4877 lines
241 KiB
Plaintext
4877 lines
241 KiB
Plaintext
75 page printout
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Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
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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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**** ****
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AN INTIMATE VIEW
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of
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ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
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by
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I. Newton Baker, A.M.
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More than any man of his day he wrote and spoke and labored
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for an unshackled healthy brain, an untrammelled truthful tongue.
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New York
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C.P.FARRELL
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1920
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**** ****
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE.
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This well-entitled "Intimate View," although really a grateful
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Tribute, was originally prepared by Mr. Baker shortly after Mr.
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Ingersoll's death, as a memorial for the private possession of the
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Ingersoll family. By their permission, and on urgency of friends,
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it is now given to the public in a revised and somewhat enlarged
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form. It speaks eloquently for itself, and is submitted in the
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confident belief that it will be warmly welcomed and highly
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appreciated in a wide circle of readers. It will certainly be
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regarded as a thoughtful and true if necessarily partial exposition
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of the views of Mr. Ingersoll, and a finely drawn portrait of the
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personality of the Great Agnostic of the century.
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C.P.FARRELL.
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New York, Nov. 1, 1919.
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**** ****
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL
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AN INTIMATE VIEW.
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I.
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Since the passing of this great and good, this loving and
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lovable man, many eloquent tributes to his memory have been written
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and spoken. These tributes have come from all parts of the world
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and from all classes and conditions of men. They have reflected
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through the press, the platform, the pulpit and private
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correspondence the general and genuine esteem and admiration in
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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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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
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which Mr. Ingersoll was held. Many who opposed, or seemed to
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oppose, his religious views, and resented, or seemed to resent, his
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manner of expressing them, have in their finer moods, unheated by
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the fires of controversy, admitted and admired the strength and
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sincerity of his convictions, the wonderful way in which he
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maintained them, and the purity and exaltation of his character and
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purpose. Even theological bitterness was silenced in the presence
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of death, or turned, as in some instances, into generous eulogium.
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Magnanimous foes whom he had defeated in the forum of debate,
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conceded the greatness and goodness of the man and acknowledged the
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magnitude and value of the work he did in the world.
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NO ADEQUATE PORTRAITURE.
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It would seem, therefore, that little can be added, that
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nothing more can be said worth the saying, that the field has been
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harvested. It is only in the hope of garnering grains ungathered by
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other gleaners that the present sketch has been attempted. It does
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not aspire to the rank of extended biography. Its simple purpose is
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to show Mr. Ingersoll as he appeared to one who had unusual
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opportunities of knowing him, -- to one whose high privilege it was
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to be in almost daily contact with him for many years. The writer
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is only too conscious that even with this advantage what skill he
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may have must fall far short of any adequate portraiture. He covets
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a fineness of perception, a keenness and breadth of intellectual
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vision, a balance of judgment, a strength of statement and a grace
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of style he has not, fitly to undertake the study. Only a genius
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can portray a genius. Only a master of expression can express a
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master. and the writer has been but sitting at a great master's
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feet. Any faithful sketch of such a man from such a source must
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therefore be an eulogy. Admiration cannot be restrained, feelings
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cannot be repressed, nor can the flow of truthful phrase be checked
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when a loving pupil wields the brush or guides the pen. No matter
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from what point of view he sees the subject, the same commanding
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figure is before him. All the rays of white light focussed on Mr.
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Ingersoll reveal him as a man of the highest, strongest, finest
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mental and moral fibre, -- such a man, indeed, as Nature bears but
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once among countless millions of her human children.
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My acquaintance with Mr. Ingersoll began soon after the death
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of his brother Ebon, and while the immortal word spoken at the
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funeral were still thrilling through the world. Literature has no
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parallel to this tribute by a brother living to a brother dead.
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these brothers were lovers, and never failed each day on reaching
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their office to give a warm embrace. The sign they first hung out
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law partners became a sacred thing to Robert, and in all his
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changes of location, from Peoria to Washington, to New York, --
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wherever he chanced to be, -- he kept that modest little sign in
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constant view from the desk in his private office.
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I entered this office in 1879 as Mr. Ingersoll's. secretary,
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and remained with him continuously until in 1892, a period of
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nearly fourteen years. During all this time it was my privilege to
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be with him in business hours, in days of leisure, of travel and of
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social intercourse, to be honored by his friendship, entrusted with
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his confidence, and, with my wife, enrolled almost a member of that
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beautiful family of which he was creator and inspirer, sun and
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shield.
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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2
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
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II.
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AS A LAWYER.
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As a young lawyer in Illinois Mr. Ingersoll quickly rose to
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eminence. In a few short years he attained to the highest office in
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his profession, the Attorney-Generalship of the State, -- a State
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that has given to the Nation many of her legal and intellectual
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giants. He won wide fame in his trial of the celebrated Munn case
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and of other legal contests in Illinois. Coming to the Nation's
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capital his ability as a lawyer was at once recognized and he
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entered upon a large and lucrative practice. This practice was for
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the most part and by preference in the Executive Departments,
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although he was frequently in the United States Supreme and
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District Courts.
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THE STAR ROUTE CASES.
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In the much misunderstood Star Route Cases Mr. Ingersoll was
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leading counsel for the defense, and by unanimous consent was
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chosen chairman of the defendant's attorneys in all their
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conferences. His masterly conduct of those cases through a
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prolonged and intricate trial covering two and more years, is a
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matter of history and record. His associates were filled with
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admiration and amazement at the legal ability he displayed. His
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knowledge of the law, his almost infallible judgment, his
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prodigious memory of the facts extending to the minutest details
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and rendering him for the most part independent of the record, his
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impregnable logic, his lucid statements of the law and the
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testimony and his forensic power -- all marked him as easily chief
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among the eminent counsel in that contest.
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JURISTS' ESTIMATES.
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The late Judge Jeremiah Wilson, one of the, brightest lights
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of the Washington bar, said to the writer: "What most impressed me
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in Col. Ingersoll's course throughout the trial and compelled my
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profound admiration, was not his legal learning, wide and accurate
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as I knew that to be, but his inimitable tact, his unerring
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judgment of the course to be pursued day by day, the witnesses to
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be examined, the weight to be given to their testimony, the points
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to be included and emphasized as vital and the parts to be excluded
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as irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial, -- in short, his
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marvelous management of the entire case. He absolutely made no
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mistakes, as the outcome proved. We seldom overruled him, and when
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we did found later that he was right and we were wrong."
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The Honorable Walter Davidge, dean of the Washington bar, who
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had been selected by his associates to follow Mr. Ingersoll's
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closing address to the jury, said: "May it please your Honor, it
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was understood among counsel that both Colonel Ingersoll and myself
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should have the privilege of addressing the jury if in the judgment
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of either it should be thought necessary. I have felt such a deep
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interest in this case that I have almost hoped he might leave
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unoccupied some portion of the field of argument. I have listened
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to every word that has fallen from his lips. He has filled the
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whole area of the case with such matchless ability and eloquence,
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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3
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
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that I have no ground upon which I could stand in making any
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further argument. I can add nothing whatever to what he has said.
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I need not add that every syllable he has uttered receives my
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grateful endorsement."
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The Capital, a leading journal in Washington, commenting on
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Colonel Ingersoll's closing address to the Jury in the first Star
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Route trial, said:
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"The most characteristic feature of the trial was the
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marvelously powerful speech of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll before
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the Jury and the Judge. People who knew this gifted gentleman only
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superficially, had supposed that he was merely superficial as a
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lawyer. While acknowledging his remarkable ability as an orator,
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and his vast accomplishments as a speaker, they doubted the depth
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of his power. They heard him, and the doubt ceased. It can be said
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of Ingersoll, as was written of Castelar, that his eloquent
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utterances are as the finely-fashioned ornamental designs on a
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Damascus blade, -- the blade cuts as keenly, and the embellishments
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beautify without retarding its power."
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AN EPISODE.
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On one occasion the venerable Judge Wylie refused a motion
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made by Mr. Ingersoll on the ground that he had already decided and
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denied it. "But your Honor twice ruled the other way."
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"Impossible!" said the Court. "I think the record will show," and
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the Colonel handed the book to the Judge, with page and lines
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indicated. The Court reddening replied: "Well, the fact that I
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ruled in defendants' favor ought to be satisfactory to them, and
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that I twice so ruled should not weaken the ruling nor lessen their
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satisfaction."
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The triumphs he scored over opposing counsel in their many
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legal tilts, the heated and sometimes bitter attacks and retorts,
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-- never invited by Mr. Ingersoll, but out of which he emerged
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victorious, -- his uniform fairness and candor, the accuracy of his
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statements when challenged, showing his thorough command of every
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detail, and finally his matchless summing up, made their
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irresistible impression on court and jury alike, and in the teeth
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of popular opinion and clamor fomented and fed by false press
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reports, and against all the power, prestige and pursuit of two
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National Administrations, won the case.
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HIS RESPECT FOR THE LAW.
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Though by choice a lawyer and in practice an eminently
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successful one, he did not seem, in later life, at least, to have
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retained his early ardor for the profession. For the law itself he
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never lost respect and reverence. To him it was the bulwark of
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Justice, the safeguard of Liberty, and he gloried in its history
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and achievements. But for the perversions of the law he felt only
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contempt and indignation. He hated all dishonest and degenerate
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methods in its practice. The law, he held, should be invoked only
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in the interest of truth and justice, but was too often made the
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tool of injustice, oppression and wrong. He scorned to resort to
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the sophistries and subterfuges employed by many in the profession.
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Bank of Wisdom
|
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
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4
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
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He did not care to win a case merely for the fee involved or for
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the glory of winning it. He wanted the Right to triumph and could
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rejoice only when Victory perched on the heights of Truth.
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Again, he chafed under the fetters and limitations of the
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modern practice. He believed that justice was often entangled in
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the net of technicalities. He could not endure the mechanical
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reliance on books, the cast-iron molds, the cut and dried forms,
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canned and labelled processes, papers and preparations ready-made
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for every case and all occasions. Most of these so-called helps he
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considered hindrances that crippled the law and made it limp and
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halt where it ought to leap and run. "The law's delay" he said, "is
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more often the lawyer's delay and should not be tolerated." Modern
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methods he believed consumed time, stifled originality, repressed
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individual initiative and tended to make of the law a mere puppet,
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an echo of old opinions, rulings and decisions, a slave to
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precedent. He hated the shackles of precedent. He hated all
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shackles. He wanted to be free to decide for himself in the law no
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less than in religion and in all other realms of thought and
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action. He was original, creative, independent. He examined rulings
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of courts but did not necessarily follow them. He has said to me,
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"One Judge contradicts another and between them I make my own
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decisions. If the law is not my way in this contention, it ought to
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be," and on this line he fought and won many a legal battle.
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DRUDGERY OF THE LAW.
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Quite naturally it followed that he could not submit to the
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drudgery of the law, the loss of valuable time poring over State
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and Federal Reports, and while his library was a rich storehouse of
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all legal lore he yet often displayed impatience when obliged to
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resort to it. His clerks relieved him of that drudgery.
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Nevertheless, in spite of his natural antipathies, and fully
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conscious of his quick mental perceptions his genius for all
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acquisition -- he acknowledged his debt to that early study and
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application which had so thoroughly drilled and equipped him for
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his profession. In his young manhood he had read and studied with
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industry and enthusiasm, even to the breaking down of his physical
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health. He knew the law in all its phases, -- its history,
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principles and interpretations -- as few men knew it. And he knew
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how to apply it. He was a maker of opinion and its interpreter in
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nearly every continent and province of human thought.
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HIS QUICK PERCEPTION.
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His marvelously quick and clear perception of any problem or
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proposition, no matter how intricate or involved, seemed little
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less than miraculous. A prospective client once came to him with a
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budget of typewritten matter and asked if he would go through it.
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"Certainly; let me see it." "Very well, Colonel, I'll leave it and
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call in a day or two for your answer." "Nonsense; wait a minute."
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Then turning over the pages one by one he handed back the screened,
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saying, "You have a good cause, and if you wish I will undertake it
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for you." "But you don't know it yet, Colonel?" "Oh yes I do."
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"Why, it includes a good many knotty questions and has lots of
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figuring in it." "To be sure; I have gone over them; haven't I just
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read it all? To convince you, I will restate it, and then point by
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Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
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5
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ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
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point Mr. Ingersoll rehearsed the subject-matter, not omitting the
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figured calculations. "Amazing, Colonel; I believe you could see
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through a brick wall! It has taken me and my assistants days to
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prepare that statement, and you have mastered it in a few minutes!"
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He tried the case and got the verdict.
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INGERSOLL AND CONKLING.
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Another incident will illustrate this X-ray faculty of Mr.
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Ingersoll's mind. In a telegraph suit before Judge Wallace at
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Syracuse, New York, the late Roscoe Conkling and the Colonel were
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associate counsel. On the train from New York, Mr. Conkling said:
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"I'm ashamed to confess it, Colonel, but I really haven't had time
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properly to examine the papers in this case and I don't feel
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prepared to argue it; you must do it, or we will have to move a
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postponement." "No, no, that won't do, it will damage our suit; let
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me see the papers." Mr. Conkling produced them. The Colonel
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examined them. Before reaching Syracuse he handed them back,
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saying: "Conkling, I will argue this case, although, as you know,
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my throat is bad to-day and I'll have to whisper my argument in the
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Court's ear." "I'm extremely sorry, Colonel, to put this burden on
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you, but I see no other way. Do you think you understand the case
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with this brief inspection?" "Perfectly; as well as if I had
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studied it for weeks," and for the next few miles he laid it all
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out before his astonished auditor. "Is that the way you prepare
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your briefs, Colonel?" "Why not? If I can't catch on to a case by
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reading it, as soon as the Court does by hearing it, I'd make a
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nice Judge or lawyer, wouldn't I?" "You're a strange man, Colonel,
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I can't fathom you!" The case was argued in a whisper, and won.
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||
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This remark of the Senator was meant as a compliment -- the
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||
highest he could pay to the ability and genius of a brother lawyer.
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I cannot forget his look and manner of unfeigned admiration, as he
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expressed himself. Not long after -- alas, too soon! -- when the
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New York Legislature requested Colonel Ingersoll to deliver before
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||
them a memorial address on Senator Conkling, the Colonel delivered
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||
the noblest tribute to his departed friend and associate ever heard
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||
in a legislative hall.
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||
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||
When urged sometimes by nervous clients to defer his summing
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||
up of their case a reasonable time after all the evidence was in
|
||
and the arguments heard, he would say: "I want no adjournment, I am
|
||
ready to go right on; I have heard it all as fully as the Court and
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jury, and that's enough." A readier, more alert mind than Robert G.
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||
Ingersoll's never practiced in a court of law.
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BEFORE A JURY.
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||
|
||
In the trial of a case before a jury Mr. Ingersoll was
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||
probably at his best in the examination of a witness. He was so
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||
patient, though persistent, in getting at the facts, so considerate
|
||
and so fair, that he often compelled the truth from hesitating and
|
||
unwilling lips. He did not brow beat or hector a witness. He did
|
||
not resort to cheap arts to entrap him. He did not abuse his
|
||
privilege as a lawyer and treat a witness on the stand as if he
|
||
were a criminal in the dock: No one under his searching cross-
|
||
examination had ever to appeal to the Court for protection. Before
|
||
a jury he was persuasive and convincing, not only by the power of
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
his eloquence, but by the force of his cogent reasoning, and the
|
||
skillful marshalling of the evidence to sustain his case. He
|
||
appealed to the reason and conscience of his jury, not to their
|
||
prejudices or passions. He was truly entitled to the reputation he
|
||
bore as one of the greatest jury lawyers of his time.
|
||
|
||
BEFORE COURT AND COUNSEL.
|
||
|
||
Before Court and counsel he was always the courteous
|
||
gentleman, never impugning motives or flinging epithet or
|
||
invective. He was always sure of his subject and object. He had
|
||
perfect poise, was always erect, self-contained and self-
|
||
controlled. He was never in a hurry, never flurried, never
|
||
flustered. He was always at himself, never taken by surprise or off
|
||
his guard. In all the many legal encounters he fought I never knew
|
||
him to be worsted in ready and apt attack and defense. The fitting
|
||
retort was always at the door of his lips, waiting to leap into
|
||
utterance, One instance will serve for many:
|
||
|
||
"ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA."
|
||
|
||
In a Toledo, Ohio, terminal suit, counsel for the other side
|
||
interrupted Mr. Ingersoll in the midst of his argument by asking:
|
||
"Colonel, did you ever read the story of Ananias and Sapphira?"
|
||
"Yes," came the reply, quick as a flash, "and while you were
|
||
speaking this afternoon I looked to see you drop dead every min-
|
||
ute!" The hit was so palpable, so perfect, that even the dignified
|
||
Court of a Federal District joined in the general convulsion and
|
||
tilted so violently in his chair that he came perilously near
|
||
toppling over.
|
||
|
||
In short, those in a position to know and qualified to judge,
|
||
-- those at all acquainted with Mr. Ingersoll's legal attainments
|
||
and career, -- accorded to him the highest honors. In nearly every
|
||
court in which he practiced he was regarded as the leading figure.
|
||
In any important case in which he appeared, only the greatest
|
||
champions ventured in the lists against him; no lesser knight of
|
||
the law could hope to cope successfully with him. He was in truth,
|
||
with all his other claims to greatness, one of the really great
|
||
lawyers of his day.
|
||
|
||
III.
|
||
|
||
IN HIS OFFICE.
|
||
|
||
He was in his office always the genial, patient, "dear old
|
||
Colonel." His clerical force and the students under him were
|
||
trusted and treated as friends. He put on no airs, assumed no
|
||
authority, affected no superiority. No arbitrary rules or
|
||
restrictions hampered his employees. He never scolded, rebuked, or
|
||
ordered, -- simply kindly requested. He was silent if displeased,
|
||
but never said a harsh, or mean, or cutting word. The air around
|
||
him was free; all the discipline was self-imposed, all the duties
|
||
self-appointed and performed with the one animating purpose, -- "to
|
||
please the Colonel." Office work in his employ was a pleasure, not
|
||
a task, -- a glad service faithfully rendered and just as
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
faithfully and fully recognized. There never was a kinder, juster,
|
||
or more generous employer. He used to say: "Do you want to know one
|
||
real test of a man? How does he treat his employer; how does his
|
||
employer treat him?"
|
||
|
||
Interruptions when he was busy in his office, did not seem to
|
||
disturb or distract him. In the midst of dictation of
|
||
correspondence or argument he would welcome a caller and after a
|
||
chat or "interview" resume his dictation at the point of leaving
|
||
it. Sometimes an hour, a day, or even days, would intervene; he did
|
||
not lose the thread but went on weaving as though the loom had not
|
||
for an instant stopped. He shut no visitor, although his clerks of
|
||
their own motion excluded many a freak or crank, notwithstanding
|
||
his repeated request to deny no decent person on audience.
|
||
|
||
The Colonel was fond of bright newspaper men. He liked to
|
||
answer questions. Interviewers flocked to him. They were always
|
||
welcomed and never disappointed if they asked sensible and proper
|
||
questions. "Fire away!" was his cheery invitation, and to their
|
||
queries a flood of wit, wisdom, humor, philosophy, logic and sense
|
||
would pour out as from a strong fountain. The files of many
|
||
metropolitan journals were enriched by these spontaneous effusions.
|
||
|
||
HIS DAILY MAIL.
|
||
|
||
His dally mail was heavy. All sorts of people wrote to him on
|
||
all conceivable subjects. This correspondence was sifted; only a
|
||
tithe reached his eye, -- those letters absolutely requiring his
|
||
attention. Requests to lecture and appeals for pecuniary help were
|
||
of course multitudinous. Many were granted, though of necessity
|
||
more were denied. Aside from his large business and professional
|
||
correspondence, letters on religious questions poured in upon him.
|
||
Advice, argument and appeal, more or less sincere, and sad to say,
|
||
abuse, slander and defamation of the most scurrilous kind, were not
|
||
uncommon, while now and then anonymous threats of his life were
|
||
received. Whenever possible, and wherever sincerity and
|
||
intelligence were manifest and abuse and malice absent, these
|
||
letters received reply. They were copied, and the letter-books
|
||
containing these replies would make a rich mine of material for
|
||
extended biography.
|
||
|
||
SENSE OF LOCALITY.
|
||
|
||
He had little order in the care of papers; his desk was for
|
||
the most part in confusion. And yet he had a method of his own,
|
||
with all the apparent disorder. When his desk reached the limit of
|
||
congestion, letters and papers were carefully collected, classified
|
||
and filed for him and the coast thus cleared. "I put that paper
|
||
just where I wanted it, why did you remove it?" was his usual
|
||
comment on this desk-clearing process. His sense of locality was so
|
||
keen that many times I have seen him produce a needed document from
|
||
a large bundle, or a letter from beneath a scattered pile, without
|
||
a moments hesitation. He could have found that celebrated needle if
|
||
he had had anything to do with putting it in the hay. His volume of
|
||
Shakespeare usually served as a paper-weight on his office desk. It
|
||
was always in sight and often taken up even in busy hours. He
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
needed for it no index or concordance. Page, column and line were
|
||
instantly turned to. He has said to me, "I know where to find that
|
||
passage in Hamlet; it is on page 432, on the right hand side, left
|
||
hand column, and at the bottom of the column."
|
||
|
||
Equally remarkable was his far-reaching accuracy of vision.
|
||
His eagle eye could take in more at a single glance than most men's
|
||
after close inspection. Very little going on around him escaped his
|
||
notice. Once, in a trial out West, he was to open the case. Counsel
|
||
for the other side sat to the front and left of him, several feet
|
||
removed, going over his notes prior to oral presentation. The
|
||
Colonel's quick eye caught the paper, and as he assured me, without
|
||
intention or purpose -- before he could help it -- he had taken in
|
||
several points of his adversary's argument. He was bothered, he
|
||
said, in making his opening, by the necessity of avoiding the
|
||
suspicion that he had in any way gained possession of his
|
||
opponent's brief. He made no unfair use of the accident. In fact,
|
||
he said, the knowledge hampered more than helped him.
|
||
|
||
A STAINLESS RECORD.
|
||
|
||
Nothing was, nothing could be, further from Mr. Ingersoll than
|
||
deceit, indirection or double-dealing. He was the very soul of
|
||
truth, of honor, and of candor. He was, indeed, a modern Bayard, "a
|
||
knight without fear and without reproach." His escutcheon was
|
||
unstained, and never in any court was his veracity impeached, or
|
||
his professional honor successfully assailed. He was high-soled,
|
||
high-minded, high-acting and incapable of a grovelling thought, or
|
||
a mean or low initiative. His professional antagonists, everywhere
|
||
encountered, admitted that he always fought in the open and were
|
||
often surprised at the large admissions and generous concessions he
|
||
made. His clients sometimes quaked as they feared he was giving
|
||
away their case. He was not. The outcome proved that his method was
|
||
the highest art, the wisest wisdom.
|
||
|
||
AN ORACLE.
|
||
|
||
His intuitions were like a woman's -- often infallible. In
|
||
many an instance they were as unerring as his judgment was sound,
|
||
-- amounting almost to prophecy fulfilled. On that fatal morning in
|
||
July when the assassin's bullet laid low the lamented Garfield, Mr.
|
||
Ingersoll was one of the first at the stricken President's side. He
|
||
said to me: "I know he will not live. I feel it. He may rally, and
|
||
linger a few days, but he cannot recover." Despite all that human
|
||
skill could do, all means that science could employ, or all that
|
||
Christendom on its knees could implore, the end came.
|
||
|
||
It was this gift or endowment, added to his clear judgment and
|
||
knowledge of human nature, that made him the seer and prophet he
|
||
really was. This rare combination in him was recognized by many who
|
||
sought his advice and counsel. Statesmen, politicians, men of
|
||
affairs in public and private life resorted to him as to an oracle,
|
||
and his "guesses," as he called them, frequently came true. He
|
||
never claimed to have soothsaying or clairvoyant powers, -- for he
|
||
was absolutely without a superstition -- but he was none the less
|
||
one whose predictions were often justified by the events.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
PRINCELY GENEROSITY.
|
||
|
||
He extended to young lawyers and students of the law a most
|
||
encouraging hand. He liked young men. He helped them by counsel, by
|
||
opening doors of opportunity, and with pecuniary aid. Many a
|
||
new-fledged attorney and many an aged, stranded one "on his
|
||
uppers," as he would say, went from his presence with a gladder
|
||
heart and fuller pocket. A hundred dollar bill was a frequent gift
|
||
from his open hand, to say not a word of the thousands scattered in
|
||
larger and smaller sums. He gave his advice freely to hundreds, --
|
||
especially to the widow, the poor and defenseless, and tried many
|
||
a case to a happy conclusion, not only without a fee, but himself
|
||
paying all costs and disbursements.
|
||
|
||
As a matter of fact, he was seldom richly remunerated in the
|
||
celebrated cases undertaken by him. The Star Route trials cost him
|
||
more than he received in actual compensation. He cared too little
|
||
for money to insist even on his rights. His office books were
|
||
filled with accounts never collected, with charges never paid, and
|
||
yet this did not cheek the flow of his extravagant generosity. He
|
||
loved to give. He was princely in giving. In one case where a
|
||
thirty-thousand dollar fee came to him he instantly gave half of it
|
||
to a young assistant to whom two or three thousand dollars would
|
||
have been an ample and satisfactory return for the service
|
||
rendered. In another case, on receiving a fee of fifteen thousand
|
||
dollars, he immediately wrote a cheek for one third of the amount
|
||
to the friend who had simply urged his selection as the best lawyer
|
||
for the case. The unexpected gift enabled this friend to lift a
|
||
mortgage that had long encumbered her home.
|
||
|
||
IV.
|
||
|
||
AS ORATOR AND WRITER.
|
||
|
||
Here his fame is fixed beyond all cavil, all criticism, all
|
||
calumny. His Christian censors admitted it. His fair-minded
|
||
contemporaries in every intellectual field conceded it. It was
|
||
world-wide. Appeals came to him from nearly every civilized country
|
||
for a visit and a series of addresses and lectures. An offer from
|
||
Australia guaranteed him one thousand dollars a night for as many
|
||
nights as he chose to speak, and all expenses of himself and family
|
||
paid. He was unable, though not unwilling, to accept the offer. As
|
||
a platform orator he was great. He had few if any peers in that
|
||
realm. The judgment of his rivals accords him this preeminence.
|
||
|
||
Henry Ward Beecher, who certainly may be quoted as competent
|
||
authority, once said in introducing him to a Brooklyn audience, "He
|
||
is the most brilliant speaker of the English tongue of all men on
|
||
this globe." The lamented Garfield, who himself was a distinguished
|
||
orator, once wrote to Mr. Ingersoll, who spoke for him in his
|
||
campaign for the Presidency: "I have followed with intense interest
|
||
your brilliant campaign in my behalf. You have appeared to me like
|
||
a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Your path has been one
|
||
broad band of blazing light. I give you my profoundest admiration
|
||
and gratitude." In the famous Davis Will Case in Montana both Judge
|
||
and prosecuting attorney cautioned the jury to be on their guard
|
||
lest they be carried away by Colonel Ingersoll's eloquence,
|
||
"which," the attorney remarked, "is famed over two continents and
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
in the islands of the seas, rivalling that of Demosthenes and
|
||
transcending the oratory of Greece and Rome." And this warning was
|
||
not an infrequent one to juries before whom Mr. Ingersoll appeared
|
||
as advocate.
|
||
|
||
LARGE LECTURE RECEIPTS.
|
||
|
||
His audiences on his frequent lecture tours were nearly
|
||
everywhere large and enthusiastic. "Standing Room Only" was the
|
||
sign often displayed at the entrance of the hall or theater where
|
||
he was to speak. His lecture receipts were extraordinary. In a trip
|
||
West at one time they amounted to more than fifty thousand dollars,
|
||
net, in one month. Boston, New York, Chicago and San Francisco
|
||
always gave him a warm and sympathetic welcome. Two or three
|
||
thousand dollars for a single lecture was not an unusual sum
|
||
received from Boston, while one great assemblage in the Auditorium
|
||
at Chicago yielded exactly seven thousand and one dollars, -- the
|
||
highest sum, we may well believe, ever realized for a single
|
||
lecture in the history of the platform.
|
||
|
||
The most thoughtful, intelligent and highly cultivated people
|
||
of a community thronged to hear him. Even hearers who hesitated to
|
||
accept all he said could not help admiring the way he said it, and
|
||
if not convinced, never left the auditorium but in a thoughtful
|
||
mood. instances were common where men and women travelled long
|
||
distances to listen to his eloquent words, and one ardent admirer
|
||
-- a young lawyer from Boston -- followed him thousands of miles
|
||
that he might not lose an opportunity of hearing him.
|
||
|
||
GREAT SPEECHES.
|
||
|
||
Most Americans are familiar with his speech nominating Mr.
|
||
Blaine for the Presidency, in which he invested that brilliant
|
||
statesman with the title "Plumed Knight," a sobriquet that remained
|
||
with him to the end of his career. His great speech at the "Grant
|
||
Banquet," his thrilling epic "A Vision of War," or "The Past Rises
|
||
Before me Like a Dream," delivered at a soldiers' reunion in
|
||
Indianapolis; his wonderful "Decoration Day Oration," in New York,
|
||
his tribute to his brother Ebon, his matchless memorial to his
|
||
friend and associate, Roscoe Conkling, and the laureate crown he
|
||
laid on the tomb of his friend and leader, the martyred Lincoln,
|
||
together with many other eulogies of the noble dead that sprang
|
||
from his generous and passionately patriotic heart, are to-day the
|
||
treasured possessions of his countrymen. His lips dropped polished
|
||
pearls that will adorn and enrich the language of his day and of
|
||
all time.
|
||
|
||
A MEMORABLE SCENE.
|
||
|
||
The tribute paid by Mr. Ingersoll to his beloved brother Ebon
|
||
was everywhere acknowledged to be the most profoundly tender and
|
||
beautiful in English literature. It has become classic. The scene
|
||
of its utterance, in its whole setting, was solemnly dramatic.
|
||
Around the bier, gathered as mourners, were many of the first men
|
||
of the Nation. They had come, not only in sympathy with the
|
||
grief-stricken brother, but to mingle their tears with his in
|
||
homage of their late friend and associate. The Hon. Ebon C.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
Ingersoll was well known in social and official circles in
|
||
Washington. He was a Member of Congress, a staunch Republican and
|
||
true patriot, and well and faithfully served his Illinois
|
||
constituency. He was a wise legislator, a man of unbending
|
||
integrity, a true and loyal friend. As a lawyer he was able and
|
||
well equipped, and while a forceful speaker, was not as "dearly
|
||
parted" as his brilliant brother although he was a wise and safe
|
||
counsellor. In religious belief he was a firm Agnostic, an ardent
|
||
supporter of Robert in all campaigns against superstition and
|
||
fanaticism, and he gloried in his fame as the greatest orator of
|
||
the day. As Mr. Ingersoll has said: "It was from his lips I heard
|
||
the first words of encouragement and praise." Ebon C. was a worthy
|
||
companion of Robert G., and an honor to the family whose name he
|
||
bore.
|
||
|
||
The following vivid description of the scene attending the
|
||
delivery of the Tribute, and of the funeral obsequies, is taken
|
||
from the National Republican of Washington, published the day after
|
||
the funeral:
|
||
|
||
|
||
"The funeral of the Hon. E. C. Ingersoll took place yesterday
|
||
afternoon at four o'clock, from his late residence, 1403 K
|
||
Street. The spacious parlors were filled to overflowing, and
|
||
hundreds were unable to obtain admittance. Among those who were
|
||
present to pay their homage to the distinguished and beloved dead
|
||
were Secretary of the Treasury Sherman, Assistant-Secretary of
|
||
the Treasury Hawley, Senators Blaine, Voorhees, Paddock, David
|
||
Davis, John A. Logan, the Hon. William M. Morrison, Hon. William
|
||
M. Springer, Hon. Thomas A. Boyd, Governor Pound, Hon. J. R.
|
||
Thomas, Hon. Thomas J. Henderson, Hon. Jeremiah Wilson, Adlai E.
|
||
Stevenson, Col, Ward H. Lamon, Col. James Fishback, General
|
||
Farnsworth, General Robert C. Schenck, General Jeffries, General
|
||
Williams and the Hon. H.C. Burchard, Judge Shellbarger, General
|
||
Birney, Governor Lowe, Acting Commissioner of Internal Revenue H.
|
||
C. Rogers, General Williamson of the Land Office and a great many
|
||
other prominent members of the bar and also a large number of
|
||
Illinoisans were present. It was the largest gathering of
|
||
distinguished persons assembled at a funeral since that of
|
||
Chief-Justice Chase.
|
||
|
||
"The only ceremony at the house, other than the viewing of
|
||
the remains, was a most affecting, pathetic and touching address
|
||
by Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, brother of the deceased. When he
|
||
began to read his eloquent characterization of the dead man his
|
||
eyes at once filled with tears. He tried to hide them, but he
|
||
could not do it, and finally he bowed his head upon the dead
|
||
man's coffin in uncontrollable grief. It was only after some
|
||
delay, and the greatest efforts at self-mastery, that Colonel
|
||
Ingersoll was able to finish reading his address. When he had
|
||
ceased speaking, the members of the bereaved family approached
|
||
the casket and looked upon the form which it contained, for the
|
||
last time. The scene was heartrending. The devotion of all
|
||
connected with the household excited the sympathy of all, and
|
||
there was not a dry eye to be seen. The pall-bearers -- Senator
|
||
William B. Allison, Senator James G. Blaine, Senator David Davis,
|
||
Senator Daniel Voohees, Representative James A. Garfield, Senator
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
A.S. Paddock, Representative Thomas Q. Boyd, of Illinois, the
|
||
Hon. Ward H. Lamon, ex-Congressman Jere Wilson, and
|
||
Representative Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois -- then bore the
|
||
remains to the hearse, and the lengthy cortege proceeded to the
|
||
Oak Hill Cemetery, where the remains were interred, in the
|
||
presence of the family and friends without further ceremony."
|
||
|
||
THE TRIBUTE.
|
||
|
||
"Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft
|
||
promised he would do for me.
|
||
|
||
"The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend, died
|
||
where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the
|
||
shadows still were falling toward the west.
|
||
|
||
"He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks
|
||
the highest point; but being weary for a moment, he lay down by
|
||
the wayside, and using his burden for a pillow, fell into that
|
||
dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in
|
||
love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence
|
||
and pathetic dust.
|
||
|
||
"Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest,
|
||
sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing
|
||
every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant
|
||
hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid sea
|
||
or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must
|
||
mark the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its
|
||
every hour is rich with love and every moment jewelled with a
|
||
joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and
|
||
dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death.
|
||
|
||
"This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak
|
||
and rock; but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the
|
||
friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights, and left all
|
||
superstitions far below, while on his forehead fell the golden
|
||
dawning of the grander day
|
||
|
||
"He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music
|
||
touched to tears. He sided with the weak, the poor and wronged,
|
||
and lovingly gave alms. With loyal heart and with the purest
|
||
hands he faithfully discharged all public trusts.
|
||
|
||
"He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed.
|
||
A thousand times I have heard him quote these words: 'For Justice
|
||
all place a temple, and all season, summer.' He believed that
|
||
happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the
|
||
only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only
|
||
priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to
|
||
whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave,
|
||
he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers.
|
||
|
||
"Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of
|
||
two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We
|
||
cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry.
|
||
From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no
|
||
word; but in the night of death Hope sees a star and listening
|
||
Love can hear the rustle of a wing.
|
||
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of
|
||
death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath,
|
||
'I am better now.' Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas,
|
||
of fears and tears, that these dear words are true of all the
|
||
countless dead.
|
||
|
||
"The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the
|
||
memory of our dead, and every sweet, unselfish act is now a
|
||
perfumed flower.
|
||
|
||
"And now, to you, who have been chosen from among the many
|
||
men he loved, to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his
|
||
sacred dust.
|
||
|
||
"Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there is, no
|
||
gentler, stronger, manlier man.
|
||
|
||
A VISION OF WAR.
|
||
|
||
What patriot can read without emotion the following thrilling
|
||
epic of the civil war, delivered at a soldiers' reunion in
|
||
Indianapolis:
|
||
|
||
"The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the
|
||
great struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of
|
||
preparation -- the music of boisterous drums -- the silver voices
|
||
of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the
|
||
appeals of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women, and the
|
||
flushed faces, of men; and in those assemblages we see all the
|
||
dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of
|
||
them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the great army
|
||
of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are
|
||
walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the
|
||
maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of
|
||
eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending
|
||
over cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the
|
||
blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold and
|
||
press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses
|
||
and tears, tears and kisses -- divine mingling of agony and love!
|
||
And some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words,
|
||
spoken in the old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear.
|
||
We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the
|
||
babe in her arms -- standing in the sunlight, sobbing. At the turn
|
||
of the road a hand waves -- she answers by holding high in her
|
||
loving arms the child. He is gone, and forever.
|
||
|
||
"We see them all as they march proudly away under the
|
||
flaunting flags, keeping time to the grand, wild music of war --
|
||
marching down the streets of the great cities -- through the towns
|
||
and across prairies -- down to the fields of glory, to do and to
|
||
die for the eternal right.
|
||
|
||
"We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the
|
||
gory fields -- in all the hospitals of pain -- on all the weary
|
||
marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the
|
||
quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running with blood -- in
|
||
the furrows of old fields. We are with them between contending
|
||
hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
away among the withered leaves. We see them pierced by balls and
|
||
torn with shells, in the trenches, by forts, and in the whirlwind
|
||
of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of steel.
|
||
|
||
"We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but
|
||
human speech can never tell what they endured.
|
||
|
||
"We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see
|
||
the maiden in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered
|
||
head of the old man bowed with the last grief.
|
||
|
||
"The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human
|
||
beings governed by the lash -- we see them bound hand and foot --
|
||
we hear the strokes of cruel whips -- we see the hounds tracking
|
||
women through tangled swamps. We see babes sold from the breasts of
|
||
mothers. Cruelty unspeakable! Outrage infinite!
|
||
|
||
"Four million bodies in chains -- four million souls in
|
||
fetters. All the sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child
|
||
trampled beneath the brutal feet of might. And all this was done
|
||
under our own beautiful banner of the free.
|
||
|
||
"The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the
|
||
bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. These heroes died. We
|
||
look. Instead of slaves we see men and women and children. The wand
|
||
of progress touches the auction-block, the slave-pen, the whipping-
|
||
post, and we see homes and firesides and school-houses and books,
|
||
and where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear, we See the
|
||
faces of the free.
|
||
|
||
"These heroes are dead. They died for liberty -- they died for
|
||
us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under
|
||
the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad
|
||
hemlocks, the tearful willows and the embracing vines. They sleep
|
||
beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of
|
||
storm, each in the windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red
|
||
with other wars -- they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in
|
||
the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one
|
||
sentiment for soldiers living and dead: Cheers for the living;
|
||
tears for the dead.
|
||
|
||
|
||
V.
|
||
|
||
HIS METHOD IN COMPOSITION.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll's method in the composition Of his written and
|
||
spoken words was singularly spontaneous and unmechanical. He was
|
||
not a phrase-tinker or word-carpenter. His pictures flashed from
|
||
his brain as finished products. They were fixed on the canvas
|
||
without correcting touches of form or color, completed as created.
|
||
What his artist-soul saw and felt he instantly communicated as
|
||
visible and audible images to others' eyes and ears. No matter what
|
||
the theme, his tongue responded to his thought in instant and
|
||
perfect epigram, illustration, simile, or metaphor.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
Excepting social letters, and memoranda found on scattered
|
||
scraps of paper, he wrote little with his own hand. Nearly
|
||
everything he gave for publication was dictated. His legal briefs
|
||
and papers, his magazine and review articles, editorials, press
|
||
interviews, monographs, speeches, lectures, -- everything he wished
|
||
to say -- were delivered in faultless form through the portals of
|
||
his facile lips. Where-ever he happened to be, -- in his office, at
|
||
his home, on the boat, in the train, in the cab rattling through
|
||
noisy streets, sitting, standing, reclining -- he spoke the
|
||
splendid words that the stenographer's art caught and reproduced
|
||
for him. His famous Replies to Judge Black in The North American
|
||
Review were dictated at the billiard table in his home, with cue in
|
||
hand. A sentence and a paragraph, then a run with the balls, --
|
||
another paragraph, another run, -- and so on to the end. His
|
||
Replies to Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Field, Cardinal Manning, and other
|
||
champions in the religious arena, were 'Composed under like
|
||
distractions, as most would deem them. To Mr. Ingersoll, however,
|
||
who had as few men ever had it, the faculty of thinking on his
|
||
feet, these distractions seemed only to stimulate and concentrate
|
||
his thought.
|
||
|
||
AS A CONVERSATIONALIST.
|
||
|
||
In conversation, whether in private or social circles, he was
|
||
beyond expression delightful, versatile, great. The favored guests
|
||
at his fireside often found themselves dumb in his presence --
|
||
struck into listening silence -- so that only the one magnetic
|
||
voice was heard. He was at his best in his own home circle. Here he
|
||
showed his shining self as nowhere else. Here his abandon was
|
||
complete. Here he threw off all trammels of convention, all
|
||
reserve, all consciousness of power, and spoke and acted as he
|
||
felt, -- with the exuberance of youth, forgetful of his mature
|
||
years and ripe experience. Around his hospitable board his chosen
|
||
friends feasted on food for mind and body, heart and soul. Those
|
||
table-talks day after day, joined in by his family and guests whom
|
||
he stimulated by question and rally and the force of his genial,
|
||
gentle leadership, -- who could forget them?
|
||
|
||
And those informal Sunday evening receptions held week after
|
||
week in his Washington home! Here distinguished men and women, --
|
||
scientists, scholars, philosophers, thinkers, judges, lawyers,
|
||
merchants, bankers, capitalists, clerks, artists and artisans,
|
||
religious and nonreligious professors, and even theologian --
|
||
saints and sinners -- gathered in his parlors and drawing-room and
|
||
joined in the discussions which he led on all topics of human
|
||
interest. It is fair to say that no social or intellectual
|
||
functions of the day in Washington were better attended, more
|
||
attractive and distinguished, or so truly cosmopolitan, as those
|
||
enjoyed in the home of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. On one occasion
|
||
no less than five Presidential aspirants mingled in the throng. It
|
||
was a frequent wish of his auditors on these occasions that he had
|
||
had an audience of thousands to hear him. He spoke as no man living
|
||
spoke.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
GREAT IN STORY-TELLING.
|
||
|
||
There never was a better teller of a story" than Mr.
|
||
Ingersoll. Like Lincoln, he always had his quiver full, and never
|
||
one missed its mark. He was in constant demand as an after-dinner
|
||
speaker, and the chief attraction at many a social feast and club
|
||
banquet. He knew just where and when to stop in the narration of
|
||
any fact or fancy. His faultless allegories, similes, metaphors and
|
||
epigrams were faultlessly used. As we have seen, he was also a king
|
||
in repartee. In swift reply he always returned much better than was
|
||
sent. Those rash opponents who ventured to attack him when they
|
||
thought him off his guard repented of their temerity, for they
|
||
found him fully armed to meet them. The retort courteous or keen,
|
||
gentle or severe, grave or gay -- always fitting -- was ready at
|
||
command for every time and place, every season and occasion. Two
|
||
incidents only out of many need be here recalled.
|
||
|
||
On a train going through California a pompous clergyman
|
||
proclaimed aloud his faith to all the travellers in the car. He
|
||
passed along the aisle, and when he reached the seat in which the
|
||
Colonel sat, cried out with strident voice, "The fool hath said in
|
||
his heart, there is no God; thank God, I'm not a fool!" Before he
|
||
could strut out, the Colonel sent the swift reply, "That depends on
|
||
what the people think who know you!" At another time a pious
|
||
maiden, thinking to entrap him, brought a nosegay and handing it to
|
||
him suddenly said: "Colonel, who made these beautiful flowers?"
|
||
"The same, my dear young lady, that made the poison of the ivy and
|
||
the asp!"
|
||
|
||
HIS WEALTH OF INFORMATION.
|
||
|
||
When, or where, or how this full man acquired the treasures of
|
||
knowledge at his command has been the puzzle of his friends. As I
|
||
knew him and observed him he did not seem to be a great reader, or
|
||
student of books, and yet he was acquainted with most worth-while
|
||
books. He was not a classical scholar, so-called, yet he knew the
|
||
classics. He was not a historian, yet he knew history. He was not
|
||
a scientist or philosopher, according to the schools, and held no
|
||
college diploma, yet he knew much of nearly all the sciences and
|
||
philosophies. Colleges and universities under the patronage and
|
||
control of religious denominations, he used to say were generally
|
||
institutions where "pebbles were polished and diamonds dimmed. He
|
||
often quoted Bruno, who called Oxford "the window of learning."
|
||
|
||
Nor was he a theologian, yet he knew theologies, and could and
|
||
did successfully contend with the greatest in that field. He
|
||
claimed that they never answered his arguments. He had such a power
|
||
of ready assimilation, that everything he saw or read or heard was
|
||
instantly appropriated and became his own. He seemed to forget
|
||
nothing that he ever knew. He was always acquiring from countless
|
||
sources of knowledge. He read with the greatest eagerness and
|
||
rapidity. I have known him to glance over the pages of even
|
||
metaphysical treatises, and without apparent hesitation possess
|
||
himself of their contents.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
HIS VERSATILITY OF TALENT.
|
||
|
||
Keeping abreast of the times as he did, he knew the latest
|
||
theories, discoveries, and inventions, -- all that was going on in
|
||
the world of science and art, of men and measures. Nothing seemed
|
||
to escape his notice, or to be beyond his grasp. His range of
|
||
information was truly encyclopedic. It was said of him, as of
|
||
another eminent publicist -- I think it was of Col. Theodore
|
||
Roosevelt: -- "He had the greatest and most accurate knowledge on
|
||
the largest number of subjects, of any man I ever knew." He had a
|
||
mathematical knowledge that made him an adept in figures and much
|
||
more than an amateur in astronomy. He knew the names of all the
|
||
constellations with their principal stars, and loved by night to
|
||
sweep the heavens with his powerful telescope, and observe the
|
||
phases of the moon and movements of the planets and their
|
||
satellites. This love of astronomy and aptness with figures, he
|
||
said, "ran in the family," was an inherited gift from his mother.
|
||
He was also a well-known student of sociology and a past-master in
|
||
domestic and political economy, a wise and far-seeing publicist and
|
||
an enlightened statesman -- an ardent Republican, but not an office
|
||
-- seeker, or politician, out for the spoils.
|
||
|
||
If his role as a lawyer required a knowledge of diseases and
|
||
their symptoms and treatment, by the study of medical treatises
|
||
bearing on his case he became, for the nonce, a pathologist; of
|
||
surgery a surgeon; of finance a financier, -- and so with many of
|
||
the applied and useful arts. The many railway, telegraph and patent
|
||
suits he tried made of him a railroad organizer, director, and
|
||
president, an electrician and industrial expert. He once tried a
|
||
case in which the plaintiff had been injured in a railroad
|
||
accident, and so astonished the Court and experts that a surgeon in
|
||
attendance, surprised at his technical knowledge of anatomy, asked
|
||
him when and where he had experimented, and from what institution
|
||
he had graduated. His wonderful capacity for acquiring knowledge
|
||
needed on any subject accounts for this versatility.
|
||
|
||
A DEVOURER OF BOOKS.
|
||
|
||
While, as I have said, he did not in his later years seem to
|
||
be a great reader of books, yet in early life he had laid the
|
||
foundations well. As a boy and in his young manhood he was an
|
||
inquirer and observer. Even as a child he was a lover of books, and
|
||
later on it became with him a fascination and passion. He read
|
||
everything of value he could lay his hands on, -- knew every book
|
||
in his father's library. He read thoughtfully, voraciously,
|
||
constantly. Night after night, and all the night through, he has
|
||
told me, he has read until mentally and physically exhausted. Nor
|
||
did he wish merely to go through a book. He wanted to understand
|
||
it. He read with a purpose. He was eager to search, to find, to
|
||
know. His thirst for knowledge was insatiate. He has said: "Banish
|
||
me from Eden when you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of
|
||
the tree of knowledge." He was hungry for facts, for truths, for
|
||
reasons. He absorbed and assimilated, combined, separated and
|
||
classified, criticized and compared until he could reach a
|
||
decision. He never left a subject until he thought he understood
|
||
it.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
A WONDERFUL MEMORY.
|
||
|
||
His memory, as we have noted it in his career as a lawyer, was
|
||
truly a marvelous gift. Whatever once left its impress on the
|
||
tablets of his sensitive brain seemed fixed there for all the
|
||
future, to be retained until recalled. Shakespeare and Burns were
|
||
so familiar to him that he had them by heart, as we say, and he
|
||
could and did quote whole scenes and acts almost without an error,
|
||
as one would read it from the printed page. I have heard him say if
|
||
most of the plays of the one and poems of the other should be lost
|
||
of record, he could substantially restore them. And it was the same
|
||
with countless selections he had acquired from the world's greatest
|
||
thinkers and writers.
|
||
|
||
He almost deified Shakespeare, and among other tributes to
|
||
that wonderful genius, said: "Shakespeare was an intellectual
|
||
ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought; within which
|
||
were all the tides and waves of destiny and will; over which swept
|
||
all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge; upon which fell the
|
||
gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the sunlight of
|
||
content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit with
|
||
the eternal stars -- an intellectual ocean -- toward which all
|
||
rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought
|
||
receive their dew and rain."
|
||
|
||
It was a favorite saying of his, "Shakespeare is my Bible and
|
||
Burns my Hymn-book."
|
||
|
||
Upon his library table he kept two magnificent folio volumes
|
||
-- one of Shakespeare, the other of Burns; -- but unlike the
|
||
traditional "parlor ornament! -- the fetich in so many Christian
|
||
homes, -- they were there not for display, but for use, and were
|
||
constantly resorted to for, reading and reference.
|
||
|
||
A FERTILE IMAGINATION.
|
||
|
||
Added to his other gifts and qualifications, natural and
|
||
acquired, and crowning them all, was his splendid imagination. This
|
||
faculty in him: was richly developed. He seemed by its power to
|
||
mount to the loftiest heights and to see into the soul and
|
||
substance of things, -- to penetrate far beyond and below all
|
||
surfaces. He has said that he shrank from passing a cemetery, --
|
||
not through fear, for there never was a more fearless soul, -- but
|
||
because beneath the mounds and monuments he could see the faces of
|
||
the dead and clothe the moldering forms with throbbing life. This
|
||
power filled in for him all vacant spaces, supplied all missing
|
||
links. Given a bone, a scale, a root, a leaf, and the man of
|
||
science will construct for you the bird, the fish, the flower and
|
||
tree that were. So the constructive Colonel needed but the hints
|
||
and fragments of a fact to enable him to group together all related
|
||
facts and complete the structure as it was and should be. But he
|
||
went a great way farther. With "imagination's wondrous wand," as he
|
||
styled it, and with his poetic soul, he made his tree a mighty
|
||
forest, his flower a garden of Eden without its serpent, his fish
|
||
a sporting multitude peopling happy seas, and his woods and groves
|
||
a fairy land vocal with the notes of warbling birds and teeming
|
||
with all forms of joyous life. He was a poet -- a real creator --
|
||
a prophet of the truth and love and joy to be.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
HIS EARLY RELIGIOUS TRAINING.
|
||
|
||
They greatly err who think and say that Mr. Ingersoll as a
|
||
child was not, could not have been, properly trained in religious
|
||
truths and duties. He was the son of loving and praying parents.
|
||
His father was a Presbyterian and Congregational minister, beloved
|
||
and honored by all who knew him. His sweet and noble mother died
|
||
when Robert was a babe of only two years. Her loving task fell to
|
||
the father. By precept and example he strove with all his might,
|
||
fervently invoking divine assistance, tenderly and truly to train
|
||
his child in the way he should go, relying on the promise that when
|
||
old he would not depart from it. Robert was brought up on the Bible
|
||
and the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and taught a strict
|
||
observance of the Sabbath day. He was admonished to search the
|
||
Scriptures. He did search them, but found them wanting, and frankly
|
||
said so. They did not solve his childish doubts, answer his many
|
||
questions, or satisfy the awakening yearnings of his large and
|
||
affectionate heart. "Something wrong, somewhere," was his frequent
|
||
comment, even as a boy, as he read the Bible. His father was
|
||
troubled in spirit. He could not comprehend such skepticism in one
|
||
so young, -- the child of his own heart and hopes, of his own faith
|
||
and prayers. How could he, in his wildest dreams, ever have
|
||
foreseen that this bright and beautiful boy would one day ripen
|
||
into the most famous Agnostic of the century? Yet, with all his
|
||
fears and misgivings, this good father was wise and just and broad
|
||
enough to say: "My boy, be true to yourself; tell your honest
|
||
thought; never be a hypocrite!" He never was.
|
||
|
||
HIS FATHER'S TUTOR.
|
||
|
||
As he advanced in years and "grew in wisdom and stature" he
|
||
became his father's tutor in religious research. He was to him a
|
||
veritable commentary, concordance and index of Bible texts and
|
||
passages. He discussed intelligently with him the creeds, histories
|
||
and theologies, the doctrines and dogmas of Jewish, Heathen and
|
||
Christian religions. His father was proud of him although he could
|
||
not answer him, and wept over his heterodoxy, while he could not
|
||
help admiring his wonderful defense of it. While yet a boy Robert
|
||
knew the Bible from cover to cover, having read it through more
|
||
than once, and by his gift of memory retained it. He had also gone
|
||
through the Commentaries of Scott, Henry and Clarke. He knew every
|
||
book in his father's library and could quote at will from most of
|
||
them. "Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress" interested and its dramatic
|
||
style pleased him, while "Fox's Book of Martyrs" fascinated but
|
||
terrified him; it burned into his soul and filled his days with
|
||
fear and nights with horrid dreams. "Milton's Paradise Lost" with
|
||
its "heavenly militia," as he termed it, fed but failed to entrap
|
||
his imagination, and he said that Mr. Jenkyn needed to atone for
|
||
his book "On The Atonement." "Alleine's Alarm" did not frighten
|
||
him; "Baxter's Call" met no response from his intellect or heart,
|
||
and his "Saints' Rest" was not the kind of rest he thought he could
|
||
enjoy, "where congregations neer break up and Sabbaths have no
|
||
end," while Jonathan Edwards' frightful sermon, "Sinners in the
|
||
Hands of an Angry God," excited only his indignation, pity and
|
||
disgust.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
The simple truth is that Mr. Ingersoll was an unbeliever from
|
||
his childhood. He has said to me as to others, that he never
|
||
remembered the time when his mind did not reject and his heart
|
||
resent what he believed to be the cruelties and falsehoods of many
|
||
of the Bible doctrines and narratives, and when he did not hate
|
||
with all his soul the injustice and savagery of the man-made God of
|
||
the Scriptures.
|
||
|
||
A WORTHY FATHER OF A NOBLE SON.
|
||
|
||
He often joined in the conversations and controversies of the
|
||
clergymen who made his father's home a favorite place of assembly.
|
||
As a youth he was remarkable for his debating powers and his
|
||
ability to define and defend his views on religion and other
|
||
subjects under discussion. His father not only respected his
|
||
convictions, but sought his opinions on disputed points of doctrine
|
||
and belief, and while he might not be able to accept his
|
||
conclusions, always accorded his son the right of private judgment
|
||
and freedom of expression. He was the worthy father of a noble son.
|
||
Long before his death, this loving and tender man who, as Mr.
|
||
Ingersoll has told me, often walked the floor at nights weeping and
|
||
agonizing over the condition of lost worlds of souls; at last,
|
||
learning "out of the mouth of his own babe and suckling," gave up
|
||
his belief in eternal torment and died abhorring it.
|
||
|
||
IN MUSIC AND THE DRAMA.
|
||
|
||
As may well be inferred from what has been said, Mr. Ingersoll
|
||
was a many-sided man. Though not a musician he was a most
|
||
discriminating judge and passionate lover of music. His ear and
|
||
heart were "finely tuned to all the harmonies." He attended all the
|
||
great operas, heard all the famous songsters, and knew familiarly
|
||
many of the masters of the baton. His own home was a temple of
|
||
music and its music-room the shrine of his dwelling. Here was his
|
||
family altar. His wife and daughters were the divinities. His two
|
||
children had been thoroughly educated in music and song, so that
|
||
under the tenderly sweet voice of the one and the exquisitely deft
|
||
touch of the other, the happy father sat as one entranced, his
|
||
sorrows soothed, his cares dismissed, his strength renewed and his
|
||
soul satisfied. Surely never was sweeter music heard in any home
|
||
than in the home of Robert G. Ingersoll.
|
||
|
||
Having such "music in his soul" he naturally gathered about
|
||
him congenial spirits. He was widely recognized as the friend and
|
||
patron of singers and musicians, of artists and actors, poets and
|
||
painters, and workers in every field of fine expression. Many of
|
||
the brightest lights in these professions were his intimates, who
|
||
sought his counsel and accepted his criticisms and suggestions on
|
||
their work. He loved the drama, was the intimate of Booth and
|
||
Barrett and their legal counsellor, the admired and admiring friend
|
||
of Joseph Jefferson, and of nearly all the popular actors of the
|
||
day. He was a contributor to the leading dramatic, musical and art
|
||
journals, a frequent visitor at artists' studios, in constant
|
||
demand and the chief attraction as a speaker in entertainments for
|
||
the benefit of the Actors' Fund, and by voice and pen showed his
|
||
sympathy with every movement for the elevation and improvement of
|
||
the actors' profession.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
In his musical taste he was passionately fond of Wagner, and
|
||
revelled in his "music of two worlds," as he styled it. He called
|
||
him "the Shakespeare of music." Beethoven's "Sweet and dim
|
||
symphonies" appealed deliciously to his sympathetic ear, and indeed
|
||
the great creations of most of the masters of song stirred him to
|
||
the depths. They thrilled, ravished, transported him. The perfect
|
||
affected him to tears. He loved in certain moods the riot of
|
||
melody, the wild and chaotic chorus, the "wolf-tone" effects of
|
||
full orchestration, as well as in placid moods he enjoyed the
|
||
quieter melody of the solo and duet. Anton Seidl as an artist in
|
||
harmony captivated him completely and won his personal regard. His
|
||
memorial tribute to that great wielder of the baton is one of the
|
||
finest in musical literature.
|
||
|
||
The violin was his special favorite among instruments. All
|
||
night long in his home he has sat entranced under the spell of
|
||
Remenyi's bow. He loved the sudden contrasts, the ascending notes
|
||
of triumph to the heights of the erescendo, and then the fall to
|
||
the diminuendo -- notes that softly floated down like snow-flakes
|
||
and like them melted in the noiseless air. The organ, unless a
|
||
master touched the keys, seldom satisfied him, -- it too often
|
||
suggested ecclesiastic service and ceremony. For a like reason the
|
||
tolling bell and metallic chime failed to please him. Beauty,
|
||
sweetness, joy, and the married harmony of form and motion, sound
|
||
and color, appealed to his aesthetic and artistic self in countless
|
||
ways, and found wide open portals at every avenue of his
|
||
art-attuned senses. He was not only a lover of art, but himself an
|
||
artist, weaving, painting, sculpturing with words, and acting his
|
||
splendid part in the drama of life, -- a drama that ended, he said,
|
||
in a tragedy for all.
|
||
|
||
CONCERNING HIS LECTURING.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll, as we have seen, was first of all, a lawyer.
|
||
This profession was his early choice, and its pursuit through life
|
||
his chief reliance. In it he rose to eminence and won enviable
|
||
recognition. But he was more than a lawyer. He was so many-sided,
|
||
so "dearly parted, so much in having, or without or in" that one
|
||
pursuit alone could not fill his measure or provide a scope wide
|
||
and broad and full enough for all his virile powers. His brain was
|
||
large, but his heart was larger, so that while he had views and
|
||
opinions on most subjects, he had something higher, deeper,
|
||
stronger, -- he had deep-seated convictions on the side of Truth,
|
||
Justice, Freedom, Honor, Courage, Candor of the soul, and all the
|
||
human virtues.
|
||
|
||
He was an ardent patriot. He loved country and its free
|
||
institutions with a passionate fervor. He hated slavery and
|
||
oppression in every form; so we early find him in the Army of
|
||
Freedom and the Union where he earned his title of Colonel by
|
||
raising a regiment of Illinois cavalry. But the horrors of war were
|
||
too appalling to his gentle and tender spirit. He could not bear
|
||
the sight of suffering even of dumb animals, and he soon resigned
|
||
the sword of war to fight with tongue and pen the battles of the
|
||
weak, the ignorant and enslaved. And so eloquent and convincing was
|
||
this tongue, that when a prisoner in General Forrest's camp, his
|
||
influence was so marked upon the Confederate troops that the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
General soon paroled him, saying that if he did not, Ingersoll
|
||
would convert all his men into Yankees! He was everywhere and
|
||
always a mighty champion of Liberty, Justice and Truth, of the
|
||
rights and privileges of mankind.
|
||
|
||
"WOE IS ME IF I PREACH NOT THE GOSPEL!"
|
||
|
||
Endowed as he was, and knew himself to be, he deemed it a
|
||
crime against his nature to be silent when he felt he ought to
|
||
speak. He used to say, with an arch smile at his use of a Scripture
|
||
quotation: "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel!" "The average
|
||
man," he said, "is afraid to utter his real thought." "He is the
|
||
prey of Tyranny and Superstition." "The Throne and Altar were twins
|
||
-- two vultures from the same egg." "The race is under the dominion
|
||
of Fear, -- fear of men, of ghosts, of hells. I do not fear. I will
|
||
speak what I think." "Somebody ought to tell the truth about the
|
||
Bible. The preachers dare not, because they would be driven from
|
||
their pulpits. Professors in colleges dare not, because they, would
|
||
lose their salaries. Politicians dare not. They would be defeated.
|
||
Editors dare not. They would lose subscribers. Merchants dare not,
|
||
because they might lose customers. Men of fashion dare not, fearing
|
||
that they would lose caste. Even clerks dare not, because they
|
||
might be discharged. And so, I thought I would do it myself."
|
||
|
||
Thus as a young lawyer, still studying and practicing his
|
||
profession, he gave his thought to wide and yet wider themes, to
|
||
large and yet larger audiences, and entered upon his triumphant
|
||
lecturing career.
|
||
|
||
So many thousands have seen and heard him, in so many places
|
||
and on so many subjects, that it seems hardly worth while here to
|
||
speak of his manner and method on the platform -- only to say that
|
||
as an orator he was the embodiment of natural ease and grace, poise
|
||
and power. He used few gestures, -- was not a desk-pounder, an
|
||
air-sawyer, or a stage-strutter. He was not declamatory, -- did not
|
||
rant, or rage, or "tear a passion to tatters, to very rags," as the
|
||
manner of some is, but following Hamlet's advice to the players, he
|
||
"used all gently, acquiring and begetting a temperance that should
|
||
give all smoothness." His aim was to "hold the mirror up to
|
||
nature," and he did it wonderfully. In his flights of eloquence he
|
||
carried his audiences with him, lifting them to the highest
|
||
pinnacles of enthusiasm, or stirring them to the deepest recesses
|
||
of their being. With his pathos he melted them to tears and ere the
|
||
drops were dry, by his sparkling wit and humor, transformed the
|
||
pearls of pity into smiles of joy, or peals of laughter. He was
|
||
indeed a master-musician who played upon every human heart-string.
|
||
|
||
It was a fine study to note him in the ante-room both before
|
||
and after the giving of a lecture. Before, he was eager, expectant,
|
||
almost exultant at the prospect of again delivering his message.
|
||
His mood was cheerful and happy, his countenance radiant with the
|
||
anticipated pleasure. He seemed at peace with himself and with all
|
||
the world. After, when many of his friends gathered to offer their
|
||
congratulations and express their admiration, he accepted their
|
||
praise with unfeigned satisfaction and the candor of a happy child
|
||
pleased with the praise of a parent over some worthy performance.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
It was no task for him to speak. He loved to speak. It was to
|
||
him an exultation. He knew he had something to say and that he knew
|
||
how to say it. He usually carried his notes to the platform. These
|
||
notes were often in mere outline prepared from dictation to his
|
||
secretary, but sometimes quite fully printed in large type. He was
|
||
not a slave to his manuscript -- seldom followed it closely any
|
||
distance. No one lecture was precisely the same in its repeated
|
||
deliveries. After one or two presentations of a new lecture he had
|
||
it by head and tongue and heart and, needed no prompting
|
||
thereafter.
|
||
|
||
ALL MASTERPIECES.
|
||
|
||
The lectures that perhaps most fully satisfied him were: "The
|
||
Liberty of Man, Woman and Child," "The Gods," "The Ghosts,"
|
||
"Orthodoxy," "Some Mistakes of Moses," "Which Way?" "Myth and
|
||
Miracle," "What Must We do to be Saved?" "The Great Infidels,"
|
||
"Some Reasons Why"' "About the Holy Bible" and "Shakespeare," --
|
||
although he rarely expressed a preference, simply accepted the
|
||
'Verdict of his friends.' The truth is, that every one of his more
|
||
than sixty famous lectures and his hundreds of great speeches,
|
||
controversies, interviews, tributes, orations, prose-poems and
|
||
legal addresses was a masterpiece. The "Liberty" lecture, however,
|
||
was received with such popular acclaim, and was so frequently
|
||
demanded, that he was disposed to regard it as probably the most
|
||
effective of his efforts.
|
||
|
||
On one occasion after its delivery in Washington, a United
|
||
States Senator sought him and said: "Colonel, you have converted
|
||
me. For years I have been estranged from my only daughter because
|
||
she did not marry to please me, but now I shall go to her to-night,
|
||
and beg her forgiveness for allowing a selfish pride to keep her
|
||
from my arms and heart!" Father and daughter were reconciled, and
|
||
the peace and joy then born in a happy home remained a seal to the
|
||
efficacy of the Colonel's teachings. Some said to him: "That is a
|
||
great sermon of yours, Colonel," referring to the "Liberty"
|
||
lecture.. Others said, "What a great preacher he would have made!"
|
||
He never considered the remark a compliment.
|
||
|
||
ATTACKING CHERISHED BELIEFS.
|
||
|
||
His Christian admirers sometimes said: "Colonel, why don't you
|
||
moderate your expressions, qualify your speech, and be more careful
|
||
not to offend the susceptibilities of many of your hearers, -- your
|
||
views would be so much better received even if they were not
|
||
adopted?" "I'll tell you why. I do not attack persons, but their
|
||
superstitions. I deal with opinions, not with those who hold them.
|
||
I do not war against men. I do not war against persons. I war
|
||
against certain doctrines that I believe to be wrong. But I give to
|
||
every human being every right that I claim for myself.
|
||
|
||
"I have not the slightest malice, no hate. A victor never
|
||
feels malice. I tell my honest thought, my sincere belief, my
|
||
earnest convictions."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
To a preacher who urged him to deal more gently with the
|
||
beliefs cherished by many in his audiences, he replied: "You do not
|
||
exactly appreciate my feeling. I do not hate Presbyterians, I hate
|
||
Presbyterianism. I hate with all my heart the creed of that church,
|
||
and I most heartily despise the God described in the Confession of
|
||
Faith. Some of the best friends I have in the world are afflicted
|
||
with the mental malady known as Presbyterianism. They are the
|
||
victims of the consolation growing out of the belief that a vast
|
||
majority of their fellow-men are doomed to suffer eternal torment,
|
||
to the end that their Creator may be eternally glorified. I have
|
||
said many times, and I say again, that I do not despise a man
|
||
because he has the rheumatism; I despise the rheumatism because it
|
||
has a man" "They tell me to use gentler expressions, and more
|
||
cunning words. Do they really wish me to make more converts? If
|
||
their advice is honest, they are traitors to their trust. If their
|
||
advice is not honest, then they are unfair to me. Certainly they
|
||
should wish me to pursue the course that will make the fewer
|
||
converts, and yet they tell me how my influence could be
|
||
increased!"
|
||
|
||
THE MERCENARY BOGY.
|
||
|
||
His enemies called him mercenary, saying that he lectured only
|
||
for money, and cited the unselfish example of the priests and
|
||
preachers who gave the gospel freely, "without money and without
|
||
price." To such he replied: "Is it possible that, after preachers
|
||
have had the field for eighteen hundred years, the way to make
|
||
money is to attack the clergy? Is this intended as a slander
|
||
against me, or against the ministers?
|
||
|
||
"The trouble is that my arguments cannot be answered. All the
|
||
preachers in the world cannot prove that slavery is better than
|
||
liberty. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to
|
||
think. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to express
|
||
their thoughts. They cannot show that a decent God will punish a
|
||
decent man for making the best guess he can."
|
||
|
||
Not one of the orthodox ministers dares to preach what he
|
||
thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation thinks otherwise.
|
||
He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his
|
||
brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is
|
||
not expected to search after the truth, but that he is employed to
|
||
defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a
|
||
hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment."
|
||
|
||
"I do not depend upon lecturing for my living. I am free, and
|
||
my audiences are free. They are under no obligation to attend. They
|
||
want to hear me and cheerfully pay the price. If I did not charge
|
||
for admission, Christians would say, as some envious one have said,
|
||
that only the lowest and vilest in a community flock to hear me.
|
||
Just the contrary, of course, was true, and these very slanderers
|
||
-- many of them -- wrote from every part of the land begging him to
|
||
lecture for the benefit of this or that church or "cause" and give
|
||
them the "proceeds."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
The pastor of a colored Baptist church in Texas once asked a
|
||
contribution to help put a new roof on his church, to replace one
|
||
that had been carried away by the wind. The Colonel wrote that it
|
||
looked to him as if God did not want a new roof there, or he would
|
||
not have blown the old one off. Besides, he did not see why any
|
||
Baptist church should need a roof; -- "The wetter the better."
|
||
Nevertheless, he sent some help out of sympathy for the race that
|
||
was struggling to rise, and that he had so often and so earnestly
|
||
befriended; but he said it passed his comprehension, -- except on
|
||
the ground of their well-known superstition, -- how an enslaved
|
||
race could love a book that favored slavery, or a God worshiped by
|
||
a slave-holder, -- how an intelligent colored man or woman could
|
||
ever be a Christian!
|
||
|
||
Replying further to those who said, "He can afford to preach
|
||
his blasphemy, -- it brings him applause as well as pecuniary
|
||
reward," he use to say that it was the greatest of compliments, --
|
||
an admission -- that his views were getting popular and worth
|
||
paying to hear. As we have seen, he was not an avaricious man, but
|
||
magnificently otherwise. He was ever more a spendthrift than a
|
||
miser. There never lived a more prodigally generous soul. There was
|
||
not a mean or sordid drop of blood in all his veins. Nor did he
|
||
care for mere personal popularity, -- avoided rather than courted
|
||
it. He did delight in noting year by year the growing acceptance of
|
||
his teachings. Once, after a visit to New England, he said: "If I
|
||
had spoken as freely in Salem thirty years ago, as I have spoken in
|
||
Salem to-night, they would have burned me at the stake." He was
|
||
fond of saying that since he had been trying to extinguish the
|
||
flames, the climate of hell had grown perceptibly cooler.
|
||
|
||
WHAT HIS VIEWS COST HIM.
|
||
|
||
The world little knows how much it cost Mr. Ingersoll to speak
|
||
his honest thought, to utter the sincere and profound convictions
|
||
of his conscience, the voice of his inmost soul. If sacrifice of
|
||
earthly honors and emoluments, of place and power, -- prizes as
|
||
dear to most men as their lives, -- is evidence of sincerity and
|
||
devotion to principle, Mr. Ingersoll was sublimely sincere,
|
||
unselfish, and self-sacrificing, and truthful history will so
|
||
record him.
|
||
|
||
His heterodoxy cost him the Governorship of Illinois. A
|
||
delegation made up of friends and admirers of both political
|
||
parties, urged his acceptance of the nomination, which meant
|
||
certain election, but coupled the offer with the condition that he
|
||
pledge himself not to touch on religious topics during the
|
||
campaign. He declined the nomination. He would have made an ideal
|
||
Governor. His large acquaintance with public men and measures, his
|
||
own experience as a public official -- as Attorney-General of the
|
||
State -- his fame as a campaign orator, his recognized ability and
|
||
integrity, his ardent patriotism and fearless advocacy of the
|
||
rights of man, and his world-wide human sympathies, -- all his
|
||
great gifts and endowments, -- marked him as one worthy of the
|
||
highest civic honors.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
But he did not covet office. He rejected all overtures in that
|
||
direction. His friends often broached the subject. He refused to
|
||
consider it. He was offered the post of Minister to Germany in
|
||
1877, but declined it. In 1882 a delegation in Washington waited on
|
||
him seeking his consent to be a candidate for the Presidency of the
|
||
United States. He declined the honor, saying that on no account
|
||
would he permit the use of his name. "I do not wish," he said, "to
|
||
bring the heat and rancor of religious discussion and dissension
|
||
into polities." No office would have been too great or high for him
|
||
to reach and fill had he consented to conceal his real thought, to
|
||
be a time-server and a hypocrite.
|
||
|
||
NOT A LEADER.
|
||
|
||
He, in fact, aspired to no personal leadership of any kind.'
|
||
He asked for no "disciples," sought no "followers." He wanted men
|
||
to think his way, but to carry out their convictions in their own
|
||
way; he would not lead them. He was not a proselytist or a
|
||
propagandist. He could have founded a school, a sect, a system. He
|
||
would not. He disliked and discourage the use of the term
|
||
"Ingersollism" that some applied to his views, and disavowed and,
|
||
so far as he could, prevented the spread of it. He was, and wanted
|
||
to be known as, an "Individualist."
|
||
|
||
He did not fully favor organizations on the lines of religious
|
||
or anti-religious belief; was not always in sympathy with
|
||
Freethought or Liberal organizations, as such. Although he agreed
|
||
in the main with their principles and aims he could not always
|
||
endorse or commend their methods, and because of such disagreement
|
||
at one time resigned the presidency of the Liberal League. His
|
||
trouble with these societies was that like most fraternal
|
||
associations, with all their merits and uses, they tended to foster
|
||
exclusiveness, class distinctions and sectarianism. He did not
|
||
believe in caste, he did not divide society into sheep and goats,
|
||
good and bad, sinners and saints, but into plain men and women
|
||
without their emblems or regalia. Many of his friends thought him
|
||
wrong in this attitude of aloofness, considered him unduly
|
||
sensitive and ideal, but he was satisfied with his ideal; he only
|
||
wished as an individual unit in society to act his own part well,
|
||
to think and speak and act from the best and highest in him, and to
|
||
help others do the same. While not condemning orders and unions and
|
||
fraternities, but recognizing their value and the need of
|
||
combination and cooperation to effect certain ends for the general
|
||
welfare, he yet felt that in the individual lay the real power to
|
||
improve and regenerate society. His broader membership was with the
|
||
race. Each man he held a brother, if he could find in him a man,
|
||
and he despised no one, however lowly, for the mere accident of
|
||
birth or circumstance.
|
||
|
||
His charity and compassion were unbounded. He could see and
|
||
condone the faults and frailties of others. "He does as he must,"
|
||
was his theorem explaining all human action. He was broad and
|
||
universal enough to announce this splendid creed: "The firmament
|
||
inlaid with stars is the dome of the real cathedral. The
|
||
interpreters of nature are the true and only priests. In the great
|
||
creed are all the truths that lips have uttered, and in the real
|
||
litany will be found all the ecstasies and aspirations of the soul,
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
27
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
all dreams of joy, all hopes for nobler, fuller life. The real
|
||
church, the real edifice, is adorned and glorified with all that
|
||
Art has done. In the real choir is all the thrilling music of the
|
||
world, and in the starlit aisles have been, and are, the grandest
|
||
souls of every land and clime.
|
||
|
||
"There is no darkness but ignorance."
|
||
|
||
"Let us flood the world with intellectual light."
|
||
|
||
VI.
|
||
|
||
LIBERTY.
|
||
|
||
Here let me state in his own unequalled words and way a few of
|
||
his many lofty sentiments. Of Liberty he said: "O Liberty, thou art
|
||
the god of my, idolatry!" It was one of his most fervent
|
||
apostrophes. He worshiped at its shrine. It was his dream, his
|
||
ideal, his hope for man. He was one of its greatest apostles. More
|
||
than any man of his day he wrote and spoke and labored for an
|
||
unshackled healthy brain, an untrammelled truthful tongue.
|
||
|
||
His attitude concerning freedom of thought, and its
|
||
expression, he gives us in these emphatic words, taken from the
|
||
opening of his "Liberty" lecture:
|
||
|
||
"There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of
|
||
intelligence."
|
||
|
||
"Only a few years ago there was a great awakening of the human
|
||
mind. Men began to inquire by what right a crowned robber made them
|
||
work for him. The man who asked this question was called a traitor.
|
||
Others asked by what right does a robed hypocrite rule my thought?
|
||
Such men were called infidels. The priest said, and the king said,
|
||
where is this spirit of investigation to stop? They said then and
|
||
they say now, that it is dangerous for man to be free. I deny it.
|
||
Out on the intellectual ocean there is room enough for every sail.
|
||
In the intellectual air there is space enough for every wing.
|
||
|
||
"The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is
|
||
a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.
|
||
|
||
"Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the
|
||
infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man.
|
||
|
||
"Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all have the same
|
||
right to think, and all are equally interested in the great
|
||
questions of origin and destiny. All I claim, all I plead for, is
|
||
liberty of thought and expression. That is all.
|
||
|
||
"I do not pretend to tell all the truth. I do not claim that
|
||
I have floated level with the heights of thought, or that I have
|
||
descended to the very depths of things. I simply claim that what
|
||
ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who
|
||
denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber. That
|
||
is all."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
28
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
I swear that while I live I will do what little I can to
|
||
preserve and to augment the liberties of man, woman, and child.
|
||
|
||
"It is a question of justice, of mercy, of honesty, of
|
||
intellectual development. If there is a man in the world who is not
|
||
willing to give to every human being every right he claims for
|
||
himself, he is just so much nearer a barbarian than I am. It is a
|
||
question of honesty. The man who is not willing to give to every
|
||
other the same intellectual rights he claims for himself, is
|
||
dishonest, selfish, and brutal."
|
||
|
||
"This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right
|
||
you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to influences of
|
||
nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance."
|
||
|
||
"As far as I am concerned I wish to be out on the high seas.
|
||
I wish to take my chances with wind, and wave, and star. And I had
|
||
rather go down in the glory and grandeur of the storm, than rot in
|
||
any orthodox harbor."
|
||
|
||
"As a man develops, he places a greater value upon his own
|
||
rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner thing. As he values
|
||
his own rights he begins to value the rights of others. And when
|
||
all men give to all others all the rights they claim for
|
||
themselves, this world will be civilized."
|
||
|
||
"We have, advanced. We have reaped the benefit of every
|
||
sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of every divine and brave act;
|
||
and we should endeavor to hand the torch to the next generation,
|
||
having added a little to the intensity and glory of the flame."
|
||
|
||
"With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate every form of
|
||
tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty.
|
||
|
||
"What do I mean by liberty? By physical liberty I mean the
|
||
right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of
|
||
another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think right
|
||
and the right to think wrong. Thought is the means by which we
|
||
endeavor to arrive at truth.
|
||
|
||
"Should I not give the real transcript of my mind? Or should
|
||
I turn hypocrite and pretend what I do not feel, and hate myself
|
||
forever after for being a cringing coward.
|
||
|
||
"Above all creeds, above all religions, after all, is that
|
||
divine thing, -- Humanity; and now and then in shipwreck on the
|
||
wide, wild sea, or mid the rocks and breakers of some cruel shore,
|
||
or where the serpents of flame writhe and hiss, some glorious
|
||
heart, some chivalric soul does a deed that glitters like a star,
|
||
and gives the lie to all the dogmas of superstition. All these
|
||
frightful doctrines have been used to degrade and to enslave
|
||
mankind.
|
||
|
||
"Away, forever away, with the creeds and books and forms and
|
||
laws and religions that take from the soul liberty and reason. Down
|
||
with the idea that thought is dangerous! Perish the infamous
|
||
doctrine that man can have property in man. Let us resent with
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
29
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
indignation every effort to put a chain upon our minds. If there is
|
||
no God, certainly we should not bow and cringe and crawl. If there
|
||
is a God, there should be no slave."
|
||
|
||
"O Liberty, thou art the god of my idolatry! Thou art the only
|
||
deity that hateth bended knees. In thy vast and unwalled temple,
|
||
beneath the roofless dome, star-gemmed and luminous with suns, thy
|
||
worshipers stand erect! They do not cringe, or crawl, or bend their
|
||
foreheads to the earth. The dust has never borne the impress of
|
||
their lips. Upon thy altars mothers do not sacrifice their babes,
|
||
nor men their rights. Thou askest naught from man except the things
|
||
that good men hate -- the whip, the chain, the dungeon key. Thou
|
||
hast no popes, no priests, who stand between their fellow-men and
|
||
thee. Thou carest not for foolish forms, or selfish prayers. At thy
|
||
sacred shrine hypocrisy does not bow, virtue does not tremble,
|
||
superstition's feeble tapers do not burn, but Reason holds aloft
|
||
her inextinguishable torch whose holy light will one day flood the
|
||
world."
|
||
|
||
TRUTH.
|
||
|
||
He exalted Truth -- pure, unadulterated, unmasked. "Sacred are
|
||
the lips," he said, "from which has issued only truth."
|
||
|
||
"Truth is the intellectual wealth of the world.
|
||
|
||
"The noblest of occupations is to search for truth.
|
||
|
||
"Truth is the foundation, the *superstructure, and the
|
||
glittering dome of progress.
|
||
|
||
"Truth is the mother of joy. Truth civilizes, ennobles, and
|
||
purifies. The grandest ambition that can enter the soul is to know
|
||
the truth.
|
||
|
||
"Truth gives man the greatest power for good. Truth is sword
|
||
and shield. It is the sacred light of the soul.
|
||
|
||
"The man who finds a truth lights a torch."
|
||
|
||
"Sacred are the lips from which has issued only truth. Over
|
||
all wealth, above all station, above the noble, the robed and
|
||
crowned, rises the sincere man. Happy is the man who neither paints
|
||
nor patches, veils nor veneers! Blessed is he who wears no mask."
|
||
|
||
LOVE.
|
||
|
||
He exalted and enthroned the god of Love, -- of sacred human
|
||
love. In words that elsewhere have no counterpart, he has embalmed
|
||
for us his thought in this marvelous piece of literary amber:
|
||
|
||
"Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the Morning
|
||
and the Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and
|
||
sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of Art --
|
||
inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light
|
||
of every heart -- builder of every home -- kindler of every fire on
|
||
every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
30
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
the world with melody, for music is the voice of Love. Love is the
|
||
magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and
|
||
makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the
|
||
perfume of that wondrous flower -- the heart -- and without that
|
||
sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts -- but
|
||
with it, earth is heave and we are gods."
|
||
|
||
LIFE.
|
||
|
||
Has any one but the immortal bard ever produced a parallel to
|
||
this living portrait of human life, -- Of his own life, -- from the
|
||
cradle to the grave?
|
||
|
||
"Born of love and hope, of ecstacy and pain, of agony and
|
||
fear, of tears and joy -- dower with the wealth of two united
|
||
hearts -- held in happy arms, with lips upon life's drifted font
|
||
blue-veined and fair, where perfect peace finds perfect form --
|
||
rocked by willing feet and wooed to shadowy shores of sleep by
|
||
siren mother singing soft and low-looking with wonder's wide and
|
||
startled eyes at common things of life and day -- taught by want
|
||
and wish and contact with the things that touch the dimpled flesh
|
||
of babes -- lured by light and flame, and charmed by color's
|
||
wondrous robes -- learning the use of hands and feet, and by the
|
||
love of mimicry beguiled to utter speech -- releasing prisoned
|
||
thoughts from crabbed and curious marks on soiled and tattered
|
||
leaves -- puzzling the brain with crooked numbers and their
|
||
changing, tangled worth -- and so through years of alternating day
|
||
and night, until the captive grows familiar with the chains and
|
||
walls and limitations of a life.
|
||
|
||
"And time runs on in sun and shade, until the one of all the
|
||
world is wooed and won, and all the lore of love is taught and
|
||
learned again. Again a home is built with the fair chamber wherein
|
||
faint dreams, like cool and shadowy vales divide the billowed hours
|
||
of love. Again the miracle of a birth -- the pain and joy, the kiss
|
||
of welcome and the cradle -- song drowning the, drowsy prattle of
|
||
a babe.
|
||
|
||
"And then the sense of obligation and of wrong -- pity for
|
||
those who toil and weep -- tears for the imprisoned and despised --
|
||
love for the generous dead, and in the heart the rapture of a high
|
||
resolve.
|
||
|
||
"And then ambition, with its lust of pelf and place and power,
|
||
longing to put upon its breast distinction's worthless badge. Then
|
||
keener thoughts of men, and eyes that see behind the smiling mask
|
||
of craft -- flattered no more by the obsequious cringe of gain and
|
||
greed -- knowing the uselessness of hoarded gold -- of honor bought
|
||
from those who charge the usury of self-respect -- of power that
|
||
only bends a coward's knees and forces from the lips of fear the
|
||
lies of praise. Knowing at last the unstudied gesture of esteem,
|
||
the reverent eyes made rich with honest thought, and holding high
|
||
above all other things -- high as hope's great throbbing star above
|
||
the darkness of the dead -- the love of wife and child and friend.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
31
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"Then locks of gray, and growing love of other days and
|
||
half-remembered things -- then holding withered hands of those who
|
||
first held his, while over dim and loving eyes death softly presses
|
||
down the lids of rest.
|
||
|
||
"And so, locking in marriage vows his children's hands and
|
||
crossing others on the breasts of peace, with daughter's babes upon
|
||
his knees, the white hair mingling with the gold, he journeys on
|
||
from day to day to that horizon where the dusk is waiting for the
|
||
night. -- At last, sitting by the holy hearth of home as evenings'
|
||
embers change from red to gray, he falls asleep within the arms of
|
||
her he worshiped and adored, feeling upon his pallid lips love's
|
||
last and holiest kiss."
|
||
|
||
Nor has this autograph of his own life ever been supplemented
|
||
with a finer touch than he gives us in these lines: "Life is a
|
||
shadowy, strange, and winding road on which we travel for a little
|
||
way -- a few short steps -- just from the cradle, with its lullaby
|
||
of love, to the low and quiet way-side inn, where all at last must
|
||
sleep, and where the only salutation is -- Goodnight!" Or that
|
||
other peerless paragraph, which I here re-quote, from the tribute
|
||
to his brother Ebon: "Life is a narrow vale between the cold and
|
||
barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond
|
||
the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our
|
||
wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there
|
||
comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and
|
||
listening love can hear the rustle of a wing."
|
||
|
||
HOPE.
|
||
|
||
Of Hope he has beautifully said: "Hope is the only bee that
|
||
makes honey without flowers."
|
||
|
||
"Hope is the consolation of the world.
|
||
|
||
"The wanderers hope for home. -- Hope builds the house and
|
||
plants the flowers and fills the air with song.
|
||
|
||
"The sick and suffering hope for health. -- Hope gives them
|
||
health and paints the roses in their cheeks.
|
||
|
||
"The lonely, the forsaken, hope for love. -- Hope brings the
|
||
lover to their arms. They feel the kisses on their eager lips.
|
||
|
||
"The poor in tenements and huts, in spite of rags and hunger,
|
||
hope for wealth. -- Hope fills their thin and trembling hands with
|
||
gold.
|
||
|
||
"The dying hopes that death is but another birth, and Love
|
||
leans above the pallid face and whispers, 'We shall meet again.'
|
||
|
||
"Let us hope, that if there be a God, he is wise and good.
|
||
|
||
"Let us hope that if there be another life, it will bring
|
||
peace and joy to all the children of men.
|
||
|
||
"And let us hope that this poor earth on which we live, may be
|
||
a perfect world -- a world without a crime -- without a tear."
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
32
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
And following this, to express his own feeling and purpose in
|
||
his work, he said: "I would not for anything blot out the faintest
|
||
star that shines in the horizon of human despair, or in the sky of
|
||
human hope; but I will do what I can to get the infinite shadow of
|
||
eternal torment out of the heart of man."
|
||
|
||
Of the hope of a future life he said: "The idea of
|
||
immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human
|
||
heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear beating against
|
||
the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book,
|
||
nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human
|
||
affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists
|
||
and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of
|
||
death. It is the rainbow, Hope, shining upon the tears of grief."
|
||
|
||
HOME.
|
||
|
||
Who, with lip or pen or brush, save only Robert Burns, has
|
||
ever given us as graphic or exalted pictures of the fireside as
|
||
Robert G. Ingersoll? He glorified, even as he exemplified, the joys
|
||
and virtues of domestic life. He said, "The home where virtue
|
||
dwells with love is like a lily with a heart of fire -- the fairest
|
||
flower in all the world." "The holiest temple beneath the stars is
|
||
a home that love has built. And the holiest altar in all the wide
|
||
world is the fireside around which gather father and mother and the
|
||
sweet babes."
|
||
|
||
"If in this world there is anything splendid, it is a home
|
||
where all are equals."
|
||
|
||
"Around the fireside cluster the private and the public
|
||
virtues of our race."
|
||
|
||
"The home, after all, is the unit of civilization, of good
|
||
government."
|
||
|
||
"Without the family relation there is no life worth living.
|
||
Every good government is made up of good families."
|
||
|
||
"Nothing is more important to America than that the babes of
|
||
America should be born around the fireside of home."
|
||
|
||
"If upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven, it is
|
||
when we pass a home in winter, at night, and through the windows,
|
||
the curtains drawn aside, we see the family about the pleasant
|
||
hearth; the old lady knitting; the cat playing with the yarn; the
|
||
children wishing they had as many dolls or dollars or knives or
|
||
somethings, as there are sparks going out to join the roaring
|
||
blast; the father reading and smoking, and the clouds rising like
|
||
incense from the altar of domestic joy. I never passed such a house
|
||
without feeling that I had received a benediction."
|
||
|
||
"Honor, place, fame, glory, riches -- they are ashes, smoke,
|
||
dust, disappointment, unless there is somebody in the world you
|
||
love, somebody who loves you; unless there is some place that you
|
||
can call home, some place where you can feel the arms of children
|
||
around your neck, some place that is made absolutely, sacred by the
|
||
love of others."
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
33
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
AMBITION.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll was ambitious. He considered true ambition to be
|
||
the father of progress. Every man, he said, should have a worthy
|
||
ideal, and strive to attain it by all the best and highest in him.
|
||
But his ambition was not for place or power, -- he did not want to
|
||
rule anybody. He craved no laurels won on fields of conquest or
|
||
aggression. His ideals were higher. His goal was human happiness --
|
||
"the greatest good of the greatest number," and he welcomed and
|
||
extolled everything that contributed to it. He sought the richer
|
||
prizes of life in the private and civic virtues -- in the fields of
|
||
art and thought, invention and discovery, and in the fruits of
|
||
skilful industry of hand and brain. Above all, he placed the
|
||
aristocracy of the fireside, and esteemed the kind and just man,
|
||
the loving father and husband, the peer of prince and potentate. He
|
||
loved to quote these lines of Burns on domestic felicity: "To make
|
||
a happy fireside clime, For weans and wife, Is the true pathos and
|
||
sublime Of human life."
|
||
|
||
And by way of contrast he paints for us this vivid picture of
|
||
Napoleon the Great and the humble but happy French peasant:
|
||
|
||
"A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon
|
||
-- a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a deity dead
|
||
-- and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble,
|
||
where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over
|
||
the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier
|
||
of the modern world.
|
||
|
||
"I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating
|
||
suicide. I saw him at Toulon -- I saw him putting down the mob in
|
||
the streets of Paris -- I saw him at the head of the army of Italy
|
||
-- I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his
|
||
hand -- I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the Pyramids -- I saw
|
||
him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the
|
||
eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo -- at Ulm and Austerlitz.
|
||
I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry
|
||
of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered
|
||
leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster -- driven by a
|
||
million bayonets back upon Paris -- clutched like a wild beast --
|
||
banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the
|
||
force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of
|
||
Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of
|
||
their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands
|
||
crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.
|
||
|
||
"I thought of the orphans and widows he had made -- of the
|
||
tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who
|
||
ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition.
|
||
And I said, I would rather have been a French peasant and worn
|
||
|
||
wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine
|
||
growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses
|
||
of the Autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant, with
|
||
my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky
|
||
-- with my children upon my knees and their arms about me -- I
|
||
would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless
|
||
silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial
|
||
impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great."
|
||
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
34
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
SCIENCE.
|
||
|
||
Everywhere and always he glorified the Deity of Science --
|
||
child of the blessed Trinity, Reason, Observation and Experience.
|
||
His works abound in eloquent praise of its achievements. Among
|
||
other passages he gives us this:
|
||
|
||
"Science took a handful of sand, constructed a telescope, and
|
||
with it explored the starry depths of heaven. Science wrested from
|
||
the gods their thunderbolts; and now, the electric spark, freighted
|
||
with thought and love, flashes under all the waves of the sea.
|
||
Science took a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it
|
||
into steam and created a giant that turns with tireless arm the
|
||
countless wheels of toil."
|
||
|
||
"Science is the providence of man, the worker of true
|
||
miracles, of real wonders. Science has 'read a little in Nature's
|
||
infinite book of secrecy.' Science knows the circuits of the winds,
|
||
the courses of the stars. Fire is his servant, and lightning his
|
||
messenger. Science freed the slaves and gave liberty to their
|
||
masters. Science taught men to enchain, not his fellows, but the
|
||
forces of nature, forces that have no backs to be scarred, no limbs
|
||
for chains to chill and eat, forces that have no hearts to break,
|
||
forces that never know fatigue, forces that shed no tears. Science
|
||
is the great physician. His touch has given sight. He has made the
|
||
lame to leap, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, and in the
|
||
pallid face his hand has set the rose of health. Science has given
|
||
his beloved sleep and wrapped in happy dreams the throbbing nerves
|
||
of pain. Science is the destroyer of disease, builder of happy
|
||
homes, the preserver of life and love. Science is the teacher of
|
||
every virtue, the enemy of every vice. Science has given the true
|
||
basis of morals, the origin and office of conscience, revealed the
|
||
nature of obligation, of duty, of virtue in its highest, noblest
|
||
forms, and has demonstrated that true happiness is the only
|
||
possible good. Science has slain the monsters of superstition, and
|
||
destroyed the authority of inspired books. Science has read the
|
||
records of the rocks, records that priestcraft cannot change, and
|
||
on his wondrous scales has weighed the atom and the star.
|
||
|
||
"Science has founded the only true religion. Science is the
|
||
only Savior of this world."
|
||
|
||
And so I might go on quoting and quoting. It is difficult to
|
||
forbear. It is a feast, mental and spiritual, to sit at the banquet
|
||
spread so bountifully for us in the thirteen beautiful Volumes
|
||
containing the published works of Mr. Ingersoll in their "Dresden"
|
||
setting, -- so-call after the little village in New York State
|
||
which was the author's birthplace. I am tempted to linger at the
|
||
|
||
feast for more of the delicious bits of poetry, philosophy,
|
||
feeling, wit, wisdom, humor and loving-kindness that abound on
|
||
every page and in almost every line. The limits of this sketch
|
||
forbid the indulgence. What he has said on Education, Art, Science,
|
||
-- on Poetry Music and Fiction, -- on Justice, Liberty, Equality
|
||
and the Rights of Man, -- On Worship, Reverence and True Religion,
|
||
-- on Orthodoxy and Agnosticism, -- on Government, Finance,
|
||
Domestic and Political Economy, and on a thousand other living
|
||
human topics -- for he has vibrated every chord -- would take many
|
||
more books to hold, and every book a glittering mine.
|
||
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
35
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
OPTIMISM vs. PESSIMISM.
|
||
|
||
Some called him a pessimist. He was not. He enjoyed more than
|
||
suffered, hoped more than despaired. It is true that when he
|
||
considered the agonies and miseries of life, the sickness and
|
||
disease, the poverty and crime, the ignorance and superstition, the
|
||
follies and failures, the human wrecks on every shore; when he
|
||
thought of the savagery of tooth and beak and claw; of the fury of
|
||
the elements, -- of wind and fire of flood, of earthquakes,
|
||
lightnings and volcanoes, of drought, and pestilence and famine and
|
||
all the evils that afflict the race from without or within, and of
|
||
the final tragedy awaiting all, he groaned in spirit and felt and
|
||
said that this was not a good world. He went further and had the
|
||
courage that some called audacity, and others blasphemy, to say
|
||
what millions think but fear to say, that if, as a man he had been
|
||
given the power and commission to make a world, he certainly would
|
||
have made a better one than this, or gone out of the business! This
|
||
was said seriously, not vaingloriously. To one who asked him what
|
||
improvement he would suggest in the order of things, he immediately
|
||
replied: "Well, for one thing, I would make health catching instead
|
||
of disease."
|
||
|
||
On the other hand, when he considered the beautiful, good and
|
||
true; the sunshine and the flowers, the blossoming spring and
|
||
ripening harvest; the warm and fructifying showers, the cool and
|
||
shady glens, the vine-clad hills and richly verdant vales and all
|
||
the varying charms of Nature in her gentler moods; when he saw the
|
||
roses on the cheeks of health, heard the songs of happy birds and
|
||
hum of busy bees in sweet pursuit, and merry shouts of children at
|
||
their play; when he saw the many open hands of sympathy and aid,
|
||
the generous and noble deeds of great heroic souls, the glorious
|
||
triumphs of genius in fields of art and song, the wonderful
|
||
achievements of science in invention and discovery and the many
|
||
marvelous products of industrial skill; and when he thought of
|
||
happy homes and loving hearts and helpful hands through all the
|
||
years, -- when he looked and thought on these he hoped, he dreamed,
|
||
he prophesied, a brighter future for his race. He believed the
|
||
world was growing better, freer, happier, every day, and he was
|
||
doing what he could to make it so. In prophetic vision he saw "Our
|
||
country filled with happy homes, with firesides of content, -- the
|
||
foremost land of all the earth."
|
||
|
||
Looking into the future with unclouded eye, he said:
|
||
|
||
"I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are
|
||
dust. The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.
|
||
|
||
"I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature's
|
||
forces have by Science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and
|
||
wave, frost and flame, and all the secret, subtle powers of earth
|
||
and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
36
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
|
||
"I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with
|
||
music's myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of
|
||
love and truth; -- a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner
|
||
mourns; -- a world on which the gibbet's shadow does not fall; --
|
||
a world where labor reaps its full reward; where work and worth go
|
||
hand in hand; where the poor girl trying to win bread with the
|
||
needle -- the needle that has been called 'the asp for the breast
|
||
of the poor,' -- is not driven to the desperate choice of crime or
|
||
death, of suicide or shame.
|
||
|
||
"I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm, the
|
||
miser's heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid
|
||
lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.
|
||
|
||
"I see a race without disease of flesh or brain, -- shapely
|
||
and fair, -- the married harmony of form and function, -- and, as
|
||
I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and
|
||
over all, in the great dome, shines the eternal star of human
|
||
hope."
|
||
|
||
For himself, he said that when he struck the balance, this
|
||
life had been to him worth living. This was optimism.
|
||
|
||
HIS INTELLECTUAL INTIMATES.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll dwelt with all the great and noble souls that
|
||
ever lived. They were his acquaintances, his friends, his
|
||
intimates. With them he held constant mental intercourse. He
|
||
studied their words and works, admired and eulogized their lofty
|
||
deeds, their high ideals. He rescued from the obloquy of spite and
|
||
hate the illustrious names of noble martyrs to the truth, of whom
|
||
the world was not worthy, -- the names of Bruno and Spinoza,
|
||
Voltaire and Paine, Hume and Elizur Wright, with those of other
|
||
great infidels and reformers of their day and time. He gloried in
|
||
the fame of all the great and good scientists and philosophers,
|
||
philanthropists and patriots who, in the realms of thought, and by
|
||
heroic deeds in fields of action, have enlarged, enriched and
|
||
ennobled life, -- names that were ever in his mind and often on his
|
||
lips of praise, -- names that will not die, -- the names of Darwin,
|
||
Huxley, Spencer and Tyndall; of Humboldt and Haeckel; of Socrates,
|
||
Plato and Epictetus; of Buddha, Brahma and Confucius, Aristotle and
|
||
Aurelius; of Lincoln and Washington, Franklin and Jefferson; of
|
||
Draper and Gibbon; of Buckle and Locke and Lecky; of Wilberforce,
|
||
Howard, Burke and Bright; of Kossuth, Lafayette and Rochambeau; of
|
||
Grant and Sherman and Sheridan, Farragut and Ericsson -- with other
|
||
heroes, in great strifes for the Right and the Rights of Man.
|
||
|
||
In the realms of space he took his flights with Newton and
|
||
Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo, Herschel and Laplace, with Proctor
|
||
and Mitchell, and other dwellers in the infinite skies, companions
|
||
of the stars, who "drew from them their secrets and told them down
|
||
to men." He sailed the unknown seas with Columbus and the Cabots,
|
||
with Magellan and the other brave mariners of the dawn, and with
|
||
them landed on the shores of a new and wide and glorious world.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
37
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
He rejoiced and shared in the inventions and discoveries of
|
||
Stephenson and Watt, of Guttenberg and Arkwright, of Galvani and
|
||
Marconi, of Morse and Field, of Edison and Bell, and all the minds
|
||
whose thought has widened out the world to commerce, fellowship and
|
||
final peace. And above all, and before all, he placed his
|
||
Shakespeare among the immortals, with Burns singing by his side the
|
||
sweetest of Nature's songs. He believed that George Eliot, Harriet
|
||
Martineau and Mrs. Browning were the greatest of female thinkers
|
||
and writers of the English world, and that Charles Dickens was the
|
||
greatest novelist.
|
||
|
||
He was strongly emotional in temperament. A man of his fine
|
||
feeling and tender susceptibility could not be otherwise. With such
|
||
a nature, joined to a clear judgment and keen appreciation of the
|
||
beautiful and great in art and men, it is small wonder that he was
|
||
the ardent admirer of his intellectual comrades, and in eloquent
|
||
eulogy extolled their words and works. He was enraptured with the
|
||
music of Wagner, Beethoven, Verdi and Schubert; devoted friend of
|
||
those mimic artists who held the mirror for him on the stage, --
|
||
his Forrests, Booths and Barretts, and his Rip Van Winkle --
|
||
Jeffersons. He exalted, if he could only hope to emulate, the
|
||
silver tongues of his brother orators, the Ciceros, Demosthenes'
|
||
Lincolns, Phillips' and Beechers -- and who will say he was not the
|
||
worthy peer of them all?
|
||
|
||
He held in very high regard those masters of the brush who
|
||
painted his pictures for him, his Angelos and Raphaels, Rembrandts
|
||
and Corots, and, in truth, all the other shining stars in his
|
||
heavens -- the writers, singers, sculptors, artists and artisans --
|
||
a glorious company -- performers with him in the wonderful drama
|
||
who by their genius have added to the beauty, worth and joy of
|
||
life. His companionship was with them all, and he had hope, he
|
||
said, for the race that could produce and admire, exalt and emulate
|
||
such souls.
|
||
|
||
HIS PRACTICAL PHILANTHROPY.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll never lost sight of his kinship with men.
|
||
Recognizing the grades and classes of humanity, he was ready at all
|
||
times to meet the demands of human sympathy and brotherhood.
|
||
Knowing sadly enough the many impositions practiced by the unworthy
|
||
poor, nevertheless, his heart and hand instinctively opened to the
|
||
appeal of suffering and want. His quick sympathies and generous
|
||
impulses guided him, and were for him better guides than cold and
|
||
calculating judgment. He did not stop to inquire, to investigate,
|
||
-- he gave. He relieved the present necessity, and did not lecture
|
||
or preach to any recipient of his bounty. He did not reproach the
|
||
weak, the ignorant, or depraved, -- he pitied and forgave. His
|
||
attitude toward the sinful and sorrowful was ever like that of the
|
||
Peasant of Palestine: "Neither do, I condemn thee."
|
||
|
||
He gave freely of the treasures of his mind. He counseled,
|
||
criticized and encouraged many in their literary and artistic
|
||
aspirations. His home and office were often like editorial
|
||
sanctums, -- piled with authors' manuscripts submitted for his
|
||
opinion and revision. Scores of introductions, reviews of books,
|
||
plays and poems, were written by him for those who requested it.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
38
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
Recognized as an art connoisseur of fine perception and rare
|
||
judgement, painters and sculptors submitted their work to his
|
||
inspection. He welcomed and aided them.
|
||
|
||
"LET US SMOKE IN THIS WORLD."
|
||
|
||
Commercial travellers were fond of him and he of them. The
|
||
"smoker" in the Pullman car, the hotel lobby and his private room
|
||
were mildly invaded by them, seeking his acquaintance and regard.
|
||
Once in the Southern Hotel in Saint Louis a young man told his tale
|
||
of discouragement. "I am travelling for a tobacco house," he said,
|
||
"and have been in very poor luck, -- haven't made a decent living
|
||
for my wife and little family; won't you allow my firm to name a
|
||
brand of cigars for you; I'm sure they'd sell like hot cakes?" "No
|
||
objection, if you make it a good, honest cigar." "Will you give me
|
||
your photograph, and permit us to get out a handsome lithograph to
|
||
advertise the brand?" "No objection, if you make it a real portrait
|
||
and not a daub." "Once more, Colonel, will you give me a
|
||
'sentiment' to accompany the brand?" "Very well, how will this do:
|
||
Let us smoke in this world -- not in the next?" The young man went
|
||
on his way rejoicing. Two years after he came from New York to
|
||
Washington and in grateful terms thanked the Colonel for his
|
||
goodness. "The cigar has sold all over the country," he said, "and
|
||
my commissions have amounted to hundreds and hundreds of dollars;
|
||
in fact, Colonel, you have put me on my feet and in the way to
|
||
comfort and success in life."
|
||
|
||
"GOING TO DENVER."
|
||
|
||
At another time, Mr. Ingersoll was traveling with a party of
|
||
capitalists who with him were inspecting cattle ranches in New
|
||
Mexico. They were in a private car going to Denver. One evening
|
||
after dinner, while they were enjoying their cigars, the conductor
|
||
announced, "Gentlemen, a tramp has curled himself up on the rear
|
||
platform of your car; shall I stop the train and put him off?"
|
||
"Certainly," replied the leader of the party, a man many times a
|
||
millionaire, "put him off, and do it without ceremony." "You will
|
||
do no such thing," quickly interrupted Colonel Ingersoll; "Let him
|
||
alone, he is doing no harm." "But he's an intruder, stealing a
|
||
ride, and how do you know he isn't a 'road-agent,' with accomplices
|
||
further on?" "No matter, let him be; I will go and speak to him."
|
||
Accompanied by the writer, he went to the rear platform. The man at
|
||
once begged pardon for his intrusion, said that necessity alone
|
||
impelled him, that he was out of work and out of money, that he was
|
||
a good mechanic and wanted to go, to Denver, where he hoped to get
|
||
employment. "Don't apologize or explain any further; I understand;"
|
||
said the Colonel. "I have been hard up myself. Are you hungry."
|
||
"Very." "Come with me;" and calling to the cook he said: "Give this
|
||
man all he wants to eat," and turning to his astonished guest,
|
||
"When you're through eating here's a good smoke for you," handing
|
||
him a perfecto. "And here's a little boost for you when you get to
|
||
Denver," drawing from his pocket a ten dollar greenback. "Never
|
||
mind," -- noticing a look of hesitation, -- "it's all right, good
|
||
luck, and don't go out on the platform again; sit on this
|
||
camp-stool till you reach Denver." Returning, he quietly resumed
|
||
his seat with the party. "Well," asked the capitalist, "how about
|
||
your hobo guest; have you invited him to keep us company the rest
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
39
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
of the way?" "Yes; to Denver." "I am surprised at you, Colonel;
|
||
here you are, a distinguished lawyer, -- a railroad lawyer, at
|
||
that, -- not only winking at, but actually aiding and abetting a
|
||
gross violation of the law! You have a great big heart, I know, and
|
||
a head to match, but I think this time you have let your heart run
|
||
away with your head." "If all our heads and hearts were only half
|
||
as big as your pocket-book, we might all be wealthier men," was the
|
||
Colonel's quiet retort.
|
||
|
||
CONSCIENTIOUS.
|
||
|
||
He believed in rendering a just and ample reward for all labor
|
||
performed. He could not bear to profit by the ill-paid toil or the
|
||
dire necessities of others. He was not satisfied to pay only the
|
||
cheap market price for goods required. He went back of the merchant
|
||
to the worker, and inquired into the original cost of many things.
|
||
In his purchases of garments for personal wear, I have known him to
|
||
go to the maker direct, wherever he could, and pay an enhanced
|
||
price -- what he believed to be nearest an equivalent for the
|
||
article bought. He said he did not want "something for nothing," he
|
||
wanted to pay his way. He could not and would not accept a money
|
||
favor, even from a friend, without making an adequate return. For
|
||
years he was complimented by railroad officials with "free passes"
|
||
over their lines. He never solicited one of them. They were freely
|
||
offered. He did not, out of politeness, refuse them, but he did not
|
||
use them. He could not travel as a "dead-head." He has shown me
|
||
bunches, of these passes, some of them beautifully executed, and in
|
||
one instance handsomely engraved on a small sterling-silver plate.
|
||
He kept them as souvenirs, so he called them -- reminders that at
|
||
one time he was himself president of a railroad in Illinois. No
|
||
remuneration in any shape would he ever accept from any corporation
|
||
or interest, or from any individual, except in acknowledgment of
|
||
service rendered.
|
||
|
||
MISTAKES AND SLANDERS.
|
||
|
||
It is not the purpose of this sketch to enter at large upon a
|
||
definition or defense of Mr. Ingersoll's religious or non-religious
|
||
views. He alone could rightly define and defend them. In the
|
||
popular mind, however, there is such ignorance, misinformation and
|
||
error, and such misrepresentation both of his person and his
|
||
teachings, that true statements, taken from his own lips, and an
|
||
intimate view of his character and actions gained by a long
|
||
acquaintance and exceptional opportunities, qualify the writer to
|
||
make a record entitled to more than passing attention. As for his
|
||
views on nearly all questions of human interest, they are amply set
|
||
forth in his writings and sayings, and happily extant and available
|
||
in the authorized form before referred to. They speak for
|
||
themselves, and in no feeble or faltering voice. He was ready to
|
||
stand by them, confident of the enlightened judgment of the fair
|
||
and free.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
40
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
His character, motives, and meanings have, however, been sadly
|
||
mistaken, perverted and maligned. The slanders of ignorance and the
|
||
lies of malice have too often aimed at him their poisoned shafts.
|
||
To show how he received and repelled these attacks, and if possible
|
||
to furnish an antidote for their virulence, is but an act of
|
||
loyalty to truth, to justice, and to right, no less than to
|
||
personal friendship and affection.
|
||
|
||
ABUSE vs. ARGUMENT.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll knew well enough that a strong man using his
|
||
strength to combat prevailing error -- no matter on what subject --
|
||
would make enemies. This he expected in his own case from the
|
||
ignorant, prejudiced and unfair; but that professed champions of
|
||
justice, love, and truth, divinely called to speak, should welcome
|
||
every hateful rumor and give it credence and circulation from
|
||
pulpit, press and platform, sometimes amazed and grieved him, but
|
||
oftener excited his pity and compassion. "And yet, after all," he
|
||
would say, "it is but natural that those who expect their God to
|
||
damn me hereafter, should want to do a little of it here
|
||
themselves! Why do they not answer my arguments? Why do not my
|
||
orthodox foes fight fairly?"
|
||
|
||
"I want to say, that if there is anything I like in the world
|
||
it is fairness. And one reason I like it so well is that I have had
|
||
so little of it. I can say, if I wish, extremely mean and hateful
|
||
things. I have read a great many religious papers and discussions
|
||
and think that I now know all the infamous words in our language.
|
||
I know how to account for every noble action by a mean and wretched
|
||
motive; and that in my judgment, embraces nearly the entire science
|
||
of modern theology."
|
||
|
||
"It does seem to me that if I were a Christian, and really
|
||
thought my fellow-man was going down to the bottomless pit, that he
|
||
was going to misery and agony forever -- it does seem to me that I
|
||
would try to save him. It does seem to me, that instead of having
|
||
my mouth filled with epithets and invectives; instead of drawing
|
||
the lips of malice back from the teeth of hatred, it seems to me
|
||
that my eyes would be filled with tears. It seems to me that I
|
||
would do what little I could to reclaim him. I would talk to him,
|
||
and of him, in kindness. I would put the arms of affection about
|
||
him. I would not speak of him as though he were a wild beast. I
|
||
would not speak to him as though he were a brute. I would think of
|
||
him as a man, as a man liable to eternal torture among the damned,
|
||
and my heart would be filled with sympathy, not hatred -- my eyes
|
||
with tears, not scorn."
|
||
|
||
"It is a mystery to me why the editors of religious papers are
|
||
so malicious, why they endeavor to answer argument with calumny. Is
|
||
it because they feel the scepter slowly slipping from their hands?
|
||
Is it the result of impotent rage? Is it because there is being
|
||
written upon every orthodox brain a certificate of intellectual
|
||
inferiority?"
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
41
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
THE CLERGY.
|
||
|
||
It is only natural to expect that with this personal
|
||
experience he could have no very high regard for the clergy. He
|
||
could not see why a stripling just fledged from a theological nest
|
||
should be called "Father" and "Reverend." He knew how ministers
|
||
were made. It used to be, more than it is now, considered an honor
|
||
to have at least one member of a family "called' to preach the
|
||
gospel. Usually, he said, it was the one with a delicate
|
||
constitution, the petted and spoiled child, of indolent habits,
|
||
averse to manly and athletic sports, who was picked out by the
|
||
parents and friends as the candidate for "holy orders." He did not
|
||
see why such a one should be "divinely chosen" and "set apart,"
|
||
while the latent lawyer, or doctor, or business man, or mechanic,
|
||
should be left without a "call." To him, the choice was simply a
|
||
very human one and often a great mistake, He thought a good workman
|
||
at the bench better than a poor parson in the pulpit.
|
||
"Schoolhouses," he said, "are the real temples, and teachers are
|
||
the true priests."
|
||
|
||
He knew only few, very few, clergymen whom he could call his
|
||
friends, and instanced Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Henry M. Field, and
|
||
the Rev. Alexander Clark as among the number. They were fair-minded
|
||
and kindly-spoken, and respected his personality even if they could
|
||
not accept his teachings.
|
||
|
||
As above stated, he knew how most of those in the ministerial
|
||
"profession" came to be there -- how they were "ordained" by the
|
||
"laying on Of hands," and "anointed" with "holy oil," the "divine
|
||
petroleum," as he termed it, of ecclesiastical ceremony. One
|
||
verified instance came to his knowledge, that he thought might well
|
||
enough illustrate the motive of many who accept the call to preach.
|
||
It was that of a young man in an Eastern university, whose
|
||
reputation for honor and decency was so tainted that he was
|
||
"black-balled" when seeking entrance into the Greek fraternity of
|
||
his fellow-students. In a class meeting before graduation the boys
|
||
were invited to tell what calling they intended to pursue in life.
|
||
This young man said: "Boys, I'm going to be a minister!" They
|
||
hooted him. "All right; you wait and see. Short cut! First you get
|
||
a call to some little country church. Then, if you have the gift of
|
||
gab, you are called to the city, get a big church, marry the
|
||
richest girl in the congregation, and you're fixed for life!" He
|
||
actually made good this forecast, in every particular.
|
||
|
||
HIS EARLY LIFE MALIGNED.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll's orthodox enemies spread the report that his
|
||
early life was dissolute and depraved. It was untrue. He was
|
||
genial, jolly, good-natured and companionable -- liked by all who
|
||
knew him. Those competent to judge, who knew him well from boyhood
|
||
to manhood, -- mayors, city and county officials, friends,
|
||
neighbors and prominent citizens -- over their own signatures
|
||
attested by their sworn affidavits, united in indignant denial of
|
||
the cheap calumny.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
42
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
Another report industriously circulated and designed to
|
||
belittle his honor as a soldier and his courage as a man and
|
||
officer, was that he tamely surrendered his regiment of cavalry to
|
||
the confederate General Forrest, and was taken prisoner in a
|
||
cowardly attempt to escape. It is maliciously false. His force was
|
||
surrounded by greatly superior numbers, and after a gallant but
|
||
futile resistance, like the wise and humane officer he was, he
|
||
decided to yield rather than cause useless bloodshed. For this act
|
||
he was to be commended, not condemned. It is enough to say that in
|
||
all after years the surviving veterans of his command loved,
|
||
honored and almost idolized him.
|
||
|
||
Continuing the campaign of miserable lies, a newspaper
|
||
paragraph widely circulated, stated that Mr. Ingersoll's daughters
|
||
were "maudlin drunkards!" A clergyman from his pulpit repeated the
|
||
infamous story. When asked to retract, he took refuge, like a moral
|
||
coward, behind the newspaper scrap and made no manly apology. He
|
||
should have been indicted! Right on the heels of this unholy
|
||
slander, and quite naturally following it, came the statement in a
|
||
religious journal that Mr. Ingersoll's daughters had repudiated
|
||
their father's views on religion, and joined a Presbyterian church!
|
||
The truth is that with the exception that as a compliment to Mr.
|
||
Beecher, whom their father esteemed, they once went to hear him
|
||
preach, they never entered the door of an orthodox church, and said
|
||
that they never wished to.
|
||
|
||
HIS "ONLY SON."
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll seldom took the trouble to answer these stories.
|
||
Once in a while at the urging of friends, he would reply to an
|
||
accusation, especially if there was an element of humor in the
|
||
situation. A prominent religious weekly published the following
|
||
news for the enlightenment of its readers: "We are told, on good
|
||
authority, that Colonel Ingersoll's only son was so addicted to
|
||
cheap novel reading that his mind became affected thereby; that he
|
||
was quietly removed to a private asylum, where he shortly afterward
|
||
died." To an inquirer who sent him the clipping he wrote: 1. My
|
||
only son was not a great novel reader; 2. He did not go insane; 3.
|
||
He was not sent to an asylum; 4. He did not die; and 5. I never had
|
||
a son!"
|
||
|
||
"The truth is," he said, "that arguments cannot be answered by
|
||
personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the
|
||
long run, defeats itself."
|
||
|
||
"There was a time when a falsehood, fulminated from the
|
||
pulpit, smote like a sword; but the supply having greatly exceeded
|
||
the demand, clerical misrepresentation has at last become almost an
|
||
innocent amusement. Remembering that only a few years ago men,
|
||
women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for
|
||
having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas
|
||
entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the
|
||
pulpit's last resort."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
43
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
THE "OBSCENE LITERATURE" CHARGE.
|
||
|
||
A more serious and vital attack on his moral character came
|
||
from an influential clergyman in Brooklyn, who from his pulpit made
|
||
the assertion that Colonel Ingersoll was in favor of the
|
||
circulation of "obscene literature, that corrupted the morals and
|
||
debauched the minds of the youth of the land." He cited in evidence
|
||
the untrue report that the Colonel once signed a petition to
|
||
Congress favoring such circulation. It was not so. The preacher did
|
||
not give the facts. He was not honest. If he did not know, the
|
||
circumstances of the case, and the intention of the signers, he
|
||
still was culpable, for the facts were all of record and of easy
|
||
access; but the preacher intended to leave, and did leave, the
|
||
impression that Mr. Ingersoll advocated the circulation through the
|
||
mails of impure and licentious literature. Of course, the very
|
||
thought of such advocacy was foreign and abhorrent to him.
|
||
|
||
Briefly stated, all there was to the hateful charge is this:
|
||
When certain self-appointed censors -- religious fanatics --
|
||
presumed to decide that liberal or infidel literature was
|
||
"obscene," and on that pretext endeavored to have it excluded,
|
||
together with his own writings, from the United States mails, the
|
||
Colonel denounced such an attempt as an infringement on religious
|
||
liberty. He fought for the inviolability and freedom of the mails
|
||
from pharisaical intrusion, and challenged the moral or legal right
|
||
of Christian inquisitors to commit the Government to an Act
|
||
declaring Infidel, or Agnostic, or Atheistic literature "obscene."
|
||
If any further word were needed to show Mr. Ingersoll's attitude on
|
||
this question, listen to this emphatic, even passionate
|
||
declaration:
|
||
|
||
"I despise, I execrate, I denounce, with every drop of my
|
||
blood, any man or woman who would engage, either directly or
|
||
indirectly, in the dissemination of anything that is not absolutely
|
||
pure; any man or woman who would stain with lust the sweet and
|
||
innocent heart of youth. Such a one I despise with all my heart.
|
||
One of my objections to the Old Testament is that it is not a fit
|
||
book to be read by either old or young. It contains passages that
|
||
no minister in the United States would read to his congregation for
|
||
any reward whatever. There are chapters that no gentleman would
|
||
read in the presence of a lady. There are chapters that no father
|
||
would read to his child. There are narratives utterly unfit to be
|
||
told; and the time will come when mankind will wonder that such a
|
||
book was ever called inspired."
|
||
|
||
"I was and am in favor of the destruction of every immoral
|
||
book in the world. I was and am in favor, not only of the law
|
||
against the circulation of such filth, but want it executed to the
|
||
letter in every State of this Union."
|
||
|
||
HIS FORBEARANCE AND SYMPATHY.
|
||
|
||
Let us now see how this patient and forgiving man received and
|
||
endured these things. He was generally silent, even under great
|
||
provocation. His friends were often indignant and urged reply and
|
||
retaliation. He would not gratify them. Only in the slanderous
|
||
attack upon his moral character involved in the "obscene
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
44
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
literature" charge, did he consent to take legal action, which
|
||
resulted in a "Plea of avoidance" by the clerical defendant; and he
|
||
pursued the case only far enough to reveal the facts and establish
|
||
his unclouded reputation. All slander and abuse he endured with a
|
||
calm philosophy. He always held himself open to conviction, and
|
||
there never was a man readier to, acknowledge an error, admit a
|
||
truth, or right a wrong. I have known him to do it many times, and
|
||
to do it gladly, gracefully, beautifully.
|
||
|
||
He had pity and forbearance for the weak and erring. He was
|
||
tender, compassionate, merciful. He pleaded for the criminal, for
|
||
reform in the method of treating him, and urged before State and
|
||
National conventions the duty of society toward him. He did not
|
||
think that all criminals were always and only irretrievably bad. A
|
||
convict whom he had caused to be released from the Joliet
|
||
penitentiary was certainly not incorrigible. The Colonel gave him
|
||
a suit of clothes and some money. In a few months a fine-looking
|
||
man, with the bearing of a gentleman, came to the Colonel to thank
|
||
him again and again, and to return the money which he said he had
|
||
only borrowed.
|
||
|
||
In Mr. Ingersoll's view, the object of all punishment should
|
||
be reformation, not retaliation -- rescue, not revenge. Only such
|
||
punishment should be inflicted as the safety of society demanded.
|
||
He was bitterly opposed to the whipping-post, -- believed that it
|
||
degraded the whipper as well as the whipped, and disgraced the
|
||
State that resorted to it. As for capital punishment, he regarded
|
||
it as legal murder, pure and simple, and believed that it made more
|
||
criminals than it ever dropped from the scaffold, or seated in the
|
||
electric chair.
|
||
|
||
INTELLECTUAL HOSPITALITY.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll emphasized the necessity of free thought. Every
|
||
man should do his own thinking, and he should not be hindered or
|
||
hampered in the exercise of it. Not only had he the right, but it
|
||
was his duty as well as privilege, to form honest opinions and give
|
||
honest expression to them. He claimed this right for himself and
|
||
accorded it to all others. He persistently upheld the right of
|
||
private judgment as against all powers, systems, creeds and
|
||
opinions. Only by its fearless exercise, he held, could the best
|
||
and highest in man be developed. Claiming no infallibility for
|
||
himself, he was tolerant of the views and opinions of others. He
|
||
invited criticism and argument, loved debate, but was not
|
||
disputatious or offensive -- not excited or heated in voice or
|
||
manner, but "slow-pulsed and calm," and deferential toward those
|
||
who differed with him. It was, indeed, a treat to argue with him.
|
||
He not only respected but he admired the one who honestly opposed
|
||
him if he could give a reason for the faith that was in him."
|
||
|
||
HIS AGNOSTICISM.
|
||
|
||
As before remarked, it is not the purpose of the writer to
|
||
enter into a discussion of Mr. Ingersoll's position on religious
|
||
and theological questions, but simply, and in merest outline, to
|
||
attempt worthily to state it. He was an Agnostic, and wanted to be
|
||
recognized as such. "I do not know," was his reply to many of the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
45
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
great problems of life and destiny. "I wish I did know, but will
|
||
never pretend, or say, that I do, when I know that I do not. I have
|
||
the same sources of information that others have, -- all they have
|
||
-- and I know that others do not know." "The clergy know that I
|
||
know that they know they do not know."
|
||
|
||
This was not said in a facetious or boastful way, but as
|
||
expressing his sincere and earnest conviction.
|
||
|
||
"I do not deny. I do not know -- but I do not "believe." I
|
||
believe that the natural is supreme -- that from the infinite chain
|
||
no link can be lost or broken -- that there is no supernatural
|
||
power that can answer prayer -- no power that worship can persuade
|
||
or change -- no power that cares for man.
|
||
|
||
"I believe that with infinite arms Nature embraces them all --
|
||
that there is no interference, no chance; that behind every event
|
||
are the necessary and countless causes, and that beyond every event
|
||
will be and must be the necessary and countless effects.
|
||
|
||
"Man must protect himself. He cannot depend upon the
|
||
supernatural, upon an imaginary Father in the skies. He must
|
||
protect himself by finding the facts in Nature, by developing his
|
||
brain, to the end that he may overcome the obstructions and take
|
||
advantage of the forces of Nature.
|
||
|
||
LIBERTY WITH RESPONSIBILITY.
|
||
|
||
"Thought and speech must be free. The man or men who would put
|
||
a chain upon the brain or a padlock on the tongue are heirs of the
|
||
Inquisition, the enemies of society, the foes of human progress."
|
||
This liberty of thought and speech did not with him mean license.
|
||
He was always careful to make this distinction and to emphasize it.
|
||
"Liberty with Responsibility" was his doctrine. Men must bear the
|
||
consequences. They do bear them. We reap what we sow. Act and
|
||
consequence are inseparable, and no power, human or divine, can
|
||
step between to change this law." "My liberty ends where yours
|
||
begins," was his constant definition of the limit of freedom.
|
||
|
||
ON A FUTURE LIFE.
|
||
|
||
As to a future conscious existence of the individual ego after
|
||
death he said: "I do not know." "I never have denied the
|
||
immortality of the soul. I have simply been honest. I have said: 'I
|
||
do not know.'"
|
||
|
||
"One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor
|
||
fear, nor belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is,
|
||
and it will be as it must be.
|
||
|
||
"We wait and hope."
|
||
|
||
"There is in death, as I believe, nothing worse than sleep."
|
||
|
||
To those who asked, "Why, if there be no conscious future
|
||
state, should the hope be so universally, implanted in the human
|
||
breast?" he replied: "Love was the first to dream of immortality,
|
||
-- not Religion, not Revelation. We love, therefore we wish to
|
||
live."
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
46
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"The hope of immortality is the great oak round which have
|
||
climbed the poisonous vines of superstition. The vines have not
|
||
supported the oak, the oak has supported the vines. As long as men
|
||
live and love and die, this hope will blossom in the human heart."
|
||
|
||
He has repeatedly declared: "I would not destroy the faintest
|
||
ray of human hope, but I deny that we get our idea of immortality
|
||
from the Bible. It existed long before the time of Moses. We find
|
||
it symbolized through all Egypt, through all India. Wherever man
|
||
has lived he has made another world in which to meet the lost of
|
||
this,
|
||
|
||
"The history of this belief we find in tombs and temples
|
||
wrought and carved by those who wept and hoped. Above their dead
|
||
they laid the symbols of another life.
|
||
|
||
"We do not know. We do not prophesy a life of pain. We leave
|
||
the dead with Nature, the mother of us all. Under the bow of hope,
|
||
under the seven-hued arch, let the dead sleep."
|
||
|
||
His attitude on this question he has put in these rhythmical
|
||
lines, -- one of his many prospoems:
|
||
|
||
We do not know, we cannot say, whether death is a wall or a
|
||
door; the beginning or end Of a day; the spreading of pinions to
|
||
soar, or the folding forever of wings; the rise or the set of a
|
||
sun, or an endless life that brings rapture and love to every one."
|
||
|
||
ON THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD.
|
||
|
||
On the existence of a God he was again Agnostic. In one short
|
||
sentence, every word a monosyllable, he has stated a whole
|
||
philosophy of the subject: "We go as far as we can, and the rest of
|
||
the way we say -- God." Could it be, has it ever been, put in
|
||
clearer, shorter, simpler form? When we have reached the limit of
|
||
human knowledge, of human thought, "the rest of the way," the
|
||
Infinite Beyond, the Unknown and Unknowable, the Eternal Mystery,
|
||
we call -- "God." On this vague and shadowy conception as a
|
||
foundation, on this human Guess, have been built all the creeds and
|
||
systems, doctrines and dogmas, of all religions that have bound and
|
||
blinded, bewildered and cursed the race. For himself, when he
|
||
reached the limit of the known he stopped, and waited for further
|
||
light, refusing to follow "blind guides leading the blind" into the
|
||
labyrinths of fear and superstition, of faith and despair.
|
||
|
||
Of one thing he was sure: there could not be a God such as the
|
||
Bible describes and the orthodox worship. There could not be a God
|
||
of the Jews any more than of the Gentiles, -- of the Egyptians, the
|
||
Hindus, the Assyrians, or any other of the races of men. Vishnu and
|
||
Brahma, Isis and Osiris, Jupiter and Junoi -- all the Gods of
|
||
Grecian and Roman mythology were alike the creatures of human hopes
|
||
and fears, ambitions and assumptions, and an equally divine and
|
||
worthless. He was careful, however, in deference to those who
|
||
mistook and misstated his ideas of God, to make this declaration:
|
||
"Let me say once for all, that when I speak of God, I mean the
|
||
being described by Moses, the Jehovah of the Jews. There may be for
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
47
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
aught I know, somewhere in the unknown shoreless vast, some being
|
||
whose dreams are constellations and within whose thought the
|
||
infinite exists. About this being, if such an one exists, I have
|
||
nothing to say, for I know nothing."
|
||
|
||
There may be a God, he further held, but if so, he cannot be,
|
||
he is not, the infinite fiend that ignorant, barbarous and savage
|
||
men have created and worshipped, -- a God who made the world,
|
||
pronounced it "good," and then permitted it to become bad, so bad
|
||
that he had to destroy it and begin over again, repeopling it,
|
||
however, with beings whom he knew would be just as wicked. He could
|
||
not conceive of a good or just God who would order his children to
|
||
slay one another; who waged wars of conquest and extermination;
|
||
tolerated slavery and polygamy; commanded religious persecution;
|
||
laughed at the calamity of his enemies and mocked at their fears;
|
||
a God who slaughtered old men and women, young men and maidens,
|
||
innocent babes at their mothers' breasts, and tortured even dumb
|
||
cattle for the sins of their owners; who in his wrath sent fire and
|
||
sword, pestilence and famine, lightnings and tempests, earthquakes
|
||
and volcanoes, snakes and vermin, upon his chosen people and his
|
||
enemies, to make them fear and love him! Such a conception of deity
|
||
was to him simply monstrous. To his mind it was but the deification
|
||
of all the weaknesses and passions of men -- their anger, jealousy,
|
||
cruelty, hatred and revenge, -- a being invested with infinite
|
||
power and wisdom to carry out his will; and to crown all, and more
|
||
infamous than all, a God who at the last would punish any of his
|
||
erring creatures with consuming fire and be himself "the keeper of
|
||
an eternal penitentiary!" He labored all his life and with all his
|
||
powers to free mankind from the thraldom of such a conception of a
|
||
Supreme Being. He used to say: "From the aspersions of, the pulpit,
|
||
from the slanders of the church, I seek to rescue the reputation of
|
||
the Deity." "It has been said, An honest man is the noblest work of
|
||
God.' I say, "An honest God is the noblest work of Man!
|
||
|
||
RELIGIONS DECAY AND DIE.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll believed, from the history of all ages past,
|
||
that religions, like individuals and nations, have their periods of
|
||
youth and maturity, decay and death; and he recalls for us this
|
||
history in the eloquent passage from his lecture on "The Gods:"
|
||
|
||
"In that vast cemetery called the past, are most of the
|
||
religions of men, and there, too, are nearly all their gods. The
|
||
sacred temples of India were ruins long ago. Over column and
|
||
cornice, over the painted and pictured walls, cling and creep the
|
||
trailing vines. Brahma, the golden, with four heads and four arms;
|
||
Vishnu, the somber, the punisher of the wicked, with his three
|
||
eyes, his crescent, and his necklace. of skulls; Siva, the
|
||
destroyer, red with seas of blood; Kali, the goddess; Draupadi, the
|
||
white armed, and Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the
|
||
thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred Nile,
|
||
Isis no longer wandering weeps, searching for the dead Osiris. The
|
||
shadow of Typhon's scowl falls no more upon the waves. The sun
|
||
rises as of yore, and his golden beams still smite the lips of
|
||
Memnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fakes
|
||
are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still waiting for
|
||
the resurrection promised by their priests, and the old beliefs,
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
48
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a
|
||
language lost and dead. Odin, the author of life and soul, Vili and
|
||
Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the icy halls
|
||
of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer,
|
||
dashes mountains to the earth no more. Broken are the circles and
|
||
cromlechs of the ancient Druids; fallen upon the summits of the
|
||
hills, and covered with the centuries' moss, are the sacred cairns.
|
||
The divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs have died out in the
|
||
ashes of the past, and there is none to rekindle, and none to feed
|
||
the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still; the drained cup of
|
||
Bacchus has been thrown aside; Venus lies dead in stone, and her
|
||
white bosom heaves no more with love. The streams still murmur, but
|
||
no naiads bathe; the trees still wave, but in the forest aisles no
|
||
dryads dance. The gods have flown from high Olympus. Not even the
|
||
beautiful women can lure them back, and Dance lies unnoticed, naked
|
||
to the stars. Hushed forever are the thunders of Sinai; lost are
|
||
the voices of the prophets, and the land once flowing with milk and
|
||
honey, is but a desert waste. One by one, the myths have faded from
|
||
the clouds; one by one, the phantom host has disappeared, and one
|
||
by one, facts, truths and realities have taken their places. The
|
||
supernatural has almost gone, but the natural remains. The gods
|
||
have fled, but man is here.
|
||
|
||
AS TO THE BIBLE.
|
||
|
||
It is hardly necessary to add, that with the views already
|
||
expressed, Mr. Ingersoll could not believe the Bible to be the
|
||
"inspired word of God." He regarded it as simply a human book -- a
|
||
very human book, -- a history more or less fragmentary of the
|
||
Jewish nation and people. As such it was the product of the times
|
||
when its different parts were written. It reflects, naturally, the
|
||
faults and follies, the weaknesses and errors, the customs and
|
||
habits and opinions of its writers and of the people for whom they
|
||
wrote. It contains, along with its traditions and religious
|
||
teachings, many wise and moral maxims and exhortations appealing to
|
||
the higher and nobler in man. With all its admitted beauties and
|
||
excellencies, however, there is so much that is trivial and false
|
||
and contradictory and impossible, that its claim to divine
|
||
inspiration seems to many to be an absurdity. To Mr. Ingersoll's
|
||
mind all the earmarks show its human origin. Its history and
|
||
chronology, its astronomy and geology, its science and philosophy,
|
||
its biology, anthropology, theology and demonology -- all its
|
||
"ologies" -- are ignorant, crude and impossible. Its myths and
|
||
miracles, childish traditions and superstitions, its immoral and
|
||
anti-natural precepts and examples, show absolutely its purely
|
||
human origin. He thought and said that, in his judgment, Adam was
|
||
not a perfect gentleman, according to the nineteenth century
|
||
standard; and that Moses and Aaron; Joshua and Jephtha; Abraham,
|
||
Isaac and Jacob; David and Saul and Solomon; Jonah, Samson,
|
||
Jeremiah and Elisha, with other "worthies" of the Old Testament,
|
||
were "a sorry lot," most of whom, if living to-day, would probably
|
||
be in the penitentiary.
|
||
|
||
Besides, he said, there are many bibles and bibles, as there
|
||
are many religions, -- sacred scriptures of other races and peoples
|
||
-- some of them of a civilization superior to and an antiquity
|
||
greater than the Jewish; to say nothing of the many differing
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
49
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
manuscripts and translations, -- "books" lost that have not been
|
||
found, "books" left in that should have been left out, and that
|
||
were admitted or excluded into or from the "sacred canon" by the
|
||
"votes" of human councils, often by narrow majorities and after
|
||
heated and angry discussions -- together with the many
|
||
interpolations, anachronisms and contradictions that mark these
|
||
sacred books, -- all these testify to their very natural earthly
|
||
origin.
|
||
|
||
MY BIBLE.
|
||
|
||
"For thousands of years men have been writing the real Bible,
|
||
and it is being written from day to day, and it will never be
|
||
finished while man has life. All the facts that we know, all the
|
||
truly recorded events, all the discoveries and inventions, all the
|
||
wonderful machines whose wheels and levers seem to think, all the
|
||
poems, crystals from the brain, flowers from the heart, all the
|
||
songs of love and joy, of smiles and tears, the great dramas of
|
||
Imagination's world, the wondrous paintings, miracles of form and
|
||
color, of light and shade, the marvelous marbles that seem to live
|
||
and breathe, the secrets told by rock and star, by dust and flower,
|
||
by rain and snow, by frost and flame, by winding stream and desert
|
||
sand, by mountain range and billowed sea.
|
||
|
||
"All the wisdom that lengthens and ennobles life -- all that
|
||
avoids or cures disease, or conquers pain -- all just and perfect
|
||
laws and rules that guide and shape our lives, all thoughts that
|
||
feed the flames of love, the music that transfigures, enraptures
|
||
and enthralls, the victories of heart and brain, the miracles that
|
||
hands have wrought, the deft and cunning hands of those who worked
|
||
for wife and child, the histories of noble deeds, of brave and
|
||
useful men, of faithful loving wives, of quenchless mother-love, of
|
||
conflicts for the right, of sufferings for the truth, of all the
|
||
best that all the men and women of the world have said, and thought
|
||
and done through all the years, -- these treasures of the heart and
|
||
brain -- these are the Sacred Scriptures of the human race."
|
||
|
||
VIII.
|
||
|
||
ON ETERNAL PUNISHMENT.
|
||
|
||
We come now to a statement, feebly inadequate, of Mr.
|
||
Ingersoll's position on this question. It was to him the
|
||
culminating point of all his objectives. It mattered little to him,
|
||
comparatively, what people believed on abstruse and disputed
|
||
questions of theology, science, or philosophy. But on the vital
|
||
question of the destiny of the human soul he stood firm as a rock.
|
||
Here he would admit no compromise, make no concession. In this, he
|
||
was no longer an Agnostic, -- he knew. Everlasting punishment of
|
||
the "unrepenting sinner," of the "wicked," of anybody, was to his
|
||
mind and heart an unspeakable horror -- a frightful insanity. This
|
||
doctrine it was that first opened his eyes to the falseness of
|
||
Christian theology, and separated him forever from all confidence
|
||
in, and sympathy with its teachings, and made him one of its most
|
||
implacable foes. This dogma he despised and execrated. He denounced
|
||
it as a "doctrine, the infamy of which no language is Sufficient to
|
||
express."
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
50
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
He said that, "While the Old Testament threatens men, women
|
||
and children with disease, famine, war, pestilence and death, there
|
||
are no threatenings of punishment beyond this life. The doctrine of
|
||
eternal punishment is a dogma of the New Testament. This doctrine,
|
||
the most cruel, the most infamous, is taught, if taught at all, in
|
||
the Bible -- in the New Testament. One cannot imagine what the
|
||
human heart has suffered by reason of the frightful doctrine of
|
||
eternal damnation. It is a doctrine so abhorrent to every drop of
|
||
my blood, so infinitely cruel, that it is impossible for me to
|
||
respect either the head or heart of any human being who teaches or
|
||
fears it. This doctrine necessarily subverts all ideas of justice.
|
||
To inflict infinite punishment for finite crimes, or rather for
|
||
crimes committed by finite beings, is a proposition so monstrous
|
||
that I am astonished it ever found lodgment in the brain of man.
|
||
Whoever says that we can be happy in heaven while those we loved on
|
||
earth are suffering infinite torments in eternal fire, defames and
|
||
calumniates the human heart."
|
||
|
||
And who can doubt that among the foremost factors in chasing
|
||
this black shadow from the earth has been the gentle, loving, brave
|
||
and fearless Ingersoll.
|
||
|
||
TRUE CONSOLATION.
|
||
|
||
His teachings were a consolation to many a sorrow in heart.
|
||
Many a heavy burden has by them been lifted from timid and troubled
|
||
souls. In San Francisco, his cousin Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, the
|
||
philanthropist, brought to his attention the case of a devoutly
|
||
pious friend, a widow, whose only boy had been suddenly taken from
|
||
her side. He was a good and loving son, the idol of her heart, the
|
||
pride and prop of her life, but he was not a Christian, and she
|
||
feared for his eternal fate, -- felt that heaven would be no heaven
|
||
to her without her boy. Her grief was inconsolable. The
|
||
"consolations" of the gospel failed to satisfy her heart, or dispel
|
||
her fears. The visits of her pastor brought no comfort, left behind
|
||
no peace. Christian friends came in vain to her relief. Appealed to
|
||
by his cousin, Colonel Ingersoll wrote a letter to this sorrowing
|
||
heart. He urged her not to fear, saying:
|
||
|
||
"Mrs. Cooper has told me the sad story of your almost infinite
|
||
sorrow. I am not foolish enough to suppose that I can say or do
|
||
anything to lessen your great grief, your anguish for his loss; but
|
||
maybe I can say something to drive from your poor heart the fiend
|
||
of fear -- fear for him.
|
||
|
||
"If there is a God, let us believe that he is good, and if he
|
||
is good, the good have nothing to fear. I have been told that your
|
||
son was kind and generous; that he was filled with charity and
|
||
sympathy. Now, we know that in this world like begets like,
|
||
kindness produces kindness, and all goodness bears the fruit of
|
||
joy. Belief is nothing -- deeds are everything; and if your son was
|
||
kind he will naturally find kindness wherever he may be. You would
|
||
not inflict endless pain upon your worst enemy. Is God less
|
||
merciful than you? You could not bear to see a viper suffer
|
||
forever. Is it possible that God will doom a kind and generous boy
|
||
to everlasting pain? Nothing can be more monstrously absurd and
|
||
cruel.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
51
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"The truth is, that no human being knows anything of what is
|
||
beyond the grave. If nothing is known, then it is not honest for
|
||
anyone to pretend that he does know. If nothing is known, then we
|
||
'Can hope only for the good. If there be a God your boy is no more
|
||
in his power now than he was before his death -- no more than you
|
||
are at the present moment. Why should we fear God more after death
|
||
than before? Does the feeling of God toward his children change the
|
||
moment they die? While we are alive they say God loves us; when
|
||
will he cease to love us? True love never changes. I beg of you to
|
||
throw away all fear. Take counsel of your own heart. If God exists,
|
||
your heart is the best revelation of him, and your heart could
|
||
never send your boy to endless pain. After all, no one knows. The
|
||
ministers know nothing. All the churches in the world know no more
|
||
on this subject than the ants on the ant-hills. Creeds are good for
|
||
nothing except to break the hearts of the loving. Have courage.
|
||
Under the seven-hued arch of hope let your boy sleep. I do not
|
||
pretend to know, but I do know that others do not know. Listen to
|
||
your heart, believe what it says, and wait with patience and
|
||
without fear for what the future has for all. If we can get no
|
||
comfort from what people know, let us avoid being driven to despair
|
||
by what they do not know.
|
||
|
||
"I wish I could say something that would put a star in your
|
||
night of grief -- a little flower in your lonely path -- and if an
|
||
unbeliever has such a wish, surely an infinitely good being never
|
||
made a soul to be the food of pain through countless years."
|
||
|
||
To this letter came the prompt reply:
|
||
|
||
"Dear Colonel Ingersoll: I found your letter inclosed with one
|
||
from Mrs. Cooper at my door on the way to this hotel to see a
|
||
friend. I broke the seal here, and through blinding tears --
|
||
letting it fall from my hands between each sentence to sob my heart
|
||
out -- read it. The first peace I have known, real peace, since the
|
||
terrible blow, has come to me now. While I will not doubt the
|
||
existence of a God, I feel that I can rest my grief-stricken heart
|
||
on his goodness and mercy; and you have helped me to do this. Why,
|
||
you have helped me to believe in an all-merciful and loving
|
||
creator, who has gathered (I will try to believe) my poor little
|
||
boy -- my kind, large-hearted child -- into his tender and
|
||
sheltering arms. There is a genuine ring in your words that lifts
|
||
me up.
|
||
|
||
"Your belief, so clear and logical, so filled with common
|
||
sense, corresponds, so far back as I can remember, with my own
|
||
matter-of-fact ideas; and I was the child of good and praying
|
||
parents, and my great wondering eyes, questioning silently when
|
||
they talked to me, my strange ways, while I tried to be good,
|
||
caused them often great anxiety and many a pang -- God forgive me.
|
||
|
||
"I am writing, while people are talking about me, just a line
|
||
to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the comfort you have
|
||
given me to-day. You great, good man; I see the traces of your
|
||
tears all over your letter, and I could clasp your hand and bless
|
||
you for this comfort you have given my poor heart."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
52
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
ON SPECIAL PROVIDENCE.
|
||
|
||
Colonel Ingersoll did not believe in a special Providence
|
||
caring for each human soul, answering prayer and extending his
|
||
almighty arm in rescue of the innocent and helpless and in reward
|
||
of the faithful and righteous; nor did he believe that this
|
||
Providence ever heard or answered the most horrible prayer ever
|
||
offered by human lips or written by human hand -- David's 109th
|
||
imprecatory Psalm.
|
||
|
||
A minister called on him once to say: "Colonel, I understand
|
||
you do not believe in a special providence." "I do not." "Well, I
|
||
want to prove it to you beyond all question, in my own case. Some
|
||
years ago I engaged passage on a steamer, to go abroad. Before she
|
||
sailed, I had a fear, a presentiment, or feeling -- call it what
|
||
you will -- that something would happen to that steamer. I got so
|
||
worked up over it, that I took it to the Lord in earnest prayer. As
|
||
the result, I gave up my stateroom. Colonel, that steamer never
|
||
reached port. She went down, and every one of the four hundred
|
||
souls on board sank to a watery grave. Will you tell me that that
|
||
was not a divine interposition in my behalf, in answer to my
|
||
prayer? Is it not proof positive that God cared for me in a
|
||
special, personal way?" "But, my dear sir," was the Colonel's
|
||
reply, "what do you suppose the families and friends of the four
|
||
hundred drowned thought of your special providence? Do you think
|
||
that God cared only for your one little soul and forgot to warn all
|
||
the rest? It won't do. Besides, do you feel comfortable at the
|
||
thought that having such a warning from the Lord you did not, day
|
||
and night, beseech the captain of that ship to postpone his
|
||
sailing, at least till you could get word from heaven that it was
|
||
safe to go?" The minister did not reply. "Now, let me tell you my
|
||
case," continued the Colonel. "Providence cared for me a little
|
||
while ago in a striking way, though you may not believe it. A
|
||
thunder-bolt struck the Young Men's Christian Association's
|
||
building which adjoined my own office in Washington, and I escaped!
|
||
If that shaft was aimed at me, I certainly think your providence
|
||
was a very poor marksman!"
|
||
|
||
ON MIRACLES.
|
||
|
||
When the subject of miracles was broached, he could hardly
|
||
repress a smile, -- the belief in them seemed to him so hopelessly
|
||
unworthy of an intelligent, thinking mind. He could find no warrant
|
||
in Nature, or experience, for such a belief. He held that the
|
||
belief had its foundation in the ignorance, credulity and fear of
|
||
the superstitious savage. That these lowest elements in man should
|
||
be played upon by designing priests to extort reverence for their
|
||
persons and their office and obedience to their authority, -- to
|
||
say nothing of the revenue extracted from the poor and toiling
|
||
millions, -- Seemed to him a monstrous crime. He could not argue
|
||
the question seriously, it was to him altogether outside the pale
|
||
of rational thought. Belief in miracles has always been the mother
|
||
of superstition, and he held the church responsible for upholding
|
||
and perpetuating it.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
53
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"Believers in miracles," he said, "should not endeavor to
|
||
explain them. There is but one, way to explain anything, and that
|
||
is to account for it by natural agencies. The moment you explain a
|
||
miracle, it disappears. You should depend not upon explanation, but
|
||
upon assertion. You should not be driven from the field because the
|
||
miracle is shown to be unreasonable. You should reply that all
|
||
miracles are unreasonable. Neither should you be in the least
|
||
disheartened if it be shown to be impossible. The possible is not
|
||
miraculous. You should take the ground that if miracles were
|
||
reasonable, and possible, there would be no reward paid for
|
||
believing them. The Christian has the goodness to believe, while
|
||
the sinner asks for evidence. It is enough for God to work
|
||
miracles, without being called upon to substantiate them for the
|
||
benefit of unbelievers."
|
||
|
||
The efforts of otherwise intelligent men, the so-called or
|
||
miscalled Christian scientists, to reconcile the miracles of the
|
||
Old and New Testaments with the facts and laws of Nature were to
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll simply amusing. "We must remember," he said, "that
|
||
the priests of one religion never credit the miracles of another
|
||
religion. Is this because priests instinctively know priests? Now,
|
||
when a Christian tells a Buddhist some of the miracles of the Old
|
||
and New Testaments, the Buddhist smiles. When the Buddhist tells a
|
||
Christian the miracles performed by the Buddha, the Christian
|
||
laughs."
|
||
|
||
Continuing, he said in substance: the truth is, that in common
|
||
belief we call that "miraculous" which is simply mysterious or
|
||
wonderful. We speak of the "miracle" of sand and star, of life and
|
||
growth, of decay and death, but they are only the immutable and
|
||
uniform operations of the laws of Nature. To suspend these laws,
|
||
even for a moment, would result in confusion, wreck and universal
|
||
doom. According to the account, General Joshua commanded that "the
|
||
sun and moon stop in the heavens in order that General Joshua might
|
||
have more time to murder; the shadow on a dial goes back ten
|
||
degrees to convince a petty king of a barbarous people that he is
|
||
not going to die of a boil." We now know that if these "miracles"
|
||
had been wrought, the world would have been instantly plunged into
|
||
the night of chaos and ruin. Nature's laws are uniform and
|
||
inexorably persistent in their operation. They obey no master,
|
||
suffer no interference. Like causes always and everywhere produce
|
||
like effects, and no mandate from earth or sky, no "miracle,"
|
||
however attested, can change this law.
|
||
|
||
Miracles are simply the product of the unenlightened human
|
||
imagination, stimulated and perverted by the mistaken zeal of
|
||
sincerity, or by the designing craft of religious hypocrisy or
|
||
fanaticism. No miracles are wrought to-day.
|
||
|
||
On the Sunday question he was equally emphatic. He did not
|
||
believe that that day, or any day, could be "holy" or "sacred" in
|
||
the theological sense. That day was holy to him in which some kind
|
||
thought was expressed, or loving deed done for others. "How," he
|
||
asked, "can a space of time be holy? You might as well talk of a
|
||
pious multiplication table, a moral triangle, or a virtuous
|
||
vacuum." He regarded the day as a good civil institution, as a day
|
||
of rest from unnecessary toil, and if sacred for anything, to be
|
||
devoted to individual, family and social joys.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
54
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
His views on slavery and polygamy; on inspiration, the
|
||
trinity, the divinity of Christ, -- whom he regarded as a good,
|
||
kind and gentle man, a reformer and an infidel in his day; on the
|
||
incarnation; on the fall of man, the atonement, the resurrection of
|
||
the body and other doctrines of orthodox Christianity, are too
|
||
generally known to need rehearsal here. He rejected them all, and
|
||
in his works has given manifold reasons therefor.
|
||
|
||
ON NATURE AND MAN.
|
||
|
||
He believed that Nature, or the Universe, is all there is;
|
||
that it is the only God. In this he was pantheistic, yet not
|
||
professedly a Pantheist. nor was he a Deist. He said:
|
||
|
||
"Let us be honest with ourselves. In the presence of countless
|
||
mysteries; standing beneath the boundless heaven sown thick with
|
||
constellations; knowing that each grain of sand, each leaf, each
|
||
blade of grass, asks of every mind the answerless question; knowing
|
||
that the simplest thing defies solution; feeling that we deal with
|
||
the superficial and the relative, and that we are forever eluded by
|
||
the real, the absolute, -- let us admit the limitations of our
|
||
minds, and let us have the courage and the candor to say: We do not
|
||
know." "The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The
|
||
Agnostic says: "I do not know, but I do not believe there is any
|
||
God." The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he
|
||
knows there is a God; but we know that he does not know. He simply
|
||
believes. He cannot know. The Atheist cannot know that God does not
|
||
exist."
|
||
|
||
As we have seen, he was an Agnostics -- he did not know, nor
|
||
pretend, nor profess to know. He did not personify Nature as God.
|
||
Nature to him had no moral qualities or attributes, -- neither
|
||
loved nor hated; held no scepter like a king dispensing favors and
|
||
rewards, no power like a judge inflicting penalties and pains. He
|
||
believed that man himself is king and judge, victor and victim, his
|
||
own master, his own slave, that he reaps what he sows, gathers his
|
||
own harvest.
|
||
|
||
He held that Nature or the elements, the Universe or God
|
||
cannot be the person, with "body, parts and passions," that man in
|
||
his ignorance and faith has created. Man in his vain search for the
|
||
Infinite has simply personified the forces of Nature and given to
|
||
them qualities and attributes in accord with his own highest and
|
||
lowest conceptions. Nature, according to Mr. Ingersoll, has no
|
||
mental, moral, or physical embodiment of a human type -- is not an
|
||
exaggerated and sublimated man, to be feared and worshiped. It has
|
||
no appetites, no wants, and cannot therefore be entreated by
|
||
prayer, flattered by praise, melted by tears, or bribed by
|
||
offerings and sacrifices. He believed that nothing we know can be
|
||
higher or lower than the natural -- can be either supernatural or
|
||
infranatural, -- that there are no gods, no angels, no devils, no
|
||
heavens, no hells. "The Universe is all there is, or was, or will
|
||
be. It is both subject and object; contemplator and contemplated;
|
||
creator and created; destroyer and destroyed; preserver and
|
||
preserved, and hath within itself all causes, modes, motions, and
|
||
effects."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
55
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
He taught that man only could be the providence of man; that
|
||
if man is to be helped, man must be the helper; that he will look
|
||
in vain to the mountains or the clouds, -- that he himself must be
|
||
and make his own heaven, as he sadly enough makes his own hell.
|
||
Summing up his philosophy of human life he said: "Happiness is the
|
||
only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is
|
||
now. The way to be happy is to make others so."
|
||
|
||
"ICONOCLASM."
|
||
|
||
Many, by way of reproach, called him a "rude Iconoclast,"
|
||
shattering the images worshipped by devout souls and setting up no
|
||
others in their places. They cried, "You take away our 'idols,' as
|
||
you call them, and give us nothing in return." To these he would
|
||
say:
|
||
|
||
"We do not want creeds; we do not want idols; we want
|
||
knowledge; we want happiness.
|
||
|
||
"And yet we are told by the Church that we have accomplished
|
||
nothing; that we are simply destroyers; that we tear down without
|
||
building again.
|
||
|
||
"Is it nothing to free the mind? Is it nothing to civilize
|
||
mankind? Is it nothing to fill the world with light, with
|
||
discovery, with science? Is it nothing to dignify man and exalt the
|
||
intellect? Is it nothing to grope your way into the dreary prisons,
|
||
the damp and dripping dungeons, the dark and silent cells of
|
||
superstition, where the souls of men are chained to floors of
|
||
stone; to greet them like a ray of light, like the song of a bird,
|
||
the murmur of a stream; to see the dull eyes open and grow slowly
|
||
bright; to feel yourself grasped by the shrunken and unused hands,
|
||
and hear yourself thanked by a strange and hollow voice?
|
||
|
||
"Is it nothing to conduct these souls gradually into the
|
||
blessed light of day -- to let them see again the happy fields, the
|
||
sweet, green earth, and hear the everlasting music of the waves? Is
|
||
it nothing to make men wipe the dust from their swollen knees, the
|
||
tears from their blanched and furrowed cheeks? Is it a small thing
|
||
to relieve the heavens of an insatiate monster and write upon the
|
||
eternal dome, glittering with stars, the grand word -- Freedom?
|
||
|
||
"Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the,
|
||
holy tears of pity -- to unbind the martyr from the stake -- break
|
||
all the chains -- put out the fires of civil war -- stay the sword
|
||
of the fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the Church from the
|
||
white throat of Science?
|
||
|
||
"Is it a small thing to make men truly free -- to destroy the
|
||
dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power -- the poisoned fables of
|
||
superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the
|
||
fiend of Fear?"
|
||
|
||
Do not be frightened, he urged; "Fear is the dungeon of the
|
||
soul." "Do not be afraid to doubt; your doubts are the smartest
|
||
things about you.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
56
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"The destroyer of weeds and thistles is a benefactor, whether
|
||
he soweth grain or not. I cannot, for my life, see why one should
|
||
be charged with tearing down and not rebuilding, simply because he
|
||
exposes a sham, or detects a lie. I do not feel under any
|
||
obligation to build something in the place of a detected falsehood.
|
||
All I think I am under obligation to put in the place of a detected
|
||
lie, is the detection."
|
||
|
||
"I have not torn the good down. I have only endeavored to
|
||
trample out the ignorant, cruel fires of hell. I do not tear away
|
||
the passage: 'God will be merciful to the merciful.' I do not
|
||
destroy the promise: 'If you will forgive others, God will forgive
|
||
you.'
|
||
|
||
"There is no darkness but ignorance, no light but
|
||
intelligence," he asserted over and over again. "On the ruins of
|
||
ignorance the splendid temple of intelligence must be reared. In
|
||
the pace of darkness the light must be made to shine."
|
||
|
||
"Some may ask, 'Are you trying to take our religion away?'
|
||
|
||
"To such I answer, No. Superstition is not religion.
|
||
|
||
"To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to
|
||
pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and
|
||
remember benefits -- to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter
|
||
honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against
|
||
slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to
|
||
make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to
|
||
cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that
|
||
genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to
|
||
cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill
|
||
life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving
|
||
words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new
|
||
truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the
|
||
storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done
|
||
and then to be resigned -- this is the religion of reason, the
|
||
creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart."
|
||
|
||
What did Mr. Ingersoll think of Christ?' That he was simply a
|
||
man, -- not "God incarnate," as theologians express it. He was not,
|
||
could not have been, miraculously conceived. He was the son, the
|
||
first-born, of Jewish parents, naturally begotten, He learned and
|
||
followed his father's trade and lived in the home with the rest of
|
||
the family. We know nothing of his boyhood aside from apocryphal
|
||
tales told of wonders he wrought for the amusement and amazement of
|
||
his playmates, and the gospel story of confounding the doctors in
|
||
the temple by his precocious wisdom. His mother, as a woman, and
|
||
the wife of Joseph, must have believed in her heart that Christ was
|
||
the child of their union, and not the offspring of Jehovah. Once
|
||
when they feared their boy was lost, she said on finding him, "Thy
|
||
father and I" -- thy parents -- "have sought thee, sorrowing."
|
||
|
||
The writer of Matthew's gospel believed, with other Jews, that
|
||
the Christ of prophesy and of their hopes was to be an earthly
|
||
king,' who should "sit on the throne of his father David." He
|
||
therefore traces the ancestry of Joseph, "as was supposed," not of
|
||
Mary, to show that the blood of David was in Joseph's veins. Christ
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
57
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
was a human being -- could have been none other. The claim of
|
||
divinity was not made for him by the early Church until years after
|
||
his death, for the epistles and gospels were not known, or accepted
|
||
as authority until at least a century-and-a-half later.
|
||
|
||
In his review of the four gospels, Mr. Ingersoll shows that
|
||
there was not agreement. This want of harmony was apparent, more
|
||
perhaps in the omission of important events and doctrines than in
|
||
the interpolations and errors of translation. He points out
|
||
especially that the most vital message of all, the Atonement, is no
|
||
definitely set forth by either of the three evangelists. Only John
|
||
tells us that we must "believe?' and be "born again" in order to be
|
||
saved. The other three had not heard of it, or did not regard
|
||
salvation by faith as an essential teaching of their Master, else
|
||
they would, all of them have said so. Instead, they exalted and
|
||
emphasized the moral precepts, the practice of goodness, mercy,
|
||
purity of heart, forgiveness, charity -- the doctrines preached by
|
||
Christ in his "Sermon on the Mount." This sermon was to be for his
|
||
hearers their guide and chart through life and the key to open for
|
||
them the portals of heaven.
|
||
|
||
Of course he discarded all miracles, myths, legends and false
|
||
records of the words said to have been spoken and deeds said to
|
||
have been done by Christ. He regarded these as the source and cause
|
||
of the beliefs of his misguided and deluded, even though sincere
|
||
and devout, followers. He could understand and account for their
|
||
credulity, and their reverential homage, and did not wonder at it.
|
||
Did not they see, this kinsman of theirs, their neighbor and
|
||
countryman, "going about doing good?" Was he not healing their
|
||
sick, causing their lame to leap, their sightless eyes to see,
|
||
their silent lips to utter speech, their closed ears to hear
|
||
melodious sounds, and marvel of marvels! their dead to be raised
|
||
from "cold obstruction" to warm and throbbing life? And all for
|
||
them! Could they be other than grateful for his kindness, his
|
||
sympathy and compassion? They looked upon him as a wise and
|
||
powerful friend, who took their part against rich and heartless
|
||
oppressors, and were overwhelmed with pity and anguish at his cruel
|
||
and pathetic death. And for their sakes! No wonder that they
|
||
worshipped him!
|
||
|
||
The early Church, growing in numbers and power, taking
|
||
advantage of this loving adoration, added the forces of mystery and
|
||
command to complete its mastery of souls. Thus did Christianity as
|
||
a system begin, and thus for centuries did it continue to be, like
|
||
all other religions since the world has been. We have found many
|
||
Christs in many races, many lands. We have seen many systems of
|
||
religion appear and disappear -- arrive, flourish, decay and die.
|
||
These all had their miraculous births, superstitious beliefs,
|
||
sacred books, cunning priests, formal ceremonies, and often cruel
|
||
and inhuman rites -- with millions of devoted followers to attest
|
||
to their divine mission and authority.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll believed, in all sincerity, that Christ was a
|
||
good man, not an imposter, not a hypocrite, but one of the best of
|
||
men that ever "touched this bank and shoal of Time." He was kind,
|
||
tender and compassionate. He loved little children and gathered
|
||
them in his arms. In his ministry he was intensely earnest, self-
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
58
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
denying and indefatigable. He preached and labored for no salary,
|
||
-- gave his gospel freely, "without money and without price," and
|
||
was so poor that "he had not where to lay his head," and lived on
|
||
the hospitality and alms of his followers. Very like, Mr. Ingersoll
|
||
thought, the itinerant preachers of the early Methodist. Church who
|
||
were more or less warmly welcomed in the homes of their flocks.
|
||
This reminded him of the pious woman who entertained several
|
||
ministers of her denomination attending quarterly conference. On
|
||
the first morning of their stay she asked her husband for an extra
|
||
supply of money to do the marketing, saying, -- "You know them
|
||
religiouses eats orful!" Apropos of this question of Christian
|
||
hospitality, so often abused, a minister once visited a "brother"
|
||
living in another city. He prolonged his stay beyond a reasonable
|
||
time. Hints that his early departure would not greatly grieve the
|
||
family, were not taken. At last, provoked, the goodman of the house
|
||
invoked the help of the Lord. At family worship one morning he
|
||
prayed: "When our brother leaves us today, go with him, bless him
|
||
in basket and in store," -- and so on. The prayer was quickly
|
||
answered, and preacher and carpet-bag disappeared before the hour
|
||
for luncheon had arrived. Another case was that of a Christian
|
||
worker who late at night, and without notice, brought himself and
|
||
his two boys to a "brother's" home, saying frankly that it was too
|
||
expensive for him to stop at the hotel! Mr. Ingersoll did not mean
|
||
to condemn or disparage the hospitality of the early Christian
|
||
disciples, but he thought the modern practice of "Pious billeting,"
|
||
as he termed it, somewhat overdone.
|
||
|
||
In the story of Mary and Martha -- probably apocryphal -- Mr.
|
||
Ingersoll thought that Christ as a guest was hardly fair to Martha
|
||
-- not as appreciative as he might have been of her "careful"
|
||
concern for his bodily comfort. His extravagant praise for Mary
|
||
should have been equally shared by both sisters. He seemed to have
|
||
been more pleased with the loving attentions of Mary, who sat at
|
||
his feet anointing them with oil, bathing them with tears, an
|
||
wiping them with her flowing tresses, than he was with the "poorer
|
||
part" that Martha "chose" in entertaining him. Martha stood in the
|
||
kitchen as we might say in modern parlance, cooking, baking and
|
||
then serving the food, and really loving him, while Mary stayed in
|
||
the parlor kneeling and adoring. As one has put it: "Mary wept,
|
||
Martha swept." Mr. Ingersoll's choice was for Martha as the better
|
||
hostess.
|
||
|
||
Christ was serene, serious, sad and solemn, as befitted his
|
||
great mission. "Jesus wept." He could not be jovial, gay, or
|
||
flippant, lighthearted or humorous. We do not know that he ever
|
||
enjoyed a joke, or indulged in a hearty laugh. He attended a
|
||
wedding feast, and may have been merry over the wine he made out of
|
||
water, but we do not know. We do know that he was terribly severe
|
||
in his denunciations of wrong and of wrong-doers, and sometimes
|
||
displayed impatience and temper when displeased, and administered
|
||
unmerited and unjust rebuke. On one occasion, being hungry, he
|
||
approached a fig tree expecting fruit, although "the time of figs
|
||
was not yet," and finding "nothing but leaves" he "cursed" the
|
||
innocent tree, saying, "Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward
|
||
forever," and instantly the poor thing "withered away." Mr.
|
||
Ingersoll could not reconcile this transaction with goodness or
|
||
greatness, and thought that a "miracle of blessing" rather than of
|
||
cursing should then and there have been performed. He thought and
|
||
hoped that the story, like others, was an interpolation.
|
||
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
59
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
The simple truth, as believed by Mr. Ingersoll, is that Christ
|
||
was an oriental Prophet, a religious Reformer, an Evangelist, a
|
||
Protestant against the evils and abuses, the false teachings and
|
||
formal rites of the Jewish synagogue and altar. He was an Infidel
|
||
and Heretic in the eyes of the orthodox of his day, and was put to
|
||
a cruel and shameful death on the cross because he dared to oppose
|
||
and expose the errors of the church of his fathers. In this he was
|
||
fearless, courageous, heroic, and truly one of the greatest of the
|
||
"glorious army of Martyrs."
|
||
|
||
He must have been attractive and magnetic in his person,
|
||
speech and manner, and capable of strong and enduring attachments
|
||
-- in short, an altogether loving and lovable man. These fine
|
||
traits in him Mr. Ingersoll fully understood and appreciated. He
|
||
had no aversion, no hatred, only praise, for the Peasant of
|
||
Palestine. He was not an enemy, but a friend of the human Christ,
|
||
notwithstanding the calumny and slander of orthodox priests and
|
||
teachers. He said:
|
||
|
||
"And let me say here, once for all, that for the man Christ I
|
||
have infinite respect. Let me say, once for all, that the place
|
||
where man has died for man is holy ground. And let me say, once for
|
||
all, that to that great and serene man I gladly pay the tribute of
|
||
my admiration and my tears. He was an infidel in his time. He was
|
||
regarded as a blasphemer, and his life was destroyed by hypocrites,
|
||
who have in all ages, done what they could to trample freedom and
|
||
manhood out of the human mind. Had I lived at that time I would
|
||
have been his friend, and should he come again he will not find a
|
||
better friend than I will be.
|
||
|
||
"That is for the man. For the theological creation I have a
|
||
different feeling. If he was, in fact, God, he knew there was no
|
||
such thing as death. He knew that what we called death was but the
|
||
eternal opening of the golden gates of everlasting joy; and it took
|
||
no heroism to face a death that was eternal life.
|
||
|
||
"But when a man, when a poor boy sixteen years of age, goes
|
||
upon the field of battle to keep his flag in heaven, not knowing
|
||
but death ends all; not knowing but that when the shadows creep
|
||
over him, the darkness will be eternal, there is heroism. For the
|
||
man who, in the darkness, said: "My God, why hast thou forsaken
|
||
me?" -- for that man I have nothing but respect, admiration, and
|
||
love. Back of the theological shreds, rags, and patches, hiding the
|
||
real Christ, I see a genuine man."
|
||
|
||
While thus recognizing and applauding the high moral character
|
||
of Christ, and his many virtues, Colonel Ingersoll could not see
|
||
from the record that he was "intellectually at the summit" of the
|
||
race. He certainly had but a narrow field of observation and a
|
||
limited experience. He lived but a few years, and in a very small
|
||
and poor country, and his "world" was confined to Palestine and the
|
||
lands bordering on the Mediterranean sea. He had not heard of
|
||
America, and knew nothing of the great islands and continents
|
||
peopled with millions of his fellow creatures, that lay beyond the
|
||
scope of his narrow vision. He had no true conception of the, size
|
||
and shape of the earth, knew little of geography, geology,
|
||
ethnology, or cosmogony, and still less of astronomy. He was
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
60
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
ignorant of the motions of the planets, of the suns, moons and
|
||
stars, wheeling in their orbits through the infinite spaces. He
|
||
perhaps had heard of "The Wise Men" and the "Star" that heralded
|
||
his birth, but made no mention of it. Matthew is the only
|
||
evangelist who records it. He was not a great philosopher. Most of
|
||
his philosophy was provincial, puerile, crude and impossible. He
|
||
did not value worldly wisdom -- his "Kingdom was not of this
|
||
world." He was not an inventer, voyager, or discoverer of new facts
|
||
and forces in nature. He practiced none of the fine arts, -- was
|
||
not a painter, sculptor or musician, although he was poetic,
|
||
dramatic and highly imaginative, -- traits common to the Oriental
|
||
temperament. He was not a historian -- wrote nothing -- left not a
|
||
line or word, not even a signature of his name. He said nothing
|
||
about education, the rights of man, popular sovereignty or
|
||
statesmanship. He did not encourage industry, thrift and economy,
|
||
or the habit of saving for the future, telling his followers to
|
||
"take no thought, for the morrow," that it was useless to lay up
|
||
treasures on earth for the end of all things was at hand. He was
|
||
the enemy of the rich and prosperous, for in his allegory he
|
||
consigned Dives to Hades, "not because he was bad, but because he
|
||
was rich," and comforted Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, "not because
|
||
he was good, but because he was poor." He did not grow eloquent
|
||
over the sacredness of home, or the blessedness of maternity. He
|
||
never married. The Church that followed him and bore his name
|
||
regarded and still regards "the priest as better than a father, the
|
||
nun holier than a mother."
|
||
|
||
His was supremely a heavenly mission. He subordinated the
|
||
material to the spiritual, the joy of living here to the promise of
|
||
greater joy hereafter. He believed the end was near, and said,
|
||
"This generation shall not pass away," that those who heard him
|
||
"should not taste of death, till all that he had prophesied had
|
||
been fulfilled. The things he did not say, but might have said, if
|
||
he had been the Divine Teacher knowing all things, past, present
|
||
and future, seemed more important to Mr. Ingersoll than the things
|
||
he did say.
|
||
|
||
"If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before him
|
||
like a panorama moved the history yet to be. He knew how his words
|
||
would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what
|
||
infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the hungry
|
||
flames of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless
|
||
martyrs. He knew that thousands and thousands of brave men and
|
||
women. would languish in dungeons in darkness, filled with pain. He
|
||
knew that the church would invent and use instruments of torture;
|
||
that his followers would appeal to whip and fagot, to chain and
|
||
rack. He saw what creeds would spring like poisonous fungi from
|
||
every text. He saw the ignorant sects waging war against each
|
||
other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests,
|
||
building prisons for their fellow-men. He saw thousands of
|
||
scaffolds dripping with the best and bravest blood. He saw his
|
||
followers using the instruments of pain. He heard the groans -- saw
|
||
the faces white with agony. He heard the shrieks and sobs and cries
|
||
of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries
|
||
would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light
|
||
of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of the
|
||
teachings attributed to him.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
61
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"He saw the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would
|
||
write and tell. He saw all wars that would be waged, and knew that
|
||
above these fields of death, these dungeons, these rackings, these
|
||
burnings, these executions, for a thousand years would float the
|
||
dripping banner of the cross.
|
||
|
||
"He knew that hypocrisy would be robed and crowned -- that
|
||
cruelty and credulity would rule the world; knew that liberty would
|
||
perish from the earth; knew that popes and kings in his name would
|
||
enslave the souls and bodies of men; knew that they would persecute
|
||
and destroy the discoverers, thinkers and inventors; knew that his
|
||
church would extinguish reason's holy light and leave the world
|
||
without a star.
|
||
|
||
"He saw his disciples extinguishing the eyes of men, flaying
|
||
them alive, cutting out their tongues, searching for all the nerves
|
||
of pain.
|
||
|
||
"He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human
|
||
flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women's breasts unbabed for
|
||
gold.
|
||
|
||
"And yet he died with voiceless lips.
|
||
|
||
"Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not. tell his disciples,
|
||
and through them the world: 'You shall not burn, imprison and
|
||
torture in my name. You shall not persecute your fellowmen.'
|
||
|
||
"Why did he not plainly say: I am the Son of God,' or, 'I am
|
||
God?' Why did he not explain the Trinity? Why did he not tell the
|
||
mode of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not write a
|
||
creed? Why did he not break the chains of slaves? Why did he not
|
||
say that the Old Testament was or was not the inspired word of God?
|
||
Why did he not write the New Testament himself? Why did he leave
|
||
his words to ignorance, hypocrisy and chance? Why did he not say
|
||
something positive, definite and satisfactory about another world?
|
||
Why did he not, turn the tear-stained hope of heaven into the glad
|
||
knowledge of another life? Why did he not tell us something of the
|
||
rights of man, of the liberty of hand and brain?
|
||
|
||
"Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to
|
||
misery and to doubt?
|
||
|
||
"I" will tell you why. He was a man, and did not know."
|
||
|
||
Notwithstanding Mr. Ingersoll's pronounced views of the
|
||
character and teachings of the man Christ, and his emphatic denials
|
||
and denunciations of orthodox theology, he repeatedly expressed,
|
||
both in his public utterances and private conversations, these
|
||
thoughts:
|
||
|
||
"I admit that there are many good and beautiful passages in
|
||
the Old and New Testaments; that from the lips of Christ dropped
|
||
many pearls of kindness, -- of love. Every verse that is true and
|
||
tender I treasure in my heart. Every thought behind which is the
|
||
tear of pity I appreciate and love. But I cannot accept it all.
|
||
Many utterances attributed to Christ shock my brain and heart. They
|
||
are absurd and cruel.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
62
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"Take from the New Testament the infinite savagery, the
|
||
shoreless malevolence of eternal pain, the absurdity of salvation
|
||
by faith, the ignorant belief in the existence of devils, the
|
||
immorality and cruelty of the Atonement, the doctrine of non-
|
||
resistance that denies to virtue the right of self-defense, and how
|
||
glorious it would be to know that the remainder is true! Compared
|
||
with this knowledge, how everything else in nature would shrink and
|
||
shrivel! What ecstacy it would be to know that God exists, that he
|
||
is our father and that he loves and cares for the children of men!
|
||
To know that all the paths that human beings travel, turn and wind
|
||
as they may, lead to the gates of stainless peace? How the heart
|
||
would thrill and throb to know that. Christ was the conqueror of
|
||
Death; that at his grave the all-devouring monster was baffled and
|
||
beaten forever; that from that moment the tomb. became the door
|
||
that opens on eternal life! To, know this would change all sorrow
|
||
into gladness. Poverty, failure, disaster, defeat, power, place and
|
||
wealth would become meaningless sounds. To take your babe upon your
|
||
knee and say: 'Mine and mine forever!' What joy! To clasp the woman
|
||
you love in your arms and to know that she is yours and forever --
|
||
yours though suns darken and constellations vanish? This is enough:
|
||
To know that the loved and dead are not lost; that they still live
|
||
and love and wait for you. To know that Christ dispelled the,
|
||
darkness of death and filled the grave with eternal light. To know
|
||
this would be all that the heart could bear. Beyond this joy cannot
|
||
go. Beyond this there is no place for hope."
|
||
|
||
In the foregoing statement of Mr. Ingersoll's view of Christ
|
||
and his teachings, the writer has given only a few extracts and
|
||
attempted only the merest outline, the most meager and superficial
|
||
survey, of the subject. He feels that he has only touched the hem
|
||
of a wonderfully woven intellectual garment, reached but the
|
||
boundary line and not explored the interior, the heights and widths
|
||
and depths of Mr. Ingersoll's universal genius. Who would penetrate
|
||
further must be referred to his published works in their complete
|
||
"Dresden" offering.
|
||
|
||
While never professing or pretending to be a "poet" in the
|
||
accepted meaning of the term, Mr. Ingersoll was yet highly poetic
|
||
in temperament, thought and expression. What he modestly called, or
|
||
his admirers called, "Prose Poems," abundantly show this. All his
|
||
writings and sayings display it. Sometimes he would invoke the muse
|
||
and jot down on bits of paper his vivid imagery in metrical
|
||
numbers. Many of these scraps, most of them very beautiful, were
|
||
found in his literary remains. He thought it worth while, in
|
||
summing up his views, to put them in verse, and so he gave us this
|
||
comprehensive rhythmical summary, called his creed, or his:
|
||
|
||
X.
|
||
|
||
DECLARATION OF THE FREE.
|
||
|
||
"We have no falsehoods to defend --
|
||
We want the facts;
|
||
Our force, our thought, we do not spend
|
||
In vain attacks.
|
||
And we will never meanly try
|
||
To save some fair and pleasing lie.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
63
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"The simple truth is what we ask,
|
||
Not the ideal;
|
||
We've set ourselves the noble task
|
||
To find the real.
|
||
If all there is is naught but dross,
|
||
We want to know and bear our loss.
|
||
|
||
"We will not willingly be fooled,
|
||
By fables nursed;
|
||
Our hearts, by earnest thought, are schooled
|
||
To bear the worst;
|
||
And we can stand erect and dare
|
||
All things, all facts that really are.
|
||
|
||
"We have no God to serve or fear,
|
||
No hell to shun,
|
||
No devil with malicious leer.
|
||
When life is done
|
||
An endless sleep may close our eyes,
|
||
A sleep with neither dreams nor sights.
|
||
|
||
"We have no master on the land --
|
||
No king in air --
|
||
Without a miracle we stand,
|
||
Without a prayer,
|
||
Without a fear of coming night;
|
||
We seek the truth, we love the light.
|
||
|
||
"We do not bow before a guess,
|
||
A vague unknown;
|
||
A senseless force we do not bless
|
||
In solemn tone.
|
||
When evil comes we do not curse,
|
||
Or thank because it is no worse.
|
||
|
||
"When cyclones rend -- when lightning blights,
|
||
'Tis naught but fate;
|
||
There is no God of wrath who smites
|
||
In heartless hate.
|
||
Behind the things that injure man
|
||
There is no purpose, thought, or plan.
|
||
|
||
"We waste no time in useless dread,
|
||
In trembling fear;
|
||
The present lives, the past is dead,
|
||
And we are here,
|
||
All welcome guests at life's great feast --
|
||
We need no help from ghost or priest.
|
||
|
||
"Our life is joyous, jocund, free --
|
||
Not one a slave
|
||
Who bends in fear the trembling knee,
|
||
And seeks to save
|
||
A coward soul from future pain;
|
||
Not one will cringe or crawl for gain.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
64
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"The jeweled cup of love we drain,
|
||
And friendship's wine
|
||
Now swiftly flows in every vein
|
||
With warmth divine,
|
||
And so we love and hope and dream
|
||
That in death's sky there is a gleam.
|
||
|
||
"We walk according to our light;
|
||
Pursue the path
|
||
That leads to honor's stainless height,
|
||
Careless of wrath
|
||
Or curse of God, or priestly spite,
|
||
Longing to know and do the right.
|
||
|
||
"We love our fellow man, our kind,
|
||
Wife, child, and friend.
|
||
To phantoms we are deaf and blind,
|
||
But we extend
|
||
The helping hand to the distressed;
|
||
By lifting others we are blessed.
|
||
|
||
"Love's sacred flame, within the heart's
|
||
And friendship's glow;
|
||
While all the miracles of art
|
||
Their wealth bestow
|
||
Upon the thrilled and joyous brain,
|
||
And present raptures banish pain.
|
||
|
||
"We love no phantoms of the skies,
|
||
But living flesh,
|
||
With passion's soft and soulful eyes,
|
||
Lips warm and fresh,
|
||
And cheeks with health's red flag unfurled,
|
||
The breathing angels of this world.
|
||
|
||
"The hands that help are better far
|
||
Than lips that pray.
|
||
Love is the ever gleaming star
|
||
That leads the way,
|
||
That shines, not on vague worlds of bliss,
|
||
But on a paradise in this.
|
||
|
||
"We do not pray, or weep, or wail;
|
||
We have no dread,
|
||
No fear to pass beyond the veil
|
||
That hides the dead.
|
||
And yet we question, dream, and guess
|
||
But knowledge we do not possess.
|
||
|
||
"We ask, yet nothing seems to know;
|
||
We cry in vain.
|
||
There is no 'master of the show'
|
||
Who will explain,
|
||
Or from the future tear the mask;
|
||
And yet we dream, and still we ask:
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
65
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
"Is there beyond the silent night
|
||
An endless day?
|
||
Is death a door that leads to light?
|
||
We cannot say.
|
||
The tongueless secret locked in fate
|
||
We do not know. -- We hope and wait."
|
||
|
||
XI.
|
||
|
||
HIS PERSONALITY.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll was physically a handsome man. His form was
|
||
large and well proportioned, his carriage erect and firm. His
|
||
manners were unaffected, easy and natural, gracious and engaging.
|
||
Whether in motion or at rest he had the air and poise that denote
|
||
the man of mark. He was stout and muscular -- weighing sometimes as
|
||
much as two hundred and thirty pounds, which he thought was perhaps
|
||
a little excessive for his height of five feet ten and a half
|
||
inches. His shoulders were broad and strong, well suited to support
|
||
the splendid head they carried. His every feature was most facile
|
||
in expression, -- all his thoughts and feelings seemed reflected
|
||
there. So open, frank and unconcealing was his countenance, he
|
||
could not without an effort hide from view a single passion or
|
||
emotion, and even his thoughts sometimes revealed themselves to
|
||
close observers. When lighted with the smile that played so often
|
||
round his mobile mouth, his presence was illuminated as with
|
||
sunshine. There never was a more glowing personality. His entrance
|
||
into any social circle was like a sun-burst, -- he radiated life
|
||
and light and joy. In truth, none could long be with him, and come
|
||
to know him well, but felt that here he saw a "combination and a
|
||
form indeed, where every god did seem to set his seal to give the
|
||
world assurance of a man."
|
||
|
||
UNSUSPICIOUS.
|
||
|
||
He was not suspicious. He used to say that Suspicion was the
|
||
blackest imp in the pit. He was simple, direct, guileless and
|
||
unsuspecting as a child, and was often imposed upon on this
|
||
unarmored side of his nature. Designing men too often found in him
|
||
an easy prey, -- not always or so much, perhaps, because he did not
|
||
sometimes detect their duplicity as that he did not wish harshly to
|
||
judge and tax a man with falseness to his face. He preferred
|
||
himself to suffer rather than to cause suffering to others. He
|
||
preferred to pity more than punish. He could not cherish anger,
|
||
gave no harbor to revenge. He was considerate, forgiving,
|
||
compassionate.
|
||
|
||
Even when he knew that favors scattered by him would never be
|
||
returned, he kept on showering them; that pledges made would not be
|
||
redeemed, that monies loaned would never be repaid, he kept on
|
||
giving. He could not bear to deny a request. He would say: "Poor
|
||
fellow, he needed it; it is so good to get a boost when one is
|
||
trying to climb. I would rather lose what I give than lose the
|
||
desire to give. I would sooner give than beg, loan than borrow, be
|
||
cheated than cheat, be wronged than wrong another."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
66
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
His time, his services and his means were given to others in
|
||
a lavish way. Money was to him but leaves to be scattered. He
|
||
rebuked his wealthy friends for hoarding and said: "The rich should
|
||
be extravagant, for that gives work; the poor economical, for thus
|
||
they may one day become rich."
|
||
|
||
He denounced the miserly spirit, the passion for mere
|
||
possession, indulged by too many of the rich, and said: "What would
|
||
you think of a man who had a thousand neckties, lying awake nights
|
||
contriving how he might add one more tie to his collection?" In his
|
||
family his purse belonged to all. He kept no secret drawers, no
|
||
locks or keys, no bolts or bars, on his possessions. For them to
|
||
want a thing was to have it, to express a wish to fulfill it, so
|
||
that many a costly longing was concealed from him lest he should
|
||
discover and indulge it.
|
||
|
||
SOMETIMES SAD.
|
||
|
||
Although his outward mien was, as the rule cheerful and happy,
|
||
he yet at times, and many times, was serious and even sad. He bore
|
||
the burdens of others. His sympathies were so deep and wide and
|
||
strong, that while he "laughed with those who laughed" he "wept
|
||
with those who wept," and often have I seen him touched to tears at
|
||
the tales of woe freely poured into his listening ears. The sights
|
||
and sounds of suffering profoundly moved him. He could not go down
|
||
into the homes of the sorrowful, the wretched and distressed, -- it
|
||
overcame him, unnerved him -- but he sent relief by other hands,
|
||
and was in his quiet, unobtrusive way a large and frequent almoner
|
||
of the poor. His tender sympathies embraced not only human kind but
|
||
all the world of sentient life. He was an early and devoted friend
|
||
of Henry Bergh, and by voice and pen did valiant service in the
|
||
crusade against cruelty to animals. He waged war against
|
||
vivisection, believing that the useful ends of science could be
|
||
well enough attained without the need of touching all the nerves of
|
||
pain. The discoverers of anaestheties he enrolled among his
|
||
aureoled saints.
|
||
|
||
AN IDEAL DOMESTIC MAN.
|
||
|
||
He had hosts of friends and choice acquaintances, but few
|
||
intimates to whom he opened out, his heart. He commanded admiration
|
||
and esteem, but did not encourage undue familiarity. His manner was
|
||
always cordial but never effilsive or obtrusive. He was a social
|
||
but not a society man, so-called; not a frequent visitor, --
|
||
preferred his own home -- to be the host rather than the guest. His
|
||
friends called on him oftener than he on them, but they always
|
||
found a welcome warm and hearty when they came. In fact, his own
|
||
home circle, with its chosen few, made for him the center and
|
||
circumference of his social world. He was an ideal domestic and
|
||
family man, loving his hearthstone and dwelling beside it happy and
|
||
satisfied.
|
||
|
||
This favored fireside, with its glowing comforts and true
|
||
refinements, its adornments of art and nature, its growing plants
|
||
and flowers, its books and pictures, paintings and statues, its
|
||
precious mementoes from friends and admirers in all lands, its
|
||
music and its songs, its conversations and readings, its games and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
67
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
pastimes, its mirth and laughter, its all pervading air and light
|
||
of love and joy, -- this fireside, was as near paradise as man and
|
||
woman and child can make on earth. Can we wonder that they who made
|
||
it loved to linger by it? The husband and father never left it for
|
||
a business or lecture tour without reluctance, nor returned to it
|
||
without delight. When away on such a tour, never a day passed but
|
||
he sent his love message home by wire and got back the quick
|
||
response, "all well, love from all."
|
||
|
||
In every place he visited his admirers entreated him to become
|
||
their guest, but out of consideration for them he declined, and
|
||
stopped at the hotel instead. He did not wish to accept a
|
||
hospitality be could not, under the circumstances inseparable from
|
||
lecturing, return. When away from home and in the busy world Mr.
|
||
Ingersoll was not a distant, solitary and unsocial being whom
|
||
strangers, even, hesitated to approach. It was just the other way.
|
||
He could scarcely walk the streets without accepting greetings from
|
||
every side. He was one of the most approachable of men, the
|
||
humblest as well as the greatest finding equal access to his
|
||
attention.
|
||
|
||
A GENEROUS LIVER.
|
||
|
||
He loved a genial companion and could not bear to be alone;
|
||
some one always walked or rode with him. I never knew him to eat a
|
||
solitary lunch or meal. At mid-day in his office, when the hour
|
||
arrived, he did not leave without inviting his secretary, or one of
|
||
his clerks or students or a friend -- sometimes several -- to go
|
||
with him and share his steak or chops, his terrapin or game. 'He
|
||
was a generous liver, fond of all good things, and did not hesitate
|
||
to join his friends in a social glass. He made no apology for this
|
||
and wished none made for him. On this question he was moderate and
|
||
temperate. He believed that in the abuse and not the rightful use
|
||
of stimulants lay the harm. Liberty in this as in other things he
|
||
held high and paramount. Without liberty to use there could be no
|
||
abuse, no responsibility. Excess should be restrained, liberty
|
||
never. No one has more faithfully or eloquently portrayed the
|
||
frightful dangers of the cup, nor any one more glowingly pictured
|
||
its fascinations.
|
||
|
||
As for himself, he governed well his appetite, and could and
|
||
did refrain from any and every indulgence when his physician
|
||
advised, or he himself believed, his health required it. Even his
|
||
loved cigar he laid aside, or its use restricted, when he thought
|
||
he would be the better for it. In the effort to reduce his flesh he
|
||
denied himself for weeks and months all luxuries of the table --
|
||
confined his diet to the narrowest regimen, and declined all sweets
|
||
and fat-producing foods with resolute firmness and apparently the
|
||
greatest ease.
|
||
|
||
A STEADFAST FRIEND.
|
||
|
||
He was a staunch and loyal friend. Those honored with his
|
||
confidence and favored with his esteem found him true to the
|
||
highest ideals, the best traditions, of friendship. To them he was
|
||
as true as steel, as steady as a fixed star. He wanted in his
|
||
friend the qualities of naturalness, frankness and openness of
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
68
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
speech and manner. To such he was a rare companion, a
|
||
whole-hearted, generous, noble comrade. He hated deceit,
|
||
indirection, sham and false pretension. He did not like solemnity
|
||
and so-called dignity -- thought them mostly masks for vanity or
|
||
hypocrisy. He knew he was superior to most men, but made no boast
|
||
of it. He had great consideration, unbounded charity, for the
|
||
faults, and frailties of his fellow-men, and pitied oftener than
|
||
blamed.
|
||
|
||
As before stated, his philosophy of human conduct was
|
||
expressed in his simple dictum,"he does as he must." All man needs
|
||
is light; his darkness is but ignorance; when his horizon broadens
|
||
his view will be clearer.
|
||
|
||
He wondered at the cheerful assent accorded by the religious
|
||
world to the musty maxims, dusty dogmas, decrees and traditions of
|
||
the superstitious past; at the "dominion of the cemetery" over the
|
||
progressive and more enlightened present; at the "thoughtless yes"
|
||
so readily yielded to the creeds of the churches, and at the
|
||
sycophantic deference shown towards the persons and office of the
|
||
priesthood, and the servile obedience to its commands. He marvelled
|
||
at the credulity of men, the ease with which their minds were
|
||
swayed, their judgment warped, their selfhood bartered, their
|
||
freedom surrendered, and he labored to restore to them their
|
||
birthright.
|
||
|
||
A MODEST MAN.
|
||
|
||
Colonel Ingersoll was an unaffectedly modest man. He disliked
|
||
notoriety, and avoided, so far as he could, every manifestation of
|
||
it. Many requests came to him from publishers of encyclopedias and
|
||
compilers of biographical volumes, for a sketch of his life. He
|
||
invariably declined to furnish it, saying: "A life should not be
|
||
written until it has been lived." He discouraged the calling of
|
||
children after him, although hundreds bear his name to-day. Albums
|
||
without number were sent to him for his autograph, and a
|
||
"sentiment," and literally thousands of requests were made for his
|
||
signature. Many of these he granted out of an obliging spirit, but
|
||
the practice did not please him overmuch or meet his full approval.
|
||
|
||
As all the world knows, he spoke his mind freely, fully,
|
||
without fear, without reserve. What he thought and felt he said,
|
||
and his meaning was always plain; but he was not arrogant or
|
||
dogmatic, only positive, in his speech. The language of deference
|
||
and inquiry was as often on his lips as that of mere assertion.
|
||
"Don't you think?" or "Isn't it so?" were frequent phrases in his
|
||
daily conversation and remark. He was, in truth, the mouthpiece and
|
||
advocate, the prophet and reformer, of his day and generation.
|
||
|
||
HIS RESPECT FOR WOMAN.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll had a knightly reverence and respect for
|
||
womanhood. In the presence of women, and in all his relations with
|
||
them, he was always the courteous, affable, gallant gentleman.
|
||
They, in turn, admired and esteemed him greatly, -- looked upon him
|
||
as an ideal man. It may be worthy of note in this connection to
|
||
say, that in all the hundreds of letters he received from women,
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
69
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
everywhere, -- and it was my privilege to read them all -- I never
|
||
saw one, not one, that contained a suggestive or compromising word
|
||
of a doubtful or double meaning -- an honor to their -- womanhood
|
||
and a compliment to his manhood. He rejoiced to note the ever-
|
||
widening avenues for the employment of women and the better
|
||
appreciation of their talents and capabilities, and believed that
|
||
they were entitled to receive and should receive equal pay with men
|
||
for equal work. He keenly enjoyed the society of the refined and
|
||
cultivated among them, and freely admitted and said that woman, the
|
||
world over, in all that made for the uplifting of the race, was
|
||
man's superior. He regarded her, to use his own words, as "the true
|
||
aristocrat of the world."
|
||
|
||
HIS LOVE FOR CHILDREN.
|
||
|
||
It is hardly necessary to say, that with such a nature as his,
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll was fond of children. He loved to have them near him,
|
||
enjoyed their innocent prattle, their merry laugh, and they
|
||
instinctively turned to him, opening up the treasures of their
|
||
guileless hearts as to a great and sympathizing friend. More than
|
||
once have I seen the tired mother on a train relieved of her
|
||
fretful babe, and when other passengers looked, if they did not
|
||
say, "stop the brat!" he, the gentle man, took the child in his
|
||
arms and with the equal of a mother's art soothed it to peaceful
|
||
sleep. He pleaded for justice, patience, liberty and love for
|
||
childhood. He could not see how a father, not to think a moment of
|
||
a mother, could strike a blow with hand or rod or whip to smart the
|
||
flesh of a helpless, tender child. To him, such an act, whether
|
||
done through impatience, ungoverned passion, or from a mistaken
|
||
"sense of duty," was a mean and cowardly deed. He believed that
|
||
oftener the parent than the child deserved the whip and rod.
|
||
|
||
THE LAUGH OF A CHILD.
|
||
|
||
He was indeed a worthy champion of children's rights. To him
|
||
their merry laughter was music. Was ever a finer thing on the laugh
|
||
of a child put in words, than this by Robert G. Ingersoll? --
|
||
|
||
"The laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred
|
||
still. Strike with hand of fire, O weird musician, thy harp strung
|
||
with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with
|
||
symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow,
|
||
bugler, blow, until the silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit
|
||
waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid the vine-clad hills. But
|
||
know, your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with
|
||
childhood's happy laugh -- the laugh that fills the eyes with light
|
||
and every heart with joy. O rippling river of laughter! thou art
|
||
the blessed boundary line between the beasts and men; and every
|
||
wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O
|
||
Laughter! rose-lipped daughter of Joy, there are dimples enough in
|
||
thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
70
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
DEVOTION TO HIS FAMILY.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Ingersoll's devotion to his family, so tender, loving and
|
||
gallant, was beautiful to see. There surely never lived a more
|
||
affectionate brother, a truer, nobler husband, a dearer, fonder
|
||
father, or a more precious grandfather -- He was always the lover,
|
||
adoring and adored. He deified wife and children. The noble mother
|
||
was a goddess, their children cherubs, their home a heaven. A
|
||
holier, sweeter, happier home was never built and kept beneath the
|
||
stars than Robert Green Ingersoll's. The open secret of it all was
|
||
Liberty and Love. There were no commands, no threats, no penalties,
|
||
no punishments. Errors were corrected with caresses, carelessness
|
||
rebuked with kisses, faults remedied with favors, and accompanying
|
||
these were reasonable requests, right precepts, wise counsels, and
|
||
rising over all a shining, glorious example.
|
||
|
||
A friend once said to the younger daughter, Mrs. Maud
|
||
Ingersoll Probasco: "Your father was a great man." Out of the
|
||
impulsive eagerness of her heart she exclaimed: "My father was not
|
||
a man, he was a god!" and this exalted feeling was shared by all
|
||
the members of his family.
|
||
|
||
"RECANTING."
|
||
|
||
A false rumor widely spread toward the close of his life, and
|
||
repeated with added particulars since his death, is that he
|
||
"recanted" as he drew near the end of his career and embraced
|
||
Christianity. It is not so. He did not weaken or waver for an
|
||
instant. It was just the opposite. He said that the longer he lived
|
||
the more convinced and confirmed he was in the truth of his
|
||
teachings and the stronger became his convictions regarding
|
||
religion. He has so expressed himself to me and to others many
|
||
times. He died as he had lived, a confident and ardent Agnostic.
|
||
Since his death, the attempt has been made in many quarters to show
|
||
that he -- as fabled of his illustrious predecessors Paine and
|
||
Voltaire -- died cursing and blaspheming. History has been
|
||
distorted and perverted by priestly prejudice and malice, and by
|
||
orthodox meanness and mendacity, in their cases, and the
|
||
probability is that in the case of Mr. Ingersoll, unless the real
|
||
facts are known, and even after they are known, error will continue
|
||
to deny and despise the truth, "world without end."
|
||
|
||
POST-MORTEM TALES.
|
||
|
||
As a matter of fact, the crusade of falsehood and calumny has
|
||
already begun. One report now in circulation is, that Colonel
|
||
Ingersoll called for a "religious confessor," and that a Roman
|
||
Catholic priest was present at his deathbed, and on his
|
||
"repentance" gave him "absolution." Unqualifiedly false!
|
||
|
||
As another illustration of the reliance to be placed on these
|
||
post-mortem tales about great men and their dying testimonies, let
|
||
me here cite a personal experience. A gentleman whom I recently met
|
||
in Southern California, told me in all earnestness the true story,
|
||
as he called it, of Mr. Ingersoll's last moments. He said that
|
||
these moments were filled with fear and remorse; that over and over
|
||
again he expressed regret that he had spent so much of his life in
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
71
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
opposing Christianity, and that he called on God for pardon and
|
||
mercy. I asked for his authority. he said that both himself and
|
||
wife were acquainted with the nurse, a lady who attended the
|
||
Colonel during the last days of his illness, and that they had the
|
||
account directly from her. Such testimony, he said, could not be
|
||
gainsaid or denied. He was astonished when he found who I was and
|
||
what I knew, and was silent if not convinced.
|
||
|
||
The simple truth is, that no physician, no priest, no
|
||
minister, no nurse was present either before or at his death, --
|
||
none could be called, nor could any have been of the slightest use,
|
||
-- his illness was so short and the end so unexpected, so
|
||
startlingly sudden. Not even the beloved members of his family
|
||
could be with him, so quickly and without warning did the end come.
|
||
Only his adored and adoring wife heard his last playful word and
|
||
saw his last loving look.
|
||
|
||
Let me here tell briefly the real facts as they were told to
|
||
me by Mrs. Ingersoll, -- facts which the family subsequently made
|
||
the subject of an affidavit duly executed and filed for
|
||
preservation and reference:
|
||
|
||
It was learned after his death, that he knew, or suspected he
|
||
had not long to live, and that his thread of life would be suddenly
|
||
snapped, the golden bowl be broken. It was said by one of the
|
||
servants of his family that he heard the doctor -- months before
|
||
the fatal day -- ask the Colonel if he realized that he might die
|
||
at any moment, and he replied: "perfectly."
|
||
|
||
XII.
|
||
|
||
HIS LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH.
|
||
|
||
The night before his death had been a restless one. He
|
||
suffered considerably from indigestion, but recovered sufficiently
|
||
to be able to join his family at breakfast in the morning. After
|
||
breakfast he sat in his easy chair on the broad piazza enjoying the
|
||
soft summer air and viewing the landscape with the Hudson River
|
||
placidly flowing at his feet. He sat thus for more than an hour,
|
||
gazing, reading and quietly conversing with those of his family who
|
||
were about him. No portent of the swiftly advancing shadow appeared
|
||
in either his look or manner. Beginning to feel a little drowsy, he
|
||
rose from his chair at half-past ten o'clock, saying that he felt
|
||
like taking a nap up-stairs, but that he would be down before
|
||
luncheon and challenge his son-in-law, Mr. Brown, and his brother-
|
||
inlaw, Mr. Farrell, to a game of pool in the billiard room. He
|
||
retired to his own chamber, his wife accompanying him. He slept
|
||
naturally and peacefully for nearly an hour; Mrs. Ingersoll
|
||
watching by his side while he slept. About a quarter before noon he
|
||
awoke and left his bed to dress, and needing no assistance sat in
|
||
his chair to put on his shoes. Mrs. Farrell, his sister-in-law, and
|
||
Miss Sharkey, a life-long and devoted member of his household,
|
||
entered the room. Mrs. Ingersoll said: "Do not dress, papa, to go
|
||
down to luncheon; I will eat here with you." "Oh, no," he replied,
|
||
"I don't want to put you to that trouble." "How foolish, Robert,"
|
||
said Mrs. Farrell, smiling; "you know it's never a trouble to us;
|
||
you know you have often eaten up-stairs with Eva." The Colonel did
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
72
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
not speak, but looked his grateful reply. Mrs. Farrell and Miss
|
||
Sharkey then left the room. Mrs. Ingersoll, returning to her
|
||
husband, said: "Papa, you are not feeling well; let me see your
|
||
tongue." He put it out with a smile, saying, "You are always
|
||
wanting to see my tongue!" "Why, papa, it is coated; I must give
|
||
you some medicine." He looked at her with a loving gaze, slowly
|
||
closed his eyes, dropped his head upon his breast, and without a
|
||
struggle, without a tremor, or the slightest sign of suffering,
|
||
like one falling peacefully to sleep, passed away.
|
||
|
||
This was on the 21st day of July, 1899. Had he lived but three
|
||
weeks longer, he would have completed his sixty-sixth year. The
|
||
immediate cause of his death was angina pecton's, a foe that for
|
||
more than two years had threatened his life. He sedulously kept the
|
||
knowledge of his real condition from his family and friends lest he
|
||
should unduly alarm them, and went bravely on, thinking, writing,
|
||
speaking, and doing to the very end.
|
||
|
||
The manner of his going was well. It was, a fitting close to
|
||
such a life, a peaceful ending of his day of toil. It was as he
|
||
wished. He. always said he. would prefer a sudden quenching of the
|
||
spark. If he had chosen the manner of its going out, he would not
|
||
have had it otherwise. In their beautiful mansion on the Hudson,
|
||
overlooking from its height a panorama of exquisite loveliness; in
|
||
the peaceful quiet of his own chamber; sitting in his accustomed
|
||
easy chair; his last word a smiling benediction; his last look, a
|
||
love-flash in the answering eyes of her whom he worshipped above
|
||
all gods -- above all other beings -- he passed into "the
|
||
tongueless, silence of his dreamless sleep."
|
||
|
||
HIS BODY CREMATED.
|
||
|
||
His body was cremated. The quick, refining fires rendered back
|
||
at once the uncorrupted and incorruptible residue. This, too, was
|
||
as he wished, although he made no positive request, leaving the
|
||
matter, entirely with his family. And now his inured ashes form the
|
||
holy altar of their home temple. Around this they gather and
|
||
worship. Here they offer the oblation of undying adoration. Here
|
||
they hold the holiest of communions, the purest of soul
|
||
interchanges, the vocal dust responding to their listening love in
|
||
sweetest antiphonies. All the wealth of all the worlds would not
|
||
measure for them the worth of this casket that holds all that was
|
||
earthly of the greatest, gentlest, dearest, best of souls that ever
|
||
lived, -- their husband, father, lover, Robert Green Ingersoll.
|
||
|
||
HIS MEMORY CROWNED.
|
||
|
||
His memory will be crowned with neverfading laurels. His fame
|
||
will shine with evergrowing lustre as the years go on. To countless
|
||
thousands he will be linked with all their, highest and noblest
|
||
ideals. When they dream of true greatness, his career will inspire
|
||
them. When they covet the richest prizes of life, -- truth, candor,
|
||
kindness, "honor bright," his precepts will guide them. When they
|
||
look for an, example of manly virtue, knightly courage, moral
|
||
exaltation, his presence will rise before them, the champion of
|
||
freedom the lover of his kind, the holder of a lighted torch.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
73
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
BOUNDLESS.
|
||
|
||
Standing by the sea, hoping to fill the vision with the
|
||
boundless view, one strains the eager gaze around, before, beyond,
|
||
but fails to grasp the complete whole. Only the curving lines of
|
||
near or farther shore, bits of the smooth or shelving beach, here
|
||
and there a jutting rock, a million crested waves and myriads of
|
||
merry rippling crestlets meet the sight, while the infinite expanse
|
||
lies far and far without, beyond the reach of finite eye. So partly
|
||
only can the farthest reaching human ken perceive and know the
|
||
boundless Ingersoll.
|
||
|
||
TOWERING.
|
||
|
||
At sunrise, on a lofty peak, I have seen a mighty mountain
|
||
cast its shadowed profile on the western plain far out to the
|
||
horizon's bound, whence, having no farther earthward scope for its
|
||
projecting form, it has mounted to the sky and lifted its majestic
|
||
outline to the zenith, -- a pyramid rising from earth to heaven. So
|
||
it has seemed to me Mr. Ingersoll's genius, shone upon by the
|
||
rising sun of Truth, has filled the intellectual plain and mounted
|
||
to the highest human heights. From such a summit he has looked upon
|
||
the world beneath, -- seen all life, known all men, scanned all
|
||
facts, weighed all faiths, all fancies, all philosophies, and sent
|
||
his message down of Love and Hope and Truth, -- of perfect Love
|
||
that casts out Fear, of Hope that maketh not ashamed, and Truth
|
||
that when perceived shall make man free.
|
||
|
||
PEERLESS.
|
||
|
||
When the record is made up, and truthful history shall assign
|
||
to each his niche of honor in the Hall of Fame it will be found
|
||
that Robert G. Ingersoll fills a place high up among the mightiest
|
||
of the race. It will surely write him first of orators, -- the
|
||
Demosthenes of his day; prince of righteous satire, -- the American
|
||
Voltaire; Emancipator of the minds of men, -- the Intellectual
|
||
Lincoln of his time; himself "The Plumed Knight" flinging down the
|
||
gauntlet of enlightened Truth to ignorant Error; piercing with
|
||
shining lance the armor of Superstition; unmasking with trenchant
|
||
blade the face of, Falsehood, and with heavy battle axe shattering
|
||
dungeon doors and opening wide at last the way "Liberty for Man,
|
||
Woman and Child."
|
||
|
||
TRULY RELIGIOUS.
|
||
|
||
In a beautiful tribute by one of his grandchildren, Eva
|
||
Ingersoll-Brown, that "daughter's babe upon his knees," -- we may
|
||
read a faithful record, a true echo of his own voice. In a preface
|
||
to "The Ingersoll Birthday Book," published by The Truth Seeker
|
||
Company, this "babe," while yet a maiden, wrote:
|
||
|
||
"Ingersoll was, I believe, the most profound ethical, the most
|
||
deeply spiritual, the most truly religious of men. His was the only
|
||
real religion, -- the religion of goodness, of justice and of
|
||
mercy, -- the religion of Humanity and His whole life was one
|
||
heroic consecration to the furtherance of his religion. I beg leave
|
||
to repeat this all-important fact: Ingersoll was a religious man --
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
74
|
||
|
||
ROBERT G.INGERSOLL -- AN INTIMATE VIEW.
|
||
|
||
religious in the highest and holiest, the only true sense of the
|
||
term, -- religious in his irrepressible and matchless zeal for
|
||
truth, -- religious in his love for and trust in humanity, --
|
||
religious in his fine, intrepid fealty to facts, to justice and to
|
||
rectitude, -- religious in his temperament of storm and fire, --
|
||
religious in his splendid scorn of wrong, in his superb capacity
|
||
for wrath and for rebellion, -- and religious in his peerless power
|
||
for tenderness, for pity, and for love; religious even in his
|
||
fearless enmity to creed and cant, to every form of futile dogma,
|
||
ignorant theology and childish faith -- to base hypocrisy that
|
||
masquerades as virtue and as truth."
|
||
|
||
Quoting his own words which we have already given, but which
|
||
cannot be too often repeated or emphasized, she gives us this
|
||
summary of what he believed true religion to be:
|
||
|
||
"To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to
|
||
pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and
|
||
remember benefits -- to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter
|
||
honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against
|
||
slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to
|
||
make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to
|
||
cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that
|
||
genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to
|
||
cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill
|
||
life with the splendor of generous deeds, the warmth of loving
|
||
words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new
|
||
truths in gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the
|
||
storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done
|
||
and then to be resigned -- this is the religion of reason, the
|
||
creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart."
|
||
|
||
Following this she writes:
|
||
|
||
"A more inspiring, noble and complete declaration of faith was
|
||
never born of human heart and brain. And, above all, be it said, to
|
||
the eternal glory of this transcendent man, that he lived in
|
||
absolute accord with these high ideals. His life was one unbroken
|
||
melody of thought and deed, of heart and hand, of will and act, --
|
||
one sublime symphony of conscience and of conduct, of precept and
|
||
practice -- one lofty consecration to the service of his
|
||
fellow-men."
|
||
|
||
L'ENVOI.
|
||
|
||
And now, "thou great and complete man," farewell! Wher'eer
|
||
thou art, in all the "Shoreless vast," it must be well with thee,
|
||
for thou thyself did'st well, and now hast got thy meed. Believe
|
||
and know, O lofty soul! that loyal friends remaining here still
|
||
cherish thee and all thy words and deeds, and fondly hope that when
|
||
it comes their turn to go, thou wilt with open arms receive and
|
||
clasp them to thy waiting heart; that they and thou, with all true
|
||
souls that loved thee here together joined, mayst be and go for aye
|
||
through all the worlds! This Hope sustains and blesses them, --
|
||
completes, fulfills thy Joy. Again, farewell! Farewell!
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
75
|
||
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