Book: The Works of Robert Ingersoll Part IV of V

LIBERALS AND LIBERALISM.

Question. What do you think of the prospects of Liberalism in this country?

Answer. The prospects of Liberalism are precisely the same as the prospects of civilization—that is to say, of progress. As the people become educated, they become liberal. Bigotry is the provincialism of the mind. Men are bigoted who are not acquainted with the thoughts of others. They have been taught one thing, and have been made to believe that their little mental horizon is the circumference of all knowledge. The bigot lives in an ignorant village, surrounded by ignorant neighbors. This is the honest bigot. The dishonest bigot may know better, but he remains a bigot because his salary depends upon it. A bigot is like a country that has had no commerce with any other. He imagines that in his little head there is everything of value. When a man becomes an intellectual explorer, an intellectual traveler, he begins to widen, to grow liberal. He finds that the ideas of others are as good as and often better than his own. The habits and customs of other people throw light on his own, and by this light he is enabled to discover at least some of his own mistakes. Now the world has become acquainted. A few years ago, a man knew something of the doctrines of his own church. Now he knows the creeds of others, and not only so, but he has examined to some extent the religions of other nations. He finds in other creeds all the excellencies that are in his own, and most of the mistakes. In this way he learns that all creeds have been produced by men, and that their differences have been accounted for by race, climate, heredity—that is to say, by a difference in circumstances. So we now know that the cause of Liberalism is the cause of civilization. Unless the race is to be a failure, the cause of Liberalism must succeed. Consequently, I have the same faith in that cause that I have in the human race.

Question. Where are the most Liberals, and in what section of the country is the best work for Liberalism being done?

Answer. The most Liberals are in the most intelligent section of the United States. Where people think the most, there you will find the most Liberals; where people think the least, you will find the most bigots. Bigotry is produced by feeling—Liberalism by thinking—that is to say, the one is a prejudice, the other a principle. Every geologist, every astronomer, every scientist, is doing a noble work for Liberalism. Every man who finds a fact, and demonstrates it, is doing work for the cause. All the literature of our time that is worth reading is on the liberal side. All the fiction that really interests the human mind is with us. No one cares to read the old theological works. Essays written by professors of theological colleges are regarded, even by Christians, with a kind of charitable contempt. When any demonstration of science is attacked by a creed, or a passage of Scripture, all the intelligent smile. For these reasons I think that the best work for Liberalism is being done where the best work for science is being done—where the best work for man is being accomplished. Every legislator that assists in the repeal of theological laws is doing a great work for Liberalism.

Question. In your opinion, what relation do Liberalism and Prohibition bear to each other?

Answer. I do not think they have anything to do with each other. They have nothing in common except this: The Prohibitionists, I presume, are endeavoring to do what they can for temperance; so all intelligent Liberals are doing what they can for the cause of temperance. The Prohibitionist endeavors to accomplish his object by legislation—the Liberalist by education, by civilization, by example, by persuasion. The method of the Liberalist is good, that of the Prohibitionist chimerical and fanatical.

Question. Do you think that Liberals should undertake a reform in the marriage and divorce laws and relations?

Answer. I think that Liberals should do all in their power to induce people to regard marriage and divorce in a sensible light, and without the slightest reference to any theological ideas. They should use their influence to the end that marriage shall be considered as a contract—the highest and holiest that men and women can make. And they should also use their influence to have the laws of divorce based on this fundamental idea,—that marriage is a contract. All should be done that can be done by law to uphold the sacredness of this relation. All should be done that can be done to impress upon the minds of all men and all women their duty to discharge all the obligations of the marriage contract faithfully and cheerfully. I do not believe that it is to the interest of the State or of the Nation, that people should be compelled to live together who hate each other, or that a woman should be bound to a man who has been false and who refuses to fulfill the contract of marriage. I do not believe that any man should call upon the police, or upon the creeds, or upon the church, to compel his wife to remain under his roof, or to compel a woman against her will to become the mother of his children. In other words, Liberals should endeavor to civilize mankind, and when men and women are civilized, the marriage question, and the divorce question, will be settled.

Question. Should Liberals vote on Liberal issues?

Answer. I think that, other things being anywhere near equal, Liberals should vote for men who believe in liberty, men who believe in giving to others the rights they claim for themselves—that is to say, for civilized men, for men of some breadth of mind. Liberals should do what they can to do away with all the theological absurdities.

Question. Can, or ought, the Liberals and Spiritualists to unite?

Answer. All people should unite where they have objects in common. They can vote together, and act together, without believing the same on all points. A Liberal is not necessarily a Spiritualist, and a Spiritualist is not necessarily a Liberal. If Spiritualists wish to liberalize the Government, certainly Liberals would be glad of their assistance, and if Spiritualists take any step in the direction of freedom, the Liberals should stand by them to that extent.

Question. Which is the more dangerous to American institutions —the National Reform Association (God-in-the-Constitution party) or the Roman Catholic Church?

Answer. The Association and the Catholic Church are dangerous according to their power. The Catholic Church has far more power than the Reform Association, and is consequently far more dangerous. The God-in-the-Constitution association is weak, fanatical, stupid, and absurd. What God are we to have in the Constitution? Whose God? If we should agree to-morrow to put God in the Constitution, the question would then be: Which God? On that question, the religious world would fall out. In that direction there is no danger. But the Roman Catholic Church is the enemy of intellectual liberty. It is the enemy of investigation. It is the enemy of free schools. That church always has been, always will be, the enemy of freedom. It works in the dark. When in a minority it is humility itself—when in power it is the impersonation of arrogance. In weakness it crawls—in power it stands erect, and compels its victims to fall upon their faces. The most dangerous institution in this world, so far as the intellectual liberty of man is concerned, is the Roman Catholic Church. Next to that is the Protestant Church.

Question. What is your opinion of the Christian religion and the Christian Church?

Answer. My opinion upon this subject is certainly well known. The Christian Church is founded upon miracles—that is to say, upon impossibilities. Of course, there is a great deal that is good in the creeds of the churches, and in the sermons delivered by its ministers; but mixed with this good is much that is evil. My principal objection to orthodox religion is the dogma of eternal pain. Nothing can be more infamously absurd. All civilized men should denounce it—all women should regard it with a kind of shuddering abhorrence.

—Secular Thought, Toronto, Canada, 1888.

POPE LEO XIII.

Question. Do you agree with the views of Pope Leo XIII. as expressed in The Herald of last week?

Answer. I am not personally acquainted with Leo XIII., but I have not the slightest idea that he loves Americans or their country. I regard him as an enemy of intellectual liberty. He tells us that where the church is free it will increase, and I say to him that where others are free it will not. The Catholic Church has increased in this country by immigration and in no other way. Possibly the Pope is willing to use his power for the good of the whole people, Protestants and Catholics, and to increase their prosperity and happiness, because by this he means that he will use his power to make Catholics out of Protestants.

It is impossible for the Catholic Church to be in favor of mental freedom. That church represents absolute authority. Its members have no right to reason—no right to ask questions—they are called upon simply to believe and to pay their subscriptions.

Question. Do you agree with the Pope when he says that the result of efforts which have been made to throw aside Christianity and live without it can be seen in the present condition of society— discontent, disorder, hatred and profound unhappiness?

Answer. Undoubtedly the people of Europe who wish to be free are discontented. Undoubtedly these efforts to have something like justice done will bring disorder. Those in power will hate those who are endeavoring to drive them from their thrones. If the people now, as formerly, would bear all burdens cheerfully placed upon their shoulders by church and state—that is to say, if they were so enslaved mentally that they would not even have sense enough to complain, then there would be what the Pope might call "peace and happiness"—that is to say, the peace of ignorance, and the happiness of those who are expecting pay in another world for their agonies endured in this.

Of course, the revolutionaries of Europe are not satisfied with the Catholic religion; neither are they satisfied with the Protestant. Both of these religions rest upon authority. Both discourage reason. Both say "Let him that hath ears to hear, hear," but neither say let him that hath brains to think, think.

Christianity has been thoroughly tried, and it is a failure. Nearly every church has upheld slavery, not only of the body, but of the mind. When Christian missionaries invade what they call a heathen country, they are followed in a little while by merchants and traders, and in a few days afterward by the army. The first real work is to kill the heathen or steal their lands, or else reduce them to something like slavery.

I have no confidence in the reformation of this world by churches. Churches for the most part exist, not for this world, but for another. They are founded upon the supernatural, and they say: "Take no thought for the morrow; put your trust in your Heavenly Father and he will take care of you." On the other hand, science says: "You must take care of yourself, live for the world in which you happen to be—if there is another, live for that when you get there."

Question. What do you think of the plan to better the condition of the workingmen, by committees headed by bishops of the Catholic Church, in discussing their duties?

Answer. If the bishops wish to discuss with anybody about duties they had better discuss with the employers, instead of the employed. This discussion had better take place between the clergy and the capitalist. There is no need of discussing this question with the poor wretches who cannot earn more than enough to keep their souls in their bodies. If the Catholic Church has so much power, and if it represents God on earth, let it turn its attention to softening the hearts of capitalists, and no longer waste its time in preaching patience to the poor slaves who are now bearing the burdens of the world.

Question. Do you agree with the Pope that: "Sound rules of life must be founded on religion"?

Answer. I do not. Sound rules of life must be founded on the experience of mankind. In other words, we must live for this world. Why should men throw away hundreds and thousands of millions of dollars in building cathedrals and churches, and paying the salaries of bishops and priests, and cardinals and popes, and get no possible return for all this money except a few guesses about another world —those guesses being stated as facts—when every pope and priest and bishop knows that no one knows the slightest thing on the subject. Superstition is the greatest burden borne by the industry of the world.

The nations of Europe to-day all pretend to be Christian, yet millions of men are drilled and armed for the purpose of killing other Christians. Each Christian nation is fortified to prevent other Christians from devastating their fields. There is already a debt of about twenty-five thousand millions of dollars which has been incurred by Christian nations, because each one is afraid of every other, and yet all say: "It is our duty to love our enemies."

This world, in my judgment, is to be reformed through intelligence —through development of the mind—not by credulity, but by investigation; not by faith in the supernatural, but by faith in the natural. The church has passed the zenith of her power. The clergy must stand aside. Scientists must take their places.

Question. Do you agree with the Pope in attacking the present governments of Europe and the memories of Mazzini and Saffi?

Answer. I do not. I think Mazzini was of more use to Italy than all the popes that ever occupied the chair of St. Peter—which, by the way, was not his chair. I have a thousand times more regard for Mazzini, for Garibaldi, for Cavour, than I have for any gentleman who pretends to be the representative of God.

There is another objection I have to the Pope, and that is that he was so scandalized when a monument was reared in Rome to the memory of Giordano Bruno. Bruno was murdered about two hundred and sixty years ago by the Catholic Church, and such has been the development of the human brain and heart that on the very spot where he was murdered a monument rises to his memory.

But the vicar of God has remained stationary, and he regards this mark of honor to one of the greatest and noblest of the human race as an act of blasphemy. The poor old man acts as if America had never been discovered—as if the world were still flat—and as if the stars had been made out of little pieces left over from the creation of the world and stuck in the sky simply to beautify the night.

But, after all, I do not blame this Pope. He is the victim of his surroundings. He was never married. His heart was never softened by wife or children. He was born that way, and, to tell you the truth, he has my sincere sympathy. Let him talk about America and stay in Italy.

—The Herald, New York, April 22, 1890.

THE SACREDNESS OF THE SABBATH.

Question. What do you think of the sacredness of the Sabbath?

Answer. I think all days, all times and all seasons are alike sacred. I think the best day in a man's life is the day that he is truly the happiest. Every day in which good is done to humanity is a holy day.

If I were to make a calendar of sacred days, I would put down the days in which the greatest inventions came to the mind of genius; the days when scattered tribes became nations; the days when good laws were passed; the days when bad ones were repealed; the days when kings were dethroned, and the people given their own; in other words, every day in which good has been done; in which men and women have truly fallen in love, days in which babes were born destined to change the civilization of the world. These are all sacred days; days in which men have fought for the right, suffered for the right, died for the right; all days in which there were heroic actions for good. The day when slavery was abolished in the United States is holier than any Sabbath by reason of "divine consecration."

Of course, I care nothing about the sacredness of the Sabbath because it was hallowed in the Old Testament, or because of that day Jehovah is said to have rested from his labors. A space of time cannot be sacred, any more than a vacuum can be sacred, and it is rendered sacred by deeds done in it, and not in and of itself.

If we should finally invent some means of traveling by which we could go a thousand miles a day, a man could escape Sunday all his life by traveling West. He could start Monday, and stay Monday all the time. Or, if he should some time get near the North Pole, he could walk faster than the earth turns and thus beat Sunday all the while.

Question. Should not the museums and art galleries be thrown open to the workingmen free on Sunday?

Answer. Undoubtedly. In all civilized countries this is done, and I believe it would be done in New York, only it is said that money has been given on condition that the museums should be kept closed on Sundays. I have always heard it said that large sums will be withheld by certain old people who have the prospect of dying in the near future if the museums are open on Sunday.

This, however, seems to me a very poor and shallow excuse. Money should not be received under such conditions. One of the curses of our country has been the giving of gifts to colleges on certain conditions. As, for instance, the money given to Andover by the original founder on the condition that a certain creed be taught, and other large amounts have been given on a like condition. Now, the result of this is that the theological professor must teach what these donors have indicated, or go out of the institution; or —and this last "or" is generally the trouble—teach what he does not believe, endeavoring to get around it by giving new meaning to old words.

I think the cause of intellectual progress has been much delayed by these conditions put in the wills of supposed benefactors, so that after they are dead they can rule people who have the habit of being alive. In my opinion, a corpse is a poor ruler, and after a man is dead he should keep quiet.

Of course all that he did will live, and should be allowed to have its natural effect. If he was a great inventor or discoverer, or if he uttered great truths, these became the property of the world; but he should not endeavor, after he is dead, to rule the living by conditions attached to his gifts.

All the museums and libraries should be opened, not only to workingmen, but to all others. If to see great paintings, great statues, wonderful works of art; if to read the thoughts of the greatest men—if these things tend to the civilization of the race, then they should be put as nearly as possible within the reach of all.

The man who works eight or ten or twelve hours a day has not time during the six days of labor to visit libraries or museums. Sunday is his day of leisure, his day of recreation, and on that day he should have the privilege, and he himself should deem it a right to visit all the public libraries and museums, parks and gardens.

In other words, I think the laboring man should have the same rights on Sundays, to say the least of it, that wealthy people have on other days. The man of wealth has leisure. He can attend these places on any day he may desire; but necessity being the master of the poor man, Sunday is his one day for such a purpose. For men of wealth to close the museums and libraries on that day, shows that they have either a mistaken idea as to the well-being of their fellow-men, or that they care nothing about the rights of any except the wealthy.

Personally, I have no sort of patience with the theological snivel and drivel about the sacredness of the Sabbath. I do not understand why they do not accept the words of their own Christ, namely, that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."

The hypocrites of Judea were great sticklers for the Sabbath, and the orthodox Christians of New York are exactly the same. My own opinion is that a man who has been at work all the week, in the dust and heat, can hardly afford to waste his Sunday in hearing an orthodox sermon—a sermon that gives him the cheerful intelligence that his chances for being damned are largely in the majority. I think it is far better for the workingman to go out with his family in the park, into the woods, to some German garden, where he can hear the music of Wagner, or even the waltzes of Strauss, or to take a boat and go down to the shore of the sea. I think than in summer a few waves of the ocean are far more refreshing then all the orthodox sermons of the world.

As a matter of fact, I believe the preachers leave the city in the summer and let the Devil do his worst. Whether it is believed that the Devil has less power in warm weather, I do not know. But I do know that, as the mercury rises, the anxiety about souls decreases, and the hotter New York becomes, the cooler hell seems to be.

I want the workingman, no matter what he works at—whether at doctoring people, or trying law suits, or running for office—to have a real good time on Sunday. He, of course, must be careful not to interfere with the rights of others. He ought not to play draw-poker on the steps of a church; neither should he stone a Chinese funeral, nor go to any excesses; but all the week long he should have it in his mind: Next Sunday I am going to have a good time. My wife and I and the children are going to have a happy time. I am going out with the girl I like; or my young man is going to take me to the picnic. And this thought, and this hope, of having a good time on Sunday—of seeing some great pictures at the Metropolitan Art Gallery—together with a good many bad ones— will make work easy and lighten the burden on the shoulders of toil.

I take a great interest, too, in the working women—particularly in the working woman. I think that every workingman should see to it that every working woman has a good time on Sunday. I am no preacher. All I want is that everybody should enjoy himself in a way that he will not and does not interfere with the enjoyment of others.

It will not do to say that we cannot trust the people. Our Government is based upon the idea that the people can be trusted, and those who say that the workingmen cannot be trusted, do not believe in Republican or Democratic institutions. For one, I am perfectly willing to trust the working people of the country. I do, every day. I trust the engineers on the cars and steamers. I trust the builders of houses. I trust all laboring men every day of my life, and if the laboring people of the country were not trustworthy—if they were malicious or dishonest—life would not be worth living.

—The Journal, New York, June 6, 1890.

THE WEST AND SOUTH.

Question. Do you think the South will ever equal or surpass the West in point of prosperity?

Answer. I do not. The West has better soil and more of the elements of wealth. It is not liable to yellow fever; its rivers have better banks; the people have more thrift, more enterprise, more political hospitality; education is more general; the people are more inventive; better traders, and besides all this, there is no race problem. The Southern people are what their surroundings made them, and the influence of slavery has not yet died out. In my judgment the climate of the West is superior to that of the South. The West has good, cold winters, and they make people a little more frugal, prudent and industrious. Winters make good homes, cheerful firesides, and, after all, civilization commences at the hearthstone. The South is growing, and will continue to grow, but it will never equal the West. The West is destined to dominate the Republic.

Question. Do you consider the new ballot-law adapted to the needs of our system of elections? If not, in what particulars does it require amendment?

Answer. Personally I like the brave and open way. The secret ballot lacks courage. I want people to know just how I vote. The old viva voce way was manly and looked well. Every American should be taught that he votes as a sovereign—an emperor—and he should exercise the right in a kingly way. But if we must have the secret ballot, then let it be secret indeed, and let the crowd stand back while the king votes.

Question. What do you think of the service pension movement?

Answer. I see that there is a great deal of talk here in Indiana about this service pension movement. It has always seemed to me that the pension fund has been frittered away. Of what use is it to give a man two or three dollars a month? If a man is rich why should he have any pension? I think it would be better to give pensions only to the needy, and then give them enough to support them. If the man was in the army a day or a month, and was uninjured, and can make his own living, or has enough, why should he have a pension? I believe in giving to the wounded and disabled and poor, with a liberal hand, but not to the rich. I know that the nation could not pay the men who fought and suffered. There is not money enough in the world to pay the heroes for what they did and endured —but there is money enough to keep every wounded and diseased soldier from want. There is money enough to fill the lives of those who gave limbs or health for the sake of the Republic, with comfort and happiness. I would also like to see the poor soldier taken care of whether he was wounded or not, but I see no propriety in giving to those who do not need.

—The Journal, Indianapolis, Indiana, June 21, 1890.

THE WESTMINSTER CREED AND OTHER SUBJECTS.

Question. What do you think of the revision of the Westminster creed?

Answer. I think that the intelligence and morality of the age demand the revision. The Westminster creed is infamous. It makes God an infinite monster, and men the most miserable of beings. That creed has made millions insane. It has furrowed countless cheeks with tears. Under its influence the sentiments and sympathies of the heart have withered. This creed was written by the worst of men. The civilized Presbyterians do not believe it. The intelligent clergyman will not preach it, and all good men who understand it, hold it in abhorrence. But the fact is that it is just as good as the creed of any orthodox church. All these creeds must be revised. Young America will not be consoled by the doctrine of eternal pain. Yes, the creeds must be revised or the churches will be closed.

Question. What do you think of the influence of the press on religion?

Answer. If you mean on orthodox religion, then I say the press is helping to destroy it. Just to the extent that the press is intelligent and fearless, it is and must be the enemy of superstition. Every fact in the universe is the enemy of every falsehood. The press furnishes food for, and excites thought. This tends to the destruction of the miraculous and absurd. I regard the press as the friend of progress and consequently the foe of orthodox religion. The old dogmas do not make the people happy. What is called religion is full of fear and grief. The clergy are always talking about dying, about the grave and eternal pain. They do not add to the sunshine of life. If they could have their way all the birds would stop singing, the flowers would lose their color and perfume, and all the owls would sit on dead trees and hoot, "Broad is the road that leads to death."

Question. If you should write your last sentence on religious topics what would be your closing?

Answer. I now in the presence of death affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world. I would say at least that much on the subject with my last breath.

Question. What, in your opinion, will be Browning's position in the literature of the future?

Answer. Lower than at present. Mrs. Browning was far greater than her husband. He never wrote anything comparable to "Mother and Poet." Browning lacked form, and that is as great a lack in poetry as it is in sculpture. He was the author of some great lines, some great thoughts, but he was obscure, uneven and was always mixing the poetic with the commonplace. To me he cannot be compared with Shelley or Keats, or with our own Walt Whitman. Of course poetry cannot be very well discussed. Each man knows what he likes, what touches his heart and what words burst into blossom, but he cannot judge for others. After one has read Shakespeare, Burns and Byron, and Shelley and Keats; after he has read the "Sonnets" and the "Daisy" and the "Prisoner of Chillon" and the "Skylark" and the "Ode to the Grecian Urn"—the "Flight of the Duchess" seems a little weak.

—The Post-Express, Rochester, New York, June 23, 1890.

SHAKESPEARE AND BACON.

Question. What is your opinion of Ignatius Donnelly as a literary man irrespective of his Baconian theory?

Answer. I know that Mr. Donnelly enjoys the reputation of being a man of decided ability and that he is regarded by many as a great orator. He is known to me through his Baconian theory, and in that of course I have no confidence. It is nearly as ingenious as absurd. He has spent great time, and has devoted much curious learning to the subject, and has at last succeeded in convincing himself that Shakespeare claimed that which he did not write, and that Bacon wrote that which he did not claim. But to me the theory is without the slightest foundation.

Question. Mr. Donnelly asks: "Can you imagine the author of such grand productions retiring to that mud house in Stratford to live without a single copy of the quarto that has made his name famous?" What do you say?

Answer. Yes; I can. Shakespeare died in 1616, and the quarto was published in 1623, seven years after he was dead. Under these circumstances I think Shakespeare ought to be excused, even by those who attack him with the greatest bitterness, for not having a copy of the book. There is, however, another side to his. Bacon did not die until long after the quarto was published. Did he have a copy? Did he mention the copy in his will? Did he ever mention the quarto in any letter, essay, or in any way? He left a library, was there a copy of the plays in it? Has there ever been found a line from any play or sonnet in his handwriting? Bacon left his writings, his papers, all in perfect order, but no plays, no sonnets, said nothing about plays—claimed nothing on their behalf. This is the other side. Now, there is still another thing. The edition of 1623 was published by Shakespeare's friends, Heminge and Condell. They knew him—had been with him for years, and they collected most of his plays and put them in book form.

Ben Jonson wrote a preface, in which he placed Shakespeare above all the other poets—declared that he was for all time.

The edition of 1623 was gotten up by actors, by the friends and associates of Shakespeare, vouched for by dramatic writers—by those who knew him. This is enough.

Question. How do you explain the figure: "His soul, like Mazeppa, was lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and love and hate"? Mr. Donnelly does not understand you.

Answer. It hardly seems necessary to explain a thing as simple and plain as that. Men are carried away by some fierce passion— carried away in spite of themselves as Mazeppa was carried by the wild horse to which he was lashed. Whether the comparison is good or bad it is at least plain. Nothing could tempt me to call Mr. Donnelly's veracity in question. He says that he does not understand the sentence and I most cheerfully admit that he tells the exact truth.

Question. Mr. Donnelly says that you said: "Where there is genius, education seems almost unnecessary," and he denounces your doctrine as the most abominable doctrine ever taught. What have you to say to that?

Answer. In the first place, I never made the remark. In the next place, it may be well enough to ask what education is. Much is taught in colleges that is of no earthly use; much is taught that is hurtful. There are thousands of educated men who never graduated from any college or university. Every observant, thoughtful man is educating himself as long as he lives. Men are better then books. Observation is a great teacher. A man of talent learns slowly. He does not readily see the necessary relation that one fact bears to another. A man of genius, learning one fact, instantly sees hundreds of others. It is not necessary for such a man to attend college. The world is his university. Every man he meets is a book—every woman a volume every fact a torch—and so without the aid of the so-called schools he rises to the very top. Shakespeare was such a man.

Question. Mr. Donnelly says that: "The biggest myth ever on earth was Shakespeare, and that if Francis Bacon had said to the people, I, Francis Bacon, a gentleman of gentlemen, have been taking in secret my share of the coppers and shillings taken at the door of those low playhouses, he would have been ruined. If he had put the plays forth simply as poetry it would have ruined his legal reputation." What do you think of this?

Answer. I hardly think that Shakespeare was a myth. He was certainly born, married, lived in London, belonged to a company of actors; went back to Stratford, where he had a family, and died. All these things do not as a rule happen to myths. In addition to this, those who knew him believed him to be the author of the plays. Bacon's friends never suspected him. I do not think it would have hurt Bacon to have admitted that he wrote "Lear" and "Othello," and that he was getting "coppers and shillings" to which he was justly entitled. Certainly not as much as for him to have written this, which if fact, though not in exact form, he did write: "I, Francis Bacon, a gentleman of gentlemen, have been taking coppers and shillings to which I was not entitled—but which I received as bribes while sitting as a judge." He has been excused for two reasons. First, because his salary was small, and, second, because it was the custom for judges to receive presents.

Bacon was a lawyer. He was charged with corruption—with having taken bribes, with having sold his decisions. He knew what the custom was and knew how small his salary was. But he did not plead the custom in his defense. He did not mention the smallness of the salary. He confessed that he was guilty—as charged. His confession was deemed too general and he was called upon by the Lords to make a specific confession. This he did. He specified the cases in which he had received the money and told how much, and begged for mercy. He did not make his confession, as Mr. Donnelly is reported to have said, to get his fine remitted. The confession was made before the fine was imposed.

Neither do I think that the theatre in which the plays of Shakespeare were represented could or should be called a "low play house." The fact that "Othello," "Lear," "Hamlet," "Julius Cæsar," and the other great dramas were first played in that playhouse made it the greatest building in the world. The gods themselves should have occupied seats in that theatre, where for the first time the greatest productions of the human mind were put upon the stage.

—The Tribune, Minneapolis, Minn., May 31, 1891.

GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY, AND PRESBYTERIANISM.

Question. How have you acquired the art of growing old gracefully?

Answer. It is very hard to live a great while without getting old, and it is hardly worth while to die just to keep young. It is claimed that people with certain incomes live longer than those who have to earn their bread. But the income people have a stupid kind of life, and though they may hang on a good many years, they can hardly be said to do much real living. The best you can say is, not that they lived so many years, but that it took them so many years to die. Some people imagine that regular habits prolong life, but that depends somewhat on the habits. Only the other day I read an article written by a physician, in which regular habits —good ones, were declared to be quite dangerous.

Where life is perfectly regular, all the wear and tear comes on the same nerves—every blow falls on the same place. Variety, even in a bad direction, is a great relief. But living long has nothing to do with getting old gracefully. Good nature is a great enemy of wrinkles, and cheerfulness helps the complexion. If we could only keep from being annoyed at little things, it would add to the luxury of living. Great sorrows are few, and after all do not affect us as much as the many irritating, almost nothings that attack from every side. The traveler is bothered more with dust than mountains. It is a great thing to have an object in life— something to work for and think for. If a man thinks only about himself, his own comfort, his own importance, he will not grow old gracefully. More and more his spirit, small and mean, will leave its impress on his face, and especially in his eyes. You look at him and feel that there is no jewel in the casket; that a shriveled soul is living in a tumble-down house.

The body gets its grace from the mind. I suppose that we are all more or less responsible for our looks. Perhaps the thinker of great thoughts, the doer of noble deeds, moulds his features in harmony with his life.

Probably the best medicine, the greatest beautifier in the world, is to make somebody else happy. I have noticed that good mothers have faces as serene as a cloudless day in June, and the older the serener. It is a great thing to know the relative importance of things, and those who do, get the most out of life. Those who take an interest in what they see, and keep their minds busy are always young.

The other day I met a blacksmith who has given much attention to geology and fossil remains. He told me how happy he was in his excursions. He was nearly seventy years old, and yet he had the enthusiasm of a boy. He said he had some very fine specimens, "but," said he, "nearly every night I dream of finding perfect ones."

That man will keep young as long as he lives. As long as a man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school. No man can get too much knowledge. In that, he can have all the avarice he wants, but he can get too much property. If the business men would stop when they got enough, they might have a chance to grow old gracefully. But the most of them go on and on, until, like the old stage horse, stiff and lame, they drop dead in the road. The intelligent, the kind, the reasonably contented, the courageous, the self-poised, grow old gracefully.

Question. Are not the restraints to free religious thought being worn away, as the world grows older, and will not the recent attacks of the religious press and pulpit upon the unorthodoxy of Dr. Briggs, Rev. R. Heber Newton and the prospective Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts, Dr. Phillips Brooks, and others, have a tendency still further to extend this freedom?

Answer. Of course the world is growing somewhat wiser—getting more sense day by day. It is amazing to me that any human being or beings ever wrote the Presbyterian creed. Nothing can be more absurd—more barbaric than that creed. It makes man the sport of an infinite monster, and yet good people, men and women of ability, who have gained eminence in almost every department of human effort, stand by this creed as if it were filled with wisdom and goodness. They really think that a good God damns his poor ignorant children just for his own glory, and that he sends people to perdition, not for any evil in them, but to the praise of his glorious justice. Dr. Briggs has been wicked enough to doubt this phase of God's goodness, and Dr. Bridgman was heartless enough to drop a tear in hell. Of course they have no idea of what justice really is.

The Presbyterian General Assembly that has just adjourned stood by Calvinism. The "Five Points" are as sharp as ever. The members of that assembly—most of them—find all their happiness in the "creed." They need no other amusement. If they feel blue they read about total depravity—and cheer up. In moments of great sorrow they think of the tale of non-elect infants, and their hearts overflow with a kind of joy.

They cannot imagine why people wish to attend the theatre when they can read the "Confession of Faith," or why they should feel like dancing after they do read it.

It is very sad to think of the young men and women who have been eternally ruined by witnessing the plays of Shakespeare, and it is also sad to think of the young people, foolish enough to be happy, keeping time to the pulse of music, waltzing to hell in loving pairs—all for the glory of God, and to the praise of his glorious justice. I think, too, of the thousands of men and women who, while listening to the music of Wagner, have absolutely forgotten the Presbyterian creed, and who for a little while have been as happy as if the creed had never been written. Tear down the theatres, burn the opera houses, break all musical instruments, and then let us go to church.

I am not at all surprised that the General Assembly took up this progressive euchre matter. The word "progressive" is always obnoxious to the ministers. Euchre under another name might go. Of course, progressive euchre is a kind of gambling. I knew a young man, or rather heard of him, who won at progressive euchre a silver spoon. At first this looks like nothing, almost innocent, and yet that spoon, gotten for nothing, sowed the seed of gambling in that young man's brain. He became infatuated with euchre, then with cards in general, then with draw-poker in particular,—then into Wall Street. He is now a total wreck, and has the impudence to say that is was all "pre-ordained." Think of the thousands and millions that are being demoralized by games of chance, by marbles —when they play for keeps—by billiards and croquet, by fox and geese, authors, halma, tiddledywinks and pigs in clover. In all these miserable games, is the infamous element of chance—the raw material of gambling. Probably none of these games could be played exclusively for the glory of God. I agree with the Presbyterian General Assembly, if the creed is true, why should anyone try to amuse himself? If there is a hell, and all of us are going there, there should never be another smile on the human face. We should spend our days in sighs, our nights in tears. The world should go insane. We find strange combinations—good men with bad creeds, and bad men with good ones—and so the great world stumbles along.

—The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, June 4, 1891.

CREEDS.

There is a natural desire on the part of every intelligent human being to harmonize his information—to make his theories agree—in other words, to make what he knows, or thinks he knows, in one department, agree and harmonize with what he knows, or thinks he knows, in every other department of human knowledge.

The human race has not advanced in line, neither has it advanced in all departments with the same rapidity. It is with the race as it is with an individual. A man may turn his entire attention to some one subject—as, for instance, to geology—and neglect other sciences. He may be a good geologist, but an exceedingly poor astronomer; or he may know nothing of politics or of political economy. So he may be a successful statesman and know nothing of theology. But if a man, successful in one direction, takes up some other question, he is bound to use the knowledge he has on one subject as a kind of standard to measure what he is told on some other subject. If he is a chemist, it will be natural for him, when studying some other question, to use what he knows in chemistry; that is to say, he will expect to find cause and effect everywhere —succession and resemblance. He will say: It must be in all other sciences as in chemistry—there must be no chance. The elements have no caprice. Iron is always the same. Gold does not change. Prussic acid is always poison—it has no freaks. So he will reason as to all facts in nature. He will be a believer in the atomic integrity of all matter, in the persistence of gravitation. Being so trained, and so convinced, his tendency will be to weigh what is called new information in the same scales that he has been using.

Now, for the application of this. Progress in religion is the slowest, because man is kept back by sentimentality, by the efforts of parents, by old associations. A thousand unseen tendrils are twining about him that he must necessarily break if he advances. In other departments of knowledge inducements are held out and rewards are promised to the one who does succeed—to the one who really does advance—to the one who discovers new facts. But in religion, instead of rewards being promised, threats are made. The man is told that he must not advance; that if he takes a step forward, it is at the peril of his soul; that if he thinks and investigates, he is in danger of exciting the wrath of God. Consequently religion has been of the slowest growth. Now, in most departments of knowledge, man has advanced; and coming back to the original statement—a desire to harmonize all that we know—there is a growing desire on the part of intelligent men to have a religion fit to keep company with the other sciences.

Our creeds were made in times of ignorance. They suited very well a flat world, and a God who lived in the sky just above us and who used the lightning to destroy his enemies. This God was regarded much as a savage regarded the head of his tribe—as one having the right to reward and punish. And this God, being much greater than a chief of the tribe, could give greater rewards and inflict greater punishments. They knew that the ordinary chief, or the ordinary king, punished the slightest offence with death. They also knew that these chiefs and kings tortured their victims as long as the victims could bear the torture. So when they described their God, they gave this God power to keep the tortured victim alive forever —because they knew that the earthly chief, or the earthly king, would prolong the life of the tortured for the sake of increasing the agonies of the victim. In those savage days they regarded punishment as the only means of protecting society. In consequence of this they built heaven and hell on an earthly plan, and they put God—that is to say the chief, that is to say the king—on a throne like an earthly king.

Of course, these views were all ignorant and barbaric; but in that blessed day their geology and astronomy were on a par with their theology. There was a harmony in all departments of knowledge, or rather of ignorance. Since that time there has been a great advance made in the idea of government—the old idea being that the right to govern came from God to the king, and from the king to his people. Now intelligent people believe that the source of authority has been changed, and that all just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. So there has been a great advance in the philosophy of punishment—in the treatment of criminals. So, too, in all the sciences. The earth is no longer flat; heaven is not immediately above us; the universe has been infinitely enlarged, and we have at last found that our earth is but a grain of sand, a speck on the great shore of the infinite. Consequently there is a discrepancy, a discord, a contradiction between our theology and the other sciences. Men of intelligence feel this. Dr. Briggs concluded that a perfectly good and intelligent God could not have created billions of sentient beings, knowing that they were to be eternally miserable. No man could do such a thing, had he the power, without being infinitely malicious. Dr. Briggs began to have a little hope for the human race—began to think that maybe God is better than the creed describes him.

And right here it may be well enough to remark that no one has ever been declared a heretic for thinking God bad. Heresy has consisted in thinking God better than the church said he was. The man who said God will damn nearly everybody, was orthodox. The man who said God will save everybody, was denounced as a blaspheming wretch, as one who assailed and maligned the character of God. I can remember when the Universalists were denounced as vehemently and maliciously as the Atheists are to-day.

Now, Dr. Briggs is undoubtedly an intelligent man. He knows that nobody on earth knows who wrote the five books of Moses. He knows that they were not written until hundreds of years after Moses was dead. He knows that two or more persons were the authors of Isaiah. He knows that David did not write to exceed three or four of the Psalms. He knows that the Book of Job is not a Jewish book. He knows that the Songs of Solomon were not written by Solomon. He knows that the Book of Ecclesiastes was written by a Freethinker. He also knows that there is not in existence to-day—so far as anybody knows—any of the manuscripts of the Old or New Testaments.

So about the New Testament, Dr. Briggs knows that nobody lives who has ever seen an original manuscript, or who ever saw anybody that did see one, or that claims to have seen one. He knows that nobody knows who wrote Matthew or Mark or Luke or John. He knows that John did not write John, and that that gospel was not written until long after John was dead. He knows that no one knows who wrote the Hebrews. He also knows that the Book of Revelation is an insane production. Dr. Briggs also knows the way in which these books came to be canonical, and he knows that the way was no more binding than a resolution passed by a political convention. He also knows that many books were left out that had for centuries equal authority with those that were put in. He also knows that many passages— and the very passages upon which many churches are founded—are interpolations. He knows that the last chapter of Mark, beginning with the sixteenth verse to the end, is an interpolation; and he also knows that neither Matthew nor Mark nor Luke ever said one word about the necessity of believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, or of believing anything—not one word about believing the Bible or joining the church, or doing any particular thing in the way of ceremony to insure salvation. He knows that according to Matthew, God agreed to forgive us when we would forgive others. Consequently he knows that there is not one particle of what is called modern theology in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. He knows that the trouble commenced in John, and that John was not written until probably one hundred and fifty years—possibly two hundred years—after Christ was dead. So he also knows that the sin against the Holy Ghost is an interpolation; that "I came not to bring peace but a sword," if not an interpolation, is an absolute contradiction. So, too, he knows that the promise to forgive in heaven what the disciples should forgive on earth, is an interpolation; and that if its not an interpolation, it is without the slightest sense in fact.

Knowing these things, and knowing, in addition to what I have stated, that there are thirty thousand or forty thousand mistakes in the Old Testament, that there are a great many contradictions and absurdities, than many of the laws are cruel and infamous, and could have been made only by a barbarous people, Dr. Briggs has concluded that, after all, the torch that sheds the serenest and divinest light is the human reason, and that we must investigate the Bible as we do other books. At least, I suppose he has reached some such conclusion. He may imagine that the pure gold of inspiration still runs through the quartz and porphyry of ignorance and mistake, and that all we have to do is to extract the shining metal by some process that may be called theological smelting; and if so I have no fault to find. Dr. Briggs has taken a step in advance—that is to say, the tree is growing, and when the tree grows, the bark splits; when the new leaves come the old leaves are rotting on the ground.

The Presbyterian creed is a very bad creed. It has been the stumbling-block, not only of the head, but of the heart for many generations. I do not know that it is, in fact, worse than any other orthodox creed; but the bad features are stated with an explicitness and emphasized with a candor that render the creed absolutely appalling. It is amazing to me that any man ever wrote it, or that any set of men ever produced it. It is more amazing to me that any human being ever believed in it. It is still more amazing that any human being ever thought it wicked not to believe it. It is more amazing still, than all the others combined, that any human being ever wanted it to be true.

This creed is a relic of the Middle Ages. It has in it the malice, the malicious logic, the total depravity, the utter heartlessness of John Calvin, and it gives me great pleasure to say that no Presbyterian was ever as bad as his creed. And here let me say, as I have said many times, that I do not hate Presbyterians—because among them I count some of my best friends—but I hate Presbyterianism. And I cannot illustrate this any better than by saying, I do not hate a man because he has the rheumatism, but I hate the rheumatism because it has a man.

The Presbyterian Church is growing, and is growing because, as I said at first, there is a universal tendency in the mind of man to harmonize all that he knows or thinks he knows. This growth may be delayed. The buds of heresy may be kept back by the north wind of Princeton and by the early frost called Patton. In spite of these souvenirs of the Dark Ages, the church must continue to grow. The theologians who regard theology as something higher than a trade, tend toward Liberalism. Those who regard preaching as a business, and the inculcation of sentiment as a trade, will stand by the lowest possible views. They will cling to the letter and throw away the spirit. They prefer the dead limb to a new bud or to a new leaf. They want no more sap. They delight in the dead tree, in its unbending nature, and they mistake the stiffness of death for the vigor and resistance of life.

Now, as with Dr. Briggs, so with Dr. Bridgman, although it seems to me that he has simply jumped from the frying-pan into the fire; and why he should prefer the Episcopal creed to the Baptist, is more than I can imagine. The Episcopal creed is, in fact, just as bad as the Presbyterian. It calmly and with unruffled brow, utters the sentence of eternal punishment on the majority of the human race, and the Episcopalian expects to be happy in heaven, with his son or daughter or his mother or wife in hell.

Dr. Bridgman will find himself exactly in the position of the Rev. Mr. Newton, provided he expresses his thought. But I account for the Bridgmans and for the Newtons by the fact that there is still sympathy in the human heart, and that there is still intelligence in the human brain. For my part, I am glad to see this growth in the orthodox churches, and the quicker they revise their creeds the better.

I oppose nothing that is good in any creed—I attack only that which is ignorant, cruel and absurd, and I make the attack in the interest of human liberty, and for the sake of human happiness.

Question. What do you think of the action of the Presbyterian General Assembly at Detroit, and what effect do you think it will have on religious growth?

Answer. That General Assembly was controlled by the orthodox within the church, by the strict constructionists and by the Calvinists; by gentlemen who not only believe the creed, not only believe that a vast majority of people are going to hell, but are really glad of it; by gentlemen who, when they feel a little blue, read about total depravity to cheer up, and when they think of the mercy of God as exhibited in their salvation, and the justice of God as illustrated by the damnation of others, their hearts burst into a kind of efflorescence of joy.

These gentlemen are opposed to all kinds of amusements except reading the Bible, the Confession of Faith, and the creed, and listening to Presbyterian sermons and prayers. All these things they regard as the food of cheerfulness. They warn the elect against theatres and operas, dancing and games of chance.

Well, if their doctrine is true, there ought to be no theatres, except exhibitions of hell; there ought to be no operas, except where the music is a succession of wails for the misfortunes of man. If their doctrine is true, I do not see how any human being could ever smile again—I do not see how a mother could welcome her babe; everything in nature would become hateful; flowers and sunshine would simply tell us of our fate.

My doctrine is exactly the opposite of this. Let us enjoy ourselves every moment that we can. The love of the dramatic is universal. The stage has not simply amused, but it has elevated mankind. The greatest genius of our world poured the treasures of his soul into the drama. I do not believe that any girl can be corrupted, or that any man can be injured, by becoming acquainted with Isabella or Miranda or Juliet or Imogen, or any of the great heroines of Shakespeare.

So I regard the opera as one of the great civilizers. No one can listen to the symphonies of Beethoven, or the music of Schubert, without receiving a benefit. And no one can hear the operas of Wagner without feeling that he has been ennobled and refined.

Why is it the Presbyterians are so opposed to music in the world, and yet expect to have so much in heaven? Is not music just as demoralizing in the sky as on the earth, and does anybody believe that Abraham or Isaac or Jacob, ever played any music comparable to Wagner?

Why should we postpone our joy to another world? Thousands of people take great pleasure in dancing, and I say let them dance. Dancing is better than weeping and wailing over a theology born of ignorance and superstition.

And so with games of chance. There is a certain pleasure in playing games, and the pleasure is of the most innocent character. Let all these games be played at home and children will not prefer the saloon to the society of their parents. I believe in cards and billiards, and would believe in progressive euchre, were it more of a game—the great objection to it is its lack of complexity. My idea is to get what little happiness you can out of this life, and to enjoy all sunshine that breaks through the clouds of misfortune. Life is poor enough at best. No one should fail to pick up every jewel of joy that can be found in his path. Every one should be as happy as he can, provided he is not happy at the expense of another, and no person rightly constituted can be happy at the expense of another.

So let us get all we can of good between the cradle and the grave; all that we can of the truly dramatic; all that we can of music; all that we can of art; all that we can of enjoyment; and if, when death comes, that is the end, we have at least made the best of this life; and if there be another life, let us make the best of that.

I am doing what little I can to hasten the coming of the day when the human race will enjoy liberty—not simply of body, but liberty of mind. And by liberty of mind I mean freedom from superstition, and added to that, the intelligence to find out the conditions of happiness; and added to that, the wisdom to live in accordance with those conditions.

—The Morning Advertiser, New York, June 12, 1891.

THE TENDENCY OF MODERN THOUGHT.

Question. Do you regard the Briggs trial as any evidence of the growth of Liberalism in the church itself?

Answer. When men get together, and make what they call a creed, the supposition is that they then say as nearly as possible what they mean and what they believe. A written creed, of necessity, remains substantially the same. In a few years this creed ceases to give exactly the new shade of thought. Then begin two processes, one of destruction and the other of preservation. In every church, as in every party, and as you may say in every corporation, there are two wings—one progressive, the other conservative. In the church there will be a few, and they will represent the real intelligence of the church, who become dissatisfied with the creed, and who at first satisfy themselves by giving new meanings to old words. On the other hand, the conservative party appeals to emotions, to memories, and to the experiences of their fellow- members, for the purpose of upholding the old dogmas and the old ideas; so that each creed is like a crumbling castle. The conservatives plant ivy and other vines, hoping that their leaves will hide the cracks and erosions of time; but the thoughtful see beyond these leaves and are satisfied that the structure itself is in the process of decay, and that no amount of ivy can restore the crumbling stones.

The old Presbyterian creed, when it was first formulated, satisfied a certain religious intellect. At that time people were not very merciful. They had no clear conceptions of justice. Their lives were for the most part hard; most of them suffered the pains and pangs of poverty; nearly all lived in tyrannical governments and were the sport of nobles and kings. Their idea of God was born of their surroundings. God, to them, was an infinite king who delighted in exhibitions of power. At any rate, their minds were so constructed that they conceived of an infinite being who, billions of years before the world was, made up his mind as to whom he would save and whom he would damn. He not only made up his mind as to the number he would save, and the number that should be lost, but he saved and damned without the slightest reference to the character of the individual. They believed then, and some pretend to believe still, that God damns a man not because he is bad, and that he saves a man not because he is good, but simply for the purpose of self-glorification as an exhibition of his eternal justice. It would be impossible to conceive of any creed more horrible than that of the Presbyterians. Although I admit—and I not only admit but I assert—that the creeds of all orthodox Christians are substantially the same, the Presbyterian creed says plainly what it means. There is no hesitation, no evasion. The horrible truth, so-called, is stated in the clearest possible language. One would think after reading this creed, that the men who wrote it not only believed it, but were really glad it was true.

Ideas of justice, of the use of power, of the use of mercy, have greatly changed in the last century. We are beginning dimly to see that each man is the result of an infinite number of conditions, of an infinite number of facts, most of which existed before he was born. We are beginning dimly to see that while reason is a pilot, each soul navigates the mysterious sea filled with tides and unknown currents set in motion by ancestors long since dust. We are beginning to see that defects of mind are transmitted precisely the same as defects of body, and in my judgment the time is coming when we shall not more think of punishing a man for larceny than for having the consumption. We shall know that the thief is a necessary and natural result of conditions, preparing, you may say, the field of the world for the growth of man. We shall no longer depend upon accident and ignorance and providence. We shall depend upon intelligence and science.

The Presbyterian creed is no longer in harmony with the average sense of man. It shocks the average mind. It seems too monstrous to be true; too horrible to find a lodgment in the mind of the civilized man. The Presbyterian minister who thinks, is giving new meanings to the old words. The Presbyterian minister who feels, also gives new meanings to the old words. Only those who neither think nor feel remain orthodox.

For many years the Christian world has been engaged in examining the religions of other peoples, and the Christian scholars have had but little trouble in demonstrating the origin of Mohammedanism and Buddhism and all other isms except ours. After having examined other religions in the light of science, it occurred to some of our theologians to examine their own doctrine in the same way, and the result has been exactly the same in both cases. Dr. Briggs, as I believe, is a man of education. He is undoubtedly familiar with other religions, and has, to some extent at least, made himself familiar with the sacred books of other people. Dr. Briggs knows that no human being knows who wrote a line of the Old Testament. He knows as well as he can know anything, for instance, that Moses never wrote one word of the books attributed to him. He knows that the book of Genesis was made by putting two or three stories together. He also knows that it is not the oldest story, but was borrowed. He knows that in this book of Genesis there is not one word adapted to make a human being better, or to shed the slightest light on human conduct. He knows, if he knows anything, that the Mosaic Code, so-called, was, and is, exceedingly barbarous and not adapted to do justice between man and man, or between nation and nation. He knows that the Jewish people pursued a course adapted to destroy themselves; that they refused to make friends with their neighbors; that they had not the slightest idea of the rights of other people; that they really supposed that the earth was theirs, and that their God was the greatest God in the heavens. He also knows that there are many thousands of mistakes in the Old Testament as translated. He knows that the book of Isaiah is made up of several books. He knows the same thing in regard to the New Testament. He also knows that there were many other books that were once considered sacred that have been thrown away, and that nobody knows who wrote a solitary line of the New Testament.

Besides all this, Dr. Briggs knows that the Old and New Testaments are filled with interpolations, and he knows that the passages of Scripture which have been taken as the foundation stones for creeds, were written hundreds of years after the death of Christ. He knows well enough that Christ never said: "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." He knows that the same being never said: "Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build my church." He knows, too, that Christ never said: "Whosoever believes shall be saved, and whosoever believes not shall be damned." He knows that these were interpolations. He knows that the sin against the Holy Ghost is another interpolation. He knows, if he knows anything, that the gospel according to John was written long after the rest, and that nearly all of the poison and superstition of orthodoxy is in that book. He knows also, if he knows anything, that St. Paul never read one of the four gospels.

Knowing all these things, Dr. Briggs has had the honesty to say that there was some trouble about taking the Bible as absolutely inspired in word and punctuation. I do not think, however, that he can maintain his own position and still remain a Presbyterian or anything like a Presbyterian. He takes the ground, I believe, that there are three sources of knowledge: First, the Bible; second, the church; third, reason. It seems to me that reason should come first, because if you say the Bible is a source of authority, why do you say it? Do you say this because your reason is convinced that it is? If so, then reason is the foundation of that belief. If, again, you say the church is a source of authority, why do you say so? It must be because its history convinces your reason that it is. Consequently, the foundation of that idea is reason. At the bottom of this pyramid must be reason, and no man is under any obligation to believe that which is unreasonable to him. He may believe things that he cannot prove, but he does not believe them because they are unreasonable. He believes them because he thinks they are not unreasonable, not impossible, not improbable. But, after all, reason is the crucible in which every fact must be placed, and the result fixes the belief of the intelligent man.

It seems to me that the whole Presbyterian creed must come down together. It is a scheme based upon certain facts, so-called. There is in it the fall of man. There is in it the scheme of the atonement, and there is the idea of hell, eternal punishment, and the idea of heaven, eternal reward; and yet, according to their creed, hell is not a punishment and heaven is not a reward. Now, if we do away with the fall of man we do away with the atonement; then we do away with all supernatural religion. Then we come back to human reason. Personally, I hope that the Presbyterian Church will be advanced enough and splendid enough to be honest, and if it is honest, all the gentlemen who amount to anything, who assist in the trial of Dr. Briggs, will in all probability agree with him, and he will be acquitted. But if they throw aside their reason, and remain blindly orthodox, then he will be convicted. To me it is simply miraculous that any man should imagine that the Bible is the source of truth. There was a time when all scientific facts were measured by the Bible. That time is past, and now the believers in the Bible are doing their best to convince us that it is in harmony with science. In other words, I have lived to see a change of standards. When I was a boy, science was measured by the Bible. Now the Bible is measured by science. This is an immense step. So it is impossible for me to conceive what kind of a mind a man has, who finds in the history of the church the fact that it has been a source of truth. How can any one come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church has been a source of truth, a source of intellectual light? How can anyone believe that the church of John Calvin has been a source of truth? If its creed is not true, if its doctrines are mistakes, if its dogmas are monstrous delusions, how can it be said to have been a source of truth?

My opinion is that Dr. Briggs will not be satisfied with the step he has taken. He has turned his face a little toward the light. The farther he walks the harder it will be for him to turn back. The probability is that the orthodox will turn him out, and the process of driving out men of thought and men of genius will go on until the remnant will be as orthodox as they are stupid.

Question. Do you think mankind is drifting away from the supernatural?

Answer. My belief is that the supernatural has had its day. The church must either change or abdicate. That is to say, it must keep step with the progress of the world or be trampled under foot. The church as a power has ceased to exist. To-day it is a matter of infinite indifference what the pulpit thinks unless there comes the voice of heresy from the sacred place. Every orthodox minister in the United States is listened to just in proportion that he preaches heresy. The real, simon-pure, orthodox clergyman delivers his homilies to empty benches, and to a few ancient people who know nothing of the tides and currents of modern thought. The orthodox pulpit to-day has no thought, and the pews are substantially in the same condition. There was a time when the curse of the church whitened the face of a race, but now its anathema is the food of laughter.

Question. What, in your judgment, is to be the outcome of the present agitation in religious circles?

Answer. My idea is that people more and more are declining the postponement of happiness to another world. The general tendency is to enjoy the present. All religions have taught men that the pleasures of this world are of no account; that they are nothing but husks and rags and chaff and disappointment; that whoever expects to be happy in this world makes a mistake; that there is nothing on the earth worth striving for; that the principal business of mankind should be to get ready to be happy in another world; that the great occupation is to save your soul, and when you get it saved, when you are satisfied that you are one of the elect, then pack up all your worldly things in a very small trunk, take it to the dock of time that runs out into the ocean of eternity, sit down on it, and wait for the ship of death. And of course each church is the only one that sells a through ticket which can be depended on. In all religions, as far as I know, is an admixture of asceticism, and the greater the quantity, the more beautiful the religion has been considered, The tendency of the world to- day is to enjoy life while you have it; it is to get something out of the present moment; and we have found that there are things worth living for even in this world. We have found that a man can enjoy himself with wife and children; that he can be happy in the acquisition of knowledge; that he can be very happy in assisting others; in helping those he loves; that there is some joy in poetry, in science and in the enlargement and development of the mind; that there is some delight in music and in the drama and in the arts. We are finding, poor as the world is, that it beats a promise the fulfillment of which is not to take place until after death. The world is also finding out another thing, and that is that the gentlemen who preach these various religions, and promise these rewards, and threaten the punishments, know nothing whatever of the subject; that they are as blindly ignorant as the people they pretend to teach, and the people are as blindly ignorant as the animals below them. We have finally concluded that no human being has the slightest conception of origin or of destiny, and that this life, not only in its commencement but in its end, is just as mysterious to-day as it was to the first man whose eyes greeted the rising sun. We are no nearer the solution of the problem than those who lived thousands of years before us, and we are just as near it as those who will live millions of years after we are dead. So many people having arrived at the conclusion that nobody knows and that nobody can know, like sensible folks they have made up their minds to enjoy life. I have often said, and I say again, that I feel as if I were on a ship not knowing the port from which it sailed, not knowing the harbor to which it was going, not having a speaking acquaintance with any of the officers, and I have made up my mind to have as good a time with the other passengers as possible under the circumstances. If this ship goes down in mid- sea I have at least made something, and if it reaches a harbor of perpetual delight I have lost nothing, and I have had a happy voyage. And I think millions and millions are agreeing with me.

Now, understand, I am not finding fault with any of these religions or with any of these ministers. These religions and these ministers are the necessary and natural products of sufficient causes. Mankind has traveled from barbarism to what we now call civilization, by many paths, all of which under the circumstances, were absolutely necessary; and while I think the individual does as he must, I think the same of the church, of the corporation, and of the nation, and not only of the nation, but of the whole human race. Consequently I have no malice and no prejudices. I have likes and dislikes. I do not blame a gourd for not being a cantaloupe, but I like cantaloupes. So I do not blame the old hard-shell Presbyterian for not being a philosopher, but I like philosophers. So to wind it all up with regard to the tendency of modern thought, or as to the outcome of what you call religion, my own belief is that what is known as religion will disappear from the human mind. And by "religion" I mean the supernatural. By "religion" I mean living in this world for another, or living in this world to gratify some supposed being, whom we never saw and about whom we know nothing, and of whose existence we know nothing. In other words, religion consists of the duties we are supposed to owe to the first great cause, and of certain things necessary for us to do here to insure happiness hereafter. These ideas, in my judgment, are destined to perish, and men will become convinced that all their duties are within their reach, and that obligations can exist only between them and other sentient beings. Another idea, I think, will force itself upon the mind, which is this: That he who lives the best for this world lives the best for another if there be one. In other words, humanity will take the place of what is called "religion." Science will displace superstition, and to do justice will be the ambition of man.

My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Question. What is going to take the place of the pulpit?

Answer. I have for a long time wondered why somebody didn't start a church on a sensible basis. My idea is this: There are, of course, in every community, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and people of all trades and professions who have not the time during the week to pay any particular attention to history, poetry, art, or song. Now, it seems to me that it would be a good thing to have a church and for these men to employ a man of ability, of talent, to preach to them Sundays, and let this man say to his congregation: "Now, I am going to preach to you for the first few Sundays—eight or ten or twenty, we will say—on the art, poetry, and intellectual achievements of the Greeks." Let this man study all the week and tell his congregation Sunday what he has ascertained. Let him give to his people the history of such men as Plato, as Socrates, what they did; of Aristotle, of his philosophy; of the great Greeks, their statesmen, their poets, actors, and sculptors, and let him show the debt that modern civilization owes to these people. Let him, too, give their religions, their mythology—a mythology that has sown the seed of beauty in every land. Then let him take up Rome. Let him show what a wonderful and practical people they were; let him give an idea of their statesmen, orators, poets, lawyers—because probably the Romans were the greatest lawyers. And so let him go through with nation after nation, biography after biography, and at the same time let there be a Sunday school connected with this church where the children shall be taught something of importance. For instance, teach them botany, and when a Sunday is fair, clear, and beautiful, let them go into the fields and woods with their teachers, and in a little while they will become acquainted with all kinds of tress and shrubs and flowering plants. They could also be taught entomology, so that every bug would be interesting, for they would see the facts in science— something of use to them. I believe that such a church and such a Sunday school would at the end of a few years be the most intelligent collection of people in the United States. To teach the children all of these things and to teach their parents, too, the outlines of every science, so that every listener would know something of geology, something of astronomy, so that every member could tell the manner in which they find the distance of a star— how much better that would be than the old talk about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and quotations from Haggai and Zephaniah, and all this eternal talk about the fall of man and the Garden of Eden, and the flood, and the atonement, and the wonders of Revelation! Even if the religious scheme be true, it can be told and understood as well in one day as in a hundred years. The church says, "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." I say: "He that hath brains to think, let him think." So, too, the pulpit is being displaced by what we call places of amusement, which are really places where men go because they find there is something which satisfies in a greater or less degree the hunger of the brain. Never before was the theatre as popular as it is now. Never before was so much money lavished upon the stage as now. Very few men having their choice would go to hear a sermon, especially of the orthodox kind, when they had a chance to see a great actor.

The man must be a curious combination who would prefer an orthodox sermon, we will say, to a concert given by Theodore Thomas. And I may say in passing that I have great respect for Theodore Thomas, because it was he who first of all opened to the American people the golden gates of music. He made the American people acquainted with the great masters, and especially with Wagner, and it is a debt that we shall always owe him. In this day the opera—that is to say, music in every form—is tending to displace the pulpit. The pulpits have to go in partnership with music now. Hundreds of people have excused themselves to me for going to church, saying they have splendid music. Long ago the Catholic Church was forced to go into partnership not only with music, but with painting and with architecture. The Protestant Church for a long time thought it could do without these beggarly elements, and the Protestant Church was simply a dry-goods box with a small steeple on top of it, its walls as bleak and bare and unpromising as the creed. But even Protestants have been forced to hire a choir of ungodly people who happen to have beautiful voices, and they, too, have appealed to the organ. Music is taking the place of creed, and there is more real devotional feeling summoned from the temple of the mind by great music than by any sermon ever delivered. Music, of all other things, gives wings to thought and allows the soul to rise above all the pains and troubles of this life, and to feel for a moment as if it were absolutely free, above all clouds, destined to enjoy forever. So, too, science is beckoning with countless hands. Men of genius are everywhere beckoning men to discoveries, promising them fortunes compared with which Aladdin's lamp was weak and poor. All these things take men from the church; take men from the pulpit. In other words, prosperity is the enemy of the pulpit. When men enjoy life, when they are prosperous here, they are in love with the arts, with the sciences, with everything that gives joy, with everything that promises plenty, and they care nothing about the prophecies of evil that fall from the solemn faces of the parsons. They look in other directions. They are not thinking about the end of the world. They hate the lugubrious, and they enjoy the sunshine of to-day. And this, in my judgment, is the highest philosophy: First, do not regret having lost yesterday; second, do not fear that you will lose to-morrow; third, enjoy to- day.

Astrology was displaced by astronomy. Alchemy and the black art gave way to chemistry. Science is destined to take the place of superstition. In my judgment, the religion of the future will be Reason.

—The Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, November, 1891.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE, HORSE RACING, AND MONEY.

Question. What are your opinions on the woman's suffrage question?

Answer. I claim no right that I am not willing to give to my wife and daughters, and to the wives and daughters of other men. We shall never have a generation of great men until we have a generation of great women. I do not regard ignorance as the foundation of virtue, or uselessness as one of the requisites of a lady. I am a believer in equal rights. Those who are amenable to the laws should have a voice in making the laws. In every department where woman has had an equal opportunity with man, she has shown that she has equal capacity.

George Sand was a great writer, George Eliot one of the greatest, Mrs. Browning a marvelous poet—and the lyric beauty of her "Mother and Poet" is greater than anything her husband ever wrote—Harriet Martineau a wonderful woman, and Ouida is probably the greatest living novelist, man or woman. Give the women a chance.

[The Colonel's recent election as a life member of the Manhattan Athletic Club, due strangely enough to a speech of his denouncing certain forms of sport, was referred to, and this led him to express his contempt for prize-fighting, and then he said on the subject of horse-racing: ]

The only objection I have to horse racing is its cruelty. The whip and spur should be banished from the track. As long as these are used, the race track will breed a very low and heartless set of men. I hate to see a brute whip and spur a noble animal. The good people object to racing, because of the betting, but bad people, like myself, object to the cruelty. Men are not forced to bet. That is their own business, but the poor horse, straining every nerve, does not ask for the lash and iron. Abolish torture on the track and let the best horse win.

Question. What do you think of the Chilian insult to the United States flag?

Answer. In the first place, I think that our Government was wrong in taking the part of Balmaceda. In the next place, we made a mistake in seizing the Itata. America should always side with the right. We should care nothing for the pretender in power, and Balmaceda was a cruel, tyrannical scoundrel. We should be with the people everywhere. I do not blame Chili for feeling a little revengeful. We ought to remember that Chili is weak, and nations, like individuals, are sensitive in proportion that they are weak. Let us trust Chili just as we would England. We are too strong to be unjust.

Question. How do you stand on the money question?

Answer. I am with the Republican party on the question of money. I am for the use of gold and silver both, but I want a dollar's worth of silver in a silver dollar. I do not believe in light money, or in cheap money, or in poor money. These are all contradictions in terms. Congress cannot fix the value of money. The most it can do is to fix its debt paying power. It is beyond the power of any Congress to fix the purchasing value of what it may be pleased to call money. Nobody knows, so far as I know, why people want gold. I do not know why people want silver. I do not know how gold came to be money; neither do I understand the universal desire, but it exists, and we take things as we find them. Gold and silver make up, you may say, the money of the world, and I believe in using the two metals. I do not believe in depreciating any American product; but as value cannot be absolutely fixed by law, so far as the purchasing power is concerned, and as the values of gold and silver vary, neither being stable any more than the value of wheat or corn is stable, I believe that legislation should keep pace within a reasonable distance at least, of the varying values, and that the money should be kept as nearly equal as possible. Of course, there is one trouble with money to-day, and that is the use of the word "dollar." It has lost its meaning. So many governments have adulterated their own coin, and as many have changed weights, that the word "dollar" has not to-day an absolute, definite, specific meaning. Like individuals, nations have been dishonest. The only time the papal power had the right to coin money—I believe it was under Pius IX., when Antonelli was his minister—the coin of the papacy was so debased that even orthodox Catholics refused to take it, and it had to be called in and minted by the French Empire, before even the Italians recognized it as money. My own opinion is, that either the dollar must be absolutely defined—it must be the world over so many grains of pure gold, or so many grains of pure silver—or we must have other denominations for our money, as for instance, ounces, or parts of ounces, and the time will come, in my judgment, when there will be a money of the world, the same everywhere; because each coin will contain upon its face the certificate of a government that it contains such a weight—so many grains or so many ounces—of a certain metal. I, for one, want the money of the United States to be as good as that of any other country. I want its gold and silver exactly what they purport to be; and I want the paper issued by the Government to be the same as gold. I want its credit so perfectly established that it will be taken in every part of the habitable globe. I am with the Republican party on the question of money, also on the question of protection, and all I hope is that the people of this country will have sense enough to defend their own interests.

—The Inter-Ocean, Chicago, Illinois, October 27, 1891.

MISSIONARIES.

Question. What is your opinion of foreign missions?

Answer. In the first place, there seems to be a pretty good opening in this country for missionary work. We have a good many Indians who are not Methodists. I have never known one to be converted. A good many have been killed by Christians, but their souls have not been saved. Maybe the Methodists had better turn their attention to the heathen of our own country. Then we have a good many Mormons who rely on the truth of the Old Testament and follow the example of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It seems to me that the Methodists better convert the Mormons before attacking the tribes of Central Africa. There is plenty of work to be done right here. A few good bishops might be employed for a time in converting Dr. Briggs and Professor Swing, to say nothing of other heretical Presbyterians.

There is no need of going to China to convert the Chinese. There are thousands of them here. In China our missionaries will tell the followers of Confucius about the love and forgiveness of Christians, and when the Chinese come here they are robbed, assaulted, and often murdered. Would it not be a good thing for the Methodists to civilize our own Christians to such a degree that they would not murder a man simply because he belongs to another race and worships other gods?

So, too, I think it would be a good thing for the Methodists to go South and persuade their brethren in that country to treat the colored people with kindness. A few efforts might be made to convert the "White-caps" in Ohio, Indiana and some other States.

My advice to the Methodists is to do what little good they can right here and now. It seems cruel to preach to the heathen a gospel that is dying out even here, and fill their poor minds with the absurd dogmas and cruel creeds that intelligent men have outgrown and thrown away.

Honest commerce will do a thousand times more good than all the missionaries on earth. I do not believe that an intelligent Chinaman or an intelligent Hindoo has ever been or ever will be converted into a Methodist. If Methodism is good we need it here, and if it is not good, do not fool the heathen with it.

—The Press, Cleveland, Ohio, November 12, 1891.

MY BELIEF AND UNBELIEF.*

     [* Col. Robert G. Ingersoll was in Toledo for a few hours
     yesterday afternoon on railroad business.  Whatever Mr.
     Ingersoll says is always read with interest, for besides the
     independence of his averments, his ideas are worded in a way
     that in itself is attractive.

     While in the court room talking with some of the officials
     and others, he was saying that in this world there is rather
     an unequal distribution of comforts, rewards, and
     punishments.  For himself, he had fared pretty well.  He
     stated that during the thirty years he has been married
     there have been fifteen to twenty of his relatives under the
     same roof, but never had there been in his family a death or
     a night's loss of sleep on account of sickness.

     "The Lord has been pretty good to you," suggested Marshall
     Wade.

     "Well, I've been pretty good to him," he answered.]

Question. I have heard people in discussing yourself and your views, express the belief that way down in the depths of your mind you are not altogether a "disbeliever." Are they in any sense correct?

Answer. I am an unbeliever, and I am a believer. I do not believe in the miraculous, the supernatural, or the impossible. I do not believe in the "Mosaic" account of the creation, or in the flood, or the Tower of Babel, or that General Joshua turned back the sun or stopped the earth. I do not believe in the Jonah story, or that God and the Devil troubled poor Job. Neither do I believe in the Mt. Sinai business, and I have my doubts about the broiled quails furnished in the wilderness. Neither do I believe that man is wholly depraved. I have not the least faith in the Eden, snake and apple story. Neither do I believe that God is an eternal jailer; that he is going to be the warden of an everlasting penitentiary in which the most of men are to be eternally tormented. I do not believe that any man can be justly punished or rewarded on account of his belief.

But I do believe in the nobility of human nature. I believe in love and home, and kindness and humanity. I believe in good fellowship and cheerfulness, in making wife and children happy. I believe in good nature, in giving to others all the rights that you claim for yourself. I believe in free thought, in reason, observation and experience. I believe in self-reliance and in expressing your honest thought. I have hope for the whole human race. What will happen to one, will, I hope, happen to all, and that, I hope, will be good. Above all, I believe in Liberty.

—The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, January 9, 1892.

MUST RELIGION GO?

Question. What is your idea as to the difference between honest belief, as held by honest religious thinkers, and heterodoxy?

Answer. Of course, I believe that there are thousands of men and women who honestly believe not only in the improbable, not only in the absurd, but in the impossible. Heterodoxy, so-called, occupies the half-way station between superstition and reason. A heretic is one who is still dominated by religion, but in the east of whose mind there is a dawn. He is one who has seen the morning star; he has not entire confidence in the day, and imagines in some way that even the light he sees was born of the night. In the mind of the heretic, darkness and light are mingled, the ties of intellectual kindred bind him to the night, and yet he has enough of the spirit of adventure to look toward the east. Of course, I admit that Christians and heretics are both honest; a real Christian must be honest and a real heretic must be the same. All men must be honest in what they think; but all men are not honest in what they say. In the invisible world of the mind every man is honest. The judgment never was bribed. Speech may be false, but conviction is always honest. So that the difference between honest belief, as shared by honest religious thinkers and heretics, is a difference of intelligence. It is the difference between a ship lashed to the dock, and on making a voyage; it is the difference between twilight and dawn—that is to say, the coming of the sight and the coming of the morning.

Question. Are women becoming freed from the bonds of sectarianism?

Answer. Women are less calculating than men. As a rule they do not occupy the territory of compromise. They are natural extremists. The woman who is not dominated by superstition is apt to be absolutely free, and when a woman has broken the shackles of superstition, she has no apprehension, no fears. She feels that she is on the open sea, and she cares neither for wind nor wave. An emancipated woman never can be re-enslaved. Her heart goes with her opinions, and goes first.

Question. Do you consider that the influence of religion is better than the influence of Liberalism upon society, that is to say, is society less or more moral, is vice more or less conspicuous?

Answer. Whenever a chain is broken an obligation takes its place. There is and there can be no responsibility without liberty. The freer a man is, the more responsible, the more accountable he feels; consequently the more liberty there is, the more morality there is. Believers in religion teach us that God will reward men for good actions, but men who are intellectually free, know that the reward of a good action cannot be given by any power, but that it is the natural result of the good action. The free man, guided by intelligence, knows that his reward is in the nature of things, and not in the caprice even of the Infinite. He is not a good and faithful servant, he is an intelligent free man.

The vicious are ignorant; real morality is the child of intelligence; the free and intelligent man knows that every action must be judged by its consequences; he knows that if he does good he reaps a good harvest; he knows that if he does evil he bears a burden, and he knows that these good and evil consequences are not determined by an infinite master, but that they live in and are produced by the actions themselves.

—Evening Advertiser, New York, February 6, 1892.

WORD PAINTING AND COLLEGE EDUCATION.

Question. What is the history of the speech delivered here in 1876? Was it extemporaneous?

Answer. It was not born entirely of the occasion. It took me several years to put the thoughts in form—to paint the pictures with words. No man can do his best on the instant. Iron to be beaten into perfect form has to be heated several times and turned upon the anvil many more, and hammered long and often.

You might as well try to paint a picture with one sweep of the brush, or chisel a statue with one stroke, as to paint many pictures with words, without great thought and care. Now and then, while a man is talking, heated with his subject, a great thought, sudden as a flash of lightning, illumines the intellectual sky, and a great sentence clothed in words of purple, falls, or rather rushes, from his lips—but a continuous flight is born, not only of enthusiasm, but of long and careful thought. A perfect picture requires more details, more lights and shadows, than the mind can grasp at once, or on the instant. Thoughts are not born of chance. They grow and bud and blossom, and bear the fruit of perfect form.

Genius is the soil and climate, but the soil must be cultivated, and the harvest is not instantly after the planting. It takes time and labor to raise and harvest a crop from that field called the brain.

Question. Do you think young men need a college education to get along?

Answer. Probably many useless things are taught in colleges. I think, as a rule, too much time is wasted learning the names of the cards without learning to play a game. I think a young man should be taught something that he can use—something he can sell. After coming from college he should be better equipped to battle with the world—to do something of use. A man may have his brain stuffed with Greek and Latin without being able to fill his stomach with anything of importance. Still, I am in favor of the highest education. I would like to see splendid schools in every State, and then a university, and all scholars passing a certain examination sent to the State university free, and then a United States university, the best in the world, and all graduates of the State universities passing a certain examination sent to the United States university free. We ought to have in this country the best library, the best university, the best school of design in the world; and so I say, more money for the mind.

Question. Was the peculiar conduct of the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, of New York, justifiable, and do you think that it had a tendency to help morality?

Answer. If Christ had written a decoy letter to the woman to whom he said: "Go and sin no more," and if he had disguised himself and visited her house and had then lodged a complaint against her before the police and testified against her, taking one of his disciples with him, I do not think he would have added to his reputation.

—The News, Indianapolis, Indiana, February 18, 1892.

PERSONAL MAGNETISM AND THE SUNDAY QUESTION.

     [Colonel Ingersoll was a picturesque figure as he sat in his
     room at the Gibson House yesterday, while the balmy May
     breeze blew through the open windows, fluttered the lace
     curtains and tossed the great Infidel's snowy hair to and
     fro.  The Colonel had come in from New York during the
     morning and the keen white sunlight of a lovely May day
     filled his heart with gladness.  After breakfast, the man
     who preaches the doctrine of the Golden Rule and the Gospel
     of Humanity and the while chaffs the gentlemen of the
     clerical profession, was in a fine humor.  He was busy with
     cards and callers, but not too busy to admire the vase full
     of freshly-picked spring flowers that stood on the mantel,
     and wrestled with clouds of cigar smoke, to see which
     fragrance should dominate the atmosphere.

     To a reporter of The Commercial Gazette, the Colonel spoke
     freely and interestingly upon a variety of subjects, from
     personal magnetism in politics to mob rule in Tennessee.  He
     had been interested in Colonel Weir's statement about the
     lack of gas in Exposition Hall, at the 1876 convention, and
     when asked if he believed there was any truth in the stories
     that the gas supply had been manipulated so as to prevent
     the taking of a ballot after he had placed James G. Blaine
     in nomination, he replied:  ]

All I can say is, that I heard such a story the day after the convention, but I do not know whether or not it is true. I have always believed, that if a vote had been taken that evening, Blaine would have been nominated, possibly not as the effect of my speech, but the night gave time for trafficking, and that is always dangerous in a convention. I believed then that Blaine ought to have been nominated, and that it would have been a very wise thing for the party to have done. That he was not the candidate was due partly to accident and partly to political traffic, but that is one of the bygones, and I believe there is an old saying to the effect that even the gods have no mastery over the past.

Question. Do you think that eloquence is potent in a convention to set aside the practical work of politics and politicians?

Answer. I think that all the eloquence in the world cannot affect a trade if the parties to the contract stand firm, and when people have made a political trade they are not the kind of people to be affected by eloquence. The practical work of the world has very little to do with eloquence. There are a great many thousand stone masons to one sculptor, and houses and walls are not constructed by sculptors, but by masons. The daily wants of the world are supplied by the practical workers, by men of talent, not by men of genius, although in the world of invention, genius has done more, it may be, than the workers themselves. I fancy the machinery now in the world does the work of many hundreds of millions; that there is machinery enough now to do several times the work that could be done by all the men, women and children of the earth. The genius who invented the reaper did more work and will do more work in the harvest field than thousands of millions of men, and the same may be said of the great engines that drive the locomotives and the ships. All these marvelous machines were made by men of genius, but they are not the men who in fact do the work.

[This led the Colonel to pay a brilliant tribute to the great orators of ancient and modern times, the peer of all of them being Cicero. He dissected and defined oratory and eloquence, and explained with picturesque figures, wherein the difference between them lay. As he mentioned the magnetism of public speakers, he was asked as to his opinion of the value of personal magnetism in political life.]

It may be difficult to define what personal magnetism is, but I think it may be defined in this way: You don't always feel like asking a man whom you meet on the street what direction you should take to reach a certain point. You often allow three or four to pass, before you meet one who seems to invite the question. So, too, there are men by whose side you may sit for hours in the cars without venturing a remark as to the weather, and there are others to whom you will commence talking the moment you sit down. There are some men who look as if they would grant a favor, men toward whom you are unconsciously drawn, men who have a real human look, men with whom you seem to be acquainted almost before you speak, and that you really like before you know anything about them. It may be that we are all electric batteries; that we have our positive and our negative poles; it may be that we need some influence that certain others impart, and it may be that certain others have that which we do not need and which we do not want, and the moment you think that, you feel annoyed and hesitate, and uncomfortable, and possibly hateful.

I suppose there is a physical basis for everything. Possibly the best test of real affection between man and woman, or of real friendship between man and woman, is that they can sit side by side, for hours maybe, without speaking, and yet be having a really social time, each feeling that the other knows exactly what they are thinking about. Now, the man you meet and whom you would not hesitate a moment to ask a favor of, is what I call a magnetic man. This magnetism, or whatever it may be, assists in making friends, and of course is a great help to any one who deals with the public. Men like a magnetic man even without knowing him, perhaps simply having seen him. There are other men, whom the moment you shake hands with them, you feel you want no more; you have had enough. A sudden chill runs up the arm the moment your hand touches theirs, and finally reaches the heart; you feel, if you had held that hand a moment longer, an icicle would have formed in the brain. Such people lack personal magnetism. These people now and then thaw out when you get thoroughly acquainted with them, and you find that the ice is all on the outside, and then you come to like them very well, but as a rule first impressions are lasting. Magnetism is what you might call the climate of a man. Some men, and some women, look like a perfect June day, and there are others who, while the look quite smiling, yet you feel that the sky is becoming overcast, and the signs all point to an early storm. There are people who are autumnal—that is to say, generous. They have had their harvest, and have plenty to spare. Others look like the end of an exceedingly hard winter—between the hay and grass, the hay mostly gone and the grass not yet come up. So you will see that I think a great deal of this thing that is called magnetism. As I said, there are good people who are not magnetic, but I do not care to make an Arctic expedition for the purpose of discovering the north pole of their character. I would rather stay with those who make me feel comfortable at the first.

[From personal magnetism to the lynching Saturday morning down at Nashville, Tennessee, was a far cry, but when Colonel Ingersoll was asked what he thought of mob law, whether there was any extenuation, any propriety and moral effect resultant from it, he quickly answered: ]

I do not believe in mob law at any time, among any people. I believe in justice being meted out in accordance with the forms of law. If a community violates that law, why should not the individual? The example is bad. Besides all that, no punishment inflicted by a mob tends to prevent the commission of crime. Horrible punishment hardens the community, and that in itself produces more crime.

There seems to be a sort of fascination in frightful punishments, but, to say the least of it, all these things demoralize the community. In some countries, you know, they whip people for petty offences. The whipping, however, does no good, and on the other hand it does harm; it hardens those who administer the punishment and those who witness it, and it degrades those who receive it. There will be but little charity in the world, and but little progress until men see clearly that there is no chance in the world of conduct any more than in the physical world.

Back of every act and dream and thought and desire and virtue and crime is the efficient cause. If you wish to change mankind, you must change the conditions. There should be no such thing as punishment. We should endeavor to reform men, and those who cannot be reformed should be placed where they cannot injure their fellows. The State should never take revenge any more than the community should form itself into a mob and take revenge. This does harm, not good. The time will come when the world will no more think of sending men to the penitentiary for stealing, as a punishment, that it will for sending a man to the penitentiary because he has consumption. When that time comes, the object will be to reform men; to prevent crime instead of punishing it, and the object then will be to make the conditions such that honest people will be the result, but as long as hundreds of thousands of human beings live in tenements, as long as babes are raised in gutters, as long as competition is so sharp that hundreds of thousands must of necessity be failures, just so long as society gets down on its knees before the great and successful thieves, before the millionaire thieves, just so long will it have to fill the jails and prisons with the little thieves. When the "good time" comes, men will not be judged by the money they have accumulated, but by the uses they make of it. So men will be judged, not according to their intelligence, but by what they are endeavoring to accomplish with their intelligence. In other words, the time will come when character will rise above all. There is a great line in Shakespeare that I have often quoted, and that cannot be quoted too often: "There is no darkness but ignorance." Let the world set itself to work to dissipate this darkness; let us flood the world with intellectual light. This cannot be accomplished by mobs or lynchers. It must be done by the noblest, by the greatest, and by the best.

[The conversation shifting around to the Sunday question; the opening of the World's Fair on Sunday, the attacks of the pulpit upon the Sunday newspapers, the opening of parks and museums and libraries on Sunday, Colonel Ingersoll waxed eloquent, and in answer to many questions uttered these paragraphs: ]

Of course, people will think that I have some prejudice against the parsons, but really I think the newspaper press is of far more importance in the world than the pulpit. If I should admit in a kind of burst of generosity, and simply for the sake of making a point, that the pulpit can do some good, how much can it do without the aid of the press? Here is a parson preaching to a few ladies and enough men, it may be, to pass the contribution box, and all he says dies within the four walls of that church. How many ministers would it take to reform the world, provided I again admit in a burst of generosity, that there is any reforming power in what they preach, working along that line?

The Sunday newspaper, I think, is the best of any day in the week. That paper keeps hundreds and thousands at home. You can find in it information about almost everything in the world. One of the great Sunday papers will keep a family busy reading almost all day. Now, I do not wonder that the ministers are so opposed to the Sunday newspaper, and so they are opposed to anything calculated to decrease the attendance at church. Why, they want all the parks, all the museums, all the libraries closed on Sunday, and they want the World's Fair closed on Sunday.

Now, I am in favor of Sunday; in fact, I am perfectly willing to have two of them a week, but I want Sunday as a day of recreation and pleasure. The fact is we ought not to work hard enough during the week to require a day of rest. Every day ought to be so arranged that there would be time for rest from the labor of that day. Sunday is a good day to get business out of your mind, to forget the ledger and the docket and the ticker, to forget profits and losses, and enjoy yourself. It is a good day to go to the art museums, to look at pictures and statues and beautiful things, so that you may feel that there is something in this world besides money and mud. It is a good day, is Sunday, to go to the libraries and spend a little time with the great and splendid dead, and to go to the cemetery and think of those who are sleeping there, and to give a little thought to the time when you, too, like them, will fall asleep. I think it is a good day for almost anything except going to church. There is no need of that; everybody knows the story, and if a man has worked hard all the week, you can hardly call it recreation if he goes to church Sunday and hears that his chances are ninety-nine in a hundred in favor of being eternally damned.

So it is I am in favor of having the World's Fair open on Sunday. It will be a good day to look at the best the world has produced; a good day to leave the saloons and commune for a little while with the mighty spirits that have glorified this world. Sunday is a good day to leave the churches, where they teach that man has become totally depraved, and look at the glorious things that have been wrought by these depraved beings. Besides all this, it is the day of days for the working man and working woman, for those who have to work all the week. In New York an attempt was made to open the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Sunday, and the pious people opposed it. They thought it would interfere with the joy of heaven if people were seen in the park enjoying themselves on Sunday, and they also held that nobody would visit the Museum if it were opened on Sunday; that the "common people" had no love for pictures and statues and cared nothing about art. The doors were opened, and it was demonstrated that the poor people, the toilers and workers, did want to see such things on Sunday, and now more people visit the Museum on Sunday than on all the other days of the week put together. The same is true of the public libraries. There is something to me infinitely pharisaical, hypocritical and farcical in this Sunday nonsense. The rich people who favor keeping Sunday "holy," have their coachman drive them to church and wait outside until the services end. What do they care about the coachman's soul? While they are at church their cooks are busy at home getting dinner ready. What do they care for the souls of cooks? The whole thing is pretence, and nothing but pretence. It is the instinct of business. It is the competition of the gospel shop with other shops and places of resort.

The ministers, of course, are opposed to all shows except their own, for they know that very few will come to see or hear them and the choice must be the church or nothing.

I do not believe that one day can be more holy than another unless more joyous than another. The holiest day is the happiest day— the day on which wives and children and men are happiest. In that sense a day can be holy.

Our idea of the Sabbath is from the Puritans, and they imagined that a man has to be miserable in order to excite the love of God. We have outgrown the old New England Sabbath—the old Scotch horror. The Germans have helped us and have set a splendid example. I do not see how a poor workingman can go to church for recreation—I mean an orthodox church. A man who has hell here cannot be benefitted by being assured that he is likely to have hell hereafter. The whole business I hold in perfect abhorrence.

They tell us that God will not prosper us unless we observe the Sabbath. The Jews kept the Sabbath and yet Jehovah deserted them, and they are a people without a nation. The Scotch kept Sunday; they are not independent. The French never kept Sunday, and yet they are the most prosperous nation in Europe.

—Commercial Gazette, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 2, 1892.

AUTHORS.

Question. Who, in your opinion, is the greatest novelist who has written in the English language?

Answer. The greatest novelist, in my opinion, who has ever written in the English language, was Charles Dickens. He was the greatest observer since Shakespeare. He had the eyes that see, the ears that really hear. I place him above Thackeray. Dickens wrote for the home, for the great public. Thackeray wrote for the clubs. The greatest novel in our language—and it may be in any other—is, according to my ideas, "A Tale of Two Cities." In that, are philosophy, pathos, self-sacrifice, wit, humor, the grotesque and the tragic. I think it is the most artistic novel that I have read. The creations of Dickens' brain have become the citizens of the world.

Question. What is your opinion of American writers?

Answer. I think Emerson was a fine writer, and he did this world a great deal of good, but I do not class him with the first. Some of his poetry is wonderfully good and in it are some of the deepest and most beautiful lines. I think he was a poet rather than a philosopher. His doctrine of compensation would be delightful if it had the facts to support it.

Of course, Hawthorne was a great writer. His style is a little monotonous, but the matter is good. "The Marble Faun" is by far his best effort. I shall always regret that Hawthorne wrote the life of Franklin Pierce.

Walt Whitman will hold a high place among American writers. His poem on the death of Lincoln, entitled "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," is the greatest ever written on this continent. He was a natural poet and wrote lines worthy of America. He was the poet of democracy and individuality, and of liberty. He was worthy of the great Republic.

Question. What about Henry George's books?

Answer. Henry George wrote a wonderful book and one that arrested the attention of the world—one of the greatest books of the century. While I do not believe in his destructive theories, I gladly pay a tribute to his sincerity and his genius.

Question. What do you think of Bellamy?

Answer. I do not think what is called nationalism of the Bellamy kind is making any particular progress in this country. We are believers in individual independence, and will be, I hope, forever.

Boston was at one time the literary center of the country, but the best writers are not living here now. The best novelists of our country are not far from Boston. Edgar Fawcett lives in New York. Howells was born, I believe, in Ohio, and Julian Hawthorne lives in New Jersey or in Long Island. Among the poets, James Whitcomb Riley is a native of Indiana, and he has written some of the daintiest and sweetest things in American literature. Edgar Fawcett is a great poet. His "Magic Flower" is as beautiful as anything Tennyson has ever written. Eugene Field of Chicago, has written some charming things, natural and touching.

Westward the star of literature takes its course.

—The Star, Kansas City, Mo., May 26, 1892.

INEBRIETY.*

     [* Published from notes found among Colonel Ingersoll's
     papers, evidently written soon after the discovery of the
     "Keeley Cure."]

Question. Do you consider inebriety a disease, or the result of diseased conditions?

Answer. I believe that by a long and continuous use of stimulants, the system gets in such a condition that it imperatively demands not only the usual, but an increased stimulant. After a time, every nerve becomes hungry, and there is in the body of the man a cry, coming from every nerve, for nourishment. There is a kind of famine, and unless the want is supplied, insanity is the result. This hunger of the nerves drowns the voice of reason—cares nothing for argument—nothing for experience—nothing for the sufferings of others—nothing for anything, except for the food it requires. Words are wasted, advice is of no possible use, argument is like reasoning with the dead. The man has lost the control of his will —it has been won over to the side of the nerves. He imagines that if the nerves are once satisfied he can then resume the control of himself. Of course, this is a mistake, and the more the nerves are satisfied, the more imperative is their demand. Arguments are not of the slightest force. The knowledge—the conviction—that the course pursued is wrong, has no effect. The man is in the grasp of appetite. He is like a ship at the mercy of wind and wave and tide. The fact that the needle of the compass points to the north has no effect—the compass is not a force—it cannot battle with the wind and tide—and so, in spite of the fact that the needle points to the north, the ship is stranded on the rocks.

So the fact that the man knows that he should not drink has not the slightest effect upon him. The sophistry of passion outweighs all that reason can urge. In other words, the man is the victim of disease, and until the disease is arrested, his will is not his own. He may wish to reform, but wish is not will. He knows all of the arguments in favor of temperance—he knows all about the distress of wife and child—all about the loss of reputation and character—all about the chasm toward which he is drifting—and yet, not being the master of himself, he goes with the tide.

For thousands of years society has sought to do away with inebriety by argument, by example, by law; and yet millions and millions have been carried away and countless thousands have become victims of alcohol. In this contest words have always been worthless, for the reason that no argument can benefit a man who has lost control of himself.

Question. As a lawyer, will you express an opinion as to the moral and legal responsibility of a victim of alcoholism?

Answer. Personally, I regard the moral and legal responsibility of all persons as being exactly the same. All persons do as they must. If you wish to change the conduct of an individual you must change his conditions—otherwise his actions will remain the same.

We are beginning to find that there is no effect without a cause, and that the conduct of individuals is not an exception to this law. Every hope, every fear, every dream, every virtue, every crime, has behind it an efficient cause. Men do neither right nor wrong by chance. In the world of fact and in the world of conduct, as well as in the world of imagination, there is no room, no place, for chance.

Question. In the case of an inebriate who has committed a crime, what do you think of the common judicial opinion that such a criminal is as deserving of punishment as a person not inebriated?

Answer. I see no difference. Believing as I do that all persons act as they must, it makes not the slightest difference whether the person so acting is what we call inebriated, or sane, or insane —he acts as he must.

There should be no such thing as punishment. Society should protect itself by such means as intelligence and humanity may suggest, but the idea of punishment is barbarous. No man ever was, no man ever will be, made better by punishment. Society should have two objects in view: First, the defence of itself, and second, the reformation of the so-called criminal.

The world has gone on fining, imprisoning, torturing and killing the victims of condition and circumstance, and condition and circumstance have gone on producing the same kind of men and women year after year and century after century—and all this is so completely within the control of cause and effect, within the scope and jurisdiction of universal law, that we can prophesy the number of criminals for the next year—the thieves and robbers and murderers —with almost absolute certainty.

There are just so many mistakes committed every year—so many crimes —so many heartless and foolish things done—and it does not seem to be—at least by the present methods—possible to increase or decrease the number.

We have thousands and thousands of pulpits, and thousands of moralists, and countless talkers and advisers, but all these sermons, and all the advice, and all the talk, seem utterly powerless in the presence of cause and effect. Mothers may pray, wives may weep, children may starve, but the great procession moves on.

For thousands of years the world endeavored to save itself from disease by ceremonies, by genuflections, by prayers, by an appeal to the charity and mercy of heaven—but the diseases flourished and the graveyards became populous, and all the ceremonies and all the prayers were without the slightest effect. We must at last recognize the fact, that not only life, but conduct, has a physical basis. We must at last recognize the fact that virtue and vice, genius and stupidity, are born of certain conditions.

Question. In which way do you think the reformation or reconstruction of the inebriate is to be effected—by punishment, by moral suasion, by seclusion, or by medical treatment?

Answer. In the first place, punishment simply increases the disease. The victim, without being able to give the reasons, feels that punishment is unjust, and thus feeling, the effect of the punishment cannot be good.

You might as well punish a man for having the consumption which he inherited from his parents, or for having a contagious disease which was given to him without his fault, as to punish him for drunkenness. No one wishes to be unhappy—no one wishes to destroy his own well-being. All persons prefer happiness to unhappiness, and success to failure, Consequently, you might as well punish a man for being unhappy, and thus increase his unhappiness, as to punish him for drunkenness. In neither case is he responsible for what he suffers.

Neither can you cure this man by what is called moral suasion. Moral suasion, if it amounts to anything, is the force of argument —that is to say, the result of presenting the facts to the victim. Now, of all persons in the world, the victim knows the facts. He knows not only the effect upon those who love him, but the effect upon himself. There are no words that can add to his vivid appreciation of the situation. There is no language so eloquent as the sufferings of his wife and children. All these things the drunkard knows, and knows perfectly, and knows as well as any other human being can know. At the same time, he feels that the tide and current of passion are beyond his power. He feels that he cannot row against the stream.

There is but one way, and that is, to treat the drunkard as the victim of a disease—treat him precisely as you would a man with a fever, as a man suffering from smallpox, or with some form of indigestion. It is impossible to talk a man out of consumption, or to reason him out of typhoid fever. You may tell him that he ought not to die, that he ought to take into consideration the condition in which he would leave his wife. You may talk to him about his children—the necessity of their being fed and educated —but all this will have nothing to do with the progress of the disease. The man does not wish to die—he wishes to live—and yet, there will come a time in his disease when even that wish to live loses its power to will, and the man drifts away on the tide, careless of life or death.

So it is with drink. Every nerve asks for a stimulant. Every drop of blood cries out for assistance, and in spite of all argument, in spite of all knowledge, in this famine of the nerves, a man loses the power of will. Reason abdicates the throne, and hunger takes its place.

Question. Will you state your reasons for your belief?

Answer. In the first place, I will give a reason for my unbelief in what is called moral suasion and in legislation.

As I said before, for thousands and thousands of years, fathers and mothers and daughters and sisters and brothers have been endeavoring to prevent the ones they love from drink, and yet, in spite of everything, millions have gone on and filled at last a drunkard's grave. So, societies have been formed all over the world. But the consumption of ardent spirits has steadily increased. Laws have been passed in nearly all the nations of the world upon the subject, and these laws, so far as I can see, have done but little, if any, good.

And the same old question is upon us now: What shall be done with the victims of drink? There have been probably many instances in which men have signed the pledge and have reformed. I do not say that it is not possible to reform many men, in certain stages, by moral suasion. Possibly, many men can be reformed in certain stages, by law; but the per cent. is so small that, in spite of that per cent., the average increases. For these reasons, I have lost confidence in legislation and in moral suasion. I do not say what legislation may do by way of prevention, or what moral suasion may do in the same direction, but I do say that after man have become the victims of alcohol, advice and law seem to have lost their force.

I believe that science is to become the savior of mankind. In other words, every appetite, every excess, has a physical basis, and if we only knew enough of the human system—of the tides and currents of thought and will and wish—enough of the storms of passion—if we only knew how the brain acts and operates—if we only knew the relation between blood and thought, between thought and act—if we only knew the conditions of conduct, then we could, through science, control the passions of the human race.

When I first heard of the cure of inebriety through scientific means, I felt that the morning star had risen in the east—I felt that at last we were finding solid ground. I did not accept—being of a skeptical turn of mind—all that I heard as true. I preferred to hope, and wait. I have waited, until I have seen men, the victims of alcohol, in the very gutter of disgrace and despair, lifted from the mire, rescued from the famine of desire, from the grasp of appetite. I have seen them suddenly become men—masters and monarchs of themselves.

MIRACLES, THEOSOPHY AND SPIRITUALISM.

Question. Do you believe that there is such a thing as a miracle, or that there has ever been?

Answer. Mr. Locke was in the habit of saying: "Define your terms." So the first question is, What is a miracle? If it is something wonderful, unusual, inexplicable, then there have been many miracles. If you mean simply that which is inexplicable, then the world is filled with miracles; but if you mean by a miracle, something contrary to the facts in nature, then it seems to me that the miracle must be admitted to be an impossibility. It is like twice two are eleven in mathematics.

If, again, we take the ground of some of the more advanced clergy, that a miracle is in accordance with the facts in nature, but with facts unknown to man, then we are compelled to say that a miracle is performed by a divine sleight-of-hand; as, for instance, that our senses are deceived; or, that it is perfectly simple to this higher intelligence, while inexplicable to us. If we give this explanation, then man has been imposed upon by a superior intelligence. It is as though one acquainted with the sciences—with the action of electricity—should excite the wonder of savages by sending messages to his partner. The savage would say, "A miracle;" but the one who sent the message would say, "There is no miracle; it is in accordance with facts in nature unknown to you." So that, after all, the word miracle grows in the soil of ignorance.

The question arises whether a superior intelligence ought to impose upon the inferior. I believe there was a French saint who had his head cut off by robbers, and this saint, after the robbers went away, got up, took his head under his arm and went on his way until he found friends to set it on right. A thing like this, if it really happened, was a miracle.

So it may be said that nothing is much more miraculous than the fact that intelligent men believe in miracles. If we read in the annals of China that several thousand years ago five thousand people were fed on one sandwich, and that several sandwiches were left over after the feast, there are few intelligent men—except, it may be, the editors of religious weeklies—who would credit the statement. But many intelligent people, reading a like story in the Hebrew, or in the Greek, or in a mistranslation from either of these languages, accept the story without a doubt.

So if we should find in the records of the Indians that a celebrated medicine-man of their tribe used to induce devils to leave crazy people and take up their abode in wild swine, very few people would believe the story.

I believe it is true that the priest of one religion has never had the slightest confidence in the priest of any other religion.

My own opinion is, that nature is just as wonderful one time as another; that that which occurs to-day is just as miraculous as anything that ever happened; that nothing is more wonderful than that we live—that we think—that we convey our thoughts by speech, by gestures, by pictures.

Nothing is more wonderful than the growth of grass—the production of seed—the bud, the blossom and the fruit. In other words, we are surrounded by the inexplicable.

All that happens in conformity with what we know, we call natural; and that which is said to have happened, not in conformity with what we know, we say is wonderful; and that which we believe to have happened contrary to what we know, we call the miraculous.

I think the truth is, that nothing ever happened except in a natural way; that behind every effect has been an efficient cause, and that this wondrous procession of causes and effects has never been, and never will be, broken. In other words, there is nothing superior to the universe—nothing that can interfere with this procession of causes and effects. I believe in no miracles in the theological sense. My opinion is that the universe is, forever has been, and forever will be, perfectly natural.

Whenever a religion has been founded among barbarians and ignorant people, the founder has appealed to miracle as a kind of credential —as an evidence that he is in partnership with some higher power. The credulity of savagery made this easy. But at last we have discovered that there is no necessary relation between the miraculous and the moral. Whenever a man's reason is developed to that point that he sees the reasonableness of a thing, he needs no miracle to convince him. It is only ignorance or cunning that appeals to the miraculous.

There is another thing, and that is this: Truth relies upon itself —that is to say, upon the perceived relation between itself and all other truths. If you tell the facts, you need not appeal to a miracle. It is only a mistake or a falsehood, that needs to be propped and buttressed by wonders and miracles.

Question. What is your explanation of the miracles referred to in the Old and New Testaments?

Answer. In the first place, a miracle cannot be explained. If it is a real miracle, there is no explanation. If it can be explained, then the miracle disappears, and the thing was done in accordance with the facts and forces of nature.

In a time when not one it may be in thousands could read or write, when language was rude, and when the signs by which thoughts were conveyed were few and inadequate, it was very easy to make mistakes, and nothing is more natural than for a mistake to grow into a miracle. In an ignorant age, history for the most part depended upon memory. It was handed down from the old in their dotage, to the young without judgment. The old always thought that the early days were wonderful—that the world was wearing out because they were. The past looked at through the haze of memory, became exaggerated, gigantic. Their fathers were stronger than they, and their grandfathers far superior to their fathers, and so on until they reached men who had the habit of living about a thousand years.

In my judgment, everything in the Old Testament contrary to the experience of the civilized world, is false. I do not say that those who told the stories knew that they were false, or that those who wrote them suspected that they were not true. Thousands and thousands of lies are told by honest stupidity and believed by innocent credulity. Then again, cunning takes advantage of ignorance, and so far as I know, though all the history of the world a good many people have endeavored to make a living without work.

I am perfectly convinced of the integrity of nature—that the elements are eternally the same—that the chemical affinities and hatreds know no shadow of turning—that just so many atoms of one kind combine with so many atoms of another, and that the relative numbers have never changed and never will change. I am satisfied that the attraction of gravitation is a permanent institution; that the laws of motion have been the same that they forever will be. There is no chance, there is no caprice. Behind every effect is a cause, and every effect must in its turn become a cause, and only that is produced which a cause of necessity produces.

Question. What do you think of Madame Blavatsky and her school of Theosophists? Do you believe Madame Blavatsky does or has done the wonderful things related of her? Have you seen or known of any Theosophical or esoteric marvels?

Answer. I think wonders are about the same in this country that they are in India, and nothing appears more likely to me simply because it is surrounded with the mist of antiquity. In my judgment, Madame Blavatsky has never done any wonderful things—that is to say, anything not in perfect accordance with the facts of nature.

I know nothing of esoteric marvels. In one sense, everything that exists is a marvel, and the probability is that if we knew the history of one grain of sand we would know the history of the universe. I regard the universe as a unit. Everything that happens is only a different aspect of that unit. There is no room for the marvelous—there is no space in which it can operate—there is no fulcrum for its lever. The universe is already occupied with the natural. The ground is all taken.

It may be that all these people are perfectly honest, and imagine that they have had wonderful experiences. I know but little of the Theosophists—but little of the Spiritualists. It has always seemed to me that the messages received by Spiritualists are remarkably unimportant—that they tell us but little about the other world, and just as little about this—that if all the messages supposed to have come from angelic lips, or spiritual lips, were destroyed, certainly the literature of the world would lose but little. Some of these people are exceedingly intelligent, and whenever they say any good thing, I imagine that it was produced in their brain, and that it came from no other world. I have no right to pass upon their honesty. Most of them may be sincere. It may be that all the founders of religions have really supposed themselves to be inspired—believed that they held conversations with angels and Gods. It seems to be easy for some people to get in such a frame of mind that their thoughts become realities, their dreams substances, and their very hopes palpable.

Personally, I have no sort of confidence in these messages from the other world. There may be mesmeric forces—there may be an odic force. It may be that some people can tell of what another is thinking. I have seen no such people—at least I am not acquainted with them—and my own opinion is that no such persons exist.

Question. Do you believe the spirits of the dead come back to earth?

Answer. I do not. I do not say that the spirits do not come back. I simply say that I know nothing on the subject. I do not believe in such spirits, simply for the reason that I have no evidence upon which to base such a belief. I do not say there are no such spirits, for the reason that my knowledge is limited, and I know of no way of demonstrating the non-existence of spirits.

It may be that man lives forever, and it may be that what we call life ends with what we call death. I have had no experience beyond the grave, and very little back of birth. Consequently, I cannot say that I have a belief on this subject. I can simply say that I have no knowledge on this subject, and know of no fact in nature that I would use as the corner-stone of a belief.

Question. Do you believe in the resurrection of the body?

Answer. My answer to that is about the same as to the other question. I do not believe in the resurrection of the body. It seems to me an exceedingly absurd belief—and yet I do not know. I am told, and I suppose I believe, that the atoms that are in me have been in many other people, and in many other forms of life, and I suppose at death the atoms forming my body go back to the earth and are used in countless forms. These facts, or what I suppose to be facts, render a belief in the resurrection of the body impossible to me.

We get atoms to support our body from what we eat. Now, if a cannibal should eat a missionary, and certain atoms belonging to the missionary should be used by the cannibal in his body, and the cannibal should then die while the atoms of the missionary formed part of his flesh, to whom would these atoms belong in the morning of the resurrection?

Then again, science teaches us that there is a kind of balance between animal and vegetable life, and that probably all men and all animals have been trees, and all trees have been animals; so that the probability is that the atoms that are now in us have been, as I said in the first place, in millions of other people. Now, if this be so, there cannot be atoms enough in the morning of the resurrection, because, if the atoms are given to the first men, that belonged to the first men when they died, there will certainly be no atoms for the last men.

Consequently, I am compelled to say that I do not believe in the resurrection of the body.*

     [* From notes found among Colonel Ingersoll's papers.]

TOLSTOY AND LITERATURE.

Question. What is your opinion of Count Leo Tolstoy?

Answer. I have read Tolstoy. He is a curious mixture of simplicity and philosophy. He seems to have been carried away by his conception of religion. He is a non-resistant to such a degree that he asserts that he would not, if attacked, use violence to preserve his own life or the life of a child. Upon this question he is undoubtedly insane.

So he is trying to live the life of a peasant and doing without the comforts of life! This is not progress. Civilization should not endeavor to bring about equality by making the rich poor or the comfortable miserable. This will not add to the pleasures of the rich, neither will it feed the hungry, not clothe the naked.

The civilized wealthy should endeavor to help the needy, and help them in a sensible way, not through charity, but through industry; through giving them opportunities to take care of themselves. I do not believe in the equality that is to be reached by pulling the successful down, but I do believe in civilization that tends to raise the fallen and assists those in need.

Should we all follow Tolstoy's example and live according to his philosophy the world would go back to barbarism; art would be lost; that which elevates and refines would be destroyed; the voice of music would become silent, and man would be satisfied with a rag, a hut, a crust. We do not want the equality of savages.

No, in civilization there must be differences, because there is a constant movement forward. The human race cannot advance in line. There will be pioneers, there will be the great army, and there will be countless stragglers. It is not necessary for the whole army to go back to the stragglers, it is better that the army should march forward toward the pioneers.

It may be that the sale of Tolstoy's works is on the increase in America, but certainly the principles of Tolstoy are gaining no foothold here. We are not a nation of non-resistants. We believe in defending our homes. Nothing can exceed the insanity of non- resistance. This doctrine leaves virtue naked and clothes vice in armor; it gives every weapon to the wrong and takes every shield from the right. I believe that goodness has the right of self- defence. As a matter of fact, vice should be left naked and virtue should have all the weapons. The good should not be a flock of sheep at the mercy of every wolf. So, I do not accept Tolstoy's theory of equality as a sensible solution of the labor problem.

The hope of this world is that men will become civilized to that degree that they cannot be happy while they know that thousands of their fellow-men are miserable.

The time will come when the man who dwells in a palace will not be happy if Want sits upon the steps at his door. No matter how well he is clothed himself he will not enjoy his robes if he sees others in rags, and the time will come when the intellect of this world will be directed by the heart of this world, and when men of genius and power will do what they can for the benefit of their fellow- men. All this is to come through civilization, through experience.

Men, after a time, will find the worthlessness of great wealth; they will find it is not splendid to excite envy in others. So, too, they will find that the happiness of the human race is so interdependent and so interwoven, that finally the interest of humanity will be the interest of the individual.

I know that at present the lives of many millions are practically without value, but in my judgment, the world is growing a little better every day. On the average, men have more comforts, better clothes, better food, more books and more of the luxuries of life than ever before.

Question. It is said that properly to appreciate Rousseau, Voltaire, Hugo and other French classics, a thorough knowledge of the French language is necessary. What is your opinion?

Answer. No; to say that a knowledge of French is necessary in order to appreciate Voltaire or Hugo is nonsensical. For a student anxious to study the works of these masters, to set to work to learn the language of the writers would be like my building a flight of stairs to go down to supper. The stairs are already there. Some other person built them for me and others who choose to use them.

Men have spent their lives in the study of the French and English, and have given us Voltaire, Hugo and all other works of French classics, perfect in sentiment and construction as the originals are. Macaulay was a great linguist, but he wrote no better than Shakespeare, and Burns wrote perfect English, though virtually uneducated. Good writing is a matter of genius and heart; reading is application and judgment.

I am of the opinion that Wilbur's English translation of "Les Miserables" is better than Hugo's original, as a literary masterpiece.

What a grand novel it is! What characters, Jean Valjean and Javert!

Question. Which in your opinion is the greatest English novel?

Answer. I think the greatest novel ever written in English is "A Tale of Two Cities," by Dickens. It is full of philosophy; its incidents are dramatically grouped. Sidney Carton, the hero, is a marvelous creation and a marvelous character. Lucie Manette is as delicate as the perfume of wild violets, and cell 105, North Tower, and scenes enacted there, almost touch the region occupied by "Lear." There, too, Mme. Defarge is the impersonation of the French Revolution, and the nobleman of the chateau with his fine features changed to stone, and the messenger at Tellson's Bank gnawing the rust from his nails; all there are the creations of genius, and these children of fiction will live as long as Imagination spreads her many-colored wings in the mind of man.

Question. What do you think of Pope?

Answer. Pope! Alexander Pope, the word-carpenter, a mechanical poet, or stay—rather a "digital poet;" that fits him best—one of those fellows who counts his fingers to see that his verse is in perfect rhythm. His "Essay on Man" strikes me as being particularly defective. For instance:

  "All discord, harmony not understood,
   All partial evil, universal good,"

from the first epistle of his "Essay on Man." Anything that is evil cannot by any means be good, and anything partial cannot be universal.

We see in libraries ponderous tomes labeled "Burke's Speeches." No person ever seems to read them, but he is now regarded as being in his day a great speaker, because now no one has pluck enough to read his speeches. Why, for thirty years Burke was known in Parliament as the "Dinner Bell"—whenever he rose to speak, everybody went to dinner.

—The Evening Express, Buffalo, New York, October 6, 1892.

WOMAN IN POLITICS.

Question. What do you think of the influence of women in politics?

Answer. I think the influence of women is always good in politics, as in everything else. I think it the duty of every woman to ascertain what she can in regard to her country, including its history, laws and customs. Woman above all others is a teacher. She, above all others, determines the character of children; that is to say, of men and women.

There is not the slightest danger of women becoming too intellectual or knowing too much. Neither is there any danger of men knowing too much. At least, I know of no men who are in immediate peril from that source. I am a firm believer in the equal rights of human beings, and no matter what I think as to what woman should or should not do, she has the same right to decide for herself that I have to decide for myself. If women wish to vote, if they wish to take part in political matters, if they wish to run for office, I shall do nothing to interfere with their rights. I most cheerfully admit that my political rights are only equal to theirs.

There was a time when physical force or brute strength gave pre- eminence. The savage chief occupied his position by virtue of his muscle, of his courage, on account of the facility with which he wielded a club. As long as nations depend simply upon brute force, the man, in time of war, is, of necessity, of more importance to the nation than woman, and as the dispute is to be settled by strength, by force, those who have the strength and force naturally settle it. As the world becomes civilized, intelligence slowly takes the place of force, conscience restrains muscle, reason enters the arena, and the gladiator retires.

A little while ago the literature of the world was produced by men, and men were not only the writers, but the readers. At that time the novels were coarse and vulgar. Now the readers of fiction are women, and they demand that which they can read, and the result is that women have become great writers. The women have changed our literature, and the change has been good.

In every field where woman has become a competitor of man she has either become, or given evidence that she is to become, his equal. My own opinion is that woman is naturally the equal of man and that in time, that is to say, when she has had the opportunity and the training, she will produce in the world of art as great pictures, as great statues, and in the world of literature as great books, dramas and poems as man has produced or will produce.

There is nothing very hard to understand in the politics of a country. The general principles are for the most part simple. It is only in the application that the complexity arises, and woman, I think, by nature, is as well fitted to understand these things as man. In short, I have no prejudice on this subject. At first, women will be more conservative than men; and this is natural. Women have, through many generations, acquired the habit of submission, of acquiescence. They have practiced what may be called the slave virtues—obedience, humility—so that some time will be required for them to become accustomed to the new order of things, to the exercise of greater freedom, acting in accordance with perceived obligation, independently of authority.

So I say equal rights, equal education, equal advantages. I hope that woman will not continue to be the serf of superstition; that she will not be the support of the church and priest; that she will not stand for the conservation of superstition, but that in the east of her mind the sun of progress will rise.

Question. In your lecture on Voltaire you made a remark about the government of ministers, and you stated that if the ministers of the city of New York had to power to make the laws most people would prefer to live in a well regulated penitentiary. What do you mean by this?

Answer. Well, as a rule, ministers are quite severe. They have little patience with human failures. They are taught, and they believe and they teach, that man is absolutely master of his own fate. Besides, they are believers in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the laws of the Old Testament are exceedingly severe. Nearly every offence was punished by death. Every offence was regarded as treason against Jehovah.

In the Pentateuch there is no pity. If a man committed some offence justice was not satisfied with his punishment, but proceeded to destroy his wife and children. Jehovah seemed to think that crime was in the blood; that it was not sufficient to kill the criminal, but to prevent future crimes you should kill his wife and babes. The reading of the Old Testament is calculated to harden the heart, to drive the angel of pity from the breast, and to make man a religious savage. The clergy, as a rule, do not take a broad and liberal view of things. They judge every offence by what they consider would be the result if everybody committed the same offence. They do not understand that even vice creates obstructions for itself, and that there is something in the nature of crime the tendency of which is to defeat crime, and I might add in this place that the same seems to be true of excessive virtue. As a rule, the clergy clamor with great zeal for the execution of cruel laws.

Let me give an instance in point: In the time of George III., in England, there were two hundred and twenty-three offences punishable with death. From time to time this cruel code was changed by Act of Parliament, yet no bishop sitting in the House of Lords ever voted in favor of any one of these measures. The bishops always voted for death, for blood, against mercy and against the repeal of capital punishment. During all these years there were some twenty thousand or more of the established clergy, and yet, according to John Bright, no voice was ever raised in any English pulpit against the infamous criminal code.

Another thing: The orthodox clergy teach that man is totally depraved; that his inclination is evil; that his tendency is toward the Devil. Starting from this as a foundation, of course every clergyman believes every bad thing said of everybody else. So, when some man is charged with a crime, the clergyman taking into consideration the fact that the man is totally depraved, takes it for granted that he must be guilty. I am not saying this for the purpose of exciting prejudice against the clergy. I am simply showing what is the natural result of a certain creed, of a belief in universal depravity, or a belief in the power and influence of a personal Devil. If the clergy could have their own way they would endeavor to reform the world by law. They would re-enact the old statutes of the Puritans. Joy would be a crime. Love would be an offence. Every man with a smile on his face would be suspected, and a dimple in the cheek would be a demonstration of depravity.

In the trial of a cause it is natural for a clergyman to start with the proposition, "The defendant is guilty;" and then he says to himself, "Let him prove himself innocent." The man who has not been poisoned with the creed starts out with the proposition, "The defendant is innocent; let the State prove that he is guilty." Consequently, I say that if I were defending a man whom I knew to be innocent, I would not have a clergyman on the jury if I could help it.

—New York Advertiser, December 24, 1893.

SPIRITUALISM.

Question. Have you investigated Spiritualism, and what has been your experience?

Answer. A few years ago I paid some attention to what is called Spiritualism, and was present when quite mysterious things were supposed to have happened. The most notable seance that I attended was given by Slade, at which slate-writing was done. Two slates were fastened together, with a pencil between them, and on opening the slates certain writing was found. When the writing was done it was impossible to tell. So, I have been present when it was claimed that certain dead people had again clothed themselves in flesh and were again talking in the old way. In one instance, I think, George Washington claimed to be present. On the same evening Shakespeare put in an appearance. It was hard to recognize Shakespeare from what the spirit said, still I was assured by the medium that there was no mistake as to the identity.

Question. Can you offer any explanation of the extraordinary phenomena such as Henry J. Newton has had produced at his own house under his own supervision?

Answer. In the first place, I don't believe that anything such as you describe has ever happened. I do not believe that a medium ever passed into and out of a triple-locked iron cage. Neither do I believe that any spirits were able to throw shoes and wraps out of the cage; neither do I believe that any apparitions ever rose from the floor, or that anything you relate has ever happened. The best explanation I can give of these wonderful occurrences is the following: A little boy and girl were standing in a doorway holding hands. A gentleman passing, stopped for a moment and said to the little girl: "What relation is the little boy to you?" and she replied, "We had the same father and we had the same mother, but I am not his sister and he is not my brother." This at first seemed to be quite a puzzle, but it was exceedingly plain when the answer was known: The little girl lied.

Question. Have you had any experience with spirit photography, spirit physicians, or spirit lawyers?

Answer. I was shown at one time several pictures said to be the photographs of living persons surrounded by the photographs of spirits. I examined them very closely, and I found evidence in the photographs themselves that they were spurious. I took it for granted that light is the same everywhere, and that it obeys the angle of incidence in all worlds and at all times. In looking at the spirit photographs I found, for instance, that in the photograph of the living person the shadows fell to the right, and that in the photographs of the ghosts, or spirits, supposed to have been surrounding the living person at the time the picture was taken, the shadows did not fall in the same direction, sometimes in the opposite direction, never at the same angle even when the general direction was the same. This demonstrated that the photographs of the spirits and of the living persons were not taken at the same time. So much for photographs.

I have had no experience with spirit physicians. I was once told by a lawyer who came to employ me in a will case, that a certain person had made a will giving a large amount of money for the purpose of spreading the gospel of Spiritualism, but that the will had been lost and than an effort was then being made to find it, and they wished me to take certain action pending the search, and wanted my assistance. I said to him: "If Spiritualism be true, why not ask the man who made the will what it was and also what has become of it. If you can find that out from the departed, I will gladly take a retainer in the case; otherwise, I must decline." I have had no other experience with the lawyers.

Question. If you were to witness phenomena that seemed inexplicable by natural laws, would you be inclined to favor Spiritualism?

Answer. I would not. If I should witness phenomena that I could not explain, I would leave the phenomena unexplained. I would not explain them because I did not understand them, and say they were or are produced by spirits. That is no explanation, and, after admitting that we do not know and that we cannot explain, why should we proceed to explain? I have seen Mr. Kellar do things for which I cannot account. Why should I say that he has the assistance of spirits? All I have a right to say is that I know nothing about how he does them. So I am compelled to say with regard to many spiritualistic feats, that I am ignorant of the ways and means. At the same time, I do not believe that there is anything supernatural in the universe.

Question. What is your opinion of Spiritualism and Spiritualists?

Answer. I think the Spiritualism of the present day is certainly in advance of the Spiritualism of several centuries ago. Persons who now deny Spiritualism and hold it in utter contempt insist that some eighteen or nineteen centuries ago it had possession of the world; that miracles were of daily occurrence; that demons, devils, fiends, took possession of human beings, lived in their bodies, dominated their minds. They believe, too, that devils took possession of the bodies of animals. They also insist that a wish could multiply fish. And, curiously enough, the Spiritualists of our time have but little confidence in the phenomena of eighteen hundred years ago; and, curiously enough, those who believe in the Spiritualism of eighteen hundred years ago deny the Spiritualism of to-day. I think the Spiritualists of to-day have far more evidence of their phenomena than those who believe in the wonderful things of eighteen centuries ago. The Spiritualists of to-day have living witnesses, which is something. I know a great many Spiritualists that are exceedingly good people, and are doing what they can to make the world better. But I think they are mistaken.

Question. Do you believe in spirit entities, whether manifestible or not?

Answer. I believe there is such a thing as matter. I believe there is a something called force. The difference between force and matter I do not know. So there is something called consciousness. Whether we call consciousness an entity or not makes no difference as to what it really is. There is something that hears, sees and feels, a something that takes cognizance of what happens in what we call the outward world. No matter whether we call this something matter or spirit, it is something that we do not know, to say the least of it, all about. We cannot understand what matter is. It defies us, and defies definitions. So, with what we call spirit, we are in utter ignorance of what it is. We have some little conception of what we mean by it, and of what others mean, but as to what it really is no one knows. It makes no difference whether we call ourselves Materialists or Spiritualists, we believe in all there is, no matter what you call it. If we call it all matter, then we believe that matter can think and hope and dream. If we call it all spirit, then we believe that spirit has force, that it offers a resistance; in other words, that it is, in one of its aspects, what we call matter. I cannot believe that everything can be accounted for by motion or by what we call force, because there is something that recognizes force. There is something that compares, that thinks, that remembers; there is something that suffers and enjoys; there is something that each one calls himself or herself, that is inexplicable to himself or herself, and it makes no difference whether we call this something mind or soul, effect or entity, it still eludes us, and all the words we have coined for the purpose of expressing our knowledge of this something, after all, express only our desire to know, and our efforts to ascertain. It may be that if we would ask some minister, some one who has studied theology, he would give us a perfect definition. The scientists know nothing about it, and I know of no one who does, unless it be a theologian.

—The Globe-Democrat, St. Louis, Mo., 1893.

PLAYS AND PLAYERS.

Chatham Street Theater, New York City, N. Y., where Robert G. Ingersoll was baptized in 1836 by his father, the Rev. John Ingersoll, who temporarily preached at the theatre, his church having been destroyed by fire.

Question. What place does the theatre hold among the arts?

Answer. Nearly all the arts unite in the theatre, and it is the result of the best, the highest, the most artistic, that man can do.

In the first place, there must be the dramatic poet. Dramatic poetry is the subtlest, profoundest, the most intellectual, the most passionate and artistic of all. Then the stage must be prepared, and there is work for the architect, the painter and sculptor. Then the actors appear, and they must be gifted with imagination, with a high order of intelligence; they must have sympathies quick and deep, natures capable of the greatest emotion, dominated by passion. They must have impressive presence, and all that is manly should meet and unite in the actor; all that is womanly, tender, intense and admirable should be lavishly bestowed on the actress. In addition to all this, actors should have the art of being natural.

Let me explain what I mean by being natural. When I say that an actor is natural, I mean that he appears to act in accordance with his ideal, in accordance with his nature, and that he is not an imitator or a copyist—that he is not made up of shreds and patches taken from others, but that all he does flows from interior fountains and is consistent with his own nature, all having in a marked degree the highest characteristics of the man. That is what I mean by being natural.

The great actor must be acquainted with the heart, must know the motives, ends, objects and desires that control the thoughts and acts of men. He must be familiar with many people, including the lowest and the highest, so that he may give to others, clothed with flesh and blood, the characters born of the poet's brain. The great actor must know the relations that exist between passion and voice, gesture and emphasis, expression and pose. He must speak not only with his voice, but with his body. The great actor must be master of many arts.

Then comes the musician. The theatre has always been the home of music, and this music must be appropriate; must, or should, express or supplement what happens on the stage; should furnish rest and balm for minds overwrought with tragic deeds. To produce a great play, and put it worthily upon the stage, involves most arts, many sciences and nearly all that is artistic, poetic and dramatic in the mind of man.

Question. Should the drama teach lessons and discuss social problems, or should it give simply intellectual pleasure and furnish amusement?

Answer. Every great play teaches many lessons and touches nearly all social problems. But the great play does this by indirection. Every beautiful thought is a teacher; every noble line speaks to the brain and heart. Beauty, proportion, melody suggest moral beauty, proportion in conduct and melody in life. In a great play the relations of the various characters, their objects, the means adopted for their accomplishment, must suggest, and in a certain sense solve or throw light on many social problems, so that the drama teaches lessons, discusses social problems and gives intellectual pleasure.

The stage should not be dogmatic; neither should its object be directly to enforce a moral. The great thing for the drama to do, and the great thing it has done, and is doing, is to cultivate the imagination. This is of the utmost importance. The civilization of man depends upon the development, not only of the intellect, but of the imagination. Most crimes of violence are committed by people who are destitute of imagination. People without imagination make most of the cruel and infamous creeds. They were the persecutors and destroyers of their fellow-men. By cultivating the imagination, the stage becomes one of the greatest teachers. It produces the climate in which the better feelings grow; it is the home of the ideal. All beautiful things tend to the civilization of man. The great statues plead for proportion in life, the great symphonies suggest the melody of conduct, and the great plays cultivate the heart and brain.

Question. What do you think of the French drama as compared with the English, morally and artistically considered?

Answer. The modern French drama, so far as I am acquainted with it, is a disease. It deals with the abnormal. It is fashioned after Balzac. It exhibits moral tumors, mental cancers and all kinds of abnormal fungi,—excrescences. Everything is stood on its head; virtue lives in the brothel; the good are the really bad and the worst are, after all, the best. It portrays the exceptional, and mistakes the scum-covered bayou for the great river. The French dramatists seem to think that the ceremony of marriage sows the seed of vice. They are always conveying the idea that the virtuous are uninteresting, rather stupid, without sense and spirit enough to take advantage of their privilege. Between the greatest French plays and the greatest English plays of course there is no comparison. If a Frenchman had written the plays of Shakespeare, Desdemona would have been guilty, Isabella would have ransomed her brother at the Duke's price, Juliet would have married the County Paris, run away from him, and joined Romeo in Mantua, and Miranda would have listened coquettishly to the words of Caliban. The French are exceedingly artistic. They understand stage effects, love the climax, delight in surprises, especially in the improbable; but their dramatists lack sympathy and breadth of treatment. They are provincial. With them France is the world. They know little of other countries. Their plays do not touch the universal.

Question. What are your feelings in reference to idealism on the stage?

Answer. The stage ought to be the home of the ideal; in a word, the imagination should have full sway. The great dramatist is a creator; he is the sovereign, and governs his own world. The realist is only a copyist. He does not need genius. All he wants is industry and the trick of imitation. On the stage, the real should be idealized, the ordinary should be transfigured; that is, the deeper meaning of things should be given. As we make music of common air, and statues of stone, so the great dramatist should make life burst into blossom on the stage. A lot of words, facts, odds and ends divided into acts and scenes do not make a play. These things are like old pieces of broken iron that need the heat of the furnace so that they may be moulded into shape. Genius is that furnace, and in its heat and glow and flame these pieces, these fragments, become molten and are cast into noble and heroic forms. Realism degrades and impoverishes the stage.

Question. What attributes should an actor have to be really great?

Answer. Intelligence, imagination, presence; a mobile and impressive face; a body that lends itself to every mood in appropriate pose, one that is oak or willow, at will; self-possession; absolute ease; a voice capable of giving every shade of meaning and feeling, an intuitive knowledge or perception of proportion, and above all, the actor should be so sincere that he loses himself in the character he portrays. Such an actor will grow intellectually and morally. The great actor should strive to satisfy himself—to reach his own ideal.

Question. Do you enjoy Shakespeare more in the library than Shakespeare interpreted by actors now on the boards?

Answer. I enjoy Shakespeare everywhere. I think it would give me pleasure to hear those wonderful lines spoken even by phonographs. But Shakespeare is greatest and best when grandly put upon the stage. There you know the connection, the relation, the circumstances, and these bring out the appropriateness and the perfect meaning of the text. Nobody in this country now thinks of Hamlet without thinking of Booth. For this generation at least, Booth is Hamlet. It is impossible for me to read the words of Sir Toby without seeing the face of W. F. Owen. Brutus is Davenport, Cassius is Lawrence Barrett, and Lear will be associated always in my mind with Edwin Forrest. Lady Macbeth is to me Adelaide Ristori, the greatest actress I ever saw. If I understood music perfectly, I would much rather hear Seidl's orchestra play "Tristan," or hear Remenyi's matchless rendition of Schubert's "Ave Maria," than to read the notes.

Most people love the theatre. Everything about it from stage to gallery attracts and fascinates. The mysterious realm, behind the scenes, from which emerge kings and clowns, villains and fools, heroes and lovers, and in which they disappear, is still a fairyland. As long as man is man he will enjoy the love and laughter, the tears and rapture of the mimic world.

Question. Is it because we lack men of genius or because our life is too material that no truly great American plays have been written?

Answer. No great play has been written since Shakespeare; that is, no play has been written equal to his. But there is the same reason for that in all other countries, including England, that there is in this country, and that reason is that Shakespeare has had no equal.

America has not failed because life in the Republic is too material. Germany and France, and, in fact, all other nations, have failed in the same way. In the sense in which I am speaking, Germany has produced no great play.

In the dramatic world Shakespeare stands alone. Compared with him, even the classic is childish.

There is plenty of material for plays. The Republic has lived a great play—a great poem—a most marvelous drama. Here, on our soil, have happened some of the greatest events in the history of the world.

All human passions have been and are in full play here, and here as elsewhere, can be found the tragic, the comic, the beautiful, the poetic, the tears, the smiles, the lamentations and the laughter that are the necessary warp and woof with which to weave the living tapestries that we call plays.

We are beginning. We have found that American plays must be American in spirit. We are tired of imitations and adaptations. We want plays worthy of the great Republic. Some good work has recently been done, giving great hope for the future. Of course the realistic comes first; afterward the ideal. But here in America, as in all other lands, love is the eternal passion that will forever hold the stage. Around that everything else will move. It is the sun. All other passions are secondary. Their orbits are determined by the central force from which they receive their light and meaning.

Love, however, must be kept pure.

The great dramatist is, of necessity, a believer in virtue, in honesty, in courage and in the nobility of human nature. He must know that there are men and women that even a God could not corrupt; such knowledge, such feeling, is the foundation, and the only foundation, that can support the splendid structure, the many pillared stories and the swelling dome of the great drama.

—The New York Dramatic Mirror, December 26, 1891.

WOMAN.

It takes a hundred men to make an encampment, but one woman can make a home. I not only admire woman as the most beautiful object ever created, but I reverence her as the redeeming glory of humanity, the sanctuary of all the virtues, the pledge of all perfect qualities of heart and head. It is not just or right to lay the sins of men at the feet of women. It is because women are so much better than men that their faults are considered greater.

The one thing in this world that is constant, the one peak that rises above all clouds, the one window in which the light forever burns, the one star that darkness cannot quench, is woman's love. It rises to the greatest heights, it sinks to the lowest depths, it forgives the most cruel injuries. It is perennial of life, and grows in every climate. Neither coldness nor neglect, harshness nor cruelty, can extinguish it. A woman's love is the perfume of the heart.

This is the real love that subdues the earth; the love that has wrought all the miracles of art, that gives us music all the way from the cradle song to the grand closing symphony that bears the soul away on wings of fire. A love that is greater than power, sweeter than life and stronger than death.

STRIKES, EXPANSION AND OTHER SUBJECTS.

Question. What have you to say in regard to the decision of Judge Billings in New Orleans, that strikes which interfere with interstate commerce, are illegal?

Answer. As a rule, men have a right to quit work at any time unless there is some provision to the contrary in their contracts. They have not the right to prevent other men from taking their places. Of course I do not mean by this that strikers may not use persuasion and argument to prevent other men from filling their places. All blacklisting and refusing to work with other men is illegal and punishable. Of course men may conspire to quit work, but how is it to be proved? One man can quit, or five hundred men can quit together, and nothing can prevent them. The decisions of Judge Ricks and Judge Billings are an acknowledgment, at least, of the principle of public control or regulation of railroads and of commerce generally. The railroads, which run for private profit, are public carriers, and the public has a vested interest in them as such. The same principle applies to the commerce of the country and can be dealt with by the courts in the same way. It is unlikely, however, that Judge Billings' decision will have any lasting effect upon organized labor. Law cannot be enforced against such vast numbers of people, especially when they have the general sympathy. Nearly all strikes have been illegal, but the numbers involved have made the courts powerless.

Question. Are you in favor of the annexation of Canada?

Answer. Yes, if Canada is. We do not want that country unless that country wants us. I do not believe it to the interests of Canada to remain a province. Canada should either be an independent nation, or a part of a nation. Now Canada is only a province—with no career—with nothing to stimulate either patriotism or great effort. Yes, I hope that Canada will be annexed.

By all means annex the Sandwich Islands, too. I believe in territorial expansion. A prosperous farmer wants the land next him, and a prosperous nation ought to grow. I believe that we ought to hold the key to the Pacific and its commerce. We want to be prepared at all points to defend our interests from the greed and power of England.

We are going to have a navy, and we want that navy to be of use in protecting our interests the world over. And we want interests to protect.

It is a splendid feeling—this feeling of growth. By the annexation of these islands we open new avenues to American adventure, and the tendency is to make our country greater and stronger. The West Indian Islands ought to be ours, and some day our flag will float there. This country must not stop growing.

Question. Is the spirit of patriotism declining in America?

Answer. There has been no decline in the spirit of American patriotism; in fact, it has increased rather then otherwise as the nation has grown older, stronger, more prosperous, more glorious. If there were occasion to demonstrate the truth of this statement it would be quickly demonstrated. Let an attack be made upon the American flag, and you will very quickly find out how genuine is the patriotic spirit of Americans.

I do not think either that there has been a decline in the celebration of the Fourth of July. The day is probably not celebrated with as much burning of gunpowder and shooting of fire crackers in the large cities as formerly, but it is celebrated with as much enthusiasm as ever all through the West, and the feeling of rejoicing over the anniversary of the day is as great and strong as ever. The people are tired of celebrating with a great noise and I am glad of it.

Question. What do you think of the Congress of Religions, to be held in Chicago during the World's Fair?

Answer. It will do good, if they will honestly compare their creeds so that each one can see just how foolish all the rest are. They ought to compare their sacred books, and their miracles, and their mythologies, and if they do so they will probably see that ignorance is the mother of them all. Let them have a Congress, by all means, and let them show how priests live on the labor of those they deceive. It will do good.

Question. Do you think that Cleveland's course as to appointments has strengthened him with the people?

Answer. Patronage is a two-edged sword with very little handle. It takes an exceedingly clever President to strengthen himself by its exercise. When a man is running for President the twenty men in every town who expect to be made postmaster are for him heart and soul. Only one can get the office, and the nineteen who do not, feel outraged, and the lucky one is mad on account of the delay. So twenty friends are lost with one place.

Question. Is the Age of Chivalry dead?

Answer. The "Age of Chivalry" never existed except in the imagination. The Age of Chivalry was the age of cowardice and crime.

There is more chivalry to-day than ever. Men have a better, a clearer idea of justice, and pay their debts better, and treat their wives and children better than ever before. The higher and better qualities of the soul have more to do with the average life. To-day men have greater admiration and respect for women, greater regard for the social and domestic obligations than their fathers had.

Question. What led you to begin lecturing on your present subject, and what was your first lecture?

Answer. My first lecture was entitled "Progress." I began lecturing because I thought the creeds of the orthodox church false and horrible, and because I thought the Bible cruel and absurd, and because I like intellectual liberty.

—New York, May 5, 1893.

SUNDAY A DAY OF PLEASURE.

Question. What do you think of the religious spirit that seeks to regulate by legislation the manner in which the people of this country shall spend their Sundays?

Answer. The church is not willing to stand alone, not willing to base its influence on reason and on the character of its members. It seeks the aid of the State. The cross is in partnership with the sword. People should spend Sundays as they do other days; that is to say, as they please. No one has the right to do anything on Monday that interferes with the rights of his neighbors, and everyone has the right to do anything he pleases on Sunday that does not interfere with the rights of his neighbors. Sunday is a day of rest, not of religion. We are under obligation to do right on all days.

Nothing can be more absurd than the idea that any particular space of time is sacred. Everything in nature goes on the same on Sunday as on other days, and if beyond nature there be a God, then God works on Sunday as he does on all other days. There is no rest in nature. There is perpetual activity in every possible direction. The old idea that God made the world and then rested, is idiotic. There were two reasons given to the Hebrews for keeping the Sabbath —one because Jehovah rested on that day, the other because the Hebrews were brought out of Egypt. The first reason, we know, is false, and the second reason is good only for the Hebrews. According to the Bible, Sunday, or rather the Sabbath, was not for the world, but for the Hebrews, and the Hebrews alone. Our Sunday is pagan and is the day of the sun, as Monday is the day of the moon. All our day names are pagan. I am opposed to all Sunday legislation.

Question. Why should Sunday be observed otherwise than as a day of recreation?

Answer. Sunday is a day of recreation, or should be; a day for the laboring man to rest, a day to visit museums and libraries, a day to look at pictures, a day to get acquainted with your wife and children, a day for poetry and art, a day on which to read old letters and to meet friends, a day to cultivate the amenities of life, a day for those who live in tenements to feel the soft grass beneath their feet. In short, Sunday should be a day of joy. The church endeavors to fill it with gloom and sadness, with stupid sermons and dyspeptic theology.

Nothing could be more cowardly than the effort to compel the observance of the Sabbath by law. We of America have outgrown the childishness of the last century; we laugh at the superstitions of our fathers. We have made up our minds to be as happy as we can be, knowing that the way to be happy is to make others so, that the time to be happy is now, whether that now is Sunday or any other day in the week.

Question. Under a Federal Constitution guaranteeing civil and religious liberty, are the so-called "Blue Laws" constitutional?

Answer. No, they are not. But the probability is that the Supreme Courts of most of the States would decide the other way. And yet all these laws are clearly contrary to the spirit of the Federal Constitution and the constitutions of most of the States.

I hope to live until all these foolish laws are repealed and until we are in the highest and noblest sense a free people. And by free I mean each having the right to do anything that does not interfere with the rights or with the happiness of another. I want to see the time when we live for this world and when all shall endeavor to increase, by education, by reason, and by persuasion, the sum of human happiness.

—New York Times, July 21, 1893.

THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS.

Question. The Parliament of Religions was called with a view to discussing the great religions of the world on the broad platform of tolerance. Supposing this to have been accomplished, what effect is it likely to have on the future of creeds?

Answer. It was a good thing to get the representatives of all creeds to meet and tell their beliefs. The tendency, I think, is to do away with prejudice, with provincialism, with egotism. We know that the difference between the great religions, so far as belief is concerned, amounts to but little. Their gods have different names, but in other respects they differ but little. They are all cruel and ignorant.

Question. Do you think likely that the time is coming when all the religions of the world will be treated with the liberality that is now characterizing the attitude of one sect toward another in Christendom?

Answer. Yes, because I think that all religions will be found to be of equal authority, and because I believe that the supernatural will be discarded and that man will give up his vain and useless efforts to get back of nature—to answer the questions of whence and whither? As a matter of fact, the various sects do not love one another. The keenest hatred is religious hatred. The most malicious malice is found in the hearts of those who love their enemies.

Question. Bishop Newman, in replying to a learned Buddhist at the Parliament of Religions, said that Buddhism had given to the world no helpful literature, no social system, and no heroic virtues. Is this true?

Answer. Bishop Newman is a very prejudiced man. Probably he got his information from the missionaries. Buddha was undoubtedly a great teacher. Long before Christ lived Buddha taught the brotherhood of man. He said that intelligence was the only lever capable of raising mankind. His followers, to say the least of them, are as good as the followers of Christ. Bishop Newman is a Methodist—a follower of John Wesley—and he has the prejudices of the sect to which he belongs. We must remember that all prejudices are honest.

Question. Is Christian society, or rather society in Christian countries, cursed with fewer robbers, assassins, and thieves, proportionately, then countries where "heathen" religions predominate?

Answer. I think not. I do not believe that there are more lynchings, more mob murders in India or Turkey or Persia than in some Christian States of the great Republic. Neither will you find more train robbers, more forgers, more thieves in heathen lands than in Christian countries. Here the jails are full, the penitentiaries are crowded, and the hangman is busy. All over Christendom, as many assert, crime is on the increase, going hand in hand with poverty. The truth is, that some of the wisest and best men are filled with apprehension for the future, but I believe in the race and have confidence in man.

Question. How can society be so reconstructed that all this horrible suffering, resultant from poverty and its natural associate, crime, may be abolished, or at least reduced to a minimum?

Answer. In the first place we should stop supporting the useless. The burden of superstition should be taken from the shoulders of industry. In the next place men should stop bowing to wealth instead of worth. Men should be judged by what they do, by what they are, instead of by the property they have. Only those able to raise and educate children should have them. Children should be better born—better educated. The process of regeneration will be slow, but it will be sure. The religion of our day is supported by the worst, by the most dangerous people in society. I do not allude to murderers or burglars, or even to the little thieves. I mean those who debauch courts and legislatures and elections— those who make millions by legal fraud.

Question. What do you think of the Theosophists? Are they sincere—have they any real basis for their psychological theories?

Answer. The Theosophists may be sincere. I do not know. But I am perfectly satisfied that their theories are without any foundation in fact—that their doctrines are as unreal as their "astral bodies," and as absurd as a contradiction in mathematics. We have had vagaries and theories enough. We need the religion of the real, the faith that rests on fact. Let us turn our attention to this world—the world in which we live.

—New York Herald, September, 1893.