know whether man was or was not
|
||
immortal, but years before my brother died, in a lecture entitled
|
||
"The Ghosts," which has since been published, I used the following
|
||
words: "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, not of any religion. It was
|
||
born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS.
|
||
|
||
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."
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: The great objection to your teaching urged by your
|
||
enemies is that you constantly tear down, and never build up?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I have just published a little book entitled, "Some
|
||
Mistakes of Moses," in which I have endeavored to give most of the
|
||
arguments I have urged against the Pentateuch in a lecture I
|
||
delivered under that title. The motto on the title page is, "A
|
||
destroyer of weeds, thistles and thorns 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. Most religionists talk as if mistakes were
|
||
valuable things and they did not wish to part with them without a
|
||
consideration. Just how much they regard lies worth a dozen I do
|
||
not know. If the price is reasonable I am perfectly willing to give
|
||
it, rather than to see them live and give their lives to the
|
||
defence of delusions. I am firmly convinced that to be happy here
|
||
will not in the least detract from our happiness in another world
|
||
should we be so fortunate as to reach another world; and I cannot
|
||
see the value of any philosophy that reaches beyond the intelligent
|
||
happiness of the present. There may be a God who will make us happy
|
||
in another world. If he does, it will be more than he has
|
||
accomplished in this. I suppose that he will never have more than
|
||
infinite power and never have less than infinite wisdom, and why
|
||
people should expect that he should do better in another world than
|
||
he has in this is something that I have never been able to explain.
|
||
A being who has the power to prevent it and yet who allows
|
||
thousands and millions of his children to starve; who devours them
|
||
with earthquakes; who allows whole nations to be enslaved, cannot
|
||
in my judgment be implicitly depended upon to do justice in another
|
||
world.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How do the clergy generally treat you?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Well, of course there are the same distinctions among
|
||
clergymen as among other people. Some of them are quite respectable
|
||
gentlemen, especially those with whom I am not acquainted. I think
|
||
that since the loss of my brother nothing could exceed the
|
||
heartlessness of the remarks made by the average clergyman. There
|
||
have been some noble exceptions, to whom I feel not only thankful
|
||
but grateful; but a very large majority have taken this occasion to
|
||
say most unfeeling and brutal things. I do not ask the clergy to
|
||
forgive me, but I do request that they will so act that I will not
|
||
have to forgive them. I have always insisted that those who love
|
||
their enemies should at least tell the truth about their friends,
|
||
but I suppose, after all, that religion must be supported by the
|
||
same means as those by which it was founded. Of course, there are
|
||
thousands of good ministers, men who are endeavoring to make the
|
||
world better, and whose failure is no particular fault of their
|
||
own, I have always been in doubt as to whether the clergy were
|
||
necessary or an unnecessary evil.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: I would like to have a positive expression of your
|
||
views as to a future state?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Somebody asked Confucius about another world, and his
|
||
reply was: "How should I know anything about another world when I
|
||
know so little of this?" For my part, I know nothing of any other
|
||
state of existence, either before or after this, and I have never
|
||
become personally acquainted with anybody that did. There may be
|
||
another life, and if there is, the best way to prepare for it is by
|
||
making somebody happy in this. God certainly cannot afford to put
|
||
a man in hell who has made a little heaven in this world. I propose
|
||
simply to take my chances with the rest of the folks, and prepare
|
||
to go where the people I am best acquainted with will probably
|
||
settle. I cannot afford to leave the great ship and sneak off to
|
||
shore in some orthodox canoe. I hope there is another life, for I
|
||
would like to see how things come out in this world when I am dead.
|
||
There are some people I would like to see again, and hope there are
|
||
some who would not object to seeing me; but if there is no other
|
||
life I shall never know it. I do not remember a time when I did not
|
||
exist; and, if, when I die, that is the end, I shall not know it,
|
||
because the last thing I shall know is that I am alive, and if
|
||
nothing is left, nothing will be left to know that I am dead; so
|
||
that so far as I am concerned I am immortal; that is to say, I
|
||
cannot recollect when I did not exist, and there never will be a
|
||
time when I shall remember that I do not exist. I would like to
|
||
have several millions of dollars, and I may say that I have a
|
||
lively hope that some day I may be rich, but to tell you the truth
|
||
I have very little evidence of it. Our hope of immortality does not
|
||
come from any religion, but nearly all religious come from that
|
||
hope. The Old Testament, instead of telling us that we are
|
||
immortal, tells us how we lost immortality. You will recollect that
|
||
if Adam and Eve could have gotten to the Tree of Life, they would
|
||
have eaten of its fruit and would have lived forever; but for the
|
||
purpose of preventing immortality God turned them out of the Garden
|
||
of Eden, and put certain angels with swords or sabres at the gate
|
||
to keep them from getting back. The Old Testament proves, if it
|
||
proves anything -- which I do not think it does -- that there is no
|
||
life after this; and the New Testament is not very specific on the
|
||
subject. There were a great many opportunities for the Savior and
|
||
his apostles to tell us about another world, but they did not
|
||
improve them to any great extent; and the only evidence, so far as
|
||
I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and
|
||
secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we
|
||
had. That is about my position.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: According to your observation of men, and your
|
||
reading in relation to the men and women of the world and of the
|
||
church, if there is another world divided according to orthodox
|
||
principles between the orthodox and heterodox, which of the two
|
||
that are known as heaven and hell would contain, in your judgment,
|
||
the most good society?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Since hanging has got to be a means of grace, I would
|
||
prefer hell. I had a thousand times rather associate with the Pagan
|
||
philosophers than with the inquisitors of the Middle Ages. I
|
||
certainly should prefer the worst man in Greek or Roman history to
|
||
John Calvin; and I can imagine no man in the world that I would
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS.
|
||
|
||
rather not sit on the same bench with than the Puritan fathers and
|
||
the founders of orthodox churches. I would trade off my harp any
|
||
minute for a seat in the other country. All the poets will be in
|
||
perdition, and the greatest thinkers, and, I should think, most of
|
||
the women whose society would tend to increase the happiness of
|
||
man; nearly all the painters, nearly all the sculptors, nearly all
|
||
the writers of plays, nearly all the great actors, most of the best
|
||
musicians, and nearly all the good fellows -- the persons who know
|
||
stories, who can sing songs, or who will loan a friend a dollar.
|
||
They will mostly all be in that country, and if I did not live
|
||
there permanently, I certainly would want it so I could spend my
|
||
winter months there. But, after all, what I really want to do is to
|
||
destroy the idea of eternal punishment. That doctrine subverts all
|
||
ideas of justice. That doctrine fills hell with honest men, and
|
||
heaven with intellectual and moral paupers. That doctrine allows
|
||
people to sin on a credit. That doctrine allows the bassist to be
|
||
eternally happy and the most honorable to suffer eternal pain. I
|
||
think of all doctrines it is the most infinitely infamous, and
|
||
would disgrace the lowest savage; and any man who believes it, and
|
||
has imagination enough to understand it, has the heart of a serpent
|
||
and the conscience of a hyena.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Your objective point is to destroy the doctrine of
|
||
hell, is it?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes, because the destruction of that doctrine will do
|
||
away with all cant and all pretence. It will do away with all
|
||
religious bigotry and persecution. lt will allow every man to think
|
||
and to express his thought. It will do away with bigotry in all its
|
||
slimy and offensive forms. --
|
||
|
||
Chicago Times, November 14, 1879.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
POLITICS AND GEN. GRANT.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Some people have made comparisons between the late
|
||
Senators O. P. Morton and Zach Chandler. What did you think of
|
||
them, Colonel?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think Morton had the best intellectual grasp of a
|
||
question of any man I ever saw. There was an infinite difference
|
||
between the two men. Morton's strength lay in proving a thing;
|
||
Chandler's in asserting it. But Chandler was a strong man and no
|
||
hypocrite.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Have you any objection to being interviewed as to
|
||
your ideas of Grant, and his position before the people?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I have no reason for withholding my views on that or
|
||
any other subject that is under public discussion. My idea is that
|
||
Grant can afford to regard the presidency as a broken toy. It would
|
||
add nothing to his fame if he were again elected, and would add
|
||
nothing to the debt of gratitude which the people feel they owe
|
||
him. I do not think he will be a candidate. I do not think he wants
|
||
it. There are men who are pushing him on their own account. Grant
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
POLITICS AND GEN. GRANT.
|
||
|
||
was a great soldier, He won the respect of the civilized world. He
|
||
commanded the largest army that ever fought for freedom, and to
|
||
make him President would not add a solitary leaf to the wreath of
|
||
fame already on his brow; and should he be elected, the only thing
|
||
he could do would be to keep the old wreath from fading.
|
||
|
||
I do not think his reputation can ever be as great in any
|
||
direction as in the direction of war. He has made his reputation
|
||
and has lived his great life. I regard him, confessedly, as the
|
||
best soldier the Anglo-Saxon blood has produced. I do not know that
|
||
it necessarily follows because he is a great soldier he is great in
|
||
other directions. Probably some of the greatest statesmen in the
|
||
world would have made the worst soldiers.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you regard him as more popular now than ever
|
||
before?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think that his reputation is certainly greater and
|
||
higher than when he left the presidency, and mainly because he has
|
||
represented this country with so much discretion and with such
|
||
quiet, poised dignity all around the world. He has measured himself
|
||
with kings, and was able to look over the heads of every one of
|
||
them. They were not quite as tall as he was, even adding the crown
|
||
to their original height. I think he represented us abroad with
|
||
wonderful success. One thing that touched me very much was, that at
|
||
a reception given him by the workingmen of Birmingham, after he had
|
||
been received by royalty, he had the courage to say that that
|
||
reception gave him more pleasure than any other. He has been
|
||
throughout perfectly true to the genius of our institutions, and
|
||
has not upon any occasion exhibited the slightest toadyism. Grant
|
||
is a man who is not greatly affected by either flattery or abuse.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What do you believe to be his position in regard to
|
||
the presidency?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: My own judgment is that he does not care. I do not
|
||
think he has any enemies to punish, and I think that while he was
|
||
President he certainly rewarded most of his friends.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What are your views as to a third term?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I have no objection to a third term on principle, but
|
||
so many men want the presidency that it seems almost cruel to give
|
||
a third term to anyone.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Then, if there is no objection to a third term what
|
||
about a fourth?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I do not know that that could be objected to either.
|
||
We have to admit, after all, that the American people, or at least
|
||
a majority of them, have a right to elect one man as often as they
|
||
please. Personally, I think it should not be done unless in the
|
||
case of a man who is prominent above the rest of his
|
||
fellow-citizens, and whose election appears absolutely necessary.
|
||
But I frankly confess I cannot conceive of any political situation
|
||
where one man is a necessity. I do not believe in the one-man-on-
|
||
horseback idea, because I believe in all the people being on
|
||
horseback.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
POLITICS AND GEN. GRANT.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What will be, the effect of the enthusiastic
|
||
receptions that are being given to General Grant?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think these ovations show that the people are
|
||
resolved not to lose the results of the great victories of the war,
|
||
and that they make known this determination by their attention to
|
||
General Grant. I think that if he goes through the principal cities
|
||
of this country the old spirit will be revived everywhere, and
|
||
whether it makes him President or not the result will be to make
|
||
the election go Republican. The revival of the memories of the war
|
||
will bring the people of the North together as closely as at any
|
||
time since that great conflict closed, not in the spirit of hatred,
|
||
or malice or envy, but in generous emulation to preserve that which
|
||
was fairly won. I do not think there is any hatred about it, but we
|
||
are beginning to see that we must save the South ourselves, and
|
||
that is the only way we can save the nation.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: But suppose they give the same receptions in the
|
||
South?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: So much the better.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is there any split in the solid South?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Some of the very best people in the South are
|
||
apparently disgusted with following the Democracy any longer, and
|
||
would hail with delight any opportunity they could reasonably take
|
||
advantage of to leave the organization, if they could do so without
|
||
making it appear that they were going back on Southern interests,
|
||
and this opportunity will come when the South becomes enlightened,
|
||
and sees that it has no interests except in common with the whole
|
||
country. That I think they are beginning to see.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How do you like the administration of President
|
||
Hayes?
|
||
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think its attitude has greatly improved of late.
|
||
There are certain games of cards -- pedro for instance, where you
|
||
can not only fail to make something, but be set back. I think that
|
||
Hayes's veto messages very nearly got him back to the commencement
|
||
of the game -- that he is now almost ready to commence counting,
|
||
and make some points His position before the country has greatly
|
||
improved, but he will not develop into a dark horse. My preference,
|
||
is of course, still for Blaine.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Where do you think it is necessary the Republican
|
||
candidate should come from to insure success?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Somewhere out of Ohio. I think it will go to Maine,
|
||
and for this reason: first of all, Blaine is certainly a competent
|
||
man of affairs, a man who knows what to do at the time; and then he
|
||
has acted in such a chivalric way ever since the convention at
|
||
Cincinnati, that those who opposed him most bitterly, now have for
|
||
him nothing but admiration. I think John Sherman is a man of
|
||
decided ability, but I do not believe the American people would
|
||
make one brother President, while the other is General of the Army.
|
||
It would be giving too much power to one family.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
POLITICS AND GEN. GRANT.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What are your conclusions as to the future of the
|
||
Democratic party?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think the Democratic party ought to disband. I think
|
||
they would be a great deal stronger disbanded, because they would
|
||
get rid of their reputation without decreasing.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: But if they will not disband?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Then the next campaign depends undoubtedly upon New
|
||
York and Indiana. I do not see how they can very well help
|
||
nominating a man from Indiana, and by that I mean Hendricks. You
|
||
see the South has one hundred and thirty-eight votes, all supposed
|
||
to be Democratic; with the thirty-five from New York and fifteen
|
||
from Indiana they would have just three to spare. Now, I take it,
|
||
that the fifteen from Indiana are just about as essential as the
|
||
thirty-five from New York. To lack fifteen votes is nearly as bad
|
||
as being thirty-five short, and so far as drawing salary is
|
||
concerned it is quite as bad. Mr. Hendricks ought to know that he
|
||
holds the key to Indiana, and that there cannot be any possibility
|
||
of carrying this State for Democracy without him. He has tried
|
||
running for the vice-presidency, which is not much of a place
|
||
anyhow -- I would about as soon be vice-mother-in-law -- and my
|
||
judgment is that he knows exactly the value of his geographical
|
||
position. New York is divided to that degree that it would be
|
||
unsafe to take a candidate from that State; and besides, New York
|
||
has become famous for furnishing defeated candidates for the
|
||
Democracy. I think the man must come from Indiana.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Would the Democracy of New York unite on Seymour?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: You recollect what Lincoln said about the powder that
|
||
had been shot off once. I do not remember any man who has once made
|
||
a race for the presidency and been defeated ever being again
|
||
nominated.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What about Bayard and Hancock as candidates?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I do not see how Bayard could possibly carry Indiana,
|
||
while his own State is too small and too solidly Democratic. My
|
||
idea of Bayard is that he has not been good enough to be popular,
|
||
and not bad enough to be famous. The American people will never
|
||
elect a President from a State with a whipping-post. As to General
|
||
Hancock, you may set it down as certain that the South will never
|
||
lend their aid to elect a man who helped to put down the Rebellion.
|
||
It would be just the same as the effort to elect Greeley. It cannot
|
||
be done. I see, by the way, that I am reported as having said that
|
||
David Davis, as the Democratic candidate, could carry Illinois. I
|
||
did say that in 1876, he could have carried it against Hayes; but
|
||
whether he could carry Illinois in 1880 would depend altogether
|
||
upon who runs against him. The condition of things has changed
|
||
greatly in our favor since 1876. --
|
||
|
||
The Journal, Indianapolis, Ind. 1879.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
POLITICS, RELIGION AND THOMAS PAINE.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: you have traveled about this State more or less,
|
||
lately, and have, of course, observed political affairs here. Do
|
||
you think that Senator Logan will be able to deliver this State to
|
||
the Grant movement according to the understood plan?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: If the State is really for Grant, he will, and if it
|
||
is not, he will not. Illinois is as little "owned" as any State in
|
||
this Union. Illinois would naturally be for Grant, other things
|
||
being equal, because he is regarded as a citizen of this State, and
|
||
it is very hard for a State to give up the patronage naturally
|
||
growing out of the fact that the President comes from that State.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Will the instructions given to delegates be final?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I do not think they will be considered final at all;
|
||
neither do I think they will be considered of any force. It was
|
||
decided at the last convention, in Cincinnati, that the delegates
|
||
had a right to vote as they pleased; that each delegate represented
|
||
the district of his State that sent him. The idea that a State
|
||
convention can instruct them as against the wishes of their
|
||
constituents smacks a little too much of State sovereignty. The
|
||
President should be nominated by the districts of the whole
|
||
country, and not by massing the votes by a little chicanery at a
|
||
State convention, and every delegate ought to vote what he really
|
||
believes to be the sentiment of his constituents, irrespective of
|
||
what the State convention may order him to do. He is not
|
||
responsible to the State convention, and it is none of the State
|
||
convention's business. This does not apply, it may be, to the
|
||
delegates at large, but to all the others it certainly must apply.
|
||
It was so decided at the Cincinnati convention, and decided on a
|
||
question arising about this same Pennsylvania delegation.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Can you guess as to what the platform is going to
|
||
contain?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I suppose it will be a substantial copy of the old
|
||
one, I am satisfied with the old one with one addition. I want a
|
||
plank to the effect that no man shall be deprived of any civil or
|
||
political right on account of his religious or irreligious
|
||
opinions. The Republican party having been foremost in freeing the
|
||
body ought to do just a little something now for the mind. After
|
||
having wasted rivers of blood and treasure uncounted, and almost
|
||
uncountable, to free the cage, I propose that something ought to be
|
||
done for the bird. Every decent man in the United States would
|
||
support that plank. People should have a right to testify in
|
||
courts, whatever their opinions may be, on any subject. Justice
|
||
should not shut any door leading to truth, and as long as just
|
||
views neither affect a man's eyesight or his memory, he should be
|
||
allowed to tell his story. And there are two sides to this
|
||
question, too. The man is not only deprived of his testimony, but
|
||
the commonwealth is deprived of it. There should be no religious
|
||
test in this country for office; and if Jehovah cannot support his
|
||
religion without going into partnership with a State Legislature,
|
||
I think he ought to give it up.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is there anything new about religion since you were
|
||
last here?
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
POLITICS, RELIGION AND THOMAS PAINE.
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Since I was here I have spoken in a great many cities,
|
||
and to-morrow I am going to do some missionary work at Milwaukee.
|
||
Many who have come to scoff have a remained to pray, and I think
|
||
that my labors are being greatly blessed, and all attacks on me so
|
||
far have been overruled for good. I happened to come in contact
|
||
with a revival of religion, and I believe what they call an
|
||
"outpouring" at Detroit, under the leadership of a gentleman by the
|
||
name of Pentecost. He denounced me as God's greatest enemy. I had
|
||
always supposed that the Devil occupied that exulted position, but
|
||
it seems that I have, in some way, fallen heir to his shoes. Mr.
|
||
Pentecost also denounced all business men who would allow any
|
||
advertisements or lithographs of mine to hang in their places of
|
||
business, and several of the gentlemen thus appealed to took the
|
||
advertisements away. The result of all this was that I had the
|
||
largest house that ever attended a lecture in Detroit. Feeling that
|
||
ingratitude is a crime, I publicly returned thanks to the clergy
|
||
for the pains they had taken to give me an audience. And I may say,
|
||
in this connection, that if the ministers do God as little good as
|
||
they do me harm, they had better let both of us alone. I regard
|
||
them as very good, but exceedingly mistaken men. They do not come
|
||
much in contact with the world, and get most of their views by
|
||
talking with the women and children of their congregations. They
|
||
are not permitted to mingle freely with society. They cannot attend
|
||
plays nor hear operas. I believe some of them have ventured to
|
||
minstrel shows and menageries, where they confine themselves
|
||
strictly to the animal part of the entertainment. But, as a rule,
|
||
they have very few opportunities of ascertaining what the real
|
||
public opinion is. They read religious papers, edited by gentlemen
|
||
who know as little about the world as themselves, and the result of
|
||
all this is that they are rather behind the times. They are good
|
||
men, and would like to do right if they only knew it, but they are
|
||
a little behind the times. There is an old story told of a fellow
|
||
who had a post-office in a small town in North Carolina, and being
|
||
the only man in the town who could read, a few people used to
|
||
gather in the post-office on Sunday, and he would read to them a
|
||
weekly paper that was published in Washington. He commenced always
|
||
at the top of the first column and read right straight through,
|
||
articles, advertisements, and all, and whenever they got a little
|
||
tired of reading he would make a mark of red ochre and commence at
|
||
that place the next Sunday. The result was that the papers came a
|
||
great. deal faster than he read them, and it was about 1817 when
|
||
they struck the war of 1812. The moment they got to that, every one
|
||
of them jumped up and offered to volunteer. All of which shows that
|
||
they were patriotic people, but a little slow, and somewhat behind
|
||
the times.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How were you pleased with the Paine meeting here,
|
||
and its results?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I was gratified to see so many people willing at last
|
||
to do justice to a great and a maligned man. Of course I do not
|
||
claim that Paine was perfect. All I claim is that he was a patriot
|
||
and a political philosopher; that he was a revolutionist and an
|
||
agitator; that he was infinitely full of suggestive thought, and
|
||
that he did more than any man to convince the people of America not
|
||
only that they ought to separate from Great Britain, but that they
|
||
ought to found a representative government. He has been despised
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
POLITICS, RELIGION AND THOMAS PAINE.
|
||
|
||
simply because he did not believe the Bible. I wish to do what I
|
||
can to rescue his name from theological defamation. I think the day
|
||
has come when Thomas Paine will be remembered with Washington,
|
||
Franklin and Jefferson, and that the American people will wonder
|
||
that their fathers could have been guilty of such base ingratitude.
|
||
|
||
Chicago Times, February 8, 1880.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
REPLY TO CHICAGO CRITICS.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Have you read the replies of the clergy to your
|
||
recent lecture in this city on "What Must we do to be Saved?" and
|
||
if so what do you thiNk of them?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think they dodge the point. The real point is this:
|
||
If salvation by faith is the real doctrine of Christianity, I asked
|
||
on Sunday before last, and I still ask, why didn't Matthew tell it?
|
||
I still insist that Mark should have remembered it, and I shall
|
||
always believe that Luke ought, at least, to have noticed it, I was
|
||
endeavoring to show that modern Christianity has for its basis an
|
||
interpolation. I think I showed it, The only gospel on the orthodox
|
||
side is that of John, and that was certainly not written, or did
|
||
not appear in its present form, until long after the others were
|
||
written.
|
||
|
||
I know very well that the Catholic Church claimed during the
|
||
Dark Ages, and still claims, that references had been made to the
|
||
gospels by persons living in the first, second, and third
|
||
centuries; but I believe such manuscripts were manufactured by the
|
||
Catholic Church. For many years in Europe there was not one person
|
||
in twenty thousand who could read and write. During that time the
|
||
church had in its keeping the literature of our world. They
|
||
interpolated as they pleased. They created. They destroyed. In
|
||
other words, they did whatever in their opinion was necessary to
|
||
substantiate the faith.
|
||
|
||
The gentlemen who saw fit to reply did not answer the
|
||
question, and I again call upon the clergy to explain to the people
|
||
why, if salvation depends upon belief on the Lord Jesus Christ,
|
||
Matthew didn't mention it. Some one has said that Christ didn't
|
||
make known this doctrine of salvation by belief or faith until
|
||
after his resurrection. Certainly none of the gospels were written
|
||
until after his resurrection; and if he made that doctrine known
|
||
after his resurrection, and before his ascension, it should have
|
||
been in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as in John.
|
||
|
||
The replies of the clergy show that they have not investigated
|
||
the subject; that they are not well acquainted with the New
|
||
Testament. In other words, they have not read it except with the
|
||
regulation theological bias. There is one thing I wish to correct
|
||
here. In an editorial in the Tribune it was stated that I had
|
||
admitted that Christ was beyond and above Buddha, Zoroaster,
|
||
Confucius, and others. I did not say so. Another point was made
|
||
against me, and those who made it seemed to think it was a good
|
||
one. In my lecture I asked why it was that the disciples of Christ
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
REPLY TO CHICAGO CRITICS.
|
||
|
||
wrote in Greek, whereas, in fact, they understood only Hebrew. It
|
||
is now claimed that Greek was the language of Jerusalem at that
|
||
time; that Hebrew had fallen into disuse; that no one understood it
|
||
except the literati and the highly educated. If I fell into an
|
||
error upon this point it was because I relied upon the New
|
||
Testament. I find in the twenty-first chapter of the Acts an
|
||
account of Paul having been mobbed in the city of Jerusalem; that
|
||
he was protected by a chief captain and some soldiers that, while
|
||
upon the stairs of the castle to which he was being taken for
|
||
protection, he obtained leave from the captain to speak unto the
|
||
people, In the fortieth verse of that chapter I find the following:
|
||
|
||
"And when he had given him license, Paul stood on the stairs
|
||
and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made
|
||
a areat silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying,"
|
||
|
||
And then follows the speech of Paul, wherein he gives an
|
||
account of his conversion. It seems a little curious to me that
|
||
Paul, for the purpose of quieting a mob, would speak to that mob in
|
||
an unknown language. If I were mobbed in the city of Chicago and
|
||
wished to defend myself with an explanation, I certainly would not
|
||
make that explanation in Choctaw even if I understood that tongue.
|
||
My present opinion is that I would speak in English; and the reason
|
||
I would speak in English is because that language is generally
|
||
understood in this city, and so I conclude from the account in the
|
||
twenty-first chapter of the Acts that Hebrew was the language of
|
||
Jerusalem at that time, or that Paul would not have addressed the
|
||
mob in that tongue.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Did you read Mr. Courtney's answer?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I read what Mr. Courtney read from others, and think
|
||
some of his quotations very good; and have no doubt that the
|
||
authors will feel complimented by being quoted. There certainly is
|
||
no need of my answering Dr. Courtney; sometime I may answer the
|
||
French gentlemen from whom he quoted.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: But what about there being "belief" ln Matthew?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Mr. Courtney says that certain people were cured of
|
||
diseases on account of faith. Admitting that mumps, measles, and
|
||
whooping-cough could be cured in that way, there is not even a
|
||
suggestion that salvation depended upon a like faith. I think he
|
||
can hardly afford to rely upon the miracles of the New Testament to
|
||
prove his doctrine. There is one instance in which a miracle was
|
||
performed by Christ without his knowledge; and I hardly think that
|
||
even Mr. Courtney would insist that any faith could have been great
|
||
enough for that, The fact is, I believe that all these miracles
|
||
were ascribed to Christ long after his death, and that Christ
|
||
never, at any time or place pretended to have any supernatural
|
||
power whatever. Neither do I believe that he claimed any
|
||
supernatural origin. Be claimed simply to be a man; no less, no
|
||
more. I do not believe Mr. Courtney is satisfied with his own
|
||
reply.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: And now as to Prof. Swing?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
REPLY TO CHICAGO CRITICS.
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Mr. Swing has been out of the orthodox church so long
|
||
that he seems to have forgotten the reasons for which he left it.
|
||
I do not believe there is an orthodox minister in the city of
|
||
Chicago who will agree with Mr. Swing that salvation by faith is no
|
||
longer preached. Prof. Swing seems to think it of no importance who
|
||
wrote the gospel of Matthew. In this I agree with him. Judging from
|
||
what he said there is hardly difference enough of opinion between
|
||
us to justify a reply on his part. He, however, makes one mistake.
|
||
I did not in the lecture say one word about tearing down churches.
|
||
I have no objection to people building all the churches they wish.
|
||
While I admit that it is a pretty sight to see children on a
|
||
morning in June going through the fields to the country church I
|
||
still insist that the beauty of that sight does not answer the,
|
||
question how it is that Matthew forgot to say anything about
|
||
salvation through Christ. Prof. Swing is a man of poetic
|
||
temperament, but this is not a poetic question.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How did the card of Dr. Thomas strike you?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think the reply of Dr. Thomas is in the best
|
||
Possible spirit. I regard him to-day as the best intellect in the
|
||
Methodist denomination. He seems to have what is generally
|
||
understood as a Christian spirit. He has always treated me with
|
||
perfect fairness, and I should have said long ago many grateful
|
||
things, had I not feared I might hurt him with his own people. He
|
||
seems to be by nature a perfectly fair man; and I know of no man in
|
||
the United States for whom I have a profounder respect. Of course,
|
||
I don't agree with Dr. Thomas. I think in many things he is
|
||
mistaken. But I believe him to be perfectly sincere. There is one
|
||
trouble about him -- he is growing; and this fact will no doubt
|
||
give great trouble to many of his brethren. Certain Methodist
|
||
hazel-brush feel a little uneasy in the shadow of this oak. To see
|
||
the difference between him and some others, all that is necessary
|
||
is to read his reply, and then read the remarks made at the
|
||
Methodist ministers' meeting on the Monday following. Compared with
|
||
Dr, Thomas, they are as puddles by the sea. There is the same
|
||
difference that there is between sewers and rivers, cesspools and
|
||
springs.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What have you to say to the remarks of the Rev. Dr.
|
||
Jewett before the Methodist ministers' meeting?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think Dr. Jewett is extremely foolish. I did not say
|
||
that I would commence suit against a minister for libel. I can
|
||
hardly conceive of a proceeding that would be less liable to
|
||
produce a dividend. The fact about it is, that the Rev. Mr. Jewett
|
||
seems to think anything true that he hears against me. Mr. Jewett
|
||
is probably ashamed of what he said by this time. He must have
|
||
known it to be entirely false. It seems to me by this time even the
|
||
most bigoted should lose their confidence in falsehood. Of course
|
||
there are times when a falsehood well told bridges over quite a
|
||
difficulty, but in the long run you had better tell the truth, even
|
||
if you swim the creek. I am astonished that these ministers were
|
||
willing to exhibit their wounds to the world, I supposed of course
|
||
I would hit some, but I had no idea of wounding so many.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Mr. Crafts stated that you were in the habit of
|
||
swearing in company and before your family?
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
REPLY TO CHICAGO CRITICS.
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I often swear. In other words, I take the name of God
|
||
in vain: that is to say, I take it without any practical thing
|
||
resulting from it, and in that sense I think most ministers are
|
||
guilty of the same thing. I heard an old story of a clergyman who
|
||
rebuked a neighbor for swearing, to whom the neighbor replied, "You
|
||
pray and I swear, but as a matter of fact neither of us means
|
||
anything by it." As to the charge that I am in the habit of using
|
||
indecent language in my family, no reply is needed. I am willing to
|
||
leave that question to the people who know us both. Mr, Crafts says
|
||
he was told this by a lady. This cannot by any possibility be true,
|
||
for no lady will tell a falsehood. Besides, if this woman of whom
|
||
he speaks was a lady, how did she happen to stay where obscene
|
||
language was being used? No lady ever told Mr, Crafts any such
|
||
thing. It may be that a lady did tell him that I used profane
|
||
language. I admit that I have not always spoken of the Devil in a
|
||
respectful way; that I have sometimes referred to his residence
|
||
when it was not a necessary part of the conversation, and that at
|
||
divers times I have used a good deal of the terminology of the
|
||
theologian when the exact words of the scientist might have done as
|
||
well. But if by swearing is meant the use of God's name in vain,
|
||
there are very few preachers who do not swear more than I do, if by
|
||
"In vain" is meant without any practical result. I leave Mr. Crafts
|
||
to cultivate the acquaintance of the unknown lady, knowing as I do,
|
||
that after they have talked this matter over again they will find
|
||
that both have been mistaken.
|
||
|
||
I sincerely regret that clergymen who really believe that an
|
||
infinite God is on their side think it necessary to resort to such
|
||
things to defeat one man. According to their idea, God is against
|
||
me, and they ought to have confidence enough in his infinite wisdom
|
||
and strength to suppose that he could dispose of one man, even if
|
||
they failed to say a word against me. Had you not asked me I should
|
||
have said nothing upon these topics. Such charges cannot hurt me.
|
||
I do not believe it possible for such men to injure me. No one
|
||
believes what they say, and the testimony of such clergymen against
|
||
an Infidel is no longer considered of value. I believe it was
|
||
Goethe who said, "I always know that I am traveling when I hear the
|
||
dogs bark."
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Are you going to make a formal reply to their
|
||
sermons?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Not unless something better is done than has been. Of
|
||
course, I don't know what another Sabbath may bring forth. I am
|
||
waiting. But of one thing I feel perfectly assured; that no man in
|
||
the United States, or in the world, can account for the fact, if we
|
||
are to be saved only by faith in Christ, that Matthew forgot it,
|
||
that Luke said nothing about it, and that Mark never mentioned it
|
||
except in two passages written by another person. Until that is
|
||
answered, as one grave-digger says to the other in "Hamlet," I
|
||
shall say, "Ay, tell me that and unyoke." In the meantime I wish to
|
||
keep on the best terms with all parties concerned. I cannot see why
|
||
my forgiving spirit fails to gain their sincere praise. --
|
||
|
||
Chicago Tribune, September 30, 1880.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you really think, Colonel, that the country has
|
||
just passed through a crisis?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes; there was a crisis and a great one. The question
|
||
was whether a Northern or Southern idea of the powers and duties of
|
||
the Federal Government was to prevail. The great victory of
|
||
yesterday means that the Rebellion was not put down on the field of
|
||
war alone, but that we have conquered it in the realm of thought.
|
||
The bayonet has been justified by argument. No party can ever
|
||
succeed in this country that even whispers "State Sovereignty."
|
||
That doctrine has become odious. The sovereignty of the State means
|
||
a Government without power, and citizens without protection.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Can you see any further significance in the present
|
||
Republican victory other than that the people do not wish to change
|
||
the general policy of the present administration?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes; the people have concluded that the lips of
|
||
America shall be free. There never was free speech in the South,
|
||
and there never will be until the people of that section admit that
|
||
the Nation is superior to the State, and that all citizens have
|
||
equal rights. I know of hundreds who voted the Republican ticket
|
||
because they regarded the South as hostile to free speech. The
|
||
people were satisfied with the financial policy of the Republicans,
|
||
and they feared a change. The North wants honest money -- gold and
|
||
silver. The people are in favor of honest votes, and they feared
|
||
the practices of the Democratic party. The tissue ballot and
|
||
shotgun policy made them hesitate to put power in the hands of the
|
||
South. Besides, the tariff question made thousands and thousands of
|
||
votes. As long as Europe has slave labor, and wherever kings and
|
||
priests rule, the laborer will be substantially a slave. We must
|
||
protect ourselves. If the world were free, trade would be free, and
|
||
the seas would be the free highways of the world. The great objects
|
||
of the Republican party are to preserve all the liberty we have,
|
||
protect American labor, and to make it the undisputed duty of the
|
||
Government to protect every citizen at home and abroad. The
|
||
Republican party intends to civilize this country.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What do you think was the main cause of the
|
||
Republican sweep?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: The wisdom of the Republicans and the mistakes of the
|
||
Democrats. The Democratic party has for twenty years underrated the
|
||
intelligence, the patriotism and the honesty of the American
|
||
people. That party has always looked upon politics as a trade, and
|
||
success as the last act of a cunning trick. It has had no
|
||
principles, fixed or otherwise. It has always been willing to
|
||
abandon everything but its prejudices. It generally commences where
|
||
it left off and then goes backward. In this campaign English was a
|
||
mistake, Hancock was another. Nothing could have a been more
|
||
incongruous than yoking a Federal soldier with a peace-at-any-price
|
||
Democrat. Neither could praise the other without slandering
|
||
himself, and the blindest partisan could not like them both. But,
|
||
after all, I regard the military record of English as fully equal
|
||
to the views of General Hancock on the tariff. The greatest mistake
|
||
that the Democratic party made was to suppose that a campaign could
|
||
be fought and won by slander, The American people like fair play
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY.
|
||
|
||
and they abhor ignorant and absurd vituperation. The continent knew
|
||
that General Garfield was an honest man; that he was in the
|
||
grandest sense a gentleman; that he was patriotic, profound and
|
||
learned; that his private life was pure; that his home life was
|
||
good and kind and true, and all the charges made and howled and
|
||
screeched and printed and sworn to, harmed only those who did the
|
||
making and the howling, the screeching and the swearing. I never
|
||
knew a man in whose perfect integrity I had more perfect
|
||
confidence, and in less than one year even the men who have
|
||
slandered him will agree with me.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How about that "personal and confidential letter"?
|
||
(The Morey letter.)
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: It was as stupid as devilish, as basely born as
|
||
godfathered. It is an exploded forgery, and the explosion leaves
|
||
dead and torn upon the field the author and his witnesses.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is there anything in the charge that the Republican
|
||
party seeks to change our form of government by gradual
|
||
centralization?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Nothing whatever. We want power enough in the
|
||
Government to protect, not to destroy, the liberties of the people.
|
||
The history of the world shows that burglars have always opposed an
|
||
increase of the police. --
|
||
New York Harold, November 5, 1880.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL AND BEECHER.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What is your opinion of Mr. Beecher?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I regard him as the greatest man in any pulpit of the
|
||
world. He treated me with a generosity that nothing can exceed, He
|
||
rose grandly above the prejudices supposed to belong to his class,
|
||
and acted as only a man could act without a chain upon his brain
|
||
and only kindness in his heart.
|
||
|
||
I told him that night that I congratulated the world that it
|
||
had a minister with an intellectual horizon broad enough and a
|
||
mental sky studded with stars of genius enough to hold all creeds
|
||
in scorn that shocked the heart of man. I think that Mr. Beecher
|
||
has liberalized the English-speaking people of the world.
|
||
|
||
I do not think he agrees with me. He holds to many things that
|
||
I most passionately deny. But in common, we believe in the liberty
|
||
of thought.
|
||
|
||
My principal objections to orthodox religion are two --
|
||
slavery here and hell hereafter. I do not believe that Mr. Beecher
|
||
on these points can disagree with me. The real difference between
|
||
us is -- he says God, I say Nature. The real agreement between us
|
||
is -- we both say -- Liberty.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What is his forte?
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL AND BEECHER.
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: He is of a wonderfully poetic temperament. In pursuing
|
||
any course of thought his mind is like a stream flowing through the
|
||
scenery of fairyland. The stream murmurs and laughs while the banks
|
||
grow green and the vines blossom.
|
||
|
||
His brain is controlled by his heart. He thinks in pictures.
|
||
With him logic means mental melody. The discordant is the absurd.
|
||
|
||
For years he has endeavored to hide the dungeon of orthodoxy
|
||
with the ivy of imagination. Now and then he pulls for a moment the
|
||
leafy curtain aside and is horrified to see the lizards, snakes,
|
||
basilisks and abnormal monsters of the orthodox age, and then he
|
||
utters a great cry, the protest of a loving, throbbing heart.
|
||
|
||
He is a great thinker, a marvelous orator, and, in my
|
||
judgment, greater and grander than any creed of any.
|
||
|
||
Besides all this, he treated me like a king. Manhood is his
|
||
forte, and I expect to live and die his friend.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
BEECHER ON INGERSOLL.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What is your opinion of Colonel Ingersoll?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I do not think there should be any misconception as to
|
||
my motive for indorsing Mr. Ingersoll. I never saw him before that
|
||
night, when I clasped his hand in the presence of an assemblage of
|
||
citizens, yet I regard him as one or the greatest men of this age.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is his influence upon the world good or otherwise?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I am an ordained clergyman and believe in revealed
|
||
religion. I am, therefore, bound to regard all persons who do not
|
||
believe in revealed religion as in error. But on the broad platform
|
||
of human liberty and progress I was bound to give him the right
|
||
hand of fellowship. I would do it a thousand times over. I do not
|
||
know Colonel Ingersoll's religious views precisely, but I have a
|
||
general knowledge of them. He has the same right to free thought
|
||
and free speech that I have. I am not that kind of a coward who has
|
||
to kick a man before he shakes hands with him. If I did so I would
|
||
have to kick the Methodists, Roman Catholics and all other creeds.
|
||
I will not pitch into any man's religion as an excuse for giving
|
||
him my hand. I admire Ingersoll because he is not afraid to speak
|
||
what he honesty thinks, and I am only sorry that he does not think
|
||
as I do. I never heard so much brilliancy and pith put into a two
|
||
hours' speech as I did on that night. I wish my whole congregation
|
||
had been there to hear it. I regret that there are not more men
|
||
like Ingersoll interested in the affairs of the nation. I do not
|
||
wish to be understood as indorsing skepticism in any form. --
|
||
|
||
New York Harold, November 7, 1880.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
27
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is it true, as rumored, that you intend to leave
|
||
Washington and reside in New York?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: No, I expect to remain here for years to come, so far
|
||
as I can now see. My present intention is certainly to stay here
|
||
during the coming winter.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is this because you regard Washington as the
|
||
pleasentest and most advantageous city for a residence?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Well, in the first place, I dislike to move. In the
|
||
next place, the climate is good. In the third place, the political
|
||
atmosphere has been growing better of late, and when you consider
|
||
that I avoid one dislike and reap the benefits of two likes, you
|
||
can see why I remain.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you think that the moral atmosphere will improve
|
||
with the political atmosphere?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I would hate to say that this city is capable of any
|
||
improvement in the way of morality. We have a great many churches,
|
||
a great many ministers, and, I believe, some retired chaplains, so
|
||
I take it that the moral tone of the place could hardly be
|
||
bettered. One majority in the Senate might help it. Seriously,
|
||
however, I think that Washington has as high a standard of morality
|
||
as any city in the Union, And it is one of the best towns in which
|
||
to loan money without collateral in the world.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you know from experience?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: This I have been told was the solemn answer.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you think that the political features of the
|
||
incoming administration will differ from the present?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Of course, I have no right to speak for General
|
||
Garfield. I believe his administration will be Republican, at the
|
||
same time perfectly kind, manly, and generous. He is a man to
|
||
harbor no resentment. He knows that it is the duty of statesmanship
|
||
to remove causes of irritation rather than punish the irritated.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do I understand you to imply that there will be a
|
||
neutral policy, as it were, towards the South?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: No, I think there will be nothing neutral about it. I
|
||
think that the next administration will be one-sided -- that is, it
|
||
will be on the right side. I know of no better definition for a
|
||
compromise than to say it is a proceeding in which hypocrites
|
||
deceive each other. I do not believe: that the incoming
|
||
administration will be neutral in anything. The American people do
|
||
not like neutrality. They would rather a man were on the wrong side
|
||
than on neither. And, in my judgment, there is no paper so utterly
|
||
unfair, malicious and devilish, as one that claims to be neutral.
|
||
No politician is as bitter as a neutral politician. Neutrality is
|
||
generally used as a mask to hide unusual bitterness. Sometimes it
|
||
hides what it is -- nothing. It always stands for hollowness of
|
||
head or bitterness of heart, sometimes for both. My idea is -- and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
28
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL.
|
||
|
||
that is only one reason I have the right to express it -- that
|
||
General Garfield believes in the platform adopted by the Republican
|
||
party. He believes in free speech, in honest money, in divorce of
|
||
church and state, and he believes in the protection of American
|
||
citizens by the Federal Government wherever the flag flies. He
|
||
believes that the Federal Government is as much bound to protect
|
||
the citizen at home as abroad. I believe he will do the very best
|
||
he can to carry these great ideas into execution and make them
|
||
living realities in the United States. Personally, I have no hatred
|
||
toward the Southern people. I have no hatred toward any class. I
|
||
hate tyranny, no matter weather it is South or North; I hate
|
||
hypocrisy, and I hate above all things, the spirit of caste. If the
|
||
Southern people could only see that they gained as great a victory
|
||
in the Rebellion as the North did, and some day they will see it,
|
||
the whole question would be settled. The South has reaped a far
|
||
greater benefit from being defeated than the North has from being
|
||
successful, and I believe some day the South will be great enough
|
||
to appreciate that fact. I have always insisted that to be beaten
|
||
by the right: is to be a victor. The Southern people must get over
|
||
the idea that they are insulted simply because they are out-voted,
|
||
and they ought by this time to know that the Republicans of the
|
||
North, not only do not wish them harm, but really wish them the
|
||
utmost success.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: But has the Republican party all the good and the
|
||
Democratic all the bad?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: No, I do not think that the Republican party has all
|
||
the good, nor do I pretend that the Democratic party has all the
|
||
bad; though I may say that each party comes pretty near it. I admit
|
||
that there are thousands of really good fellows in the Democratic
|
||
party, and there are some pretty bad people in the Republican
|
||
party. But I honestly believe that within the latter are most of
|
||
the progressive men of this country. That party has in it the
|
||
elements of growth. It is full of hope. It anticipates. The
|
||
Democratic party remembers. It is always talking about the past. It
|
||
is the possessor of a vast amount of political rubbish, and I
|
||
really believe it has outlived its usefulness. I firmly believe,
|
||
that your editor, Mr. Hutchins, could start a better organization,
|
||
if he would only turn his attention to it. Just think for a moment
|
||
of the number you could get rid of by starting a new party. A
|
||
hundred names will probably suggest themselves to any intelligent
|
||
Democrat, the loss of which would almost insure success, Some one
|
||
has said that a tailor in Boston made a fortune by advertising that
|
||
he did not cut the breeches of Webster's statue. A new party by
|
||
advertising that certain men would not belong to it, would have an
|
||
advantage in the next race.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What, in your opinion, were the causes which led to
|
||
the Democratic defeat?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think the nomination of English was exceedingly
|
||
unfortunate. Indiana, being an October State, the best man in that
|
||
State should have been nominated either for President or Vice-
|
||
President. Personally, I know nothing of Mr. English, but I have
|
||
the right to say that he was exceedingly unpopular. That was
|
||
mistake number one. Mistake number two was putting a plank in the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
29
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL.
|
||
|
||
platform insisting upon a tariff for revenue only. That little word
|
||
"only" was one of the most frightful mistakes ever made by a
|
||
Political party. That little word "only" was a millstone around the
|
||
neck of the entire campaign. The third mistake was Hancock's
|
||
definition of the tariff. It was exceedingly unfortunate,
|
||
exceedingly laughable, and came just in the nick of time. The
|
||
fourth mistake was the speech of Wade Hamption, I mean the speech
|
||
that the Republican papers claim he made. Of course I do not know,
|
||
personally, whether it was made or not. If made, it was a great
|
||
mistake.Mistake number five was made in Alabama, where they refused
|
||
to allow a Greenbacker to express his opinion. That lost the
|
||
Democrats enough Greenbackers to turn the scale in Maine, and
|
||
enough in Indiana to change that election. Mistake number six was
|
||
in the charges made against General Garfield. They were insisted
|
||
upon, magnified and multiplied until at last the whole thing
|
||
assumed the proportions of a malicious libel. This was a great
|
||
mistake, for the reason that a number of Democrats in the United
|
||
States had most heartily and cordially indorsed General Garfield as
|
||
a man of integrity and great ability. Such indorsement had been
|
||
made by the leading Democrats of the North and South, among them
|
||
Governor Hendricks and many others I might name. Jere Black had
|
||
also certified to the integrity and intellectual grandeur of
|
||
General Garfield, and when afterward he certified to the exact
|
||
contrary, the people believed that it was a persecution. The next
|
||
mistake, number seven, was the Chinese letter. While it lost
|
||
Garfield California, Nevada and probably New Jersey, it did him
|
||
good in New York. This letter was the greatest mistake made,
|
||
because a crime is greater than a mistake. These, in my judgment,
|
||
are the principal mistakes made by the Democratic party in the
|
||
campaign. Had McDonald been on the ticket the result might have
|
||
been different, or had the party united on some man in New York,
|
||
satisfactory to the factions, it might have succeeded. The truth,
|
||
however, is that the North to-day is Republican, and it may be that
|
||
had the Democratic party made no mistakes whatever the result would
|
||
have been the same, But that mistakes were made is now perfectly
|
||
evident to the blindest partisan, If the ticket originally
|
||
suggested, Seymour and McDonald, had been nominated on an
|
||
unobjectionable platform, the result might have been different. One
|
||
of the happiest days in my life was the day on which the Cincinnati
|
||
convention did not nominate Seymour and did nominate English. I
|
||
regard General Hancock as a good soldier, but not particularly well
|
||
qualified to act as President. He has neither the intellectual
|
||
training nor the experience to qualify him for that place.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: You have doubtless heard of a new party, Colonel.
|
||
What is your idea in regard to it?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I have heard two or three speak of a new party to be
|
||
called the National party, or National Union party, but whether
|
||
there is anything in such a movement I have no means of knowing.
|
||
Any party in opposition to the Republican, no matter what it may be
|
||
called, must win on a new issue, and that new issue will determine
|
||
the new party, Parties cannot be made to order. They must grow.
|
||
They are the natural offspring of national events. They must embody
|
||
certain hopes, they must gratify, or promise to gratify, the
|
||
feelings of a vast number of people. No man can make a party, and
|
||
if a new party springs into existence it will not be brought forth
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
30
|
||
|
||
POLITICAL.
|
||
|
||
to gratify the wishes of a few, but the wants of the many. It has
|
||
seemed to me for years that the Democratic party carried too great
|
||
a load in the shape of record; that its autobiography was nearly
|
||
killing it all the time, and that if it could die just long enough
|
||
to assume another form at the resurrection, just long enough to
|
||
leave a grave stone to mark the end of its history, to get a
|
||
cemetery back of it, that it might hope for something like success.
|
||
In other words, that there must be a funeral before there can be
|
||
victory. Most of its leaders are worn out. They have become so
|
||
accustomed to defeat that they take it as a matter of course; they
|
||
expect it in the beginning and seem unconsciously to work for it.
|
||
There must be some new ideas, and this only can happen when the
|
||
party as such has been gathered to its fathers. I do not think that
|
||
the advice of Senator Hill will be followed. He is willing to kill
|
||
the Democratic party in the South if we will kill the Republican
|
||
party in the North. This puts me in mind of what the rooster said
|
||
to the horse "Let us agree not to step on each other's feet."
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Your views of the country's future and prospects
|
||
must naturally be rose colored?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Of course, I look at things through Republican eyes
|
||
and may be prejudiced without knowing it. But it really seems to me
|
||
that the future is full of great promise. The South, after all, is
|
||
growing prosperous. It is producing more and more every year, until
|
||
in time it will become wealthy, The West is growing almost beyond
|
||
the imagination of a speculator, and the Eastern and Middle States
|
||
are much more than holding their own, We have now fifty millions of
|
||
people and in a few years will have a hundred, That we are a Nation
|
||
I think is now settled. Our growth will be unparalleled. I myself
|
||
expect to live to see as many ships on the Pacific as on the
|
||
Atlantic, In a few years there will probably be ten millions of
|
||
people living along the Rocky and Sierra Mountains. It will not be
|
||
long until Illinois will find her market west of her. In fifty
|
||
years this will be the greatest nation on the earth, and the most
|
||
populous in the civilized world. China is slowly awakening from the
|
||
lethargy of centuries. It will soon have the wants of Europe, and
|
||
America will supply those wants. This is a nation of inventors and
|
||
there is more mechanical ingenuity in the United States than on the
|
||
rest of the globe. In my judgment this country will in a short time
|
||
add to its customers hundreds of millions of the people of the
|
||
Celestial Empire. So you see, to me, the future is exceedingly
|
||
bright. And besides all this, I must not forget the thing that is
|
||
always nearest my heart. There is more intellectual liberty in the
|
||
United States to-day than ever before. The people are beginning to
|
||
see that every citizen ought to have the right to express himself
|
||
freely upon every possible subject. In a little while, all the
|
||
barbarous laws that now disgrace the statute books of the "States
|
||
by discriminating against a man simply because he is honest, will
|
||
be repealed, and there will he one country where all citizens will
|
||
have and enjoy not only equal rights, but all rights. Nothing
|
||
gratifies me so much as the growth of intellectual liberty. After
|
||
all, the true civilization is where every man gives to every other,
|
||
every right that he claims for himself. --
|
||
|
||
The Post, Washington, D.C., November 14, 1880.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
31
|
||
|
||
RELIGION IN POLITICS.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How do you regard the present political situation?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: My opinion is that the ideas the North fought for upon
|
||
the field have at last triumphed at the ballot-box. For several
|
||
years after the Rebellion was put down the Southern ideas traveled
|
||
North. We lost West Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and
|
||
a great many congressional districts in other States. We lost both
|
||
houses of Congress and every Southern State. The Southern ideas
|
||
reached their climax in 1876. In my judgment the tide has turned,
|
||
and hereafter the Northern idea is going South. The young men are
|
||
on the Republican side. The old Democrats are dying. The cradle is
|
||
beating the coffin. It is a case of life and death, and life is
|
||
ahead. The heirs outnumber the administrators.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What kind of a President will Garfield make?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: My opinion is that he will make as good a President as
|
||
this nation ever had. He is fully equipped. He is a trained
|
||
statesman. He has discussed all the great questions that have
|
||
arisen for the last eighteen years, and with great ability. He is
|
||
a thorough scholar, a conscientious student, and takes an
|
||
exceedingly comprehensive survey of all questions. He is genial,
|
||
generous and candid, and has all the necessary qualities of heart
|
||
and brain to make a great President. He has no prejudices.
|
||
Prejudice is the child and flatterer of ignorance. He is firm, but
|
||
not obstinate. The obstinate man wants his own way; the firm man
|
||
stands by the right. Andrew Johnson was obstinate -- Lincoln was
|
||
firm.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How do you think he will treat the South?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Just the same as the North. He will be the President
|
||
of the whole country. He will not execute the laws by a compass,
|
||
but according to the Constitution. I do not speak for General
|
||
Garfield, nor by any authority from his friends. No one wishes to
|
||
injure the South. The Republican party feels in honor bound to
|
||
protect all citizens, white and black. It must do this in order to
|
||
keep its self-respect. It must throw the shield of the Nation over
|
||
the weakest, the humblest and the blackest citizen. Any other
|
||
course is suicide. No thoughtful Southern man can object to this,
|
||
and a Northern Democrat knows that it is right.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is there a probability that Mr. Sherman will be
|
||
retained in the Cabinet?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I have no knowledge upon that question, and
|
||
consequently have nothing to say. My opinion about the Cabinet is,
|
||
that General Garfield is well enough acquainted with public men to
|
||
choose a Cabinet that will suit him and the country. I have never
|
||
regarded it as the proper thing to try and force a Cabinet upon a
|
||
President. He has the right to be surrounded by his friends, by men
|
||
in whose judgment and in whose friendship he has the utmost
|
||
confidence, and I would no more think of trying to put some man in
|
||
the Cabinet than I would think of signing a petition that a man
|
||
should marry a certain woman. General Garfield will, I believe,
|
||
select his own constitutional advisers, and he will take the best
|
||
he knows.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
32
|
||
|
||
RELIGION IN POLITICS.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What, in your opinion, is the condition of the
|
||
Democratic party at present?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: It must get a new set of principles, and throw away
|
||
its prejudices. It must demonstrate its capacity to govern the:
|
||
country by governing the States where it is in power. In the
|
||
presence of rebellion it gave up the ship. The South must become
|
||
Republican before the North will willingly give it power; that is,
|
||
the great ideas of nationality and Federal protection must be
|
||
absolutely accepted. Ideas are greater than parties, and if our
|
||
flag is not large enough to protect every citizen, we must add few
|
||
more stars and stripes. Personally I have no hatreds in this
|
||
matter. The present is not only the child of the past, but the
|
||
necessary child. A statesman must deal with things as they are. He
|
||
must not be like Gladstone, who divides his time between foreign
|
||
wars and amendments to the English Book of Common Prayer.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How do you regard the religious question in
|
||
Politics?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Religion is a personal matter -- a matter that each
|
||
individual soul should be allowed to settle for itself. No man shod
|
||
in the brogans of impudence should walk into the temple of
|
||
another's soul. While every man should be governed by the highest
|
||
possible considerations of the public weal, no one has the right to
|
||
ask for legal assistance in the support of his particular sect. If
|
||
Catholics oppose the public schools I would not oppose them because
|
||
they are Catholics, but because I am in favor of the schools. I
|
||
regard the public school as the intellectual bread of life.
|
||
Personally I have no confidence in any religion that can be
|
||
demonstrated only to children. I suspect all creeds that rely
|
||
implicitly on mothers and nurses. That religion is the best that
|
||
commends itself the strongest to men and women of education and
|
||
genius. After all, the prejudices of infancy and the ignorance of
|
||
the aged are a poor foundation for any system of morals or faith.
|
||
I respect every honest man, and I think more of a liberal Catholic
|
||
than of an illiberal Infidel. The religious question should be left
|
||
out of politics. You might as well decide questions of art and
|
||
music by a ward caucus as to govern the longings and dreams of the
|
||
soul by law. I believe in letting the sun shine whether the weeds
|
||
grow or not. I can never side with Protestants if they try to put
|
||
Catholics down by law, and I expect to oppose both of them until
|
||
religious intolerance is regarded as a crime.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is the religious movement of which you are the chief
|
||
exponent spreading?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: There are ten times as many Freethinkers this year as
|
||
there were last. Civilization is the child of freethought. The new
|
||
world has drifted away from the rotting wharf of superstition. The
|
||
politics of this country are being settled by the new ideas of
|
||
individual liberty; and parties and churches that cannot accept the
|
||
new truths must perish. I want it perfectly understood that I am
|
||
not a politician. I believe in liberty and I want to see the time
|
||
when every man, woman and child will enjoy every human right.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
33
|
||
|
||
RELIGION IN POLITICS.
|
||
|
||
The election is over, the passions aroused by the campaign
|
||
will soon subside, the sober judgment of the people will, in my
|
||
opinion, indorse the result, and time will indorse the indorsement.
|
||
|
||
The Evening Express, New York City, November 19, 1880.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
MIRACLES AND IMMORALITY.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: you have seen some accounts of the recent sermon of
|
||
Dr. Tyng on "Miracles," I presume, and if so, what is your opinion
|
||
of the sermon, and also what is your opinion of miracles?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: From an orthodox standpoint, I think the Rev. Dr. Tyng
|
||
is right. If miracles were necessary eighteen hundred years ago,
|
||
before scientific facts enough were known to overthrow hundreds and
|
||
thousands of passages in the Bible, certainly they are necessary
|
||
now. Dr. Tyng sees clearly that the old miracles are nearly worn
|
||
out, and that some new ones are absolutely essential. He takes for
|
||
granted that, if God would do a miracle to found his gospel, he
|
||
certainly would do some more to preserve it, and that it is in need
|
||
of preservation about now is evident. I am amazed that the
|
||
religious world should laugh at him for believing in miracles. It
|
||
seems to me just as reasonable that the deaf, dumb, blind and lame,
|
||
should be cured at Lourdes as at Palestine. It certainly is no more
|
||
wonderful that the law of nature should be broken now than that it
|
||
was broken several thousand years ago. Dr. Tyng also has this
|
||
advantage. The witnesses by whom he proves these miracles are
|
||
alive. An unbeliever can have the opportunity of a cross-
|
||
examination. Whereas, the miracles in the New Testament are
|
||
substantiated only by the dead. It is just as reasonable to me that
|
||
blind people receive their sight in France as that devils were made
|
||
to vacate human bodies in the holy land.
|
||
|
||
For one I am exceedingly glad that Dr. Tyng has taken this
|
||
position. It shows that he is a believer in a personal God, in a
|
||
God who is attending a little to the affairs of this world, and in
|
||
a God who did not exhaust his supplies in the apostolic age. It is
|
||
refreshing to me to find in this scientific age a gentleman who
|
||
still believes in miracles. My opinion is that all thorough
|
||
religionists will have to take the ground and admit that a
|
||
supernatural religion must be supernaturally preserved.
|
||
|
||
I have been asking for a miracle for several years, and have
|
||
in a very mild, gentle and loving way, taunted the church for not
|
||
producing a little one. I have had the impudence to ask any number
|
||
of them to join in a prayer asking anything they desire for the
|
||
purpose of testing the efficiency of what is known as supplication.
|
||
They answer me by calling my attention to the miracles recorded in
|
||
the New Testament. I insist, however, on a new miracle, and,
|
||
personally, I would like to see one now. Certainly, the Infinite
|
||
has not lost his power, and certainly the Infinite knows that
|
||
thousands and hundreds of thousands, if the Bible is true, are now
|
||
pouring over the precipice of unbelief into the gulf of Hell. One
|
||
little miracle would save thousands. One little miracle in
|
||
Pittsburgh, well authenticated, would do more good than all the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
34
|
||
|
||
MIRACLES AND IMMORALITY.
|
||
|
||
preaching ever heard in this sooty town. The Rev. Tyng clearly sees
|
||
this, and he has been driven to the conclusion, first, that God can
|
||
do miracles; second, that he ought to, third, that he has. In this
|
||
he is perfectly logical. After a man believes the Bible; after he
|
||
believes in the flood and in the story of Jonah, certainly he ought
|
||
not to hesitate at a miracle of to-day. When I say I want a
|
||
miracle, I mean by that, I want a good one. All the miracles
|
||
recorded in the New Testament could have been simulated. A fellow
|
||
could have: pretended to be dead or blind, or dumb, or deaf, I want
|
||
to see a good miracle I want to see a man with one leg, and then I
|
||
want to see the other leg grow out.
|
||
|
||
I would like to see a miracle like that performed in North
|
||
Carolina. Two men were disputing about the relative merits of the
|
||
salve they had for sale. One of the men, in order to demonstrate
|
||
that his salve was better than any other, cut off a dog's tail and
|
||
applied a little of the salve to the stump and, in the presence of
|
||
the spectators, a new tail grew out. But the other man, who also
|
||
had salve for sale, took up the piece of tail that had been cast
|
||
away, put a little salve at the end of that, and a new dog grew
|
||
out, and the last heard of those parties they were quarrelling as
|
||
to who owned the second dog. Something like that is what I call a
|
||
miracle.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What do you believe about the immortality of the
|
||
soul? Do you believe that the spirit lives as an individual after
|
||
the body is dead?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I have said a great many times that it is no more
|
||
wonderful that we should live again than that we do live. Sometimes
|
||
I have thought it not quite so wonderful for the reason that we
|
||
have a start. But upon that subject I have not the slightest
|
||
information. Whether man lives again or not I cannot pretend to
|
||
say. There may be another world and there may not be. If there is
|
||
another world we ought to make the best of it after arriving there.
|
||
If there is not another world, or if there is another world, we
|
||
ought to make the best of this. And since nobody knows, all should
|
||
be permitted to have their opinions, and my opinion is that nobody
|
||
knows.
|
||
|
||
If we take the Old Testament for authority, man is not
|
||
immortal. The Old Testament shows man how he lost immortality.
|
||
According to Genesis, God prevented man from putting forth his hand
|
||
and eating of the Tree of Life. It is there stated, had he
|
||
succeeded, man would have lived forever. God drove him from the
|
||
garden, preventing him eating of this tree, and in consequence man
|
||
became mortal; so that if we go by the Old Testament we are
|
||
compelled to give up immortality. The New Testament has but little
|
||
on the subject. In one place we are told to seek for immorality. If
|
||
we are already immortal, it is hard to see why we should go on
|
||
seeking for it. In another place we are told that they who are
|
||
worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection of the dead, are
|
||
not given in marriage. From this one would infer there would be
|
||
some unworthy to be raised from the dead. Upon the question of
|
||
immortality, the Old Testament throws but little satisfactory
|
||
light. I do not deny immortality, nor would I endeavor to shake the
|
||
belief of anybody in another life. What I am endeavoring to do is
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
35
|
||
|
||
MIRACLES AND IMMORALITY.
|
||
|
||
to put out the tires of hell. If we cannot have heaven without
|
||
hell. I am in favor of abolishing heaven. I do not want to go to
|
||
heaven if one soul is doomed to agony. I would rather be
|
||
annihilated.
|
||
|
||
My opinion of immortality is this:
|
||
|
||
Fist. -- I live, and that of itself is infinitely wonderful.
|
||
|
||
Second. -- There was a time when I was not, and after I was
|
||
not, I was. Third. -- that I am, I may be again; and it is no more
|
||
wonderful that I may be again, if I have been, than I am, having
|
||
once been nothing. If the churches advocated immortality, if they
|
||
advocated eternal justice, if they said that man would be rewarded
|
||
and punished according to deeds; if they admitted that some time in
|
||
eternity there would be an opportunity given to lift up the souls,
|
||
and that throughout all the ages the angels of progress and virtue
|
||
would beckon the fallen upward and that some time, and no matter
|
||
how far away they might put off the time, all the children of men
|
||
would be reasonably happy, I never would say a solitary word
|
||
against the church, but just as long as they preach that the
|
||
majority of mankind will suffer eternal pain, just so long I shall
|
||
oppose them; that is to say, as long as I live.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you believe in a God; and, if so, what kind of a
|
||
God?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Let me, in the first place, lay a foundation for an
|
||
answer.
|
||
|
||
First. -- Man gets all food for thought through the medium of
|
||
the senses. The effect of nature upon the senses, and through the
|
||
senses upon the brain, must be natural. All food for thought, then,
|
||
is natural. As a consequence of this there can be no supernatural
|
||
idea in the, human brain whatever idea there is must have been a
|
||
natural product. If, then, there is no supernatural idea in the
|
||
human brain. then there cannot be in the human brain an idea of the
|
||
supernatural. If we can have no idea of the supernatural, and if
|
||
the God of whom you spoke is admitted to be supernatural, then, of
|
||
course, I can have no idea of him, and I certainly can have no very
|
||
fixed belief on any subject about which I have no idea.
|
||
|
||
There may he a God for all I know. There may be thousands of
|
||
them. But the idea of an infinite Being outside and independent of
|
||
nature is inconceivable. I do not know of any word that would
|
||
explain my doctrine or my views upon that subject. I suppose
|
||
Pantheism is as near as I could go, I believe in the eternity of
|
||
matter and in the eternity of intelligence, but I do not believe in
|
||
any Being outside of nature. I do not believe in any personal
|
||
Deity. I do not believe in any aristocracy of the air. I know
|
||
nothing about origin or destiny, Between these two horizons I live,
|
||
whether I wish to or not, and must be satisfied with what I find
|
||
between these two horizons, I have never heard any God described
|
||
that I believe in. I have never heard any religion explained that
|
||
I accept. To make something out of nothing cannot be more absurd
|
||
than that an infinite intelligence made this world, and proceeded
|
||
to fill it with crime and want and agony, and then, not satisfied
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
36
|
||
|
||
MIRACLES AND IMMORALITY.
|
||
|
||
with the evil he had wrought, made a hell in which to consummate
|
||
the great mistake.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you believe that the world and all that is in it
|
||
came by chance?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I do not believe anything comes by chance I regard the
|
||
present as the necessary child of a necessary past. I believe
|
||
matter is eternal; that it has eternally existed and eternally will
|
||
exist. I believe that in all matter, in some way, there is what we
|
||
call force; that one of the forms of force is intelligence. I
|
||
believe that whatever is in the universe has existed from eternity
|
||
and will forever exist.
|
||
|
||
Secondly. -- I exclude from my philosophy all ideas of chance.
|
||
Matter changes eternally its form, never its essence. You cannot
|
||
conceive of anything being created. No one can conceive of anything
|
||
existing without a cause or with a cause. Let me explain; a thing
|
||
is not a cause until an effect has been produced; no that, after
|
||
all, cause and effect are twins coming into life at precisely the
|
||
same instant, born of the womb of an unknown mother. The Universe
|
||
is the only fact, and everything that ever has happened, is
|
||
happening, or will happen, are but the different aspects of the one
|
||
eternal fact. --
|
||
|
||
The Dispatch, Pittsburgh, Pa. December 11, 1880.
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
||
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
||
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
||
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
|
||
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
|
||
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
|
||
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
|
||
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
|
||
|
||
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
|
||
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
|
||
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
|
||
us, we need to give them back to America.
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
37
|
||
|