^m 
 
 & 
 

 
 r 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OR 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 

 
 THE GHOSTS 
 
 AND OTHER LECTURES 
 
 ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 
 
 THE IDEA or IMMOBTALITY, THAT LIKE A SEA HAS EBBED AND FLOWED m THE 
 
 HUMAN HEART, WITH ITS COUNTLESS WAVES OF HOPE AND FEAR, BEATING AGAINST 
 THE SHORES AND ROCKS OF TIME AND FATE, WAS NOT BORN OK ANY BOOK, NOR OK 
 ANY CREED, NOR OF ANY RELIGION. IT WAS BORN OF HUMAN AFFECTION, AND IT WILL 
 CON TINUE TO EUB AND FLOW BEN EATH THE MISTS AND CLOUDS OF DOUBT AND DARK 
 NESS AS LONG AS LOVE KISSES THE LIPS OF DEATH. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C.: 
 C. P. FARRELL, PUBLISHER, 
 
 1878.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1878, by 
 
 ROBERT G. INGERSOLL, 
 in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 
 
 ELKCTKOTYPD r BLOUGKK.N BROS. & C
 
 TO 
 
 EBON C. INGERSOLL, 
 
 MY BROTHER 
 
 FROM WHOSE LIPS I HEARD THE FIRST APPLAUSE, 
 
 AND WITH WHOSE NAME I WISH MY OWN 
 
 ASSOCIATED UNTIL BOTH ARE 
 
 FORGOTTEN, 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE GHOSTS, - - 9 
 
 LET THE GHOSTS Go. WE WILL WORSHIP THEM NO MORE. LET 
 
 THEM COVER THEIR EYELESS SOCKETS WITH THEIR FLESH- 
 LESS HANDS AND FADE FOREVER FROM THE IMAGINATIONS 
 
 OF MEN. 
 i 
 
 THE LIBERTY OF MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD, - 73 
 
 LIBERTY SUSTAINS THE SAME RELATION TO MIND THAT SPACE DOES 
 TO MATTER. 
 
 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, - - 145 
 
 ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS RETIRED THE GODS 
 FROM POLITICS. 
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS, - 181 
 
 To PLOW is To PRAY To PLANT is To PROPHECY, AND THE 
 . HARVEST ANSWERS AND FULFILLS. 
 
 SPEECH AT CINCINNATI, - -221 
 
 NOMINATING JAMES G. ELAINE FOR THE PRESIDENCY, JUNE, 1876. 
 
 THE PAST RISES BEFORE ME LIKE A DREAM, 229 
 
 EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE SOLDIERS REUNION 
 AT INDIANAPOLIS, SEPT. 21, 1876.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THESE lectures have been so maimed and muti 
 lated by orthodox malice ; have been made to 
 appear so halt, crutched and decrepit by those who 
 mistake the pleasures of calumny for the duties of 
 religion, that in simple justice to myself I concluded 
 to publish them. 
 
 Most of the clergy are, or seem to be, utterly 
 incapable of discussing anything in a fair and 
 catholic spirit. They appeal, not to reason, but to 
 prejudice ; not to facts, but to passages of scripture. 
 They can conceive of no goodness, of no spiritual 
 exaltation beyond the horizon of their creed. Who 
 ever differs with them upon what they are pleased 
 to call "fundamental truths," is, in their opinion, a 
 base and infamous man. To re-enact the tragedies 
 of the Sixteenth Century, they lack only the power. 
 Bigotry in all ages has been the same. Christianity 
 simply transferred the brutality of the Colosseum to
 
 ii PREFACE. 
 
 the Inquisition. For the murderous combat of the 
 gladiators, the saints substituted the auto de fe. 
 What has been called religion is, after all, but the 
 organization of the wild beast in man. The per 
 fumed blossom of arrogance is Heaven. Hell is 
 the consummation of revenge. 
 
 The chief business of the clergy has always 
 been to destroy the joy of life, and multiply and 
 magnify the terrors and tortures of death and per 
 dition. They have polluted the heart and paralyzed 
 the brain ; and upon the ignorant altars of the Past 
 and the Dead, they have endeavored to sacrifice 
 the Present and the Living. 
 
 Nothing can exceed the mendacity of the reli 
 gious press. I have had some little experience 
 with political editors, and am forced to say, that un 
 til I read the religious papers, I did not know what 
 malicious and slimy falsehoods could be constructed 
 from ordinary words. The ingenuity .with which 
 the real and apparent meaning can be tortured out 
 of language, is simply amazing. The average re 
 ligious editor is intolerant and insolent; he knows 
 nothing of affairs ; he has the envy of failure, the 
 malice of impotence, and always accounts for the 
 brave and generous actions of unbelievers, by low, 
 base and unworthy motives.
 
 PREFACE. iii 
 
 By this time, even the clergy should know that 
 the intellect of the Nineteenth Century needs no 
 guardian. They should cease to regard themselves 
 as shepherds defending flocks of weak, silly and 
 fearful sheep from the claws and teeth of ravening 
 wolves. By this time they should know that the 
 religion of the ignorant and brutal Past no longer 
 satisfies the heart and brain ; that the miracles have 
 become contemptible; that the "evidences" have 
 ceased to convince ; that the spirit of investigation 
 cannot be stopped nor stayed ; that the Church is 
 losing her power ; that the ycung are holding in a 
 kind of tender contempt the sacred follies of the 
 old ; that the pulpit arid pews no longer represent 
 the culture and morality of the world, and that the 
 brand of intellectual inferiority is upon the ortho 
 dox brain. 
 
 Men should be liberated from the aristocracy of 
 the air. Every chain of superstition should be 
 broken. The rights of men and women should be 
 equal and sacred marriage should be a perfect 
 partnership children should be governed by kind 
 ness, every family should be a republic every 
 fireside a democracy. 
 
 It seems almost impossible for religious people
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 to really grasp the idea of intellectual freedom. 
 They seem to think that man is responsible for his 
 honest thoughts ; that unbelief is a crime ; that in 
 vestigation is sinful ; that credulity is a virtue, and 
 that reason is a dangerous guide. They cannot 
 divest themselves of the idea that in the realm of 
 thought there must be government authority and 
 obedience laws and penalties rewards and pun 
 ishments, and that somewhere in the universe there 
 is a penitentiary for the soul. 
 
 In the republic of mind, one is a majority. 
 There, all are monarchs, and all are equals. The 
 tyranny of a majority even is unknown. Each one 
 is crowned, sceptered and throned. Upon every 
 brow is the tiara, and around every form is the im 
 perial purple. Only those are good citizens who 
 express their honest thoughts, and those who per 
 secute for opinion s sake, are the only traitors. 
 There, nothing is considered infamous except an 
 appeal to brute force, and nothing sacred but love, 
 liberty, and joy. The church contemplates this 
 republic with a sneer. From the teeth of. hatred 
 she draws back the lips of scorn. She is filled 
 with the spite and spleen born of intellectual weak 
 ness. Once she was egotistic ; now she is envious.
 
 PREFACE. v 
 
 Once she wore upon her hollow breast false gems, 
 supposing them to be real. They have been shown 
 to be false, but she wears them still. She has the 
 malice of the caught, the hatred of the exposed. 
 
 We are told to investigate the bible for our 
 selves, and at the same time informed that if we 
 come to the conclusion that it is not the inspired 
 word of God, we will most assuredly be damned. 
 Under such circumstances, if we believe this, inves 
 tigation is impossible. Whoever is held responsible 
 for his conclusions cannot weigh the evidence with 
 impartial scales. Fear stands at the balance, and 
 gives to falsehood the weight of its trembling hand. 
 
 I oppose the Church because she is the enemy 
 of liberty ; because her dogmas are infamous and 
 cruel; because she humiliates and degrades, 
 woman ; because she teaches the doctrines of eter 
 nal torment and the natural depravity of man ; be 
 cause she insists upon the absurd, the impossible, 
 and the senseless; because she resorts to falsehood 
 and slander; because she is arrogant and revenge 
 ful ; because she allows men to sin on a credit ; be 
 cause she discourages self-reliance, and laughs at 
 good works ; because she believes in vicarious vir 
 tue and vicarious vice vicarious punishment and
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 vicarious reward ; because she regards repentance 
 of more importance than restitution, and because 
 she sacrifices the world we have to one we know 
 not of. 
 
 The free and generous, the tender and affec 
 tionate, will understand me. Those who have 
 escaped from the grated cells of a creed will appre 
 ciate my motives. The sad and suffering wives, 
 the trembling and loving children will thank me : 
 This is enough. 
 
 ROBERT G. INGERSOL-L. 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., 
 
 April 13, 1878.
 
 THE GHOSTS.
 
 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 LET THEM COVER THEIR EYELESS SOCKETS WITH THEIR 
 FLESHLESS HANDS AND FADE FOREVER FROM THE 
 IMAGINATION OF MEN. 
 
 THERE are three theories by which men 
 account for all phenomena, for everything 
 that happens : First, the Supernatural ; Second, 
 the Supernatural and Natural; Third, the Natural. 
 Between these theories there has been, from the 
 dawn of civilization, a continual conflict. In this 
 great war, nearly all the soldiers have been in the 
 ranks of the supernatural. The believers in the 
 supernatural insist that matter is controlled and 
 directed entirely by powers from without; while 
 naturalists maintain that Nature acts from within ; 
 that Nature is not acted upon ; that the universe is 
 all there is ; that Nature with infinite arms em 
 braces everything that exists, and that all supposed 
 powers beyond the limits of the material are
 
 10 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 simply ghosts. You say, "Oh, this is materialism!" 
 What is matter ? I take in my hand some earth : 
 in this dust put seeds. Let the arrows of light 
 from the quiver of the sun smite upon it ; let the 
 rain fall upon it. The seeds will grow and a plant 
 will bud and blossom. Do you understand this? 
 Can you explain it better than you can the produc 
 tion of thought? Have you the slightest conception 
 of what it really is? And yet you speak of matter 
 as though acquainted with its origin, as though 
 you had torn from the clenched hands of the rocks 
 the secrets of material existence. Do you know 
 what force is? Can you account for molecular 
 action? Are you really familiar with chemistry, 
 and can you account for the loves and hatreds of 
 the atoms ? Is there not something in matter that 
 forever eludes? After all, can you get beyond, 
 above or below appearances? Before you cry 
 "materialism!" had you not better ascertain what 
 matter really is? Can you think even of anything 
 without a material basis ? Is it possible to imagine 
 the annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible 
 for you to conceive of the creation of an atom? 
 Can you have a thought that was not suggested 
 to you by what you call matter?
 
 THE GHOSTS. 11 
 
 Our fathers denounced materialism, and ac 
 counted for all phenomena by the caprice of gods 
 and devils. 
 
 For thousands of years it was believed that 
 ghosts, good and bad, benevolent and malignant, 
 weak and powerful, in some mysterious way, pro 
 duced all phenomena; that disease and health, 
 happiness and misery, fortune and misfortune, 
 peace and war, life and death, success and failure, 
 were but arrows from the quivers of these ghosts ; 
 that shadowy phantoms rewarded and punished 
 mankind ; that they were pleased and displeased 
 by the actions of men ; that they sent and withheld 
 the snow, the light, and the rain ; that they blessed 
 the earth with harvests or cursed it with famine ; 
 that they fed or starved the children of men ; that 
 they crowned and uncrowned kings ; that they took 
 sides in war ; that they controlled the winds ; that 
 they gave prosperous voyages, allowing the brave 
 mariner to meet his wife and child inside the harbor 
 bar, or sent the storms, strewing the sad shores 
 with wrecks of ships and the bodies of men. 
 
 Formerly, these ghosts were believed to be 
 almost innumerable. Earth, air, and water were 
 filled with these phantom hosts. In modern times
 
 12 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 they have greatly decreased in number, because 
 the second theory, a mingling of the supernatural 
 and natural, has generally been adopted. The 
 remaining ghosts, however, are supposed to per 
 form the same offices as the hosts of yore. 
 
 It has always been believed that these ghosts 
 could in some way be appeased ; that they could be 
 flattered by sacrifices, by prayer, by fasting, by the 
 building of temples and cathedrals, by the blood 
 of men and beasts, by forms and ceremonies, by 
 chants, by kneelings and prostrations, by flagella 
 tions and maimings, by renouncing the joys of 
 home, by living alone in the wide desert, by the 
 practice of celibacy, by inventing instruments of 
 torture, by destroying men, women and children, 
 by covering the earth with dungeons, by burning 
 unbelievers, by putting chains upon the thoughts 
 and manacles upon the limbs of men, by believing 
 things without evidence and against evidence, by 
 disbelieving and denying demonstration, by despis 
 ing facts, by hating reason, by denouncing liberty, 
 by maligning heretics, by slandering the dead, by 
 subscribing to senseless and cruel creeds, by dis 
 couraging investigation, by worshiping a book, by 
 the cultivation of credulity, by observing certain
 
 THE GHOSTS. 13 
 
 times and days, by counting beads, by gazing at 
 crosses, by hiring others to repeat verses and 
 prayers, by burning candles and ringing bells, by 
 enslaving each other and putting out the eyes of 
 the soul. All this has been done to appease and 
 flatter these monsters of the air. 
 
 In the history of our poor world, no horror has 
 been" omitted, no infamy has been left undone by 
 the believers in ghosts, by the worshipers of these 
 fleshless phantoms. And yet these shadows were 
 born of cowardice and malignity. They were 
 painted by the pencil of fear upon the canvas of 
 ignorance by that artist called superstition. 
 
 From these ghosts, our fathers received infor 
 mation. They were the schoolmasters of our ances 
 tors. They were the scientists and philosophers, 
 the geologists, legislators, astronomers, physicians, 
 metaphysicians and historians of the past. For 
 ages these ghosts were supposed to be the only 
 source of real knowledge. They inspired men to 
 write books, and the books were considered sacred. 
 If facts were found to be inconsistent with these 
 books, so much the worse for the facts, and 
 especially for their discoverers. It was then, and 
 still is, believed that these books are the basis of
 
 14 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 the idea of immortality ; that to give up these 
 volumes, or rather the idea that they are inspired, 
 is to renounce the idea of immortality. This I 
 deny. 
 
 The idea of immortality, that like a sea has 
 ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its 
 countless waves of hope and fear, beating against 
 the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born 
 of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. 
 It was born of human affection, and if will continue 
 to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of 
 doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips 
 of death. It is the rainbow Hope shining upon 
 the tears of grief. 
 
 From the books written by the ghosts we have 
 at last ascertained that they knew nothing about 
 the world in which we live. Did they know 
 anything about the next ! Upon every point 
 where contradiction is possible, they have been 
 contradicted. 
 
 By these ghosts, by these citizens of the air, 
 the affairs of government were administered ; all 
 authority to govern came from them. The emper 
 ors, kings and potentates all had commissions from 
 these phantoms. Man was not considered as the
 
 THE GHOSTS. 15 
 
 source of any power whatever. To rebel against 
 the king was to rebel against the ghosts, and 
 nothing less than the blood of the offender could 
 appease the invisible phantom or the visible tyrant. 
 Kneeling was the proper position to be assumed 
 by the multitude. The prostrate were the good. 
 Those who stood erect were infidels and traitors. 
 In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, 
 man was enslaved, crushed, and plundered. The 
 many toiled wearily in the storm and sun that the 
 few favorites of the ghosts might live in idleness. 
 The many lived in huts, and caves, and dens, that 
 the few might dwell in palaces. The many covered 
 themselves with rags, that the few might robe 
 themselves in purple and in gold. The many 
 crept, and cringed, and crawled, that the few might 
 tread upon their flesh with iron feet. 
 
 From the ghosts men received, not only author 
 ity, but information of every kind. They told us 
 the form of this earth. They informed us that 
 eclipses were caused by the sins of man ; that the 
 universe was made in six days; that astronomy, 
 and geology were devices of wicked men, instigated 
 by wicked ghosts ; that gazing at the sky with a 
 telescope was a dangerous thing ; that digging into
 
 16 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 the earth was sinful curiosity; that trying to be 
 wise above what they had written was born of a 
 rebellious and irreverent spirit. 
 
 They told us there was no virtue like belief, and 
 no crime like doubt; that investigation was pure 
 impudence, and the punishment therefor, eternal 
 torment. They not only told us all about this 
 world, but about two others ; and if their state 
 ments about the other worlds are as true as about 
 this, no one can estimate the value of their in 
 formation. 
 
 For countless ages the world was governed by 
 ghosts, and they spared no pains to change the 
 eagle of the human intellect into a bat of darkness. 
 To accomplish this infamous purpose ; to drive the 
 love of truth from the human heart ; to prevent the 
 advancement of mankind; to shut out from the 
 world every ray of intellectual light; to pollute 
 every mind with superstition, the power of kings, 
 the cunning and cruelty of priests, and the wealth 
 of nations were exhausted. 
 
 During these years of persecution, ignorance, 
 superstition and slavery, nearly all the people, the 
 kings, lawyers, doctors, the learned and the un 
 learned, believed in that frightful production of
 
 THE GHOSTS. 17 
 
 ignorance, fear, and faith, called witchcraft. They 
 believed that man was the sport and prey of devils. 
 They really thought that the very air was thick 
 with these enemies of man. With few exceptions, 
 this hideous and infamous belief was universal. 
 Under these conditions, progress was almost im 
 possible. 
 
 Fear paralyzes the brain. Progress is born of 
 courage. Fear believes courage doubts. Fear 
 falls upon the earth and prays courage stands 
 erect and thinks. Fear retreats courage advan 
 ces.. Fear is barbarism courage is civilization. 
 Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. 
 Fear is religion courage is science. 
 
 The facts, upon which this terrible belief rested, 
 were proved over and over again in every court of 
 Europe. Thousands confessed theirtselves guilty 
 admitted that they had sold themselves to the devil. 
 They gave the particulars of the sale ; told what 
 they said and what the devil replied. They con- 
 fesseci this, when they knew that confession was 
 death ; knew that their property would be con 
 fiscated, and their children left to beg their bread. 
 This is one of the miracles of history one of the 
 strangest contradictions of the human mind. With-
 
 18 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 out doubt, they really believed themselves guilty. 
 In the first place, they believed in witchcraft as a 
 fact, and when charged with it, they probably 
 became insane. In their insanity they confessed 
 their guilt. They found themselves abhorred and 
 deserted charged with a crime that they could 
 not disprove. Like a man in quicksand, every 
 effort only sunk them deeper. Caught in this 
 frightful web, at the mercy of the spiders of super 
 stition, hope fled, and nothing remained but the 
 insanity of confession. The whole world appeared 
 to be insane. 
 
 In the time of James the First, a man was 
 executed for causing a storm at sea with the inten 
 tion of drowning one of the royal family. How 
 could he disprove it? How could he show that he 
 did not cause the storm? All storms were at that 
 time generally supposed to be caused by the devil 
 the prince of the power of the air and by 
 those whom he assisted. 
 
 I implore you to remember that the believers in 
 such impossible things were the authors of our 
 creeds and confessions of faith. 
 
 A woman was tried and convicted before Sir 
 Matthew Hale, one of the great judges and lawyers
 
 THE GHOSTS. 19 
 
 of England, for having caused children to vomit 
 crooked pins. She was also charged with having 
 nursed devils. The learned judge charged the 
 intelligent jury that there was no doubt as to the 
 existence of witches ; that it was established by all 
 history, and expressly taught by the bible. 
 
 The woman was hanged and her body burned. 
 
 Sir Thomas Moore declared that to give up 
 witchcraft was to throw away the sacred scriptures. 
 In my judgment, he was right. 
 
 John Wesley was a firm believer in ghosts and 
 witches, and insisted upon it, years after all laws 
 upon the subject had been repealed in England. I 
 beg of you to remember that John Wesley was the 
 founder of the Methodist Church. 
 
 In New England, a woman was charged with 
 being a witch, and with having changed herself into 
 a fox. While in that condition she was attacked 
 and bitten by some dogs. A committee of three 
 men, by order of the court, examined this woman. 
 They removed her clothing and searched for <( witch 
 spots." That is to say, spots into which needles 
 could be thrust without giving her pain. They 
 reported to the court that such spots were found. 
 She denied, however, that she ever had changed
 
 20 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 herself into a fox. Upon the report of the com 
 mittee she was found guilty and actually executed. 
 This was done by our Puritan fathers, by the 
 gentlemen who braved the dangers of the deep for 
 the sake of worshiping God and persecuting their 
 fellow men. 
 
 In those days people believed in what was 
 known as lycanthropy that is, that persons, with 
 the assistance of the devil, could assume the form 
 of wolves. An instance is given where a man was 
 attacked by a wolf. He defended himself, and 
 succeeded in cutting off one of the animal s paws. 
 The wolf ran away. The man picked up the paw, 
 put it in his pocket and carried it home. There he 
 found his wife with one of her hands gone. He 
 took the paw from his pocket. It had changed to a 
 human hand. He charged his wife with being a 
 witch. She was tried. She confessed her guilt, 
 and was burned. 
 
 People were burned for causing frosts in sum 
 mer for destroying crops with hail for causing 
 storms for making cows go dry, and even for 
 souring beer. There was no impossibility for which 
 some one was not tried and convicted. The life of 
 no one was secure. To be charged, was to be
 
 THE GHOSTS. 21 
 
 convicted. Every man was at the mercy of every 
 other. This infamous belief was so firmly seated 
 in the minds of the people, that to express a doubt 
 as to its truth was to be suspected. Whoever 
 denied the existence of witches and devils was 
 denounced as an infidel. 
 
 They believed that animals were often taken 
 possession of by devils, and that the killing of the 
 animal would destroy the -devil. They absolutely 
 tried, convicted, and executed dumb beasts. 
 
 At Basle, in 1470, a rooster was tried upon the 
 charge of having laid an egg. Rooster eggs were 
 used only in making witch ointment, this every 
 body knew. The rooster was convicted and with 
 all due solemnity was burned in the public square. 
 So a hog and six pigs were tried for having 
 killed and partially eaten a child. The hog was 
 convicted, but the pigs, on account probably of 
 their extreme youth, were acquitted. As late as 
 1 740, a cow was tried and convicted of being 
 possessed by a devil. 
 
 They used to exorcise rats, locusts, snakes and 
 vermin. They used to go through the alleys, 
 streets, and fields, and warn them to leave within a 
 certain number of days. In case they disobeyed, 
 they were threatened with pains and penalties.
 
 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 But let us be careful how we laugh at these 
 things. Let us not pride ourselves too much on 
 the progress of our age. We must not forget that 
 some of our people are yet in the same intelligent 
 business. Only a little while ago, the governor of 
 Minnesota appointed a day of fasting and prayer, to 
 see if some power could not be induced to kill the 
 grasshoppers, or send them into some other state. 
 
 About the close of the fifteenth century, so 
 great was the excitement with regard to the exist 
 ence of witchcraft that Pope Innocent VIII issued 
 a bull directing the inquisitors to be vigilant in 
 searching out and punishing all guilty of this crime. 
 Forms for the trial were regularly laid down in a 
 book or a pamphlet called the "MALLEUS MALEFI- 
 CORUM" (Hammer of Witches), which was issued 
 by the Roman See. Popes Alexander, Leo, and 
 Adrian, issued like bulls. For two hundred and 
 fifty years the church was busy in punishing the 
 impossible crime of witchcraft; in burning, hanging 
 and torturing men, women, and children. Protest 
 ants were as active as Catholics, and in Geneva five 
 hundred witches were burned at the stake in a 
 period of three months. About one thousand were 
 executed in one year in the diocese of Como. At
 
 THE GHOSTS. 23 
 
 least one hundred thousand victims suffered in 
 Germany alone: the last execution ( in Wurtzburg ) 
 taking place as late as 1749. Witches were burned 
 in Switzerland as late as 1780. 
 
 In England the same frightful scenes were 
 enacted. Statutes were passed from Henry VI to 
 James I, defining the crime and its punishment. 
 The last act passed by the British parliament was 
 when Lord Bacon was a member of the House of 
 Commons; and this act was not repealed until 
 1736. 
 
 Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on 
 the Laws of England, says: To deny the pos 
 sibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and 
 sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the word of 
 God in various passages both of the old and new 
 testament ; and the thing itself is a truth to which 
 every nation in the world hath in its turn borne 
 testimony, either by examples seemingly well at 
 tested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least 
 suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil 
 spirits." 
 
 In Brown s Dictionary of the Bible, published at 
 Edinburg, Scotland, in 1807, it is said that: "A 
 witch is a woman that has dealings with Satan.
 
 24 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 That such persons are among men is abundantly 
 plain from scripture, and that they ought to be put 
 to death." 
 
 This work was re-published in Albany, New 
 York, in 1816. No wonder the clergy of that city 
 are ignorant and bigoted even unto this day. 
 
 In 1716, Mrs. Hicks and her daughter, nine 
 years of age, were hanged for selling their souls to 
 the devil, and raising a storm by pulling off their 
 stockings and making a lather of soap. 
 
 In England it has been estimated that at least 
 thirty thousand were hanged and burned. The last 
 victim executed in Scotland, perished in 1722. 
 "She was an innocent old woman, who had so little 
 idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight of the 
 fire which was destined to consume her. She had 
 a daughter, lame both of hands and of feet a 
 circumstance attributed to the witch having been 
 used to transform her daughter into a pony and 
 getting her shod by the devil." 
 
 In 1692, nineteen persons were executed and 
 one pressed to death in Salem, Massachusetts, for 
 the crime of witchcraft. 
 
 It was thought in those days that men and 
 women made compacts with the devil, orally and in
 
 THE GHOSTS. 25 
 
 writing. That they abjured God and Jesus Christ, 
 and dedicated themselves wholly to the devil. The 
 contracts were confirmed at a general meeting of 
 witches and ghosts, over which the devil himself 
 presided ; and the persons generally signed the 
 articles of agreement with their own blood. These 
 contracts were, in some instances, for a few years ; 
 in others, for life. General assemblies of the 
 witches were held at least once a year, at which 
 they appeared entirely naked, besmeared *with an 
 ointment made from the bodies of unbaptizcd in 
 fants. "To these meetings they rode from great 
 distances on broomsticks, pokers, goats, hogs, and 
 dogs. Here they did homage to the prince of hell, 
 and offered him sacrifices of young children, and 
 practiced all sorts of license until the break of 
 day." 
 
 "As late as 1815, Belgium was disgraced by a 
 witch trial ; and guilt was established by the water 
 ordeal." "In 1836, the populace of Hela, near 
 Dantzic, twice plunged into the sea a woman 
 reputed to be a sorceress ; and as the miserable 
 creature persisted in rising to the surface, she was 
 pronounced guilty, and beaten to death." 
 
 "It was believed that the bodies of devils are
 
 26 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 not like those of men and animals, cast in an 
 unchangeable mould. It was thought they were 
 like clouds, refined and subtle matter, capable of 
 assuming any form and penetrating into any orifice. 
 The horrible tortures they endured in their place of 
 punishment rendered them extremely sensitive to 
 suffering, and they continually sought a temperate 
 and somewhat moist warmth in order to allay their 
 pangs. It was for this reason they so frequently 
 entered into men and women." 
 
 The devil could transport men, at his will, 
 through the air. He could beget children ; and 
 Martin Luther himself had come in contact with 
 one of these children. He recommended the 
 mother to throw the child into the river, in order to 
 free their house from the presence of a devil. 
 
 It was believed that the devil could transform 
 people into any shape he pleased. 
 
 Whoever denied these things was denounced as 
 an infidel. All the believers in witchcraft con 
 fidently appealed to the bible. Their mouths were 
 filled with passages demonstrating the existence of 
 witches and their power over human beings. By 
 the bible they proved that innumerable evil spirits 
 were ranging over the world endeavoring to ruin
 
 THE GHOSTS. 27 
 
 mankind ; that these spirits possessed a power and 
 wisdom far transcending the limits of human facul 
 ties; that they delighted in every misfortune that 
 could befall the world ; that their malice was super 
 human. That they caused tempests was proved by 
 the action of the devil toward Job ; by the passage 
 in the book of Revelation describing the four angels 
 who held the four winds, and to whom it was given 
 to afflict the earth. They believed the devil could 
 carry persons hundreds of miles, in a few seconds, 
 through the air. They believed this, because they 
 knew that Christ had been carried by the devil in 
 the same manner and placed on a pinnacle of the 
 temple. "The prophet Habakkuk had been trans 
 ported by a spirit from Judea to Babylon; and 
 Philip, the evangelist, . had been the object of a 
 similar miracle ; and in the same way Saint Paul 
 had been carried in the body into the third 
 heaven." 
 
 "In those pious days, they. believed that Incubi 
 and Succubi were forever wandering among man 
 kind, alluring, by more than human charms, the 
 unwary to their destruction, and laying plots, which 
 were too often successful, against the virtue of the 
 saints. Sometimes the witches kindled in the
 
 28 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 monastic priest a more terrestrial fire. People told, 
 with bated breath, how, under the spell of a vin 
 dictive woman, four successive abbots in a German 
 monastery had been wasted away by an unholy 
 flame." 
 
 An instance is given in which the devil not only 
 assumed the appearance of a holy man, in order to 
 pay his addresses to a lady, but when discovered, 
 crept under the bed, suffered himself to be dragged 
 out, and was impudent enough to declare that he 
 was the veritable bishop. So perfectly had he 
 assumed the form and features of the prelate that 
 those who knew the bishop best were deceived. 
 
 One can hardly imagine the frightful state of 
 the human mind during these long centuries of 
 darkness and superstition. To them, these things 
 were awful and frightful realities. Hovering above 
 them in the air, in their houses, in the bosoms of 
 friends, in their very bodies, in all the darkness of 
 night, everywhere, around, above and below, were 
 innumerable hosts of unclean and malignant devils. 
 
 From the malice of those leering and vindictive 
 vampires of the air, the church pretended to 
 defend mankind. Pursued by these phantoms, the 
 frightened multitudes fell upon their faces and im-
 
 THE GHOSTS. 29 
 
 plored the aid of robed hypocrisy and sceptered 
 theft. 
 
 Take from the orthodox church of to-day the 
 threat and fear of hell, and it becomes an extinct 
 volcano. 
 
 Take from the church the miraculous, the super 
 natural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, 
 the impossible, the unknowable, and the absurd, 
 and nothing but a vacuum remains. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the infamous things justly 
 laid to the charge of the church, we are told that 
 the civilization of to-day is the child of what we 
 are pleased to call the superstition of the past. 
 
 Religion has not civilized man man has civil 
 ized religion. God improves as man advances. 
 
 Let me call your attention to what we have 
 received from the followers of the ghosts. Let me 
 give you an outline of the sciences as taught by 
 these philosophers of the clouds. 
 
 All diseases were produced, either as a punish 
 ment by the good ghosts, or out of pure malignity 
 by the bad ones. There were, properly speaking, 
 no diseases. The sick were possessed by ghosts. 
 The science of medicine consisted in knowing how
 
 30 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 to persuade these ghosts to vacate the premises. 
 For thousands of years the diseased were treated 
 with incantations, with hideous noises, with drums 
 and gongs. Everything was done to make the visit 
 of the ghost as unpleasant as possible, and they 
 generally succeeded in making things so disagree 
 able that if the ghost did not leave, the patient did. 
 These ghosts were supposed to be of different 
 rank, power and dignity. Now and then a man 
 pretended to have won the favor of some powerful 
 ghost, and that gave him power over the little 
 ones. Such a man became an eminent physician. 
 
 It was found that certain kinds of smoke, such 
 as that produced by burning the liver of a fish, the 
 dried skin of a serpent, the eyes of a toad, or the 
 tongue of an adder, were exceedingly offensive to 
 the nostrils of an ordinary ghost. With this 
 smoke, the sick room w r ould be filled until the ghost 
 vanished or the patient died. 
 
 It was also believed that certain words, the 
 names of the most powerful ghosts, when prop 
 erly pronounced, were very effective weapons. It 
 was for a long time thought that Latin words were 
 the best, Latin being a dead language, and 
 known by the clergy. Others thought that two
 
 THE GHOSTS. 31 
 
 sticks laid across each other and held before the 
 wicked ghost would cause it instantly to flee in 
 dread away. 
 
 For thousands of years, the practice of medicine 
 consisted in driving these evil spirits out of the 
 bodies of men. 
 
 In some instances, bargains and compromises 
 were made with the ghosts. One case is given 
 where a multitude of devils traded a man for a herd 
 of swine. In this transaction the devils were 
 the losers, as the swine immediately drowned 
 themselves in the sea. This idea of disease 
 appears to have been almost universal, and is by no 
 means yet extinct. 
 
 The contortions of the epileptic, the strange 
 twitchings of those afflicted with .chorea, the 
 shakings of palsy, dreams, trances, and the number 
 less frightful phenomena produced by diseases of 
 the nerves, were all seized upon as so many proofs 
 that the bodies of men were filled with unclean and 
 malignant ghosts. 
 
 Whoever endeavored to account for these things 
 by natural causes, whoever attempted to cure 
 diseases by natural means, was denounced by the 
 church as an infidel. To explain anything was a
 
 32 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 crime. It was to the interest of the priest that all 
 phenomena should be accounted for by the will and 
 power of gods and devils. The moment it is 
 admitted that all phenomena are within the domain 
 of the natural, the necessity for a priest has 
 disappeared. Religion breathes the air of the 
 supernatural. Take from the mind of man the idea 
 of the supernatural, and religion ceases to exist. 
 For this reason, the church has always despised the 
 man who explained the wonderful. Upon this 
 principle, nothing was left undone to stay the 
 science of medicine. As long as plagues and pesti 
 lences could be stopped by prayer, the priest was 
 useful. The moment the physician found a cure, 
 the priest became an extravagance. The moment it 
 began to be apparent that prayer could do nothing 
 for the body, tiie priest shifted his ground and 
 began praying for the soul. 
 
 Long after the devil idea was substantially aban 
 doned in the practice of medicine, and when it was 
 admitted that God had nothing to do with ordinary 
 coughs and colds, it was still believed that all the 
 frightful diseases were sent by him as punishments 
 for the wickedness of the people. It was thought to 
 be a kind of blasphemy to even try, by any natural
 
 THE GHOSTS. 33 
 
 means, to stay the ravages of pestilence. Formerly, 
 during the prevalence of plague and epidemics, the 
 arrogance of the priest was boundless. He told 
 the people that they had slighted the clergy, that 
 they had refused to pay tithes, that they had 
 doubted some of the doctrines of the church, and 
 that God was now taking his revenge. The people 
 for the most part, believed this infamous tissue 
 of priestcraft. They hastened to fall upon their 
 knees; they poured out their wealth upori the 
 altars of hypocrisy; they abased and debased 
 themselves ; from their minds they banished all 
 doubts, and made haste to crawl in the very dust of 
 humility. 
 
 The church never wanted disease to be under 
 the control of man. Timothy Dwight, president of 
 Yale College, preached a sermon against vaccina 
 tion. His idea was, that if God had decreed from 
 all eternity that a certain man should die with the 
 small-pox, it was a frightful sin to avoid and annul 
 that decree by the trick of vaccination. Small-pox 
 being regarded as one of the heaviest guns in the 
 arsenal of heaven, to spike it was the height of 
 presumption. Plagues and pestilences were instru 
 mentalities in the hands of God with which to 
 
 3
 
 34 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 gain the love and worship of mankind. To find 
 a cure for disease was to take a weapon from the 
 church. No one tries to cure the ague with prayer. 
 Quinine has been found altogether more reliable. 
 Just as soon as a specific is found for a disease, 
 that disease will be left out of the list of prayer. 
 The number of diseases with which God from time 
 to time afflicts mankind, is continually decreasing. 
 In a few years all of them will be under the control 
 of man, the gods will v be left unarmed, and the 
 threats of their priests will excite only a smile. 
 
 The science of medicine has had but one 
 enemy religion. Man was afraid to save his 
 body for fear he might lose his soul. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the people in those days 
 believed in and taught the infamous doctrine of 
 eternal punishment a doctrine that makes God a 
 heartless monster and man a slimy hypocrite and 
 slave ? 
 
 - v 
 
 The ghosts were historians, and their histories 
 were the grossest absurdities. "Tales told by 
 idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 
 In those days the histories were written by the 
 monks, who, as a rule, were almost as superstitious
 
 THE GHOSTS. 35 
 
 as they were dishonest. They wrote as though 
 they had been witnesses of every occurrence they 
 related. They wrote the history of every country 
 of importance. They told all -the past and pre 
 dicted all the future with an impudence that 
 amounted to sublimity. "They traced the order of 
 St. Michael, in France, to the archangel himself, 
 and alleged that he was the founder of a chivalric 
 order in heaven itself. They said that Tartars 
 originally came from hell, and that they were called 
 Tartars because Tartarus was one of the names of 
 perdition. They declared that Scotland was so 
 named after Scota, a daughter of Pharaoh, who 
 landed in Ireland, invaded Scotland, and took it by 
 force of arms. This statement was made in a letter 
 addressed to the Pope in the fourteenth century, 
 and was alluded to as a well-known fact. The 
 letter was written by some of the highest digni 
 taries, and by the direction of the King himself." 
 
 These gentlemen accounted for the red on the 
 breasts of robins, from the fact that these birds 
 carried water to unbaptized infants in hell. 
 
 Matthew, of Paris, an eminent historian of the 
 fourteenth century, gave the world the following 
 piece of information : " It is well known that
 
 36 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 Mohammed was once a cardinal, and became a 
 heretic because he failed in his effort to be elected 
 pope;" and that having drank to excess, he fell by 
 the roadside, and in this condition was killed by 
 swine. "And for that reason, his followers abhor 
 pork even unto this day." 
 
 Another eminent historian informs us that Nero 
 was in the habit of vomiting frogs. When I read 
 this, I said to myself: Some of the croakers of the 
 present day against Progress would be the better 
 for such a vomit. 
 
 The history of Charlemagne was written by 
 Turpin, of Rheims. He was a bishop. He assures 
 us that the walls of a city fell down in answer to 
 prayer. That there were giants in those days who 
 could take fifty ordinary men under their arms and 
 walk away with them. "With the greatest of these, 
 a direct descendant of Goliath, one Orlando had a 
 theological discussion, and that in the heat of the" 
 debate, when the giant was overwhelmed with the 
 argument, Orlando rushed forward and inflicted a 
 fatal stab." 
 
 The history of Britain, written by the arch 
 deacons of Monmouth and Oxford, was wonderfully 
 popular. According to them, Brutus conquered
 
 THE GHOSTS. 37 
 
 England and built the city of London. During his 
 time, it rained pure blood for three days. At 
 another time, a monster came from the sea, and, 
 after having devoured great multitudes of people, 
 swallowed the king and disappeared. They tell us 
 that King Arthur was not born like other mortals, 
 but was the result of a magical contrivance ; that 
 he had great luck in killing giants; that he killed 
 one in France that had the cheerful habit of eating 
 some thirty men a day. That this giant had 
 clothes woven of the beards of the kings he had 
 devoured. To cap the climax, one of the authors 
 of this book was promoted for having written the 
 only reliable history of his country. 
 
 In all the histories of those days there is hardly 
 a single truth. Facts were considered unworthy 
 of preservation. Anything that really happened 
 was not of sufficient interest or importance to be 
 recorded. The great religious historian, Eusebeus, 
 ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully 
 omitted whatever tended to discredit the church, 
 and that he piously magnified all that conduced to 
 her glory. 
 
 The same glorious principle was scrupulously 
 adhered to by all the historians of that time.
 
 38 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 They wrote, and the people believed, that the 
 tracks of Pharoah s chariots were still visible on 
 the sands of the Red Sea, and that they had been 
 miraculously preserved from the winds and waves 
 as perpetual witnesses of the great miracle there 
 performed. 
 
 It is safe to say that every truth in the histories 
 of those times is the result of accident or mistake. 
 
 They accounted for everything as the work of 
 good and evil spirits. With cause and effect they 
 had nothing to do. Facts were in no way related 
 to each other. God, governed by infinite caprice, 
 filled the world with miracles and disconnected 
 events. From the quiver of his hatred came the 
 arrows of famine, pestilence, and death. 
 
 The moment that the idea is abandoned that all 
 is natural ; that all phenomena are the necessary 
 links in the endless chain of being, the conception 
 of history becomes impossible. With the ghosts, 
 the present is not the child of the past, nor the 
 mother of the future. In the domain of religion 
 all is chance, accident, and caprice. 
 
 Do not forget, I pray you, that our creeds were 
 written by the cotemporaries of these historians.
 
 THE GHOSTS. 39 
 
 The same idea was applied to law. It was 
 believed by our intelligent ancestors that all law 
 derived its sacredness and its binding force from 
 the fact that it had been communicated to man by 
 the ghosts. Of course it was not pretended that 
 the ghosts told everybody the law ; but they told it 
 to a few, and the few told it to the people, and the 
 people, as a rule, paid them exceedingly well for 
 their trouble. It was thousands of ages before the 
 people commenced making laws for themselves, and 
 strange as it may appear, most of these laws were 
 vastly superior to the ghost article. Through the 
 web and woof of human legislation began to run 
 and shine and glitter the golden thread of justice. 
 
 During these years of darkness it was believed 
 that rather than see an act of injustice done ; rather 
 than see the innocent suffer; rather than see the 
 guilty triumph, some ghost would interfere. This 
 belief, as a rule, gave great satisfaction to the 
 victorious party, and as the other man was dead, 
 no complaint was heard from him. 
 
 This doctrine was the sanctification of brute 
 force and chance. They had trials by battle, by 
 fire, by water, and by lot. Persons were made to 
 grasp hot iron, and if it burned them their guilt
 
 40 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 was established. Others, with tied hands and feet, 
 were cast into the sea, and if they sank, the verdict 
 of guilty was unanimous, if they did not sink, 
 they were in league with devils. 
 
 So in England, persons charged with crime 
 could appeal to the corsned. The corsned was a 
 piece of the sacramental bread. If the defendant 
 could swallow this piece he went acquit. Godwin, 
 Earl of Kent, in the time of Edward the Confessor, 
 appealed to the corsned. He failed to swallow it 
 and was choked to death. 
 
 The ghosts and their followers always took 
 delight in torture, in cruel and unusual punish 
 ments. For the infraction of most of their laws, 
 death was the penalty death produced by stoning 
 and by fire. Sometimes, when man committed 
 only murder, he was allowed to flee to some city 
 of refuge. Murder was a crime against man. But 
 for saying certain words, or denying certain doc 
 trines, or for picking up sticks on certain days, or 
 for worshiping the wrong ghost, or for failing to 
 pray to the right one, or for laughing at a priest, or 
 for saying that wine was not blood, or that bread 
 was not flesh, or for failing to regard ram s horns as 
 artillery, or for insisting that a dry bone was
 
 THE GHOSTS. 41 
 
 scarcely sufficient to take the place of water works, 
 or that a raven, as a rule, made a poor landlord: 
 death, produced by all the ways that the ingenuity 
 of hatred could devise, was the penalty. 
 
 Law is a groxvth it is a science. Right and 
 wrong exist in the nature of things. Things are 
 not right because they are commanded, nor wrong 
 because they are prohibited. There are real crimes 
 enough without creating artificial ones. All prog 
 ress in legislation has for centuries consisted in 
 repealing the laws of the ghosts. 
 
 The idea of right and wrong is born of man s 
 capacity to enjoy and suffer. If man could not 
 suffer, if he could. not inflict injury upon his fellow, 
 if he could neither feel nor inflict pain, the idea of 
 right and wrong never would have entered his 
 brain. But for this, the word conscience never 
 would have passed the lips of man. 
 
 There is one good happiness. There is but 
 one sin selfishness. All law should be for the 
 preservation of the one and the destruction of the 
 other. 
 
 Under the regime of the ghosts, laws were not 
 supposed to exist in the nature of things! They 
 were supposed to be simply the irresponsible com-
 
 42 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 mand of a ghost. These commands were not 
 supposed to rest upon reason, they were the 
 product of arbitrary will. 
 
 The penalties for the violation of these laws 
 were as cruel as the laws were senseless and 
 absurd. Working on the Sabbath and murder 
 were both punished with death. The tendency of 
 such laws is to blot from the human heart the sense 
 of justice. 
 
 To show you how perfectly every department of 
 knowledge, or ignorance rather, was saturated with 
 superstition, I will for a moment refer to the science 
 of language. 
 
 It was thought by our fathers, that Hebrew was 
 the original language ; that it was taught to Adam 
 in the Garden of Eden by the Almighty, and that 
 consequently all languages came from, and could 
 be traced to, the Hebrew. Every fact inconsistent 
 with that idea was discarded. According to the 
 ghosts, the trouble at the tower of Babel accounted 
 for the fact that all people did not speak Hebrew. 
 The Babel business settled all questions in the 
 science of language. 
 
 After a time, so many facts were found to be
 
 THE GHOSTS. 43 
 
 inconsistent with the Hebrew idea that it began to 
 fall into disrepute, and other languages began to 
 compete for the honor of being the original. 
 
 Andre Kempe, in 1569, published a work on the 
 language of Paradise, in which he maintained that 
 God spoke to Adam in Swedish ; that Adam 
 answered. in Danish; and that the serpent which 
 appears to me quite probable spoke to Eve in 
 French. Erro, in a work published at Madrid, 
 took the ground that Basque was the language 
 spoken in the Garden of Eden; but in 1580 
 Goropius published his celebrated work at Ant 
 werp, in which he put the whole matter at rest by 
 showing, beyond all doubt, that the language 
 spoken in Paradise was neither more nor less than 
 plain Holland Dutch. 
 
 The real founder of the science of language 
 was Liebnitz, a cotemporary of Sir Isaac Newton. 
 He discarded the idea that all languages could be 
 traced to one language. He maintained that 
 language was a natural growth. Experience 
 teaches us that this must be so. Words are 
 continually dying and continually being born. 
 Words are naturally and necessarily produced. 
 Words are the garments of thought, the robes of
 
 44 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 ideas. Some are as rucle as the skins of wild 
 beasts, and others glisten and glitter like silk and 
 gold. They have been bora of hatred and 
 revenge; of love, and self-sacrifice; of hope and 
 fear, of agony and joy. These words are born of 
 the terror and beauty of nature. The stars have 
 fashioned them. In them mingle the darkness and 
 the dawn. From everything they have taken 
 something. Words are the crystalizations of 
 human history, of all that man has enjoyed and 
 and suffered his victories and defeats all that 
 he has lost and won. Words are the shadows of 
 all that has been the mirrors of all that is. 
 
 The ghosts also enlightened our fathers in 
 astronomy and geology. According to them the 
 earth was made out of nothing, and a little more 
 nothing having been taken than was used in the 
 construction of this world, the stars were made out 
 of what was left over. Cosmos, in the sixth 
 century, taught that the stars were impelled by 
 angels, who either carried them on their shoulders, 
 rolled them in front of them, or drew them after. 
 He also taught that each angel that pushed a star 
 took great pains to observe what the other angels 
 were doing, so that the relative distances between
 
 THE GHOSTS. 45 
 
 the stars might always remain the same. He also 
 gave his idea as to the form of the world. 
 
 He stated that the world was a vast p^rallelo- 
 gram ; that on the outside was a strip of land, 
 like the frame of a common slate ; that then there 
 was a strip of water, and in the middle a great 
 piece of land ; that Adam and Eve lived on the 
 outer strip; that their descendants, with the excep 
 tion of the Noah family, were drowned by a flood 
 on this outer strip ; that the ark finally rested on 
 the middle piece of land where we now are. He 
 accounted for night and day by saying that on the 
 outside strip of land there was a high mountain, 
 around which the sun and moon revolved, and 
 that when the sun was on the other side of the 
 mountain, it was night; and when on this side, it 
 was day. 
 
 He also declared that the earth was flat. This 
 he proved by many passages from the bible. 
 Among other reasons for believing- the earth to 
 be flat, he brought forward the following: We are 
 told in the new testament that Christ shall come 
 again in glory and power, and all the world shall 
 see him. Now, if the world is round, how are the 
 people on the other side going to see Christ when
 
 46 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 he comes? That settled the question, and the 
 church not only endorsed the book, but declared 
 that whoever believed less or more than stated by 
 Cosmos, was a heretic. 
 
 In those blessed days, Ignorance was a king 
 and Science an outcast. 
 
 They knew the moment this earth ceased to be 
 the centre of the universe, and became a mere 
 speck in the starry heaven of existence, that their 
 religion would become a childish fable of the past. 
 
 In the name and by the authority of the ghosts, 
 men enslaved their fellow men ; they trampled upon 
 the rights of women and children. In the name 
 and by the authority of ghosts, they bought and 
 sold and destroyed each other ; they filled heaven 
 with tyrants and earth with slaves, the present with 
 despair and the future with horror. In the name 
 and by the authority of the ghosts, they imprisoned 
 the human mind, polluted the conscience, hardened 
 the heart, subverted justice, crowned robbery, 
 sainted hypocrisy, and extinguished for a thousand 
 years the torch of reason. 
 
 I have endeavored, in some faint degree, to 
 show you what has happened, and what always will 
 happen when men are governed by superstition and
 
 THE GHOSTS. 47 
 
 fear; when they desert the sublime standard of 
 reason ; when they take the words of others and do 
 not investigate for themselves. 
 
 Even the great men of those days were nearly 
 as weak in this matter as the most ignorant. 
 Kepler, one of the greatest men of the world, an 
 astronomer second to none, although he plucked 
 from the stars the secrets of the universe, was an 
 astrologer, and really believed that he could predict 
 the career of a man by finding what star was in the 
 ascendant at his birth. This great man breathed, 
 so to speak, the atmosphere of his time. He 
 believed in the music of the spheres, and assigned 
 alto, bass, tenor, and treble to certain stars. 
 
 Tycho Brahe, another astronomer, kept an idiot, 
 whose disconnected and meaningless words he 
 carefully set down, and then put them together in 
 such manner as to make prophecies, and then 
 waited patiently to see them fulfilled. Luther 
 believed that he had actually seen the devil, and 
 had discussed points of theology with him. The 
 human mind was in chains. Every idea almost was 
 a monster. Thought was deformed. Facts were 
 looked upon as worthless. Only the wonderful was 
 worth preserving. Things that actually happened
 
 48 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 were not considered worth recording ; real occur 
 rences were too common. Everybody expected 
 the miraculous. 
 
 The ghosts were supposed to be busy; devils 
 were thought to be the most industrious things in 
 the universe, and with these imps, every occurrence 
 of an unusual character was in some way connected. 
 There was no order, no serenity, no certainty in 
 anything. Everything depended upon ghosts and 
 phantoms. Man was, for the most part, at the 
 mercy of malevolent spirits. He protected himself 
 as best he could with holy water and tapers and 
 wafers and cathedrals. He made noises and rung 
 bells to frighten the ghosts, and he made music 
 to charm them. He used smoke to choke them, 
 and incense to please them. He wore beads and 
 crosses. He said prayers, and hired others to say 
 them. He fasted when he was hungry, and feasted 
 when he was not. He believed everything that 
 seemed unreasonable, just to appease the ghosts. 
 He humbled himself. He crawled in the dust. 
 He shut the doors and windows, and excluded 
 
 every ray of light from the temple of the soul. 
 
 
 He debauched and polluted his own mind, and 
 
 toiled night and day to repair the walls of his own
 
 THE GHOSTS. 49 
 
 prison. From the garden of his heart he plucked 
 and trampled upon the holy flowers of pity. 
 
 The priests reveled in horrible descriptions 
 of hell. Concerning the wrath of God, they 
 grew eloquent. They denounced man as totally 
 depraved. They made reason blasphemy, and 
 pity a crime. Nothing so delighted them as 
 painting the torments and sufferings of the lost. 
 Over the worm that never dies they grew poetic; 
 and the second death filled them with a kind of 
 holy delight. According to them, the smoke and 
 cries ascending from hell were the perfume and 
 music of heaven. 
 
 At the risk of being tiresome, I have said what 
 I have to show you the productions of the human 
 mind, when enslaved ; the effects of wide-spread 
 ignorance the results of fear. I want to convince 
 you that every form of slavery is a viper, that, 
 sooner or later, will strike its poison fangs into the 
 bosoms of men. 
 
 The first great step towards progress, is, for 
 man to cease to be the slave of man ; the second, 
 to cease to be the slave of the monsters of his own 
 creation of the ghosts and phantoms of the air. 
 
 For ages the human race was imprisoned.
 
 50 THE GHDSTS. 
 
 Through the bars and grates came a few struggling 
 rays of light. Against these grates and bars 
 Science pressed its pale and thoughtful face, wooed 
 by the holy dawn of human advancement. 
 
 Men found that the real was the useful; that 
 what a man knows is better than what a ghost 
 says; that an event is more valuable than a 
 prophecy. They found that diseases were not 
 produced by spirits, and could not be cured by 
 frightening them away. They found that death 
 was as natural as life. They began to study the 
 anatomy and chemistry of the human body, and 
 found that all was natural and within the domain 
 of law. 
 
 The conjurer and sorcerer were discarded, and 
 the physician and surgeon employed. They found 
 that the earth was not flat ; that the stars were not 
 mere specks. They found that being born under a 
 particular planet had nothing to do with the 
 fortunes of men. 
 
 The astrologer was discharged and the astron 
 omer took his place. 
 
 They found that the earth had swept through 
 the constellations for millions of ages. They 
 found that good and evil were produced by natural
 
 THE GHOSTS. 51 
 
 causes, and not by ghosts ; that man could not be 
 good enough or bad enough to stop or cause a 
 rain ; that diseases were produced as naturally as 
 grass, and were not sent as punishments upon 
 man for failing to believe a certain creed. They 
 found that man, through intelligence, could take 
 advantage of the forces of nature that he could 
 make the waves, the winds, the flames, and the 
 lightnings of heaven do his bidding and minister to 
 his wants. They found that the ghosts knew 
 nothing of benefit to man ; that they were utterly 
 ignorant of geology of astronomy of geogra 
 phy; that they knew nothing of history; that 
 they were poor doctors and worse surgeons; that 
 they knew nothing of law and less of justice ; 
 that they were without brains, and utterly destitute 
 of hearts ; that they knew nothing of the rights of 
 men ; that they were despisers of women, the . 
 haters of progress, the enemies of science, and the 
 destroyers of liberty. 
 
 The condition of the world during the Dark 
 Ages shows exactly the result of enslaving the 
 bodies and souls of men. In those days there was 
 no freedom. Labor was despised, and a laborer
 
 52 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 was considered but little above a beast. Ignorance, 
 like a vast cowl, covered the brain of the world, 
 and superstition ran riot with the imagination of 
 man. The air was filled with angels, with demons 
 and monsters. Credulity sat upon the throne of 
 the soul, and Reason was an exiled king. A man 
 to be distinguished must be a soldier or a monk. 
 War and theology, that is to say, murder and 
 hypocrisy, were the principal employments of man. 
 Industry was a slave, theft was commerce ; murder 
 was war, hypocrisy was religion. 
 
 Every Christian country maintained that it was 
 no robbery to take the property of Mohammedans 
 by force, and no murder to kill the owners. Lord 
 Bacon was the first man of note who maintained 
 that a Christian country was bound to keep its 
 plighted faith with an infidel nation. Reading and 
 writing were considered dangerous arts. Every 
 layman who could read and write was suspected of 
 Being a heretic. All thought was discouraged. 
 They forged chains of superstition for the minds, 
 and manacles of iron for the bodies of men. The 
 earth was ruled by the cowl and sword, by the 
 mitre and scepter, by the altar and throne, by 
 Fear and Force, by Ignorance and Faith, by 
 ghouls and ghosts.
 
 THE GHOSTS. 53 
 
 In the fifteenth century the following law was 
 in force in England: 
 
 "That whosoever reads the scriptures in the 
 mother tongue, shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and 
 goods from their heirs forever, and so be condemned 
 for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and 
 most arrant traitors to the land." 
 
 During the first year this law was in force thirty- 
 nine were hanged for its violation and their bodies 
 burned. 
 
 In the sixteenth century men were burned be 
 cause they failed to kneel to a procession of monks. 
 
 The slightest word uttered against the supersti 
 tion of the time was punished with death. 
 
 Even the reformers, so called, of those days, 
 had no idea of intellectual liberty no idea even 
 of toleration. Luther, Knox, Calvin, believed in 
 religious liberty only when they were in the minor 
 ity. The moment they were clothed with power 
 they began to exterminate with fire and sword. 
 
 Castellio was the first minister who advocated 
 the liberty of the soul. He was regarded by the 
 reformers as a criminal, and treated as though he 
 had committed the crime of crimes. 
 
 Bodinus, a lawyer of France, about the same
 
 54 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 time, wrote a few words in favor of the freedom of 
 conscience, but public opinion was overwhelmingly 
 against him. The people were ready, anxious, and 
 willing, with whip, and chain, and fire, to drive 
 from the mind of man the heresy that he had a 
 right to think. 
 
 Montaigue, a man blest with so much common 
 sense that he was the most uncommon man of his 
 time, was the first to raise a voice against torture 
 in France. But what was the voice of one man 
 against the terrible cry of ignorant, infatuated, su 
 perstitious and malevolent millions? It was the 
 cry of a drowning man in the wild roar of the cruel 
 sea. 
 
 In spite of the efforts of the brave few the in 
 famous war against the freedom of the soul was 
 waged until at least one hundred millions of human 
 beings fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters with 
 hopes, loves, and aspirations like ourselves, were 
 sacrificed upon the cruel altar of an ignorant faith. 
 They perished in every way by which death can be 
 produced. Every nerve of pain was sought out 
 and touched by the believers in ghosts. 
 
 For my part I glory in the fact, that here in 
 the new world, in the United States, liberty of
 
 THE GHOSTS. 55 
 
 conscience was first guaranteed to man, and that 
 the Constitution of the United States was the first 
 great decree entered in the high court of human 
 equity forever divorcing Church and State, the 
 first injunction granted against the interference of 
 the ghosts. This was one of the grandest steps 
 ever taken by the human race in the direction of 
 Progress. 
 
 You will ask what has caused this wonderful 
 
 
 
 change in three hundred years. And I answer 
 the inventions and discoveries of the few; the 
 brave thoughts, the heroic utterances of the few; 
 the acquisition of a few facts. 
 
 Besides, you must remember that every wrong 
 in some way tends to abolish itself. It is hard to 
 make a lie stand always. A lie will not fit a fact. 
 It will only fit another lie made for the purpose. 
 The life of a lie is simply a question of time. 
 Nothing but truth is immortal. The nobles and 
 kings quarreled; the priests began to dispute; 
 the ideas of government began to change. 
 
 In 1441 printing was discovered. At that time 
 the past was a vast cemetery with hardly an 
 epitaph. The ideas of men had mostly perished 
 in the brain that produced them. The lips of the
 
 56 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 human race had been sealed. Printing gave 
 pinions to thought. It preserved ideas. * It made 
 it possible for man to bequeath to the future the 
 riches of his brain, the wealth of his soul. At 
 first, it was used to flood the world with the 
 mistakes of the ancients, but since that time it has 
 been flooding the iworld with light. 
 
 When people read they begin to reason, and 
 when they reason they progress. This was another 
 grand step in the direction of Progress. 
 
 The discovery of powder, that put the peasant 
 almost upon a par with the prince; that put an 
 end to the so-called age of chivalry; that released 
 avast number of men from the armies; that gave 
 pluck and nerve a chance with brute strength. 
 
 The discovery of America, whose shores were 
 trod by the restless feet of adventure ; that 
 brought people holding every shade of superstition 
 together; that gave the world an opportunity to 
 compare notes, and to laugh at the follies of each 
 other. Out of this strange mingling of all creeds, 
 and superstitions, and facts, and theories, and 
 countless opinions, came the Great Republic. 
 
 Every fact has pushed a superstition from the 
 brain and a ghost from the clouds. Every me-
 
 THE GHOSTS. 57 
 
 chanic art is an educator. Every loom, every 
 reaper and mower, every steamboat, every locomo 
 tive, every engine, every press, every telegraph, is 
 a missionary of Science and an apostle of Progress. 
 Every mill, every furnace, every building with its 
 wheels and levers, in which something is made for 
 the convenience, for the use, and for the comfort 
 and elevation of man, is a church, and every school 
 house is a temple. 
 
 Education is the most radical thing in the world. 
 
 To teach the alphabet is to inaugurate a revo 
 lution. 
 
 To build a school house is to construct a fort. 
 
 Every library is an arsenal filled with the 
 weapons and ammunition of Progress, and every 
 fact is a monitor with sides of iron and a turret of 
 steel. 
 
 I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the 
 thinkers. I thank Columbus and Magellan. I 
 thank Galileo, and Copernicus, and Kepler, and 
 Des Cartes, and Newton, and La x Place. I thank 
 Locke, and Hume, and Bacon, and Shakespeare, 
 and Kant, and Fichte, and Liebnitz, and Goethe. 
 I thank Fulton, and Watts, and Volta, and Galvani, 
 and Franklin, and Morse, who made lightning the
 
 53 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 messenger of man. I thank Humboldt, the 
 Shakespeare of science. I thank Crompton and 
 Arkwright, from whose brains leaped the looms 
 and spindles that clothe the world. I thank 
 Luther for protesting against the abuses of the 
 church, and I denounce him because he was the 
 enemy of liberty. I thank Calvin for writing a 
 book in favor of religious freedom, and I abhor 
 him because he burned Servetus. I thank Knox 
 for resisting episcopal persecution, and I hate 
 him because he persecuted in his turn. I thank 
 the Puritans for saying "Resistance to tyrants 
 is obedience to God," and yet I am compelled 
 to say that they were tyrants themselves. I thank 
 
 Thomas Paine because he was a believer in liberty, 
 
 
 and because he did as much to make my country 
 
 free as any other human being. I thank Voltaire, 
 that great man who, for half a century, was the 
 intellectual emperor of Europe, and who, from his 
 throne at the foot of the Alps, pointed the finger 
 of scorn at every hypocrite in Christendom. I 
 thank Darwin, Haeckel and Buchner, Spenser, 
 Tyndall and Huxley, Draper, Leckey and Buckle. 
 I thank the inventors, the discoverers, the 
 thinkers, the scientists, the explorers. I thank 
 the honest millions who have toiled.
 
 THE GH-OSTS. 59 
 
 I thank the brave men with brave thoughts. 
 They are the Atlases upon whose broad and mighty 
 shoulders rests the grand fabric of civilization. 
 They are the men who have broken, and are still 
 breaking, the chains of Superstition. They are the 
 Titans who carried Olympus by assault, and who 
 will soon stand victors upon Sinai s crags. 
 
 We are beginning to learn that to exchange a 
 mistake for the truth a superstition for a fact 
 to ascertain the real is to progress. 
 
 Happiness is the only possible good, and all 
 that tends to the happiness of man is right, and is 
 of value. All that tends to develop the bodies and 
 minds of men ; all that gives us better houses, bet 
 ter clothes, better food, better pictures, grander 
 music, better heads, better hearts ; all that renders 
 us more intellectual and more loving, nearer just; 
 that makes us better husbands and wives, better 
 children, tetter citizens all these things combined 
 produce what I call Progress. 
 
 Man advances only as he overcomes the ob 
 structions of Nature, and this can be done only by 
 labor and by thought. Labor is the foundation of 
 all. Without labor, and without great labor, prog-
 
 60 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 ress is impossible. The progress of the world 
 depends upon the men who walk in the fresh fur 
 rows and through the rustling corn ; upon those 
 who sow and reap ; upon those whose faces are 
 radiant with the glare of furnace fires ; upon the 
 delvers in the mines, and the workers in shops ; 
 upon those who give to the winter air the ringing 
 music of the axe ; upon those who battle with the 
 boisterous billows of the sea; upon the inventors 
 and discoverers ; upon the brave thinkers. 
 
 From the surplus produced by labor, schools 
 and universities are built and fostered. From this 
 surplus the painter is paid for the productions of 
 the pencil ; the sculptor for chiseling shapeless rock 
 into forms divinely beautiful, and the poet for sing 
 ing the hopes, the loves, the memories, and the 
 .aspirations of the world. This surplus has given 
 us the books in which we converse with the dead 
 and living kings of the human race. It has given 
 us all there is of beauty, of elegance, and of re 
 fined happiness. 
 
 I am aware that there is a vast difference of 
 opinion as to what progress really is ; that many 
 denounce the ideas of to-day as destructive of all 
 happiness of all good. I know that there are
 
 THE GHOSTS. 61 
 
 many worshipers of the past. They venerate the 
 ancient because it is ancient. They see no beauty 
 in anything from which they do not blow the dust 
 of ages with the breath of praise. They say, no 
 masters like the old ; no religion, no governments 
 like the ancient ; no orators, no poets, no statesmen 
 like those who have been dust for two thousand 
 years. Others love the modern simply because 
 it is modern. 
 
 We should have gratitude enough to acknowl 
 edge the obligations we are under to the great 
 and heroic of antiquity, and independence enough 
 not to believe what they said simply because they 
 said it. 
 
 With the idea that labor is the basis of progress 
 goes the truth that labor must be free. The 
 laborer must be a free man. 
 
 The free man, working for wife and child, gets 
 his head and hands in partnership. 
 
 To do the greatest amount of work in the 
 shortest space of time, is the problem of free labor. 
 
 Slavery does the least work in the longest space 
 of time. 
 
 Free labor will give us wealth. Free thought 
 will give us truth.
 
 62 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 Slowly but surely man is freeing his imagination 
 of these sexless phantoms, of these cruel ghosts. 
 Slowly but surely he is rising above the super 
 stitions of the past. He is learning to rely upon 
 himself. He is beginning to find that labor is the 
 only prayer that ought to be answered, and that 
 hoping, toiling, aspiring, suffering men and women 
 are of more importance than all the ghosts that 
 ever wandered through the fenceless fields of 
 space. 
 
 The believers in ghosts claim still, that they are 
 the only wise and virtuous people upon the earth ; 
 claim stffl, that there is a difference between them 
 and unbelievers so vast, that they will be infinitely 
 rewarded, and the others infinitely punished. 
 \ I ask you to-night, do the theories and doctrines 
 of the theologians satisfy the heart or brain of the 
 Nineteenth Century? 
 
 Have the churches the confidence of mankind ? 
 
 Does the merchant give credit to a man because 
 he belongs to a church? 
 
 Does the banker loan money to a man because 
 he is a Methodist or Baptist? 
 
 Will a certificate of good standing in any church 
 be taken as collateral security for one dollar?
 
 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 Will you take the word of a church member, or 
 his note, or his oath, simply because he is a church 
 member? 
 
 Are the clergy, as a class, better, kinder and 
 more generous to their families to their fellow-men 
 
 than doctors, lawyers, merchants and farmers? 
 
 Does a belief in ghosts and unreasonable things 
 necessarily make people honest?- 
 
 When a man loses confidence in Moses, must 
 the people lose confidence in him? 
 
 Does not the credit system in morals breed 
 extravagance in sin? 
 
 Why send missionaries to other lands while 
 every penitentiary in ours is filled with criminals ? 
 
 Is it philosophical to say that they who do right 
 carry a cross ? 
 
 Is it a source of joy to think that perdition is 
 the destination of nearly all of the children of men ? 
 
 Is it worth while to quarrel about original sin 
 
 when there is so much copy? 
 
 Does it pay to dispute about baptism, and the 
 trinity, and predestination, and apostolic succession 
 and the infallibility of churches, of popes and of 
 books? Does all this do any good?
 
 64 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 Are the theologians welcomers of new truths? 
 Are they noted for their candor? Do they treat 
 an opponent with common fairness? Are they 
 investigators? Do they pull forward, or do they 
 hold back? 
 
 Is science indebted to the church for a solitary 
 fact? 
 
 What church is an asylum for a persecuted 
 truth ? 
 
 What great reform has been inaugurated by the 
 church ? 
 
 Did the church abolish slavery? 
 
 Has the church raised its voice against war? 
 
 I used to think that there was in religion no real 
 restraining force. Upon this point my mind has 
 changed. Religion will prevent man from com 
 mitting artificial crimes and offenses. 
 
 A man committed murder. The evidence was 
 so conclusive that he confessed his guilt. 
 
 He was asked why he killed his fellow-man. 
 
 He replied : " For money." 
 
 "Did you get any?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " How much?" 
 
 " Fifteen cents."
 
 THE GHOSTS. 65 
 
 " What did you do with this money? " 
 "Spent it." 
 "What for?" 
 "Liquor." 
 
 "What else did you find upon the dead man?" 
 "He had his dinner in a bucket some meat 
 and bread." 
 
 "What did you do with that?" 
 
 "I ate the bread." 
 
 "What did you do with the meat?" 
 
 " I threw it away." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " It was Friday." 
 
 Just to the extent that man has freed himself 
 from the dominion of ghosts he has advanced. Just 
 to the extent that he has freed himself from the 
 tyrants of his own creation he has progressed. 
 Just to the extent that he has investigated for him 
 self he has lost confidence in superstition. 
 
 With knowledge obedience becomes intelligent 
 acquiescence it is no longer degrading. Acquies 
 cence in the understood in the known is the 
 act of a sovereign, not of a slave. It ennobles, it 
 does not degrade. 
 
 5
 
 66 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 Man has found that he must give liberty to 
 others in order to have it himself. He has found 
 that a master is also a slave; that a tyrant is him 
 self a serf. He has found that governments should 
 be founded and administered by man and for 
 man ; that the rights of all are equal ; that the 
 powers that be are not ordained by God ; that 
 woman is at least the equal of man ; that men ex 
 isted before books; that religion is one of the 
 phases of thought through which the world is pass 
 ing ; that all creeds were made by man ; that every 
 thing is natural ; that a miracle is an impossibility ; 
 that we know nothing of origin and destiny ; that 
 concerning the unknown we are all equally igno 
 rant ; that the pew has the right to contradict what 
 the pulpit asserts ; that man is responsible only to 
 himself and those he injures, and that all have a 
 right to think. 
 
 True religion must be free. Without perfect 
 liberty of the mind there can be no true religion. 
 Without liberty the brain is a dungeon the mind 
 a convict. The slave may bow and cringe and 
 crawl, but he cannot adore he cannot love. 
 
 True religion is the perfume of a free and grate 
 ful heart. True religion is a subordination of the
 
 THE GHOSTS. 67 
 
 passions to the perceptions of the intellect. True 
 religion is not a theory it is a practice. It is not 
 a creed it is a life. 
 
 A theory that is afraid of investigation is unde 
 serving a place in the -human mind. 
 
 I do not pretend to tell what all the truth is. I 
 do not pretend to have fathomed the abyss, nor to 
 have floated on outstretched wings level with the 
 dim heights of thought. I simply plead for freedom. 
 I denounce the cruelties and horrors of slavery. I 
 ask for light and air for the souls of men. I say, 
 take off those chains break those manacles free 
 those limbs release that brain! I plead for the 
 right to think to reason to investigate. I ask 
 that the future may be enriched with the honest 
 thoughts of men. I implore every human being to 
 be a soldier in the army of progress. 
 
 I will not invade the rights of others. You 
 have no right to ^rect your toll-gate upon the 
 highways of thought. You have no right to leap 
 from the hedges of superstition and strike down 
 the pioneers of the human race. You have no 
 right to sacrifice the liberties of man upon the 
 altars of ghosts. Believe what you may; preach
 
 68 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 what you desire ; have all the forms and ceremonies 
 you please ; exercise your liberty in your own way 
 but extend to all others the same right. 
 
 I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds 
 if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought 
 to be dangerous if they aver that doubt is a 
 crime, then I attack them one and all, because they 
 enslave the minds of men. 
 
 I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagi 
 nation that have ruled the world. I attack slavery. 
 I ask for room room for the human mind. 
 
 Why should we sacrifice a real world that we 
 have, for one we know not of? Why should we 
 enslave ourselves? Why should we forge fetters 
 for our own hands? Why should we be the slaves 
 of phantoms. The darkness of barbarism was the 
 womb of these shadows. In the light of science 
 they cannot cloud the sky forever. They have 
 reddened the hands of man with innocent blood. 
 They made the cradle a curse, and the grave 
 a place of torment. 
 
 They blinded the eyes and stopped the ears of 
 the human race. They subverted all ideas of 
 justice by promising infinite rewards for finite 
 virtues, and threatening infinite punishment for 
 finite offenses.
 
 THE GHOSTS. 69 
 
 They filled the future with heavens and with 
 hells, with the shining peaks of selfish joy and the 
 lurid abysses of flame. For ages they kept the 
 world in ignorance and awe, in want and misery, in 
 fear and chains. 
 
 I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I 
 plead for individual independence. I plead for the 
 rights of labor and of thought. I plead for a 
 chainless future. Let the ghosts go justice 
 remains. Let them disappear men and women 
 and children are left. Let the monsters fade away 
 the world is here with its hills and seas and 
 plains, with its seasons of smiles and frowns, its 
 spring of leaf and bud, its summer of shade and 
 flower and murmuring stream ; its autumn with the 
 laden boughs, when the withered banners of the 
 corn are still, and gathered fields are growing 
 strangely wan ; while death, poetic death, with 
 hands that color what they touch, weaves in the 
 Autumn wood her tapestries of gold and brown. 
 
 The world remains with its winters and homes 
 and firesides, where grow and bloom the virtues of 
 our race. All these are left; and music, with its 
 sad and thrilling voice, and all there is of art and 
 song and hope and love and aspiration high. All
 
 70 THE GHOSTS. 
 
 these remain. Let the ghosts go we will worship 
 them no more. 
 
 Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity 
 is grander than all the creeds, than all the books. 
 Humanity is the great sea, and these creeds, and 
 books, and religions, are but the waves of a day. 
 Humanity is the sky, and these religions and 
 dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds 
 changing continually, destined finally to melt away. 
 
 That which is founded upon slavery, and fear, 
 and ignorance, cannot endure. In the religion of 
 the future there will be men and women and 
 children, all the aspirations of the soul, and all the 
 tender humanities of the heart. 
 
 Let the ghosts go. .We will worship them no 
 more. Let them cover their eyeless sockets with 
 their fleshless hands and fade forever from the 
 imaginations of men.
 
 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD.
 
 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD, 
 
 LIBERTY SUSTAINS THE SAME RELATION TO MIND THAT SPACE 
 DOES TO MATTER. 
 
 THERE is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty 
 is the child of intelligence. 
 
 The history of man is simply the history of 
 slavery, of injustice and brutality, together with 
 the means by which he has, through the dead and 
 desolate years, slowly and painfully advanced. He 
 has been the sport and prey of priest and king, the 
 food of superstition and cruel might. Crowned 
 force has governed ignorance through fear. Hy 
 pocrisy and tyranny two vultures have fed 
 upon the liberties of man. From all these there 
 has been, and is, but one means of escape intel 
 lectual development. Upon the back of industry 
 has been the whip. Upon the brain have been the 
 fetters of superstition. Nothing has been left
 
 74 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art 
 and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been 
 practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of 
 man. In this great struggle every crime has been 
 rewarded and every virtue has been punished. 
 Reading, writing, thinking and investigating have 
 all been crimes. 
 
 Every science has been an outcast. 
 
 All the altars and all the thrones united to 
 arrest the forward march of the human race. The 
 king said that mankind must not work for them 
 selves. The priest said that mankind must not 
 think for themselves. One forged chains for the 
 hands, the other for the soul. Under this infamous 
 regime the eagle of the human intellect was for 
 ages a slimy serpent of hypocrisy. 
 
 The human race was imprisoned. Through 
 some of the prison bars came a few struggling rays 
 of light. Against these bars Science pressed its 
 pale and thoughtful face, wooed by the holy dawn 
 of human advancement. Bar after bar was broken 
 away. A few grand men escaped and devoted 
 their lives to the liberation of their fellows. 
 
 Only a few years ago there was a great 
 awakening of the human mind. Men began to
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 75 
 
 inquire by what right a crowned robber made 
 them work for him? The man who asked this 
 question was called a traitor. Others asked by 
 what right does a robed hypocrite rule my thought ? 
 Such men were called infidels. The priest said, 
 and the king said, where is this spirit of investiga 
 tion to stop? They said then and they say now, 
 that it is dangerous for man to be free. I deny it. 
 Out on the intellectual sea there is room enough 
 for every sail. In the intellectual air there is space 
 enough for every wing. 
 
 The man who does not do his own thinking is a 
 slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow- 
 men. 
 
 Every man should stand under the blue and 
 stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of 
 every other man. 
 
 Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all 
 have the same right to think, and all are equally 
 interested in the great questions of origin and 
 destiny. All I claim, all I plead for, is liberty of 
 thought and expression. That is all. I do not 
 pretend to tell what is absolutely true, but what I 
 think is true. I do not pretend to tell all the truth. 
 
 I do not claim that I have floated level with the
 
 76 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 heights of thought, or that I have descended to the 
 very depths of things. I simply claim that what 
 ideas I have, I have a right to express ; and that 
 any man who denies that right to me is an intel 
 lectual thief and robber. That is all. 
 
 Take those chains from the human soul. Break 
 those fetters. If I have no right to think, why 
 have I a brain? If I have no such right, have 
 three or four men, or any number, who may get 
 together, and sign a creed, and build a house, and 
 put a steeple upon it, and a bell in it have they 
 the right to think? The good men, the good 
 women are tired of the whip and lash in the realm 
 of thought. . They remember the chain and fagot 
 with a shudder. They are free, and they give 
 liberty to others. Whbever claims any right that 
 he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dis 
 honest and infamous. 
 
 In the good old times, our fathers had the idea 
 that they could make people believe to suit them. 
 Our ancestors, in the ages that are gone, really 
 believed that by force you could convince a man. 
 You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by 
 torture ; nor by social ostracism. But I will tell 
 you what you can do by these, and what you have
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 77 
 
 done. You can make hypocrites by the million. 
 You can make a man say that he has changed his 
 mind ; but he remains of the same opinion still. 
 Put fetters all over him; crush his feet in iron 
 boots ; stretch him to the last gasp upon the holy 
 rack ; burn him, if you please, but his ashes will be 
 of the same opinion still. 
 
 Our fathers in the good old times and the 
 best thing I can say about them is, that they have 
 passed away had an idea that they could force 
 men to think their way. That idea is still prevalent 
 in many parts, even of this country. Even in our 
 day some extremely religious people say, "We will 
 not trade with that man ; we will not vote for him ; 
 we will not hire him if he is a lawyer ; we will die 
 before we will take his medicine if he is a doctor; 
 we will not invite him to dinner; we will socially 
 ostracise him ; he must come to our church ; he 
 must believe our doctrines ; he must worship our 
 god or we will not in any way contribute to his 
 support." 
 
 In the old times of which I have spoken, 
 they desired to make all men think exactly alike. 
 All the mechanical ingenuity of the world cannot 
 make two clocks run exactly alike, and how are you
 
 78 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 
 
 going to make hundreds of millions of people, dif 
 fering in brain and disposition, in education and 
 aspiration, in conditions and surroundings, each 
 clad in a living robe of passionate flesh how are 
 you going to make them think and feel alike ? If 
 there is an infinite god, one who made us, and 
 wishes us to think alike, why did he give a spoonful 
 of brains to one, and a magnificent intellectual 
 development to another? Why is it that we have 
 all degrees of intelligence, from orthodoxy to 
 genius, if it was intended that all should think and 
 feel alike? 
 
 I used to read in books how our fathers perse 
 cuted mankind. But I never appreciated it. I read 
 it, but it did not burn itself into my soul. 1 did not 
 really appreciate the fnfamies that have been com 
 mitted in the name of religion, until I saw the iron 
 arguments that Christians used. I saw the Thumb 
 screw two little pieces of iron, armed on the 
 inner surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their 
 slipping; through each end a screw uniting the two 
 pieces. And when some .man denied the efficacy 
 of baptism, or may be said, "I do not believe that 
 a fish ever swallowed a man to keep him from 
 drowning," then they put his thumb between these
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 79 
 
 pieces of iron and in the name of love and 
 universal forgiveness, began to screw these pieces 
 together. When this was done most men said, "I 
 will recant." Probably I should have done the 
 same. Probably I would have said: "Stop, I will 
 admit anything that you wish; I will admit that 
 there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion ; 
 suit yourselves ; but stop." 
 
 But there was now and then a man who would 
 not swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now 
 and then some sublime heart, willing to die for an 
 intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such 
 men, we would be savages to-night. Had it not 
 been for a few brave, heroic souls in every age, we 
 would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild 
 beasts tattooed upon our flesh, dancing around 
 some dried snake fetich. 
 
 Let us thank every good and noble man who 
 stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, 
 of hatred and death, for what he believed to be the 
 truth. 
 
 Heroism did not excite the respect of our 
 fathers. The man who would not recant was not 
 forgiven. They screwed the thumbscrews down to 
 the last pang, and then threw their victim into some
 
 80 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence and dark 
 ness, he might suffer the agonies of the fabled 
 damned. This was done in the name of love in 
 the name of mercy in the name of the compas 
 sionate Christ. 
 
 I saw, too, what they called the Collar of 
 Torture. Imagine a circle of iron, and on the 
 inside a hundred points almost as sharp as needles. 
 This argument was fastened about the throat of 
 the sufferer. Then he could not walk, nor sit 
 down, nor stir without the neck being punctured by 
 these points. In a little while the throat would 
 begin to swell, and suffocation would end the 
 agonies of that man. This man, it may be, had 
 committed ^he crime of saying, with tears upon his 
 cheeks, "I do not believe that God, the father of 
 us all, will damn to eternal perdition any of the 
 children of men." 
 
 I saw another instrument, called the Scaven 
 ger s Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with 
 handles, not only where they now are, but at the 
 points as well, and just above the pivot that unites 
 the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles 
 the hands would be placed ; in the lower, the feet ; 
 and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 81 
 
 of the victim would be forced. In this condition/ 
 he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and the 
 strain upon the muscles produced such agony that 
 insanity would in pity end his pain. 
 
 This was done by gentlemen who said: "Who 
 soever smiteth thee upon one cheek turn to him the 
 other also." 
 
 I saw the Rack. This was a box like the bed of 
 a wagon, with a windlass at each end, with levers, 
 and ratchets to prevent slipping ; over each wind 
 lass went chains ; some were fastened to the ankles 
 of the sufferer; others to his wrists. And then 
 priests, clergymen, divines, saints, began turning 
 these windlasses, and kept turning, until the ankles, 
 the knees, the hips, the shoulders, the elbows, the 
 wrists of the victim were all dislocated, and the 
 sufferer was wet with the sweat of agony. And 
 they had standing by a physician to feel his pulse. 
 What for? To save his life? Yes. In mercy? 
 No ; simply that they might rack him once again. 
 
 This was done, remember, in the name of civil 
 ization ; in the name of law and order; in the name 
 of mercy ; in the name of religion ; in the name 
 of the most merciful Christ. 
 
 Sometimes, when I read and think about these 
 
 6
 
 82 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 frightful things, it seems to me that I have suffered 
 all these horrors myself. It seems sometimes, as 
 though I had stood upon the shore of exile and 
 gazed with tearful eyes toward home and native 
 land ; as though my nails had been torn from my 
 hands, and into the bleeding quick needles had 
 been thrust; as though my feet had been crushed 
 in iron boots ; as though I had been chained in the 
 cell of the Inquisition and listened with dying ears 
 for the coming footsteps of release ; as though I 
 had stood upon the scaffold and had seen the 
 glittering axe fall upon me ; as though I had been 
 upon the rack and had seen, bending above me, 
 the white faces of hypocrite priests ; as though I 
 had been taken from my fireside, from my wife and 
 children, taken to thfe public square, chained ; as 
 though fagots had been piled about me ; as though 
 the flames had climbed around my limbs and 
 scorched my eyes to blindness, and as though my 
 ashes had been scattered to the four winds, by all 
 the countless hands of hate. And when I so feel, 
 I swear that while I live I will do what little I 
 can to preserve and to augment the liberties of 
 man, woman, and child. 
 
 It is a question of justice, of mercy, of honesty,
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 83 
 
 of intellectual development. If there is a man in 
 the world who is not willing to give to every human 
 being every right he claims for himself, he is just so 
 much nearer a barbarian than I am. It is a ques 
 tion of honesty. The man who is not willing to 
 give to every other the same intellectual rights he 
 claims for himself, is dishonest, selfish, and brutal. 
 
 It is a question of intellectual development. 
 Whoever holds another man responsible for his 
 honest thought, has a deformed and distorted brain. 
 It is a question of intellectual development. 
 
 A little while ago I saw models of nearly every 
 thing that man has made. I saw models of all the 
 water craft, from the rude dug-out in which floated 
 a naked savage one of our ancestors a naked 
 savage, with teeth two inches in length, with a 
 spoonful of brains in the back of his head I saw 
 models of all the water craft of the world, from that 
 dug-out up to a man-of-war, that carries a hundred 
 guns and miles of canvas from that dug-out to 
 the steamship that turns its brave prow from the 
 port of New York, with a compass like a con 
 science, crossing three thousand miles of billows 
 without missing a throb or beat of its mighty iron 
 heart.
 
 84 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 I saw at the same time the weapons that man 
 has made, from a club, such as was grasped by 
 that same savage, when he crawled from his den in 
 the ground and hunted a snake for his dinner; 
 from that club to the boomerang, to the sword, to 
 the cross-bow, to the blunderbuss, to the flint-lock, 
 to the cap-lock, to the needle-gun, up to a cannon 
 cast by Krupp, capable of hurling a ball weighing 
 two thousand pounds through eighteen inches of 
 solid steel. 
 
 I saw, too, the armor from the shell of a turtle, 
 that one of our brave ancestors lashed upon his 
 breast when he went to fight for his country ; the 
 skin of -<JL porcupine, dried with the quills on, which 
 this same savage pulled over his. orthodox head, 
 up to the shirts of mail, that were worn in the 
 Middle Ages, that laughed at the edge of the 
 sword and defied the point of the spear; up to a 
 monitor clad in complete steel. 
 
 I saw at the same time, their musical instru 
 ments, from the tom-tom that is, a hoop with a 
 couple of strings of raw hide drawn across it 
 from that tom-tom, up to the instruments we 
 have to-day, that make the common air blossom 
 with melody.
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 85 
 
 I saw, too, their paintings, from a daub of 
 yellow mud, to the great works which now adorn 
 the galleries of the world. I saw also their sculp 
 ture, from the rude god with four legs, a half dozen 
 arms, several noses, and two or three rows of ears, 
 and one little, contemptible, brainless head, up to 
 the figures of to-day to the marbles that genius 
 has clad in such a personality that it seems almost 
 impudent to touch them without an introduction. 
 
 I saw their books books written upon skins of 
 wild beasts upon shoulder-blades of sheep 
 books written upon leaves, upon bark, up to the 
 splendid volumes that enrich the libraries of our 
 day. When I speak of libraries, I think of the 
 remark of Plato: "A house that has a library in 
 it has a soul." 
 
 I saw their implements of agriculture, from a 
 crooked stick that was attached to the horn of an 
 ox by some twisted straw, to the agricultural imple 
 ments of this generation, that make it possible 
 for a man to cultivate the soil without being an 
 ignoramus. 
 
 While looking upon these things I was forced to 
 say that man advanced only as he mingled his 
 thought with his labor, only as he got into part-
 
 86 THE LIBERTY OP 
 
 nership with the forces of nature, only as he 
 learned to take advantage of his surroundings 
 only as he freed himself from the bondage of fear, 
 only as he depended upon himself only as he 
 lost confidence in the gods. 
 
 I saw at the same time a row of human skulls, 
 from the lowest skull that has been found, the 
 Neanderthal skull skulls from Central Africa, 
 skulls from the Bushmen of Australia skulls from 
 the farthest isles of the Pacific sea up to the best 
 skulls of the last generation ; and I noticed that 
 there was the same difference between those skulls 
 that there was between the products of those skulls, 
 and I said to myself, "After all, it is a simple ques 
 tion of intellectual development." There was the 
 same difference between those skulls, the lowest 
 and highest skulls, that there was between the dug 
 out and the man-of-war and the steamship, between 
 the club and the Krupp gun, between the yellow 
 daub and the landscape, between the tom-tom and 
 an opera by Verdi. 
 
 The first and lowest skull in this row was the 
 den in which crawled the base and meaner instincts 
 of mankind, and the last was a temple in which 
 dwelt joy, liberty, and love.
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 87 
 
 It is all a question of brain, of intellectual de 
 velopment. 
 
 If we are nearer free than were our fathers, it 
 is because we have better heads upon the average, 
 and more brains in them. 
 
 Now, I ask you to be honest with me. It makes 
 no difference to you what I believe, nor what I wish 
 to prove. I simply ask you to be honest. Divest 
 your minds, for a moment at least, of all religious 
 prejudice. Act, for a few moments, as though you 
 were men and women. 
 
 Suppose the king, if there was one, and the 
 priest, if there was one, at the time this gentleman 
 floated in the dug-out, and charmed his ears with 
 the music of the tom-tom, had said: "That dug-out 
 is the best boat that ever can be built by man ; the 
 pattern of that came from on high, from the great 
 god of storm and flood, and any man who says that 
 he can improve it by putting a mast in it, with a sail 
 upon it, is an infidel, and shall be burned at the 
 stake;" what, in your judgment honor bright 
 would have been the effect upon the circumnaviga 
 tion of the globe? 
 
 Suppose the king, if there was one, and the 
 priest, if there was one and I presume there was
 
 88 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 a priest, because it was a very ignorant age sup 
 pose this king and priest had said: "That tom-tom 
 is the most beautiful instrument of music of which 
 any man can conceive; that is the kind of music 
 they have in heaven; an angel sitting upon the 
 edge of a fleecy cloud, golden in the setting sun, 
 playing upon that tom-tom, became so enraptured, 
 so entranced wifti her own music, that in a kind of 
 ecstasy she dropped it that is how we obtained it; 
 and any man who says that it can be improved by 
 putting a back an-d front to it, and four strings, and 
 a brklge, and getting a bow of hair with rosin, is a 
 blaspheming wretch, and shall die the death," I 
 ask you, what effect would that have had upon 
 music? If that course had been pursued, would 
 the human ears, in your judgment, ever have been 
 enriched with the divine symphonies of Beethoven ? 
 Suppose the king, if there was one, and the 
 priest, had said: "That crooked stick is the best 
 plow that can be invented : the pattern of that plow 
 was given to a pious farmer in a holy dream, and 
 that twisted straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted 
 things, and any man who says he can make an im 
 provement upon that plow, is an atheist;" what, in 
 your judgment, would have been the effect upon 
 .the science of agriculture ?
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 89 
 
 But the people said, and the king and priest 
 said: "We want better weapons with which to kill 
 our fellow Christians ; we want better plows, better 
 music, better paintings, and whoever will give us 
 better weapons, and better music, better houses to 
 live in, better clothes, we will robe him in wealth, 
 and crown him with honor." Every incentive was 
 held out to every human being to improve these 
 things. That is the reason the club has been 
 changed to a cannon, the dug-out to a steamship, 
 the daub to a painting ; that is the reason that the 
 piece of rough and broken stone finally became a 
 glorified statue. 
 
 You must not, however, forget that the gen 
 tleman in the dug-out, the gentleman who was 
 enraptured with the music of the tom-tom, and 
 cultivated his land with a crooked stick, had a 
 religion of his own. That gentlemen in the dug 
 out was orthodox. He was never troubled with 
 doubts. He lived and died settled in his mind. 
 He believed in hell ; and he thought he would be 
 far happier in heaven, if he could just lean over and 
 see certain people who expressed doubts as to the 
 truth of his creed, gently but everlastingly broiled 
 and burned.
 
 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 It is a very sad and unhappy fact that this man 
 has had a great many intellectual descendants. It 
 is also an unhappy fact in nature, that the ignorant 
 multiply much faster than the intellectual. This 
 fellow in the dug-out believed in a personal devil. 
 His devil had a cloven hoof, a long tail, armed with 
 a fiery dart ; and his devil breathed brimstone. 
 This devil was at least the equal of god ; not quite 
 so stout but a little shrewder. And do you know 
 there has not been a patentable improvement made 
 upon that devil for six thousand years. 
 
 This gentleman in the dug-out believed that God 
 was a tyrant; that he would eternally damn the 
 man who lived in accordance with his highest and 
 grandest ideal. He believed that the earth was 
 flat. He believed in a literal, burning, seething 
 hell of fire and sulphur. He had also his idea of 
 politics ; and his doctrine was, might . makes right. 
 And it will take thousands of years before the 
 world will reverse this doctrine, and believingly say, 
 "Right makes might." 
 
 All I ask is the same privilege to improve upon 
 that gentleman s theology as upon his musical in 
 strument; the same right to improve upon his 
 politics as upon his dug-out. That is all. I ask
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 91 
 
 for the human soul the same liberty in every direc 
 tion. That is the only crime I have committed. I 
 say, let us think. Let each one express his 
 thought. Let us become investigators, not follow 
 ers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in 
 heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied 
 with the worship of cowards and hypocrites. Hon 
 est unbelief, honest infidelity, honest atheism, will 
 be a perfume in heaven when pious hypocrisy, no 
 matter how religious it may be outwardly, will be a 
 stench. 
 
 This is my doctrine : Give every other human 
 being every right you claim for yourself. Keep 
 your mind open to the influences of nature. Re 
 ceive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us 
 advance. 
 
 The religionist of to-day wants the ship of his 
 soul to lie at the wharf of orthodoxy and rot in the 
 sun. He delights to hear the sails of old opinions 
 flap against the masts of old creeds. He loves to 
 see the joints and the sides open and gape in the 
 sun, and it is a kind of bliss for him to repeat again 
 and again: "Do not disturb my opinions. Do not 
 unsettle my mind ; I have it all made up, and I 
 want no infidelity. Let me go backward rather 
 than forward."
 
 92 
 
 As far as I am concerned I wish to be out on the 
 high seas. I wish to take my chances with wind, 
 and wave, and star. And I had rather go down in 
 the glory and grandeur of the storm, than to rot in 
 any orthodox harbor whatever. 
 
 After all, we are improving from age to age. 
 The most orthodox people in this country two 
 hundred years ago would have been burned for the 
 crime of heresy. The ministers who denounce me 
 for expressing my thought would have been in the 
 Inquisition themselves. Where once burned and 
 blazed the bivouac fires of the army of progress, 
 now glow the altars of the church. The religion 
 ists of our time are occupying about the same 
 ground occupied by heretics and infidels of one 
 hundred years ago. The church has advanced in 
 spite, as it were, of itself. It has followed the 
 army of progress protesting and denouncing, and 
 had to keep within protesting and denouncing dis 
 tance. If the church had not made great progress 
 I could not express my thoughts. 
 
 Man, however, has advanced just exactly in the 
 proportion with which he has mingled his thought 
 with his labor. The sailor, without control of the 
 wind and wave, knowmg nothing or very little of
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 93 
 
 the mysterious currents and pulses of the sea, is 
 superstitious. So also is the agriculturist, whose 
 prosperity depends upon something he cannot con 
 trol. But the mechanic, when a wheel refuses to 
 turn, never thinks of dropping on his knees and 
 asking the assistance of some divine power. He 
 knows there is a reason. He knows that some 
 thing is too large or too small; that there is 
 something wrong with his machine ; and he goes 
 to work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or 
 there, until the wheel will turn. Now, just in pro 
 portion as man gets away from being, as it were, 
 the slave of his surroundings, the serf of the 
 elements, of the heat, the frost, the snow, and 
 the lightning, just to the extent that he has got 
 ten control of his own destiny, just to the extent 
 that he has triumphed over the obstacles of nature, 
 he has advanced physically and intellectually. As 
 man develops, he places a greater value upon his 
 own rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner 
 thing. As he values his own rights, he begins to 
 value the rights of others. And when all men 
 give to all others all the rights they claim for them 
 selves, this world will be civilized. 
 
 A few years ago the people were afraid to
 
 94 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 question the king, afraid to question the priest, 
 afraid to investigate a creed, afraid to deny a book, 
 afraid to denounce a dogma, afraid to reason, 
 afraid to think. Before wealth they bowed to the 
 very earth, and in the presence of titles they 
 became abject. All this is slowly but surely 
 changing. We no longer bow to men simply be 
 cause they are rich. Our fathers worshiped the 
 golden calf. The worst you can say of an Amer 
 ican now is, he worships the gold of the calf. 
 Even the calf is beginning to see this distinction. 
 It no longer satisfies the ambition of a great 
 man to be king or emperor. The last Napoleon 
 was not satisfied with being the emperor of the 
 French. He was not satisfied with having a circlet 
 of gold about his head. He wanted some evidence 
 that he had something of value within his head. 
 So he wrote the life of Julius Csesar, that he might 
 become a member of the French Academy. The 
 emperors, the kings, the popes, no longer tower 
 above their fellows. Compare, for instance, King 
 William and Bismarck. The king is one of the 
 anointed by the most high, as they claim one 
 upon whose head has been poured the divine 
 petroleum of authority. Compare this king with
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 95 
 
 1 
 
 Bismarck, who towers an intellectual colossus above 
 the crowned mediocrity. Compare George Eliot 
 with Queen Victoria. The queen is clothed in 
 garments given her by blind fortune and unreason 
 ing chance, while George Eliot wears robes of 
 glory woven in the loom of her own genius. 
 
 The world is beginning to pay homage to intel 
 lect, to genius, to heart. 
 
 We have advanced. We have reaped the ben 
 efit of every sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of 
 every divine and brave act; and we should en 
 deavor to hand the torch to the next generation, 
 having added a little to the intensity and glory of 
 the flame. 
 
 When I think of how much this world has suf 
 fered ; when I think of how long our fathers were 
 slaves, of how they cringed and crawled at the foot 
 of the throne, and in the dust of the altar, of how 
 they abased themselves, of how abjectly they stood 
 in the presence of superstition robed and crowned, 
 I am amazed. 
 
 This world has not been fit for a man to live in 
 fifty years. It was not until the year 1808 that 
 Great Britain abolished the slave trade. Up to 
 that time her judges, sitting upon the bench in the
 
 96 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 name of justice, her priests, occupying her pulpits, 
 in the name of universal love, owned stock in the 
 slave ships, and luxuriated upon the profits of 
 piracy and murder. It was not until .the same year 
 that the United States of America abolished the 
 slave trade between this and other countries, but 
 carefully preserved it as between the States. It 
 was not until the 28th day of August, 1833, that 
 Great Britain abolished human slavery in her colo 
 nies ; and it was not until the ist day of January, 
 1863, that Abraham Lincoln, sustained by the sub 
 lime and heroic North, rendered our flag pure as 
 the sky in which it floats. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many 
 respects, the grandest man ever President of the 
 United States. Upon his monument these words 
 should be written: "Here sleeps the only man in 
 the history of the world, who, having been clothed 
 with almost absolute power, never abused it, except 
 upon the side of mercy." 
 
 Think how long we clung to the institution of 
 human slavery, how long lashes upon the naked 
 back were a legal tender for labor performed. 
 Think of it. The pulpit of this country deliber 
 ately and willingly, for a hundred years, turned the 
 cross of Christ into a whipping post.
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD, 97 
 
 With every drop of my blood I hate and 
 execrate every form of tyranny, every form of 
 slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty. 
 
 What do I mean by liberty? By physical liberty 
 I mean the right to do anything which does not 
 interfere with the happiness of another. By intel 
 lectual liberty I mean the right to think right and 
 the right to think wrong. Thought is the means 
 by which we endeavor to arrive at truth. If we 
 know the truth already, we need not think. All 
 that can be required is honesty of purpose. You 
 ask my opinion about anything; I examine it 
 honestly, and when my mind is made up, what 
 should I tell you? Should I tell you my real 
 thought? What should I do? There is a book 
 put in my hands. I am told this is the Koran; it 
 was written by inspiration. I read it, and when I 
 get through, suppose that I think in my heart and 
 in my brain, that it is utterly untrue, and you then 
 ask me, what do you think? Now, admitting that 
 I live in Turkey, and have no chance to get any 
 office unless I am on the side of the Koran, 
 what should I say? Should I make a clean breast 
 and say, that upon my honor I do not believe 
 
 it? What would you think then of my fellow- 
 
 7
 
 98 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 citizens if they said: "That man is dangerous, he 
 is -dishonest." 
 
 Suppose I read the book called the bible, and 
 when I get through I make up my mind that it was 
 written by men. A minister asks me, "Did you 
 read the bible?" I answer that I did. "Do you 
 think it divinely inspired?" What should I reply? 
 Should I say to myself, " If I deny the inspiration 
 of the scriptures, the people will never clothe me 
 with power." What ought I to. answer? Ought I 
 not to say like a man: "I have read it; I do not 
 believe it." Should I not give the real transcript 
 of my mind ? Or should I turn hypocrite and pre 
 tend what I do not feel, and hate myself forever 
 after for being a cringing coward. For my part I 
 would rather a man would tell me what he honestly 
 thinks. I would rather he would preserve his man 
 hood. I had a thousand times rather be a manly 
 unbeliever than an unmanly believer. And if there 
 is a judgment day, a time when all will stand before 
 some supreme being, I believe I will stand higher, 
 and stand a better chance of getting my case de 
 cided in my favor, than any man sneaking through 
 life pretending to believe what he does not. 
 
 I have made up my mind to say my say. I
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND GHILD. 99 
 
 shall do it kindly, distinctly ; but I am going to do 
 it. I know there are thousands of men who sub 
 stantially agree with me, but who are not in a con 
 dition to express their thoughts. They are poor ; 
 they are in business ; and they know that should 
 they tell their honest thought, persons will refuse 
 to patronize them to trade with them; they wish 
 to get bread for their little children ; they wish to 
 take care of their wives ; they wish to have homes 
 and the comforts of life. Every such person is a 
 certificate of the meanness of the community in 
 which he resides. And yet I do not blame these 
 people for not expressing their thought. I say to 
 them: "Keep your ideas to yourselves; feed and 
 clothe the ones you love ; I will do your talking for 
 you. The church can not touch, can not crush, 
 can not starve, cannot stop or stay me ; I will ex 
 press your thoughts." 
 
 As an excuse for tyranny, as a justification of 
 slavery, the church has taught that man is totally 
 depraved. Of the truth of that doctrine, the 
 church has furnished the only evidence there is. 
 The truth is, we are both good and bad. The 
 worst are capable of some good deeds, and the
 
 100 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 best are capable of bad. The lowest can rise, and 
 the highest may fall. That mankind can be divided 
 into two great classes, sinners and saints, is an 
 utter falsehood. In times of great disaster, called 
 it may be, by the despairing voices of women, men, 
 denounced by the church as totally depraved, rush 
 to death as to a festival. By such men, deeds 
 are done so filled with self-sacrifice and generous 
 daring, that millions pay to them the tribute, not 
 only of admiration, but of tears. Above all creeds, 
 above all religions, after all, is that divine thing, 
 Humanity ; and now and then in shipwreck on the 
 wide, wild sea, or mid the rocks and breakers of 
 some cruel shore, or where the serpents of flame 
 writhe and hiss, some glorious heart, some chivalric 
 soul does a deed that glitters like a star, and gives 
 the lie to all the dogmas of superstition. All these 
 frightful doctrines have been used to degrade and 
 to enslave mankind. 
 
 Away, forever away with the creeds and books 
 and forms and laws and religions that take from 
 the soul liberty and reason. Down with the idea 
 that thought is dangerous ! Perish the infamous 
 doctrine that man can have property in man. Let 
 us resent with indignation every effort to put a
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 101 
 
 chain upon our minds. If there is no God, cer 
 tainly we should not bow and cringe and crawl. If 
 there is a God, there should be "no slaves. 
 
 LIBERTY OF WOMAN. 
 
 Women have been the slaves of slaves ; and in 
 my judgment it took millions of ages for woman to 
 come from the condition of abject slavery up to the 
 institution of marriage. Let me say right here, that 
 I regard marriage as the holiest institution among 
 men. Without the fireside there is no human ad 
 vancement; without the family relation there is no 
 life worth living. Every good government is made 
 up of good families. The unit of good government 
 is the family, and anything that tends to destroy 
 the family is perfectly devilish and infamous. I be 
 lieve in marriage, and I hold in utter contempt the 
 opinions of those long-haired men and short-haired 
 women who denounce the institution of marriage. 
 
 The grandest ambition that any man can possi 
 bly have, is to so live, and so improve himself in 
 heart and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some 
 splendid woman ; and the grandest ambition of any 
 girl is to make herself worthy of the love and ado-
 
 102 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 ration of some magnificent man. That is my iaea. 
 There is no success in life without love and mar 
 riage. You had better J^e the emperor of one lov 
 ing and tender-heart, and she the empress of yours, 
 than to be king of the world. The man who has 
 really won the love of one good woman in this 
 world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beg 
 gar, his life has been a success. 
 
 I say it took millions of years to come from the 
 condition of abject slavery up to the condition of 
 marriage. Ladies, the ornaments you wear upon 
 your persons to-night are but the souvenirs of your 
 mother s bondage. The chains around your necks, 
 and the bracelets clasped upon your white arms by 
 the thrilled hand of love, have been changed by 
 the wand of civilization from iron to shining, glit 
 tering gold. 
 
 But nearly every religion has accounted for all 
 the devilment in this world by the crime of woman. 
 What a gallant thing that is ! And if it is true, I 
 had rather live with the woman I love in a world 
 ful-1 of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody 
 but men. 
 
 I read in a book and I will say now that I 
 cannot give the exact language, as my memory does
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 103 
 
 not retain the words, but I can give the substance 
 - 1 read in a book that the Supreme Being con 
 cluded to make a world and one man ; that he took 
 
 * 
 
 some nothing and made a world and one man, and 
 put this man in a garden.* In a little while he 
 noticed that the man got lonesome ; that he wan 
 dered around as if he was waiting for a train. 
 There was nothing to interest him ; no news ; no 
 papers ; no politics ; no policy ; and, as the devil 
 had not yet made his appearance, there was no * 
 chance for reconciliation ; not even for civil service 
 reform. Well, he wandered about the garden in 
 this condition, until finally the Supreme Being made 
 up his mind to make him a companion. 
 
 Having used up all the nothing he originally 
 took in making the world and one man, he had to 
 take a part of the man to start a woman with. So 
 he caused a sleep to fall on this man now under 
 stand me, I do not say this story is true. After 
 the sleep fell upon this man, the Supreme Being 
 took a rib, or as the French would call it, a cutlet, 
 out of this man, and from that he made a woman. 
 And considering the amount of raw material used, 
 I look upon it as the most successful job ever per 
 formed. Well, after he got the woman done, she
 
 104 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 was brought to the man ; not to see how she liked 
 him, but to see how he liked her. He liked her, 
 and they started housekeeping ; and they were told 
 of certain things they might do and of one thing 
 they could not do and of course they did it. I 
 would have done it in fifteen minutes, and I know 
 it. There wouldn t have been an apple on that 
 tree half an hour from date, and the limbs would 
 have been full of clubs. And then they were 
 turned out of the park and extra- policemen were 
 put on to keep them from getting back. 
 
 Devilment commenced. The mumps, and the 
 measles, and the whooping-cough, and the scarlet 
 fever started in their race for man. They began to 
 have the toothache, roses began to have thorns, 
 snakes began to have poisoned teeth, and people 
 began to divide about religion and politics, and the 
 world has been full of trouble from that day to this. 
 
 Nearly all of the religions of this world account 
 for the existence of evil by such a story as that ! 
 
 I read in another book what appeared to be an 
 account of the same transaction. It was written 
 about four thousand years before the other. All 
 commentators agree that the one that was written 
 last was the original, and that the one that was
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 105 
 
 written first was copied from the one that was 
 written last. But I would advise you all not to 
 allow your creed to be disturbed by a little matter 
 of four or five thousand years. In this other story, 
 Brahma made up his mind to make the world and a 
 man and woman. He made the world, and he 
 made the man and then the woman, and put them 
 on the island of Ceylon. According to the account 
 it was the most beautiful island of which man can 
 conceive. Such birds, such songs, such flowers and 
 such verdure ! And the branches of the trees were 
 so arranged that when the wind swept through 
 them every tree was a thousand /Eolian harps. 
 
 Brahma, when he put them there, said: "Let 
 them have a period of courtship, for it is my desire 
 and will that true love should forever precede 
 marriage." When I read that, it was so much 
 more beautiful and lofty than the other, that I said 
 to myself, " If either one of these stories ever turns 
 out to be true, I hope it will be this one." 
 
 Then they had their courtship, with the nightin 
 gale singing, and the stars shining, and the flowers 
 blooming, and they fell in love. Imagine that 
 courtship ! No prospective fathers or mothers-in- 
 law; no prying and gossiping neighbors; nobody
 
 100 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 to say, "Young man, how do you expect to support 
 her?" Nothing of that kind. They were married 
 by the Supreme Brahma, and he said to them : 
 "Remain here; you must never leave this island." 
 Well, after a little while the man and his name 
 was Adami, and the woman s name was Heva 
 said to Heva: " I believe I ll look about a little." 
 He went to the northern extremity of the island 
 where there was a little narrow neck of land con 
 necting it with the mainland, and the devil, who is 
 always playing pranks with us, produced a mirage, 
 and when he looked over to the mainland, such 
 hills and vales, such dells and dales, such mountains 
 crowned with snow, such cataracts clad in bows of 
 glory did he see there, that he went back and told 
 Heva: "The country over there is a thousand 
 times better than this; let us migrate." She, like 
 every other woman that ever lived, said: " Let well 
 enough alone ; we have all we want ; let us stay 
 here." But he said "No, let us go;" so she fol 
 lowed him, and when they came to this narrow 
 neck of land, he took her on his back like a gen 
 tleman, and carried her over. But the moment 
 they got over they heard a crash, and looking back, 
 .discovered that this narrow neck of land had fallen
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 107 
 
 into the sea. The mirage had disappeared, and 
 there were naught but rocks and sand; and then 
 the Supreme Brahma cursed them both to the 
 lowest hell. 
 
 Then it was that the man spoke, and I have 
 liked him ever since for it "Curse me, but curse 
 not her, it was not her fault, it was mine." 
 
 That s the kind of man to start a world with. 
 
 The Supreme Brahma said: "I will save her, 
 but not thee." And then she spoke out of her 
 fullness of love, out of a heart in which there was 
 love enough to make all her daughters rich in holy 
 
 affection, and said: " If thou wilt not spare him, 
 
 
 
 spare neither me ; I do not wish to live without 
 him; I love him." Then the Supreme Brahma 
 said and I have liked him ever since I read it 
 "I will spare you both and watch over you and 
 your children forever." 
 
 Honor bright, is not that the better and grander 
 story ? 
 
 And from that same book I want to show you 
 what ideas some of these miserable heathen had; 
 the heathen we are trying to convert. We send 
 missionaries over yonder to convert heathen there, 
 and we send soldiers out on the plains to kill
 
 108 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 heathen here. If we can convert the heathen, why 
 not convert those nearest home ? Why not convert 
 those we can get at? Why not convert those who 
 have the immense advantage of the example of 
 the average pioneer? But to show you the men 
 we are trying to convert: In this book it says: 
 "Man is strength, woman is beauty; man is cour 
 age, woman is love. When the one man loves the 
 one woman and the one woman loves the one man, 
 the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in 
 that house and sing for joy." 
 
 They are the men we are converting. Think 
 of it! I tell you, when I read these things, I say 
 that love is not of any country ; nobility does not 
 belong exclusively to any race, and through all the 
 ages, there have been a few great and tender souls 
 blossoming in love and pity. 
 
 In my judgment, the woman is the equal of the 
 man. She has all the rights I have and one more, 
 and that is the right to be protected. That is my 
 doctrine. You are married ; try and make the 
 woman you love happy. Whoever marries simply 
 for himself will make a mistake ; but whoever loves 
 a woman so well that he says " I will make her 
 happy," makes no mistake. And so with the
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 109 
 
 woman who says, " I will make him happy." There 
 is only one way to be happy, and that is to make 
 somebody else so, and you cannot be happy by 
 going cross lots; you have got to go the regular 
 turnpike road. 
 
 If there is any man I detest, it is the man who 
 thinks he is the head of a family the man who 
 thinks he is "boss!". The fellow in the dug-out 
 used that word " boss ; " that was one of his favorite 
 expressions. 
 
 Imagine a young man and a young woman 
 courting, walking out in the moonlight, and the 
 nightingale singing a song of pain and love, as 
 though the thorn touched her heart imagine them 
 stopping there in the moonlight and starlight and 
 song, and saying, " Now, here, let us settle who is 
 boss ! " I tell you it is an infamous word and an 
 infamous feeling I abhor a man who is "boss," 
 who is going to -govern in his family, and when he 
 speaks orders all the rest to be still as some mighty 
 idea is about to be launched from his mouth. Do 
 you know I dislike this man unspeakably? 
 
 I hate above all things a cross man. What 
 right has he to murder the sunshine of a day? 
 What right has he to assassinate the joy of life?
 
 110 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 When you go home you ought to go like a ray of 
 light so that it will, even in the night, burst out 
 of the doors and windows and illuminate the 
 darkness. Some men think their mighty brains 
 have been in a turmoil ; they have been thinking 
 about who will be alderman from the fifth ward; 
 they have been thinking about politics ; great and 
 mighty questions have been engaging their minds; 
 they have bought calico at five cents or six, and 
 want to sell it for seven. Think of the intellectual 
 strain that must have been upon that man, and 
 when he gets home everybody else in the house 
 must look out for his comfort. A woman who has 
 only taken care of five or six children, and one or 
 two of them sick, has been nursing them and 
 singing to them, and trying to make one yard of 
 cloth do the work of two, she, of course, is fresh 
 and fine and ready to wait upon this gentleman 
 the head of the family the boss! 
 
 Dp you know another thing? I despise a 
 stingy man. I do not see how it is possible for a 
 man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten 
 million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he 
 meets almost every day the withered hand of 
 beggary and the white lips of famine. How a
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. Ill 
 
 man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch 
 of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is 
 past my comprehension. I do not see how he can 
 do it. I should not think he could do it any more 
 than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, 
 where hundreds and thousands of men were 
 drowning in the sea. 
 
 Do you know that I have known men who 
 would trust their wives with their hearts and their 
 honor but not with their pocketbook; not with a 
 dollar. When I see a man of that kind, I always 
 think he knows which of these articles is the most 
 valuable. Think of making your wife a beggar! 
 Think of her having to ask you every day for a 
 dollar, or for two dollars or fifty cents! "What 
 did you do with that dollar I gave you last week?" 
 Think of having a wife that is afraid of you! 
 What kind of children do you expect to have with 
 a beggar and a coward for their mother? Oh, I 
 tell you if you have but a dollar in the world, and 
 you have got to spend it, spend it like a king; 
 spend it as though it were a dry leaf and you the 
 owner of unbounded forests ! That s the way to 
 spend it ! I had rather be a beggar and spend my 
 last dollar like a king, than be a king and spend
 
 112 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 my money like a beggar ! If it has got to go, let 
 it go! 
 
 Get the best you can for your family try to 
 look as well as you can yourself. When you used 
 to go courting, how elegantly you looked! Ah, 
 your eye was bright, your step was light, and you 
 looked like a prince. Do you know that it is 
 insufferable egotism in you to suppose a woman is 
 going to love you always looking as slovenly as 
 you can! Think of it! Any good woman on 
 earth will be true to you forever when you do your 
 level best. 
 
 Some people tell me, "Your doctrine about 
 loving, and wives, and all that, is splendid for the 
 rich, but it won t do for the poor." I tell you 
 to-night there is more love in the homes of the 
 poor than in the palaces of the rich. The meanest 
 hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and 
 a palace without love is a den only fit for wild 
 beasts. That is my doctrine ! You cannot be so 
 poor that you cannot help somebody. Good 
 nature is the cheapest commodity in the world ; 
 and love is the only thing that will pay ten per 
 cent, to borrower and lender both. Do not tell me 
 that you have got to be rich! We have a false
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 113 
 
 standard of greatness in the United States. We 
 think here that a man must be great, that he must 
 be notorious ; that he must be extremely wealthy, 
 or that his name must be upon the putrid lips 
 of rumor. It is all a mistake. It is not necessary 
 to be rich or to be great, or to be powerful, to be 
 happy. The happy man is the successful man. 
 
 Happiness is the legal tender of the soul. 
 
 Joy is wealth. 
 
 A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the 
 old Napoleon a magnificent tomb of gilt and 
 gold, fit almost for a dead deity and gazed upon 
 the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble, where 
 rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I 
 leaned over the balustrade and thought about the 
 career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. 
 
 I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, 
 contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon I 
 saw him putting down the mob in the streets of 
 Paris I saw him at the head of the army of Italy 
 -I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with 
 the tri-color in his hand I saw him in Egypt in 
 the shadows of the pyramids I saw him conquer 
 the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the 
 eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo at
 
 114 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where 
 the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild 
 blast scattered his legions like winter s withered 
 leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster 
 driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris 
 clutched like a wild beast banished to Elba. I 
 saw him escape and retake an empire by the force 
 of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of 
 Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to 
 wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I 
 saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed 
 behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn 
 sea. 
 
 I thought of the orphans and widows he had 
 made of the tears that had been shed for his 
 glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, 
 pushed from his heart by the cold hand of 
 ambition. And I said I would rather have been a 
 French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would 
 rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over 
 the door, and the grapes growing purple in the 
 kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have 
 been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my 
 side, knitting as the day died out of the sky with 
 my children upon my knees and their arms about
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 115 
 
 me I would rather have been that man and gone 
 down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless 
 dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation 
 of force and murder. 
 
 It is not necessary to be great to be happy ; it 
 is not necessary to be rich to be just and generous 
 and to have a heart filled with divine affection. 
 No matter whether you are rich or poor, treat your 
 wife as though she were a splendid flower, and she 
 will fill your life with perfume and with joy. 
 
 And do you know, it is a splendid thing to 
 think that the woman you really love will never 
 grow old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, 
 through the mask of years, if you really love her, 
 you will always see the face you loved and won. 
 And a woman who really loves a man does not see 
 that he grows old; he is not decrepit to her; he 
 does not tremble ; he is not old ; she always sees 
 the same gallant gentleman who won her hand and 
 heart. I like to think of it in that way ; I like to 
 think that love is eternal. And to love in that way 
 and then go down the hill of life together, and as 
 you go down, hear, perhaps, the laughter of 
 grandchildren, while the birds of joy and love sing 
 once more in the leafless branches of the tree 
 of age.
 
 116 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 I believe in the fireside. I believe in the 
 democracy of home. I believe in the republicanism 
 of the family. I believe in liberty, equality and 
 love. 
 
 THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN. 
 
 If women have been slaves, what shall I say of 
 children; of the little children in alleys and 
 sub-cellars ; the little children who turn pale when 
 they hear their fathers footsteps ; little children who 
 run away when they only hear their names called 
 by the lips of a mother; little children the 
 children of poverty, the children of crime, the 
 children of brutality, wherever they are flotsam 
 and jetsam upon the wild, mad sea of life my 
 heart goes out to them, one and all. 
 
 I tell you the children have the same rights that 
 we have, and we ought to treat them as though 
 they were human beings. They should be reared 
 with love, with kindness, with tenderness, and not 
 with brutality. That is my idea of children 
 
 When your little child tells a lie, do not rush at 
 him as though the world were about to go into 
 bankruptcy. Be honest with him. A tyrant father 
 will have liars for his children; do you know that?
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 117 
 
 A lie is born of tyranny upon the one hand and 
 weakness upon the other, and when you rush at a 
 poor little boy with a club in your hand, of course 
 he lies. 
 
 I thank thee, Mother Nature, that thou hast put 
 ingenuity enough in the brain of a child, when 
 attacked by a brutal parent, to throw up a little 
 breastwork in the shape of a lie. 
 
 When one of your children tells a lie, be honest 
 with him ; tell him that you have told hundreds of 
 them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way; 
 that you have tried it. Tell him as the man did in 
 Maine when his boy left home: "John, honesty is 
 the best policy; I have tried both." Be honest 
 with him. Suppose a man as much larger than you 
 as you are larger than a child five years old, should 
 come at you with a liberty pole in his hand, and in 
 a voice of thunder shout, "Who broke that plate?" 
 There is not a solitary one of you who would not 
 swear you never saw it, or that it was cracked 
 when you got it. Why not be honest with these 
 children? Just imagine a man who deals in stocks 
 whipping his boy for putting false rumors afloat! 
 Think of a lawyer beating his own flesh and blood 
 for evading the truth when he makes half of his
 
 118 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 own living that way ! Think of a minister 
 punishing his child for not telling all he thinks ! 
 Just think of it ! 
 
 When your child commits a wrong, take it in 
 your arms ; let it feel your heart beat against its 
 heart ; let the child know that you really and truly 
 and sincerely love it. Yet some Christians, good 
 Christians, when a child commits a fault, drive it 
 from the door and say: "Never do you darken this 
 house again." Think of that! And then these 
 same people will get down on their knees and ask 
 God to take care of the child they, have driven 
 from home. I will never ask God to take care of 
 my children unless I am doing my level best in that 
 same direction. 
 
 But I will tell you what I say to my children : 
 " Go where you will ; commit what crime you may; 
 fall to what depth of degradation you may; you 
 can never commit any crime that will shut my door, 
 my arms, or my heart to you. As long as I live 
 you shall have one sincere friend." 
 
 Do you know that I have seen some people 
 who acted as though they thought that when the 
 Saviour said " Suffer little children to come unto me, 
 for of such is the kingdom of heaven," he had a
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 119 
 
 raw-hide under his mantle, and made that remark 
 simply to get the children within striking distance? 
 
 I do not believe in the government of the lash. 
 If any one of you ever expects to whip your chil 
 dren again, I want you to have a photograph taken 
 of yourself when you are in the act, with your face 
 red with vulgar anger, and the face of the little 
 child, with eyes swimming in tears and the little 
 chin dimpled with fear, like a piece of water struck 
 by a sudden cold wind. Have the picture taken. 
 If that little child should die, I cannot think of a 
 sweeter way to spend an autumn afternoon than to 
 go out to the cemetery, when the maples are clad 
 in tender gold, and little scarlet runners are coming, 
 like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the 
 earth and sit down upon the grave and look at 
 that photograph, and think of the flesh now dust 
 that you beat. I tell you it is wrong ; it is no way 
 to raise children ! Make your home happy. Be 
 honest with them. Divide fairly with them in 
 everything. 
 
 Give them a little liberty and love, and you can 
 not drive them out of your house. They will want 
 to stay there. Make home pleasant. Let them 
 play any game they wish. Do not be so foolish as
 
 120 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 to say: "You may roll balls on the ground, but you 
 must not roll them on a green cloth. You may 
 knock them with a mallet, but you must not push 
 them with a cue. You may play with little pieces 
 of paper which have authors written on them, but 
 you must not have cards." Think of it! "You 
 may go to a minstrel show where people blacken 
 themselves and imitate humanity below them, but 
 you must not go to a theatre and see the characters 
 created by immortal genius put upon the stage." 
 Why? Well, I can t think of any reason in the 
 world except "minstrel" is a word of two syllables, 
 and "theatre" has three. 
 
 Let children have some daylight at home if you 
 want to keep them there, and do not commence at 
 the cradle and shout "Don t!" "Don t!" "Stop!" 
 That is nearly all that is said to a child from 
 the cradle until he is twenty-one years old, and 
 when he comes of age other people begin saying 
 "Don t!" And the church says "Don t?" and 
 the party he belongs to says "Don t! " 
 
 I despise that way of going through this world. 
 Let us have liberty just a little. Call me infidel, 
 call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to 
 treat my children, that they can come to my grave
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 121 
 
 and truthfully say: "He who sleeps here never 
 gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now 
 dust, never came to us an unkind word." 
 
 People justify all kinds of tyranny towards 
 children upon the ground that they are totally 
 depraved. At the bottom of ages of cruelty lies 
 this infamous doctrine of total depravity. Religion 
 contemplates a child as a living crime heir to an 
 infinite curse doomed to eternal fire. 
 
 In the olden time, they thought some days were 
 too good for a child to enjoy himself. When I was 
 a boy Sunday was considered altogether too holy 
 to be happy in. Sunday used to commence then 
 when the sun went down on Saturday night. We 
 commenced at that time for the purpose of getting 
 a good ready, and when the sun fell below the 
 horizon on Saturday evening, there was a darkness 
 fell upon the house ten thousand times deeper 
 than that of night. Nobody said a pleasant word ; 
 nobody laughed ; nobody smiled ; the child that 
 looked the sickest was regarded as the most pious. 
 That night you could not even crack hickory nuts. 
 If you were caught chewing gum it was only 
 another evidence of the total depravity of the 
 human heart. It was an exceedingly solemn night.
 
 122 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 Dyspepsia was in the very air you breathed. 
 Everybody looked sad and mournful. I have 
 noticed all my life that many people think they 
 have religion when they are troubled with dys 
 pepsia. If there could be found an absolute 
 specific for that disease, it would be the hardest 
 blow the church has ever received. 
 
 On Sunday morning the solemnity had simply 
 increased. Then we went to church. The 
 minister was in a pulpit about twenty feet high, 
 with a little sounding-board above him, and he 
 commenced at "firstly" and went on and on and 
 on to about "twenty- thirdly." Then he made a 
 few remarks by way of application ; and then took 
 a general view of the subject, and in about two 
 hours reached the last chapter in Revelations. 
 
 In those days, no matter how cold the weather 
 was, there was no fire in the church. It was 
 thought to be a kind of sin to be comfortable while 
 you were thanking God. The first church that 
 ever had a stove in it in New England, divided on 
 that account. So the first church in which they 
 sang by note, was torn in fragments. 
 
 After the sermon we had an intermission. 
 Then came the catechism with the chief end of
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 123 
 
 man. We went through with that. We sat in a 
 row with our feet coming in about six inches of the 
 floor. The minister asked us if we knew that we 
 all deserved to go to hell, and we all answered 
 "Yes." Then we were asked if we would be will 
 ing to go hell if it was God s will, and every little 
 liar shouted "Yes." Then the same sermon was 
 preached once more, commencing at the other end 
 and going back. After that, we started for home, 
 sad and solemn overpowered with the wisdom 
 displayed in the scheme of the atonement. When 
 we got home, if we had been good boys, and the 
 weather was warm, sometimes they would take us 
 out to the graveyard to cheer us up a little. It did 
 cheer me. When I looked at the sunken tombs 
 and the leaning stones, and read the half-effaced 
 inscriptions through the moss of silence and forget- 
 fulness, it was a great comfort. The reflection 
 came to my mind that the observance of the Sab 
 bath could not last always. Sometimes they would 
 sing that beautiful hymn in which occurs these 
 cheerful lines : 
 
 "Where congregations ne er break up, 
 And Sabbaths never end." 
 
 These lines, I think, prejudiced me a little
 
 124 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 against even heaven. Then we had good books 
 that we read on Sundays by way of keeping us 
 happy and contented. There were Milners 
 "History of the Waldenses," Baxter s "Call to the 
 Unconverted," Yahn s "Archaeology of the Jews," 
 and Jenkins "On the Atonement." I used to read 
 Jenkins "On the Atonement." I have often 
 thought that an atonement would have to be 
 exceedingly broad in its provisions to cover the 
 case of a man who would write a book like that 
 for a boy. 
 
 But at last the Sunday wore away, and the 
 moment the sun went down we were free.- Be 
 tween three and four o clock we would go out to 
 see how the sun was coming on. Sometimes it 
 seemed to me that it was stopping from pure 
 meanness. But finally 4t went down. It had to. 
 And when the last rim of light sank below the 
 horizon, off would go our caps, and we would give 
 three cheers for liberty once more. 
 
 Sabbaths used to be prisons. Every Sunday 
 was a Bastile. Every Christian was a kind of turn 
 key, and every child was a prisoner, a convict. 
 In that dungeon, a smile was a crime.
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 125 
 
 It was thought wrong for a child to laugh upon 
 this holy day. Think of that! 
 
 A little child would go out into the garden, and 
 there would be a tree laden with blossoms, and the 
 little fellow would lean against it, and there would 
 be a bird on one of the boughs, singing and swing 
 ing, and thinking about four little speckled eggs, 
 warmed by the breast of its mate, singing and 
 swinging, and the music in happy waves rippling 
 out of its tiny throat, and the flowers blossoming, 
 the air filled with perfume and the great white 
 clouds floating in the sky, and the little boy would 
 lean up against that tree and think about hell and 
 the worm that never dies. 
 
 I have heard them preach, when I sat in the 
 pew and my feet did not touch the floor, about the 
 final home of the unconverted. In order to impress 
 upon the children the length of time they would 
 probably stay if they settled in that country, the 
 preacher would frequently give us the following 
 illustration: "Suppose that once in a billion years 
 a bird should come from some far-distant planet, 
 and carry off in its little bill a grain of sand, a time 
 would finally come when the last atom composing 
 this earth would be carried away ; and when this
 
 126 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 last atom was taken, it would not even be sun 
 up in hell." Think of such an infamous doctrine 
 being taught to children ! 
 
 The laugh of a child will make the holiest day 
 more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, O 
 weird musician, thy harp strung with Apollo s 
 golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with 
 symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the 
 organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver 
 notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and 
 charm the lovers wandering mid the vine-clad hills. 
 But know, your sweetest strains are discords all, 
 compared with childhood s happy laugh the laugh 
 that fills the eyes with light and every heart with 
 joy. O rippling river of laughter, thou art the 
 blessed boundary line between the beasts and men ; 
 and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some 
 fretful fiend of care. O Laughter, rose-lipped 
 daughter of Joy, there are dimples enough in thy 
 cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears 
 of grief. 
 
 And yet the minds of children have been 
 polluted by this infamous doctrine of eternal 
 punishment. I denounce it to-day as a doctrine, 
 the infamy of which no language is sufficient to 
 express.
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 127 
 
 Where did that doctrine of eternal punishment 
 for men and women and children come from? It 
 came from the low and beastly skull of that wretch 
 in the dug-out. Where did he get it? It was a 
 souvenir from the animals. The doctrine of eternal 
 punishment was born in the glittering eyes of 
 snakes snakes that hung in fearful coils watching 
 for their prey. It was born of the howl and bark 
 and growl of wild beasts. It was born of the grin 
 of hyenas and of the depraved chatter of unclean 
 baboons. I despise it with every drop of my 
 blood. Tell me there is a God in the serene 
 heavens that will damn his children for the 
 expression of an honest belief! More men have 
 died in their sins, judged by your orthodox creeds, 
 than there are leaves on all the forests in the wide 
 world ten thousand times over. Tell me these men 
 are in hell ; that these men are in torment ; that 
 these children are in eternal pain, and rhat they 
 are to be punished forever and forever ! I denounce 
 this doctrine as the most infamous of lies. 
 
 When the great ship containing the hopes and 
 aspifations of the world, when the great ship 
 freighted with mankind goes down in the night of 
 death, chaos and disaster, I am willing to go
 
 128 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 down with the ship. I will not be guilty of the 
 ineffable meanness of paddling away in some or 
 thodox canoe. I will go down with the ship, with 
 those who love me, and with those whom I have 
 loved. If there is a God who will damn his 
 children forever, I would rather go to hell than to 
 go to heaven and keep the society of such an in 
 famous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise 
 that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this 
 world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of 
 children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It 
 has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to 
 every good man and woman and child. It has 
 filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has 
 had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has 
 wrung the hearts of the tender : it has furrowed the 
 cheeks of the good. This doctrine never should 
 be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mn 
 clergyman^ you, minister of the gospel, to stand at 
 the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, 
 and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do 
 not believe this doctrine: neither do you. If you 
 did, you could not sleep one moment. Any <nan 
 who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, 
 throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 129 
 
 believes that doctrine and does not go insane has 
 the heart of a snake and the conscience of a 
 hyena. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if 
 his doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his 
 holy hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the 
 damned, preached this doctrine ; and he said : 
 "Can the believing husband in heaven be happy 
 with his unbelieving wife in hell? Can the 
 believing father in heaven be happy with his 
 unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving wife 
 in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband 
 in hell?" And he replies: "I tell you, yea. Such 
 will be their sense of justice, that it will increase 
 rather than diminish their bliss." There is no wild 
 beast in the jungles of Africa whose reputation 
 would not be tarnished by the expression of such a 
 doctrine. 
 
 These doctrines have been taught in the name 
 of religion, in the name of universal forgiveness, in 
 the name of infinite love and charity. Do not, I 
 pray you, soil the minds of your children with this 
 dogma. Let them read for themselves; let them 
 think for themselves. 
 
 Do not treat your children like orthodox posts 
 
 9
 
 130 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 to be set in a row. Treat them like trees that need 
 light and sun and air. Be fair and honest with 
 them; give them a chance. Recollect that their 
 rights are equal to yours. Do not have it in your 
 mind that you must govern them ; that they must 
 obey. Throw away forever the idea of master and 
 slave. 
 
 In old times they used to make the children go 
 to bed when they were not sleepy, and get up when 
 they were sleepy. I say let them go to bed when 
 they are sleepy, and get up when they are not 
 sleepy. 
 
 But you say, this doctrine will do for the rich 
 but not for the poor. Well, if the poor have to 
 waken their children early in the morning it is as 
 easy to wake them with a kiss as with a blow. 
 Give your children freedom; let them preserve 
 their individuality. Let your children eat what 
 they desire, and commence at the end of a dinner 
 they like. That is their business and not yours. 
 They know what they wish to eat. If they are 
 given their liberty from the first, they know what 
 they want better than any doctor in the world can 
 prescribe. Do you know that all the improvement 
 that has ever been made in the practice of medicine
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD- 131 
 
 has been made by the recklessness of patients and 
 not by the doctors ? For thousands and thousands 
 of years the doctors would not let "a man suffering 
 from fever have a drop of water. Water they 
 looked upon as poison. But every now and then 
 some man got reckless and said, "I had rather die 
 than not to slake my thirst." Then he would drink 
 two or three quarts of water and get well. And 
 when the doctor was told of what the patient had 
 done, he expressed great surprise that he was still 
 alive, and complimented his constitution upon being 
 able to bear such a frightful strain. The reckless 
 men, however, kept on drinking the water, and 
 persisted in getting well. And finally the doctors 
 said: " In a fever, water is the very best thing you 
 can take." So, I have more confidence in the 
 voice of nature about such things than I have in 
 the conclusions of the medical schools. 
 
 Let your children have freedom and they will 
 fall into your ways; they will do substantially as 
 you do ; but if you try to make them, there is some 
 magnificent, splendid thing in the human heart that 
 refuses to be driven. And do you know that it is 
 the luckiest thing that ever happened for this 
 world, that people are that way. What would have
 
 132 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 become of the people five hundred years ago if 
 they had followed strictly the advice of the 
 doctors? They would have all been dead. What 
 would the people have been, if at any age of the 
 world they had followed implicitly the direction of 
 the church? They would have all been idiots. It 
 is a splendid thing that there is always some grand 
 man who will not mind, and who will think for 
 himself. 
 
 I believe in allowing the children to think for 
 themselves. I believe in the democracy of the 
 family. If in this world there is anything splendid, 
 it is a home where all are equals. 
 
 You will remember that only a few years ago 
 parents would tell their children to " let their 
 victuals stop their mouths." They used to eat as 
 though it were a religious ceremony a very 
 solemn thing. Life should not be treated as a 
 solemn matter. I like to see the children at 
 table, and hear each one telling of the wonderful 
 things he has seen and heard. I like to hear the 
 clatter of knives and forks and spoons mingling 
 with their happy voices. I had rather hear it than 
 any opera that was ever put upon the boards. Let 
 the children have liberty. Be honest and fair with
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 133 
 
 them ; be just ; be tender, and they will make you 
 rich in love and joy. 
 
 Men are oaks, women are vines, children are 
 flowers. 
 
 The human race has been guilty of almost 
 countless crimes ; but I have some excuse for 
 mankind. This world, after all, is not very well 
 adapted to raising good people. In the first place, 
 nearly all of it is water. It is much better adapted 
 to fish culture than to the production of folks. Of 
 that portion which is land not one-eighth has 
 suitable soil and climate to produce great men and 
 women. You cannot raise men and women of 
 genius, without the proper soil and climate, any 
 more than you can raise corn and wheat upon the 
 ice fields of the Arctic sea. You must have the 
 necessary conditions and surroundings. Man is 
 a product ; you must have the soil and food. The 
 obstacles presented by nature must not be so 
 great that man cannot, by reasonable industry and 
 courage, overcome them. There is upon this world 
 only a narrow belt of land, circling zigzag the 
 globe, upon which you can produce men and 
 women of talent. In the Southern Hemisphere
 
 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 the real climate that man needs falls mostly upon 
 the sea, and the result is, that the southern half of 
 our world has never produced a man or woman of 
 great genius. In the far north there is no genius 
 it is too cold. In the far south there is no 
 genius it is too warm. There must be winter, 
 and there must be summer. In a country where 
 man needs no coverlet but a cloud, revolution is 
 his normal condition. Winter is the mother of 
 industry and prudence. Above all, it is the mother 
 of the family relation. Winter holds in its icy arms 
 the husband and wife and the .sweet children. If 
 upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven, 
 it is when we pass a home in winter, at night, and 
 through the windows, the curtains drawn aside, we 
 see the family about the pleasant hearth; the old 
 lady knitting; the cat playing with the yarn; the 
 children wishing they had as many dolls or dollars 
 or knives or somethings, as there are sparks going 
 out to join the roaring blast; the father reading 
 and smoking, and the clouds rising like incense 
 from the altar of domestic joy. I never passed 
 such a house without feeling that I had received a 
 benediction. 
 
 Civilization, liberty, justice, charity, intellectual
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 135 
 
 advancement, are all flowers that blossom in the 
 drifted snow. 
 
 I do not know that I can better illustrate the 
 great truth that only part of the world is adapted 
 to the production of great men and women than by 
 calling your attention to the difference between 
 vegetation in valleys and upon mountains. In the 
 valley you find the oak and elm tossing their 
 branches defiantly to the storm, and as you advance 
 up the mountain side the hemlock, the pine, the 
 birch, the spruce, the fir, and finally you come to 
 little dwarfed trees, that look like other trees seen 
 through a telescope reversed every limb twisted 
 as though in pain^ getting a scanty subsistence 
 from the miserly crevices of the rocks. You 
 go on and on, until at last the highest crag is 
 freckled with a kind of moss, and- vegetation ends. 
 You might as well try to raise oaks and elms where 
 the mosses grow, as to raise great men and great 
 women where their surroundings are unfavorable. 
 You must have the proper climate and soil. 
 
 A few years ago we were talking about the 
 annexation of Santo Domingo to this country. I 
 was in Washington at the time. I was opposed to 
 it. I was told that it was a most delicious climate ;
 
 136 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 that the soil produced everything. But I said: 
 "We do not want it; it is not the right kind of 
 country in which to raise American citizens. Such 
 a climate would debauch us. You might go there 
 with five thousand Congregational preachers, five 
 thousand ruling elders, Jive thousand professors in 
 colleges, five thousand of the solid men of Boston 
 and their wives ; settle them all in Santo Domingo, 
 and you will see the second generation riding upon 
 a mule, bareback, no shoes, a grapevine bridle, hair 
 sticking out at the top of their sombreros, with a 
 rooster under each arm, going to a cock fight on 
 Sunday." Such is the influence of climate. 
 
 Science, however, is gradually widening the 
 area within which men of genius can be produced. 
 We are conquering the north with houses, clothing, 
 food and fuel. We are in many ways overcoming 
 the heat of the south. If we attend to this world 
 instead of another, we may in time cover the land 
 with men and women of genius. 
 
 I have still another excuse. I believe that man 
 came up from the lower animals. I do not say this 
 as a fact. I simply say I believe it to be a fact. 
 Upon that. question I stand about eight to seven, 
 which, for all practical purposes, is very near a
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 137 
 
 certainty. When I first heard of that doctrine I 
 did not like it. My heart was filled with sympathy 
 for those people who have nothing to be proud 
 of except ancestors. I thought, how terrible 
 this will be upon the nobility of the old world. 
 Think of their being forced to trace their ancestry 
 back to the duke Orang Outang, or to the princess 
 Chimpanzee. After thinking it all over, I came to 
 the conclusion that I liked that doctrine. I became 
 convinced in spite of myself. I read about 
 rudimentary bones and muscles. I was told that 
 everybody had rudimentary muscles extending 
 from the ear into the cheek. I asked: What are 
 they?" I was told: "They are the remains of 
 muscles; that they became rudimentary from lack 
 of use ; they went into bankruptcy. They are the 
 muscles with which your ancestors used to flap 
 their ears." I do not now so much wonder that 
 we once had them as that we have outgrown them. 
 After all I had rather belong to a race that 
 started from the skulless vertebrates in the dim 
 Laurentian seas, vertebrates wiggling without 
 knowing why they wiggled, swimming without 
 knowing where they were going, but that in some 
 way began to develop, and began to get a little
 
 133 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 higher and a little higher in the scale of existence ; 
 that came up by degrees through millions of ages 
 through all the animal world, through all that crawls 
 and swims and floats and climbs and walks, and 
 finally produced the gentleman in the dug-out ; and 
 then from this man, getting a little grander, and 
 each one below calling every one above him a 
 heretic, calling every one who had made a little 
 advance an infidel or an atheist for in the history 
 of this world the man who is ahead has always 
 been called a heretic I would rather come from a 
 race that started from that skulless vertebrate, and 
 came up and up and up- and finally produced 
 Shakespeare, the man who found the human intel-* 
 lect dwelling in a hut, touched it with the wand of 
 his genius and it became a palace domed and 
 pinnacled ; Shakespeare, who harvested all the 
 fields of dramatic thought, and from whose day to 
 this, there have been only gleaners of straw and 
 chaff - 1 would rather belong to that race that 
 commenced a skulless vertebrate and produced 
 Shakespeare, a race that has before it an infinite 
 future, with the angel of progress leaning from the 
 far horizon, beckoning men forward, upward and 
 onward forever I had rather belong to such a
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 139 
 
 race, commencing there, producing this, and with 
 that hope, than to have sprung from a perfect pair 
 upon which the Lord has lost money every moment 
 from that day to this. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I have given you my honest thought. Surely 
 investigation is better than unthinking faith. 
 Surely reason is a better guide than fear. This 
 world should be controlled by the living, not by 
 the dead. The grave is not a throne, and a 
 corpse is not a king. Man should not try to live 
 on ashes. 
 
 The theologians dead, knew no more than the 
 theologians now living. More than this cannot be 
 said. About this world little is known, about 
 another world, nothing. 
 
 Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their 
 fathers were slaves. The makers of our creeds 
 were ignorant and brutal. Every dogma that we 
 have, has upon it the mark of whip, the rust of 
 chain, and the ashes of fagot. 
 
 Our fathers reasoned with instruments of tor 
 ture. They believed in the logic of fire and sword. 
 They hated reason. They despised thought. 
 They abhorred liberty.
 
 140 THE LIBERTY OF 
 
 Superstition is the child of slavery. Free 
 thought will give us truth. When all have the 
 right to think and to express their thoughts, 
 every brain will give to all the best it has. The 
 world will then be filled with intellectual wealth. 
 
 As long as men and women are afraid of the 
 church, as long as a minister inspires fear, as long 
 as people reverence a thing simply because they 
 do not. understand it, as long as it is respectable 
 to lose your self-respect, as long as the church 
 has power, as long as mankind worship a book, 
 just so long will the world be filled with intel 
 lectual paupers and vagrants, covered with the 
 soiled and faded rags of superstition. 
 
 As long as woman regards the bible as the 
 charter of her rights, she will be the slave of man. 
 The bible was not written by a woman. Within its 
 lids there is nothing but humiliation and shame 
 for her. She is regarded as the property of man. 
 She is made to ask forgiveness for becoming a 
 mother. She is as much below her husband, as 
 her husband is below Christ. She is not allowed 
 to speak. The gospel is too pure to be spoken by 
 her polluted lips. Woman should learn in silence. 
 
 In the bible will be found no description of a
 
 MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD. 141 
 
 civilized home. The free mother, surrounded by 
 free and loving children, adored by a free man, her 
 husband, was unknown to the inspired writers of 
 the bible. They did not believe in the democracy 
 of home in the republicanism of the fireside. 
 
 These inspired gentlemen knew nothing of the 
 rights of children. They were the advocates of 
 brute force the disciples of the lash. They knew 
 nothing of human rights. Their doctrines have 
 brutalized the homes of millions, and filled the 
 eyes of infancy with tears. 
 
 Let us free ourselves from the tyranny of a 
 book, from the slavery of dead ignorance, from the 
 aristocracy of the air. 
 
 . There has never been upon the earth a gener 
 ation of free men and women. It is not yet time 
 to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken 
 until dungeons are not regarded as temples. 
 Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom 
 until mental cowardice ceases to be known as rev 
 erence. Wait until the living are considered the 
 equals of the dead until the cradle takes prece 
 dence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can 
 be spoken without regard to what others may 
 believe. Wait until teachers take the place of
 
 142 THE LIBERTY OF MAN, ETC. 
 
 preachers until followers become investigators. 
 Wait until the world is free before you write a 
 creed. 
 
 In this creed there will be but one word 
 Liberty. 
 
 Oh Liberty, float not forever in the far horizon 
 remain not forever in the dream of the enthu 
 siast, the philanthropist and poet, but come and 
 make thy home among the children of men! 
 
 I know not what discoveries, what inventions, 
 what thoughts may leap from the brain of the 
 world. I know not what garments of glory may 
 be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream 
 of the victories . to be won upon the fields of 
 thought ; but I do know, that coming from the 
 infinite sea of the future, there will never touch 
 this "bank and shoal of time" a .richer gift, a 
 rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and 
 for child.
 
 1776. 
 
 THE DECLARATION OF 
 INDEPENDENCE.
 
 THE DECLARATION OF 
 INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO OUR FATHERS RETIRED THE GODS 
 FROM POLITICS. 
 
 THE Declaration of Independence is the grand 
 est, the bravest, and the profoundest political 
 document that was ever signed by the representa 
 tives of a people. It. is the embodiment of physical 
 and moral courage and of political wisdom. 
 
 I say of physical courage, because it was a 
 declaration of war against the most powerful nation 
 then on the globe ; a declaration of war by thirteen 
 weak, unorganized colonies; a declaration of war 
 by a few people, without military stores, without 
 wealth, without strength, against the most powerful 
 kingdom on the earth ; a declaration of war made 
 when the British navy, at that day the mistress of
 
 146 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 every sea, was- hovering along the coast of 
 America, looking after defenseless towns and 
 villages to ravage and destroy. It was made when 
 thousands of English soldiers were upon our soil, 
 and when the principal cities of America were in 
 the susbtantial possession of the enemy. And so, 
 I say, all things considered, it was the bravest 
 political document ever signed by man. And if 
 it was physically brave , the moral courage of the 
 document is almost infinitely beyond the physical. 
 They had the courage not only, but they had the 
 almost infinite wisdom, to declare that all men are 
 created equal. 
 
 Such things had occasionally been said by some 
 political enthusiast in the olden time, but for the 
 first time in the history of the world, the represen 
 tatives of a nation, the representatives of a real, 
 living, breathing, hoping people, declared that all 
 men are created equal. With one blow, with one 
 stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel, 
 heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, 
 that kingcraft had raised between man and man. 
 They struck down with one immortal blow, that 
 infamous spirit of caste that makes a god almost 
 a beast, and a beast almost a god. With one
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 147 
 
 word, with one blow, they wiped away and utterly 
 destroyed all that had been done by centuries of 
 war centuries of hypocrisy centuries of injustice. 
 
 What more did they do? They then declared 
 that each man has a right to live. And what does 
 that mean? It means that he has the right to 
 make his living. It means that he has the right 
 to breathe the air, to work the land, that he stands 
 the equal of every other human being beneath the 
 shining stars ; entitled to the product of his labor 
 the labor of his hand and of his brain. 
 
 What more? That every man has the right 
 to pursue his own happiness in his own way. 
 Grander words than these have never been spoken 
 by man. 
 
 And what more did these men say ? They laid 
 down the doctrine that governments were insti 
 tuted among men for the purpose of preserving 
 the rights of the people. The old idea was that 
 people existed solely for the benefit of the state 
 that is to say, for kings and nobles. 
 
 The old idea was that the people were the 
 wards of king and priest that their bodies be 
 longed to one and their souls to the other. 
 
 And what more? That the people are the
 
 148 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 source of political power. That was not only a 
 revelation, but it was a revolution. It changed 
 the ideas of people with regard to the source of 
 political power. For the first time it made human 
 beings men. What was the old idea? The old 
 idea was that no political power came from, nor in 
 any manner belonged to, the people. The old 
 idea was that the political power came from the 
 clouds ; that the political power came in some 
 miraculous way from heaven ; that it came down to 
 kings, and queens, and robbers. That was the old 
 idea. The nobles lived upon the labor of the 
 people ; the people had no rights ; the nobles stole 
 what they had and divided with the kings, and the 
 kings pretended to divide what they stole with God 
 Almighty. The source, then, of political power 
 was from above. The people were responsible to 
 the nobles, the nobles to the king, and the people 
 had no political rights whatever, no more than the 
 wild beasts of the forest. The kings were respon 
 sible to God ; not to the people. The kings were 
 responsible to the clouds ; not to the toiling millions 
 they robbed and plundered. 
 
 And our forefathers, in this declaration of 
 independence, reversed this thing, and said: No;
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 149 
 
 the people, they are the source of political power, 
 and their rulers, these presidents, these kings, are 
 but the agents and servants of the great, sublime 
 people. For the first time, really, in the history 
 of the world, the king was made to get off the 
 throne and the people were royally seated thereon. 
 The people became the sovereigns, and the old 
 sovereigns became the servants and the agents of 
 the people. It is hard for you and me now to 
 imagine even the immense results of that change. 
 It is hard for you and for me, at this day, to 
 understand how thoroughly it had been ingrained 
 in the brain of almost every man, that the king 
 had some wonderful right over him ; that in some 
 strange way the king owned him ; that in some 
 miraculous manner he belonged, body and soul, to 
 somebody who rode on a horse to somebody with 
 epaulettes on his shoulders and a tinsel crown upon 
 his brainless head. 
 
 Our forefathers had been educated in that idea, 
 and when they first landed on American shores 
 they believed it. They thought they belonged to 
 somebody, and that they must be loyal to some 
 thief, who could trace his pedigree back to an 
 tiquity s most successful robber.
 
 150 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 It took a long time for them to get that idea 
 out of their heads and hearts. They were three 
 thousand miles away from the despotisms of the old 
 world, and every wave of the sea was an assistant 
 to them. The distance helped to disenchant their 
 minds of that infamous belief, and every mile 
 between them and the pomp and glory of monarchy 
 helped to put republican ideas and thoughts into 
 their minds. Besides that, when they came to 
 this country, when the savage was in the forest 
 and three thousand miles of waves on the other 
 side, menaced by barbarians on the one side and 
 famine on the other, they learned that a man who 
 had courage, a man who had thought, was as good 
 as any other man in the world, and they built up, 
 as it were, in spite of themselves, little republics. 
 And the man that had the most nerve and heart 
 was the best man, whether he had any noble blood 
 in his veins or not. 
 
 It has been a favorite idea with me that our 
 forefathers were educated by Nature; that they 
 grew grand as the continent upon which they 
 landed; that the great rivers the wide plains 
 the splendid lakes the lonely forests the sub 
 lime mountains that all these things stole into
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 151 
 
 and became a part of their being-, and they grew 
 great as the country in which they lived. They 
 began to hate the narrow, contracted views of 
 Europe. They were educated by their surround 
 ings, and every little colony had to be, to a certain 
 extent, a republic. The kings of the old world 
 endeavored to parcel out this land to their favorites. 
 But there were too many Indians. There was too 
 much courage required for them to take and keep 
 it, and so men had to come here who were dissat 
 isfied with the old country who were dissatisfied 
 with England, dissatisfied with France, with Ger 
 many, with Ireland and Holland. The kings 
 favorites stayed at home. Men came here for 
 liberty, and on account of certain principles they 
 entertained and held dearer than life. And they 
 were willing to work, willing to fell the forests, 
 to fight the savages, willing to go through all the 
 hardships, perils and dangers of a new country, of 
 a new land ; and the consequence was that our 
 country was settled by brave and adventurous 
 spirits, by men who had opinions of their own and 
 were willing to live in the wild forests for the sake 
 of expressing those opinions, even if they expressed 
 them only to trees, rocks, and savage men. The 
 best blood of the old world came to the new.
 
 152 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 When they first came over they did not have a 
 great deal of political philosophy, nor the best 
 ideas of liberty. We might as well tell the truth. 
 When the Puritains first came, they were narrow. 
 They did npt understand what liberty meant what 
 religious liberty, what political liberty, was ; but 
 they found out in a few years. There was one 
 feeling among them that rises to their eternal honor 
 like a white shaft to the clouds they were in 
 favor of universal education. Wherever they went 
 they built school houses, introduced books, and 
 ideas of literature. They believed that every man 
 should know how to read and how to write, and 
 should find out all that his capacity allowed him to 
 comprehend. That is the glory of the Puritan 
 fathers. 
 
 They forgot in a little while what they had 
 suffered, and they forgot to apply the principle of 
 universal liberty of toleration. Some of the 
 colonies did not forget it, and I want to give credit 
 where credit should be given. The Catholics of 
 Maryland were the first people on the new conti 
 nent to declare universal religious toleration. Let 
 this be remembered to their eternal honor. Let it 
 be remembered to the disgrace of the Protestant
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 153 
 
 government of England, that it caused this grand 
 law to be repealed. And to the honor and credit 
 of the Catholics of Maryland let it be remembered, 
 that the moment they got back into power tney 
 re-enacted the old law. The Baptists of Rhode 
 Island also, led by Roger Williams, ware in favor 
 of universal religious liberty. 
 
 No American should fail to honor Roger 
 Williams. He was the first grand advocate of the 
 liberty of the soul. He was in favor of the eternal 
 divorce of church and state. So far as I know, he 
 was the only man at that time in this country who 
 was in favor of real religious liberty. While the 
 Catholics of Maryland declared in favor of religious 
 toleration, they had no idea of religious liberty. 
 They would not allow any one to call in question 
 the doctrine of the trinity, or the inspiration of the 
 scriptures. They stood ready with branding iron 
 and gallows to burn and choke out of man the idea 
 that he had a right to think and to express his. 
 thoughts. 
 
 So many religions met in our country so 
 many theories and dogmas came in contact 
 so many follies, mistakes and stupidities became 
 acquainted with each other, that religion began to
 
 154 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 fall somewhat into disrepute. Besides this, the 
 question of a new nation began to take precedence 
 of all others. 
 
 The people were too much interested in this 
 world to quarrel about the next. The preacher 
 was lost in the patriot. The bible was read to find 
 passages against kings. 
 
 Everybody was discussing the rights of man. 
 Farmers and mechanics suddenly became states 
 men, and in every shop and cabin nearly every 
 question was asked and answered. 
 
 During these years of political excitement, the 
 interest in religion abated to that degree that a 
 common purpose animated men of all sects and 
 creeds. 
 
 At last our fathers became tired of being 
 colonists tired of writing and reading and sign 
 ing petitions, and presenting them on their bended 
 knees, to an idiot king. They began to have an 
 aspiration to form a new nation, to be citizens of a 
 new republic instead of subjects of an old mon 
 archy. They had the idea the Puritans, the 
 Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the 
 Quakers, and a few Free Thinkers, all had the idea 
 that they would like to form a new nation.
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 155 
 
 Now, do not understand that all of our fathers 
 were in favor of independence. Do not understand 
 that they were all like Jefferson ; that they were all 
 like Adams or Lee ; that they were all like 
 Thomas Paine or John Hancock. There were 
 thousands and thousands of them who were op 
 posed to American independence. There were 
 thousands and thousands who said: "When you 
 say men are created equal, it is a lie ; when you 
 say the political power resides in the great body of 
 the people, it is false." Thousands and thousands 
 of them said: "We prefer Great Britain." But 
 the men who were in favor of independence, the 
 men who knew that a new nation must be born, 
 went on full of hope and courage, and nothing 
 could daunt or stop or stay the heroic, fearless few. 
 
 They met in Philadelphia; and the resolution 
 was moved by Lee of Virginia, that the colonies 
 ought to be independent states, and ought to dis 
 solve their political connection with Great Britain. 
 
 They made up their minds that a new nation 
 must be formed. All nations had been, so to 
 speak, the wards of some church. The religious 
 idea as to the source of power had been at the 
 foundation of all governments, and had been the 
 bane and curse of man.
 
 156 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 Happily for us, there was no church strong 
 enough to dictate to the rest. Fortunately for us, 
 the colonists not only, but the colonies differed 
 widely in their religious views. There were the 
 Puritans who hated the Episcopalians, and Episco 
 palians who hated the Catholics, and the Catholics 
 who hated both, while the Quakers held them all 
 in contempt. There they were, of every sort, and 
 color, and kind, and how was it that they came 
 together? They had a common aspiration. They 
 wanted to form a new nation. More than that, 
 most of them cordially hated Great Britain ; and 
 they pledged each other to forget these religious 
 prejudices, for a time at least, and agreed that 
 there should be only one religion until they got 
 through, and that was the religion of patriotism. 
 They solemnly agreed that the new nation should 
 not belong to any particular church, but that it 
 should secure the rights of all. 
 
 Our fathers founded the first secular govern 
 ment that was ever founded in this world. Rec- 
 collect that. The first secular goverment; the 
 first government that said every church has exactly 
 the same rights, and no more ; every religion has 
 the same rights, and no more. In other words, our
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 157 
 
 fathers were the first men who had the sense, had 
 the genius, to know that no church should be 
 allowed to have a sword ; that it should be allowed 
 only to exert its moral influence. 
 
 You might as well have a government united 
 by force with Art, -or with Poetry, or with Oratory, 
 as with Religion. Religion should have the influ 
 ence upon mankind that its goodness, that its 
 morality, its justice, its charity, its reason, and its 
 argument give it, and no more. Religion should 
 have the effect upon mankind that it necessarily 
 has, and no more. The religion that has to be 
 supported by law is without value, not only, but a 
 fraud and curse. The religious argument that has 
 to be supported by a musket, is hardly worth 
 making. A prayer that must have a cannon 
 behind it, better never be uttered. Forgiveness 
 ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. 
 Love need not carry knives and revolvers. 
 
 So, our fathers said: "We will form a secular 
 government, and under the flag with which we are 
 going to enrich the air, we will allow every man to 
 worship God as he thinks best." They said: 
 "Religion is an individual thing between each man 
 and his Creator, and he can worship as he pleases
 
 158 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 and as he desires." And why did they do this? 
 The history of the world warned them that the 
 liberty of man was not safe in the clutch and grasp 
 of any church. They had read of and seen the 
 thumb-screws, the racks and the dungeons of the 
 inquisition. They knew all about the hypocrisy of 
 the olden time. They knew that the church had 
 stood side by side with the throne ; that the high 
 priests were hypocrites, and that the kings were 
 robbers. They also knew that if they gave to any 
 church power, it would corrupt the best church in 
 the world. And so they said that power must not 
 reside in a church nor in a sect, but power must be 
 wherever humanity is, in the great body of the 
 people. And the officers and servants of the peo 
 ple must be responsible to them. And so I say 
 again, as I said in the commencement, this is the 
 wisest, the profoundest, the bravest political docu 
 ment that ever was written and signed by man. 
 
 They turned, as I tell you, everything squarely 
 about. They derived all their authority from the 
 people. They did away forever with the theologi 
 cal idea of government. 
 
 And what more did they say ? They said that 
 whenever the rulers abused this authority, this
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 159 
 
 power, incapable of destruction, returned to the 
 people. How did they come to say this? I 
 will tell you. They were pushed into it. How? 
 They felt that they were oppressed; and whenever 
 a man feels that he is the subject of injustice, his 
 perception of right and wrong is wonderfully 
 quickened. 
 
 Nobody was ever in prison wrongfully who did 
 not believe in the writ of habeas corpus. Nobody 
 ever suffered wrongfully v/ithout instantly having 
 ideas of justice. 
 
 And they began to inquire what rights the king 
 of Great Britain had. They began to search for 
 the charter of his authority. They began to inves 
 tigate and dig down to the bed-rock upon which 
 society must be founded, and when they got down 
 there, forced there, too, by their oppressors, forced 
 against their own prejudices and education, they 
 found at the bottom of things, not lords, not nobles, 
 not pulpits, not thrones, but humanity and the 
 rights .of men. 
 
 And so they said, we are men; we are men. 
 They found out they were men. And the next 
 thing they said, was, "We will be free men ; we are 
 weary of being colonists ; we are tired of being
 
 160 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 subjects ; we are men ; and these colonies ought to 
 be states ; and these states ought to be a nation ; 
 and that nation ought to drive the last British 
 soldier into the sea." And so they signed that 
 brave declaration of independence. 
 
 I thank every one of them from the bottom of 
 my heart for signing that sublime declaration. I 
 thank them for their courage for their patriotism 
 for their wisdom for the splendid confidence 
 
 in themselves and in the human race. I thank 
 u 
 them for. what they were, and for what we are 
 
 for what they did and for what we have received 
 for what they suffered, and for what we enjoy. 
 
 What would we have been if we had remained 
 colonists and subjects ? What would we have 
 been to-day? Nobodies, ready to get down on 
 our knees and crawl in the very dust at the sight 
 of somebody that was supposed to have in him 
 some drop of blood that flowed in the veins of that 
 mailed marauder that royal robber, William the 
 Conqueror. 
 
 They signed that declaration of independence, 
 although they knew that it would produce a long, 
 terrible, and bloody war. They looked forward 
 and saw poverty, deprivation, gloom and death.
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 161 
 
 But they also saw, on the wrecked clouds of war, 
 the beautiful bow of freedom. 
 
 These grand men were enthusiasts; and the 
 world has only been raised by enthusiasts. In 
 every country there have been a few who have 
 given a national aspiration to the people. The 
 enthusiasts of 1776 were the builders and framers 
 of this great and splendid government ; and they 
 were the men who saw, although others did not, 
 the golden fringe of the mantle of glory that will 
 finally cover this world. They knew, they felt, 
 they believed that they would give a new constel 
 lation to the political heavens that they would 
 make the Americans a grand people grand as 
 the continent upon which they lived. 
 
 The war commenced. There was little money, 
 and less credit. The new nation had but few 
 friends. To a great extent, each soldier of free 
 dom had to clothe and feed himself. He was poor 
 and pure brave and good, and so he went to the 
 fields of death to fight for the rights of man. 
 
 What did the soldier leave when he went? 
 
 He left his wife and children. 
 
 Did he leave them in a beautiful home, sur-
 
 162 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 rounded by civilization, in the repose of law, in the 
 security of a great and powerful republic? 
 
 No. He left his wife and children on the edge, 
 on the fringe of the boundless forest, in which 
 crouched and crept the red savage, who was at 
 that time the ally of the still more savage Briton. 
 He left his wife to defend herself, and he left the 
 prattling babes to be defended by their mother 
 and by nature. The mother made the living ; she 
 planted the corn and the potatoes, and hoed them 
 in the sun, raised the children, and in the darkness 
 of night, told them about their brave father, and 
 the "sacred cause." She told them that in a little 
 while the war would be over and father would come 
 back covered with honor and glory. 
 
 Think of the woman, of the sweet children who 
 listened for the footsteps of the dead who waited 
 through the sad and desolate years for the dear 
 ones who never came. 
 
 The soldiers of 1776 did not march away with 
 music and banners. They went in silence, looked 
 at and gazed after by eyes filled with tears. They 
 went to meet, not an equal, but a superior to 
 fight five times their number to make a desperate 
 stand to stop the advance of the enemy, and
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 163 
 
 then, when their ammunition gave out, seek the 
 protection of rocks, of rivers and of hills. 
 
 Let me say here : The greatest test of courage 
 on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. 
 That army is the bravest that can be whipped the 
 greatest number of times and fight again. 
 
 Over the entire territory, so to speak, then 
 settled by our forefathers, they were driven again 
 and again. Now and then they would meet the 
 English with something like equal numbers, and 
 then the eagle of victory would proudly perch 
 upon the stripes and stars. And so they went 
 on as best they could, hoping and fighting until 
 they came to the dark and sombre gloom of Valley 
 Forge. 
 
 There were very few hearts then beneath that 
 flag that did not begin to think that the struggle 
 was useless ; that all the blood and treasure had 
 been spent and shed in vain. But there were some 
 men gifted with that wonderful prophecy that 
 fulfils itself, and with that wonderful magnetic 
 power that makes heroes of everybody they come 
 in contact with. 
 
 And so our fathers went through the gloom of 
 that terrible time, and still fought on. Brave men
 
 164 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 wrote grand words, cheering the despondent, brave 
 men did brave deeds, the rich man gave his wealth, 
 the poor man gave his life, until at last, by the 
 victory of Yorktown, the old banner won its place 
 in the air, and became glorious forever. 
 
 Seven long years of war fighting for what? 
 For the principle that all men are created equal 
 a truth that nobody ever disputed except a scoun 
 drel ; nobody, nobody in the entire history of this 
 world. No man ever denied that truth who was 
 not a rascal, and at heart a thief; never, never, and 
 never will. What else were they fighting for? 
 Simply that in America every man should have a 
 right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
 Nobody ever denied that except a villain ; never, 
 never. It has been denied by kings they were 
 thieves. It has been denied by statesmen they 
 were liars. It has been denied by priests, by 
 clergymen, by cardinals, by bishops and by popes 
 they were hypocrites. 
 
 What else were they fighting for? For the 
 idea that all political power is vested in the great 
 body of the people. The great body of the people 
 make all the money ; do all the work. They plow 
 the land, cut- down the forests ; they produce
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 165 
 
 everything that is produced. Then who shall say 
 what shall be done with what is produced except 
 the producer? Is it the non-producing thief, sitting 
 on a throne, surrounded by vermin ? 
 
 Those were the things they were fighting for; 
 and that is all they were fighting for. They fought 
 to build up a new, a great nation ; to establish an 
 asylum for the oppressed of the world everywhere. 
 They knew the history of this world. They knew 
 the history of human slavery. 
 
 The history of civilization is the history of the 
 slow and painful enfranchisement of the human 
 race. In the olden times the family was a mon 
 archy, the father being the monarch. The mother 
 and children were the veriest slaves. The will of 
 the father was the supreme law. He had the 
 power of life and death. It took thousands of 
 years to civilize this father, thousands of years to 
 make the condition of wife and mother and child 
 even tolerable. A few families constituted a tribe ; 
 the tribe had a chief; the chief was a tyrant; 
 a few tribes formed a nation ; the nation was 
 governed by a king, who was also a tyrant. A 
 strong nation robbed, plundered, and took captive 
 the weaker ones. This was the commencement of 
 human slavery.
 
 166 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 It is not possible for the human imagination to 
 conceive of the horrors of slavery. It has left no 
 possible crime uncommitted, no possible cruelty 
 unperpetrated. It has been practised and defended 
 by all nations in some form. It has been upheld 
 by all religions. It has been defended by nearly 
 every pulpit. From the profits derived from the 
 slave trade churches have been built, cathedrals 
 reared and priests paid. Slavery has been blessed 
 by bishop, by cardinal, and by pope. It has 
 received the sanction of statesmen, of kings, and 
 of queens. It has been defended by the throne, 
 the pulpit, and the bench. Monarchs have shared 
 in the profits. Clergymen have taken their part of 
 the spoil, reciting passages of scripture in its 
 defense at the same time, and judges have taken 
 their portion in the name of equity and law. 
 
 Only a few years ago our ancestors were slaves. 
 Only a few years ago they passed with and belong 
 ed to the soil, like coal under it and rocks on it. 
 Only a few years ago they were treated like beasts 
 of burden, worse far than we treat our animals at 
 the present -day. Only a few years ago it was a 
 crime in England for a man to have a bible in his 
 house, a crime for which men were hanged, and
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 167 
 
 their bodies afterwards burned. Only a few years 
 ago fathers could and did sell their children. Only 
 a few years ago our ancestors were not allowed to 
 speak or write their thoughts that being a crime. 
 Only a few years ago to be honest, at least in the 
 expression of your ideas, was a felony. To do 
 right was a capital offense ; and in those days 
 chains and whips were the incentives to labor, 
 and the preventives of thought. Honesty was a 
 vagrant, justice a fugitive, and liberty in chains. 
 Only a few years ago men were denounced because 
 they doubted the inspiration of the bible because 
 they denied miracles and laughed at the wonders 
 recounted by the ancient Jews. 
 
 Only a few years ago a man had to believe in 
 the total depravity of the human heart in order to 
 be respectable. Only a few years ago, people who 
 thought God too good to punish in eternal flames 
 an unbaptized child were considered infamous. 
 
 As soon as our ancestors began to get free 
 they began to enslave others. With an inconsis 
 tency that defies explanation, they practiced upon 
 others the same outrages that had been perpe 
 trated upon them. As soon as white slavery 
 began to be abolished, black slavery commenced.
 
 168 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 In this, infamous traffic nearly every nation of 
 Europe embarked. Fortunes were quickly real 
 ized ; the avarice and cupidity of ^urope were 
 excited ; all ideas of justice were discarded ; pity 
 fled from the human breast; a few good, brave 
 men recited the horrors of the trade ; avarice was 
 deaf; religion refused to hear; the trade went on; 
 the governments of Europe upheld it in the name 
 of commerce in the name of civilization and 
 of religion. 
 
 Our fathers knew the history of caste. They 
 knew that in the despotisms of the old world it was 
 a disgrace to be useful. They knew that a me 
 chanic was esteemed as hardly the equal of a 
 hound, and far below a blooded horse. They 
 knew that a nobleman held a son of labor in con 
 tempt that he had no rights the royal loafers 
 were bound to respect. 
 
 The world has changed. 
 
 The other day there came shoemakers, potters, 
 workers in wood and iron from Europe, and they 
 were received in the city of New York as though 
 they had been princes. They had been sent by 
 the great republic of France to examine into the 
 arts and manufactures of the great republic of
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 169 
 
 America. They looked a thousand times better 
 to me than the Edward Alberts and Albert Ed 
 wards the royal vermin, that live on the body 
 politic. And I would think much more of our 
 government if it would fete and feast them, 
 instead of wining and dining the imbeciles of a 
 royal line. 
 
 Our fathers devoted their lives and fortunes to 
 the grand work of founding a government for the 
 protection of the rights of man. The theological 
 idea as to the source of political power had 
 poisoned the web and woof of every government 
 in the world, and our fathers banished it from this 
 continent forever. 
 
 What we want to-day is what our fathers wrote 
 down. They did not attain to their ideal ; we 
 approach it nearer, but have not reached it yet. 
 We want, not only the independence . of a state, 
 not only the independence of a nation, but some 
 thing far more glorious the absolute independence 
 of the individual. That is what we want. I want 
 it so that I, one of the children of Nature, can 
 stand on an equality with the rest ; that I can say 
 this is my air, my sunshine, my earth, and I have 
 a right to live, and hope, and aspire, and labor,
 
 170 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 and enjoy the fruit of that labor, as much as any 
 individual or any nation on the face of the globe. 
 
 We want every American to make to-day, on 
 this hundredth anniversary, a declaration of indi 
 vidual independence. Let each man enjoy his 
 liberty to the utmost enjoy all he can; but be 
 sure it is not at the expense of another. The 
 French convention gave the best definition of 
 liberty I have ever read: "The liberty of one 
 citizen ceases only where the liberty of another 
 citizen commences-." I know of no better defini 
 tion. I ask you to-day to make a declaration of 
 individual independence. And if you are indepen 
 dent, be just. Allow everybody else to make his 
 declaration of individual independence. Allow 
 your wife, allow your husband, allow your children 
 to make theirs. Let everybody be absolutely 
 free and independent, knowing only the sacred 
 obligation of honesty and affection. Let us be 
 independent of party, independent of everybody 
 and everything except our own consciences and our 
 own brains. Do not belong to any clique. Have 
 the clear title deeds in fee simple to yourselves, 
 without any mortgage on the premises to any 
 body in the world.
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 171 
 
 It is a grand thing to be the owner of yourself. 
 It is a grand thing to protect the rights of others. 
 It is a sublime thing to-be free and just. 
 
 Only a few days ago I stood in Independence 
 Hall in that little room where was signed the 
 immortal paper. A little room, like any other; 
 and it did not seem possible that from that room 
 went forth ideas, like cherubim and seraphim, 
 spreading their wings over a continent, and touch 
 ing, as with holy fire, the hearts of men. 
 
 In a few moments I was in the park, where are 
 gathered the accomplishments of a century. Our 
 fathers never dreamed of the things I saw. There 
 were hundreds of locomotives, with their nerves of 
 steel and breath of flame^ every kind of machine, 
 with whirling wheels and curious cogs and cranks, 
 and the myriad thoughts of men that have been 
 wrought in iron, brass and steel. And going out 
 from one little building were wires in the air, 
 stretching to every civilized nation, and they could 
 send a shining messenger in a moment to any part 
 of the world, and it would go sweeping under the 
 waves of the sea with thoughts and words within its 
 glowing heart. I saw all that had been achieved 
 by this nation, and I wished that the signers of the
 
 172 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 Declaration the soldiers of the revolution could 
 see what a century of freedom has produced. I 
 wished they could see the fields we cultivate the 
 rivers we navigate the railroads running over the 
 Alleghanies, far into what was then the unknown 
 forest on over the broad prairies on over the 
 vast plains away over the mountains of the 
 West, to the Golden Gate of the Pacific. 
 
 All this is the result of a hundred years of 
 freedom. 
 
 Are you not more than glad that in 17 j& was 
 announced the sublime principle that political 
 power resides with the people? That our fathers 
 then made up their minds nevermore to be colo 
 nists and subjects, but that they would be free and 
 independent citizens of America? 
 
 I will not name any of the grand men who 
 fought for liberty. All should be named, or none. 
 I feel that the unknown soldier who was shot 
 down without even his name being remembered 
 who was included only in a report of "a hundred 
 killed," or "a hundred missing," nobody knowing 
 even the number that attached to his august corpse 
 is entitled to as deep and heartfelt thanks as the 
 titled leader who fell at the head of the host.
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 173 
 
 Standing here amid the sacred memories of the 
 first, on the golden threshold of the second, I ask, 
 Will the second century be as grand as the first ? I 
 believe it will, because we are growing more and 
 more humane, I believe there is more human 
 kindness, more real, sweet human sympathy, a 
 greater desire to help one another, in the United 
 States, than in all the world besides. 
 
 We must progress. We are just at the com 
 mencement of invention. The steam engine the 
 telegraph these are but the toys with which 
 science has been amused. Wait; there will be 
 grander things ; there will be wider and higher 
 culture a grander standard of character, of liter 
 ature, and art. 
 
 We have now half as many millions of people 
 as we have years, and many of us will live until a 
 hundred million stand beneath the flag. We are 
 getting more real solid sense. The school house 
 is the finest building in the village. We are 
 writing and reading more books ; we are painting 
 and buying more pictures ; we are struggling more 
 and more to get at the philosophy of life, of things 
 trying more and more to answer the questions 
 of the eternal Sphinx. We are looking in every
 
 174 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 / 
 direction investigating; in short, we are thinking 
 
 and working. Besides all this, I believe the people 
 are nearer honest than ever before. A few years 
 ago we were willing to live upon the labor of four 
 million slaves. Was that honest? At last, we 
 have a national conscience. At last, we have 
 carried out the Declaration of Independence. Our 
 fathers wrote it we have accomplished it. The 
 black man was a slave we made him a citizen. 
 We found four million human beings in manacles, 
 and now the hands of a race are held up in the 
 free air without a chain. 
 
 I have had the supreme pleasure of seeing a 
 man once a slave sitting in the seat of his 
 former master in the Congress of the United States. 
 I have had that pleasure, and when I saw it my 
 eyes were filled with tears. , I felt that we had 
 carried out the Declaration of Independence, that 
 we had given reality to it, and breathed the breath 
 of life into its every word. I felt that our flag 
 would float over and protect the colored man and 
 his little children standing straight in the sun, 
 just the same as though he were white and worth a 
 million. I would protect him more, because the 
 rich white man could protect himself.
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 175 
 
 All who stand beneath our banner are free. 
 Ours is the only flag that has in reality written 
 upon it: Liberty, Fraternity, Equality the three 
 grandest words in all the languages of men. 
 
 Liberty: Give to every man the fruit of his 
 own labor the labor of his hands and of his 
 brain. 
 
 Fraternity: Every man in the right is my 
 brother. 
 
 Equality : The rights of all are equal : Justice, 
 poised and balanced in eternal calm, will shake 
 from the golden scales, in which- are weighed the 
 acts of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste : 
 No race, no color, no previous condition, can 
 change the rights of men. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence has at last 
 been carried out in letter and in spirit. 
 
 The second century will be grander than the 
 first. 
 
 Fifty millions of people are celebrating this 
 day. To-day, the black man looks upon his child 
 and says : The avenues to distinction are open to 
 you upon your brow may fall the civic wreath 
 this day belongs to you.
 
 176 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 We are celebrating the courage and wisdom of 
 our fathers, and the glad shout of a free people, the 
 anthem of a grand nation, commencing at the 
 Atlantic, is following the sun to the Pacific, across 
 a- continent of happy homes. 
 
 We are a great people. Three millions have 
 increased to fifty thirteen states to thirty-eight. 
 We have better homes, better clothes, better food 
 and more of it, and more of the conveniencies of 
 life, than any other people upon the globe. 
 
 The farmers of our country live better than did 
 the kings and princes two hundred years ago and 
 they have twice as much sense and heart. Liberty 
 and labor have given us all. I want every person 
 here to believe in the dignity of labor to know 
 that the respectable man is the useful man the 
 man who produces or helps others to produce 
 something of value, whether thought of the brain 
 or work of the hand. 
 
 I want you to go away with an eternal hatred in 
 your breast of injustice, of aristocracy, of caste, of 
 the idea that one man has more rights than another 
 because he has better clothes, more land, more 
 money, because he owns a railroad, or is famous 
 and in high position. Remember that all men have
 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 177 
 
 equal rights. Remember that the man who acts 
 best his part who loves his friends the best is 
 most willing to help others truest to the dis 
 charge of obligation who has the best heart 
 the most feeling the deepest sympathies and 
 who freely gives to others the rights that he 
 claims for himself, is the best man. I am willing to 
 swear to this. 
 
 What has made this country? I say again, 
 liberty and labor. What would we be without 
 labor? I want every farmer, when plowing the 
 rustling corn of June while mowing in the per 
 fumed fields to feel that he is adding to the 
 wealth and glory of the United States. I want 
 every mechanic -^every man of toil, to know and 
 feel that he is keeping the cars running, the tele 
 graph wires in the air ; that he is making the 
 statues and painting the pictures : that he is 
 writing and printing the books ; that he is helping 
 to fill the world with honor, with happiness, with 
 love and law. 
 
 Our country is founded upon the dignity of 
 labor upon the equality of man. Ours is the 
 first real republic in the history of the world. 
 Beneath our flag the people are free. We have 
 
 12
 
 178 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 retired the gods from politics. We have found 
 that man is .the only source of political power, 
 and .that the governed should govern. We have 
 disfranchised the aristocrats of the air and have 
 given one country to mankind.
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 To PLOW is TO PRAY TO PLANT is TO PROPHECY, AND 
 THE HARVEST ANSWERS AND FULFILLS. 
 
 I AM not an old and experienced farmer, nor a 
 tiller of the soil, nor one of the hard-handed 
 sons of labor. I imagine, however, that I know 
 something about cultivating the soil, and getting 
 happiness out of the ground. 
 
 I know enough to know that agriculture is the 
 basis of all wealth, prosperity and luxury. I know 
 that in a country where the tillers of the fields are 
 free, everybody is free and ought to be prosperous. 
 Happy is that country where those who cultivate 
 the land own it. Patriotism is born in the woods 
 and fields by lakes and streams by crags and 
 plains. 
 
 The old way of farming was a great mistake. 
 Everything was done the wrong way. It was all 
 work and waste, weariness and want. They used
 
 182 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 to fence a hundred and sixty acres of land with a 
 couple of dogs. Everything was left to the pro 
 tection of the blessed trinity of chance, accident 
 and mistake. 
 
 When I was a farmer they used to haul wheat 
 , two hundred miles in wagons and sell it for thirty- 
 five cents a bushel. They would bring home 
 about three hundred feet of lumber, two bunches 
 of shingles, a barrel of salt, and a cook-stove that 
 never would draw and never did bake. 
 
 In those blessed days the people lived on corn 
 and bacon. Cooking was an unknown art. Eating 
 was a necessity, not a pleasure. It was hard work 
 for the cook to keep on good terms even with 
 hunger. 
 
 We had poor houses. The rain held the roofs 
 in perfect contempt, and the snow drifted joyfully 
 on the floors and beds. They had no barns. 
 The horses were kept in rail pens surrounded with 
 straw. Long before spring the sides would be 
 eaten away and nothing but roofs would be left. 
 Food is fuel. When the cattle were exposed to 
 all the blasts of winter, it took all the corn and 
 oats that could be stuffed into them to prevent 
 actual starvation.
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 185 
 
 In those times most farmers thought the best 
 place for the pig-pen was immediately in front of 
 the house. There is nothing like sociability. 
 
 Women were supposed to know the art of 
 making fires without fuej. The wood pile con 
 sisted, as a general thing, of one log upon which 
 an axe or two had been worn out in vain. There 
 was nothing to kindle a fire with. Pickets were 
 pulled from the garden fence, clap-boards taken 
 from the house, and every stray plank was seized 
 upon for kindling. Everything was done in the 
 hardest way. Everything about the farm was 
 disagreeable. Nothing was kept in order. Noth 
 ing was preserved. The wagons stood in the sun 
 and rain, and the plows rusted in the fields. There 
 was no leisure, no feeling that the work was done. 
 It was all labor and weariness and vexation of 
 spirit. The crops were destroyed by wandering 
 herds, or they were put in too late, or too early, or 
 they were blown down, or caught by the frost, or 
 devoured by bugs, or stung by flies, or eaten by 
 worms, or carried away by birds, or dug up by 
 gophers, or washed away by floods, or dried up 
 by the sun, or rotted in the stack, or heated in the 
 crib, or they all run to vines, or tops, or straw, or
 
 184 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 smut, or cobs. And when in spite of all these 
 accidents that lie in wait between the plow and 
 the reaper, they did succeed in raising a good 
 crop and a high price was offered, then the rdads 
 would be impassable. And when the roads got 
 good, then the prices went down. Everything 
 worked together for evil. 
 
 Nearly every farmer s boy took an oath that he 
 never would cultivate the soil. The moment they 
 arrived at the age of twenty-one they left the 
 desolate and dreary farms and rushed to the 
 towns and cities. They wanted to be book 
 keepers, doctors, merchants, railroad men, insur 
 ance agents, lawyers, even preachers, anything to 
 avoid the drudgery of the farm. Nearly every boy 
 acquainted with the three R s reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic imagined that he had altogether 
 more education than ought to be wasted in raising 
 potatoes and corn. They made haste to get into 
 some other business. Those who stayed upon the 
 farm envied those who went away. 
 
 A few years ago the times were prosperous, 
 and the young men went to the cities to enjoy the 
 fortunes that were waiting for them. They wanted 
 to engage in something that promised quick
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 185 
 
 returns. They built railways, established banks 
 and insurance companies. They speculated in 
 stocks in Wall Street, and gambled in grain at 
 Chicago. They became rich. They lived in 
 palaces. They rode in carriages. They pitied 
 their poor brothers on the farms, and the poor 
 brothers envied them. 
 
 But time has brought its revenge. The farmers 
 have seen the railroad president a bankrupt, and 
 the road in the hands of a receiver. They have 
 seen the bank president abscond, and the insurance 
 company a wrecked and ruined fraud. The only 
 solvent people, as a class, the only independent 
 people, are the tillers of the soil. 
 
 Farming must be made more attractive. The 
 comforts of the town must be added to the beauty 
 of the fields. The sociability of the city must be 
 rendered possible in the country. 
 
 Farming has been made repulsive. The farm 
 ers have been unsociable and their homes have 
 been lonely. They have been wasteful and care 
 less. They have not been proud of their business. 
 
 In the first place, farming ought to be reason 
 ably profitable. The farmers have not attended to 
 their own interests. They have been robbed and 
 plundered in a hundred ways.
 
 1 Sti ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 No farmer can afford to raise corn and oats and 
 hay to sell. He should sell horses, not oats; sheep, 
 cattle and pork, not corn. He should make every 
 profit possible out of what he produces. So long 
 as the farmers of Illinois ship their corn and oats, 
 so long they will be poor, just so long will their 
 farms be mortgaged to the insurance companies 
 and banks of the east, just so long will they do 
 the work and others reap the benefit, just so long 
 will they be poor, and the money lenders grow 
 rich, just so long will cunning avarice grasp and 
 hold the net profits of honest toil. When the 
 farmers of the west ship beef and pork instead of 
 grain, w r hen we manufacture here, when we 
 cease paying tribute to others, ours will be the 
 most prosperous country in the world. 
 
 Another thing It is just as cheap to raise a 
 good as a poor breed of cattle. Scrubs will eat 
 just as much as thoroughbreds. If you are not 
 able to buy Durhams and Alderneys, you can 
 raise the corn breed. By "corn breed" I mean 
 the cattle that have, for several generations, had 
 enough to eat, and have been treated with 
 kindness. Every farmer who will treat his cattle 
 kindly, and feed them all they want, will, in a
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 187 
 
 few years, have blooded stock on his farm. All 
 blooded stock has been produced in this way. You 
 can raise good cattle just as you can raise good 
 people. If you wish to raise a good boy you must 
 give him plenty to eat, and treat him with kindness. 
 In this way, and in this way only, can good cattle 
 or good people be produced. 
 
 Another thing You must beautify your homes. 
 
 When I was a farmer it was not fashionable to 
 set out trees, nor to plant vines. 
 
 When you visited the farm you were not wel 
 comed by flowers, and greeted by trees loaded 
 with fruit. Yellow dogs came bounding over the 
 tumbled fence like wild beasts. There is no sense 
 there is no profit in such^a life. It is not living. 
 The farmers ought to beautify their homes. There 
 should be trees and grass and flowers and running 
 vines. Everything should be kept in order gates 
 should be on their hinges, and about all there 
 should be the pleasant air of thrift. In every 
 house there should be a bath-room. The bath is a 
 civilizer, a refiner, a beautifier. When- you come 
 from the fields tired, covered with dust, nothing is 
 so refreshing. Above all things, keep clean. It is 
 not necessary to be -a pig in order to raise one. In
 
 188 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 the cool of the evening, after a day in the field, put 
 on clean clothes, take a seat under the trees, mid 
 the perfume "of flowers, surrounded by your family, 
 and you will know what it is to enjoy life like a 
 gentleman. 
 
 In no part of the globe will farming pay better 
 than in Illinois. You are in the best portion of the 
 earth. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, there is 
 no such country as yours. The east is hard and 
 stony ; the soil is stingy. The far west is a desert 
 parched and barren, dreary and desolate as perdi 
 tion would be with the fires out. It is better to 
 dig wheat and corn from the soil than gold. Only 
 a few days ago I was where they wrench the 
 precious metals from the miserly clutch of the 
 rocks. When I saw the mountains, treeless, shrub- 
 less, flowerless, without even a spire of grass, it 
 seemed to me that gold had the same effect upon 
 the country that holds it, as upon the man who 
 lives and labors only for that. It affects the land 
 as it does the man. It leaves the heart barren 
 without a flower of kindness without a blossom 
 of pity. 
 
 The farmer in Illinois has the best soil the 
 greatest return for the least labor more leisure
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 189 
 
 more time for enjoyment than any other farmer in 
 the world. His hard work ceases with autumn. 
 He has the long winters in which to become 
 acquainted with his family with his neighbors 
 in which to read and keep abreast with the 
 advanced thought of his day. He has the time and 
 means for self-culture. He has more time than the 
 mechanic, the merchant or the professional man. 
 If the farmer is not well informed it is his own 
 fault. Books are cheap, and every farmer can have 
 enough to give him the outline of every science, 
 and an idea of all that has been accomplished by 
 man. 
 
 In many respects the farmer has the advantage 
 of the mechanic. In our time we have plenty of 
 mechanics but no tradesmen. In the sub-division 
 of labor we have a thousand men working upon 
 different parts of the same thing, each taught in 
 one particular branch, and in only one. We have, 
 say, in a shoe factory, hundreds of men, but not 
 one shoemaker. It takes them all, assisted by a 
 great number of machines, to make a shoe. Each 
 does a particular part, and not one of them knows 
 the entire trade. The result is that the moment the 
 factory shuts down these men are out of employ-
 
 190 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 ment. Out of employment means out of bread 
 out of bread means famine and horror. The 
 mechanic of to-day has but little independence. 
 His prosperity often depends upon the good will of 
 one man. He is liable to be discharged for a look, 
 for a word. He lays by but little for his declining 
 years. He is, at the best, the slave of capital. 
 
 It is a thousand times better to be a whole 
 farmer than part of a mechanic. It is better to till 
 the ground and work for yourself than to be hired 
 by corporations. Every man should endeavor to 
 belong to -himself. 
 
 About seven hundred years ago, Kheyam, a 
 Persian, said: "Why should a man who possesses 
 a piece of bread securing life for two days, and 
 who has a cup of water why should such a man 
 be commanded by another, and why should such a 
 man serve another?" 
 
 Young men should not be satisfied with a 
 salary. Do not mortgage the possibilities of your 
 future. Have the courage to take life as it comes, 
 feast or famine. Think of hunting a gold mine for 
 a dollar a day, and think of finding one for another 
 man. How would you feel then? 
 
 We are lacking in true courage, when, for fear
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 191 
 
 of the future, we take the crusts and scraps and 
 niggardly salaries of the present. I had a thousand 
 times rather have a farm and be independent, than 
 to be President of the United States without inde 
 pendence, filled with doubt and trembling, feeling 
 of the popular pulse, resorting to art and artifice, 
 enquiring about the wind of opinion, and suc 
 ceeding at last in losing my self respect without 
 gaining the respect of others. 
 
 Man needs more manliness, more real indepen- 
 
 
 
 dence. We must take care of ourselves. This 
 we can do by labor, and in this way we can 
 preserve our independence. We should try and 
 choose that business or profession the pursuit of 
 which will give us the most happiness. Happiness 
 is wealth. We can be happy without being rich 
 without- holding office without being famous. I 
 am not sure that we can be happy with wealth, 
 with office, or with fame. 
 
 There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and 
 the hope of a serene old age, that no other business 
 or profession can promise. A professional man is 
 doomed sometime to feel that his powers are 
 waning. He is doomed to see younger and 
 stronger men pass him in the race of life. He
 
 1!>2 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 looks forward to an old age of intellectual medioc 
 rity. He will be last where once he was the first. 
 But the farmer goes, as it were, into partnership 
 with nature he lives with trees and flowers 
 he breathes the sweet air of the fields. There is 
 no constant and frightful strain upon his mind. 
 His nights are filled with sleep and rest. 
 He watches his flocks and herds as they feed 
 upon the green and sunny slopes. He hears the 
 pleasant rain falling upon the waving corn, and the 
 trees he planted in youth rustle above him as he 
 plants others for the children yet to be. 
 
 Our country is filled with the idle and unem 
 ployed, and the great question asking for an 
 answer is: What shall be done with these men? 
 What shall these men do? To this there is but 
 one answer: They must cultivate the soil. . Farm 
 ing must be rendered more attractive. Those who 
 work the land must have an honest pride in their 
 business. They must educate their children to 
 cultivate the soil. They must make farming easier, 
 so that their children will not hate it so that they 
 will not hate it themselves. The boys must not be 
 taught that tilling the grorind is a curse and almost 
 a disgrace. They must not suppose that education
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 193 
 
 is thrown away upon them unless they become 
 ministers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, or states 
 men. It must be understood that education can 
 be used to advantage on a farm. We must get rid 
 of the idea that a little learning unfits one for work. 
 There is no real conflict between Latin and labor. 
 There are hundreds of graduates of Yale and 
 Harvard and other colleges, who are agents of 
 sewing machines, solicitors for insurance, clerks, 
 copyists, in short, performing a hundred varieties 
 of menial service. They seem willing to do any 
 thing that is not regarded as work anything 
 that can be done in a town, in the house, in 
 an office, but they avoid farming as they would a 
 leprosy. Nearly every young man educated in this 
 way is simply ruined. Such an education ought to 
 be called ignorance. It is a thousand times better 
 to have common sense without education, than 
 education without the sense. Boys and girls 
 should be educated to help themselves. They 
 should be taught that it is disgraceful to be idle, 
 and dishonorable to be useless. 
 
 I say again, if you want more men and women 
 on the farms, something must be done to make 
 farm life pleasant. One great difficulty is that the 
 13
 
 194 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 farm is lonely. People write about the pleasures 
 of solitude, but they are found only in books. He 
 who lives long alone becomes insane. A hermit is 
 a madman. Without friends and wife and child, 
 there is nothing left worth living for. The unsocial 
 are the enemies of joy. They are filled with 
 egotism and envy, with vanity and hatred. People 
 who live much alone become narrow and suspicious. 
 They are apt to be the property of one idea. They 
 begin to think there is no use in anything. They 
 look upon the happiness of others as a kind of 
 folly. They hate joyous folks, because, way down 
 in their hearts, they envy them. 
 
 In our country, farm-life is too lonely. The 
 farms are large, and neighbors are too far apart. 
 In these days, when the roads are filled with 
 "tramps," the wive3 and children need protection. 
 When the farmer leaves home and goes to some 
 distant field to work, a shadow of fear is upon his 
 heart all day, and a like shadow rests upon all at 
 home. 
 
 In the early settlement of our country the 
 pioneer was forced to take his family, his axe, his 
 dog and his gun, and go into the far wild forest, 
 and build his cabin miles and miles from any
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 195 
 
 neighbor. He saw the smoke from his hearth go 
 up alone in all the wide and lonely sky. 
 
 But this necessity has passed away, and now, 
 instead of living so far apart upon the lonely farms, 
 you should live in villages. With the improved 
 machinery which you have with your generous 
 soil with your markets and means of transporta 
 tion, you can now afford to live together. 
 
 It is not necessary in this age of the world for 
 the farmer to rise in the middle of the night and 
 begin his work. This getting up so early in the 
 morning is a relic of barbarism. It has made 
 hundreds and thousands of young men curse the 
 business. There is no need of getting up at three 
 or four o clock in the winter morning. The farmer 
 who persists in doing it and persists in dragging 
 his wife and children from their beds ought to be 
 visited by a missionary. It is time enough to rise 
 after the sun- has set the example. For what 
 purpose do you get up? To feed the cattle? 
 Why not feed them more the night before ? It is 
 a waste of life. In the old times they used to get 
 up about three o clock in the morning, and go to 
 work long before the sun had risen with "heal 
 ing upon his wings," and as a just punishment they
 
 196 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 all had the ague ; and they ought to have it now. 
 The man who cannot -get a living upon Illinois soil 
 without rising before daylight ought to starve. 
 Eight hours a day is enough for any farmer to 
 work except in harvest x time. When you rise at 
 four and work till dark what is life worth ? Of 
 what use are all the improvements in farming? Of 
 what use is all the improved machinery unless it 
 tends to give the farmer a little more leisure? 
 What is harvesting now, compared with what 
 it was in the old time ? Think of the days of 
 reaping, of cradling, of raking and binding and 
 mowing. Think of threshing with the flail and 
 winnowing with the wind. And now think of the 
 reapers and mowers, the binders and threshing 
 machines, the plows and cultivators, upon which 
 the farmer rides protected from the sun. If, with 
 all these advantages, you cannot get a living with 
 out rising in the middle of the night, go into some 
 other business. You should not rob your families 
 of sleep. Sleep is the best medicine in the world. 
 It is the best doctor upon the earth. There is no 
 such thing as health without plenty of sleep. 
 Sleep until you are thoroughly rested and restored. 
 When you work, work; and when you get through 
 take a good, long, and refreshing rest.
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 197 
 
 You should live in villages, so that you can 
 have the benefits of social life. You can have a 
 reading-room you can take the best papers and 
 magazines you can have plenty of books, and 
 each one can have the benefit of them all. Some 
 of the young men and women can cultivate music. 
 You can have social gatherings you can learn 
 from each other you can discuss all topics of 
 interest, and in this way you can make farming a 
 delightful business. You must keep up with the 
 age. The way to make farming respectable is for 
 farmers to become really intelligent. They must 
 live intelligent and happy lives. They must know 
 something of books and something of what is going 
 on in the world. They must not be satisfied with 
 knowing something of the affairs of a neighbor 
 hood and nothing about the rest of the earth. The 
 business must be made attractive, and it never can 
 be until the farmer has prosperity, intelligence and 
 leisure. 
 
 Another thing I am a believer in fashion. It 
 is the duty of every woman to make herself as 
 beautiful and attractive as she possibly can. 
 
 "Handsome is as handsome does," but she is 
 much handsomer if well dressed. Every man
 
 198 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 should look his very best. I am a believer in good 
 clothes. The time never ought to come in this 
 country when you can tell a farmer s wife or 
 daughter simply by the garments she wears. I say 
 to every girl and woman, no matter what the 
 material of your dress may be, no matter how 
 cheap and coarse it is, cut it and make it in the 
 fashion. I believe in jewelry. Some people look 
 upon it as barbaric, but in my judgment, wearing 
 jewelry is the first evidence the barbarian gives of 
 a wish to be civilized. To adorn ourselves seems 
 to be a part of our nature, and this desire seems, to 
 be everywhere and in everything. I have some 
 times thought that the desire for beauty covers the 
 earth with flowers. It is this desire that paints the 
 wings of moths, tints the chamber of the shell, 
 and gives the bird its plumage and its song. Oh 
 daughters and wives, "if you would be loved, adorn 
 yourselves if you would be adored, be beautiful! 
 There is another fault common with the farmers 
 of our country they want too much land. You 
 cannot, at present, when taxes are high, afford to 
 own land that you do not cultivate. Sell it and let 
 others make farms and homes. In this way what 
 you keep will be enhanced in value. Farmers
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 199 
 
 ought to own the land they cultivate, and cultivate 
 what they own. Renters can hardly be called 
 farmers. There can be no such thing in the high 
 est sense as a home unless you own it. There 
 must be an incentive to plant trees, to beautify the 
 grounds, to preserve and improve. It elevates a 
 man to own a home. It gives a certain indepen 
 dence, a force of character that is obtained in no 
 other, way. A man without a home feels like a 
 passenger. There is in such a man a little of the 
 vagrant. Homes make patriots. He who has sat 
 by his own fireside with wife and children will 
 defend it. When he hears the word country pro 
 nounced, he thinks of his home. 
 
 Few men have been patriotic enough to shoul 
 der a musket in defence of a boarding house. 
 
 The prosperity and glory of our country depend 
 upon the number of our people who are the owners 
 of homes. Around the fireside cluster the private 
 and the public virtues of our race. Raise your 
 sons to be independent through labor to pursue 
 some business for themselves and upon their own 
 account to be self-reliant to act upon their own 
 responsibility, and to take the consequences like 
 men. Teach them above all things to be good,
 
 200 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 true and tender husbands winners of love and 
 builders of homes. 
 
 A great many farmers seem to think that they 
 are the only laborers in the world. This is a very 
 foolish thing. Farmers cannot get along without 
 the mechanic. You are not independent of the 
 man of genius. Your prosperity depends upon the 
 inventor. The world advances by the assistance of 
 all laborers ; and all labor is. under obligations to 
 the inventions of genius. The inventor does as 
 much for. agriculture as he who tills the soil. All 
 laboring men should be brothers. You are in part 
 nership with the mechanics who make your reapers, 
 your mowers and your plows ; and you should take 
 into your granges all the men who make their 
 living by honest labor. The laboring people should 
 unite and should protect themselves against all 
 idlers. You can divide mankind into two classes: 
 the laborers and the idlers, the supporters and the 
 supported, the honest and the dishonest. Every 
 man is dishonest who lives upon the unpaid labor 
 of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. Ail 
 laborers should be brothers. The laborers should 
 have equal rights before the world and before the 
 law. And I want every farmer to consider every
 
 I 
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 201 
 
 man who labors either with hand or brain as his 
 brother. Until genius and labor formed a partner 
 ship there was no such thing as prosperity among 
 men. Every reaper and mower, every agricultural 
 implement, has elevated the work of the farmer, 
 and his vocation grows grander with every inven 
 tion. In the olden time the agriculturist was 
 ignorant; he knew nothing of machinery, he was 
 the slave of superstition. He was always trying to 
 appease some imaginary power by fasting and 
 prayer. He supposed that some being actuated 
 by malice, sent the untimely frost, or swept away 
 with the wild wind his rude abode. To him the 
 seasons were mysteries. The thunder told him of 
 an enraged god the barren fields of the vengeance 
 -of heaven. The tiller of the soil lived in perpetual 
 and abject fear. He knew nothing of mechanics, 
 nothing of order, nothing of law, nothing of cause 
 and effect. He was a superstitious savage. He 
 invented prayers instead of plows, creeds instead of 
 reapers and mowers. He was unable to devote all 
 his time to the gods, and so he hired others to 
 assist him, and for their influence with the gentle 
 men supposed to Control the weather, he gave 
 one-tenth of all he could produce.
 
 202 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 The farmer has been elevated through science 
 and he should not forget the debt he owes to the 
 mechanic, to the inventor, to the thinker. He 
 should remember that all laborers belong to the 
 same grand family that they are the real kings 
 and queens, the only true nobility. 
 
 Another idea entertained by most farmers is 
 that they are in some mysterious way oppressed 
 by every other kind of business that they are 
 devoured by monopolies, especially by railroads. 
 
 Of course, the railroads are indebted to the 
 farmers for their prosperity, and the farmers are 
 indebted to the railroads. Without them Illinois 
 would be almost worthless. 
 
 A few years ago you endeavored to regulate, 
 the charges of railroad companies. The principal 
 complaint you had was that they charged too much 
 for the transportation of corn and other cereals to 
 the East. You should remember that all freights 
 are paid by the consumer; and that it made little 
 difference to you what the railroad charged for 
 transportation to the East, as that transportation 
 had to be paid by the consumers of the grain. 
 You were really interested in transportation from 
 the East to the West and in local freights. The
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 203 
 
 result is that while you have put down through 
 freights you have not succeeded so well in local 
 freights. The exact opposite should be the policy 
 of Illinois. Put down local freights ; put them 
 down, if you can, to the lowest possible figure, and 
 let through rates take of themselves. If all the 
 corn raised in Illinois could be transported to 
 New York absolutely free, it would enhance but 
 little the price that you would receive. What we 
 want is the lowest possible local rate. Instead of 
 this you have simply succeeded in helping the East 
 at the expense of the West. The railroads are 
 your friends. They are your partners. They can 
 prosper only where the country through which 
 they run prospers. All intelligent railroad men 
 know this. They know that present robbery is 
 future bankruptcy. They know that the interest 
 of the farmer and of the railroad is the same. 
 We must have railroads. What can we do with 
 out them? 
 
 When we had no railroads, we drew, as I said 
 before, our grain two hundred miles to market. 
 
 In those days the farmers did not stop at hotels. 
 They slept under their wagons took with them 
 their food fried their own bacon, made their
 
 204 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 coffee, and ate their meals in the snow and rain. 
 Those were the days when they received ten cents 
 a bushel for corn when they sold four bushels of 
 potatoes for a quarter thirty-three dozen eggs 
 for a dollar, and a hundred pounds of pork for a 
 dollar and a half. 
 
 What has made the difference? 
 
 The railroads came to your door and they 
 brought with them the markets of the world. 
 They brought New York and Liverpool and Lon 
 don into Illinois, and the state has been clothed 
 with prosperity as with a mantle. It is the interest 
 of the farmer to protect every great interest in the 
 state. You should feel proud that Illinois has 
 more railroads than any other state in this Union. 
 Her main tracks and. side tracks would furnish iron 
 enough to belt the globe. In Illinois there are ten 
 thousand miles of railways. In these iron high 
 ways more than three hundred million dollars have 
 been invested a sum equal to ten times the 
 original cost of all the land in the state. To make 
 war upon the railroads is a short-sighted and 
 suicidal policy. They should be treated fairly and 
 should be taxed by the same standard that farms 
 are taxed, and in no other way. If we wish to
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 205 
 
 prosper we must act together, and we must see to 
 it that every form of labor is protected. 
 
 There has been a long period of depression in 
 all business. The farmers have suffered least of 
 all. Your land is just as rich and productive as 
 ever. Prices have been reasonable. The towns 
 and cities have suffered. Stocks and bonds have 
 shrunk from par to worthless paper. Princes have 
 become paupers, and bankers, merchants and 
 millionaires have passed into the oblivion of bank 
 ruptcy. The period of depression is slowly passing 
 away, and we are entering upon better times. 
 
 A great many people say that a scarcity of 
 money is our only difficulty. In my opinion we 
 have money enough, but we lack confidence in 
 each other and in the future. 
 
 There has been so much dishonesty, there have 
 been so many failures, that the people are afraid to 
 trust anybody. There is plenty of money, but 
 there seems to be a scarcity of business. If you 
 were to go to the* owner of a ferry, and, upon 
 seeing his boat lying high and dry on the shore, 
 should say, "There is a superabundance of ferry 
 boat," he would probably reply, " No, but there is 
 a scarcity of water." So with us there is not a
 
 206 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 scarcity of money, but there is a scarcity of busi 
 ness. And this scarcity springs from lack of 
 confidence in one another. So many presidents of 
 savings banks, even those belonging to the Young 
 Men s Christian Association, run off with the funds ; 
 so many railroad and insurance companies are in 
 the hands of receivers ; there is so much bank 
 ruptcy on every hand, that all capital is held in the 
 nervous clutch of fear. Slowly, but surely we are 
 coming back to honest methods in business. Con 
 fidence will return, and then enterprise will unlock 
 the safe and money will again circulate as of yore ; 
 the dollars will leave their hiding places and every 
 one will be seeking investment. 
 
 For my part, I do not ask any interference on 
 the part of the government except to undo the 
 wrong it has done. I do not ask that money be 
 made out of nothing. I do not ask for the pros 
 perity born of paper. But I do ask for the remon- 
 etization of silver. Silver was demonetized by 
 fraud. It was an imposition upon every solvent 
 man ; a fraud upon every honest debtor in the 
 United States. It assassinated labor. It was done 
 in the interest of avarice and greed, and should be 
 undone by honest men.
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 207 
 
 The farmers should vote only for such men as 
 are able and willing to guard and advance the 
 interests of labor. We should know better than to 
 vote for men who will deliberately put a tariff of 
 three dollars a thousand upon Canada lumber, 
 when every farmer in Illinois is a purchaser of 
 lumber. People who live upon the prairies ought 
 to vote for cheap lumber. We should protect 
 ourselves. We ought to have intelligence enough 
 to know what we want and how to get it. The 
 real laboring men of this country can succeed if 
 they are united. By laboring men, I do not mean 
 only the farmers. I mean all who contribute in 
 some way to the general welfare. They should 
 forget prejudices and party names, and remember 
 only the best interests of the people. Let us see 
 if we cannot, in Illinois, protect every department 
 of industry. Let us see if all property cannot be 
 protected alike and taxed alike, whether owned by 
 individuals or corporations. 
 
 Where industry creates and justice protects,, 
 prosperity dwells. 
 
 Let me tell you something more about Illinois : 
 We have fifty-six thousand square miles of land 
 nearly thirty-six million acres. Upon these plains
 
 208 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 we can raise enough to feed and clothe twenty 
 million people. Beneath these prairies were hidden 
 millions of ages ago, by that old miser, the sun, 
 thirty-six thousand square miles of coal. The 
 aggregate thickness of these veins is at least fifteen 
 feet. Think of a column of coal one mile square 
 and one hundred miles high ! All this came from 
 the sun. What a sunbeam such a column would 
 be ! Think of the engines and machines this coal 
 will run and turn and whirl.! Think of all this 
 force, willed and left to us by the dead morning of 
 the world ! Think of the firesides of the future 
 around which will sit the fathers, mothers and 
 children of the years to be ! Think of the sweet 
 and happy faces, the loving and tender eyes that 
 will glow and gleam in the sacred light of all these 
 flames ! 
 
 We have the best country in the world, and 
 Illinois is the best state in that country. Is there 
 any reason that our farmers should not be prosper 
 ous and happy men ? They have every advantage, 
 and within their reach are all the comforts and 
 conveniences of life. 
 
 Do not get the land fever and think you must 
 buy all that joins you. Get out of debt as soon as
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 209 
 
 you possibly can. A mortgage casts a shadow on 
 the sunniest field. There is no business under the 
 sun that can pay ten per cent. 
 
 Ainsworth R. Spofford gives the following facts 
 about interest: "One dollar loaned for one hundred 
 years at six per cent., with the interest collected 
 annually and added to the principal, will amount to 
 three hundred and forty dollars. At eight per 
 cent, it amounts to two thousand two hundred and 
 three dollars. At three per cent, it amounts only 
 to nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents. At ten 
 per cent, it is thirteen thousand eight hundred and 
 nine dollars, or about seven hundred times as much. 
 At twelve per cent, it amounts to eighty-four thou 
 sand and seventy-five dollars, or more than four 
 thousand times as much. At eighteen per cent, it 
 amounts to fifteen million one hundred and forty- 
 five thousand and seven dollars. At twenty-four 
 per cent, (which we sometimes hear talked of) it 
 reaches the enormous sum of two billion five hund 
 red and fifty-one million seven hundred and ninety- 
 nine thousand four hundred and four dollars." 
 
 One dollar, at compound interest, at twenty-four 
 per cent., for one hundred years, would produce a 
 sum equal to our national debt. 
 14
 
 210 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 Interest eats night and day, and the more it 
 eats the hungrier it grows. The farmer in debt, 
 lying awake at night, can, if he listens, hear it 
 gnaw. If he owes nothing, he can hear his corn 
 grow. Get out of debt as soon as you possibly 
 can. You have supported idle avarice and lazy 
 economy long enough. 
 
 Above all let every farmer treat his wife and 
 children with infinite kindness. Give your sons 
 and daughters every advantage within your power. 
 In the air of kindness they will grow about you 
 like flowers. They will fill your homes with sun 
 shine and all your years with joy. Do not try to 
 rule by force. A blow from a parent leaves a scar 
 on the soul. I should feel ashamed to die sur 
 rounded by children I had whipped. Think of 
 feeling upon your dying lips the kiss of a child you 
 had struck. 
 
 See to it that your wife has every convenience. 
 Make her life worth living. Never allow her to 
 become a servant. Wives, weary and worn, 
 mothers, wrinkled and bent before their time, fill 
 homes with grief and shame. If you are not able 
 to hire help for your wives, help them yourselves. 
 See that they have the best utensils to work with.
 
 AB O UT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 211 
 
 Women cannot create things by magic. Have 
 plenty of wood and coal good cellars and plenty 
 in them. Have cisterns, so that you can have 
 plenty of rain water for washing. Do not rely on 
 a barrel and a board. When the rain comes the 
 board will be lost or the hoops will be off the 
 barrel. 
 
 Farmers should live like princes. Eat the best 
 things you raise and sell the rest. Have good- 
 things to cook and good things to cook with. Of 
 all people in our country, you should live the best. 
 Throw your miserable little stoves out of the win 
 dow. Get ranges, and have them so built that 
 your wife need not burn her face off to get you a 
 breakfast. Do not make her cook in a kitchen hot 
 as the orthodox perdition. The beef, not the cook, 
 should be roasted. It is just as easy to have 
 things convenient and right as to have them any 
 other way. 
 
 Cooking is one of the fine arts. Give your 
 wives and daughters things to cook, and things 
 to cook with, and they will soon become most 
 excellent cooks. Good cooking is the basis of 
 civilization. The man whose arteries and veins are 
 filled with rich blood made of good and well
 
 212 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 cooked food, has pluck, courage, endurance and 
 and noble impulses. The inventor of a good soup 
 did more for his race than the maker of any creed. 
 The doctrines of total depravity and endless pun 
 ishment were born of bad cooking and dyspepsia. 
 Remember that your wife should have the things 
 to cook with. 
 
 In the good old days there would be eleven 
 children in the family and only one skillet. Every 
 thing was broken or cracked or loaned or lost. 
 
 There ought to be a law making it a crime, 
 punishable by imprisonment, to fry beefsteak. 
 ..Broil it; it is just as easy, and when broiled it is 
 delicious. Fried beefsteak is not fit for a wild 
 beast. You can broil even on a stove. Shut the 
 front damper open the back one then take off 
 a griddle. There will then be a draft downwards 
 through this opening. Put on your steak, using a 
 wire broiler, and not a particle of smoke will touch 
 it, for the reason that the smoke goes down. If 
 you try to broil it with the front damper open, the 
 smoke will rise. For broiling, coal, even soft coal, 
 makes a better fire than wood. 
 
 There is no reason why farmers should not have 
 fresh meat all the year round. There is certainly
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 213 
 
 no sense in stuffing yourself full of salt meat every 
 morning, and making a well or a cistern of your 
 stomach for the rest of the day. Every farmer 
 should have an ice house. Upon or near every 
 farm is some stream from which plenty of ice can 
 be obtained, and the long summer days made de 
 lightful. Dr. Draper, one of the world s greatest 
 scientists, says that ice water is healthy, and that 
 it has done away with many of the low forms of 
 fever in the great cities. Ice has become one. of 
 the necessaries of civilized life, and without it there 
 is very little comfort. 
 
 Make your homes pleasant. Have your houses 
 warm and comfortable for the winter. Do not build 
 a story-and-a-half house. The half story is sim 
 ply an oven in which, during the summer, you will 
 bake every night, and feel in the morning as though 
 only the rind of yourself was left. 
 
 Decorate your rooms, even if you do so with 
 cheap engravings. The cheapest are far better 
 than none. Have books have papers, and read 
 them. You have more leisure than the dwellers in 
 cities. Beautify your grounds with plants and flow 
 ers and vines. Have good gardens. Remember 
 that everything of beauty tends to the elevation of
 
 214 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 man. Every little morning-glory whose purple 
 bosom is thrilled with the amorous kisses of the 
 sun, tends to put a blossom in your heart. Do not 
 judge of the value of everything by the market 
 reports. Every flower about a house certifies to 
 the refinement of somebody. Every vine climbing 
 and blossoming, tells of love and joy. 
 
 Make your houses comfortable. Do not huddle 
 together in a little room around a red-hot stove, 
 with every window fastened down. Do not live in 
 this poisoned atmosphere, and then, when one of 
 your children dies, put a piece in the papers com 
 mencing with, "Whereas, it has pleased divine 
 Providence to remove from our midst ." Have 
 plenty of air, and plenty of warmth. Comfort is 
 health. Do not imagine anything is unhealthy 
 simply because it is pleasant. That is an old and 
 foolish idea. 
 
 Let your children sleep. Do not drag them 
 from their beds in the darkness of night. Do not 
 compel them to associate all that is tiresome, irk 
 some and dreadful with cultivating the soil. In 
 this way you bring farming into hatred and disre 
 pute. Treat your children with infinite kindness 
 treat them as equals. There is no happiness in a
 
 AB O UT FAR AUNG IN ILLINOIS. 2 1 5 
 
 home not filled with love. Where the husband 
 hates his wife where the wife hates the husband; 
 where children hate their parents and each other 
 there is a hell upon earth. 
 
 There is no reason why farmers should not be 
 the kindest and most cultivated of men. There is 
 nothing in plowing the fields to make men cross, 
 cruel and crabbed. To look upon the sunny slopes 
 covered with daisies does not tend to make men 
 unjust. Whoever labors for the happiness of those 
 he loves, elevates himself, no matter whether he 
 works in the dark and dreary shops, or in the 
 perfumed fields. To work for others is, in reality, 
 the only way in which a man can work for himself. 
 Selfishness is ignorance. Speculators cannot make 
 unless somebody loses. In the realm of. specula 
 tion, every success has at least one victim. The 
 harvest reaped by the farmer benefits all and injures 
 none. For him to succeed, it is not necessary that 
 some one should fail. The same is true of all 
 producers of all laborers. 
 
 I can imagine no condition that carries with it. 
 it such a promise of joy as that of the farmer in 
 the early winter. He has his cellar filled he has 
 made every preparation for the days of snow and
 
 216 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 storm he looks forward to three months of ease 
 and rest ; to three months of fireside - content ; 
 three months with wife and children ; three months 
 of long, delightful evenings ; three months of home ; 
 three months of solid comfort. 
 
 When the life of the farmer is such as I have 
 described, the cities and towns will not be filled 
 with want the streets will not be crowded with 
 wrecked rogues, broken bankers, and bankrupt 
 speculators. The fields will be tilled, and country 
 villages, almost hidden by trees and vines and 
 flowers, filled with industrious and happy people, 
 will nestle in every vale and gleam like gems on 
 every plain. 
 
 The idea must be done away with that there is 
 something intellectually degrading in cultivating 
 the soil. Nothing can be nobler than to be useful. 
 Idleness should not be respectable. 
 
 If farmers will cultivate well, and without waste ; 
 if they will sofcbuild that their houses will be warm 
 in winter and cool in summer; if they will plant 
 trees and beautify their homes ; if they will occupy 
 their leisure in reading, in thinking, in improving 
 their minds and in devising ways and means to 
 make their business profitable and pleasant; if
 
 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 217 
 
 they will live nearer together and cultivate socia 
 bility ; if they will come together often ; if they 
 will have reading rooms and cultivate music; if 
 they will have bath-rooms, ice-houses and good 
 gardens ; if their wives can have an easy time ; if 
 their sons and daughters can have an opportunity 
 to keep in line with the thoughts and dis 
 coveries of the world ; if the nights can be taken 
 for sleep and the evenings for enjoyment, every 
 body will be in love with the fields. Happiness 
 should be the object of life, and if life on the farm 
 can be made really happy, the children will grow 
 up in love with the meadows, the streams, the 
 woods and the old home. Around the farm will 
 cling and cluster the happy memories of the de- 
 lighful years. 
 
 Remember, I pray you, that you are in partner 
 ship with all labor that you should join hands 
 with all the sons and daughters of toil, and that all 
 who work belong to the same noble family. 
 
 For my part, I envy the man who has lived on 
 the same broad acres from his boyhood, who culti 
 vates the fields where in youth he played, and lives 
 where his father lived and died. 
 
 I can imagine no sweeter way to end one s life
 
 218 ABOUT FARMING IN ILLINOIS. 
 
 than in the quiet of the country, out of the mad 
 race for money, place and power far from the 
 demands of business out of the dusty highway 
 where fools struggle and strive for the hollow praise 
 of other fools. 
 
 Surrounded by pleasant fields and faithful 
 friends, by those I have loved, I hope to end my 
 days. And this I hope may be the lot of all who 
 hear my voice. I hope that you, in the country, in 
 houses covered with vines and clothed with flowers, 
 looking from the open window upon rustling fields 
 of corn and wheat, over which will run the sunshine 
 and the shadow, surrounded by those whose lives 
 
 tf 
 
 you have filled with joy, will pass away serenely as 
 the Autumn dies.
 
 SPEECH AT CINCINNATI. 

 
 SPEECH AT CINCINNATI. 
 
 NOMINATING JAMES G. ELAINE FOR THE PRESIDENCY, 
 JUNE, 1876. 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS may be satisfied with 
 the loyalty, of Benjamin H. Bristow; so am 
 I; but if any man nominated by this convention 
 can not carry the State of Massachusetts, I am not 
 satisfied with the loyalty of that State. If the 
 nominee of this convention can not carry the grand 
 old Commonwealth of Massachusetts by seventy- 
 five thousand majority, I would advise them to sell 
 out Faneuil Hall as a Democratic headquarters. .1 
 would advise them to take from Bunker Hill that 
 old monument of glory. 
 
 The Republicans of the United States demand 
 as their leader in the great contest of 1876 a man 
 of intelligence, a man of integrity, a man of well- 
 known and approved political opinions. They de 
 mand a statesman ; they demand a reformer after
 
 \ 
 
 222 POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 as well as before the election. They demand a 
 politician in the highest, broadest and best sense 
 a man of superb moral courage. They demand a 
 man acquainted with public affairs with the wants 
 of the people; with not only the requirements of 
 the hour, but with the demands of the future. 
 They demand a man broad enough to comprehend 
 the relations of this government to the other 
 nations of the earth. They demand a man well 
 versed in the powers, duties, and prerogatives of 
 each and every department of this government. 
 They demand a man who will sacredly preserve the 
 financial honor of the United States ; one who 
 knows enough to know that the national debt must 
 be paid through the prosperity of this people ; one 
 who knows enough to know that all the financial 
 theories in the world cannot redeem a single dol 
 lar; one who knows enough to know that all the 
 money must be made, not by law, but by labor; 
 one who knows enough to know that the people of 
 the United States have the industry to make the 
 money, and the honor to pay it over just as fast as 
 they make it. 
 
 The Republicans of the United States demand 
 a man who knows that prosperity and resumption,
 
 POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 223 
 
 when they come, must come together; that when 
 they come, they will come hand in hand through 
 the golden harvest fields ; hand in hand by the 
 whirling spindles and the turning wheels ; hand in 
 hand past the open furnace doors ; hand in hand by 
 the flaming forges ; hand in hand by the chimneys 
 filled with eager fire, greeted arid grasped by the 
 countless sons of toil. 
 
 This money has to be dug out of the earth. 
 You can not make it by passing resolutions in a 
 political convention. 
 
 The Republicans of the United States want a 
 man who knows that this government should pro 
 tect every citizen, at home and abroad ; who knows 
 that any government that will not defend its 
 defenders, and protect its protectors, is a disgrace 
 to the map of the world. They demand a man 
 who believes in the eternal separation and divorce- 
 ment of church and school. They demand a man 
 whose political reputation is spotless as a star ; but 
 they do not demand that their candidate shall have 
 a certificate of moral character signed by a confed 
 erate congress. The man who has, in full, heaped 
 and rounded measure, all these splendid qualifica 
 tions, is the present grand and gallant leader of 
 the Republican party James G. Elaine.
 
 224 POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 Our country, crowned with the vast and mar 
 velous achievements of its first century, asks for a 
 man worthy of the past, and prophetic of her 
 future; asks for a man who has the audacity of 
 genius ; asks for a man who is the grandest combi 
 nation of heart, conscience and brain beneath her 
 flag such a man is James G. Elaine. 
 
 For the Republican host, led by this intrepid 
 man, there can be no defeat. 
 
 This is a grand year a year filled with the 
 recollections of the Revolution ; filled with proud 
 and tender memories of the past; with the sacred 
 legends of liberty a year in which the sons of 
 freedom will drink from the fountains of enthu 
 siasm ; a year in which the people call for a man 
 who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers 
 won upon the field ; a year in which they call for 
 the man who has torn from the throat of treason 
 the tongue of slander for the man who has 
 snatched the mask of Democracy from the hideous 
 face of rebellion; for the man who, like an intel 
 lectual athlete, has stood .in the arena of debate 
 and challenged all comers, and who is still a total 
 stranger to defeat. 
 
 Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight,
 
 POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 225 
 
 James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the 
 American Congress and threw his shining lance full 
 and fair against the brazen foreheads of the de- 
 famers of his country and the maligners of his 
 honor. For the Republican party to desert this 
 gallant leader now, is as though an army should 
 desert their general upon the field of battle. 
 
 James G. Blaine is now and has been for years 
 the bearer of the sacred standard of the Republican 
 party. I call it sacred, because no human being 
 can stand beneath its folds without becoming and 
 without remaining free. 
 
 Gentlemen of the convention, in the name of 
 the great Republic, the only Republic that ever 
 existed upon this earth; in the name of all her 
 defenders and of all her supporters; in the name 
 of all her soldiers living; in the name of all her 
 soldiers dead upon the field of battle, and in the 
 name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch 
 of famine at Andersonville and Libby, whose suffer 
 ings he so vividly remembers, Illinois -- Illinois 
 nominates for the next President of this country, 
 that prince of parliamentarians that leader of 
 leaders James G. Blaine.
 
 "THE PAST RISES BEFORE ME 
 LIKE A DREAM."
 
 "THE PAST RISES BEFORE ME 
 LIKE A DREAM." 
 
 EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE SOLDIERS 
 REUNION AT INDIANAPOLIS, SEPT. 21, 1876. 
 
 THE past rises before me like a dream. Again 
 we are in the great struggle for national 
 life. We hear the sounds of preparation the 
 music of boisterous drums the silver voices of 
 heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, 
 and hear the appeals of orators ; we see the pale 
 cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men ; 
 and in those assemblages we see all the dead 
 whose dust we have covered with flowers. We 
 lose sight of them no more. We are with them 
 when they enlist in the great army of freedom. 
 We see them part with those they love. Some are 
 walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, 
 with the maidens they adore. We hear the whis-
 
 230 POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 perings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they 
 lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over 
 cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are 
 receiving the blessings of old men. Some are 
 parting with mothers who hold them and press 
 them to their hearts again and again, and say 
 nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and kisses 
 divine mingling of agony and love ! And some 
 are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave 
 words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their 
 hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We 
 see the wife standing in the door with the babe in 
 her arms standing in the sunlight sobbing at 
 the turn of the road a hand waves she answers 
 by holding high in her loving arms the child. He 
 is gone, and forever. 
 
 We see them all as they march proudly away 
 under the flaunting flags, keeping time to the 
 grand, wild music of war marching down the 
 streets of the great cities through the towns and 
 across the prairies down to the fields of glory, to 
 do and to die for the eternal right. 
 
 We go with them, one and all. We are by 
 their side on the gory fields in all the hospitals 
 of pain on all the weary marches. We stand
 
 POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 231 
 
 guard with them in the wild storm and under the 
 quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running 
 with blood in the furrows of old fields. We are 
 with them between contending hosts, unable to 
 move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly away 
 among the withered leaves. We see them pierced 
 by balls and torn with shells, in the trenches, by 
 forts, and in the whirlwind of the charge, where 
 men become iron, with nerves of steel. 
 
 We are with them in the prisons of hatred and 
 famine ; but human speech can never tell what they 
 endured. 
 
 We are with them when the news comes that 
 they are dead. We see the maiden in the shadow 
 of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of 
 the old man bowed with the last grief. 
 
 The past rises before us, and we see four 
 millions of human beings governed by the lash 
 we see them bound hand and foot we hear the 
 strokes of cruel whips we see the hounds track 
 ing women through tangled swamps. We see 
 babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty 
 unspeakable ! Outrage infinite ! 
 
 Four million bodies in chains four million 
 souls in fetters. All the sacred relations of wife,
 
 232 POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 
 
 mother, father and child trampled beneath the 
 brutal feet of might. And all this was done under 
 our own beautiful banner of the free. 
 
 The past rises before us. We hear the roar 
 and shriek of the bursting shell. The broken fet 
 ters fall. These heroes died. We look. Instead 
 of slaves we see men and women and children. 
 The wand of progress touches the auction-block, 
 the slave-pen, the whipping-post, and we see homes 
 and firesides and school-houses and books, and 
 where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear 
 we see the faces of the free. 
 
 These heroes are dead. They died for liberty 
 they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep 
 in the land they made free, under the flag they 
 rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad 
 hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing 
 vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the 
 clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each 
 in the windowless palace of Rest. Earth may run 
 red with other wars they are at peace. In the 
 midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found 
 the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for 
 soldiers living and dead: Cheers for the living; 
 tears for the dead.
 
 Over Twenty thousand copies of this book already sold. 
 
 The Gods 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER LECTURES. 
 
 BY ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 
 
 NEW edition of Ingersoll s Lectures is now ready for distribu 
 tion. This edition contains "The Gods," "Humboldt," "Thomas 
 Paine," "Individuality," and "Heretics and Heresies." These Lectures 
 have just been revised, and many changes, additions, and corrections 
 made by the author. 
 
 This volume is handsomely printed on tinted paper, and substantially 
 bound. 
 
 These Lectures are the most radical ever delivered in the United 
 States. The most important theological questions are discussed from 
 a perfectly rational point of view. The existence of the supernatural 
 is denied, and reason, observation, and experience are shown to be the 
 only basis upon which man can securely build. 
 
 There is an effort in these Lectures to drive from the heart the 
 the shadow of superstition to enable man to enjoy this life, and to 
 do away with the tyranny of the Church. 
 
 The author takes the ground that man belongs to himself; that each 
 individual should, at all hazards, maintain his intellectual freedom ; and 
 reject with scorn every religion that demands the sacrifice of his Indi 
 viduality. 
 
 %* Price, $1.50. A liberal discount to the Trade. 
 
 C. P. FARRELL, Publisher, 
 
 PEORIA, ILLINOIS.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. 
 
 FOR THE USE OF MAN.
 
 EXTRACTS FROM NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 
 
 [From "The Chicago Times," July 5, 1874.] 
 
 One of the most remarkable books ever presented to the public is tha 
 just issued by Col. Jngersoll. It is remarkable for many things : Its abil 
 ity, the spirit of fairness that pervades it, but above all, for its courage. 
 It is also remarkable in another sense no inherent quality, to be sure 
 and that is, it marks an epoch in the world of thought, a new birth ; for 
 this book, now everywhere read and reviewed on its merits, would have 
 
 been met by a howl of execration but a simple ten years ago 
 
 Col. Ingersoll is a man in earnest. He a man of power. The rarest gifts 
 bountiful Nature now and then bestows on mortals, seldom more than one 
 at a time, she has showered on him in profusion. As an orator, he stands 
 probably without an equal in the land ; as a writer, considering that close 
 application to the law has given him little opportunity for practice, he is 
 almost equal to himself as an orator; and this in the most comprehensive 
 sense, for his efforts present a rare combination of force, pure diction, 
 poetical imagery, comprehensive and incisive reasoning, and a logic that 
 is inexorable. But what gives most character to his style, and constitutes 
 its greatest charm, is its suggestiveness. Mr. Ingersoll never exhausts a 
 subject. His lectures are strings of epigrams. . . . The absolute 
 truth is unattainable for man. The nearest any of us will ever get to the 
 great secret of our existence, is to be honest with ourselves. In this view, 
 Robert G. Ingersoll is nearer finite truth than most men. 
 
 [From "The Chicago Journal," July 3, 1874.] 
 
 One of the most superbly gotten-up books we have seen for many a day. 
 This book belongs to a class of publications which challenge attention by 
 boldness and strength. Every sentence is brilliant with the light of genius, 
 and based on sincerity. It is probably the most radical book to be found 
 in the whole range of theology. The issue joined by this volume is vital 
 to every feature ot religion, and that all the more, because the moral tone 
 is lofty. It is well for the cause of truth that no issue of ethics, politics, 
 sociology, or personalities, is raised, or so much as suggested. The posi 
 tions taken must be met squarely if at all: . . The lecture on Humboldt 
 shows a great wealth of knowledge, and a profound appreciation of what 
 science has done for the world. . . The dominant idea of the volume 
 is, Belief should rest on evidence.
 
 [From "The St. Louis Republican," July n, 1874.] 
 
 "The Gods, and Other Lectures," by Robert G. Ingersoll, is a daring 
 book. Many would call it a bad book ; and yet it illustrates the grand 
 principle of freedom of thought and opinion, and is perfectly decorous in 
 language. The tree of life and knowledge still stands in the garden bear 
 ing fruit. Those who chose can eat of it ; those who are not hungry can 
 let it alone. It is a free lunch, just as it always was ; and by the way 
 humanity has shaken, and are continually pressing around it, we are con 
 stantly reminded of what a spunky little woman our mother Eve was. 
 There is a rich mine of human nature in her, and its treasures are exhaust- 
 less. Those who do not wish to read Mr. IngersolPs book about the Gods 
 can let it alone, and those who wish to abuse it without reading have that 
 privilege, for the press is as free to them as it was to him. . . . The 
 book is written with great care and precision, and its coolness is something 
 astonishing. The motto on the title page is an index to the contents. It 
 is: "Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than 
 the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you 
 will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge." . . . 
 
 [From "The Cincinnati Commercial," July n, 1874.] 
 
 Robert G. Ingersoll, of Illinois, is re.cognized as one among the most 
 brilliant of radical speakers and writers ; and he is very radical, as any one 
 who has read his lecture on "The Gods," well knows. He does not mince 
 matters. He discusses theological questions from a rational point of view. 
 He ignores the supernatural, and builds upon the foundation of reason, 
 observation, and experience. He takes the ground that man belongs to 
 himself, must maintain his intellectual freedom, and reject every religion 
 that demands the sacrifice of his individuality. 
 The typography of this volume is superb. 
 
 [ From " The Spiritualist at Work."] 
 
 Colonel R. G. Ingersoll is one of the boldest and clearest thinkers of 
 the age, and as an orator he has few rivals, and no superiors, in America. 
 The book before us is, therefore, a work of great merit. It is full of the 
 most radical and advanced thought, clothed in robes of purest eloquence. 
 . . . It is a work upon which great care has been bestowed, and deep 
 thought and profound scholarship expended, and it is destined to become 
 standard. . . . The Lectures on Humboldt and Paine are able reviews 
 of those great representative thinkers, and valuable as historical and bio 
 graphical sketches. . . . .