INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS G. W. FOOTE AND A. D. MCLAREN Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN r J INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS by G. W. FOOTE New Revised and Much Enlarged Edition by A. D. MCLAREN Published for the Secular Society Ltd. The Pioneer Press {G. W. Foote and Co. Ltd.) 61, Farrin'gdon Street, E.G. 4 PART I 18946S1 NOTE. FORTY-SEVEN years have passed since the first edition of this book was published. During that time the list of " infidel death-beds " has, naturally, been considerably augmented, and it now includes the name of the original author, George William Foote. I am responsible for the whole of Part II of the present edition, and for the records of those Freethinkers whose names are marked with an asterisk in the Index. A.D.M. INTRODUCTION. INFIDEL death-beds have been a fertile theme of pulpit eloquence. The priests of Christianity often inform their congregations that Faith is an excellent soft pillow, and Reason a horrible hard bolster, for the dying head. Freethought, they say, is all very well in the days of our health and strength, when we are buoyed up by the pride of carnal intellect ; but ah ! how poor a thing it is when health and strength fail us, when, deserted by our self- sufficiency, we need the support of a stronger power. In that extremity the proud Freethinker turns to Jesus Christ, renounces his wicked scepticism, implores par- don of the Saviour he has despised, and shudders at the awful scenes that await him in the next world should the hour of forgiveness be past. Pictorial art has been pressed into the service of this plea for religion, and in such orthodox periodicals as the British Workman, to say nothing of the hordes of pious inventions which are circulated as tracts, expiring sceptics have been portrayed in agonies of terror, gnash- ing their teeth, wringing their hands, rolling their eyes, and exhibiting every sign of despair. One minister of the gospel, the Rev. Erskine Neale, has not thought it beneath his dignity to compose an extensive series of these holy frauds, under the title of Vlll. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS Closing Scenes. This work was, at one time, very popu- lar and influential ; but its specious character having been exposed, it has fallen into disrepute, or at least into neglect. The real answer to these arguments, if they may be called such, is to be found in the body of the present work. I have narrated in a brief space, and from the best authorities, the " closing scenes " in the lives of many eminent Freethinkers during the last three cen- turies. They are not anonymous persons without an address, who cannot be located in time or space, and who simply serve "to point a moral or adorn a tale." Their names* are in most cases historical, and in some cases familiar to fame; great poets, philosophers, his- torians, and wits, of deathless memory, who cannot be withdrawn from the history of our race without robbing it of much of its dignity and splendour. In some instances I have prefaced the story of their deaths with a short, and in others with a lengthy, record of their lives. The ordinary reader cannot be expected to possess a complete acquaintance with the career and achievements of every great soldier of progress ; and I have therefore considered it prudent to afford such in- formation as might be deemed necessary to a proper appreciation of the character, the greatness, and the renown, of the subjects of my sketches. When the hero of the story has been the object of calumny or misrepre- sentation, when his death has been falsely related, and simple facts have been woven into a tissue of lying ab- surdity, I have not been content with a bare narration of the truth ; I have carried the war into the enemy's camp, and refuted their mischievous libels. One of our greatest living thinkers entertains " the belief that the English mind, not readily swayed by INTRODUCTION IX. rhetoric, moves freely under the pressure of facts." * I may therefore venture to hope that the facts I have recorded will have their proper effect on the reader's mind. Yet it may not be impolitic to examine the ortho- dox argument as to death-bed repentance. Carlyle, in his Essay on Voltaire, utters a potent warning against anything of the kind : Surely the parting agonies of a fellow-mortal, when the spirit of our brother, rapt in the whirlwinds and thick ghastly yapours of death, clutches blindly for help, and no help is there, are not the scenes where a wise faith would seek to exult, when it can no longer hope to alleviate ! For the rest, to touch farther on those their idle tales of dying horrors, remorse, and the like ; to write of such, to believe them, or disbelieve them, or in anywise discuss them, were but a continuation of the same ineptitude. He who, after the imperturbable exit of so many Cartouches and Thurtells, in every age of the world, can continue to regard the manner of a man's death as a test of his religious orthodoxy, may boast himself impregnable to merely terrestial logic. 2 There is a great deal of truth in this vigorous passage. I fancy, however, that some of the dupes of priestcraft are not absolutely impregnable to terrestrial logic, and I discuss the subject for their sakes, even at the risk of being held guilty of " ineptitude." Throughout the world the religion of mankind is deter- mined by the geographical accident of their birth. In England men grow up Protestants ; in Italy, Catholics ; in Russia, Greek Christians ; in Turkey, Mohammedans ; in India, Brahmans ; in China, Buddhists or Confucians. What they are taught in their childhood they believe in their manhood ; and they die in the faith in which they have lived. 1 Dr. E. B. Tylor : Preface to second edition of Primitive Culture. 2 Essays, Vol II., p. 161 (People's edition). X. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS Here and there a few men think for themselves. If they discard the faith in which they have been educated, they are never free from its influence. It meets them at every turn, and is constantly, by a thousand ties, draw- ing them back to the orthodox fold. The stronger resist this attraction, the weaker succumb to it. Between them is the average man, whose tendency will depend on several things. If he is isolated, or finds but few sym- pathisers, he may revert to the ranks of faith ; if he finds many of the same opinion with himself, he will prob- ably display more fortitude. Even Freethinkers are gregarious, and in the worst as well as the best sense of the words, the saying of Novalis is true " My thought gains infinitely when it is shared by another." But in all cases of reversion, the sceptic invariably turns to the creed of his own country. What does this prove ? Simply the power of our environment, and the force of early training. When " infidels " are few, and their relatives are orthodox, what could be more natural than what is called " a death-bed recantation?" Their minds are enfeebled by disease, or the near approach of death ; they are surrounded by persons who continually urge them to be reconciled to the popular faith ; and is it astonishing if they sometimes yield to these solicita- tions? Is it wonderful if, when all grows dim, and the priestly carrion-crow of the death-chamber mouths the perfunctory shibboleths, the weak brain should become dazed, and the poor tongue mutter a faint response? Should the dying man be old, there is still less reason for surprise. Old age yearns back to the cradle, and as Dante Rossetti says : Life all paet Is like the sky when the sun sets in it, Clearest where furthest off. The " recantation " of old men, if it occurs, is easily INTRODUCTION XI. understood. Having been brought up in a particular religion, their earliest and tenderest memories may be connected with it ; and when they lie down to die they may mechanically recur to it, just as they may forget whole years of their maturity, and vividly remember the scenes of their childhood. Those who have read Thackeray's exquisitely faithful and pathetic narrative of the death of old Col. Newcome, will remember that as the evening chapel bell tolled its last note, he smiled, lifted his head a little, and cried Adsum\ ("I am present "), the boy's answer when the names were called at school. Cases of recantation, if they were ever common, which does not appear to be true, are now exceedingly rare; so rare, indeed, that they are never heard of ex- cept in anonymous tracts, which are evidently concocted for the glory of God, rather than the edification of Man. .Sceptics are at present numbered by thousands, and they can nearly always secure at their bedsides the presence of friends who share their unbelief. Every week, the Freethought journals report quietly, and as a matter of course, the peaceful end of " infidels " who, having lived without hypocrisy, have died without fear. They are frequently buried by their heterodox friends, and never a week passes without the Secular Burial Service, or some other appropriate words, being read by sceptics over a sceptic's grave. Christian ministers know this. They usually confine themselves, therefore, to the death-bed stories of Paine and Voltaire, which have been again and again refuted. Little, if anything, is said about the eminent Freethinkers who have died in the present generation. The priests must wait half a century before they can hope to defame them with success. Our cry to these pious sutlers is "Hands off!" Refute the arguments of Freethinkers, Xll. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS if you can; but do not obtrude your disgusting presence in the death chamber, or vent your malignity over their tombs. Supposing, however, that every Freethinker turned Christian on his death-bed. It is a tremendous stretch of fancy, but I make it for the sake of argument. What does it prove ? Nothing, as I said before, but the force of our surroundings and early training. It is a common saying among Jews, when they hear of a Christian proselyte, " Ah, wait till he comes to die !" As a matter of fact, converted Jews generally die in the faith of their race; and the same is alleged as to the native converts that are made by our missionaries in India. Heine has a pregnant passage on this point. Referring to Joseph Schelling, who was " an apostate to his own thought," who " deserted the altar he had himself con- secrated," and " returned to the crypts of the past," Heine rebukes the " old believers," who cried Kyrie cleison (" Lord, have mercy ") in honour of such a con- version. " That," he says " proves nothing for their doctrine. It only proves that man turns to religion when he is old and fatigued, when his physical and mental force has left him, when he can no longer enjoy nor reason. So many Freethinkers are converted on their death-beds ! . . . But at least do not boast of them. These legendary conversions belong at best to pathology, and are a poor evidence for your cause. After all, they only prove this, that it was impossible for you to con- vert those Freethinkers while they were healthy in body and mind." 3 Renan has some excellent words on the same subject in his delightful volume of autobiography. After ex- pressing a rooted preference for a sudden death, he con- tinues : " I should be grieved to go through one of those 3 De I'Allemagne, Vol. I,, p. 174. INTRODUCTION Xlll. periods of feebleness, in which the man who has possessed strength and virtue is only the shadow and ruins of him- self, and often, to the great joy of fools, occupies himself in demolishing the life he had laboriously built up. Such an old age is the worst gift the gods can bestow on man. If such a fate is reserved for me, I protest in advance against the fatuities that a softened brain may make me say or sign. It is Renan sound in heart and head, such as I am now, and not Renan half destroyed by death, and no longer himself, as I shall be if I decompose gradually, that I wish people to listen to and believe." * To find the best passage on this topic in our own literature we must go back to the seventeenth century, and to Selden's Table Talk, a volume in which Coleridge found " more weighty bullion sense " than he " ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer." Selden lived in a less mealy-mouthed age than ours, and what I am going to quote smacks of the blunt old times ; but it is too good to miss, and all readers who are not prudish will thank me for citing it. " For a priest," says Selden, " to turn a man when he lies a dying, is just like one that has a long time solicited a woman, and cannot obtain his end; at length he makes her drunk, and so lies with her." It is a curious thing that the writer of these words helped to draw up the Westminster Confession of faith. For my own part, while I have known many Free- thinkers who were steadfast to their principles in death, I have never known a single case of recantation. The fact is, Christians are utterly mistaken on this subject. It is quite intelligible that those who believe in a venge- ful God, and an everlasting hell, should tremble on " the brink of eternity" ; and it is natural that they should as- cribe to others the same trepidation. But a moment's re- * Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse, p. 377. XIV. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS flexion must convince them that this is fallacious. The only terror in death is the apprehension of what lies be- yond it, and that emotion is impossible to a sincere dis- believer. Of course the orthodox may ask, " But is there a sincere disbeliever?" To which I can only reply, like Diderot, by asking, "Is there a sincere Christian?" Professor Tyndall, while repudiating Atheism himself, has borne testimony to the earnestness of others who em- brace it. "I have known some of the most pronounced among them," he says, " not only in life but in death seen them approaching with open eyes the inexorable goal, with no dread of a hangman's whip, with no hope of a heavenly crown, and still as mindful of their duties, and as faithful in the discharge of them, as if their eternal future depended on their latest deeds." 5 Lord Bacon said, " I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death." True, and the physical suffering, and the pang of separation, are the same for all. Yet the end of life is as natural as its beginning, and the true philosophy of existence is nobly expressed in the lofty sentence of Spinoza, " A free man thinks less of nothing than of death." " So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 8 G.W.F. s Fortnightly Review, November, 1877. Bryant, Thanatopsis. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS. LORD AMBERLEY. VISCOUNT AMBERLEY, the eldest son of the late Earl Russell, and the author of a very heretical work en- titled an Analysis of Religious Belief, lived and died a Freethinker. His will, stipulating that his son should be educated by a sceptical friend was set aside by Earl Russell; the law of England being such, that Freethinkers are denied the parental rights which are enjoyed by their Christian neighbours. Lady Frances Russell, who signs with her initials the Pre- face to Lord Amberley's book, which was published afer his death, writes : "Ere the pages now given to the public had left the press, the hand that had written them was cold, the heart of which few could know the loving depths had ceased to beat, the far- ranging mind was for ever still, the fervent spirit was at rest. Let this be remembered by those who read, and add slemnity to the solemn purpose of the book." JOHN BASKERVILLE BASKERVILLE'S name is well known in the republic of letters, and his memory still lingers in Birmingham, where he carried on the trade of a printer. He was 1 6 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS celebrated for the excellence of his workmanship, the beauty of his types, and the splendour of his editions. Born in 1706, he died on January 8, 1775. He was buried in a tomb in his own garden, on which was placed the following inscription : Stranger, Beneath this cone, in unconsecrated ground, A friend to the liberties of mankind directed His body to be inurned. May the example contribute to emancipate thy Mind from the idle fears of Superstition And the wicked arts of Priesthood. This virtuous man and useful citizen took precau- tions against " the wicked arts of priesthood." "His will," says Mr. Leslie Stephen, " professed open con- tempt for Christianity, and the biographers who repro- duce the document always veil certain passages with lines of stars as being ' far too indecent (i.e., irreverent) for repetition.' " 1 PIERRE BAYLE. PIERRE BAYLE was the author of the famous Dictionary which bears his name. This monument of learning and acuteness has been of inestimable service to suc- ceeding writers. Gibbon himself laid it under con- tribution, and acknowledged his indebtedness to the "celebrated writer " and " philosopher " of Amster- dam. Elsewhere Gibbon calls him "the indefatigable Bayle," an epithet which is singularly appropriate, since he worked fourteen hours daily for over forty years. Born on November 18, 1647, Bayle died on December 28, 1706. He continued writing to the very end, and " laboured constantly, with the same 1 Dictionary of National Biography. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 17 tranquillity of mind as if death has not been ready to interrupt his work. 2 This is the testimony of a friend, and a similar statement is made in the Nou-velle Biographic Generate, which says, " He died in his clothes, and as it were pen in hand." According to Des Maiseaux, " he saw death approaching without either fearing or desiring it." Nor did his jocularity desert him any more than his scepticism. Writing to Lord Shaftesbury on October 29, 1706 only two months before his death he said : " I should have thought that a dispute with Divines would put me out of humour, but I find by experience that it serves as an amusement for me in the solitude to which I have reduced myself." The final moments of this great scholar are des- cribed by a friend who had the account from an at- tendant. " M. Bayle died," says M. Seers, " with great tranquillity and without anybody with him. At nine o'clock in the morning his landlady entered his chamber; he asked her, but with a dying voice, if his fire was kindled, and died a moment after, without M. Basnage, 3 or me., or any of his friends with him." JEREMY BENTHAM. BENTHAM exercised a profound influence on the party of progress for nearly two generations. He was the father of Philosophical Radicalism, which did so much to free the minds and bodies of the English people, and which counted among its swordsmen historians like Grote, philosophers like Mill, wits like Sydney Smith, journalists like Fonblanque, and politicians 2 Des Maiseaux, Life of Bayle, prefixed to the English translation of the " Dictionary." s M. Basnage the author of the first History of the Jews. B 1 8 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS like Roebuck. As a reformer in jurisprudence he has no equal. His brain swarmed with progressive ideas and projects for the improvement and elevation of mankind; and his fortune, as well as his intellect, was ever at the service of advanced causes. His sceptic- ism was rather suggested than paraded in his multi- tudinous writings, but it was plainly expressed in a few special volumes. Not Paul, but Jesus, published under the pseudonym of Gamaliel Smith is a slashing attack on the Great Apostle. The Church of Eng- land Catechism Explained is a merciless criticism of that great instrument for producing mental and political slaves. But the most thorough-going of Bentham's works was a little volume written by Grote from the Master's notes the Influence of Natural Re- ligion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind in which theology is assailed as the historic and neces- sary enemy of human liberty, enlightenment, and welfare. Born on February 15, 1748, Bentham died on June 6, 1832. By a will dating as far back as 1769, his body was left for the purposes of science, " not out of affectation of singularity, but to the intent and with the desire that mankind may reap some small benefit in and by my decease, having hitherto had small op- portunities to contribute thereto while living." A memorandum affixed shows that this clause was delib- erately confirmed two months before his death. Dr. Southwood Smith delivered a lecture over Bentham's remains, three days after his death, in the Webb Street School of Anatomy. He thus des- cribed the last moments of his illustrious friend : Some time before his death, when he truly be- , lieved lie was near that hour, he said to one of his disciples, who was watching over him : " I now feel that I am dying : our care must be to minimise the INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS IQ pain. Do not let any of the servants come into my room and keep away the youth : it will be distressing to them, and they can be of no service. Yet I must not be alone : you will remain with me, and you only ; and then we shall have reduced the pain to the least possible amount." Such were his last thoughts and feelings. 4 Mr. Leslie Stephen relates a similar story in the Dictionary of National Biography. As a Utilitarian, Bentham regarded happiness as the only good and pain as the only evil. He met death " serenely," but like a sensible man he " minimised the pain." PAUL BERT. PAUL BERT was born at Auxerre in October, 1833, and he died at Tonquin on November n, 1886. His father educated him in a detestation of priests, and his own nature led him to the pursuit of science. He took the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1863, and three years later the degree of Doctor of Science. His political life began with the fall of the Empire. After the war of 1870-71 he entered the Chamber of Depu- ties, and devoted his great powers to the development of public education. Largely through his labours, the Chamber voted free, secular, and compulsory in- struction for both sexes. He was idolized by the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses in France. Being accused of a " blind hatred " of priests, he replied in the Chamber " The conquests of education are made on the domain of religion; I am forced to meet on my road Catholic superstitions and Romish policy, or rather it is across their empire that my path seems to me naturally traced." Speaking at a mass meet- 4 Dr. Southwood Smith's Lecture, p. 62. 20 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS ing at the Cirque d'Hiver, in August, 1881, Gam- betta himself being in the chair, Paul Bert declared that ' ' modern societies march towards morality in pro- portion as they leave religion behind." Afterwards he published his scathing Morale des Jesuites, over twenty thousand copies of which were sold in less than a year. The book was dedicated to Bishop Frep- pel in a vein of masterly irony. Paul Bert also pub- lished a scientific work, the Premiere Annie d'En- seignement Scientifique, which is almost universally used in the French primary schools. During Gambetta's short-lived government Paul Bert held the post of Minister of Public Instruction. In 1886 he went out to Tonquin as Resident-General. Hard work and the pestilential climate laid him low and he succumbed to dysentery. When the news of his death reached the French Chamber, M. Freycinet thus announced the event from the tribune : I announce with the deepest sorrow the death of M. Paul Bert. He died literally on the field of honour, broken down by the fatigues and hardships which he so bravely endured in trying to carry out the glorious task which he had undertaken. The Chamber loses by his death one of its most eminent members, Science one of its most illustrious votaries, France one of her most loving and faithful children, and the Government a fellow-worker of inestimable value, in whom we placed the fullest confidence. Excuse me, gentlemen, if because my strength fails me I am un- able to proceed. The sitting was raised as a mark of respect, and the next day the Chamber voted a public funeral and a pension to Paul Bert's family. Bishop Freppel op- posed the first vote on the ground that the deceased was an inveterate enemy of religion, but he was ignom- inously beaten, the majority against him being 379 to INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 21 45. Despite this miserable protest, while Paul Bert's body was on its way to Europe the clerical party started a canard about his " conversion." Perhaps the story originated in the fact that he had daily visited the Haoni Hospital, distributing books and medicines and speaking kind words to the nuns in attendance. It was openly stated and unctuously commented on in the religious journals, that the Resi- dent-General had sent for a Catholic bishop on his death-bed and taken the sacrament; and as inventions of this kind are always circumstantial, it was said that the Papal Nuncio at Lisbon had received this in- telligence. But on December 29 the Papal Nuncio telegraphed that his name had been improperly used; and two days later, when the French war-ship touched at the Suez Canal, Madame Bert telegraphed that the story was absolutely and entirely false. LORD BOLINGBROKE. HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE, was born in 1672 at Battersea, where he also died on December 12, 1751. His life was a stormy one, and on the fall of the Tory Ministry, of which he was a distinguished member, he was impeached by the Whig Parliament under the leadership of Sir Robert Walpole. It was merely a party prosecution and although Bolingbroke was attainted of high treason, he did not lose a friend or forfeit the respect of honest men. Swift and Pope held him in the highest esteem; they corresponded with him throughout their lives, and it was from Bolingbroke that Pope derived the principles of the Essay on Man. That Bolingbroke's abilities were of the highest order cannot be gainsaid. His political writings are masterpieces of learning, eloquence and 22 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS wit, the style is sinewy and graceful, and in the greatest heat of controversy he never ceases to be a gentleman. His philosophical writings were pub- lished after his death by his literary executor, David Mallet, whom Johnson described as "a beggarly Scotchman " who was " left half-a-crown " to fire off a blunderbus, which his patron had charged, against " religion and morality." Johnson's opinion on such a subject is however, of trifling importance. He hated Scotchmen and Infidels, and he told Boswell that Vol- taire and Rousseau deserved transportation more than any of the scoundrels who were tried at the Old Bailey. Bolingbroke's philosophical writings show him to have been a Deist. He believed in God, but he re- jected Revelation. His views are advanced and sup- ported with erudition, eloquence, and masterly irony. The approach of death, which was preceded by the excruciating disease of cancer in the cheek, did not produce the least change in his convictions. Accord- ing to Goldsmith, " He was consonant with himself to the last; and those principles which he had all along avowed, he confirmed with his dying breath, having given orders that none of the clergy should be per- mitted to trouble him in his last moments." 5 CHARLES BRADLAUGH. BRADLAUGH is the greatest personality in the history of the popular Freethought Movement in England. He was born in London on September 26, 1833, and the centenary of his birth is now being celebrated by English Freethinkers throughout the world. As a 5 Life of Lord Bolingbroke : Works, IX., p. 248 : Tegg. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 23 boy he was " an eager and exemplary Sunday School scholar " of St. Peter's Church, Be.thnal Green, and studied the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Gospels as a preparation for confirmation. Finding discrepancies he wrote to the incumbent, the Rev. J. G. Packer, for his " aid and explanation." The net result of these inquiries was that the youth was obliged to leave his father's home, and " from that day until his death his life was one long struggle against the bitterest ani- mosity which religious bigotry could inspire." Brad- laugh soon afterwards attended the " infidel " meet- ings in Bonner's Fields, and later came into contact with the militant Freethinkers of the earlier decades of the nineteenth century, Richard Carlile, the brothers Holyoake and others. From this time until 1868, when he became a candidate for Parliament, he carried on a vigorous Freethought propaganda under the name of " Iconoclast." During this period, and for some time afterwards, he was also actively work- ing for Republicanism. In his short Autobiography (1873) he refers to his lectures on "The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick." " I have sought," he says, " and not entirely without success," to organize " the Republican movement on a thoroughly legal basis." In 1860 he established the National Reformer, an uncompromisingly Atheistic journal, which at first had to contend against a host of difficulties, including a Government prosecution to compel him to find securities against the publication of matter of a blas- phemous or seditious nature. His successful defence resulted in the repeal of the Security Laws. Brad- laugh's knowledge of the law was wide, but apart from this he always showed remarkable penetration in perceiving the legal points involved in the charges brought against him. In 1876, when he and Mrs. 24 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS Besant were prosecuted for publishing a Malthusian work, his accurate knowledge of the law again stood him in good stead. They were convicted, but the conviction was quashed on appeal. In 1866 Bradlaugh founded the National Secular Society and remained its President until 1890. The Society is still flourishing and keeps a strong current of popular Freethought in movement all over England. Bradlaugh first became a candidate for Parliament in 1868, but was not elected till 1880. He asked to be allowed to make affirmation of allegiance, instead of taking the oath, but a Select Committee reported against his claim. The story of his Parliamentary struggle and his subsequent triumph, the last stage in which only came at the time of his death, cannot be related here. It is a thrilling story and reveals the character of the man as it stands written in every chapter of his career from his first encounter with the Rev. J. G. Packer. In 1886 Bradlaugh was allowed to take his seat and two years later, through his in- strumentality, a Bill \vas carried permitting an affir- mation to be made in all cases where an oath was re- quired by law. Although a considerable part of Bradlaugh's life was devoted to political work, it is probably as the " image-breaker," the protagonist of Freethought, that he will be longest remembered. A bare list of the names of those with whom he debated would prob- ably fill several pages of this book. It is needless to say that he never left any room for doubt as to what his real convictions were. He has himself told us that " about the middle of 1850 " he was " honoured by " the British Banner with a leading article " vigorously assailing " him for his lectures against Christianity. This " assailing " never ceased during his life, and was by no means confined to his views and opinions. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 25 He wrote numerous pamphlets. The Plea for Athe- ism appeared in 1877 and has frequently been re- printed. Humanity's Gain from Unbelief has also had a wide circulation. In the debate with the Rev. W. M. Westerby on Has or is Man a Soul? (1879), and elsewhere, he shows his complete rejection of be- lief in a future life. Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891. His daughter, Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner, took minute precautions to procure " signed testimony from those who had been attending him," that during his last illness he had never uttered a word directly or indirectly bear- ing upon religion. The last words she heard him speak during the night of his death " were reminiscent of his voyage to India." Despite this testimony the traditional Christian falsehoods on this subject are still circulated and the writer of this notice is con- stantly encountering them. As recently as May, 1932, Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner found it necessary to refute the absurd story about her father's holding a watch and challenging God to kill him in sixty seconds. (The Literary Guide, p. 84.) Such mendacities no longer yield the amusement of novelty to Freethinkers, they are rather considered a tribute to Bradlaugh's greatness. Authority : Charles Bradlaugh (1894) and Did Charles Bradlaugh die an Atheist? (1913), both by Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner. BROUSSAIS. FRANCIS JEAN VICTOR BROUSSAIS, the great French physician and philosopher, was born in 1772. He died on November i7th, 1838, leaving behind him a " profession of faith," which was published by his 26 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS biographer. With respect to immortality, he wrote, " I have no fears or hopes as to a future life, since I am unable to conceive it." His views on the God idea were equally negative. "I cannot," he said, "form any notion of such a power." GIORDANO BRUNO. THIS glorious martyr of Freethought did not die in a quiet chamber, tended by loving hands. He was literally " butchered to make a Roman holiday." When the assassins of " the bloody faith " kindled the fire which burnt out his splendid life, he was no decrepit man, nor had the ringer of Death touched his cheek with a pallid hue. The blood coursed actively through his veins, and a dauntless spirit shone in his noble eyes. It might have been Bruno that Shelley had in mind when he wrote those thrilling lines in Queen Mab : I was an infant when my mother went To see an Atheist burned. She took me there : The dark-robed priests were met around the pile, The multitude was gazing silently; And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth : The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs ; His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon ; His death-pang rent my heart ! The insensate mob Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. Giordano Bruno was born at Nola, near Naples, in 1548, ten years after the death of Copernicus, and ten years before the birth of Bacon. At the age of fifteen he became a novice in the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, and after his year's novitiate ex- pired he took the monastic vows. Studying deeply, INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 2J he became heretical, and an act of accusation was drawn up against the boy of sixteen. Eight years later he was threatened with another trial for heresy. A third process was more to be dreaded, and in his twenty-eighth year Bruno fled from his persecutors. He visited Rome, Noli, Venice, Turin and Padua. At Milan he made the acquaintance of Sir Philip Sid- ney. After teaching for some time in the university, he went to Chambery, but the ignorance and bigotry of its monks were too great for his patience. He next visited Geneva, but although John Calvin was dead, his dark spirit still remained, and only flight pre- served Bruno from the fate of Servetus. Through Lyons he passed to Toulouse, where he was elected Public Lecturer to the University. In 1579 he went to Paris. The streets were still foul with the blood of the Bartholomew massacres, but Bruno declined a professorship at the Sorbonne, a condition of which was attending mass. Henry the Third, however, made him Lecturer extraordinary to the University. Paris at length became too hot to hold him, and he went to London, where he lodged with the French Ambassador. His evenings were mostly spent with Sir Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville, Dyer and Hervey. So great was his fame that he was invited to re.ad at the University of Oxford, where he also held a public debate with its orthodox professors on the Coper- nican astronomy. Leaving London in 1584, he re- turned to Paris, and there also he publicly disputed with the Sorbonne. His safety being once more threatened, he went to Marburg, and thence to Witten- berg, where he taught for two years. At Helenstadt he was excommunicated by Boetius. Repairing to Frankfort, he made the acquaintance of a nobleman, who lured him to Venice and betrayed him to the In- quisition. The Venetian Council transferred him to 2S INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS Rome, where he languished for seven years in a pesti- ferous dungeon, and \vas repeatedly tortured, accord- ing to the hellish code of the Inquisition. At length, on February loth, 1600, he was led out to the Church of Santa Maria, and sentenced to be burnt alive, or, as the Holy Church hypocritically phrased it, to be pun- ished " as mercifully as possible, and without effu- sion of blood." Haughtily raising his head, he ex- claimed : " You are more afraid to pronounce my sen- tence than I to receive it." He was allowed a week's grace for recantation, but without avail; and on the 1 7th of February, 1600, he \vas burnt to death on the Field of Flowers. To the last he was brave and defiant; he contemptuously pushed aside the crucifix they presented him to kiss; and, as one of his enemies said, he died without a plaint or a groan. Such heroism stirs the blood more than the sound of a tmmpe.t. Bruno stood at the stake in solitary and awful grandeur. There was not a friendly face in the vast crowd around him. It was one man against the world. Surely the knight of Liberty, the champion of Freethought, who lived such a life and died such a death, without hope of reward on earth or in heaven, sustained only by his indomitable man- hood, is worthy to be accounted the supreme martyr of all time. He towers above the less disinterested martyrs of Faith like a colossus; the proudest of them might walk under him without bending. Authorities : M. Bartholomess, Jordano Bruno, 2 vols. I Frith, Life of Giordano Bruno. HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. THE author of the famous History of Civilisation be- lieved in God and immortality, but he rejected all the INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 2Q special tenets of Christianity. He died at Damascus on May 2Qth, 1862. His incoherent utterances in the fever that carried him off showed that his mind was still dwelling on the uncompleted purpose of his life. " Oh my book," he exclaimed, " my book, I shall never finish my book!" 6 His end, however, was quite peaceful. His biographer says : "He had a very quiet night, with intervals of consciousness; but at six in the morning a sudden and very marked change for the worse became but too fearfully evident; and at a quarter past ten he quietly breathed his last, with merely a wave of the hand." 7 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON. SIR RICHARD BURTON, traveller and author, was born in Hertfordshire in 1821. He died on 2Oth October, 1890, and his wife's conduct in regard to his death and burial was at the time the subject of wide com- ment, especially among Burton's friends. Lady Isabel Burton was a devout Roman Catholic. According to her story, Burton had his fits of Catholicism, out- spoken Agnosticism and Eastern Mysticism, but con- sistently maintained that in religion "there were only two points, Agnosticism and Catholicism." Four days before he died, she says he " wrote a declaration " that he wished to die a Catholic, but a few weeks pre- viously he upset her by " an unusual burst of agnostic talk at tea." She had the extreme unction of the Catholic Church administered to him, but everybody in the house and every member of Burton's staff ex- 6 Pilgrim Memories, by J. Stuart Glennie, p. 508. 7 Life and Writings of Henry Thomas Buckle, by A. Huth, Vol. II., p. 252. 30 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS cept the maid, was surprised at her sending for the priest. Burton was actually dead when these " last comforts " of the Church were administered, and Lady Burton afterwards fully admitted this. Never- theless " he had three Church services performed over him, and 1,100 masses said for the tepose of his soul." (Thomas Wright, Life of Sir Richard Burton, ii. 241- 5.) Mrs. Lynn Lin ton referred to Burton as a "frank agnostic," who " had systematically preached a doc- trine so adverse" to Christianity, and whose memory was dishonoured by his wife's demeanour at the time of his death (Nineteenth Century, March, 1892, p. 461.) Lady Burton resented this charge with con- siderable indignation, but her own statements in The New Review (November, 1892) almost fully bear it out. Rev. H. R. Haweis knew Burton well and re- ports a conversation with him on the question of a future life : Sir Richard was a very good friend of mine, and one whom I held in high esteem. Sir Richard once said, " I know nothing about my soul, I get on very well without one. It is rather hard to inflict a soul on me in the decline of my life." (The Dead Pulpit, p. 269.) Burton's niece, Georgina M. Stisted, says : The shock of so fatal a terminus to his illness would have daunted most Romanists desirous of effecting a death-bed conversion. It did not daunt Isabel. No sooner did she perceive that her hus- band's life was in danger, than she sent messengers in every direction for a priest. Mercifully, even the first to arrive, a man of peasant extraction, who had been appointed to the parish, came too late to molest one then far beyond the reach of human folly and superstition. (The True Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, pp. 413-4.) INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 31 In Burton's Selected Papers on Anthropology, etc. (pp. 165-6), published in 1924, may be found many sarcastic references to Holy Week in Rome and its theatricals, to " the horde of harpies " that prey on visitors, the contrast between the richly decorated churches, and the crowd of beggars imploring alms " in God's name," and to the brisk trade in " holy things images, crucifixes and rosaries, blessed by his Holiness." Swinburne knew Burton and protested in vigorous verse against what he considered an outrage on decency committed by the " priests and soulless serfs of priests " who swarm With vulturous acclamation, loud in lies, About his dust while yet his dust is warm Who mocked as sunlight mocks their base blind eyes, Their godless ghost of godhead. LORD BYRON. No one can read Byron's poems attentively without seeing that he was not a Christian, and this view is amply corroborated by his private letters, notably the very explicit one. to Hodgson, published half a century after Byron's death. Even the poet's first and chief biographer, Moore, was constrained to ad- mit that " Lord Byron was, to the last, a sceptic." Byron was born at Holies Street, London, on January 22nd, 1788. His life was remarkably event- ful for a poet, but its history is so easily accessible, and so well known, that we need not summarise it here. His death occurred at Missolonghi on April iQth, 1824. Greece was then struggling for independ- ence, and Byron devoted his life and fortune to her cause. His sentiments on this subject are expressed 32 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS with power and dignity in the lines written at Misso- longhi on his thirty-sixth birthday. The faults of his life were many, but they were redeemed by the glory of his death. Exposure, which his declining health was unfitted to bear, brought on a fever, and the soldier-poet of free- dom died without proper attendance, far from those he loved. He conversed a good deal at first with his friend Parry, who records that " he spoke of death with great composure." The day before he expired, when his friends and attendants wept round his bed at the thought of losing him, he looked at one of them steadily, and said, half smiling, "Oh questa e una bella scena !" Oh this is a fine scene ! After a fit of delirium, he called his faithful servant Fletcher, who offered to bring pen and paper to take down his words. " Oh no," he replied, " there is no time. Go to my sister tell her go to Lady Byron you will see her, and say . . ." Here his voice became indistinct. For nearly twenty minutes he muttered to himself, but only a. word now and then could be distinguished. He then said, " Now, I have told you all." Fletcher replied that he had not understood a word. " Not understand me?" exclaimed Byron, with a look of the utmost distress, " what a pity ! then it is too late; all is over." He tried to utter a few more words, but none were intelligible except "my sister my child." After the doctors had given him a sleeping draught, he muttered, " Poor Greece ! poor town ! my poor servants ! my hour is come ! I do not care for death but why did I not go home ? There are things that make the world dear to me : for the rest I am content to die." He spoke also of Greece, saying, " I have given her my time, my means, my health and now I give her my life ! what could I do more?" About six o'clock in the evening he said " No\v I shall go to INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 33 sleep." He then fell into the slumber from which he never woke. At a quarter past six on the following day, he opened his eyes and immediately shut them again. The physicians felt his pulse he was dead. 5 His work was done. As Swinburne wrote in 1865, " A little space was allowed him to show at least an heroic purpose, and attest a high design; then, with all things unfinished before him and behind, he fell asleep after many troubles and triumphs. Few can have ever gone wearier to the grave : none with less fear." 9 The pious guardians of Westminster Abbey denied him sepulture in its holy precincts, but he found a grave at Hucknall, and " after life's fitful fever he sleeps well." Byron's own views on the subject of death-beds were expressed in a letter to Murray, dated June yth, 1820. " A death-bed," he wrote, " is a matter of nerves and constitution, not of religion." He also re- marked that " Men died calmly before the Christian era, and since, without Christianity." RICHARD CARLILE. RICHARD CARULE was born at Ashburton, in Devon- shire, on December 8th, 1790. His whole life was spent in advocating Freethought and Republicanism, and in resisting the Blasphemy Laws. His total im- prisonments for the freedom of the press amounted to nine years and four months. Thirteen days before his death he penned these words : " The enemy with whom I have to grapple is one with whom no peace can be made. Idolatry will not parley; superstition 8 Byron's Life and Letters, by Thomas Moore, pp. 684-688. 9 Preface (p. 28) to a Selection from Byron's poems, 1865. 34 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS will not treat on covenant. They must be uprooted for public and individual safety." Carlile died on February loth, 1843. He was attended in his last illness by Dr. Thomas Lawrence, the author of the once famous Lectures on Man. Wishing to be useful in death as in life, Carlile devoted his body to dissec- tion. His wish was complied with by the family, and the post-mortem examination was recorded in the Lancet. The burial took place at Kensal Green Cemetery, where a clergyman insisted on reading the Church Service over his remains. " His eldest son, Richard, who represented his sentiments as well as his name, very properly protested against the pro- ceedings, as an outrage upon the principles of his father and the wishes of the family. Of course the remonstrance was disregarded, and Richard, his brothers, and their friends left the ground." 10 After their departure, the clergyman called the great hater of priests his " dear departed brother," and declared that the rank Materialist had died " in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection." WILLIAM KINGDOM CLIFFORD. PROFESSOR CLIFFORD died ail-too early of consump- tion, on March 3, 1879. He was one of the gentlest and most amiable of men, and the centre of a large circle of distinguished friends. His great ability was beyond dispute; in the higher mathematics he enjoyed a European reputation. Nor was his courage less, for he never concealed his heresy, but rather proclaimed it from the housetops. A Freethinker to the heart's core, he " utterly dismissed from his thoughts, as 10 Life and Character of Richard Carlile, by G. J. Holy- oake. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 35 being unprofitable or worse, all speculations on a future or unseen world"; and "as never man loved life more, so never man feared death less." He fulfilled, continues Mr. Pollock, " well and truly the great say- ing of Spinoza, often in his mind and on his lips; Homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat. (A free man thinks less of nothing than of death.)" 11 Clifford faced the inevitable with the utmost calmness. For a week he had known that it might come at any moment and looked to it steadfastly. So calmly had he received the warning which conveyed this knowledge that it seemed at the instant as if he did not understand it ... He gave careful and exact directions as to the disposal of his works . . . More than this, his interest in the outer world, his affec- tion for his friends and his pleasure in their pleas- ures, did not desert him to the very last He srlll followed the course of events, and asked for the public news on the morning of his death, so strongly did he hold fast his part in the common weal and in active social life. 12 Clifford was a great loss to " the good old cause." He was a most valiant soldier of progress, cut off be- fore a tithe of his work was accomplished. ANACHARSIS CLOOTZ. AMONG the multitude of figures in the vast panorama of the French Revolution was Jean Baptiste du Val de Grace, known as Anacharsis Clootz. He appears several times in Carlyle's great epic. Now he intro- duces a deputation of foreigners of all nations to the 11 Lectures and Essays, by Professor Clifford. Pollock's Introduction, p. 25. 12 Ibid, p. 26. 36 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS Assembly; later he presents to the Convention " a work evincing the nullity of all religions." Finally, on March 24th, 1794, he is one of a tumbril-load of victims, nineteen in all, on the road to the guillotine. " Clootz," says Carlyle., " still with an air of polished sarcasm, endeavours to jest, to offer cheering ' argu- ments of Materialism '; he requested to be executed last ' in order to establish certain principles.' " '' Clootz's biographer, Avenel, gives a fuller account of the scene. " Let me lie under the green sward," ex- claimed the great Atheist, " so that I may be re-born in vegetation." " Nature," he said, " is a good mother, who loves to see her children appear and re- appear in different forms. All she includes is eternal, imperishable like herself. Now let me sleep !" 14 ANTHONY COLLINS. ANTHONY COLLINS was one of the chief English Free- thinkers of the eighteenth century. Professor Fraser calls him " this remarkable man." 15 Swift refers to him as a leading sceptic of that age. He was a barrister, born of a good Essex family in 1767, and dying on December 13, 1829. Locke, whose own character was manly and simple, was charmed by him. " He praised his love of truth and moral courage," says Professor Fraser, " as superior to almost any other he had ever known, and by his will he made him one of his executors." Yet bigotry was then so rampant, that Bishop Berkeley, who, according to 13 French Revolution, III., p. 215. 14 Georges Avenel, Anacharsis Clootz,, II., p. 471. 18 Berkeley, by A. C. Fraser, L/L/.D., 99. " Ibid. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 37 Pope, had every virtue under heaven, actually said in the Guardian that the author of A Discourse on Free- thinking " deserved to be denied the common benefits of air and water." Collins afterwards engaged in con- troversy with the clergy, wrote against priestcraft, and debated with Dr. Samuel Clarke " about neces- sity and the moral nature of man, stating the argu- ments against human freedom with a logical force unsurpassed by any necessitarian." 17 With respect to Collins's controversy on " the soul," Professor Huxley says : " I do not think anyone can read the letters which passed between Clarke and Collins without admitting that Collins, who writes with won- derful power and closeness of reasoning, has by far the best of the argument, so far as the possible materiality of the soul goes; and that in this battle the Goliath of Freethinking overcame the champion of what was considered orthodoxy. 18 According to Berkeley, Collins had announced " that he was able to demonstrate the impossibility of God's existence," but this is probably the exaggeration of an opponent. We may be sure, however, that he was a thorough sceptic with regard to Christianity. His death is thus referred to in the Biographia Britannica : Notwithstanding all the reproaches cast upon Mr. Collins as an enemy to religion, impartiality obliges us to remark, what is said, and generally believed to be true, upon his death-bed he declared " That, as Tie had always endeavoured, to the best of his abilities to serve his God, his King, and his country, so he was persuaded he was going to the place which God had designed for those who love him " : to which he added that " The Catholic religion is to love God, 17 Ibid. 18 Critiques and Addresses, p. 324. 3 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS and to love man " ; and he advised such as were about him to have a constant regard to these prin- ciples. There is probably a good deal apocryphal in this passage, but it is worthy of notice that nothing is said about any dread of death. Another memorable fact is that Collins left his library to an opponent, Dr. Sykes. It was large and curious, and always open to men of letters. Collins was so earnest a seeker for truth, and so candid a controversialist, that he often furnished his antagonists with books to confute him- self. AUGUSTE COMTE COMTE, the founder of Positivism, was born on Janu- ary 19, 1798. The aim of his philosophy, as set forth on the title-page of his masterpiece, was to " reorgan- ize society without God or King, by the systematic culture of Humanity." Owing to a congenital dis- order of the nervous system, he was liable to occa- sional aberrations of mind, and he was once put under restraint. But his life was nevertheless dignified and fruitful, and the literature of social, political and re- ligious speculation shows what a profound influence he has exercised on many of the best minds of our age. He died on September 5th, 1857, of the painful dis- ease of cancer in the stomach. M. Littre, his greatest disciple, thus describes his last days : " The fatal hour arrived, M. Comte, who had borne his malady with the greatest fortitude, met with no less firmness the approach of death. His bodily weakness became extreme, and he expired without pain, having around him some of his most cherished disciples." ] 19 E. Littr6, Auguste Comte et la Philosophic Positive, p. 643. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 39 CONDORCET. MARIE- JEAN- ANTOINE-NICHOLAS, MARQUIS DE CON- DORCET, was born at Ribemont in Picardy, in 1743. As early as 1764 he composed a work on the integral calculus. In 1773 he was appointed perpetual secre- tary of the French Academy. He was an intense ad- mirer of Voltaire, and wrote a life of that great man. At the commencement of the Revolution he ardently embraced the popular cause. In 1791 he represented Paris in the Legislative Assembly, df which he was immediately elected secretary. It was on his motion that, in the following year, all orders of nobility were abolished. Elected by the Aisne department to the new Assembly of 1792, he was named a member of the Constitutional Committee, which also included Danton and Thomas Paine. After the execution of Louis XIV., he was opposed to the excess of the ex- treme party. Always showing the courage of his con- victions, he soon became the victim of proscription. " He cared as little for his life," says Mr. Morley, " as Danton or St. Just cared for theirs. Instead of coming down among the men of the plain or the frogs of the Marsh, he withstood the Mountain to its face." While hiding from those who thirsted for his blood, and burdened with anxiety as to the fate of his wife and child, he wrote, without a single book to refer to, his novel and profound Esquisse d'un Tableau His- iorique des Progres de I'Esprit Humain. Mr. Mor- ley says that " among the many wonders of an epoch of portents this feat of intellectual abstraction is not the least amazing." Despite the odious law that who- ever gave refuge to a proscribed person should suffer death, Condorcet was offered shelter by a noble- hearted woman, who said : "If you are outside the 40 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS law, we are not outside humanity." But he would not bring peril upon her house, and he went forth to his doom. Arrested at Clamart-sous-Meudon, he was conducted to prison at Bourg-la-Reine. Wounded in the foot, and exhausted with fatigue and priva- tion, he was flung into a miserable cell. It was the 27th of March, 1794. " On the morrow," says Mr. Morley, " when the gaolers came to see him, they found him stretched upon the ground, dead and stark. So he perished of hunger and weariness, say some; of poison ever carried by him in a ring, say others." 20 The Abb< Morellet, in his narrative of the death of Condorcet (Memoires, ch. xxiv.), says that the poison was a mixture of stramonium and opium, but he adds that the surgeon described the death as due to apoplexy. In any case Condorcet died like a hero, refusing to save his life at the cost of another's danger. MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY. CON WAY was born in Virginia, U.S.A., in 1832. The story of his life is interesting as a study in the psycho- logy of religious experience. Originally a Methodist minister, later he became a Unitarian, and later still a Rationalist with Theistic sympathies. In 1863 he came to London, and in the same year was appointed minister of the South Place Chapel (afterwards Insti- tute) London an institution which now has its head- quarters in Conw T ay Hall, Red Lion Square. This ministry he carried on until 1884. During this time he gradually moved away from his theistic belief, 20 Miscellanies. By John Morley Vol. I., p. 75. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 4 1 and it is easy to quote passages from his later writings and speeches which show his complete rejection of both Christianity and Theism. He rendered service to the Freethought cause by his outspoken denuncia- tion of the intellectual dishonesty of those who give a nominal adherence to religious formularies and doctrines which they do not inwardly accept. His Life of Thomas Paine in two volumes appeared in 1892. Conway died in Paris in 1907. His latest writings and utterances make it clear that up to the time of his death he took a keen interest in the progress of Freethought. " To the last I never found him des- pairing, never even apathetic," says Mr. J. M. Robertson (The Life Pilgrimage of Moncur D. Con- -way, p. 69.) ROBERT COOPER. ROBERT COOPER was Secretary to Robert Owen and editor of the London Investigator. His lectures on the Bible and the Immortality of the Soul, and his Holy Scriptures Analysed, were well known in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. His pam- phlet, Deathbed Repentance, 1852, is one of the earliest detailed exposures of the lies fabricated by Christians in regard to the last days of prominent Freethinkers. He was a thorough-going materialist and never wavered in this philosophy. He died on May 3, 1868. The National Reformer of July 26, 1868, contains the following note written by Cooper shortly before his death : At a moment when the hand of death is suspended over me, my theological opinions remain unchanged ; months of deep and silent cogitation, under the 4- INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS pressure of long suffering, have confirmed rather than modified them. I calmly await, therefore, all risk attached to these convictions. Conscious that, if mistaken, I have always been sincere, I apprehend no disabilities for impressions I cannot resist. Robert Cooper was not related to Thomas Cooper, to whose lectures on God and a Future Life he wrote a reply in 1856. D'ALEMBERT. the founder of the great Encyclo- pedia, the friend of Voltaire and the colleague of Diderot, was born on November 16, 1717. His death occurred on October 29, 1783. His opinions on re- ligion were those of a firm Agnostic. " As for the existence of a supreme intelligence," he wrote to Frederick the Great, " I think that those who deny it advance far more than they can prove, and sceptic- ism is the only reasonable course." He goes on to say, however, that experience invincibly proves the materiality of the " soul." 21 D'Alembert's last moments were in harmony with his philosophy. According to his friend and executor, Condorcet, his last days were spent amidst a numerous company, listening to their conversation, and sometimes en- livening it with pleasantries or stories. " He only," says Condorcet, " was able to think of other subjects than himself, and to give himself to gaiety and amuse- ment." 23 21 J. Morley, Diderot, Vol. II., p. 160. 22 CEuv.res Philosophiques de D'Alembert, Vol. I., p. 131. An. XIII (1805). INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 43 DANTON. DANTON, called by Carlyle the Titan of the Revo- lution, and certainly its greatest figure after Mira- beau, was guillotined on April 5, 1794. He was only thirty-five, but he made a name that will live as long as the history of France. With all his faults, says Carlyle, " he was a Man; fiery-real, from the great fire-bosom of Nature herself." Some of his phrases are like pyramids, standing sublime above the drifting sand of human speech. It was he who advised " daring, and still daring, and ever daring." It was he who cried, " The coalesced kings of Europe threaten us, and as our gage of battle we fling before them the head of a king." It was he who exclaimed, in a rapture of patriotism, " Let my name be blighted, so that France be free." And what a saying was that, when his friends urged him to flee from the Terror, " One does not carry his country with him at the sole of his shoe !" Danton would not flee. " They dare not " arrest him, he said; but he was soon a prisoner in the Luxembourg. " What is your name and abode?" they asked him at the tribunal. " My name is Dan- ton," he answered, " a name tolerably known in the Revolution : my abode will soon be Annihilation; but I shall live in the Pantheon of History." Replying to his infamous Indictment, his magnificent voice " reverberates with the roar of a lion in the toils." The President rings his bell, enjoining calmness, says Carlyle, in a vehement manner, " What is it to thee how I defend myself?" cries Danton; " the right of dooming me is thine always. The voice of a man 44 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS speaking for his honour and life may well drown the jingling of thy bell !" On the way to the guillotine Danton bore himself proudly. Poor Camille Desmoulins struggled and writhed in the cart, which was surrounded by a howling mob. " Calm, my friend," said Danton, " heed not that vile canaille." Herault de Sechelles, whose turn it was to die first, tried to embrace his friend, but the executioners prevented him. "Fools," said Danton > " you cannot prevent our heads from meeting in the basket." At the foot of the scaffold the thought of home flashed through his mind. " O my wife," he exclaimed, " my well-beloved, I shall never see thee more then." But recovering himself, he said, " Danton, no weakness !" Looking the executioner in the face, he cried with his great voice, " You will show my head to the crowd; it is worth showing; you don't see the like in these days." The next minute that head, the one that might have guided France best, was severed from his body by the knife of the guillotine. What a man this Danton was ! With his Herculean form, his huge black head, his mighty voice, his passionate nature, his fiery courage, his poignant wit, his geniality, and his freedom from cant, he was a splendid and unique figure. An Atheist, he perished in trying to arrest bloodshed. Robespierre, the Deist, continued the bloodshed till it drowned him. The two men were as diverse in nature as in creed, and Danton killed by Robes- pierre, as Courtois said, was Pyrrhus killed by a woman ! [The reader may consult Carlyle's French Revolu- tion, Book vi., Ch. ii., and Jules Claretie's Camille Desmoulins et les Dantonistes, Ch. vi.] INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 45 CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. DARWIN, the great evolutionist, whose fame is as wide as civilization, was born at Shrewsbury in 1809. Intended for a clergyman, he became a naturalist; and although his bump of reverence was said to be large enough for ten priests, he passed by gentle stages into the most extreme scepticism. From the age of forty he was, to use his own words, a complete disbeliever in Christianity. Further reflection showed him that Nature bore no evidence of design, and the prevalence of struggle and suffering in the world compelled him to reject the doctrine of infinite benevolence. He professed himself an Agnostic, re- garding the problem of the universe as beyond our solution. " For myself," he wrote, " I do not be- lieve in any revelation. As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities." Robert Lewins, M.D., knew Darwin personally, and had discussed this question with him. Darwin was much less reticent to Lewins than he had shown himself in a letter to Haeckel. In answer to a direct question " as to the bearing of his researches on the existence of an anima, or soul in man, he distinctly stated that, in his opinion, a vital or spiritual principle, apart from inherent somatic (bodily) energy, had no more locus standi in the human than in the other races of the animal king- dom " (What is Religion? by Constance Naden, p. 52). Yet the Church buried him in Westminster Abbey " in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection." Darwin died on April 19, 1882, in the plenitude of his fame, having outlived the opposition of ignorance 46 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS and bigotry, and witnessed the triumph of his ideas. His last moments are described by his eldest son Francis : No special change occurred during the beginning of April, but on Saturday i5th he was seized with giddiness while sitting at dinner in the evening, and fainted in an attempt to reach his sofa. On the iyth he was again better, and in my temporary absence recorded for me the progress of an experiment in which I was engaged. During the night of April iSth, about a quarter to twelve, he had a severe at- tack and passed into a faint, from which he was brought back to consciousness with great difficulty. He seemed to recognize the approach of death, and said "I am not the least afraid to die." All the next morning he suffered from terrible nausea and faintness, and hardly rallied before the end came. No one in his senses would have supposed that he was " afraid to die," yet it is well to have the words recorded by the son who was present. In the second edition of Infidel Deathbeds this notice ended with the words : "Pious ingenuity will be unable to traduce the deathbed of Charles Darwin." But " pious ingen- uity " is not easily slain. Sir Francis Darwin as re- cently as January, 1916, had to refute a lying story about his father's agonizing deathbed, and the story cropped up again, with embellishments, in The Churchman's Magazine for March, 1925. ERASMUS DARWIN. ERASMUS DARWIN, the physician, and grandfather of the great Charles Darwin, was born on December 12, 1731. His death took place on April 10, 1802. INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 47 While driving from patient to patient, Erasmus Dar- win composed a lengthy poem, in which he antici- pated many of the ideas of modern evolution. His scepticism was strongly pronounced. He believed in God, but not in Christianity. Even the Unitarians were too orthodox for him; indeed, he called Unitar- ianism a feather-bed to catch a falling Christian. His death was singularly peaceful. " At about seven o'clock," said his grandson, " he was seized with a violent shivering fit, and went into the kitchen to warm himself; he retired to his study, lay on the sofa, became faint and cold, and was moved into an arm- chair, where, without pain or emotion of any kind, he expired a little before nine o'clock." 23 A few years before, wanting to a friend, he said, " When I think of dying it is always without pain or fear." DELAMBRE. JEAN BAPTIST JOSEPH DELAMBRE, one of the most dis- tinguished French astronomers, was born at Amiens on September 19, 1749. He was a pupil of Lalande, and like him an Atheist. He died, after a long and painful illness, on August 18, 1822. In announcing his death, a pious journal wrote : "It appears that this savant had the misfortune to be an unbeliever. We wish we could announce that sickness had brought him back to the faith; but we have been un- able to obtain any information to that effect." 34 Like Lalande, the dying astronomer was faithful to the convictions of his life. 23 Charles Darwin, Life of Erasmus Darwin, p. 126. 2 * L'Ami de la Religion et du Roi, tome xxxiii., p. in. INFIDEI, DEATH-BEDS DENIS DIDEROT. RARELY has the world seen a more fecund mind than Diderot's. Voltaire called him Pantophile, for everything came within the sphere of his mental activity. The twenty volumes of his collected writings contain the germ-ideas of nearly all the best thought of our age, and his anticipations of Darwin- ism are nothing less than extraordinary. He had not Voltaire's lightning wit and supreme grace of style, nor Rousseau's passionate and subtle eloquence; but he was superior to either of them in depth and solid- ity, and he was surprisingly ahead of his time, not simply in his treatment of religion, but also in his view of social and political problems. His historical monument is the great Encyclopedia. For twenty years he laboured o