Part 11

England was filled with Puritan gloom and Episcopal ceremony. All religious conceptions were of the grossest nature. The ideas of crazy fanatics and extravagant poets were taken as sober facts. Milton had clothed Christianity in the soiled and faded finery of the gods--had added to the story of Christ the fables of Mythology, He gave to the Protestant Church the most outrageously material ideas of the Deity. He turned all the angels into soldiers--made heaven a battlefield, put Christ in uniform, and described God as a militia general. His works were considered by the Protestants nearly as sacred as the Bible itself, and the imagination of the people was thoroughly polluted by the horrible imagery, the sublime absurdity of the blind Milton.

347. Ernst Haeckel

Amongst the bravest, side by side with the greatest of the world in Germany, the land of science--stands Ernst Haeckel, who may be said not only to have demonstrated the theories of Darwin, but the monistic conception of the world. He has endeavored--and I think with complete success--to show that there is not, and never was, and never can be, the creator of anything. Haeckel is one of the bitterest enemies of the church, and is, therefore, one of the bravest friends of man.

348. Professor Swing, a Dove amongst Vultures

Professor Swing was too good a man to stay in the Presbyterian Church. He was a rose amongst thistles; he was a dove amongst vultures; and they hunted him out, and I am glad he came out. I have the greatest respect for Professor Swing, but I want him to tell whether the 109th Psalm is inspired.

349. Queen Victoria and George Eliot

Compare George Eliot with Queen Victoria. The Queen is clad in garments given her by blind fortune and unreasoning chance, while George Eliot wears robes of glory woven in the loom of her own genius. And so it is the world over. The time is coming when men will be rated at their real worth; when we shall care nothing for an officer if he does not fill his place.

350. Bough on Rabbi Bien

I will not answer Rabbi Bien, and I will tell you why. Because he has taken himself outside of all the limits of a gentleman; because he has taken upon himself to traduce American women in language the beastliest I ever read; and any man who says that the American women are not just as good women as any God can make, and pick his mind to-day, is an unappreciative barbarian. I will let him alone because he denounced all the men in this country, all the members of Congress, all the members of the Senate, all the Judges on the bench, as thieves and robbers. I pronounce him a vulgar falsifier, and let him alone.

351. General Garfield

No man has been nominated for the office since I was born, by either party, who had more brains and more heart than James A. Garfield. He was a soldier, he is a statesman. In time of peace he preferred the avocations of peace; when the bugle of war blew in his ears he withdrew from his work and fought for the flag, and then he went back to the avocation of peace. And I say to-day that a man who, in a time of profound peace, makes up his mind that he would like to kill folks for a living is no better, to say the least of it, than the man who loves peace in the time of peace, and who, when his country is attacked, rushes to the rescue of her flag.

352. "Wealthy in Integrity; In Brain a Millionaire."

James A. Garfield is to-day a poor man, and you know that there is not money enough in this magnificent street to buy the honor and manhood of James A. Garfield. Money cannot make such a man, and I will swear to you that money cannot buy him. James A. Garfield to-day wears the glorious robe of honest poverty. He is a poor man; but I like to say it here in Wall street; I like to say it surrounded by the millions of America; I like to say it in the midst of banks, and bonds, and stocks; I love to say it where gold is piled--that, although a poor man, he is rich in honor, in integrity he is wealthy, and in brain he is a millionaire.

353. Garfield a Certificate of the Splendor of the American Constitution

Garfield is a certificate of the splendor of our Government, that says to every poor boy: "All the avenues of honor are open to you." I know him and I like him. He is a scholar; he is a statesman; he was a soldier; he is a patriot; and above all he is a magnificent man, and if every man in New York knew him as well as I do, Garfield would not lose a hundred votes in this city.

354. Dr. W. Hiram Thomas

The best thing that has come from the other side is from Dr. Thomas. I regard him as by far the grandest intellect in the Methodist Church. He is intellectually a wide and tender man. I cannot conceive of an article being written in a better spirit. He finds a little fault with me for not being exactly fair. If there were more ministers like Dr. Thomas the probability is I never should have laid myself liable to criticism. There is some human nature in me, and I find it exceedingly difficult to preserve at all times perfect serenity. I have the greatest possible respect for Dr. Thomas, and must heartily thank him for his perfect fairness.

MISCELLANEOUS

355. Heresy and Orthodoxy

It has always been the man ahead that has been called the heretic. Heresy is the last and best thought always! Heresy extends the hospitality of the brain to a new idea; that is what the rotting says to flax growing; that is what the dweller in the swamp says to the man on the sun-lit hill; that is what the man in the darkness cries out to the grand man upon whose forehead is shining the dawn of a grander day; that is what the coffin says to the cradle. Orthodoxy is a kind of shroud, and heresy is a banner--Orthodoxy is a fog and Heresy a star shining forever upon the cradle of truth. I do not mean simply in religion, I mean in everything and the idea I wish to impress upon you is that you should keep your minds open to all the influences of nature, you should keep your minds open to reason; hear what a man has to say, and do not let the turtle-shell of bigotry grow above your brain. Give everybody a chance and an opportunity; that is all.

356. The Aristocracy that will Survive.

We used to worship the golden calf, and the worst you can say of us now, is, we worship the gold of the calf, and even the calves are beginning to see this distinction. We used to go down on our knees to every man that held office, now he must fill it if he wishes any respect. We care nothing for the rich, except what will they do with their money? Do they benefit mankind? That is the question. You say this man holds an office. How does he fill it?--that is the question. And there is rapidly growing up in the world an aristocracy of heart and brain--the only aristocracy that has a right to exist.

357. Truth will Bear the Test

If a man has a diamond that has been examined by the lapidaries of the world, and some ignorant stonecutter told him that it is nothing but an ordinary rock, he laughs at him; but if it has not been examined by lapidaries, and he is a little suspicious himself that it is not genuine, it makes him mad. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.

358. Paring Nails

Why should we in this age of the world be dominated by the dead? Why should barbarian Jews who went down to death and dust three thousand years ago, control the living world? Why should we care for the superstition of men who began the sabbath by paring their nails, "beginning at the fourth finger, then going to the second, then to the fifth, then to the third, and ending with the thumb?" How pleasing to God this must have been.

359. There may be a God

There may be for aught I know, somewhere in the unknown shoreless vast, some being whose dreams are constellations and within whose thought the infinite exists. About this being, if such an one exists, I have nothing to say. He has written no books, inspired no barbarians, required no worship, and has prepared no hell in which to burn the honest seeker after truth.

360. The People are Beginning to Think

The people are beginning to think, to reason and to investigate. Slowly, painfully, but surely, the gods are being driven from the earth. Only upon rare occasions are they, even by the most religious, supposed to interfere in the affairs of men. In most matters we are at last supposed to be free. Since the invention of steamships and railways, so that the products of all countries can be easily interchanged, the gods have quit the business of producing famine.

361. Unchained Thought

For the vagaries of the clouds the infidels propose to substitute the realities of earth; for superstition, the splendid demonstrations and achievements of science; and for theological tyranny, the chainless liberty of thought.

362. Man the Victor of the Future

If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.

363. The Sacred Sabbath

Of all the superstitious of mankind, this insanity about the "sacred Sabbath" is the most absurd. The idea of feeling it a duty to be solemn and sad one-seventh of the time! To think that we can please an infinite being by staying in some dark and sombre room, instead of walking in the perfumed fields! Why should God hate to see a man happy? Why should it excite his wrath to see a family in the woods, by some babbling stream, talking, laughing and loving? Nature works on that "sacred" day. The earth turns, the rivers run, the trees grow, buds burst into flower, and birds fill the air with song. Why should we look sad, and think about death, and hear about-hell? Why should that day be filled with gloom instead of joy?

364. Make the Sabbath Merry

Freethinkers should make the Sabbath a day of mirth and music; a day to spend with wife and child--a day of games, and books, and dreams--a day to put fresh flowers above our sleeping dead--a day of memory and hope, of love and rest.

365. Away to the Hills and the Sea

A poor mechanic, working all the week in dust and noise, needs a day of rest and joy, a day to visit stream and wood--a day to live with wife and child; a day in which to laugh at care, and gather hope and strength for toils to come. And his weary wife needs a breath of sunny air, away from street and wall, amid the hills or by the margin of the sea, where she can sit and prattle with her babe, and fill with happy dreams the long, glad day.

366. Melancholy Sundays

When I was a little fellow most everybody thought that some days were too sacred for the young ones to enjoy themselves in. That was the general idea. Sunday used to commence Saturday night at sundown, under the old text, "The evening and the morning were the first day." They commenced then, I think, to get a good ready. When the sun went down Saturday night, darkness ten thousand times deeper than ordinary night fell upon that house. The boy that looked the sickest was regarded as the most pious. You could not crack hickory nuts that night, and if you were caught chewing gum it was another evidence of the total depravity of the human heart. It was a very solemn evening. We would sometimes sing, "Another day has passed." Everybody looked as though they had the dyspesia--you know lots of people think they are pious, just because they are bilious, as Mr. Hood says. It was a solemn night, and the next morning the solemnity had increased. Then we went to church, and the minister was in a pulpit about twenty feet high. If it was in the winter there was no fire; it was not thought proper to be comfortable while you were thanking the Lord. The minister commenced at firstly and ran up to about twenty-fourthly, and then he divided it up again; and then he made some concluding remarks, and then he said lastly, and when he said lastly he was about half through.

367. Moses took Egyptian Law for his Model

It has been contended for many years that the ten commandments are the foundation of all ideas of justice and of law. Eminent jurists have bowed to popular prejudice, and deformed their works by statements to the effect that the Mosaic laws are the fountains from which sprang all ideas of right and wrong. Nothing can be more stupidly false than such assertions. Thousands of years before Moses was born, the Egyptians had a code of laws. They had laws against blasphemy, murder, adultery, larceny, perjury, laws for the collection of debts, and the enforcement of contracts.

368. A False Standard of Success

It is not necessary to be rich, nor powerful, nor great, to be a success; and neither is it necessary to have your name between the putrid lips of rumor to be great. We have had a false standard of success. In the years when I was a little boy we read in our books that no fellow was a success that did not make a fortune or get a big office, and he generally was a man that slept about three hours a night. They never put down in the books the gentlemen who succeeded in life and yet slept all they wanted to. We have had a wrong standard.

369. Toilers and Idlers

You can divide mankind into two classes: the laborers and the idlers, the supporters and the supported, the honest and the dishonest. Every man is dishonest who lives upon the unpaid labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. All laborers should be brothers. The laborers should have equal-rights before the world and before the law. And I want every farmer to consider every man who labors either with hand or brain as his brother. Until genius and labor formed a partnership there was no such thing as prosperity among men. Every reaper and mower, every agricultural implement, has elevated the work of the farmer, and his vocation grows grander with every invention. In the olden time the agriculturist was ignorant; he knew nothing of machinery, he was the slave of superstition.

370. The Sad Wilderness History

While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend.

371. Law Much Older than Sinai

Laws spring from the instinct of self-preservation. Industry objected to supporting idleness, and laws were made against theft. Laws were made against murder, because a very large majority of the people have always objected to being murdered. All fundamental laws were born simply of the instinct of self-defence. Long before the Jewish savages assembled at the foot of Sinai, laws had been made and enforced, not only in Egypt and India, but by every tribe that ever existed.

372. Who is the Blasphemer?

There was no pity in inspired war. God raised the black flag, and commanded his soldiers to kill even the smiling infant in its mother's arms. Who is the blasphemer; the man who denies the existence of God, or he who covers the robes of the infinite with innocent blood?

373. Standing Tip for God

We are told in the Pentateuch that God, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a God, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him.

374. Matter and Force

The statement in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, I cannot accept. It is contrary to my reason, and I cannot believe it. It appears reasonable for me that force has existed from eternity. Force cannot, as it appears to me, exist apart from matter. Force, in its nature, is forever active, and without matter it could not act; and so I think matter must have existed forever. To conceive of matter without force, or of force without matter, or of a time when neither existed, or of a being who existed for an eternity without either, and who out of nothing created both, is to me utterly impossible.

375. Haeckel before Moses!

It may be that I am led to these conclusions by "total depravity," or that I lack the necessary humility of spirit to satisfactorily harmonize Haeckel and Moses; or that I am carried away by pride, blinded by reason, given over to hardness of heart that I might be damned, but I never can believe that the earth was covered with leaves, and buds, and flowers, and fruits, before the sun with glittering spear had driven back the hosts of night.

376. How was it Done?

We are told that God made man; and the question naturally arises, how was this done? Was it by a process of "evolution," "development;" the "transmission of acquired habits;" the "survival of the fittest," or was the necessary amount of clay kneaded to the proper consistency, and then by the hands of God moulded into form? Modern science tells that man has been evolved, through countless epochs, from the lower forms; that he is the result of almost an infinite number of actions, reactions, experiences, states, forms, wants and adaptations.

377. General Joshua

My own opinion is that General Joshua knew no more about the motions of the earth than he did mercy and justice. If he had known that the earth turned upon its axis at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, and swept in its course about the sun at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, he would have doubled the hailstones, spoken of in the same chapter, that the Lord cast down from heaven, and allowed the sun and moon to rise and set in the usual way.

378. Early Rising is Barbaric!

This getting up so early in the morning is a relic of barbarism. It has made hundreds of thousands of young men curse business. There is no need of getting up at three or four o'clock in the winter morning. The farmer who persists in dragging his wife and children from their beds ought to be visited by a missionary. It is time enough to rise after the sun has set the example. For what purpose do you get up? To feed the cattle? Why not feed them more the night before? It is a waste of life. In the old times they used to get up about three o'clock in the morning, and go to work long before the sun had risen with "healing upon his wings," and as a just punishment they all had the ague; and they ought to have it now.

379. Sleep is Medicine!

You should not rob your families of sleep. Sleep is the best medicine in the world. There is no such thing as health, without plenty of sleep. Sleep until you are thoroughly rented and restored. When you work, work; and when you get through take a good, long and refreshing sleep.

380. Never Rise at Four O'Clock

The man who cannot get a living upon Illinois soil without rising before daylight ought to starve. Eight hours a day is enough for any farmer to work except in harvest time. When you rise at four and work till dark what is life worth? Of what use are all the improvements in farming? Of what use is all the improved machinery unless it tends to give the farmer a little more leisure? What is harvesting now, compared with what it was in the old time? Think of the days of reaping, of cradling, of raking and binding and mowing. Think of threshing with the flail and winnowing with the wind. And now think of the reapers and mowers, the binders and threshing machines, the plows and cultivators, upon which the farmer rides protected from the sun. If, with all these advantages, you cannot get a living without rising in the middle of the night, go into some other business.

381. The Hermit is Mad

A hermit is a mad man. Without friends and wife and child, there is nothing left worth living for. The unsocial are the enemies of joy. They are filled with egotism and envy, with vanity and hatred. People who live much alone become narrow and suspicious. They are apt to be the property of one idea. They begin to think there is no use in anything. They look upon the happiness of others as a kind of folly. They hate joyous folks, because, way down in their hearts, they envy them.

382. Duke Orang-Outang

I think we came from the lower animals. I am not dead sure of it, but think so. When I first read about it I didn't like it. My heart was filled with sympathy for those people who leave nothing to be proud of except ancestors. I thought how terrible this will be upon the nobility of the old world. Think of their being forced to trace their ancestry back to the Duke Orang-Outang or to the Princess Chimpanzee. After thinking it all over I came to the conclusion that I liked that doctrine. I became convinced in spite of myself. I read about rudimentary bones and muscles. I was told that everybody had rudimentary muscles extending from the ear into the cheek. I asked: "What are they?" I was told: "They are the remains of muscles; they became rudimentary from the lack of use." They went into bankruptcy. They are the muscles with which your ancestors used to flap their ears. Well, at first I was greatly astonished, and afterward I was more astonished to find they had become rudimentary.

383. Self-Made Men

It is often said of this or that man that he is a self-made man--that he was born of the poorest and humblest parents, and that with every obstacle to overcome he became great. This is a mistake. Poverty is generally an advantage. Most of the intellectual giants of the world have been nursed at the sad but loving breast of poverty. Most of those who have climbed highest on the shining ladder of fame commenced at the lowest round. They were reared in the straw thatched cottages of Europe; in the log houses of America; in the factories of the great cities; in the midst of toil; in the smoke and din of labor.

384. The One Window in the Ark

A cubit is twenty-two inches; so that the ark was five hundred and fifty feet long, ninety-one feet and eight inches wide, and fifty-five feet high. The ark was divided into three stories, and had on top, one window twenty-two inches square. Ventillation must have been one of Jehovah's hobbies. Think of a ship larger than the Great Eastern with only one window, and that but twenty-two inches square!

385. No Ante-Diluvian Camp-Meetings!

It is a little curious that when God wished to reform the ante-diluvian world he said nothing about hell; that he had no revivals, no camp-meetings, no tracts, no out-pourings of the Holy Ghost, no baptisms, no noon prayer meetings, and never mentioned the great doctrine of salvation by faith. If the orthodox creeds of the world are true, all those people went to hell without ever having heard that such a place existed. If eternal torment is a fact, surely these miserable wretches ought to have been warned. They were threatened only with water when they were in fact doomed to eternal fire!

386. Hard Work in the Ark

Eight persons did all the work. They attended to the wants of 175,000 birds, 3,616 beasts, 1,300 reptiles, and 2,000,000 insects, saying nothing of countless animalculae.

387. What did Moses know about the Sun?