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GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. 1
A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SEAVER. 3
A TRIBUTE TO RICHARD H. WHITING. 8
A TRIBUTE TO ELIZUR WRIGHT. 9
LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF ANTON SEIDL. 12
THE TRUTH OF HISTORY. 16
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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
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GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.
TWO articles have recently appeared attacking the motives of
George Jacob Holyoake. He is spoken of as a man governed by a
desire to please the rich and powerful, as one afraid of public
opinion and who in the perilous hour denies or conceals his
convictions.
In these attacks there is not one word of truth. They are
based upon mistakes and misconceptions.
There is not in this world a nobler, braver man. In England he
has done more for the great cause of intellectual liberty than any
other man of this generation. He has done more for the poor, for
the children of toil, for the homeless and wretched than any other
living man. He has attacked all abuses, all tyranny and all forms
of hypocrisy. His weapons have been reason, logic, facts, kindness,
and above all, example. He has lived his creed. He has won the
admiration and respect of his bitterest antagonists. He has the
simplicity of childhood, the enthusiasm of youth and the wisdom of
age. He is not abusive, but he is clear and conclusive. He is
intense without violence -- firm without anger. He has the strength
of perfect kindness. He does not hate -- he pities. He does not
attack men and women, but dogmas and creeds. And he does not attack
them to get the better of people, but to enable people to get the
better of them. He gives the light he has. He shares his
intellectual wealth with the orthodox poor. He assists without
insulting, guides without arrogance, and enlightens without
outrage. Besides, he is eminent for the exercise of plain common
sense. He knows that there are wrongs besides those born of
superstition -- that people are not necessarily happy because they
have renounced the Thirty-nine Articles -- and that the priest is
not the only enemy of mankind. He has for forty years been
preaching and practicing industry, economy, self-reliance, and
kindness. He has done all within his power to give the workingman
a better home, better food, better wages, and better opportunities
for the education of his children. He has demonstrated the success
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.
of cooperation -- of intelligent combination for the common good.
As a rule, his methods have been perfectly legal. In some instances
he has knowingly violated the law, and did so with the intention to
take the consequences. He would neither ask nor accept a pardon,
because to receive a pardon carries with it the implied promise to
keep the law, and an admission that you were in the wrong. He would
not agree to desist from doing what he believed ought to be done,
neither would he stain his past to brighten his future, nor
imprison his soul to free his body. He has that happy mingling of
gentleness and firmness found only in the highest type of moral
heroes. He is an absolutely just man, and will never do an act that
he would condemn in another. He admits that the most bigoted
churchman has a perfect right to express his opinions not only, but
that he must be met with argument couched in kind and candid terms.
Mr. Holyoake is not only the enemy of a theological hierarchy, but
he is also opposed to mental mobs. He will not use the bludgeon of
epithet.
Perfect fairness is regarded by many as weakness. Some people
have altogether more confidence in their beliefs than in their own
arguments. They resort to assertion. If what they assert be denied,
the "debate" becomes a question of veracity. On both sides of most
questions there are plenty of persons who imagine that logic dwells
only in adjectives, and that to speak kindly of an opponent is a
virtual surrender.
Mr. Holyoake attacks the church because it has been, is, and
ever will be the enemy of mental freedom, but he does not wish to
deprive the church even of its freedom to express its opinion
against freedom. He is true to his own creed, knowing that when we
have freedom we can take care of all its enemies.
In one of the articles to which I have referred it is charged
that Mr. Holyoake refused to sign a petition for the pardon of
persons convicted of blasphemy. If this is true, he undoubtedly had
a reason satisfactory to himself. You will find that his action, or
his refusal to act, rests upon a principle that he would not
violate in his own behalf.
Why should we suspect the motives of this man who has given
his life for the good of others? I know of no one who is his mental
or moral superior. He is the most disinterested of men. His name is
a synonym of candor. He is a natural logician -- an intellectual
marksman. Like an unerring arrow his thought flies to the heart and
center. He is governed by principle, and makes no exception in his
own favor. He is intellectually honest. He shows you the cracks and
flaws in his own wares. He calls attention to the open joints and
to the weakest links. He does not want a victory for himself, but
for truth. He wishes to expose and oppose, not men, but error. He
is blessed with that cloudless mental vision that appearances
cannot deceive, that interest cannot darken, and that even
ingratitude cannot blur. Friends cannot induce and enemies cannot
drive this man to do an act that his heart and brain would not
applaud. That such a character was formed without the aid of the
church, without the hope of harp or fear of flame, is a
demonstration against the necessity of superstition.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.
Whoever is opposed to mental bondage, to the shackles wrought
by cruelty and worn by fear, should be the friend of this heroic
and unselfish man.
I know something of his life -- something of what he has
suffered -- of what he has accomplished for his fellow-men. He has
been maligned, imprisoned and impoverished. "He bore the heat and
burden of the unregarded day" and "remembered the misery of the
many." For years his only recompense was ingratitude. At last he
was understood. He was recognized as an earnest, honest, gifted,
generous, sterling man, loving his country, sympathizing with the
poor, honoring the useful, and holding in supreme abhorrence
tyranny and falsehood in all their forms. The idea that this man
could for a moment be controlled by any selfish motive by the hope
of preferment, by the fear of losing a supposed annuity, is simply
absurd. The authors of these attacks are not acquainted with Mr.
Holyoake. Whoever dislikes him does not know him.
Read his "Trial of Theism" -- his history of "Cooperation in
England" -- if you wish to know his heart -- to discover the
motives of his life -- the depth and tenderness of his sympathy --
the nobleness of his nature -- the subtlety of his thought -- the
beauty of his spirit -- the force and volume of his brain -- the
extent of his information -- his candor, his kindness, his genius,
and the perfect integrity of his stainless soul.
There is no man for whom I have greater respect, greater
reverence, greater love, than George Jacob Holyoake. --
August 8. 1888.
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A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SEAVER.
At Paine Hall, Boston, August 25, 1889.
HORACE SEAVER was a pioneer, a torch-bearer, a toiler in that
great field we call the world -- a worker for his fellow-men. At
the end of his task he has fallen asleep, and we are met to tell
the story of his long and useful life -- to pay our tribute to his
work and worth.
He was one who saw the dawn while others lived in night. He
kept his face toward the "purpling east and watched the coming of
the blessed day.
He always sought for light. His object was to know -- to find
a reason for his faith -- a fact on which to build.
In superstition's sands he sought the gems of truth; in
superstition's night he looked for stars.
Born in New England -- reared amidst the cruel superstitions
of his age and time, he had the manhood and the courage to
investigate, and he had the goodness and the courage to tell his
honest thoughts.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SEAVER.
He was always kind, and sought to win the confidence of men by
sympathy and love. There was no taint or touch of malice in his
blood. To him his fellows did not seem depraved -- they were not
wholly bad -- there was within the heart of each the seeds of good.
He knew that back of every thought and act were forces
uncontrolled. He wisely said: "Circumstances furnish the seeds of
good and evil, and man is but the soil in which they grow." He
fought the creed, and loved the man. He pitied those who feared and
shuddered at the thought of death -- who dwelt in darkness and in
dread.
The religion of his day filled his heart with horror.
He was kind, compassionate, and tender, and could not fall
upon his knees before a cruel and revengeful God -- he could not
bow to one who slew with famine, sword and fire -- to one pitiless
as pestilence, relentless as the lightning stroke. Jehovah had no
attribute that he could love.
He attacked the creed of New England -- a creed that had
within it the ferocity of Knox, the malice of Calvin, the cruelty
of Jonathan Edwards -- a religion that had a monster for a God --
a religion whose dogmas would have shocked cannibals feasting upon
babes.
Horace Seaver followed the light of his brain -- the impulse
of his heart. He was attacked, but he answered the insulter with a
smile; and even he who coined malignant lies was treated as a
friend misled. He did not ask God to forgive his enemies -- he
forgave them himself. He was sincere. Sincerity is the true and
perfect mirror of the mind. It reflects the honest thought. It is
the foundation of character, and without it there is no moral
grandeur.
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.
The man who lies before us wrapped in perfect peace, practiced
no art to hide or half conceal his thought. He did not write or
speak the double words that might be useful in retreat. He gave a
truthful transcript of his mind, and sought to make his meaning
clear as light.
To use his own words, he had "the courage which impels a man
to do his duty, to hold fast his integrity, to maintain a
conscience void of offence, at every hazard and at every sacrifice,
in defiance of the world."
He lived to his ideal. He sought the approbation of himself.
He did not build his character upon the opinions of others, and it
was out of the very depths of his nature that he asked this
profound question:
"What is there in other men that makes us desire their
approbation, and fear their censure more than our own?"
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SEAVER.
Horace Seaver was a good and loyal citizen of the mental
republic -- a believer in intellectual hospitality, one who knew
that bigotry is born of ignorance and fear -- the provincialism of
the brain. He did not belong to the tribe, or to the nation, but to
the human race. His sympathy was wide as want, and, like the sky,
bent above the suffering world.
This man had that superb thing called moral courage -- courage
in its highest form. He knew that his thoughts were not the
thoughts of others -- that he was with the few, and that where one
would take his side, thousands would be his eager foes. He knew
that wealth would scorn and cultured ignorance deride, and that
believers in the creeds, buttressed by law and custom, would hurl
the missiles of revenge and hate. He knew that lies, like snakes,
would fill the pathway of his life -- and yet he told his honest
thought -- told it without hatred and without contempt -- told it
as it really was. And so, through all his days, his heart was sound
and stainless to the core.
When he enlisted in the army whose banner is light, the honest
investigator was looked upon as lost and cursed, and even Christian
criminals held him in contempt. The believing embezzler, the
orthodox wife-beater, even the murderer, lifted his bloody hands
and thanked God that on his soul there was no stain of unbelief.
In nearly every State of our Republic, the man who denied the
absurdities and impossibilities lying at the foundation of what is
called orthodox religion, was denied his civil rights. He was not
canopied by the aegis of the law. He stood beyond the reach of
sympathy. He was not allowed to testify against the invader of his
home, the seeker for his life -- his lips were closed. He was
declared dishonorable, because he was honest. His unbelief made him
a social leper, a pariah, an outcast. He was the victim of
religious hate and scorn. Arrayed against him were all the
prejudices and all the forces and hypocrisies of society. All
mistakes and lies were his enemies. Even the Theist was denounced
as a disturber of the peace, although he told his thoughts in kind
and candid words. He was called a blasphemer, because he sought to
rescue the reputation of his God from the slanders of orthodox
priests.
Such was the bigotry of the time, that natural love was lost.
The unbelieving son was hated by his pious sire, and even the
mother's heart was by her creed turned into stone.
Horace Seaver pursued his way. He worked and wrought as best
he could, in solitude and want. He knew the day would come. He
lived to be rewarded for his toil -- to see most of the laws
repealed that had made outcasts of the noblest, the wisest, and the
best. He lived to see the foremost preachers of the world attack
the sacred creeds. He lived to see the sciences released from
superstition's clutch. He lived to see the orthodox theologian take
his place with the professor of the black art, the fortune-teller,
and the astrologer. He lived to see the greatest of the world
accept his thought -- to see the theologian displaced by the true
priests of Nature -- by Humboldt and Darwin, by Huxley and Haeckel.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SEAVER.
Within the narrow compass of his life the world was changed.
The railway, the steamship, and the telegraph made all nations
neighbors. Countless inventions have made the luxuries of the past
the necessities of to-day. Life has been enriched, and man
ennobled. The geologist has read the records of frost and flame, of
wind and wave -- the astronomer has told the story of the stars --
the biologist has sought the germ of life, and in every department
of knowledge the torch of science sheds its sacred light.
The ancient creeds have grown absurd. The miracles are small
and mean. The inspired book is filled with fables told to please a
childish world, and the dogma of eternal pain now shocks the heart
and brain.
He lived to see a monument unveiled to Bruno in the city of
Rome -- to Giordano Bruno -- that great man who two hundred and
eighty-nine years ago suffered death for having proclaimed the
truths that since have filled the world with joy. He lived to see
the victim of the church a victor -- lived to see his memory
honored by a nation freed from papal chains.
He worked knowing what the end must be -- expecting little
while he lived -- but knowing that every fact in the wide universe
was on his side. He knew that truth can wait, and so he worked
patient as eternity.
He had the brain of a philosopher and the heart of a child.
Horace Seaver was a man of common sense.
By that I mean, one who knows the law of average. He denied
the Bible, not on account of what has been discovered in astronomy,
or the length of time it took to form the delta of the Nile -- but
he compared the things he found with what he knew.
He knew that antiquity added nothing to probability -- that
lapse of time can never take the place of cause, and that the dust
can never gather thick enough upon mistakes to make them equal with
the truth.
He knew that the old, by no possibility, could have been more
wonderful than the new, and that the present is a perpetual torch
by which we know the past.
To him all miracles were mistakes, whose parents were cunning
and credulity. He knew that miracles were not, because they are
not.
He believed in the sublime, unbroken, and eternal march of
causes and effects -- denying the chaos of chance, and the caprice
of power.
He tested the past by the now, and judged of all the men and
races of the world by those he knew.
He believed in the religion of free-thought and good deed --
of character, of sincerity, of honest endeavor, of cheerful help --
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SEAVER.
and above all, in the religion of love and liberty -- in a religion
for every day -- for the world in which we live -- for the present
-- the religion of roof and raiment, of food, of intelligence, of
intellectual hospitality -- the religion that gives health and
happiness, freedom and contentment -- in the religion of work, and
in the ceremonies of honest labor.
He lived for this world; if there be another, he will live for
that.
He did what he could for the destruction of fear -- the
destruction of the imaginary monster who rewards the few in heaven
-- the monster who tortures the many in perdition.
He was a friend of all the world, and sought to civilize the
human race.
For more than fifty years he labored to free the bodies and
the souls of men -- and many thousands have read his words with
joy. He sought the suffering and oppressed. He sat by those in pain
-- and his helping hand was laid in pity on the brow of death.
He asked only to be treated as he treated others. He asked for
only what he earned, and had the manhood cheerfully to accept the
consequences of his actions. He expected no reward for the goodness
of another.
But he has lived his life. We should shed no tears except the
tears of gratitude. We should rejoice that he lived so long.
In Nature's course, his time had come. The four seasons were
complete in him. The Spring could never come again. The measure of
his years was full.
When the day is done -- when the work of a life is finished --
when the gold of evening meets the dusk of night, beneath the
silent stars the tired laborer should fall asleep. To outlive
usefulness is a double death. "Let me not live after my flame lacks
oil, to be the snuff of younger spirits."
When the old oak is visited in vain by Spring -- when light
and rain no longer thrill -- it is not well to stand leafless,
desolate, and alone. It is better far to fall where Nature softly
covers all with woven moss and creeping vine.
How little, after all, we know of what is ill or well! How
little of this wondrous stream of cataracts and pools -- this
stream of life, that rises in a world unknown, and flows to that
mysterious sea whose shore the foot of one who comes has never
pressed! How little of this life we know -- this struggling ray of
light 'twixt gloom and gloom -- this strip of land by verdure clad,
between the unknown wastes -- this throbbing moment filled with
love and pain -- this dream that lies between the shadowy shores of
sleep and death!
We stand upon this verge of crumbling time. We love, we hope,
we disappear. Again we mingle with the dust, and the "knot
intrinsicate" forever falls apart.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SEAVER.
But this we know: A noble life enriches all the world.
Horace Seaver lived for others. He accepted toil and hope
deferred. Poverty was his portion. Like Socrates, he did not seek
to adorn his body, but rather his soul with the jewels of charity,
modesty, courage, and above all, with a love of liberty.
Farewell, O brave and modest man!
Your lips, between which truths burst into blossom, are
forever closed. Your loving heart has ceased to beat. Your busy
brain is still, and from your hand has dropped the sacred torch.
Your noble, self-denying life has honored us, and we will
honor you.
You were my friend, and I was yours. Above your silent clay I
pay this tribute to your worth.
Farewell!
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A TRIBUTE TO RICHARD H. WHITING.
New York, May 21, 1888.
MY FRIENDS: The river of another life has reached the sea.
Again we are in the presence of that eternal peace that we
call death.
My life has been rich in friends, but I never had a better or
a truer one than he who lies in silence here. He was as steadfast,
as faithful, as the stars.
Richard H. Whiting was an absolutely honest man. His word was
gold -- his promise was fulfillment -- and there never has been,
there never will be, on this poor earth, any thing nobler than an
honest, loving soul.
This man was as reliable as the attraction of gravitation --
he knew no shadow of turning. He was as generous as autumn, as
hospitable as summer, and as tender as a perfect day in June. He
forgot only himself, and asked favors only for others. He begged
for the opportunity to do good -- to stand by a friend, to support
a cause, to defend what he believed to be right.
He was a lover of nature -- of the woods, the fields and
flowers. He was a home-builder. He believed in the family and the
fireside -- in the sacredness of the hearth.
He was a believer in the religion of deed, and his creed was
to do good. No man has ever slept in death who nearer lived his
creed.
I have known him for many years, and have yet to hear a word
spoken of him except in praise.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A TRIBUTE TO RICHARD H. WHITING.
His life was full of honor, of kindness and of helpful deeds.
Besides all, his soul was free. He feared nothing, except to do
wrong. He was a believer in the gospel of help and hope. He knew
how much better, how much more sacred, a kind act is than any
theory the brain has wrought.
The good are the noble. His life filled the lives of others
with sunshine. He has left a legacy of glory to his children. They
can truthfully say that within their veins is right royal blood --
the blood of an honest, generous man, of a steadfast friend, of one
who was true to the very gates of death.
If there be another world, another life beyond the shore of
this, -- if the great and good who died upon this orb are there, --
then the noblest and the best, with eager hands, have welcomed him
-- the equal in honor, in generosity, of any one that ever passed
beyond the veil.
To me this world is growing poor. New friends can never fill
the places of the old.
Farewell! If this is the end, then you have left to us the
sacred memory of a noble life. If this is not the end, there is no
world in which you, my friend, will not be loved and welcomed.
Farewell!
**** ****
A TRIBUTE TO ELIZUR WRIGHT.
New York. December 19, 1885.
ANOTHER hero has fallen asleep -- one who enriched the world
with an honest life.
Elizur Wright was one of the Titans who attacked the monsters,
the Gods, of his time -- one of the few whose confidence in liberty
was never shaken, and who, with undimmed eyes, saw the atrocities
and barbarisms of his day and the glories of the future.
When New York was degraded enough to mob Arthur Tappan, the
noblest of her citizens; when Boston was sufficiently infamous to
howl and hoot at Harriet Martineau, the grandest Englishwoman that
ever touched our soil; when the North was dominated by theology and
trade, by piety and piracy; when we received our morals from
merchants, and made merchandise of our morals, Elizur Wright held
principle above profit, and preserved his manhood at the peril of
his life.
When the rich, the cultured, and the respectable, -- when
church members and ministers, who had been "called" to preach the
"glad tidings," and when statesmen like Webster joined with
bloodhounds, and in the name of God hunted men and mothers, this
man rescued the fugitives and gave asylum to the oppressed.
During those infamous years -- years of cruelty and national
degradation -- years of hypocrisy and greed and meanness beneath
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A TRIBUTE TO ELIZUR WRIGHT.
the reach of any English word, Elizur Wright became acquainted with
the orthodox church. He found that a majority of Christians were
willing to enslave men and women for whom they said that Christ had
died -- that they would steal the babe of a Christian mother,
although they believed that the mother would be their equal in
heaven forever. He found that those who loved their enemies would
enslave their friends -- that people who when smitten on one cheek
turned the other, were ready, willing and anxious to mob and murder
those who simply said: "The laborer is worthy of his hire."
In those days the church was in favor of slavery, not only of
the body but of the mind. According to the creeds, God himself was
an infinite master and all his children serfs. He ruled with whip
and chain, with pestilence and fire. Devils were his bloodhounds,
and hell his place of eternal torture.
Elizur Wright said to himself, why should we take chains from
bodies and enslave minds -- why fight to free the cage and leave
the bird a prisoner? He became an enemy of orthodox religion --
that is to say, a friend of intellectual liberty.
He lived to see the destruction of legalized larceny; to read
the Proclamation of Emancipation; to see a country without a slave,
a flag without a stain. He lived long enough to reap the reward for
having been an honest man; long enough for his "disgrace" to become
a crown of glory; long enough to see his views adopted and his
course applauded by the civilized world; long enough for the hated
word "abolitionist" to become a title of nobility, a certificate of
manhood, courage and true patriotism.
Only a few years ago, the heretic was regarded as an enemy of
the human race. The man who denied the inspiration of the Jewish
Scriptures was looked upon as a moral leper, and the Atheist as the
worst of criminals. Even in that day, Elizur Wright was grand
enough to speak his honest thought, to deny the inspiration of the
Bible; brave enough to defy the God of the orthodox church -- the
Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Eternal jailer, the Everlasting
Inquisitor.
He contended that a good God would not have upheld slavery and
polygamy; that a loving Father would not assist some of his
children to enslave or exterminate their brethren; that an infinite
being would not be unjust, irritable, jealous, revengeful,
ignorant, and cruel.
And it was his great good fortune to live long enough to find
the intellectual world on his side; long enough to know that the
greatest naturalists, philosophers, and scientists agreed with him;
long enough to see certain words change places, so that "heretic"
was honorable and "orthodox " an epithet. To-day, the heretic is
known to be a man of principle and courage -- one blest with enough
mental independence to tell his thought. To-day, the thoroughly
orthodox means the thoroughly stupid.
Only a few years ago it was taken for granted that an
"unbeliever" could not be a moral man; that one who disputed the
inspiration of the legends of Judea could not be sympathetic and
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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A TRIBUTE TO ELIZUR WRIGHT.
humane, and could not really love his fellow-men. Had we no other
evidence upon this subject, the noble life of Elizur Wright would
demonstrate the utter baselessness of these views.
His life was spent in doing good -- in attacking the hurtful,
in defending what he believed to be the truth. Generous beyond his
means; helping others to help themselves; always hopeful, busy,
just, cheerful; filled with the spirit of reform; a model citizen
-- always thinking of the public good, devising ways and means to
save something for posterity, feeling that what he had he held in
trust; loving Nature, familiar with the poetic side of things,
touched to enthusiasm by the beautiful thought, the brave word, and
the generous deed; friendly in manner, candid and kind in speech,
modest but persistent; enjoying leisure as only the industrious
can; loving and gentle in his family; hospitable, -- judging men
and women regardless of wealth, position or public clamor;
physically fearless, intellectually honest, thoroughly informed;
unselfish, sincere, and reliable as the attraction of gravitation.
Such was Elizur Wright, -- one of the staunchest soldiers that ever
faced and braved for freedom's sake the wrath and scorn and lies of
place and power.
A few days ago I met this genuine man. His interest in all
human things was just as deep and keen, his hatred of oppression,
his love of freedom, just as intense, just as fervid, as on the day
I met him first. True, his body was old, but his mind was young,
and his heart, like a spring in the desert, bubbled over as
joyously as though it had the secret of eternal youth. But it has
ceased to beat, and the mysterious veil that hangs where sight and
blindness are the same -- the veil that revelation has not drawn
aside -- that science cannot lift, has fallen once again between
the living and the dead.
And yet we hope and dream. May be the longing for another life
is but the prophecy forever warm from Nature's lips, that love,
disguised as death, alone fulfills. We cannot tell. And yet perhaps
this Hope is but an antic, following the fortunes of an uncrowned
king, beguiling grief with jest and satisfying loss with pictured
gain. We do not know.
But from the Christian's cruel hell, and from his heaven more
heartless still, the free and noble soul, if forced to choose,
should loathing turn, and cling with rapture to the thought of
endless sleep.
But this we know: good deeds are never childless. A noble life
is never lost. A virtuous action does not die. Elizur Wright
scattered with generous hand the priceless seeds, and we shall reap
the golden grain. His words and acts are ours, and all he nobly did
is living still.
Farewell, brave soul! Upon thy grave I lay this tribute of
respect and love. When last our hands were joined, I said these
parting words: "Long life!" And I repeat them now.
END
**** ****
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF ANTON SEIDL.
New York, February 2, 1895.
MR. PRESIDENT, MR. ANTON SEIDL, AND GENTLEMEN: I was enjoying
myself with music and song; why I should be troubled, why I should
be called upon to trouble you, is a question I can hardly answer.
Still, as the president has remarked, the American people like to
hear speeches. Why, I don't know. It has always been a matter of
amazement that anybody wanted to hear me. Talking is so universal;
with few exceptions -- the deaf and dumb -- everybody seems to be
in the business. Why they should be so anxious to hear a rival I
never could understand. But, gentlemen, we are all pupils of
nature; we are taught by the countless things that touch us on
every side; by field and flower and star and cloud and river and
sea, where the waves break into whitecaps, and by the prairie, and
by the mountain that lifts its granite forehead to the sun; all
things in nature touch us, educate us, sharpen us, cause the heart
to bud, to burst, it may be, into blossom; to produce fruit. In
common with the rest of the world I have been educated a little
that way; by the things I have seen and by the things I have heard
and by the people I have met. But there are a few things that stand
out in my recollection as having touched me more deeply than
others, a few men to whom I feel indebted for the little I know,
and for the little I happen to be. Those men, those things, are
forever present in my mind. But I want to tell you to-night that
the first man that let up the curtain in my mind, that ever opened
a blind, that ever allowed a little sunshine to straggle in, was
Robert Burns. I went to get my shoes mended, and I had to go with
them. And I had to wait till they were done. I was like the fellow
standing by the stream naked washing his shirt. A lady and
gentleman were riding by in a carriage, and upon seeing him the man
indignantly shouted, "Why don't you put on another shirt when you
are washing one? " The fellow said, "I suppose you think I've got
a hundred shirts!"
When I went into the shop of the old Scotch shoemaker he was
reading a book, and when he took my shoes in hand I took his book,
which was "Robert Burns." In a few days I had a copy; and, indeed,
gentlemen, from that time if "Burns" had been destroyed I could
have restored more than half of it. It was in my mind day and
night. Burns you know is a little valley, not very wide, but full
of sunshine; a little stream runs down making music over the rocks,
and children play upon the banks; narrow roads overrun with vines,
covered with blossoms, happy children, the hum of bees, and little
birds pour out their hearts and enrich the air. That is Burns.
Then, you must know that I was raised respectably. Certain books
were not thought to be good for the young person; only such books
as would start you in the narrow road for the New Jerusalem. But
one night I stopped at a little hotel in Illinois, many years ago,
when we were not quite civilized, when the footsteps of the red man
were still in the prairies. While I was waiting for supper an old
man was reading from a book, and among others who were listening
was myself. I was filled with wonder. I had never heard anything
like it. I was ashamed to ask him what he was reading; I supposed
that an intelligent boy ought to know. So I waited, and when the
little bell rang for supper I hang back and they went out. I picked
up the book; it was Sam Johnson's edition of Shakespeare. The next
day I bought a copy for four dollars. My God! more than the
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF ANTON SEIDL.
national debt. You talk about the present straits of the Treasury
I For days, for nights, for months, for years, I read those books,
two volumes, and I commenced with the introduction. I haven't read
that introduction for nearly fifty years, certainly forty-five, but
I remember it still. Other writers are like a garden diligently
planted and watered, but Shakespeare a forest where the oaks and
elms toss their branches to the storm, where the pine towers, where
the vine bursts into blossom at its foot. That book opened to me a
new world, another nature. While Burns was the valley, here was a
range of mountains with thousands of such valleys; while Burns was
as sweet a star as ever rose into the horizon, here was a heaven
filled with constellations. That book has been a source of
perpetual joy to me from that day to this; and whenever I read
Shakespeare -- if it ever happens that I fail to find some new
beauty, some new presentation of some wonderful truth, or another
word that bursts into blossom, I shall make up my mind that my
mental faculties are failing, that it is not the fault of the book.
Those, then, are two things that helped to educate me a little.
Afterward I saw a few paintings by Rembrandt, and all at once
I was overwhelmed with the genius of the man that could convey so
much thought in form and color. Then I saw a few landscapes by
Corot, and I began to think I knew something about art. During all
my life, of course, like other people, I had heard what they call
music, and I had my favorite pieces, most of those favorite pieces
being favorites on account of association; and nine-tenths of the
music that is beautiful to the world is beautiful because of the
association, not because the music is good, but because of
association. We cannot write a very poetic thing about a pump or
about water works; they are not old enough. We can write a poetic
thing about a well and a sweep and an old moss-covered bucket, and
you can write a poem about a spring, because a spring seems a gift
of nature, something that cost no trouble and no work, something
that will sing of nature under the quiet stars of June. So, it is
poetic on account of association. The stage coach is more poetic
than the car, but the time will come when cars will be poetic,
because human feelings, love's remembrances, will twine around
them, and consequently they will become beautiful. There are two
pieces of music, "The Last Rose of Summer," and "Home Sweet Home,"
with the music a little weak in the back; but association makes
them both beautiful. So, in the "Marseillaise" is the French
Revolution, that whirlwind and flame of war, of heroism the highest
possible, of generosity, of self-denial, of cruelty, of all of
which the human heart and brain are capable; so that music now
sounds as though its notes were made of stars, and it is beautiful
mostly by association.
Now, I always felt that there must be some greater music
somewhere, somehow. You know this little music that comes back with
recurring emphasis every two inches or every three-and-a-half
inches; I thought there ought to be music somewhere with a great
sweep from horizon to horizon, and that could fill the great dome
of sound with winged notes like the eagle; if there was not such
music, somebody, sometime, would make it, and I was waiting for it.
One day I heard it, and I said, "What music is that?" "Who wrote
that?" I felt it everywhere. I was cold. I was almost hysterical.
It answered to my brain, to my heart; not only to association, but
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF ANTON SEIDL.
to all there was of hope and aspiration, all my future; and they
said this is the music of Wagner. I never knew one note from
another -- of course I would know it from a promissory note -- and
was utterly and absolutely ignorant of music until I heard Wagner
interpreted by the greatest leader, in my judgment, in the world --
Anton Seidl. He not only understands Wagner in the brain, but he
feels him in the heart, and there is in his blood the same kind of
wild and splendid independence that was in the brain of Wagner. I
want to say to-night, because there are so many heresies, Mr.
President, creeping into this world, I want to say and say it with
all my might, that Robert Burns was not Scotch. He was far wider
than Scotland; he had in him the universal tide, and wherever it
touches the shore of a human being it finds access. Not Scotch,
gentlemen, but a man, a man! I can swear to it, or rather affirm,
that shakespeare was not English, but another man, kindred of all,
of all races and peoples, and who understood the universal brain
and heart of the human race, and who had imagination enough to put
himself in the place of all.
And so I want to say to-night, because I want to be
consistent, Richard Wagner was not a German, and his music is not
German; and why? Germany would not have it. Germany denied that it
was music. The great German critics said it was nothing in the
world but noise. The best interpreter of Wagner in the world is not
German, and no man has to be German to understand Richard Wagner.
In the heart of nearly every man is an AEolian harp, and when the
breath of true genius touches that harp, every man that has one, or
that knows what music is or has the depth and height of feeling
necessary to appreciate it, appreciates Richard Wagner. To
understand that music, to hear it as interpreted by this great
leader, is an education. It develops the brain; it gives to the
imagination wings; the little earth grows larger; the people grow
important; and not only that, it civilizes the heart; and the man
who understands that music can love better and with greater
intensity than he ever did before. The man who understands and
appreciates that music, becomes in the highest sense spiritual --
and I don't mean by spiritual, worshiping some phantom, or dwelling
upon what is going to happen to some of us -- I mean spiritual in
the highest sense; when a perfume arises from the heart in
gratitude, and when you feel that you know what there is of beauty,
of sublimity, of heroism and honor and love in the human heart.
This is what I mean by being spiritual. I don't mean denying
yourself here and living on a crust with the expectation of eternal
joy -- that is not what I mean. By spiritual I mean a man that has
an ideal, a great ideal, and who is splendid enough to live to that
ideal; that is what I mean by spiritual. And the man who has heard
the music of Wagner, that music of love and death, the greatest
music, in my judgment, that ever issued from the human brain, the
man who has heard that and understands it has been civilized,
Another man to whom I feel under obligation whose name I do
not know -- I know Burns, Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Wagner, but
there are some other fellows whose names I do not know -- is he who
chiseled the Venus de Milo. This man helped to civilize the world;
and there is nothing under the sun so pathetic as the perfect.
Whoever creates the perfect has thought and labored and suffered;
and no perfect thing has ever been done except through suffering
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF ANTON SEIDL.
and except through the highest and holiest thought, and among this
class of men is Wagner. Let me tell you something more. You know I
am a great believer. There is no man in the world who believes more
in human nature than I do. No man believes more in the nobility and
splendor of humanity than I do; no man feels more grateful than I
to the self-denying, heroic, splendid souls who have made this
world fit for ladies and gentlemen to live in. But I believe that
the human mind has reached its top in three departments. I don't
believe the human race -- no matter if it lives millions of years
more upon this wheeling world -- I don't believe the human race
will ever produce in the world anything greater, sublimer, than the
marbles of the Greeks. I do not believe it. I believe they reach
absolutely the perfection of form and the expression of force and
passion in stone. The Greeks made marble as sensitive as flesh and
as passionate as blood. I don't believe that any human being of any
coming race -- no matter how many suns may rise and set, or how
many religions may rise and fall, or how many languages be born and
decay -- I don't believe any human being will ever excel the dramas
of Shakespeare. Neither do I believe that the time will ever come
when any man with such instruments of music as we now have, and
having nothing but the common air that we now breathe, will ever
produce greater pictures in sound, greater music, than Wagner.
Never! Never! And I don't believe he will ever have a better
interpreter than Anton Seidl. Seidl is a poet in sound, a sculptor
in sound. He is what you might call an orchestral orator, and as
such he expresses the deepest feelings, the highest aspirations and
the intensest and truest love of which the brain and heart of man
are capable.
Now, I am glad, I am delighted, that the people here in this
city and in various other cities of our great country are becoming
civilized enough to appreciate these harmonies; I am glad they are
civilized at last enough to know that the home of music is tone,
not tune; that the home of music is in harmonies where you braid
them like rainbows; I am glad they are great enough and civilized
enough to appreciate the music of Wagner, the greatest music in
this world. Wagner sustains the same relation to other composers
that Shakespeare does to other dramatists, and any other dramatist
compared with Shakespeare is like one tree compared with an
immeasurable forest, or rather like one leaf compared with a
forest; and all the other composers of the world are embraced in
the music of Wagner. Nobody has written anything more tender than
he, nobody anything sublimer than he. Whether it is the song of the
deep, or the warble of the mated bird, nobody has excelled Wagner;
he has expressed all that the human heart is capable of
appreciating. And now, gentlemen, having troubled you long enough,
and saying long live Anton Seidl, I bid you good-night.
END
**** ****
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
15
THE TRUTH OF HISTORY.
1887
Thousands of Christians have asked: How was it possible for
Christ and his apostles to deceive the people of Jerusalem? How
came the miracles to be believed? Who had the impudence to say that
lepers had been cleansed, and that the dead had been raised? How
could such impostors have escaped exposure?
I ask: How did Mohammed deceive the people of Mecca? How has
the Catholic Church imposed upon millions of people? Who can
account for the success of falsehood?
Millions of people are directly interested in the false. They
live by lying. To deceive is the business of their lives. Truth is
a cripple; lies have wings. It is almost impossible to overtake and
kill and bury a lie. If you do, some one will erect a monument over
the grave, and the lie is born again as an epitaph. Let me give you
a case in point.
A few days ago the Matlock Register, a paper published in
England, printed the following:
CONVERSION OF THE ARCH ATHEIST.
Mr. Isaac Loveland, of Shoreham, desires us to insert the
following: --
November 27, 1886.
"Dear Mr. Loveland. -- A day or two since, I received
from Mr. Hine the exhilarating intelligence that through his
lectures on the 'Identity of the British Nation with Lost
Israel,' in Canada and the United States, that Col. Bob
Ingersoll, the arch Atheist, has been converted to
Christianity, and has joined the Episcopal Church.
Praise the Lord! ! ! 5,000 of his followers have been
won for Christ through Mr. Hine's grand mission work, the
other side of the Atlantic. The Colonel's cousin, the Rev. Mr.
Ingersoll, wrote to Mr. Hine soon after he began lecturing in
America, informing him that his lectures had made a great
impression on the Colonel and other Atheists. I noted it at
the time in the Messenger. Bradlaugh will yet be converted;
his brother has been, and has joined a British Israel Identity
Association. This is progress, and shows what an energetic,
determined man (like Mr. Hine), who is earnest in his faith,
can do.
"Very faithfully yours,
H. HODSON RUGG."
How can we account for an article like that? Who made up this
story? Who had the impudence to publish it?
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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CONVERSION OF THE ARCH ATHEIST.
As a matter of fact, I never saw Mr. Hine, never heard of him
until this extract was received by me in the month of December. I
never read a word about the "Identity of Lost Israel with the
British Nation." It is a question in which I never had, and never
expect to have, the slightest possible interest.
Nothing can be more preposterous than that the Englishman in
whose veins can be found the blood of the Saxon, the Dine, the
Norman, the Pict, the Scot and the Celt, is the descendant of
"Abraham, Isaac and jacob." The English language does not bear the
remotest resemblance to the Hebrew, and yet it is claimed by the
Reverend Hodson Rugg that not only myself, but five thousand other
Atheists, were converted by the Rev. Mr. Hine, because of his
theory that Englishmen and Americans are simply Jews in disguise.
This letter, in my judgment, was published to be used by
missionaries in China, Japan, India and Africa.
If stories like this can be circulated about a living man,
what may we not expect concerning the dead who have opposed the
church?
Countless falsehoods have been circulated about all the
opponents of Superstition. Whoever attacks the popular falsehoods
of his time will find that a lie defends itself by telling other
lies. Nothing is so prolific, nothing can so multiply itself,
nothing can lay and hatch as many eggs, as a good, healthy,
religious lie.
And nothing is more wonderful than the credulity of the
believers in the supernatural. They feel under a kind of obligation
to believe everything in favor of their religion, or against any
form of what they are pleased to call Infidelity."
The old falsehoods about Voltaire, Paine, Hume, Julian,
Diderot and hundreds of others, grow green every spring. They are
answered; they are demonstrated to be without the slightest
foundation; but they rarely die. And when one does die there seems
to be a kind of Caesarian operation, so that in each instance
although the mother dies the child lives to undergo, if necessary,
a like operation, leaving another child, and sometimes two.
There are thousands and thousands of tongues ready to repeat
what the owners know to be false, and these lies are a part of the
stock in trade, the valuable assets, of superstition. No church can
afford to throw its property away. To admit that these stories are
false now, is to admit that the church has been busy lying for
hundreds of years, and it is also to admit that the word of the
church is not and cannot be taken as evidence of any fact.
A few years ago, I had a little controversy with the editor of
the New York Observer. the Rev. Irenaeus Prime, (who is now
supposed to be in heaven enjoying the bliss of seeing Infidels in
hell), as to whether Thomas Paine recanted his religious opinions.
I offered to deposit a thousand dollars for the benefit of a
charity, if the reverend doctor would substantiate the charge that
Paine recanted. I forced the New York Observer to admit that Paine
did not recant, and compelled that paper to say that "Thomas Paine
died a blaspheming Infidel."
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CONVERSION OF THE ARCH ATHEIST.
A few months afterward an English paper was sent to me -- a
religious paper -- and in that paper was a statement to the effect
that the editor of the New York Observer had claimed that Paine
recanted; that I had offered to give a thousand dollars to any
charity that Mr. Prime might select, if he would establish the fact
that Paine did recant; and that so overwhelming was the testimony
brought forward by Mr. Prime, that I admitted that Paine did
recant, and paid the thousand dollars.
This is another instance of what might be called the truth of
history.
I wrote to the editor of that paper, telling the exact facts,
and offering him advertising rates to publish the denial, and in
addition, stated that if he would send me a copy of his paper with
the denial, I would send him twenty-five dollars for his trouble.
I received no reply, and the lie is in all probability still on its
travels, going from Sunday school to Sunday school, from pulpit to
pulpit, from hypocrite to savage, -- that is to say, from
missionary to Hottentot -- without the slightest evidence of
fatigue -- fresh and strong, -- and in its cheeks the roses and
lilies of perfect health.
Some person, expecting to add another gem to his crown of
glory, put in circulation the story that one of my daughters had
joined the Presbyterian Church, -- a story without the slightest
foundation -- and although denied a hundred times, it is still
being printed and circulated for the edification of the faithful.
Every few days I receive some letter of inquiry as to this charge,
and I have industriously denied it for years, but up to the present
time, it shows no signs of death -- not even of weakness.
Another religious gentleman put in print the charge that my
son, having been raised in the atmosphere of Infidelity, had become
insane and died in an asylum. Notwithstanding the fact that I never
had a son, the story still goes right on, and is repeated day after
day without the semblance of a blush.
Now, if all this is done while I am alive and well, and while
I have all the facilities of our century for spreading the denials,
what will be done after my lips are closed?
The mendacity of superstition is almost enough to make a man
believe in the supernatural.
And so I might go on for a hundred columns. Billions of
falsehoods have been told and there are trillions yet to come. The
doctrines of Malthus have nothing to do with this particular kind
of reproduction.
And there are also many other falsehoods which the church has
told, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that
even the world itself could not contain the books that should be
written"
The Truth Seeker, Now York, February. 19. 1887.
Bank of Wisdom
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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