Part 12

But it is said that soul-qualities are the active manifestations of gray matter in the human brain. We have already seen that the power to think, to reflect, and to judge of the moral quality of thoughts and acts, is not a property of matter. None of it, by itself or in combination, possesses this power. Wonderful have been the combinations and resultants of the operations of chemists, but life even in its simplest form is beyond their power. How much further beyond their power must be the production of the soul-power mentioned above! Besides, this gray matter has been analyzed and its constituent elements ascertained; none of these elements in its simplest form show any trace of this power. How is it possible, then, by combination to produce that of which no trace even existed in the elements? Then too, if this power is resultant, it is a law of chemistry that all resultants may be reduced back to its constituent elements. It would indeed be a wonderful achievement to reduce the power to think as a resultant, back to its constituent gases. Again, take the case of a strong and healthy man suddenly killed by a bullet penetrating both ventricles of the heart; this gray matter exists intact in the brain immediately after the extinction of life. Decay does not immediately affect its power. Does the man think, reflect and judge of the moral qualities of thoughts and acts after the extinction of life? If so, then this soul-power exists after death, and the argument answers itself.

This argument has proceeded far enough to show its line of thought. Much might be added by way of illustration, details and further supporting propositions, but it is not deemed necessary.

I conclude, then, that the soul is not only a unit with the power ascribed to it, but that it is also an invisible, immaterial and eternal entity or being. This is but the enumeration of the attributes of a spirit or spirit-existence. I will not attempt to repeat the reasons found in every text-book of mental philosophy and moral science to show its unity. We have seen that it is not matter; yea, more, that it is not a property of matter; therefore that it is immaterial. If immaterial and possessing the power to think and reflect, and endowed with moral sensations and perceptions--the highest and best evidences of life--it is a spirit-existence. As such, what evidence have we that a spirit-existence was ever destroyed? That it exists in manifest. Existing with no evidence of its destruction or of its destructibility, we ought to believe in its immortality; hence, I conclude, if a man die, he will live again.

I have had a controversy on religious subjects but once in my life. I have always desired to avoid such controversies. Fixed religious opinions in the minds of others, especially of the old, I regard as sacred. To create a doubt, is to loosen them from their moral and religious moorings and to set them hopelessly adrift.

After I had left school and was recuperating at my father's house, a gentleman of the name of Wellover, who had known me all my life, and who was a plain man of the common people, came to my father's house to see me. His residence was in what was called the Burr Oak Settlement, distant about six miles from the town of Sturgis. He was a member of the Methodist Church and a very exemplary Christian. He seemed to be much troubled. He said to me: "Orange, you know I have been a believer in the Bible and its doctrines for many years. A man has been delivering a course of lectures in the school-house in our settlement. He claims to be a Greek and Latin scholar, and he is attempting to show that the priests have so translated the Bible that it is a deception and a fraud. Now, Orange," he said, "I want you to go down with me to listen to one of his lectures, and afterwards to tell me whether his translations are true or not." I said to him, "You go up to town and see William Allman, who is a graduate of Greenbury College, Indiana, and is reputed to be a good Greek scholar, and ask him to go with me. Tell him to bring with him his large Cooper's Greek Dictionary, and if he will go, I will also." He departed, and soon returned with Allman. I took my large Cooper's Latin Dictionary; we got into Wellover's carriage and we went to his fine residence, took supper with him, and then went to hear the lecture of that evening. We found a good-sized audience in attendance at the school-house. The lecturer, who had passed the middle age in life, stated in his introductory remarks that he would pursue the same course as theretofore, and show, by reference to the Greek and Latin languages, how the priests had translated the Scriptures; sometimes correctly, but in most cases, where their interests were involved, so as to create a dismal terror in the present, and perpetuate by fear, their power in the future. He said that if there were any present acquainted with these languages, he would be glad, if he made an incorrect statement, to be interrupted, and if the statement was incorrect he would correct it. He denied the existence of a God and the immortality of man. He further declared that religion, on account of its doctrine of hate and vengeance, made men crazy. I interrupted, and asked him what was the proof of the last statement; he said the proof was manifest, for that men babbled of religion, of God, immortality and hell, after they became crazy. I answered by saying that I had heard men babble of snakes in their boots, snakes in the bed and snakes everywhere in the room, but I never knew that snakes had anything to do with their madness; in fact, I said, such madness had a well-recognized and efficient cause. He said: "Don't attempt to be smart, young man," and I took my seat. He further declared that if man were immortal, beasts were also, for the Romans had used the word "animus" indiscriminately as to both, and that the priests had translated "animus" to mean intellect and what was called by them, the soul of man. I told him I thought he was mistaken. He rather uncourteously asked me what I knew about Latin. I told him that I had some knowledge of it and that the Romans used the word "mens" from which we derived our word mind, mental, and many other words of the same character, to signify the soul of man; and did not use the word "animus" for that purpose, or with that meaning. I read to him and to the audience from the Dictionary the definitions of "animus" and of "mens." This drove him out of the Latin language, and he and Allman had a spirited and sharp and somewhat personal dispute, about some Greek or pretended Greek word. The controversy showed that he had no knowledge, or only a very limited knowledge, of what he was talking about. He said, after the wrangle with Allman was ended, that he had been interrupted so much by the two young men from town, that he would not proceed with his lecture on that evening, but would close by telling his experience. He said that he had been a minister for eighteen years--nine years in the Methodist Church, and nine years in the Christian or Campbellite Church. He divided all ministers into two classes--knaves and fools. I interrupted him again and asked him, inasmuch as he had been a minister for eighteen years and classed all ministers as knaves and fools, what class he belonged to. He hesitated a moment and said: "I am willing to confess that I belong to the class of fools." "Then," I said, "that confession proves the Bible to be true, for it says, 'the fool hath said in his heart, "there is no God."'" The meeting dissolved, and he lectured no more in that settlement. His pretended knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages was a deception and fraud.

Indians and Their Customs

The Indians are fast passing away, and their customs and mode of thought are passing with them and will only linger in dim tradition. For over fifty-five years I have been in close contact with many individuals of the different tribes of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and California and I have taken considerable interest in the study of their characteristics. I have already stated that the Indian is an impassive stoic. If he has any human emotions, they are with the exception of anger, never displayed in his countenance. When angry, his countenance becomes fixed, sullen, morose and determined. He does not voice his anger, but silently nurses his wrath to keep it warm. He has no wit, but has a keen sense of the ludicrous, sometimes degenerating into short pungent sarcasm. This is the exception, not the general rule. He reasons from surface indications and has a keen perception of the absurd, or what he considers such. I have given one illustration in the narration of R.'s civilizing efforts. It is stated that an Indian chief said to General Isaac I. Stevens, in one of his treaty conventions, "We and our fathers have always possessed this country. We have no objections to the whites coming and enjoying it with us. The country is ours. Why do the whites always urge the Indian to go upon reservations? The Indian never tells the whites that they must go on reservations." On my return from Colville in 1855 I met an Indian with a fine mare. I asked him if he would sell her to me. "Yes," he said, "you may have her for fifteen dollars." I had with me a surplus of blankets and coarse but warm clothing, and I offered to trade him three pair of blankets and a suit of coarse clothing for his mare. It was a cold morning, and the grass was stiff with hoar frost. He had nothing on him in the shape of clothing or wraps, with the exception of a thin calico shirt. I told him that he needed these blankets and clothes to keep him warm. I asked him if he was not cold. He answered in the Yankee style by asking me if my face was cold. I told him "No." "Well," says he, "I am face all over."

The most thorough and extended system of Esperanto which ever existed, so far as my knowledge goes, was spoken on this Coast. It was an invention of the Hudson Bay Company, and extended and was spoken by the Indians generally from the northern portion of California through all of Oregon and Washington and British Columbia, and north of that along the Coast for a great distance. It was also spoken and understood by the pioneers, settlers and trappers through all this vast region. It was Spartan in some of its laconisms. As an illustration: I was appointed by the Court, in the trial of a criminal case in Southern Oregon, for the defense of three Indians on the charge of grand larceny. They were indicted for horse-stealing. The proof against them was clear and satisfactory. I labored to reduce the offense from grand to petit larceny, and I succeeded, for the jury brought in a verdict of "guilty of petit larceny." The Court sentenced them to three months' imprisonment each, in the county jail. When their time expired, the sheriff opened the doors and told them they might go; but, instead of going, they went to the further end of a long, narrow hall, and two of them squatted in the corners and the other between them against the wall. The sheriff came to my office and said to me, "Jacobs, I want you to go with me over to the jail. I can't make those clients of yours understand that they may go." I went over with him and found them thus situated. I told them in the jargon, or Esperanto, that they had paid the debt they owed to the whites and that they were free to go to their homes to see their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and friends. The center man--the oldest of the three--slowly arose and very emphatically spoke the following: "Halo mammook, hiyu muck-a-muck, hyas close, wake klatawa." This being interpreted means: "We have nothing to do, we have plenty to eat, we think it very good, we will not go." We had to drive them out of the jail and into the road on their way home. I walked slowly back to my office meditating on the philosophy of such punishment for an Indian.

Before I came to Puget Sound I had heard of a cultus potlatch. A potlatch is the giving-away of all of our earthly possessions without any hope or expectation of any return, either in kind or value. There was an Indian on the Sound known by the whites as Indian Jim. Jim had a wonderful ability to accumulate property; he was an Indian Morgan, or Rockefeller. He was an expert gambler and trader, and very industrious withal. He usually worked at the mills, where many other Indians were employed, and he not only saved the money earned by himself, but obtained, by his expertness in gambling, much of the money earned by the other Indians, and much of that earned by the white laborers. This money he invested in blankets--usually at Victoria. Some of his accumulation of gold he had changed into fifty and twenty-five cent pieces. He also purchased quite a quantity of calico and Indian trinkets. When he had secured a large accumulation of such things, he gave a potlatch. The one I attended was held on the tide-flats south of Seattle. As the time approached, many canoes were on the Bay, headed by a joyous crowd going to the potlatch. Jim was very anxious that I should attend the closing-day of the potlatch. I told him that I would go. He sent a large canoe with eight paddle-men to take me to the potlatch. So I went in style, I witnessed the closing ceremonies and Jim had enough to give every one in attendance, a blanket, or piece of money, or some gaudy calico, beads or other trinkets.

He even took off a pretty good suit of clothes that he was accustomed to wear and gave them away, substituting an old suit for them. He accompanied me to the city on my return. I said to him, "Jim, you now are a vagabond; you have no clothes to wear, no provisions to eat, and no money." He said that that was all right; he would soon get some more. He said it was all the same as that of the whites, but it was much better than the white man's potlatch. He said that whenever he met his friends he could see in their countenance a pleasant light. He also gave me to understand that it made a sort of nobleman of him. But he said when the white man died his children make a potlatch of what he left behind him; and, being dead he could not see in their countenances that light arising from what they had received from him. I thought possibly that Jim's philosophy had a touch of sarcasm, and a good deal of truth in it.

In Memoriam

James A. Garfield was elected President of the United States of America in November, 1880, and was inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1881; was shot and mortally wounded on the 2nd day of July, 1881; and was removed to Elberton, New Jersey, where he lingered until September 19th, and on that day he died--to the great sorrow of a waiting, hopeful and sympathetic Nation. No death in our history, save possibly that of Lincoln, so generally and profoundly filled the hearts of the American people with sorrow as did the death of Garfield. After its announcement a Nation, inspired by a common impulse, at once hung out the dark emblems of sorrow.

September 27th was appointed Memorial Day. On the 25th a public meeting was called in Seattle at the old Pavilion. Honorable Roger S. Greene was elected chairman of that meeting, and he was to act as such on Memorial Day. Myself, Rev. George H. Watson and Honorable William H. White were invited to deliver at that time addresses on the character and public career of the fallen statesman.

On the appointed day an audience of over four thousand people assembled in front of and on each side of the west end of the old Occidental Hotel. The officers of the day and the speakers occupied the first balcony of the hotel. The exercises were appropriately opened with prayer by Rev. Ellis. Honorable Roger S. Greene made a brief but earnest and impressive address, and introduced me in the following complimentary language:

"We shall hear from one to-day who can occupy an appreciative standpoint and speak of the departed President with more than common sympathy for his public purposes and deeds.

"Yet more. You yourselves have something to say. You seek one of yourselves to speak for you; one who not only, like the lamented dead, thinks as the people think and feels as the people feel, but one who belongs to this local community and who shares our own peculiar shade of sorrow.

"Such an one is here. He is a man skilled in the use of words, a man identified with yourselves, a man experienced and accomplished in public and national affairs, a man personally acquainted with James A. Garfield.

"Fellow citizens, I introduce to you Orange Jacobs, your orator of to-day."

Thus eloquently introduced to the audience, I delivered the following address:

"FELLOW CITIZENS:--In arising to address you on this occasion I feel my own inability to do the subject justice; and the hollow impotence of human language to express the sentiment of national woe. We have assembled to honor the memory, to revere the character, and recount the living virtues of a fallen patriot and statesman. James A. Garfield, the popular idol of the nation, is no more. His spirit has passed the bourne from whence there is no return. We have, in time of our greatest need, lost one of our greatest statesmen and purest patriots. In the mid-day of his manhood, in the midst of his usefulness, just as hope became steady, and faith reliant and sure, Mr. Garfield descended to the grave. His sun of life has set forever. It fell from its meridian splendor, as falls a star from the blazing galaxy of heaven. No twilight obscured its setting.

"As the sun of the physical world--the brightest and grandest of all of the luminaries of the firmament sinks to rest, tingeing the clouds that stretch along the horizon with the golden glories of its declining rays, so Garfield, the sun-intellect of this nation, has gone to his repose, reflecting the light of his noble deeds and unfaltering patriotism, tingeing the breaking clouds of dissention with the beauty and effulgence of hope and peace.

"When the telegraph flashed over a hopeful nation the mournful news of James A. Garfield's death, with the previous knowledge of the cowardly means by which it was effected, the great popular and patriotic heart momentarily ceased its pulsations, and the life-current of a nation, stood still for a moment, until the energies of patriotic vitality gathered new force to repel the effect of the stunning shock. Unbelief and astonishment were succeeded by wordless sorrow, and this was mingled with emotions of patriotic vengeance. Patriots in this mournful hour can brook no sympathy for the damning deed--can bear no manifestation of joy for the bloody work of the assassin.

"James A. Garfield was the popular representative of American patriotism. As President he possessed no powers but those freely delegated to him by his fellow-citizens. His highest duty under the Constitution, and by the delegation of the people, was to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and Government established by the Revolutionary Fathers. In the faithful discharge of these duties, he was suddenly struck down by an assassin. The blow struck not the President alone; it reached in its rebound the popular heart of America. The shot meant the annihilation of delegated power, and as such reached the fountains of popular vitality.

"The people, in the exercise of their inherent sovereignty, may elect, but if it does not suit he shall not live says the shot of the assassin. Such assassinations are extremely dangerous to liberty and constitutional government. If the will of the majority is defeated in this manner, popular government will not long survive. Anarchy, bloodshed and general civil war will succeed the rebound of the popular heart. The popular frenzy which developed itself in mobs in many sections of our country, on the reception of the tidings of Lincoln's death, is but the logical sequence of the assassin's stroke at civil liberty and popular rights. Then it behooves every well-wisher of his country, on such mournful occasions, to give emphasis and intensity to the nation's woe. For, mark you, fellow-citizens, there is a smothered volcano of wrath and vengeance in the great popular heart upon such occasions. A word may vent it, and fill all this fair land with the lava of blood and ashes.

"One more preliminary consideration before I call your attention to the life, character and public services of our dead President. What will be the effect and consequence of this horrid murder, considered with reference to national affairs? No one present can fully tell. Most of the ultimate consequences are too remote and recondite to be comprehended now. We must wait for the full development of the logic of events. This we know, that the time elapsing between the assassin's shot and the lamented death of his victim has been sufficient for the supremacy of reason and the subjugation of passion so far as to prevent any immediate dire results to free government. The American people, yea the Anglo-Saxon race, are believers in law and order. They put their trust in and found their hopes upon a liberty regulated by law. Passion may triumph for an hour, but the sober-second-thought of the masses is sure to assert itself. Passion has never but once in our history crystalized into revolution. It is this subordination to law, this reverence for its majesty, this reliant faith in its methods and results, that constitute the bulwark of our liberties, and make the American people capable of self-government.

"James A. Garfield was born on the 19th day of November, 1831, in Orange, Cuyahoga County, State of Ohio, and hence was in his fiftieth year when he died. He was a graduate of Williams College, Massachusetts. After his graduation he followed the profession of teacher, and was president of a literary institution in Ohio for several years. He afterwards studied law, and so great was his proficiency, that in legal knowledge and forensic power he was a foeman worthy of the steel of such men as Stanton, Ewing, Stanberry and others of national reputation at the Ohio bar. He entered the Union army as Colonel of the 42nd Ohio, in 1861; was promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General January 10th, 1862; was appointed chief of the staff of the Army of the Cumberland, and was promoted to the rank of Major-General, Sept. 20th, 1863; was elected to the 38th Congress while in the field, and was successively elected up to and including the 46th Congress; and while holding this last position he was elected Senator from the great State of Ohio, to succeed Judge Thurman. He never took his seat, however, in the American Senate, for he was nominated and elected President, before Judge Thurman's time expired. I ought to have mentioned that in 1859-'60 he was a member of the State Senate of Ohio. Such is a brief history of this remarkable man.