Part 12

ALL kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable serenity. As a rule, there is nothing in the death of a pirate to cast any discredit on his profession. The murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell, meets death without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ, or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost. The king who has waged cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with widows and fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who has succeeded in offering to the Moloch of ambition the best and bravest of his subjects, dies like a saint.

All the believing kings are in heaven--all the doubting philosophers in perdition. All the persecutors sleep in peace, and the ashes of those who burned their brothers, sleep in consecrated ground. Libraries could hardly contain the names of the Christian wretches who have filled the world with violence and death in defence of book and creed, and yet they all died the death of the righteous, and no priest, no minister, describes the agony and fear, the remorse and horror with which their guilty souls were filled in the last moments of their lives. These men had never doubted--they had never thought--they accepted the creed as they did the fashion of their clothes. They were not infidels, they could not be--they had been baptized, they had not denied the divinity of Christ, they had partaken of the "last supper." They respected priests, they admitted that Christ had two natures and the same number of wills; they admitted that the Holy Ghost had "proceeded," and that, according to the multiplication table of heaven, once one is three, and three times one is one, and these things put pillows beneath their heads and covered them with the drapery of peace.

They admitted that while kings and priests did nothing worse than to make their fellows wretched, that so long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and helpless, God would maintain the strictest neutrality; but when some honest man, some great and tender soul, expressed a doubt as to the truth of the Scriptures, or prayed to the wrong God, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real God leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering flesh tore his wretched soul.

There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has been paralyzed--no truthful account in all the literature of the world of the innocent child being shielded by God. Thousands of crimes are being committed every day--men are at this moment lying in wait for their human prey--wives are whipped and crushed, driven to insanity and death--little children begging for mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled eyes to the brutal faces of fathers and mothers--sweet girls are deceived, lured and outraged, but God has no time to prevent these things--no time to defend the good and protect the pure. He is too busy numbering hairs and watching sparrows. He listens for blasphemy; looks for persons who laugh at priests; examines baptismal registers; watches professors in college who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the astronomy of Joshua. He does not particularly object to stealing, if you won't swear. A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking God's name in vain, but millions of men, women and children have been stolen from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no one engaged in this infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful hand of God.

Now and then a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty, has appeared. Such men have denounced the superstitions of their day. They have pitied the multitude. To see priests devour the substance of the people--priests who made begging one of the learned professions--filled them with loathing and contempt. These men were honest enough to tell their thoughts, brave enough to speak the truth. Then they were denounced, tried, tortured, killed by rack or flame. But some escaped the fury of the fiends who love their enemies, and died naturally in their beds. It would not do for the church to admit that they died peacefully. That would show that religion was not essential at the last moment. Superstition gets its power from the terror of death. It would not do to have the common people understand that a man could deny the Bible--refuse to kiss the cross--contend that Humanity was greater than Christ, and then die as sweetly as Torquemada did, after pouring molten lead into the ears of an honest man; or as calmly as Calvin after he had burned Servetus; or as peacefully as King David after advising with his last breath one son to assassinate another.

The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments of all infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were infinitely wretched and despairing. It was alleged that words could not paint the horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every good Christian was expected to, and generally did, believe these accounts. They have been told and retold in every pulpit of the world. Protestant ministers have repeated the lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a kind of theological comity, have sworn to the lies told by the Protestants. Upon this point they have always stood together, and will as long as the same falsehood can be used by both.

Instead of doing these things, Voltaire wilfully closed his eyes to the light of the gospel, examined the Bible for himself, advocated intellectual liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an arrogant faith, assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of man, appealed to reason, endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored the indigent, and defended the oppressed.

He demonstrated that the origin of all religions is the same--the same mysteries--the same miracles--the same imposture--the same temples and ceremonies--the same kind of founders, apostles and dupes--the same promises and threats--the same pretence of goodness and forgiveness and the practice of the same persecution and murder. He proved that religion made enemies--philosophy friends--and that above the rights of Gods were the rights of man.

These were his crimes. Such a man God would not suffer to die in peace. If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might follow his example, until none would be left to light the holy fires of the _auto da fe_. It would not do for so great, so successful, an enemy of the church to die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shudder of remorse, some ghastly prayer of chattered horror uttered by lips covered with blood and foam.

For many centuries the theologians have taught that an unbeliever--an infidel--one who spoke or wrote against their creed, could not meet death with composure; that in his last moments God would fill his conscience with the serpents of remorse.

For a thousand years the clergy have manufactured the facts to fit this theory--this infamous conception of the duty of man and the justice of God.

The theologians have insisted that crimes against man were, and are, as nothing compared with crimes against God.

Upon the death-bed subject the clergy grow eloquent. When describing the shudderings and shrieks of the dying unbeliever, their eyes glitter with delight.

It is a festival.

They are no longer men. They become hyenas. They dig open graves. They devour the dead.

It is a banquet.

Unsatisfied still, they paint the terrors of hell. They gaze at the souls of the infidels writhing in the coils of the worm that never dies. They see them in flames--in oceans of fire--in gulfs of pain--in abysses of despair. They shout with joy. They applaud.

It is an _auto da fe_, presided over by God.

VIII. THE SECOND RETURN.

FOR four hundred years the Bastile had been the outward symbol of oppression. Within its walls the noblest had perished. It was a perpetual threat. It was the last, and often the first, argument of king and priest. Its dungeons, damp and rayless, its massive towers, its secret cells, its instruments of torture, denied the existence of God.

In 1789, on the 14th of July, the people, the multitude, frenzied by suffering, stormed and captured the Bastile. The battle-cry was "Vive Voltaire."

In 1791 permission was given to place in the Pantheon the ashes of Voltaire. He had been buried 110 miles from Paris. Buried by stealth, he was to be removed by a nation. A funeral procession of a hundred miles; every village with its flags and arches; all the people anxious to honor the philosopher of France--the Savior of Calas--the Destroyer of Superstition.

On reaching Paris the great procession moved along the Rue St. Antoine. Here it paused, and for one night upon the ruins of the Bastile rested the body of Voltaire--rested in triumph, in glory--rested on fallen wall and broken arch, on crumbling stone still damp with tears, on rusting chain and bar and useless bolt--above the dungeons dark and deep, where light had faded from the lives of men and hope had died in breaking hearts.

The conqueror resting upon the conquered.--Throned upon the Bastile, the fallen fortress of Night, the body of Voltaire, from whose brain had issued the Dawn.

For a moment his ashes must have felt the Promethean fire, and the old smile must have illumined once more the face of death.

The vast multitude bowed in reverence, hushed with love and awe heard these words uttered by a priest: "God shall be avenged."

The cry of the priest was a prophecy. Priests skulking in the shadows with faces sinister as night, ghouls in the name of the gospel, desecrated the grave. They carried away the ashes of Voltaire.

The tomb is empty.

God is avenged.

The world is filled with his fame.

Man has conquered.

Was there in the eighteenth century, a man wearing the vestments of the church, the equal of Voltaire?

What cardinal, what bishop, what priest in France raised his voice for the rights of men? What ecclesiastic, what nobleman, took the side of the oppressed--of the peasant? Who denounced the frightful criminal code--the torture of suspected persons? What priest pleaded for the liberty of the citizen? What bishop pitied the victims of the rack? Is there the grave of a priest in France on which a lover of liberty would now drop a flower or a tear? Is there a tomb holding the ashes of a saint from which emerges one ray of light?

If there be another life--a day of judgment, no God can afford to torture in another world the man who abolished torture in this. If God be the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, he should not imprison there the men who broke the chains of slavery here. He cannot afford to make an eternal convict of Voltaire.

Voltaire was a perfect master of the French language, knowing all its moods, tenses and declinations, in fact and in feeling--playing upon it as skillfully as Paganini on his violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the most serious subjects with the gayety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the crumbling mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings that covered the asp with flowers and flattery--master of satire and compliment--mingling them often in the same line, always interested himself, and therefore interesting others--handling thoughts, questions, subjects as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air with perfect ease--dressing old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit and wisdom, and sometimes wickedness, logic and laughter. With a woman's instinct knowing the sensitive nerves--just where to touch--hating arrogance of place, the stupidity of the solemn--snatching masks from priest and king, knowing the springs of action and ambition's ends--perfectly familiar with the great world--the intimate of kings and their favorites, sympathizing with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving liberty with all his heart. Such was Voltaire writing "Odipus" at seventeen, "Irene" at eighty-three, and crowding between these two tragedies the accomplishment of a thousand lives.

From his throne at the foot of the Alps, he pointed the finger of scorn at every hypocrite in Europe. For half a century, past rack and stake, past dungeon and cathedral, past altar and throne, he carried with brave hands the sacred torch of Reason, whose light at last will flood the world.

LIBERTY IN LITERATURE.

(A TESTIMONIAL TO WALT WHITMAN.)

* An address delivered in Philadelphia, Oct. 21, 1890. Used by permission of the Truth Seeker Co.

I. LET US PUT WREATHS ON THE BROWS OF THE LIVING.

IN the year 1855 the American people knew but little of books. Their ideals, their models, were English. Young and Pollok, Addison and Watts, were regarded as great poets. Some of the more reckless read Thomson's "Seasons" and the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott. A few, not quite orthodox, delighted in the mechanical monotony of Pope, and the really wicked--those lost to all religious shame--were worshipers of Shakespeare. The really orthodox Protestant, untroubled by doubts, considered Milton the greatest poet of them all. Byron and Shelley were hardly respectable--not to be read by young persons. It was admitted on all hands that Burns was a child of nature of whom his mother was ashamed and proud.

In the blessed year aforesaid, candor, free and sincere speech, were under the ban. Creeds at that time were entrenched behind statutes, prejudice, custom, ignorance, stupidity, Puritanism and slavery; that is to say, slavery of mind and body.

Of course it always has been, and forever will be, impossible for slavery, or any kind or form of injustice, to produce a great poet. There are hundreds of verse makers and writers on the side of wrong--enemies of progress--but they are not poets, they are not men of genius.

At this time a young man--he to whom this testimonial is given--he upon whose head have fallen the snows of more than seventy winters--this man, born within the sound of the sea, gave to the world a book, "Leaves of Grass." This book was, and is, the true transcript of a soul. The man is unmasked. No drapery of hypocrisy, no pretence, no fear. The book was as original in form as in thought. All customs were forgotten or disregarded, all rules broken--nothing mechanical--no imitation--spontaneous, running and winding like a river, multitudinous in its thoughts as the waves of the sea--nothing mathematical or measured--in everything a touch of chaos; lacking what is called form, as clouds lack form, but not lacking the splendor of sunrise or the glory of sunset. It was a marvelous collection and aggregation of fragments, hints, suggestions, memories, and prophecies, weeds and flowers, clouds and clods, sights and sounds, emotions and passions, waves, shadows and constellations.

His book was received by many with disdain, with horror, with indignation and protest--by the few as a marvelous, almost miraculous, message to the world--full of thought, philosophy, poetry and music.

In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous. A great soul appears and fills the world with new and marvelous harmonies. In his words is the old Promethean flame. The heart of nature beats and throbs in his line. The respectable prudes and pedagogues sound the alarm, and cry, or rather screech: "Is this a book for a young person?"

A poem true to life as a Greek statue--candid as nature--fills these barren souls with fear.

They forget that drapery about the perfect was suggested by immodesty.

The provincial prudes, and others of like mold, pretend that love is a duty rather than a passion--a kind of self-denial--not an over-mastering joy. They preach the gospel of pretence and pantalettes, In the presence of sincerity, of truth, they cast down their eyes and endeavor to feel immodest. To them, the most beautiful thing is hypocrisy adorned with a blush.

They have no idea of an honest, pure passion, glorying in its strength--intense, intoxicated with the beautiful, giving even to inanimate things pulse and motion, and that transfigures, ennobles, and idealizes the object of its adoration.

They do not walk the streets of the city of life--they explore the sewers; they stand in the gutters and cry "Unclean!" They pretend that beauty is a snare; that love is a Delilah; that the highway of joy is the broad road, lined with flowers and filled with perfume, leading to the city of eternal sorrow.

Since the year 1855 the American people have developed; they are somewhat acquainted with the literature of the world. They have witnessed the most tremendous of revolutions, not only upon the fields of battle, but in the world of thought. The American citizen has concluded that it is hardly worth while being a sovereign unless he has the right to think for himself.

And now, from this height, with the vantage-ground of to-day, I propose to examine this book and to state, in a general way, what Walt Whitman has done, what he has accomplished, and the place he has won in the world of thought.

II. THE RELIGION OF THE BODY.

WALT WHITMAN stood when he published his book, where all stand to-night, on the perpetually moving line where history ends and prophecy begins. He was full of life to the very tips of his fingers--brave, eager, candid, joyous with health. He was acquainted with the past. He knew something of song and story, of philosophy and art; much of the heroic dead, of brave suffering, of the thoughts of men, the habits of the people--rich as well as poor--familiar with labor, a friend of wind and wave, touched by love and friendship, liking the open road, enjoying the fields and paths, the crags, friend of the forest--feeling that he was free--neither master nor slave; willing that all should know his thoughts; open as the sky, candid as nature, and he gave his thoughts, his dreams, his conclusions, his hopes and his mental portrait to his fellow-men.

Walt Whitman announced the gospel of the body. He confronted the people. He denied the depravity of man. He insisted that love is not a crime; that men and women should be proudly natural; that they need not grovel on the earth and cover their faces for shame, He taught the dignity and glory of the father and mother; the sacredness of maternity.

Maternity, tender and pure as the tear of pity, holy as suffering--the crown, the flower, the ecstasy of love!

People had been taught from Bibles and from creeds that maternity was a kind of crime; that the woman should be purified by some ceremony in some temple built in honor of some god. This barbarism was attacked in "Leaves of Grass."

The glory of simple life was sung; a declaration of independence was made for each and all.

And yet this appeal to manhood and to womanhood was misunderstood. It was denounced simply because it was in harmony with the great trend of nature. To me, the most obscene word in our language is celibacy.

It was not the fashion for people to speak or write their thoughts. We were flooded with the literature of hypocrisy. The writers did not faithfully describe the worlds in which they lived. They endeavored to make a fashionable world. They pretended that the cottage or the hut in which they dwelt was a palace, and they called the little area in which they threw their slops their domain, their realm, their empire. They were ashamed of the real, of what their world actually was. They imitated; that is to say, they told lies, and these lies filled the literature of most lands.

Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion--the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song.

They cried out: "He is a defender of passion--he is a libertine! He lives in the mire. He lacks spirituality!"

Whoever differs with the multitude, especially with a led multitude--that is to say, with a multitude of taggers--will find out from their leaders that he has committed an unpardonable sin. It is a crime to travel a road of your own, especially if you put up guide-boards for the information of others.

Many, many centuries ago Epicurus, the greatest man of his century, and of many centuries before and after, said: "Happiness is the only good; happiness is the supreme end." This man was temperate, frugal, generous, noble--and yet through all these years he has been denounced by the hypocrites of the world as a mere eater and drinker.

It was said that Whitman had exaggerated the importance of love--that he had made too much of this passion. Let me say that no poet--not excepting Shakespeare--has had imagination enough to exaggerate the importance of human love--a passion that contains all heights and all depths--ample as space, with a sky in which glitter all constellations, and that has within it all storms, all lightnings, all wrecks and ruins, all griefs, all sorrows, all shadows, and all the joy and sunshine of which the heart and brain are capable.

No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work--by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.

Which way does the great stream tend? Is it for good or evil? Are the motives high and noble, or low and infamous?

We cannot measure Shakespeare by a few lines, neither can we measure the Bible by a few chapters, nor "Leaves of Grass" by a few paragraphs. In each there are many things that I neither approve nor believe--but in all books you will find a mingling of wisdom and foolishness, of prophecies and mistakes--in other words, among the excellencies there will be defects. The mine is not all gold, or all silver, or all diamonds--there are baser metals. The trees of the forest are not all of one size. On some of the highest there are dead and useless limbs, and there may be growing beneath the bushes weeds, and now and then a poisonous vine.

If I were to edit the great books of the world, I might leave out some lines and I might leave out the best. I have no right to make of my brain a sieve and say that only that which passes through belongs to the rest of the human race. I claim the right to choose. I give that right to all.

Walt Whitman had the courage to express his thought--the candor to tell the truth. And here let me say it gives me joy--a kind of perfect satisfaction--to look above the bigoted bats, the satisfied owls and wrens and chickadees, and see the great eagle poised, circling higher and higher, unconscious of their existence. And it gives me joy, a kind of perfect satisfaction, to look above the petty passions and jealousies of small and respectable people, above the considerations of place and power and reputation, and see a brave, intrepid man.

It must be remembered that the American people had separated from the Old World--that we had declared not only the independence of colonies, but the independence of the individual. We had done more--we had declared that the state could no longer be ruled by the church, and that the church could not be ruled by the state, and that the individual could not be ruled by the church.

These declarations were in danger of being forgotten. We needed a new voice, sonorous, loud and clear, a new poet for America, for the new epoch, somebody to chant the morning song of the new day.

The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind, fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public. They flatter the stupid and pander to the prejudice of their readers. They write for the market, making books as other mechanics make shoes. They have no message, they bear no torch, they are simply the slaves of customers.