1041 lines
47 KiB
Plaintext
1041 lines
47 KiB
Plaintext
16 page printout, page 232 to 247
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INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
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CHAPTER 18.
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HIS FACULTIES OF ARTISTIC AND
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INTELLECTUAL EXPRESSION
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He who would rise to the full scope of Ingersoll's art, in its
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varied manifestations -- oratory, poetry, prose -- must be familiar
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with the elements of things. He must be of no school or cult --
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must possess that elemental depth, that aversion to the provincial,
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that view of the universal, which invariably marks the mind of
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genius. In unison with the great eternal pulse of the universe must
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be the rhythm of his heart and brain.
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But how are we to look upon the artistic side of Ingersoll?
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Shall he be viewed as an orator, as a poet, or as a rhetorician? I
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answer: As none of these, in particular; for he was far more than
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any or all of them: he was an idealist, -- one of the purest and
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sublimest that has lived. Back of every expression, -- poetic,
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oratorical, or philosophical, -- was the ideal. This he worshiped.
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In the realm of art, he saw with faultless eye. So absolute was his
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devotion to the ideal; so keen, and yet so profound, his sense of
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symmetry, proportion, harmony, that he clothed his thoughts in the
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noblest garb, shrinking from the inapposite, the inelegant, as
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surely as the magnet repels a scrap of lead. This made his art
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supreme.
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It is often remarked: "That man was a great sculptor," "That
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man was a great painter," when it should be said: "A great idealist
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chiseled that statue," "A great idealist painted that picture." Who
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can not chisel or paint? But how many who chisel or paint or write
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or speak do so at the command of the ideal?
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Every writer and every speaker unconsciously produces a
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perfect likeness of his physical and mental being -- of himself. It
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is called his style. Critics sometimes assert that the style of so-
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and-so is "artificial." In the ultimate sense, this is erroneous.
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Should a writer employ a borrowed style, it would not be his style,
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any more than an apple artificially attached to a twig of an
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orange-tree would be an orange. And no matter how successful he
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might be in deceiving others as to the genuineness of his style, he
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could never succeed in deceiving himself.
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We are here led to a most fitting comparison of two natural
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phenomena: the tree and its fruit -- the author and his style. The
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analogy is unmistakable. Neither literally nor figuratively do men
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gather grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles. No one would
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have expected Daniel Webster -- the leonine head with brow
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overhanging cliff like the cavernous eyes and rugged lines below --
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to produce a Queen Mob. It required the slight figure, the girlish,
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sympathetic face, the intense blue eyes, the keen sensibilities.
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the rare ethereal vision, of Shelley.
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Ingersoll, too, put his personality into his lines. His style,
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therefore, is not susceptible to comparison -- it is utterly
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unique! Should one of his marvelous pages be found on the sands of
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the Sahara, its author would be instantly recognizable.
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INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
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A vast majority of our race are substantially alike. They look
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alike, dress alike, act alike, think alike. Since they must
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inevitably, if unconsciously, infuse into their literary expression
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a part of their very selves, how can they but write alike? Indeed,
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not only is the latter what we are led, by reason and analogy, to
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expect: it is precisely what we establish by observation. Take the
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output in any branch of literature -- contemporary periodical
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verse, for example. As far as individuality is concerned, the
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greater part of the periodical verse of the last decade, or of the
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preceding, could have been written by a single person. Between the
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styles (if "styles" there be) of almost any two of the scores of
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authors actually represented, there is less difference than between
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the styles of the garments of any two of those authors, despite the
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proverbial pecuniary vicissitudes of literary fortune. Ingersoll
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himself described, all too faithfully, this class of artists when
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he said: --
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" * * * Most writers suppress individually. They wish to
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please the public. They flatter the stupid and pander to the
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prejudice of their readers. They write for the market, making books
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as other mechanics make shoes. They have no message, they bear no
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torch, they are simply the slaves of customers.
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"The books they manufacture are handles by 'the trade'; they
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are regarded as harmless. The pulpit does not object; the young
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person can read the monotonous pages without a blush -- or a
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thought.
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"On the title pages of these books you will find the imprint
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of the great publishers; on the rest of the pages, nothing. These
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books might be prescribed for insomnia."
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In striking contrast with the many writers just described
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stand the few who are the glory of literature not only, but of the
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human race, -- the men and the women of genius. And, strange to
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say, or rather, natural to say, the former have always made, and
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are still making, with perhaps equal frequency, in reference to the
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latter, two contradictory assertions. About half of the
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mediocrities assert, that individuals of genius are the same as
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others; and this is perfectly natural, because mediocrity can
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scarcely be expected fully to comprehend its own limitations. A
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prisoner can see only the inner side of the confining wall -- never
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the outer side nor the top. The other half of the mediocrities
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assert, that individuals of genius are absolutely different from
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others; and this, too, is perfect natural, for the same reason. The
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truth is, that the genius is the same as others in everything
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except that in which he is a genius; or, reversely, he differs from
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others in that only in which he is not a mediocrity.
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Without speculating as to the ultimate cause of the difference
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distinguishing him (the futility of so speculating, in the present
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state of scientific knowledge, having been pointed in Chapter I),
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we may yet briefly concern ourselves with the difference itself.
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The genius, then, has implicit confidence in himself; the
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mediocrity, confidence in others. The genius has learned little,
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and has little to learn: the mediocrity may have learned a great
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deal, but has a great deal to learn. The genius does not "suppress
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individuality": he expresses it. He does not "wish to please the
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INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
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public," but himself, -- his ideal. He does not "flatter the
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stupid": he tries to arouse and enlighten them. He does not "pander
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to the prejudice" of his readers: he tries to destroy it. He does
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not "write for the market," but for posterity. He has a "message";
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he bears a "torch"; he is not a "slave," but free. His books,
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though they may be "handled by 'the trade,'" are not always
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"regarded as harmless": they are often regarded as dangerous. To
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them, "the pulpit" does "object"; because, while "the young person"
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can read them "without a blush," neither the young nor the old can
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read them without "a thought."
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So it was with Ingersoll and his works. And no one else in
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American literature, where the microcephalous deny him a place, has
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crowded more into a line. Many have occupied pages in expressing
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what he would have expressed in a paragraph.
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He wrote as a river runs. In the work of no other writer is to
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be found less evidence of effort. There is nothing to suggest the
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literary student, -- the "verbal varnisher and veneerer."
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Preeminently the word-wizard of his century, the whole of rhetoric
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was rejuvenated by his genius.
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But there is a particular quality of his style, which,
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although not yet recognized by the general reader, demands
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conspicuous attention, -- and, indeed, perhaps the most conspicuous
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attention, -- in a just estimate of him as a literary artist. I
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refer to rhythm. For it is undoubtedly true, as an observing and
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distinguished critic has said, that Ingersoll, like Socrates, was
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the first to perfect the prose rhythms of the language in which he
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sought expression. He possessed not only the imagination, but the
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ear, of the born poet. Believing that the poets themselves have
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demonstrated rhyme to be a hindrance, rather than a help, in
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expressing the sublimest thought and feeling; caring nothing for
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the greater part of that which passes as poetry; and often putting
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upon it the stamp of ridicule, he carried unconsciously into his
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lines the enchanting splendor, -- the resistless charm, -- of
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metered rhyme. It is this, more than any other single factor, which
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will one day compel impartial and unprejudiced critics to place him
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among the first, if not at the head, of the great masters of
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English prose.
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So naturally did his thoughts find harmonious expression, that
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scarcely a page of his finer productions fails to afford, here and
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there, material for exquisite blank verse.
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Thus "The Warp and Woof," only part of which (for spacial
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reasons) will be quoted, may be arranged so that the prevailing
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measure will be iambic pentameter: --
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"The rise and set of sun,
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The birth and death of day,
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The dawns of silver and the dusks of gold,
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The wonders of rain and snow,
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The shroud of winter and the many-colored robes of spring,
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The lonely moon with nightly loss or gain,
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The serpent lightning and thunder's voice,
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The tempest's fury and the breath of morn,
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The threat of storm and promise of the bow;
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Cathedral clouds with dome and spire," etc.
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INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
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And elsewhere, in iambic rhythm rendered more conspicuous by
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prosodical division and capitalization, this charming picture of
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autumn: --
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"The withered banners of the corn are still,
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And gathered fields are growing strangely wan,
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White death, poetic death,
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With hands that color what they touch,
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Weaves in the autumn wood
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Its tapestries and gold."
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Speaking of the part that myths have played in the evolution
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of religious thought, he says, in perfect iambic rhythm: --
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"They thrilled the vines of Spring with tremulous desire; Made
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tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne and home of love; Filled
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Autumn's arms with sun-kissed grapes and gathered sheaves; And
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pictured Winter as a weak old king Who felt, like Lear upon his
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withered face, Cordelia's tears."
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The following rhapsodical tribute to Shelley is so strikingly
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like what Poe defined as "The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty," that,
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had it been written with ten syllables to the line, no more and no
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less, as it could have been, regardless alike of sense and rhythm,
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it would doubtless be called poetry: --
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"The light of morn beyond the purple hills -- - A palm that
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lifts its coronet of leaves above the desert's sands -- An isle of
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green in some far sea -- A spring that waits for lips of thirst --
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A strain of music heard within some palace wrought of dreams -- A
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cloud of gold above a setting sun -- A fragrance wafted from some
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unseen shore."
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Concerning Shakespeare's understanding of human nature, he
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expresses himself with a rhythm as wondrously beautiful as the
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molten undulations left by the sinking sun: --
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"He knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, The savage joys of
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hatred and revenge. He heard the hiss of envy's snakes And watched
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the eagles of ambition soar. There was no hope that did not put its
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star above his head -- No fear he had not felt -- No joy that had
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not shed its sunshine on his face."
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Again of Shakespeare: --
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"He walked the ways of mighty Rome,
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And saw great Caesar with his legions in the field.
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He stood with vast and motley throngs
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And watched the triumphs given to victorious men,
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Followed by uncrowned kings, the captured hosts, and all
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the spoils of ruthless war.
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He heard the shouts that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls,
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When from the reeling gladiator's hand the short sword fell,
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While from his bosom gushed the stream of wasted life."
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It will be observed, that, excepting a single line in the
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last, both of these Shakespearean quotations, like the one on
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INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
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Shelley, could be arranged in perfectly regular blank verse, with
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five iambic feet (ten syllables) to the line. It will also he
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observed, that, should they be so arranged, their sense would be
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marred, and they would lose insouciance and rhythmic beauty. What
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would be left? And yet, had they been originally written thus, by
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some professional poet schooled to sacrifice substance to mere
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traditional literary form, they would have been classed as poetry.
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Indeed, that this is precisely what would have occurred, even had
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they possessed less of poetic quality than they do, there is ample
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evidence. As introductory of a fragment of it, I quote: --
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"The red man came -- the roaming hunter tribes, warlike and
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fierce, and the mound-builders vanished from the earth. The
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solitude of centuries untold has settled where they dwelt. The
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prairie wolf hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den yawns by
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my path. The gopher mines the ground where stood their swarming
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cities."
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Surely the average reader, chancing upon this passage, would
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not suspect that he was being enriched beyond the potencies of good
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prose: and yet, no less a judge of literature than William Cullen
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Bryant evidently regarded it as poetry; for he wrote and published
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it as such, in blank verse of just ten syllables, under the title
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The Prairies, as follows: --
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"The red man came --
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The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce,
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And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.
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The solitude of centuries untold
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Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie wolf
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Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den
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Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground
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Where stood their swarming cities."
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But let it be understood, that this passage is not quoted with
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the object of asserting that it is not poetry, nor with the
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purposive implication that the scores of productions in like form
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which might be quoted from other sources are not poetry. Rather is
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it quoted with the object of rendering the reader receptive to a
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question which I have had in mind for many years, and which I now
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ask, in simple justice: If that which, when transformed into prose,
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is indistinguishable from it may be retransformed into verse and
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legitimately called poetry, what term shall be applied to that
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which, although originally written as prose, contains imaginative,
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emotional, rhythmic, and tonal qualities unmistakably placing it
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above and beyond good prose? That is to ask, if the quotation from
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Bryant is poetry, what are the quotations from Ingersoll? If Bryant
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and others of his school were poets, what was Ingersoll? Let us be
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candid; let us be fair; let us be sensible.
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Form is one thing; substance, or quality, quite another. Form
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is not an alembic transmuting the baser mental metals into gold. It
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does not create -- it is created. It cannot change prose to poetry,
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nor poetry to prose. volumes of prose have been written as poetry;
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volumes of poetry, as prose.
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Bank of Wisdom
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INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
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The truth is, that, of all the elements of recognized poetic
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form, only one is absolutely indispensable to poetry-rhythm. There
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may be very great poetry without rhyme, and without perfect meter;
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but poetry without rhythm is not poetry: it is mere verse. It is a
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heart that does not beat -- a stream without cataracts -- a willow
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that does not wave -- a bird without wings -- a star that does not
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shine.
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This indispensable element of poetry, -- this indefinable
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something that haunts with enchanting spell the golden temple of
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enraptured song, -- is apparent in all of Ingersoll's finer work.
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Of course, it is rendered more so by the formal treatment which I
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have applied to particular selections; but, unlike that of a
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considerable portion of the professional poet's blank verse, it
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cannot be obscured by the prose form, in which Ingersoll usually
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cast his printed thoughts. Of this, there is no stronger nor more
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pleasing evidence than the following fragment of one of his
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controversial Papers: --
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"Life is a shadowy, strange, and winding road on which we
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travel for a little way -- a few short steps -- just from the
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cradle, with its lullaby of love, to the low and quiet wayside inn,
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where all at last must sleep, and where the only salutation is --
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Good night."
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In exercising the art of expression, Ingersoll kept to himself
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all that was back of the scene. He made no explanation -- offered
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no excuse. His presence was his prelude; his pen was his preface.
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He knew that a glance behind the canvas mars the effect of the
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greatest painting. Very few writers, and still fewer orators,
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appear to recognize this vital aesthetic truth. Hence most of them,
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by way of introduction, usually exhibit all of the defects that an
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imperfect mastery can reveal -- the crude ideas and rejected
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fragments -- the very interior of their mental workshops. It is
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like a glimpse of the kitchen from the banquet board.
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What would the tender and enthralling lines to "Chloris" be
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worth were they prefaced by Burns to imply, that, before writing
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them, he had carefully and conscientiously compared her with the
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other girls? Think of it!
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Most writers are affected with a sort of verbose diathesis.
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Having almost no imagination, they credit the reader with a like
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amount. They anticipate the very motions of his brain -- tell
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everything. Their lines are prison-bars between which fettered
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fancy catches only now and then a glimpse of field and sky. With
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such a style, Ingersoll had no patience. He despised detail, the
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mathematical, the provincial. In short, he was an idealist; and his
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style, like the rainbow, arched in iridescent wonder the
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intellectual sky. He knew that one mind can get from another no
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more than it is "capable of receiving," and that, between the
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words, there should always be room for the reader or hearer to use
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the brush and chisel. He knew that every mind, in spite of others,
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-- in spite of itself, -- takes its own peculiar view. He realized
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that the greatest work of art is, at most, only a sort of mental
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arbor where cling and run the vines of fancy, springing from the
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brain of whomsoever reads or sees. Most of these vines would be
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INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
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dwarfed and flowerless, and not last half the season through; some
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might live, but would not thrive; others still, with exuberance
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interwoven, would tender to mating songsters the hospitality of
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countless leafy bowers, fling to summer dawns blossoms fit for
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Juliet's breast, while beneath the mellowing skies would hang, in
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clustered spheres and purple, the smiles and tears of April days,
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the amorous kisses of unnumbered suns.
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There is a particular circumstance which those who would form
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a just estimate of Ingersoll's expressional faculties should keep
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constantly in mind: he was, first of all, an orator. By dint of the
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orator's power and prestige did he lay claim upon contemporaries;
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and under the orator's almost fateful disadvantages must he lay
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claim upon posterity. The present has memories; the future will
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have type and tradition. The critic, the student, even the admirer,
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in the years to be will know and feel only so much of the
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expressional power of this great personality as can be conveyed by
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the illusive and inadequate medium of the insensate page. Gone, --
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fading in the mist of memory, -- the noble form; silent, -- echoing
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only in the hearts of a lessening few, -- the voice that soothed
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and silvered common speech, and glorified the un-remembering air;
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vanished the enthralling presence -- a presence that held in magic
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||
spell the spirit of the springtime dawn, -- the calm of fulfilled
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noon, -- the peacefulness of eventide, -- the tranquillity of
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midnight upon the starlit plain.
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So in Ingersoll the orator were blended, in matchless harmony,
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nature's rarest and noblest gifts. The circumstances under which
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the latter first became manifest, -- under which he discovered
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himself, -- are as interesting as they were anomalous.
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Robert Ingersoll was in his late teens when a presumably
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orthodox gentleman who had been selected to speak at a Sunday-
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school picnic, on the Fourth of July, near a small town in
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Illinois, was prevented by illness, at the veritable "eleventh
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hour," from keeping his engagement. Thereupon the good people who
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were charged with seeing that the programme was carried out in its
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original completeness, and who had heard something of young
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Ingersoll's oratorical inclinations, invited him to take the place
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of the delinquent one.
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The youthful substitute chose as his theme the patriots and
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heroes of the Revolution. Familiar, of course, with the great and
|
||
noble services which Thomas Paine had rendered, not only to
|
||
America, but to the whole world, before, during, and after that
|
||
struggle, and resenting, with deepest indignation, the base
|
||
ingratitude which had been his lot simply and solely because of his
|
||
subsequent deistical and anti-christian writings, Ingersoll had
|
||
previously made a resolution never to deliver a speech without
|
||
mentioning the name of the "Author-Hero." The probability that
|
||
those whom he was about to address were somewhat deficient in
|
||
reliable data concerning the author of Common Sense, The Crisis,
|
||
The Right of Man, etc. doubtless served to confirm, in Ingersoll's
|
||
judgment, the wisdom of the resolution just mentioned. Anyway, the
|
||
memory of Thomas Paine received at that Sunday-school picnic its
|
||
rightful meed. This, of course, was met with resentment --
|
||
resentment which the youthful speaker read unmistakably in the
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
238
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
faces and voices of his orthodox elders. But in the same faces and
|
||
voices, he read something else -- evidence of kindled emotion; for,
|
||
many times during his speech, -- made without preparation, -- his
|
||
hearers were moved alternately to laughter and tears. In that
|
||
laughter and those tears, -- in that April of his genius, -- Robert
|
||
Ingersoll saw the many-colored bow of promise. For the first time,
|
||
he realized that he held the magic key which, even through the
|
||
cankerous rust of prejudice, could reach and unlock the secrets of
|
||
the soul.
|
||
|
||
Of the "rarest and noblest gifts," visible and invisible,
|
||
which 'nature blended with matchless harmony in Ingersoll the
|
||
orator,' I would here mention eyes, features, and physique; for
|
||
these were by no means the least of the many factors which combined
|
||
to constitute in him "that wonderful thing called presence."
|
||
|
||
His eyes, then, were light-blue, changing, with varying moods,
|
||
to gray, -- changing markedly; and his face was "the face that
|
||
mirrored thoughts." Among the orators of the world, from Pericles
|
||
to the present, there is no face like the face of Ingersoll. As you
|
||
gaze upon it, you feel that nature has reached the summit -- that
|
||
she can rise no higher, can do no more -- that she, at last, has
|
||
done what she set out to do. This face is human! -- you feel that
|
||
a great brain is in partnership with a great heart, and that the
|
||
heart is senior partner. The lines of the former seem everywhere
|
||
just subdued by the lines of the latter -- the lines of intellect
|
||
to blend easily, gladly, with the lines of art. The forehead, the
|
||
eyes, the nose, of the thinker are also those of the artist and
|
||
philanthropist; the mouth and chin of the intellectual gladiator
|
||
are also the mouth and chin of the poet, -- almost of the mother.
|
||
As you gaze upon this face, you feel that mercy, at last, has found
|
||
expression -- every unfortunate, a friend; that the moans of every
|
||
martyr, -- the longings of every exile, -- the agonies of every
|
||
victim of dungeon, rack, and chain, -- the burdens of every slave,
|
||
-- the despair and wretchedness of every outcast, -- the cries of
|
||
every unmothered babe, -- the sobs and yearnings of every abused or
|
||
hungry child, -- were heard and felt by the unknown sculptor who
|
||
traced the lines; -- that those lines express the rapturous
|
||
realization of an eon-wished, but hitherto unpictured and
|
||
unembodied, ideal. And you feel that, after all, man's melancholy
|
||
martyrdom was not in vain; that the race has possibilities; that
|
||
its future is radiant with hope. This face has the contour, the
|
||
symmetry, the poise and balance, the confidence, the integrity, the
|
||
frankness, the open honesty -- the naturalness -- of nature. In it
|
||
are the joy of June and the serenity of September. And yet there is
|
||
earnestness, determination, unmistakable. In fact, you look upon
|
||
this face, and you feel that, were it just a trifle less serious,
|
||
you should smile. You look a moment longer, and -- you smile! and
|
||
are satisfied.
|
||
|
||
ln height Ingersoll was six feet, minus half an inch; and, in
|
||
his prime, he weighed from two hundred to two hundred and twenty
|
||
pounds. This brief statement, in conjunction with the preceding
|
||
text and illustrations, might, perhaps, suffice as a description of
|
||
his physical appearance, were it not for the remarkable fact
|
||
(repeatedly noted by intimate friends), that, when he stepped upon
|
||
the platform before an audience, he seemed suddenly to become a
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
239
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
giant in stature, -- far ampler and taller than he actually was --
|
||
seemed to rise on the spirit of the occasion, to the supreme
|
||
command of everything in sight! The greater the occasion and the
|
||
audience, the greater he seemed to become, and the higher he seemed
|
||
to rise. He was peculiarly, preeminently, "the born orator" -- born
|
||
anew with every inspiration. Of incomparable physique, -- the broad
|
||
and massive shoulders supporting a perfectly molded head -- with
|
||
the formidableness of an antique warrior, and yet the gentle mien
|
||
of a child -- his was a presence to command the attention of the
|
||
Olympian gods. The admirer of the majestic, the heroic, the classic
|
||
in poise and bearing, -- of the Grecian ideal in breathing flesh,
|
||
-- who never sat with an audience as Robert G. Ingersoll strode
|
||
upon the stage and stood "foursquare to all the winds that blew,"
|
||
has missed such an unforgettable impression as will not again be
|
||
the proud and happy fortune of mankind.
|
||
|
||
Oratory is the noblest stream that flows from the hidden
|
||
spring of the ideal to the illimitable ocean of expression.
|
||
Ingersoll was acquainted by nature with the course of that stream
|
||
-- knew its every inch, from where it, dallying, sparkles like a
|
||
silver thread among the rocks and hills of thought, to where its
|
||
mighty current forces back the tides of error in the broad estuary
|
||
of persuasion.
|
||
|
||
Of course, as already mentioned, oratory cannot be put upon
|
||
paper It cannot even be separated from the times and the scenes
|
||
that produce it, nor from the effects that it in turn produces. As
|
||
dead protoplasm is no longer protoplasm, so a printed oration is
|
||
not an oration. The unprecedented occasion -- the opportunity
|
||
previously sought in vain, but now within the orator's grasp; the
|
||
vast assemblage waiting only for the magic voice that shall set
|
||
vibrating in unison with each other, and with those of the orator,
|
||
the secret chords of sympathy and emotion; the flashing eye, the
|
||
poise, the gesture, and the thrilling pause -- language too
|
||
eloquent for utterance -- these are as much a part of the oration
|
||
as are its words.
|
||
|
||
But while the latter alone are comparatively valueless in
|
||
judging the orator as such, they do enable us to judge him as
|
||
verbal artist and philosopher.
|
||
|
||
To attempt a final selection from the gems that, for forty
|
||
years, fell from the golden lips of Ingersoll, seems well nigh
|
||
hopeless. To choose from most other geniuses, would be an easy
|
||
task. Their average product contains enough of the commonplace to
|
||
distinguish passages that are really grand. But Ingersoll left
|
||
nothing commonplace. Great lines, -- thoughts that touch the
|
||
universal, -- poems of subdue shade, -- are found on almost every
|
||
page. Many sentences are music, as sweet as the Orphean lyre, and
|
||
will hold their power to charm as long as genius knows its kith and
|
||
kin. There was no thought, fancy, sentiment, emotion, or passion in
|
||
the expression of which he was not supreme. He was the Phidias of
|
||
verbal sculpture -- the Michelangelo of words. From the gallery of
|
||
his mind, he selected symbols, figures, pictures, as easily, -- as
|
||
naturally, -- as the sea tosses upon the sand a nameless gem.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
240
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
So the question as to which is Ingersoll's oratorical
|
||
masterpiece is preeminently, -- almost distinctively, -- one that
|
||
does not permit of a confident answer. Yet, ask the average person
|
||
to name that masterpiece, and he will mention the "Plumed Knight
|
||
Speech" or A Tribute to Ebon C. Ingersoll or possibly, A Vision of
|
||
War. Why I do not know. Probably it is because he has read one of
|
||
them. For, though perfect of their kind, none of them, I judge, is
|
||
better entitled to distinction than are several other productions
|
||
of our orator.
|
||
|
||
Take the "Soliloquy" at the grave of Napoleon -- only a few
|
||
sentences, to be sure -- a few touches of the brush; and yet it is
|
||
a complete and perfect picture of that marvelous life, from the
|
||
insatiable ambition which would grasp and hold the world, to the
|
||
Stygian midnight of despair and gloom which settled at St. Helena.
|
||
There, "gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea" -- "the only woman
|
||
that ever loved him pushed from his heart by the cold hand of
|
||
ambition" -- stands the great Napoleon. And beside the "poor
|
||
peasant," in "wooden shoes," but surrounded by loving wife and
|
||
happy children, how small and wretched!
|
||
|
||
Then there is "The Cemetery" -- "that vast cemetery called the
|
||
past," wherein are "most of the religions of men," and "nearly all
|
||
their gods," from India's mystic shrines to the divine fires of our
|
||
Aztecs -- a view of comparative mythology and religion which is
|
||
universal in its scope, and which is expressed with the charm of
|
||
consummate art.
|
||
|
||
And the Shakespearean lecture -- a vine of words that twines
|
||
with subtle delicacy and grace around the mighty oak of
|
||
Shakespeare's brain. I have often thought that there are two
|
||
productions which should be in the hands of every student of
|
||
English, -- Spencer's Philosophy of Style and Ingersoll's lecture
|
||
on Shakespeare: the first, to show why certain words and
|
||
expressions are used in preference to others; the last, how they
|
||
are used. This lecture contains, in my judgment, the noblest
|
||
metaphor in our language: --
|
||
|
||
"Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the
|
||
shores of thought; within which were all the 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 eternal stars -- an intellectual
|
||
ocean -- towards which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles
|
||
and continents of thought receive their dew and rain."
|
||
|
||
Many other selections, taken here and there, are hardly less
|
||
notable. How many have read the following? and yet what
|
||
physiologist, psychologist, poet, or philosopher has left a truer
|
||
description of the human brain? --
|
||
|
||
"The dark continent of motive and desire has never been
|
||
explored. In the brain, that wondrous world with one inhabitant,
|
||
there are recesses dim and dark, treacherous sands and dangerous
|
||
shores, where seeming sirens tempt and fade; streams that rise in
|
||
unknown lands from hidden springs, strange seas with ebb and flow
|
||
of tides, restless billows urged by storms of flame, profound and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
241
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
awful depths hidden by mist of dreams, obscure and phantom realms
|
||
where vague and fearful things are half revealed, jungles where
|
||
passion's tigers crouch, and skies of cloud and blue where fancies
|
||
fly with painted wings that dazzle and mislead; and the poor of
|
||
this pictured world is led by old desires and ancient hates, and
|
||
stained by crimes of many vanished years, and pushed by hands that
|
||
long ago were dust, until he feels like some bewildered slave that
|
||
Mockery has throned and crowned."
|
||
|
||
Could the student of human nature -- could any one who has climbed
|
||
unhelped, or in spite of opposition, the ladder of success --
|
||
possibly fail to catch the golden thread that runs through this
|
||
iambic epigram? --
|
||
|
||
"Obstruction is but virtue's foil. From thwarted light leaps
|
||
color's flame. The stream impedded has a song."
|
||
|
||
Think of the spirit of liberty that breathes through this
|
||
sentence: --
|
||
|
||
"Let us go the broad way where science goes -- through the
|
||
open fields, past the daisied slopes, where sunlight, lingering,
|
||
seems to sleep and dream."
|
||
|
||
His ability to find in the words of his very adversaries the
|
||
weapons of attack, -- to capture the enemy's ordnance and use it
|
||
against its owner, -- is well shown in describing "The Infidel": --
|
||
|
||
"He knew that all the pomp and glitter had been purchased with
|
||
liberty -- that priceless jewel of the soul. In looking at the
|
||
cathedral he remembered the dungeon. The music of the organ was not
|
||
loud enough to drown the clank of fitters. He could not forget that
|
||
the taper had lighted the fagot. He knew that the cross adorned the
|
||
hilt of the sword, and so where others worshiped, he wept."
|
||
|
||
What other orator, standing at the grave of a friend, has
|
||
uttered such praise as the following? -- hyperbole so perfect that
|
||
it actually does not seem an exaggeration! --
|
||
|
||
"Her heart was open as the gates of day. She shed kindness as
|
||
the sun sheds light. If all her deeds were flowers, the air would
|
||
be faint with perfume. If all her charities could change to
|
||
melodies, a symphony would fill the sky."
|
||
|
||
And could human speech be more tenderly pathetic than in the
|
||
lines in behalf of the aged actors whom death has claimed? --
|
||
|
||
"And then the silence falls on darkness.
|
||
|
||
"Some loving hands should close their eyes; some loving lips
|
||
should leave upon their pallid brows a kiss; some friends should
|
||
lay the breathless forms away, and on the graves drop blossoms
|
||
jeweled with the tears of love."
|
||
|
||
It required three of the Rhodian artists to chisel the Laocoon
|
||
group; but, in the Decoration Day Oration of 1882, Ingersoll alone
|
||
chiseled an allegorical group, which, in perfection at least, is
|
||
its companion-piece: --
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
242
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
"Pity pointed to the scarred and bleeding backs of slaves;
|
||
Mercy heard the sobs of mothers reft of babes, and justice held
|
||
aloft the scales, in which one drop of blood shed by a master's
|
||
lash, outweighed a nation's gold."
|
||
|
||
Having included the preceding, it would be very hard to omit
|
||
the closing sentences of A Vision of War: --
|
||
|
||
"Those 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 od 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."
|
||
|
||
What majesty! What harmony! What soulful perfection! -- "under
|
||
the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the
|
||
embracing vines"; and "in the windowless palace of Rest." One must
|
||
indeed be faintly impressible to beauty, who should hope to do
|
||
justice to the author of such words as these.
|
||
|
||
Were he not necessarily aware of the sad depth to which the
|
||
noxious roots of religious prejudice penetrate the mental soil of
|
||
mediocrity, the justly appreciative reader of the selections here
|
||
quoted or mentioned would, despairing, wonder at the comparatively
|
||
meager praise elsewhere bestowed upon their author. And with a
|
||
reviewer who should utterly ignore the source of so many matchless
|
||
thoughts, such reader could have but little patience. Suppose that
|
||
the spirit of an absolutely unprejudiced literary critic, visiting
|
||
this earth from another sphere, should find in some "Library of the
|
||
World's Best Literature" liberal selections from America's
|
||
recognized literati, with no mention of Life, A Vision of War,
|
||
Shakespeare, or any of the "tributes." What, in the reader's
|
||
judgment, would be that angel's opinion of literary editors? Yet
|
||
this is precisely what would be found. There are in our libraries
|
||
to-day compilations containing no reference to Ingersoll, but
|
||
including productions of scores of writers who are all but
|
||
commonplace, and whose combined efforts could never have resulted
|
||
in even one of his masterpieces.
|
||
|
||
He shared with poets and philosophers the ability to express,
|
||
with appositeness, lucidity, and beauty, the utmost in a line. He
|
||
was gifted to an extraordinary degree with the phrasal and the
|
||
epigrammatic faculties. Definitions, descriptions, comparisons,
|
||
illustrations, generalizations, fell from his lips as fall the
|
||
ripened fruits from autumn's laden boughs. Thus he referred to the
|
||
bygone centuries as --
|
||
|
||
"The withered leaves of time that strew the desert of the
|
||
past."
|
||
|
||
In the aurora borealis, he beheld --
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
243
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
"The morning of the North when the glittering lances pierce
|
||
the shield of night."
|
||
|
||
He was --
|
||
|
||
"Touched and saddened by autumn, the grace and poetry of
|
||
death."
|
||
|
||
Where others saw merely the snowflakes blown singly or in
|
||
flurries, he could see --
|
||
|
||
"the infantry of the snows and the cavalry of the wild blast."
|
||
|
||
Than this it would be difficult to find in English a more
|
||
strikingly suggestive figure.
|
||
|
||
With a delicacy rivaling Shelley's reference to the lids of
|
||
the sleeping Ianthe, he described the breast of woman as --
|
||
|
||
"Life's drifted font, blue-veined and fair, where perfect
|
||
peace finds perfect form."
|
||
|
||
Condemning alike the practices of the "insane ascetic" and the
|
||
"fool of pleasure," he defined temperance as --
|
||
|
||
"The golden path along the strip of virtue that lies between
|
||
the deserts of extremes."
|
||
|
||
The secret of his countless tributes to manhood, heroism, and
|
||
genius is revealed in this line: --
|
||
|
||
"Gratitude is the fairest flower that sheds its perfume in the
|
||
heart."
|
||
|
||
There was in Ingersoll the marvelous extravagance of Hugo --
|
||
of Shakespeare. Referring to the hopefulness of a beautiful but
|
||
helpless girl -- a paralytic -- whom he had visited, he said that
|
||
|
||
"her brave and cheerful spirit over wreck and ruin of her body
|
||
like morning on the desert."
|
||
|
||
While the selections thus far quoted, -- particularly in the
|
||
present chapter, -- are extraordinarily rich in epigrammatic
|
||
quality, they are nevertheless inadequate in doing full justice to
|
||
Ingersoll's genius in the latter regard.
|
||
|
||
Our philosopher was not one of those individuals who sit down
|
||
deliberately to write epigrams. Had he been such, he doubtless
|
||
would not now be creditable with a greater number of really
|
||
noteworthy sayings than any other American. Like Burns's poem's,
|
||
Ingersoll's epigrams wrote themselves.
|
||
|
||
In the one that follows, we are reminded, by the way, of the
|
||
"ploughman poet's" partiality for common sense and real genius, in
|
||
contradistinction to mere book-learning and acquired talent: --
|
||
|
||
"For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are
|
||
polished and diamonds are dimmed."
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
244
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
In our next selection, we find cause to wonder at Ingersoll's
|
||
intimate knowledge of things in which he never indulged: --
|
||
|
||
"A brazen falsehood and a timid truth are the parents of
|
||
compromise."
|
||
|
||
And --
|
||
|
||
"Apology is the prelude to retreat."
|
||
|
||
In illustration of the truth that great cares and sorrows are
|
||
rare with most of us, -- that trivialities make up the bulk of
|
||
life's burdens, -- he said: --
|
||
|
||
"The traveler is bothered more with dust than mountains."
|
||
|
||
He observed that --
|
||
|
||
"The road is short to anything we fear,"
|
||
|
||
That --
|
||
|
||
"Joy lives in the house beyond the one we reach,"
|
||
|
||
And that --
|
||
|
||
"Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers."
|
||
|
||
Ingersoll uttered in the fewer, shortest words the profoundest
|
||
philosophic truths, -- the wisest ethical precepts.
|
||
|
||
Than the following sixteen syllables what pompous array of
|
||
sentences and paragraphs could more truly express the conclusion of
|
||
every candid man who has really thought? --
|
||
|
||
"The golden bridge of life from gloom emerges and on shadow
|
||
rests."
|
||
|
||
He was the philosopher, not only of moral, but of mental
|
||
honesty, -- of perfect intellectual veracity; and he observed that
|
||
|
||
"Cunning plates fraud with the gold of honesty, and veneers
|
||
vice with virtue."
|
||
|
||
But that, nevertheless --
|
||
|
||
"There is nothing shrewder in this world than intelligent
|
||
honesty. Perfect candor is sword and shield."
|
||
|
||
And he declared that --
|
||
|
||
"Nobility is a question of character, not of birth.
|
||
|
||
"Honor cannot be received as alms -- it must be earned.
|
||
|
||
"It is the brow that makes the wreath of glory green."
|
||
|
||
He was the philosopher of right: --
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
245
|
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|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
"Every man in the right is my brother."
|
||
|
||
Although painfully aware that "innocence is not a perfect
|
||
shield" against the aggressiveness of evil, he still asserted that
|
||
|
||
"The gem of the brain is the innocence of the soul."
|
||
|
||
He was the philosopher of human love -- a believer in its
|
||
protecting and redeeming powers: --
|
||
|
||
"Vice lives either before Love is born, or after Love is
|
||
dead."
|
||
|
||
In the following line, conscience comes to solace the victim
|
||
of unmerited neglect: --
|
||
|
||
"It is better to deserve without receiving than to receive
|
||
without deserving."
|
||
|
||
He was the philosopher of freedom: --
|
||
|
||
"In the realm of Freedom, waste is husbandry. He who puts
|
||
chains upon the body of another shackles his own soul."
|
||
|
||
He was the philosopher of sympathy. He believed that no
|
||
character could be so lofty that it would not be elevated by
|
||
pitying even the very lowest: --
|
||
|
||
"We rise by raising others -- and he who stoops above the
|
||
fallen, stands erect."
|
||
|
||
To those who would seek life's goal solely in the heights of
|
||
fame, he said: --
|
||
|
||
"Happiness dwells in the valleys with the shadows."
|
||
|
||
He condenses the conclusions of modern physical science into
|
||
these nine words: --
|
||
|
||
"A grain of sand can defy all the gods."
|
||
|
||
In the following line our language is enriched with a new
|
||
definition: --
|
||
|
||
"Wisdom is the science of happiness."
|
||
|
||
To the morally short-sighted, he utters this warning: --
|
||
|
||
"He loads the dice against himself, who scores a point against
|
||
the right."
|
||
|
||
Is there in progressive literature a more substantial line
|
||
than the following? --
|
||
|
||
"Fear is the dungeon of the mind."
|
||
|
||
He declares that --
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
246
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
"Intellectual freedom is only the right to be honest."
|
||
|
||
This is one of the subtlest and profoundest truths. A person
|
||
who has not the right to express his honest thoughts has not the
|
||
right to be honest.
|
||
|
||
But in none of the preceding epigrams, perhaps, is there
|
||
stronger proof of profound and subtle intellect than in the
|
||
following fragment of an argument for the doctrine of necessity: --
|
||
|
||
"To the extent that we have wants, we are not free. To the
|
||
extent that we do not have wants, we do not act."
|
||
|
||
And yet it has been said that the author of these lines was
|
||
not a thinker!
|
||
|
||
It is barely necessary to state, that, making due allowance,
|
||
in many cases, for unavoidable incompleteness, the selections which
|
||
have been included in this chapter, and in this work as a whole,
|
||
are, in my judgment, fairly representative of the artistic and
|
||
intellectual Ingersoll. Should they not seem fully to justify my
|
||
estimate of him, I could only wish that they might at least awaken
|
||
sufficient interest to prompt their unbiased comparison with an
|
||
equal number of selections, of kindred nature, from some reformer,
|
||
lawyer, patriot, philosopher, orator, and poet whose title to
|
||
enduring fame is universally recognized.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom Inc. is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
||
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
||
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
||
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
|
||
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
|
||
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
|
||
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
|
||
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
|
||
|
||
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
|
||
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
|
||
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
|
||
us, we need to give them back to America.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
247
|
||
|