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<n this colossal enterprise, assisted
by the best heads in France, but harassed and
thwarted by the government and the clergy.
Diderot tasted imprisonment in 1749, and many
times afterwards his liberty was menaced. Nothing,
however, could intimidate or divert him from his task;
and he never quailed when the ferocious beast of per-
secution, having tasted the blood of meaner victims,
turned an evil and ravenous eye on him.
Carlyle's brilliant essay on Diderot is ludicrously
unjust. The Scotch puritan was quite unable to
judge the French Atheist. A greater than Carlyle
wrote : " Diderot is Diderot, a peculiar individuality;
whoever holds him or his doings cheaply is a Philis-
tine, and the name of them is legion." Goethe's dic-
tum outweighs that of his disciple.
INFIDEI, DEATH-BEDS 49
Born at Langres in 1713, Diderot died at Paris
1784. His life was long, active and fruitful. 25 His
conversational powers were great, and showed the fer-
tility of his genius. " When I recall Diderot,"
wrote Meister, " the immense variety of his ideas,
the amazing multiplicity of his knowledge, the rapid
flight, the warmth, the impetuous tumult of his im-
agination, all the charm and all the disorder of his
conversation, I venture to liken his character to
Nature herself, exactly as he used to conceive her
rich, fertile, abounding in germs of every sort, gentle
and fierce, simple and majestic, worthy and sublime,
but without any dominating principle, without a
master and without a God."
Chequered as Diderot's life had been, his closing
years were full of peace and comfort. Superstition
was mortally wounded, the Church was terrified, and
it was clear that the change the philosophers had
worked for was at hand. As John Morley says, "the
press literally teemed with pamphlets, treatises,
poems, histories, all shouting from the house-tops
open destruction to beliefs which fifty years before
were actively protected against so much as a whisper
in the closet. Every form of literary art was seized
and turned into an instrument in the remorseless
attack on L'lnfame."
In the Spring of 1784 Diderot was attacked by what
he felt was his last illness. Dropsy set in, and in a
few months the end came. A fortnight before his
death he was removed from the upper floor in the Rue
Taranne, which he had occupied for thirty years, to
35 In Diderot and the Encyclopaedists, Vol. I., pp. 39-40,
John Morley gives an interesting description of Diderot's
personal appearance.
50 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
palatial rooms provided for him by the Czarina in
the Rue de Richelieu. Growing weaker every day
he was still alert in mind :
He did all he could to cheer the people around him,
and amused himself and them by arranging his pic-
tures and his books. In the evening, to the last, he
found strength to converse on science and philosophy
to the friends who were eager as ever for the last
gleanings of his prolific intellect. In the last con-
versation that his daughter heard him carry on, his
last words were the pregnant aphorism that the first
step towards philosophy is incredulity.
On the evening of the 3oth July, 1784, he sat down
to table, and at the end of the meal took an apricot.
His wife, with kind solicitude, remonstrated. Mais
quel diable de mal veux-tu que cela me fasse ? (How
the deuce can that hurt me?) he said, and ate the
apricot. Then he rested his elbow on the table,
trifling with some sweetmeats. His wife asked him a
question ; on receiving no answer, she looked up and
saw he was dead. He had died as the Greek poets
say that men died in the golden age they passed
away as if mastered by sleep. 26
Grimm gives a slightly different account of Dide-
rot's death, omitting the apricot, and stating that his
words to his wife were, " It is long since I have eaten
with so much relish." 27 The cure of St. Roch, in
whose parish he died, had scrupled at first about bury-
ing him, on account of his sceptical reputation and the
doctrines expounded in his writings; but the priest's
scruples were overcome, partly by a present of "fif-
teen or eighteen thousand livres."
According to Morley, an effort was made to con-
vert Diderot, or at least to wring from him something
like a retractation :
16 Morley, Vol. II., pp. 259-260.
27 Quoted from the Revue Retrospective in Ass6zat's
complete edition of Diderot.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 51
The priest of St. Sulpice, the centre of the philo-
sophic quarter came to visit him three or four times
a week, hoping to achieve at least the semblance of a
conversion. Diderot did not encourage conversation
on theology, but when pressed he did not refuse it.
One day when they found, as two men of sense will
always find, that they had ample common ground in
matters of morality and good works, the priest ven-
tured to hint that an exposition of such excellent
maxims, accompanied by a slight retraction of
Diderot's previous works, would have a good effect
on the world. " I dare say it would, monsieur le
cure, but confess that I should be acting an impu-
dent lie." And no word of retractation was ever
made. 28
If judging men by the company they keep is a safe
rule, \ve need have no doubt as to the sentiments
which Diderot entertained to the end. Grimm tells
us that on the morning of the very day he died " he
conversed for a long time and with the greatest free-
dom with his friend the Baron D'Holbach," the
famous author of the System of Nature, compared
with whom, says Morley, " the most eager Nescient
or Denier to be found in the ranks of the assailants
of theology in our own day is timorous and moderate."
These men were the two most earnest Atheists of their
generation. Both were genial, benevolent, and con-
spicuously generous. D'Holbach was learned, elo-
quent, and trenchant; and Diderot, in Comte's
opinion, was the greatest genius of the eighteenth
century.
ETIENNE DOLET.
ETIENNE (Stephen) DOLET, the great French printer,
whose name is inseparably connected with the Re-
vival of Learning, was hanged and burnt at Lyons on
2 8 Morley, Vol. II., p. 258.
52 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
August 3, 1546. The Church gave him the martyr's
crown on his thirty-seventh birthday. He was a
heretic, and he paid the penalty exacted from all who
dared to think for themselves. As Mr. Christie re-
marks, he was " neither a Protestant nor a Catholic."
His contemporaries were fully persuaded of his
Atheism. " Philosophy has alone the right," says
the great French historian, " to claim on its side the
illustrious victim of the Place Maubert." 2 *
Dolet got his first taste of persecution in 1533, when
he was thrown into prison for denouncing in a Latin
oration the burning alive of Jean de Cartuce at Toul-
ouse. During the remaining thirteen years of his
life he was five times imprisoned, and nearly half his
days were spent in confinement.
Sentence of death for blasphemy was pronounced
on Dolet in the Chambre Ardente at Paris on August
2, 1546. He was condemned to be hanged, and then
burnt with his books on the Place Maubert; and his
widow and children were beggared by the confisca-
tion of his goods to the king. It was also ordered
that he should be put to the torture before his execu-
tion, and questioned about his companions; and " if
the said Dolet shall cause any scandal or utter any
blasphemy, his tongue shall be cut out, and he shall
be burnt alive." The next day he met his doom.
He was hanged first, and then (for they were not very
particular), probably while he still breathed, the
faggots were lighted, and Dolet and his books were
consumed in the flames. It is said that instead of a
prayer he uttered a pun in Latin Ncm dolet ipse
Dolet, sed pia turba dolet " Dolet himself does not
grieve, but the pious crowd grieves." Yet the con-
fessor who attended him at the stake invented the
29 Henri Martin, Histoire de France, Vol. II., p. 343.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 53
miserable falsehood that the martyr had acknow-
ledged his errors. " I do not believe a word of it,"
wrote the great Erasmus, "it is the usual story
which these people invent after the death of their
victims." Dolet's real sentiments are expressed in
the noble cantique, full of resignation and courage,
which he composed in prison when death was immi-
nent. 30 [Authorities : R. C. Christie, Etienne Dolet,
Joseph Boulmier, Etienne Dalet.~\
GEORGE ELIOT.
MARIAN EVANS, afterwards Mrs. Lewes, and finally
Mrs. Cross, was one of the greatest writers of the
third quarter of the nineteenth century. The noble
works of fiction she published under the pseudonym
of George Eliot are known to all. Her earliest
writing was done for the Westminster Review, a
magazine of marked sceptical tendency. Her in-
clination to Freethought is further shown by her
translation of Strauss's famous Life of Jesus and
Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, the latter being
the work of a profound Atheist. George Eliot was,
30 Here are the last two verses in the fine old French :
De patience ung bon cueur jouyassant,
Dessoubz le mal jamais n'est flechissant ;
Se desolant ou en riens gemissant,
Tous jours vaincqueur.
Sus, mon esprit, monstres vous de tel cueur;
Vostre asseurance, au besoigng soit congneue ;
Tout gentil cueur, tout constant bellicqueur,
Jusqu 'a la mort sa force a maintenue!
Rough translation : " A good heart, sustained with
patience, never bends under evil, bewails or moans, but is
always victor. Courage, my soul, and show such a heart ;
let your confidence be seen in trial ; every noble heart, every
constant warrior, maintains his fortitude even unto death."
54 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
to some extent, a disciple of Comte, and reckoned a
member of the Society of Positivists. Mr. Myers tells
us that in the last conversation he had with her at
Cambridge, they talked of God, Immortality and
Duty, and she gravely remarked how hypothetical
was the first, how improbable was the second, and
how sternly real the last. Whenever in her novels
she speaks in the first person she breathes the same
sentiment. Her biography has been written by her
second husband, who says that " her long illness in
the autumn had left her no power to rally. She
passed away about ten o'clock at night on the 22nd
of December, 1880. She died, as she would herself
have chosen to die, without protracted pain, and with
every faculty brightly vigorous." 31 Her body lies
in the next grave to that of George Henry Lewes at
High gate Cemetery; her spirit, the product of her
life has, in her own words, joined " the choir in-
visible, whose music is the gladness of the world."
FRANCISCO FERRER.
FERRER was born in 1859. He founded his
" Modern School," which was purely secular, at Bar-
celona in September, 1901. " No priest and no re-
ligion, no prayers, and no devotions inspired by any
creed of supernaturalistic affinities, found shelter
under its auspices." This roused the bitter antagon-
ism of the clergy, who stirred up the authorities
against him. Ferrer was imprisoned and his pro-
perty confiscated; but new schools were established in
31 Life and Letters of George Eliot, by J. W. Cross, Vol.
III., p. 439.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 55
many localities. On May 31, 1906, a bomb explosion
at Madrid furnished the pretext for serious charges
against him. Three years later another pretext was
furnished by a civil disturbance in Barcelona. He
was falsely charged with complicity in the rising and
condemned to be shot, a sentence which was carried
out on October 12, 1909. (See the articles by Mr.
William Heaford in the Freethinker, May 14, and
June 7, 1931).
LUDWIG ANDREAS FEUERBACH.
FEUERBACH was born in Bavaria in 1804. After study-
ing theology for two years he abandoned it to devote
himself to philosophy. In 1828 he became a lecturer
in the University of Erlangen, but soon had to retire
owing to the offence caused by his Thoughts on
Death and Immortality f in which he attacks the be-
lief in an immortal " soul." His Essence of Christ-
ianity appeared in 1841, and the English translation
by George Eliot in 1853. Brewin Grant, of con-
siderable notoriety at one time as a Christian of the
evangelical type, said : " Goethe, Feuerbach, R. B.
Sheridan, all died in despair." We happen, how-
ever, to know in detail the story of Feuerbach's last
days. His friend, Carl Scholl, who delivered an
address at his grave, visited him every morning
during his last illness. Scholl says that Feuerbach
was suffering from bronchitis and endured severe
pain with great fortitude. He died on September 13,
1872, " in a slumber so peaceful that those present
scarcely noticed that he was dead." (Scholl, Dem
Andenken Ludwig Feuerbachs, 1872, pp. 13-16.)
56 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
GEORGE WILLIAM FOOTE.
FOOTE was born in Plymouth on January n, 1850.
He was brought up in the Anglican communion, and
in early youth became " converted." But he was
essentially of the number of those who are destined
by Nature to examine the grounds of their opinions
on religion or any other subject. Before he was
eighteen he rejected as untenable the claims made on
behalf of the Bible. In 1868 he came to London,
where he joined the Young Men's Secular Associa-
tion and was soon working energetically for Free-
thought and Republicanism. Both as a speaker and
as a writer he early showed a power of thought and
expression which, combined with utter fearlessness,
was to make him later so great an asset to the Free-
thought cause. " Free Lance," writing on "Secular
Progress in 1871," in the National Secular Society's
Almanack, 1872 (p. 24), said: "We have also two
young lecturers of great promise, Mr. G. Bishop and
Mr.G. W.Foote." During the decade 1870-1880 Foote
contributed to the Secular Chronicle and the National
Reformer, founded, in conjunction with G. J. Holy-
oake, the Secularist, edited the Liberal, and wrote a
number of pamphlets, among which may be men-
tioned : Heroes and Martyrs of Freethought, and
God, the Soul and A Future State: a Reply to
Thomas Cooper. In 1881 he established the Free-
thinker, a journal that was destined to become a
powerful factor in spreading Freethought throughout
England. From 1883 to 1887 he edited Progress,
which contained many articles of high literary merit.
Though the prosecutions of Foote for " blas-
phemous libels " published in the Freethinker, con-
stitute an important chapter in the story of his life,
it is impossible here to enter into details concerning
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 57
them. He was served with his first summons in
July, 1882, and at the Court of Queen's Bench was
compelled to find securities for ^600. The next trial
arose out of the illustrations in the Christmas number
of the same year and had more serious consequences.
For this offence he was, in March, 1883, sentenced by
Judge North, a Roman Catholic, to twelve months'
imprisonment. Nearly two months later Foote was
tried again on the first indictment, before Lord Chief
Justice Coleridge, and defended himself in a speech
which is now one of the classics in the literature of its
kind. For a detailed account of these prosecutions
the reader is referred to Foote' s Prisoner for Blas-
phemy, and the Defence of Free Speech. The latter
has just been republished by the Pioneer Press, and
contains an interesting Introduction by Mr. H.
Cutner.
Apart from his thirty-five years' work on the Free-
thinker r during the whole of this period Foote was
in various other ways writing books and pamphlets,
lecturing and debating serving the cause to which
he had early decided to devote his life. In 1882 ap-
peared The God the Christians Swear by, during
Charles Bradlaugh's parliamentary struggle, Blas-
phemy no crime, and Death's Test, afterwards en-
larged into Infidel Deathbeds. The last, like A Lie
in Five Chapters? (1892), in which he ran to earth
the story of a " converted Atheist," which the Rev.
Hugh Price Hughes had started, was more
than an exposure of " lying for the glory
of God." Foote discerned as clearly as any
man ever did the influence of superstitious beliefs
on personality, and the fatal ease with which they
are made to serve the purposes of the professional
soul-saver. The Bible Handbook, in which W. P.
Ball collaborated, appeared in 1885, and Crimes of
58 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
Christianity in 1887. In producing the latter, which
is a veritable store-house of historical facts for the
Freethought propagandist, he had the assistance of
his life-long friend, J. M. Wheeler. Rome or
Atheism (1892) shows that power of going straight
to the point which characterized all Foote's work. It
also shows exactly where he himself stood. The
Newman brothers are made the text for a keen an-
alysis of the Roman Catholic's " certitude " and the
Protestant's " right to private judgment "; the dis-
integration of Protestantism is seen to be inevitable;
and the field will be left to the two great protagon-
ists who already " march steadily forward to their
Armageddon." His views on death and a future
life are concisely expressed in " The Gospel of Secu-
larism," contributed to Religious Systems of the
World. The Secularist, he says, will give no assent
to any proposition of whose truth he is not assured,
and " declines to traffic in supernatural hopes and
fears."
Foote appreciated every great piece of literature,
and his knowledge of ancient and modern writers,
and of ecclesiastical history, was almost encyclopaedic.
Some of his finest literary criticism may be found in
Shakespeare and Other Literary Essays. (Pioneer
Press, 1929.)
Ever since Foote entered upon his campaign in
London a large proportion of his time was spent in
lectures and debates in different parts of Great
Britain. He was a powerful speaker, clear and logi-
cal, at times very witty, and in his perorations rising
to heights of real oratory.
In 1890 he succeeded Bradlaugh as President of the
National Secular Society a position which he held
for twenty-five years. Through his instrumentality
The Secular Society, Limited, was formed in 1898 : it
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 59
affords legal security to the acquisition, by bequest or
otherwise, of funds for Secular purposes. The
decision of the House of Lords in the Bowman case
makes this security absolute.
Foote died on October 17, 1915. The details of his
last illness and death are related in the Freethinker of
October 31, 1915, by Mr. Chapman Cohen, who
speaks with full knowledge of the facts :
To me it will always be some consolation that he
died as he would have wished in harness . . .
When I saw him on the Friday (two days) before his
death he said, " I have had another setback, but I
am a curious fellow and may get all right again."
But he looked the fact of death in the face with the
same courage and determination that he faced Judge
North many years ago. A few hours before he died
he said calmly to those around him, " I am dying."
And when the end came his head dropped back on
the pillow, and with a quiet sigh, as of one falling to
sleep, he passed away.
FREDERICK THE GREAT.
FREDERICK THE GREAT, the finest soldier of his age,
the maker of Prussia, and therefore the founder of
modern Germany, was born in 1712. His life forms
the theme of Carlyle's masterpiece. Notoriously a
disbeliever in Christianity, as his writings and cor-
respondence attest, he loved to surround himself with
Freethinkers, the most conspicuous of whom was
Voltaire. When the great French heretic died,
Frederick pronounced his eulogium before the Berlin
Academy, denouncing " the imbecile priests," and
declaring that " the best destiny they can look for is
that they and their vile artifices will remain forever
buried in the darkness of oblivion, while the fame
60 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
of Voltaire will increase from age to age, and trans-
mit his name to immortality."
When the old king was on his death-bed, one of
his subjects, solicitous about his immortal soul, sent
him a letter full of pious advice. " Let this," he
said, " be answered civilly; the intention of the writer
is good." Shortly after, on August 17, 1786, Fred-
erick died in his own fashion. Carlyle says :
For the most part he was unconscious, never more
than half conscious. As the wall clock above his
head struck eleven, he asked: "What o'clock?"
" Eleven," answered they. " At four," murmured
he, " I will arise." One of his dogs sat on its stool
near him ; about midnight he noticed it shivering
for cold : " Throw a quilt over it," said or beckoned
he; that, I think, was his last completely conscious
utterance. Afterwards, in a severe choking fit,
getting at last rid of the phlegm, he said, "La
montagne est passte nous irons mieux We are on
the hill, we shall go better now." 32
Better it was. The pain was over, and the brave
old king, who had wrestled with all Europe and
thrown it, succumbed quietly to the inevitable defeat
which awaits us all.
LEON GAMBETTA.
GAMBETTA was the greatest French orator and states-
man of his age. He was one of those splendid and
potent figures who redeem nations from common-
place. To him, more than to any other man, the
present Republic owes its existence. He played
deeply for it in the great game of life and death
after Sedan, and by his titantic organization of the
national defence he made it impossible for Louis
" Frederick the Great, Vol. VI., p. 694, edition, 1869.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 6 1
Napoleon to reseat himself on the throne with the aid
of German bayonets. Again, in 1877, he saved the
Republic he loved so well from the monarchial con-
spirators. He defeated their base attempt to subvert
a nation's liberties, but the struggle sapped his enor-
mous vitality, which had already been impaired by
the terrible labours of his Dictatorship. He died at
the early age of forty-four, having exhausted his
strength in fighting for freedom.
Like almost every eminent Republican, Gambetta
was a Freethinker. As Mr. Frederic Harrison says,
" he systematically and formally repudiated any kind
of acceptance of theology." During his lifetime he
never entered a Church, even when attending a
marriage or a funeral, but stopped short at the door,
and let who would go inside and listen to the mum-
mery of the priest. In his own expressive words, he
declined to be " rocked asleep by the myths of
childish religions." He professed himself an admirer
and a disciple of Voltaire I'admirateur et le disciple
de Valiaire. Every member of his ministry was a
Freethinker, and one of them, the eminent scientist
Paul Bert, a militant Atheist. Speaking at a public
meeting not long before his death, Gambetta called
Comte the greatest thinker of this century; that Comte
who proposed to " reorganize society, without God
and without king, by the systematic cultus of
humanity."
When John Stuart Mill died, a Christian journal,
which died itself a few weeks after, declared he had
gone to hell, and wished all his friends, and disciples
would follow him. Several pious prints expressed
similar sentiments with regard to Gambetta. Passing
by the English papers, let us look at a few French
ones. The Due de Broglie's organ, naturally anxious
to insult the statesman who had so signally beaten
62 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
him, said that ''he died suddenly after hurling defi-
ance at God." The Pay s, edited by that pious bully,
Paul de Cassagnac, said ''He dies, poisoned by his
own blood. He set himself up against God. He has
fallen. It is fearful. But it is just."
These tasteful exhibitions of Christian charity
show that Gambetta lived and died a Freethinker.
Yet the sillier sort of Christians have not scrupled to
insinuate and even argue, that he was secretly a be-
Jiever. One asinine priest, M. Feuillet des Conches,
formerly Vicar of Notre Dame des Victoires, and
then honorary Chamberlain to the Pope, stated in
the London Times that, about two years before his
death, Gambetta came to his church with a brace of
big wax tapers which he offered in memory of his
mother. He also added that the great orator knelt
before the Virgin, dipped his finger in holy water,
and made the sign of the cross. Was there ever a
more absurd story? Gambetta was a remarkable
looking man, and extremely well known. He could
not have entered a church unobserved, and had he
done so, the story would have gone round Paris the
next day. Yet nobody heard of it till after his death.
Either the priest mistook some portly dark man for
Gambetta, or he was guilty of a pious fraud.
According to another story, Gambetta said " I am
lost," when the doctors told him he could not re-
cover. But the phrase Je suis perdu has no theo-
logical significance. Nothing is more misleading
than a literal translation. Gambetta simply meant
" It is all over then." This monstrous perversion of
a simple phrase could only have arisen from sheer
malice or gross ignorance of French.
While lying on his death-bed Gambetta listened to
Rabelais, Moliere, and other favourite but not very
pious authors, read aloud by a young student who
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 63
adored him,. Almost his last words, as recorded in
the Times, were these " Well, I have suffered so
much, it will be a deliverance." The words are
calm, collected, and truthful. There is no rant and
no quailing. It is the natural language of a strong
man confronting Death after long agony. Shortly
after he breathed his last. No priest administered
" the consolations of religion," and he expressly
ordered that he should be buried without religious
rites.
GARIBALDI.
GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI'S name is a household word in
every civilized country. His romantic life and
superb achievements are too well known to need any
recital in these pages. The Lion of Caprera found
the priests the greatest enemies of his beloved Italy,
and he hated them accordingly. " The priest," he
says in the preface to his Memoirs, "the priest is the
personification of falsehood, the liar is a thief, and
the thief an assassin." 33 His English biographer,
Theodore Bent, admits that in his old age he grew
more and more sceptical. " One of his laconic
letters of 1880," he says, " illustrates this. It was
as follows : ' Dear friends, Man has created God,
not God man. Yours ever, Garibaldi.' "
We have no account of Garibaldi's last moments,
but he died daily in his crippled and helpless old
age, and his cheerful fortitude was known to all.
He desired his body to be cremated, and gave strict
orders that no priest should officiate at his funeral.
He also had his sarcophagus built at Caprera, but the
family yielded to the wish of the Government, and
he was buried at Rome.
33 Garibaldi, Memorie Autobiografiche, p. 2.
64 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
ISAAC GENDRE.
THE controversy over the death of this Swiss Free-
thinker was summarized in the London Echo of
July 29, 1881 :
A second case of death-bed conversion of an emi-
nent Liberal to Roman Catholicism, suggested prob-
ably by that of the great French philologist Littre,
has passed the round of the Swiss papers. A few
days ago the veteran leader of the Freiburg Liberals,
M. Isaac Gendre, died. The Ami du Peuple, the
organ of the Freiburg Ultramontanes, immediately
set afloat the sensational news that when M. Gendre
found that his last hour was approaching, he sent
his brother to fetch a priest, in order that the last
sacraments might be administered to him, and the
evil which he had done during his life by his per-
sistent Liberalism might be atoned by his repentance
at the eleventh hour. This brother, M. Alexandre
Gendre, now writes to the paper stating that there
is not one word of truth in this story What pos-
sible benefit can any Church derive from the inven-
tion of such tales ? Doubtless there is a credulous
residuum which believes that there must be " some
truth " in anything which has once appeared in
print.
It might be added that many people readily believe
what pleases them, and that a lie which has a good
start is very hard to run down.
EDWARD GIBBON.
EDWARD GIBBON, greatest of modern historians, was
born at Putney, near London, on April 27, i?37-
His monumental work, the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, which Carlyle called " the splendid
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 65
bridge from the old world to the new," is universally
known and admired. To have your name mentioned
by Gibbon, said Thackeray, is like having it written
on the dome of St. Peter's, which is seen by pilgrims
from all parts of the earth. Twenty years of his life
were devoted to his colossal History, which incident-
ally conveys his opinion of many problems. His
views on Christianity are indicated in his famous
fifteenth chapter, which is a masterpiece of grave and
temperate irony. When Gibbon wrote that " it was
not in this world that the primitive Christians were
desirous of making themselves either agreeable or
useful," every sensible reader understood his mean-
ing.
Gibbon did not long survive the completion of his
great work. The last volumes of the Decline and
Fall were published on May 8, 1788, and he died on
January 14, 1794. His malady was dropsy. After
being twice tapped in November, he removed to the
house of his devoted friend, Lord Sheffield. A week
before he expired he was obliged for the sake of the
highest medical attendance, to return to his lodgings
in St. James's Street, London. The following
account of his last moments was written by Lord
Sheffield :
During the evening he complained much of his
stomach, and of a feeling of nausea. Soon after nine
lie took his opium draught and went to bed. About
ten he complained of much pain, and desired that
warm napkins might be applied to his stomach. He
almost incessantly expressed a sense of pain till
about four o'clock in the morning, when lie said he
found his stomach much easier. About seven the
servant asked whether he should send for Mr. Far-
quhar (the doctor). He answered, No; that he was
as well as the day before. At about half-past eight
lie got out of bed, and said he was " plus adroit "
E
66 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
than he had been for three months past, and got into
bed again without assistance, better than usual.
About nine he said he would rise. The servant,
however, persuaded him to remain in bed till Mr.
Farquhar, who was expected at eleven, should
come. Till about that hour he spoke with great
facility. Mr. Farquhar came at the time appointed,
and he was then visibly dying. When the valet-de-
chambre returned, after attending Mr. Farquhar out
of the room, Mr. Gibbon said, " Pour-quoi est ce que
vous me quittez?" (Why do you leave me?) This
was about half-past eleven. At twelve o'clock he
drank some brandy and water from a teapot, and
desired his favourite servant to stay with him. These
were the last words he pronounced articulately. To
the last he preserved his senses; and when he could
no longer speak, his servant having asked a ques-
tion, he made a sign to show that he understood him.
He was quite tranquil, and did not stir, his eyes
half shut. About a quarter before one he ceased to
breathe. The valet-de-chambre observed that he did
not, at any time, evince the least sign of alarm or
apprehension of death. (Last Days of Gibbon, in
Milman's edition of Gibbon, Vol. I., Introduction.)
James Cotter Morison, in his admirable monograph
on Gibbon, which forms a volume of Macmillan's
" English Men of Letters " series, quotes the whole
of this passage with the exception of the last sentence.
In our opinion the words we have italicized are the
most important in the extract, and should not have
been withheld.
WILLIAM GODWIN.
WILLIAM GODWIN, the author of Political Justice and
the father-in-law of Shelley, was born on March 3,
1756, and died on April 7, 1836. Only a few days
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 67
before his death he wrote to his daughter, Mrs.
Shelley, as follows:
I leave behind me a manuscript, in a considerable
state of forwardness for the press, entitled, The
Genius of Christianity Unveiled: in a Series of
Essays. I am most unwilling that this, the concluding
work of a long life, and written, as I believe, in the
full maturity of my understanding, should be con-
signed to oblivion. It has been the main object of my
life, since I attained to years of discretion, to do my
part to free the human mind from slavery. I adjure
you therefore, or whomsoever else into whose
hands these papers may fall, not to allow them to be
consigned to oblivion.
Mrs Shelley seems to have disregarded this solemn
adjuration, for the work was not published till 1873,
when it was issued by Kegan Paul, to whose Life of
William Godwin we are indebted.
GOETHE.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE was born in Frank-
fort-on-the-Main, on August 28, 1749, and died on
March 22, 1832. Throughout the civilized world
there are few places where the centenary of his death
was no<t commemorated last year. Goethe's hos-
tility to everything fundamental in Christian theology
was unyielding, and continued from about his seven-
teenth year to the end of his long life. Heine, in his
De I'Allemagne, notices Goethe's " vigorous heathen
nature " and his " militant antipathy to Christ-
ianity," and on the Continent hardly anyone would
impugn the accuracy of this statement. As a young
man his antagonism to the historic faith caused a
marked estrangement between him and some of his
68 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
friends. In 1788, after his return from his prolonged
stay in Italy, he openly declared himself a Pagan
whose ideals and world-view accorded largely with
those of Lucretius. Some of his letters to 1/avater,
Jacobi, Schiller and Zelter, contain unsparing
criticism of Christianity and the claims made for it.
Goethe's " truly Julian hatred of Christianity "
became less intense with advancing years; but
throughout life he rejected its cardinal doctrines on
intellectual grounds and regarded some of them as
serious hindrances to the growth of personality.
Christianity's attitude to Nature, the doctrine of total
depravity, the cult of sorrow and its extremely un-
favourable influence on art, and the orthodox scheme
of salvation generally all these elements of the faith
strongly repelled Goethe.
In his later years he avowed to Eckermann, a kind
of German Boswell who has left us in his Conversa-
tions with Goethe many interesting notes on the poet
and his Weimar circle of friends, that the name which
he would prefer to all others was Befreier ("libera-
tor "). Only eleven days before his death, writing
to Eckermann, he said that Biblical questions can be
viewed from two standpoints, either as a study in re-
ligious origins or from the standpoint of the Church,
which, feeble and transitory as it is, will continue as
long as there are weak human beings in existence to
need her good offices. In his letters to Zelter, the
musician, one of the dearest of all his friends
Goethe's last letters, written after he had entered
his 'eighties are numerous passages showing his re-
pugnance to Christianity's low estimate of human
nature. His last letter to Zelter, a long one dated
March n, 1832, does not contain a word directly
bearing on religion, but near the end there is a re-
mark so Goethean to the core that it deserves quota-
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 69
tion : " It is strange that the English, the French,
and now the Germans, too, like to express themselves
incomprehensibly, just as others like to listen to what
is incomprehensible." Again and again in reading
Goethe we note this detestation of obscurantism, of
that verbiage which expressed nothing real, and
which he was never weary of arraigning as one of
the baneful influences of his time.
Goethe as a thinker and investigator in the domain
of natural science has been the subject of interesting
dissertations by Helmholtz and Virchow. The notion
of evolution, in its broadest aspect, had taken com-
plete possession of him.
It would be interesting to consider at length the
poet's views on Theism. Occasionally he speaks like
a thorough-going Agnostic, sometimes like a Panthe-
ist, and frequently when he refers to God he qualifies
the word with a possessive pronoun "my," "your,"
" his," or " their" God occurs fairly often. " If an
ultimate phenomenon," he said to Eckermann, " has
astonished us, we ought to rest content, nothing
higher can be granted to us, and we ought not to seek
anything behind it."
All attempts to prove that Goethe believed in im-
mortality, in the Christian sense, are futile. Here is
his opinion on this subject, as expressed when he
was seventy-five years old :
This occupation with ideas of immortality is for
people of rank, and especially for ladies who have
nothing to do. But a man of real worth who has
something to do here, and must toil and struggle to
produce day by day, leaves the future world to itself,
and is active and useful in this.
This does not reflect the mood of the moment, it
represents Goethe's typical attitude to the question
of man's survival of physical death.
70 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
On March 22, 1832, Germany's greatest son, the
poet and thinker whom Strauss declared to be "a
world in himself," died an almost ideal death. His
suffering was slight and he had no consciousness of
the approaching end. Eckermann saw his body pre-
pared for burial, and noted the peace and firmness
of the features " a perfect man lay in great beauty
before me." "More light!" This was the poet's
last utterance. His meaning was of course purely
physical, but it was symbolic of his life and his life's
work.
Authorities : The reader may consult the Free-
thinker of January 31 and February 7, 1932.
GEORGE GROTE.
GEORGE GROTE, the author of our classic His-
tory of Greece, was born on November 17,
1794. He was a disciple of Bentham and a
confirmed Atheist. His death, which occurred on
June 18, 1871, was full of serenity. " Early in the
month of June," writes Mrs. Grote, " a marked
change supervened, and at the end of three weeks his
honourable, virtuous, and laborious course was
closed by a tranquil and painless death." 34
The Rev. Peter Anton, in his Masters of History,
obviously takes his account of Grote's death from
this source, but it is worth noticing that he enhances,
instead of weakening, the panegyric. " The great
historian," he says, " passed away tranquilly and
without pain; and thus was brought to a close a
career singularly devoted, conscientious, and
laborious, a life rich in virtue and honour and the
34 Personal Life of George Grote. By Mrs. Grote, p. 330.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 7 1
esteem of the wise and the good." Three centuries
ago Grote might have been burnt to death; but the
custodians of Westminster Abbey are now anxious to
enrich their precincts with celebrities, and the Atheist
historian is interred there with Freethinkers like
Ephraim Chambers, Sir Charles L,yell, and Charles
Darwin.
HELVETIUS.
HELVETIUS, the French philosopher, was born in
1715. His death took place on December 26, 1771.
By accident or negligence, his famous treatise,
L'Esprit, passed the censorship; but, on its true
character being recognized, the censor was cashiered,
and the author dismissed from an honorary post in
the Queen's household. The indictment, says Mr.
Morley, described the work as a " collection into one
cover of everything that impiety could imagine, cal-
culated to engender hatred against Christianity and
Catholicism." 35 The book was publicly burnt, and
the same fire consumed Voltaire's poem on Natural
Religion. Here is a passage which may help to ex-
plain its fate :
It is fanaticism that puts arms into the hands of
Christian princes ; it orders Catholics to massacre
heretics ; it brings out upon the earth again those
tortures that were invented by such monsters as
Phalaris, as Busiris, as Nero; in Spain it piles and
lights up the fires of the Inquisition, while the pious
Spaniards leave their ports and sail across distant
seas, to plant the Cross and spread desolation in
America. Turn your eyes to north or south, to east
or west ; on every side you see the consecrated knife
3 Diderot, Vol. II., 124.
72 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
of Religion raised against the breasts of women, of
children, of old men, and the earth all smoking with
the blood of victims immolated to false gods or the
Supreme Being, and presenting one vast, sickening,
horrible charnel-house of intolerance.
Marmontel described Helvetius as " liberal,
generous, unostentatious, and benevolent." His
death was mourned by a wide circle of friends and
dependants. " Day by day," says Condorcet, " he
felt his strength failing. An attack of gout, which
flew to the head and chest, deprived him at first of
consciousness, and soon of life." 38
HENRY HETHERINGTON.
HENRY HETHERINGTON, one of the heroes of " the
free press," w r as born at Compton Street, Soho, Lon-
don, in 1792. He very early became an ardent re-
former. In 1830 the Government obtained three
convictions against him for publishing the Poor
Man's Guardian, and he was lodged for six months
in Clerkenwell gaol. At the end of 1832 he was
again imprisoned there for six months, his treatment
being most cruel. An opening, called a window, but
without a pane of glass, let in the rain and snow by
day and night. In 1841 he was a third time incar-
cerated in the Queen's Bench prison for four months.
This time his crime was " blasphemy," in other
words, publishing Haslam's Letters to the Clergy.
He died on August 24, 1849, in his fifty-seventh
year, leaving behind him his Last Will and Testa-
ment, from which we take the following extracts:
38 Essay by Condorcet, prefixed to the CEuvres of Hel-
vetius (1784).
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 73
As life is uncertain, it behoves every one to make
preparations for death ; I deem it therefore a duty
incumbent on me, ere I quit this life, to express in
writing, for the satisfaction and guidance of
esteemed friends, my feelings and opinions in refer-
ence to our common principles. I adopt this course
that no mistake or misapprehension may arise
through the false reports of those who officiously and
obtrusively obtain access to the death-beds of avowed
infidels to priestcraft and superstition ; and who, by
their annoying importunities, labour to extort from
an opponent, whose intellect is already worn out and
subdued by protracted physical suffering, some
trifling admission, that they may blazon it forth to
the world as a Death-bed Confession, and a triumph
of Christianity over infidelity.
In the first place, then, I calmly and deliberately
declare that I do not believe in the popular notion
of the existence of an Almighty, All-Wise and
Benevolent God possessing intelligence, and con-
scious of his own operations ; because these attri-
butes involve such a mass of absurdities and contra-
dictions, so much cruelty and injustice on his part
to the poor and destitute portion of his creatures
that, in my opinion, no rational reflecting mind can,
after disinterested investigation, give credence to the
existence of such a Being, and. I believe death to
be an eternal sleep that I shall never live again
in this world, or another, with a consciousness that
I am the same identical person that once lived, per-
formed the duties, and exercised the functions of a
human being. 3rd. I consider priestcraft and
superstition the greatest obstacle to human improve-
ment and happiness. During my life I have, to the
best of my ability, sincerely and strenuously ex-
posed and opposed them, and die with a firm con-
viction that Truth, Justice, and Liberty will never be
permanently established on earth till every vestige of
priestcraft and superstition shall be utterly des-
74 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
troyed. 4th. I have ever considered that the only
religion useful to man consists exclusively of the
practice of morality, and in the mutual interchange
of kind actions. In such a religion there is no room
for priests and when I see them interfering at our
births, marriages and deaths, pretending to conduct
us safely through this state of being to another and
happier world, any disinterested person of the least
shrewdness and discernment must perceive that their
sole aim is to stultify the minds of the people by
their incomprehensible doctrines, that they may
the more effectually fleece the poor deluded sheep
who listen to their empty babblings and mystifica-
tions. 5th. As I have lived so I die, a determined
opponent to their nefarious and plundering system.
I wish my friends, therefore, to deposit my remains
in unconsecrated ground, and trust they will allow
no priest, or clergyman of any denomination, to
interfere in any way whatever at my funeral. My
earnest desire is, that no relation or friend shall wear
black or any kind of mourning, as I consider it
contrary to our rational principles to indicate re-
spect for a departed friend by complying with a
hypocritical custom. 6th. I wish those who re-
spect me, and who have laboured in our common
cause, to attend my remains to their last resting
place, not so much in consideration of the individual,
as to do honour to our just, benevolent and rational
principles. I hope all true Rationalists will leave
pompous displays to the tools of priestcraft and
superstition.
Hetherington wrote this Testament nearly two
years before his death, but he signed it with a firm
hand three days before he breathed his last, in the
presence of Thomas Cooper, who left it at the
Reasoner office for " the inspection of the curious or
sceptical." Thomas Cooper became a Christian, but
he could not repudiate what he printed at the time, or
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 75
destroy his " personal testimony," as he called it, to
the consistency with which Hetherington died in the
principles of Freethought.
THOMAS HOBBES.
THE Philosopher of Malmesbury, as he is often called,
was one of the clearest and boldest thinkers that ever
lived. His theolo'gical proclivities are well expressed
in his witty aphorism that superstition is religion out
of fashion, and religion superstition in fashion.
Although a courageous thinker, Hobbes was physic-
ally timid. This fact is explained by the circum-
stances of his birth. In the spring of 1588 all Eng-
land was alarmed at the news that the mighty Spanish
Armada had set sail for the purpose of deposing
Queen Elizabeth, bringing the country under a foreign
yoke, and re-establishing the power of the papacy. In
sheer fright, the wife of the vicar of Westport, now
part of Malmesbury, gave premature birth to her
second son on Good Friday, the 5th of April. This
seven months' child used to say, in later life, that his
mother brought forth himself and a twin brother Fear.
He was delicate and nervous all his days. Yet
through strict temperance he reached the great age
of ninety-one, dying on the 4th of December, 1679.
This parson's son was destined to be hated by the
clergy for his heresy. The Great Fire of 1666,
following the Great Plague of the previous year, ex-
cited popular superstition, and to appease the wrath
of God, a new Bill was introduced in Parliament
against Atheism and profaneness. The Committee to
which the Bill was entrusted were empowered to " re-
ceive information touching " heretical books, and
Hobbes's Leviathan was mentioned " in particular."
? INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
The old philosopher, then verging on eighty, was
naturally alarmed. Bold as he was in thought, his
inherited physical timidity shrank from the prospect
of the prison, the scaffold, or the stake. He made a
show of conformity, and according to Bishop Kennet,
who is not an irreproachable witness, he partook of
the sacrament. It was said by some, however, that
he acted thus in compliance with the wishes of the
Devonshire family, who were his protectors, and
whose private chapel he attended. A noticeable fact
was that he always went out before the sermon, and
when asked his reason, he answered that " they
could teach him nothing but what he knew." He
spoke of the chaplain, Dr. Jasper Mayne, as " a very
silly fellow."
Hated by the clergy, and especially by the bishops;
owing his liberty and perhaps his life to powerful
patrons; fearing that some fanatic might take the par-
sons' hints and play the part of an assassin; Hobbes
is said to have kept a lighted candle in his bedroom.
The fact, if it be such, is not mentioned in Professor
Croom Robertson's exhaustive biography. 37 It is
perhaps a bit of pious gossip. But were the story
authentic, it would not show that Hobbes had any
supernatural fears. He was more apprehensive of
assassins than of ghosts and devils. Being very old,
too, and his life precarious, he might well desire a
light in his bedroom in case of accident or sudden
sickness.
Hobbes does not appear to have troubled himself
about death. Bishop Kennet relates that only " the
winter before he died he made a warm greatcoat,
which he said must last him three years, and then he
would have such another." Even so late as August,
37 Hobbes. By George Croom Robertson (1886).
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 77
1676, four months before his decease, he was "writing
somewhat " for his publisher to " print in English."
About the middle of October he had an attack of
stranguary, and " Wood and Kennet both have it
that, on hearing the trouble was past cure, he ex-
claimed, ' I shall be glad then to find a hole to creep
out of the world at.' " 38 This story was picked up
thirty years after Hobbes's death, and is probably
apocryphal. If the philosopher said anything of the
kind, he doubtless meant that, being very old, and
without wife, child, or relative to care for him, he
would be glad to find a shelter for his last moments,
and to expire in comfort and peace. At the end of
November his right side was paralysed, and he lost
his speech. He " lingered in a somnolent state " for
several days, says Professor Robertson, and " then
his life quietly went out."
Bishop Kennet was absurd enough to hint that
Hobbes's " lying some days in a silent stupefaction,
did seem owing to his mind, more than his body." 39
An old man of ninety-one suffers a paralytic stroke,
loses his speech, sinks into unconsciousness, and
quietly expires. What could be more natural? Yet
the Bishop, belonging to an order which always
scents a brimstone flavour round the heretic's death-
bed, must explain this stupor and inanition by sup-
posing that the moribund philosopher was in a fit of
despair. We have only to add that Bishop Kennet
was not present at Hobbes's death. His theory is,
therefore, only a professional surmise; and we may be
sure that the wish was father to the thought.
38 Robertson, p. 203.
39 Memoirs of the Cavendish Family, p. 108.
?8 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
AUSTIN HOLYOAKE.
THIS steadfast Freethinker was a younger brother
of George Jacob Holyoake. He was of a singularly
modest and amiable nature, and although he left many
friends he left not a single enemy. He was entirely
devoted to the Freethought cause, and satisfied to
work hard behind the scenes while more popular
figures took the credit and profit. His assiduity in
the publishing business at Fleet Street, which was
ostensibly managed by his better-known and more
fortunate brother, induced a witty friend to call him
" Jacob's ladder." Afterwards he threw in his lot
with Charles Bradlaugh, then the redoubtable "Icono-
clast," and became the printer and in part sub-editor
of the National Reformer, to whose columns he was
a frequent and welcome contributor. He died on
April 10, 1874, and was interred at Highgate
Cemetery, his funeral being largely attended by the
London Freethinkers, including C. Bradlaugh, C.
Watts, G. W. Foote, James Thomson and G. J. Holy-
oake. The malady that carried him off was consump-
tion; he was conscious almost to the last; and his only
regret in dying, at the comparatively early age of
forty-seven, was that he could no longer fight the
battle of freedom, nor protect the youth of his little
son and daughter.
Two days before his death, Austin Holyoake
dictated his last thoughts on religion, which were
written down by his devoted wife, and printed in the
National Reformer of April 19, 1874. Part of this
document is filled with his mental history. In the re-
mainder he reiterates his disbelief in the cardinal
doctrines of Christianity. The following extracts
are interesting and pertinent :
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 79
Christians constantly tell Freethinkers that their
principles of " negation," as they term them, may do
very well for health; but when the hour of sickness
and approaching death arrives they utterly break
down, and the hope of a " blessed immortality " can
alone give consolation. In my own case I have been
anxious to test the truth of this assertion, and have
therefore deferred till the latest moment I think it
prudent to dictate these few lines.
To desire eternal bliss is no proof that we shall
ever attain it ; and it has long seemed to me absurd to
believe in that which we wish for, however ardently.
I regard all forms of Christianity as founded in sel-
fishness. It is the expectation held out of bliss
through all eternity, in return for the profession of
faith in Christ and him crucified, that induces the
erection of temples of worship in all Christian lands.
Remove the extravagant promise, and you will hear
very little of the Christian religion.
As I have stated before, my mind being free from
any doubts on these bewildering matters of specula-
tion, I have experienced for twenty years the most
perfect mental repose ; and now I find that the near
approach of death, the " grim King of Terrors,"
gives me not the slightest alarm. I have suffered,
and am suffering, most intensely both by night and
day; but this has not produced the least symptom of
change of opinion. No amount of bodily torture can
alter a mental conviction. Those who, under pain,
say they see the error of their previous belief, had
never thought out the subject for themselves.
These are words of transparent sincerity; not a
phrase is strained, not a line aims at effect. Reading
them, we feel in the presence of an earnest man
bravely confronting death, consciously sustained by
his convictions, and serenely bidding the world fare-
well.
Austin Holyoake's Secular Burial Service is still in
general use among Freethinkers.
So INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE.
HOLYOAKE was born in Birmingham, in 1817. In
The Last Trial for Atheism, he says : " In early youth
I was religious," and " as I grew up I attended mis-
sionary meetings, and my few pence were given to
that cause." In 1836 he became a Sunday School
teacher, but in June of the following year he met
Robert Owen and this led to serious inquiry into the
grounds of his religious beliefs and to their complete
abandonment before his twenty-fourth year. In
1841 Holyoake, Southwell, Ryall and Chilton founded
the Oracle oj Reason, an atheistic publication. On
November 27 an article appeared under the title,
" The Jew Book," which resulted in the prosecution
and imprisonment of Southwell for blasphemy. Holy-
oake himself was destined soon to undergo a similar
experience. In a speech at Cheltenham in 1842 he
said that in view of the prevailing poverty he would
put the Church " on half pay " a crime for which
Mr. Justice Erskine sentenced him to six months' im-
prisonment. In June, 1846, appeared the first issue
of his weekly paper, The Reasoner, which continued
until June, 1861. New series with the same title ap-
peared subsequently, the last in 1871. Holyoake was
the first to use the term " Secularism " in 1850
and shortly after this date he defined it as expressing
a philosophy of life :
Secularism relates to the present existence of man,
having for its object the development of the physical,
intellectual and moral nature of man, to the highest
point, as the immediate duty of society, inculcating
the practical sufficiency of natural morality apart
from Atheism, Theism or Christianity.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS Si
Holyoake wrote numerous pamphlets on various as-
pects of Secularism; but his more important works
deal with the co-operative movement in England.
He died peacefully, in the presence of his wife and
daughter, at Brighton in January, 1906. Bygones
Worth Remembering was published in his eighty-ninth
year, and during the last few weeks of his life he
took a keen interest in the general election then
pending.
Authorities : C. W. F. Goss , A Descriptive Biblio-
graphy of the Writings of G. J. Holyoake; Joseph
McCabe, Life and Letters of G. J. Holyoake, 1908.
VICTOR HUGO.
THE greatest French poet of this century, perhaps
the greatest French poet of all time, was a fervent
Theist, reverencing the prophet of Nazareth as a man,
and holding that the " divine tear " of Jesus and
" the human smile " of Voltaire " compose the
sweetness of the present civilization." But he was
perfectly free from the trammels of creeds, and he
hated priestcraft, like despotism, with a perfect
hatred.
In one of his striking later poems, " Religion et les
Religions," he derides and denounces the tenets and
pretensions of Christianity. The Devil, he says to
the clergy, is only the monkey of superstition; your
Hell is an outrage on Humanity and a blasphemy
against God; and when you tell me that your deity
made you in his own image, I reply that he must be
very ugly.
As a man, as well as a writer, there was something
magnificently grandiose about him. Substract him
from the nineteenth century, and you rob it of much
82 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
of its glory. For nineteen years on a lonely channel
island, an exile from the land of his birth and his love,
he nursed the. conscience of humanity within his
mighty heart, brandishing the lightnings and thunders
of chastisement over the heads of the political brig-
ands who were stifling a nation, and prophesying
their certain doom. When it came, after Sedan, he
returned to Paris, and for fifteen years he was idolized
by its people. There was great mourning at his death,
and " all Paris " attended his funeral. But true to
the simplicity of his life he ordered that his body
should lie in a common coffin, which contrasted
vividly with the splendid procession. France buried
him, as she did Gambetta; he was laid to rest in the
Church of St. Genevieve/, re-secularised as the Pan-
theon for the occasion; and the interment took place
without any religious rites.
Hugo's great oration on Voltaire, in 1878, roused
the ire of the Bishop of Orleans, who reprimanded him
in a public letter. The Freethinking poet sent a
crushing reply :
France had to pass an ordeal. France was free.
A man traitorously seized her in the night, threw her
down and garrotted her. If a people could be killed,
that man had slain France. He made her dead
enough for him to reign over her. He began his
reign, since it was a reign, with perjury,
lying in wait, and massacre. He continued
it by oppression, by tyranny, by despotism,
by an unspeakable parody of religion and
justice. He was monstrous and little. The Te
Deum, Magnificat, Salvum fac, Gloria tibi, were sung
for him. Who sang them ? Ask yourself. The law
delivered the people up to him. The Church
delivered God up to him. Under that man sank
down right, honour, country ; he had beneath his feet
oath, equity, probity, the glory of the flag, the dig-
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 83
nity of men, the liberty of citizens. That man's
prosperity disconcerted the human conscience. It
lasted nineteen years. During that time you were in
a palace. I was in exile. I pity you, sir.
Despite this terrible rebuff to Bishop Dupanloup,
another priest, Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris,
had the temerity and bad taste to obtrude himself
when Victor Hugo lay dying in 1885. Being born on
February 26, 1802, the poet was in his eighty-fourth
year, and expiring naturally of old age. Had the
rites of the Church been performed on him in such
circumstances, it would have been an insufferable
farce. Yet the Archbishop wrote to Madame L/ock-
roy, offering to bring personally " the succour and
consolation so much needed in these cruel ordeals."
Monsieur Lockroy at once replied as follows :
Madame Lockroy, who cannot leave the bedside of
her father-in-law, begs me to thank you for the senti-
ments which you have expressed with so much elo-
quence and kindness. As regards M. Victor Hugo,
he has again said within the last few days, that he
had no wish during his illness to be attended by a
priest of any persuasion. We should be wanting in
our duty if we did not respect his resolution. 40
Hugo's death-chamber was thus unprofaned by
the presence of a priest. He expired in peace, sur-
rounded by the beings he loved. According to the
Times correspondent in Paris, " Almost his last
words, addressed to his grand-daughter, were, * Adieu,
Jeanne, adieu !' And his last movement of conscious-
ness was to clasp his grandson's hand."
40 London Times, May 23, 1885 : Paris Correspondent's
tetter.
84 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
DAVID HUME.
PROFESSOR HUXLEY ventures to call David Hume
" the most acute thinker of the eighteenth century,
even though it produced Kant." 41 Hume's greatness
is no less clearly acknowledged by Joseph De Maistre,
the foremost champion of the Papacy in our own
country. " I believe," he says, " that taking all into
account, the eighteenth century, so fertile in this re-
spect, has not produced a single enemy of religion
who can be compared with him. His cold venom
is far more dangerous than the foaming rage of Vol-
taire. If ever, among men who have heard the
gospel preached, there has existed a veritable Atheist
(which I will not undertake to decide) it is he." 42
Allowing for the personal animosity in his estimate of
Hume, De Maistre is as accurate as Huxley. The
immortal Essays attest both his penetration and his
scepticism; the one on Miracles being a perpetual
stumbling-block to Christian apologists. With superb
irony, Hume closes that portentous discourse with a
reprimand of " those dangerous friends or disguised
enemies to the Christian Religion, who have under-
taken to defend it by the principles of human reason."
He reminds them that " our most holy religion is
founded on faith, not on reason." He remarks that
Christianity was " not only attended by miracles,
but even at this day cannot be believed by any
reasonable person without one." For " whoever is
moved by faith to assent to it, is conscious of a con-
tinued miracle in his own person, which subverts
all the principles of his understanding, and gives
him a determination to believe what is most con-
trary to custom and experience."
41 Lay Sermons, p. 141.
*a Lettres sur I'Inqnisition, pp. 147, 148.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 85
Hume was born at Edinburgh on April 26, 1711.
His life was the uneventful one of a literary man.
Besides his Essays, he published a History of Eng-
land, which was the first serious effort in that direc-
tion. Judged by the standard of our day it is inade-
quate; but it abounds in philosophical reflections of the
highest order, and its style is nearly perfect. Gibbon,
who was a good judge of style, had an unbounded
admiration for Hume's '* careless inimitable beauties."
Fortune, however, was not so kind to him as fame.
At the age of forty, his frugal habits had enabled him
to save no more than ^1,000. He reckoned his in-
come at 50 a year, but his wants were few, his spirit
was cheerful, and there were few prizes in the lottery
of life for which he would have made an exchange.
In 1775 his health began to fail. Knowing that his
disorder (hemorrhage of the bowels) would prove
fatal, he made his will, and wrote My Own Life, the
conclusion of which, says Huxley, " is one of the
most cheerful, simple and dignified leave-takings of
life and all its concerns, extant." He died on
August 25, 1776, and was buried a few days later on
the eastern slope of Calton Hill, Edinburgh, his body
being " attended by a great concourse of people, who
seem to have anticipated for it the fate appropriate
to wizards and necromancers." 43
Adam Smith, the great author of the Wealth of
Nations, was one of Hume's most intimate friends.
He tells us that Hume went to London in April, 1776,
and soon after his return he " gave up all hope of re-
covery, but submitted with the utmost cheerfulness,
and the most perfect complacency and resignation."
His cheerfulness was so great that many people could
not believe he was dying. " Mr. Hume's magnani-
43 Plume, by Professor Huxley, p. 43.
86 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
mity and firmness were such," said Adam Smith,
" that his most affectionate friends knew that they
hazarded nothing in talking and writing to him as a
dying man, and that, so far from being hurt by this
frankness, he was rather pleased and flattered by it."
His chief thought in relation to the possible prolonga-
tion of his life, which his friends hoped although he
told them their hopes were groundless, was that he
would have " the satisfaction of seeing the downfall
of some of the prevailing systems of superstition."
On August 8, Adam Smith went to Kircaldy, leaving
Hume in a very weak state but still very cheerful.
On August 28, he received the following letter from
Dr. Black, the physician, announcing the philo-
sopher's death :
Edinburgh,
Monday, August 26, 1776.
Dear Sir, Yesterday about four o'clock, afternoon,
Mr. Hume expired. The near approach of his death
became evident in the night between Thursday and
Friday, when his disease became excessive, and soon
weakened him so much, that he could no longer rise
out of his bed. He continued to the last perfectly
sensible and free from much pain and feelings of dis-
tress. He never dropped the smallest expression of
impatience ; but when he had occasion to speak to the
people about him, always did it with, affection and
tenderness. I thought it improper to write to bring
you over, especially as I heard that lie had dictated
a letter to you, desiring you not to come. When he
became weak it cost him an effort to speak, and he
died in such a happy composure of rnind that nothing
could exceed it.
" Thus," says Adam Smith, " died our most excel-
lent and never to be forgotten friend . . . Upon the
whole, I have always considered him, both in his life-
time and since his death as approaching as nearly to
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 87
the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as per-
haps the nature of human frailty will permit."
44
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL.
INGERSOU, was born in the small town of Dresden,
State of New York, on August u, 1833. His father
was a Minister of the Congregational Church, and the
boy was brought up in an evangelical atmosphere,
though he never accepted some of the dogmas which
he was taught. At an early age he expressed his ab-
horrence of the idea of an eternal hell. In 1854 he
was admitted to the Bar and soon gained a large
practice.
The Civil War broke out in 1861, and he raised for
the anti-slavery cause a regiment of Illinois cavalry,
of which he. was appointed colonel. During the war
he was taken prisoner by the Confederate troops. In
1866 he was appointed Attorney-General of Illinois,
and would most certainly have been Governor of the
State but for the religious prejudice against him.
Ingersoll's eloquence, wit, and keen logic in con-
troversy made him a great asset to the popular Free-
thought Movement, and to an almost equal degree it
caused him to be bitterly attacked and slandered by
the clergy, especially by the ultra-evangelical Tal-
mage. What above all else excited orthodox opposi-
tion was Ingersoll's habit of laughing at the absurdi-
ties of Christianity. This play of wit and satire is
noticeable in The Mistakes of Moses, probably the
best known of his Freethought writings. Among his
pamphlets and reported speeches, which have had a
wide circulation throughout the English-speaking
44 Letter to William Strahan, dated November 9, 1776, and
usually prefixed to Hume's History of England.
bo INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
world, but are far too numerous for detailed reference
here, may be mentioned Ghosts, What must I do to
be saved? and Real Blasphemy. Perhaps he is seen at
his literary best in the Reply to Gladstone, which ap-
peared originally in the North American Review for
June, 1888. The replies to his assaults on the faith
would alone form a small library.
His attitude to the whole question of a future life is
perfectly Agnostic. In Faith and Fact, 1887 (p. 12)
he declares : "I know no more (of the immortality
of the soul) than the lowest savage, no more than a
doctor of divinity that is to say, nothing." In God
and Man, 1888 (p. n) he is emphatic concerning the
worthlessness of what is called the Christian hope :
" It offers no consolation to any good and loving
man." He pours all that refined scorn of which he
was a master on the promise of a future life to the
oppressed as compensation for their sufferings here
(Repairing the Idols, 1888, pp. 6-8). At the grave of
the child, Harry Miller, speaking of the question,
<: Whither?" he said : " The poor barbarian weeping
over his dead can answer the question as intelligently
and satisfactorily as the robed priests of the most
authentic creed." (Appendix to Mistakes of Moses.)
Ingersoll died of angina pectoris on July 21, 1899.
He passed away very peacefully and his last words
were, " I am better now." But it was not to be ex-
pected that so great an " infidel " would be spared
the familiar story of a death-bed recantation, despite
the fact that all the details of his last moments are
well known. His friend, W. J. Armstrong, summed
them up concisely in the Los Angeles Times Maga-
zine : " He died unexpectedly and suddenly, after
conversing cheerfully a few minutes before with the
members of his family." (The Freethinker, October
4, 1908).
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 89
RICHARD JEFFERIES.
RICHARD JEFFERIES, the nature-lover, who wrote of
hedge-rows and woodlands and wild life, was born in
1848. Religion never had a strong hold upon him.
In The Siory of My Heart, published in 1883, four
years before he died, he says :
In the march of time there fell away from my mind,
as the leaves from the trees in autumn, the last
traces and relics of superstitions and traditions
acquired compulsorily in childhood. Always feebly
adhering, they finally disappeared.
He died on August 14, 1887, after several years of
painful suffering. Sir Walter Besant, in his Eulogy
of Richard Jefferies, makes it appear that Jefferies, at
the end, returned to the Christian faith. Sir Walter
related the story as he had heard it; but he himself a
few years later wrote to Mr. H. S. Salt :
I stated in my Eulogy that he died a Christian.
This was true in the sense of outward conformity.
His wife read to him the Gospel of St. Luke, and he
acquiesced. But, I have since been informed, he
was weak, too weak not to acquiesce, and his views
never changed from the time that he wrote The Story
of My Heart. You are, I am convinced, quite right.
When a man gets as far as Jefferies did when he
has shed and scattered to the winds all sacerdotalism
and authority he does not go back. (H. S. Salt :
Company I have Kept, 1930, pp. 106-7.)
JULIAN THE APOSTATE.
THE life of Julian, Roman Emperor from 361 to 363
A.D., is of considerable interest to Freethinkers. At
an early age his education \vas entrusted to Christian
monks; but he soon began to contrast the Greek view
of life and its intellectual activities with the gloomy
90 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
piety and the theological hair-splitting of his teachers.
His Refutation of the Christian Religion was des-
troyed by the efforts of Theodosius II., but we know
that it contained some acute criticism of the absurd
stories in the Old Testament and also of the contra-
dictory statements in the Gospel narratives of the life
of Christ. " No wild beasts," he once declared,
" are so hostile to men as Christian sects in general
are to one another."
Fortunately, we happen to know the details of
Julian's last days. He died in the campaign against
the Persians, in which he showed supreme valour and
the utmost calm. The story of his exclaiming, ''Thou
hast conquered, O Galilean !" is pure fiction.
" Christian legend soon began to busy itself in weav-
ing strange tales round the Emperor's death-bed, for
which we have no foundation in any trustworthy
authorities. They need no disproof " (Alice Gardner,
Julian, Philosopher and Emperor). These "strange
tales " belong to the early samples of the wares, now
familiar enough, which Christians have manufactured
" for the greater glory of God."
GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING.
LESSING was born in 1729 at Kamenz, Saxony, where
his father was a pastor in the Lutheran Church. At
the University, Leipzig, he studied theology, medicine
and philosophy, but soon devoted himself mainly to
literary criticism. At an early age he showed his in-
dependent nature, and this independence was especi-
ally noticeable in his views on religion. In his essay,
How the Ancients Represented Death, he contrasts
the attitude of classical antiquity to death as the
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS QI
natural end of life with that of the Christian faith,
which considers death a penalty for sin. Some of the
posthumous essays of Hermann Samuel Reimarus,
The Principal Truths of Natural Religion and the
Doctrines of Reason, in which he subjects the im-
portant claims of Christianity to a profound examina-
tion and rejects them as untenable, were edited by
Lessing, who took them with him to Wolfenbuettel.
Lessing himself was greatly impressed by Reimarus'
work, though he dissented from many of its conclu-
sions. His part in circulating these heterodox views
and his own ideas of the need of free discussion in re-
ligion, as expressed in The Education of the Human
Race, were distasteful to the orthodox of the time,
and Pastor Goeze pursued him as viciously as Tal-
mage pursued Ingersoll a century later.
In a conversation with Jacoby in 1780 Lessing ex-
pressed high appreciation of Goethe's Prometheus.
He added : " If I am a follower of anyone, it can only
be Spinoza. There is no other philosophy but Spin-
oza's."
Towards the end of his life Lessing suffered severely
from asthma, and in February 1781, the malady be-
came acute. He felt that the hand of death was upon
him, but conversed with his friends '* with much of
his old liveliness." To one of them who spoke of the
annoyance which the clerics caused Voltaire on his
death-bed, Lessing exclaimed : " When you see me
about to die, call the notary; I will declare before him
that I die in none of the prevailing religions." On
February 15 he rallied " and joked with some of those
who came to visit him "; but in the evening of the
same day " a stroke of apoplexy followed, and after
life's fitful fever he slept well" (James Sime, Lessing,
ii. 345-6).
Q2 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
M. LITTRE.
THIS great French Positivist died in 1882 at the ripe
age of eighty-one. M. Littre was one of the foremost
writers in France. His monumental Dictionary of
the French Language is the greatest work of its kind
in the world. As a scholar and a philosopher his
eminence was universally recognized.
M. Littre's wife w r as an ardent Catholic, yet she was
allowed to follow her own religious inclinations with-
out the least interference. She, however, was less
scrupulous than her husband. After enjoying for so
many years the benefit of his steadfast toleration, she
took advantage of her position to exclude his friends
from his death-bed, to have him baptized in his last
moments, and to secure his burial in consecrated
ground with pious rites. Not satisfied with this, she
even allowed it to be understood that her husband had
recanted his heresy and died in the bosom of the
Church. The Abbe Huvelin, her confessor, who
frequently visited M. Littre during his last illness,
assisted her in the fraud.
There was naturally a disturbance at M. Littre's
funeral. As the Standard correspondent wrote, his
friends and disciples were " very angry at this recanta-
tion in extremis, and claimed that dishonest priest-
craft took advantage of the darkness cast over that
clear intellect by the mist of approaching death to
perform the rites of the Church over his semi-inani-
mate body."
At the grave M. Wyrouboff, editor of the Comtist
review, La Philosophic Positive, founded by M.
Littre, delivered a brief address to the Freethinkers
who remained, which concluded thus:
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 93
Littre proved by his example that it is possible
for a man to possess a noble and generous heart, and
at the same time espouse a doctrine which admits
nothing beyond what is positively real and which
prevents any recantation. And, gentlemen, in spite
of deceptive appearances, Littre died as he had lived,
without contradictions or weakness. All those who
knew that calm and serene mind and I was of the
number of those who did are well aware that it was
irrevocably closed to the " unknowable," and that it
was thoroughly prepared to meet courageously the
irresistible laws of nature. And now sleep in peace,
proud and noble thinker! You will not have the
eternity of a world to come, which you never ex-
pected ; but you leave behind you your country that
you strove honestly to serve, the Republic which you
always loved, a generation of disciples who will re-
main faithful to you; and last, but not least, you
leave your thoughts and your virtues to the whole
world. Social immortality, the only beneficent and
fecund immortality, commences for you to-day.
M. Wyrouboff has since amply proved his state-
ments.
The English press creditably rejected the story of
M. Littre's recantation. The Daily News sneered at
it, the Times described it as absurd, the Standard
said it looked untrue. But the Morning Advertiser
was still more outspoken. It said :
There can hardly be a doubt that M. Littre died a
steadfast adherent to the principles he so powerfully
advocated during his laborious and distinguished
life. The Church may claim, as our Paris corres-
pondent, in his interesting note on the subject, tells
us she is already claiming, the death-bed conversion
of the great unbeliever, who for the last thirty-five
years was one of her most active and formidable
enemies. She has attempted to take the same pos-
thumous revenge on Voltaire r on Paine, and on many
94 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
others, who were described by Roman Catholic
writers as calling in the last dreadful hour for the
spiritual support they held up to ridicule in the con-
fidence of health and the presumption of their intel-
lect.
Unfortunately for the clericals, there exists a docu-
ment which may be considered M. Littre's last con-
fession. It is an article written for the Comtist re-
view a year before his death, entitled, " Pour la Der-
niere Fois " For the Last Time. While writing it
he knew that his end was not far off. '* For many
months," he says, " my sufferings have prostrated
me with dreadful persistence . . . Every evening
when I have to be put to bed, my pains are exasper-
ated, and often I have not the strength to stifle cries
which are grievous to me and grievous to those who
tend me." After the article was completed his
malady increased. Fearing the worst, he wrote to his
friend, M. Caubet, as follows:
Last Saturday I swooned away for a long time. It
is for that reason I send you, a little prematurely, my
article for the Review. If I live, I will correct the
proofs as usual. If I die, let it be printed and pub-
lished in the Review as a posthumous article. It will
be a last trouble which I venture to give you. The
reader must do his best to follow the manuscript
faithfully.
Let us see what M. Littre's last confession is. I
translate two passages from the article. Referring to
Charles Greville, he says :
I feel nothing of what he experienced. Like him,
I find it impossible to accept the theory of the world,
which Catholicism prescribes to all true believers ;
but I do not regret being without such doctrines, and
I cannot discover in myself any wish to return to
them.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 95
And he concludes the article with these words :
Positive Philosophy, which has so supported me
since my thirtieth year, and which, in giving me an
ideal, a craving for progress, the vision of history
and care for humanity, has preserved me from being
a simple negationist, accompanies me faithfully in
these last trials. The questions it solves in its own
way, the rules it prescribes by virtue of its principle,
the beliefs it discountenances in the name of our
ignorance of everything absolute ; of these I have
in the preceding pages made an examination, which
I conclude with the supreme word of the commence-
ment for the last time.
So much for the lying story of M. Littre's recanta-
tion.
JOHN T. LLOYD.
JOHN T. LLOYD was born at Felin-y-wig, Denbigh-
shire, in 1850. He was brought up in the Calvinistic
faith, the form of Christianity handed down to him
" as a sacred legacy through a long line of ancestors,"
and even as a boy he was " resolutely ambitious to
enter the ministry of the gospel." This ambition met
with an early realization. Lloyd was enrolled as a
candidate for the ministry, entered the University,
and afterwards studied theology for three years at
Bala College. He occupied the pulpit of the Presby-
terian Church in South Africa for twenty years, and
throughout that period was regarded as " a popular
preacher." During the greater part of this time the
churches in which he officiated were too small to
accommodate the crowds that flocked to hear him.
In a series of articles contributed to the Freethinker
in 1903, and republished under the title, From
Christian Pulpit to Secular Platform, Lloyd has left
a detailed account of the many phases of religious
thought through which he passed before he finally
96 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
" discarded God, Christ, and Immortality, with all
the absurd dogmas concerning them." These sixty
pages are much more than a criticism of his early
creed, they are a " human document " which often
reminds us of the mental experience, as recorded by
themselves, of Jospeh Symes and Moncure D. Con-
way, who also left the Christian pulpit for the Secular
platform.
From, 1903, when he decided to devote the re-
mainder of his life to the Freethought cause, until
his death Lloyd was a regular contributor to the Free-
thinker, and during nearly the whole of this period
he was also a prominent lecturer for the National
Secular Society. He died on February i, 1928, and
showed a keen interest in the progress of Freethought
until within a few weeks of his death. An attack of
cerebral haemorrhage at the beginning of December,
1927, prevented further active work for the cause,
and before the end came he lost consciousness.
Lloyd's pamphlet, God-eating: A Study in Christ-
ianity and Cannibalism (1921), is a popularly written
but scholarly exposition of the principal sacrament of
the Christian Church, its origin, and the superstitious
history associated with it. His vigorous protest
against the imprisonment of J. W. Gott for blasphemy
in 1922, and his remark at the time " these prosecu-
tions are a sign of weakness, not of strength " will
long be remembered by English Secularists.
EMMA MARTIN.
EMMA MARTIN was born in Bristol in 1812. She was
brought up in the Baptist denomination, but the trial
of Southwell for blasphemy led her to inquire into the
grounds of her faith and to reject it completely. She
INFlDEIv DEATH-BEDS 97
became an enthusiastic speaker and writer for the
Freethought cause, and was imprisoned for blas-
phemy. In 1844 she wrote Baptism a Pagan Rite,
and this was followed by The Bible no Revelation and
Reasons for Renouncing Christianity. In 1848 a
leaflet was circulated in Scotland, giving a circum-
stantial account of her death-bed recantation. At the
time she was actually lecturing in London and con-
tinued to do so for about three years.
She died at Finchley Common on October 8, 1851,
after severe suffering which she endured with great
fortitude. Eight days before her death G. J. Holy-
oake visited her and found her reading Strauss's Life
of Jesus. She made several requests to him, one
being that he should speak at her graveside. His ad-
dress was published as a pamphlet under the title,
The Last Days of Mrs. Emma Martin. The Rev.
Brewin Grant, however, true to the best traditions of
his evangelical Christianity, described her death as a
" dreadful tragedy " and agony as " the eloquent and
fitting requiem " for it.
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
THIS gifted woman died on May 27, 1876, after a
long and useful life, filled with literary labour in the
cause of progress. On April 19, less than six weeks
before her death, she wrote her last letter to Mr.
H. G. Atkinson, from which the following is
taken :
I cannot think of any future as at all probable, ex-
cept the " annihilation" from which some people
recoil with so much horror. I find myself here in
9 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
the universe I know not how, whence or why. I see
everything in the universe go out and disappear, and
I see no reason for supposing that it is not an actual
and entire death. And for my part, I have no objec-
tion to such an extinction. I well remember the pas-
sion with which W. E. Forster said to me <( I had
rather be damned than annihilated." If he once felt
five minutes' damnation, he would be thankful for ex-
tinction in preference. The truth is, I care little
about it any way. Now that the event draws near,
and that I see how fully my household expect my
death pretty soon, the universe opens so widely be-
fore my view, and I see the old notions of death, and
scenes to follow so merely human so impossible to
be true, when one glanced through the range of
science that I see nothing to be done but to wait,
without fear or hope for future experience, nor have
I any fear of it. Under the weariness of illness I
long to be asleep. 45
These are the words of a brave woman, who met
Death with the same fortitude as she exhibited in the
presence of the defenders of slavery in the United
States.
GEORGE MEREDITH.
MEREDITH was born in Hampshire in 1828 an,l died
in 1909. He ranks as one of the greatest of English
novelists, and very high as a poet. Even " in his
late boyhood " he " detested conventional religion,"
but not Christianity as he interpreted it for himself.
(R. E. Sencourt, The Life of George Meredith, 1929,
* 5 Autobiography of Harriet Martineau, Vol III., p. 454;
Edition 1877.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 99
p. 6.) Nearly every chapter in this biography shows
Meredith's rejection of the fundamentals of Christian-
ity the friendships which he cultivated, his refer-
ences to Darwin, Swinburne and Renan, and his con-
stant emphasis on " the creative activity of nature "
as the sole source of life and energy. And Mere-
dith was in full sympathy with the popular Free-
thought Movement. He was one of the earliest mem-
bers of the General Council of the Secular Education
League (Nineteenth Century t April, 1911, p. 743).
He corresponded with G. W. Foote, valued his friend-
ship, and " gave his name as well as his cheque " to
the support of the Freethinker. He protested against
the imprisonment of Foote for blasphemy in 1883,
and in one of his letters to him spoke of the fight
against the priests as *' the best of causes."
Meredith died on May 18, 1909. On April 13 he
wrote a letter to Theodore Watts-Dunton on the
death of Swinburne, which took place three days pre-
viously. " He was the greatest of our lyric poets
of the world, I could say, considering what a
language he had to wield." On April 23 he wrote to
Foote, enclosing a contribution to the Freethinker
fund, and this was almost certainly the last letter he
ever wrote. On May 4, he said : " Nature is my
God and I trust in her." His remains were cremated
at Woking, and there was no religious service; but
when the ashes were buried at Dorking cemetery " a
clergyman muttered some Anglican prayers," and the
same day, in Westminster Abbey, " the Dean con-
ducted with great ceremony a requiem service."
Meredith's sympathy with Freethought and Free-
thinkers is noticeable in his correspondence, and his
poetry vibrates throughout with love of life and
Nature, with the spirit summed up in the lines :
100 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
Into the Earth that gives the rose
Shall I with shuddering fall?
Authorities : Sencourt; Photiades, George Meredith;
Freethinker, October 20, 1912; " George Meredith :
Freethinker," in Shakespeare and other Literary
Essays, by G. W. Foote.
JEAN MESLIER.
JEAN MESLIER, or more correctly, Mellie.r, was born
on June 15, 1664. His death occurred in 1733. He
was cure, or parish priest, of Entrepigny. He left
his small property to his parishioners, and asked to be
buried in his own garden. Among his effects were
found three copies of a manuscript of 370 folios,
signed by his own hand and entitled My Testament.
The writing was found to be a merciless exposure of
Christianity. What he could not say while alive, he
said in this legacy to his flock. As he himself wrote
on the wrapper of the copy for his parishioners, "I
have not dared to say it during my life, but I will
say it at least in dying or after my death." On
November 17, 1794, the National Convention sent to
the Committee of Public Instruction a proposal to
erect a statue to Meslier as " the first priest who had
the courage and honesty to abjure his religious
errors." A work called Bon Sens, translated into
English as Good Sense, is not by Meslier, but by
D'Holbach.
Authorities : Larousse, Dictionaire Universelle.
Bouilliot, Biographie Ardenaise. Voltaire's Works
and Letters.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS IOI
JAMES MILL-
JAMES MILL, the author of the History of British
India f the Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human
Mind, and other works, was a robust thinker and a
powerful writer himself; though his name became
more illustrious when borne by his great son, John
Stuart Mill. James Mill was born in 1773. He
would have entered the pulpit as a Presbyterian
preacher, had he not " by his own studies and reflec-
tions been led to reject not only the belief in Revela-
tion, but the foundations of what is commonly
called Natural Religion." 46 He came to the convic-
tion that " concerning the origin of things nothing
whatever can be known." He looked upon religion as
" the greatest enemy of morality," and he regarded
the God of Christianity as an embodiment of the (r ne
plus ultra of wickedness." From these views he
never departed. His death occurred on June 23,
1836. Mrs. Grote says, " he died without any pain
or struggle, of long standing pulmonary phthisis."
Francis Place wrote as follows to Mrs Grote on June
15 :
Stayed too long with poor Mill, who showed much
more sympathy and affection than ever before in all
our long friendship. But he was all the time as
much of a bright reasoning man as ever he was
reconciled to his fate, brave, and calm to an extent
which I never before witnessed, except in another
old friend, Thomas Holcroft, the day before the day
of his death. 47
Holcroft and Place, it should be added, were both
Freethinkers.
46 J. S. Mill, Autobiography, p. 38.
47 Prof. A. Bain, James Mill, p. 409.
IO2 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
JOHN STUART MILL.
MILL was born in Rodney Street, Pentonville, Lon-
don, on May 20, 1806, and he died at Avignon on
May 8, 1873. Notwithstanding the unguarded admis-
sions in the one of his Three Essays on Religion,
which he never prepared for the press, it is certain
that he lived and died a Freethinker. His father edu-
cated him without theology, and he never really im-
bibed any afterwards. Professor Bain, his intimate
friend and his biographer, tells us that " he absented
himself during his whole life from religious services,"
and that " in everything characteristic of the creed of
Christendom he was a thorough-going negationist. He
admitted neither its truth nor its utility." 48 John
Morley also, in his admirably-written account of the
last day he spent with Mill, 49 says that he looked for-
ward to a general growth of the religion of Humanity.
Mill was one of the pall-bearers at Grote's funeral
in 1871. He accepted the office under great pressure,
and on walking out of Westminster Abbey with Pro-
fessor Bain he remarked " In no very long time, I
shall be laid in the ground with a very different cere-
monial from that." 50 Professor Bain observes:
It so happened, however, that a prayer was
delivered at his own interment by the Protestant
pastor at Avignon, who thereby got himself into
trouble, from Mill's known scepticism, and had to
write an exculpation in the local newspaper. 51
** John Stuart Mill, by Alexander Bain, pp. 139, 140.
49 Miscellanies, Vol. III.
50 Bain, p. 133.
" Ibid, 133.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 103
This pastor had became friendly with Mill at Avig-
non. According to Professor Bain, he was " a very
intelligent and liberal-minded man." When the
Democratic du Midi announced that Mill had received
les derniers secours de la religion (the last consola-
tions of religion) on his death-bed, M. Rey honour-
ably denied the statement, and said, II n'y avail point
de pasteur pres du lit de M. Mill " There was no
clergyman at Mr. Mill's bedside." 52
Mill died of erysipelas consequent on a fall. Three
days before his death he walked fifteen miles. Dr.
Gurney thus describes his last hours :
Mr. Mill suffered but little, except in swallowing,
and from the heat and weight of the enormous swell-
ing, which, by the time I arrived from Nice, had
already spread over his face and neck ; and yet he
learned from me on my arrival the fatal nature of the
attack with calmness and resignation. His express
desire that he might not lose his mental faculties
was gratified, for his great intellect remained clear
to the last moment. His wish that his funeral might
be quiet and simple, as indeed, his every wish, was
attended to by his loving step-daughter with devoted
solicitude." 53
Mill's death was not misrepresented in England.
On the contrary, one religious journal, which died it-
self soon afterwards, declared its opinion that his
soul was burning in hell, and expressed a hearty wish
that his disciples would soon follow him.
52 M. Rey's letter is given in La Critique Philosophique,
June 5, 1873, p. 283.
53 Daily News, May 12, 1873.
104 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
MIRABEAU.
GABRIEL HONORE RIQUETTI, son and heir of the Mar-
quis de Mirabeau, was born on March 9, 1747. He
came of a wild strong stock, and was a magnificent
"enormous" fellow at his birth, the head being especi-
ally great. The turbulent life of the man has been
graphically told by Carlyle in his Essays and in the
French Revolution. Faults he had many, but not
that of insincerity; with all his failings, he was a
gigantic mass of veracious humanity. " Moralities
not a few," says Carlyle, " must shriek condemna-
tory over this Mirabeau; the Morality by which he
could be judged has not yet got uttered in the speech
of men."
Mirabeau's work in the National Assembly belongs
to history. It was mighty and splendid, but it can-
not be recited here. In January, 1791, he sat as
President of the Assembly, with his neck bandaged
after the application of leeches. At parting he said
to Dumont, " I am dying, my friend; dying as by
slow fire." On the 27th of March he stood in the
tribune for the last time. Four days later he w ? as on
his death-bed. Crowds beset the street, anxious but
silent, and stopping all traffic so that their hero might
not be disturbed. A bulletin was issued every three
hours. " On Saturday, the second day of April,"
says Carlyle, " Mirabeau feels that the last of the
Days has risen for him; that on this day he has to
depart and be no more. His death is Titanic, as his
life has been. Lit up, for the last time, in the glare
of the coming dissolution, the mind of the man is all
glowing and burning; utters itself in sayings, such as
men long remember. He longs to live, yet acquiesces
in death, argues not with the inexorable." 54
54 French Revolution, Vol. II., p. 120.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS TO5
Gazing out on the Spring sun, Mirabeau said, Si
ce n' est pas la Dieu, c'est du mains son cousin ger-
main If that is not God, it is at least his cousin
german. It was the great utterance of an eighteenth
century Pagan, looking across the mists of Christian
superstition to the saner nature- worship of antiquity.
Power of speech gone, Mirabeau made signs for
paper and pen, and wrote the \vord dormir, " to
sleep." Cabanis, the great physician, who stood be-
side him, pretended not to understand this passionate
request for opium. Thereupon, writes the doctor,
" he made a sign for the pen and paper to be brought
to him again, and wrote, ' Do you think that Death
is dangerous?' Seeing that I did not comply with
his demand, he wrote again, ' . . . How can you
leave your friend on the wheel, perhaps for days?' '
Cabanis and Dr. Petit decided to give him a sedative.
While it was sent for " the pains became atrocious."
Recovering speech a little under the torture, he
turned to M. de la Marck, saying, "You deceive me."
" No," replied his friend, " we are not deceiving
you, the remedy is coming, we all saw it ordered."
''Ah, the doctors, the doctors!" he muttered. Then,
turning to Cabanis, with a look of mingled anger and
tenderness, he said, " Were you not my doctor and
my friend? Did you not promise to spare me the
agonies of such a death? Do you wish me to expire
with a regret that I trusted you?"
" Those words," says Cabinis, " the last that he
uttered, ring incessantly in my ears. He turned
over on the right side with a convulsive movement,
and at half-past eight in the morning he expired in
our arms." 55 Dr. Petit, standing at the foot of the
55 Journal de la Maladie et de la Mart d'Honore-Gabriel
Mirabeau. Paris, 1791, p. 263.
106 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
bed, said, "His sufferings are ended." "So dies,"
writes Carlyle, "a gigantic Heathen and Titan;
stumbling blindly, undismayed, down to his rest."
Mirabeau was an Atheist, and he was buried as be-
came his philosophy and his greatness. The Assem-
bly decreed a Public Funeral, there was a procession
a league in length, and the very roofs, trees, and
lamp-posts, were covered with people. The Church of
Sainte-Genevieve was turned into a Pantheon for the
Great Men of the Fatherland, Aux Grands Homines
la Patrie Reconnaissante. It was midnight ere the
ceremonies ended, and the mightiest man in France
was left in the darkness and silence to his long re-
pose. Of him, more than most men, it might well
have been said, " After life's fitful fever he sleeps
well." Dormir, " to sleep," he wrote in his dying
agony. Death had no terror for him; it was only the
ringing down of the curtain at the end of the drama.
WILHELM OSTWALD.
OSTWALD was born at Riga in 1853. For a time he
was a professor in the University of Leipzig and
earned international fame as a chemist. He was for
some years President of the German Monists' Union,
of which he was a member at the time of his death.
In Individuality and Immortality (1906) he said that
death is not an evil but a necessary factor in the
existence of the race. Beyond the hope that his work
had contributed something to the mental equipment
of humanity he had no desire whatever for a future
life.
He died on April 4, 1932. At the funeral the ap-
pearance of a pastor in clerical gown, who delivered
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 1 07
an address, in which he declared that '* as a scientist
Ostwald had not trodden the pathway of theology,"
excited amazement among the friends of the deceased.
After several others had spoken a representative of
the Monists' Union was allowed to speak for a few
minutes on promising the relatives not to say anything
against the Church or religion. (Die Geistesfreheit,
Leipzig, May i, 1932).
ROBERT OWEN.
ROBERT OWEN, whose name w ? as once a terror to the
clergy and the privileged classes, was born at New-
town, Montgomeryshire, on May 14, 1771. In his
youth he noticed the inconsistency of professing
Christians, and on studying the various religions of
the world, as he tells us in his Autobiography, he
found that "one and all had emanated from the same
source, and their varieties from the same false imagi-
nations of our early ancestors." We have no space
to narrate his long life, his remarkable prosperity in
cotton spinning, his experiments in the education of
children, his disputes with the clergy, and his efforts
at social re.form, to which he devoted his time and
wealth, with singular disinterestedness and sim-
plicity. At one time his influence even with the
upper classes was remarkable, but he seriously im-
paired it in 1817, by honestly stating, at a great
meeting at the City of London Tavern, that it was
useless to hope for real reform while people were be-
sotted by " the gross errors that have been combined
with the fundamental notions of every religion."
After many more years of labour for the cause he
loved, Owen quietly passed away on November 17,
108 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
1858, at the great age of eighty-eight. His last
hours are described in the following letter by his son,
Robert Dale Owen, which appeared in the newspapers
of the time, and is preserved in Mr. G. J. Holyoake's
Last Days of Robert Owen :
" Newtown, November 17, 1858. My dear father
passed away this morning, at a quarter before seven,
and passed away as gently and quietly as if he had
fallen asleep. There was not the least struggle, not
a contraction of a limb, of a muscle, not an expres-
sion of pain on his face. His breathing gradually
became slower and slower, until at last it ceased
so imperceptibly, that, even as I held his hand, I
could scarcely tell the moment when he no longer
breathed. His last words distinctly pronounced
about twenty minutes before his death, were ' Relief
has come.' About half an hour before he said ' Very
easy and comfortable.' "
Owen's remains were interred in the churchyard of
St. Mary's, Newtown, and as the law then stood, the
minister had a right, which he exercised, of reading
the Church of England burial service over the here-
tic's coffin, and the Freethinkers who stood round the
grave had to bear the mockery as quietly as possible.
In Owen's case, as in Carlile's, the Church appro-
priated the heretic's corpse. Even Darwin's body
rests in Westminster Abbey, and that is all of him
the Church can boast.
THOMAS PAINE.
GEORGE WASHINGTON has been called the hero of
American Independence, but Thomas Paine shares
with him the honour. The sword of the one, and
the pen of the other, were both necessary in the con-
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS IOQ
flict which prepared the ground for building the Re-
public of the United States. While the farmer-
general fought with unabated hope in the darkest
hours of misfortune, the soldier-author wrote the
stirring appeals which kindled and sustained enthu-
siasm in the sacred cause of liberty. Common Sense
was the precursor of the Declaration of Independence.
The Rights of Man, subsequently written and pub-
lished in England, advocated the same principles
where they were equally required. Replied to by
Government in a prosecution for treason, it brought
the author so near to the gallows that he was only
saved by flight. Learning afterwards that The Rights
of Man can never be realized while the people are
deluded and degraded by priestcraft and superstition,
Paine attacked Christianity in The Age of Reason.
That vigorous, logical, and witty volume has con-
verted thousands of Christians to Freethought. It
was answered by bishops, denounced by the clergy,
and prosecuted for blasphemy. But it was eagerly
read in fields and workshops, brave men fought round
it as a standard of freedom; and before the battle
ended the face of society was changed.
Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, in Norfolk, on
January 29, 1736. His scepticism began at the early
age of eight, when he was shocked by a sermon on
the Atonement, which represented God as killing his
own son when he could not revenge himself in any
other way. Becoming acquainted with Dr. Franklin
in London, Paine took his advice and emigrated to
America in the autumn of 1774. A few months
later his Common Sense announced the advent of a
masterly writer. More than a hundred thousand
copies were sold, yet Paine lost money by the pam-
phlet, for he issued it, like all his other writings, at
the lowest price that promised to cover expenses.
HO INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
Congress, in 1777, appointed him Secretary to the
Committee for Foreign Affairs. Eight years later it
granted him three thousand dollars on account of his
" early, unsolicited, and continued labours in ex-
plaining the principles of the late Revolution." In
the same year the State of Pennsylvania presented
him with 500, and the State of New York gave him
three hundred acres of valuable land.
Returning to England in 1787, Paine devoted his
abilities to engineering. He invented the arched iron
bridge, and the first structure of that kind in the
world, the cast-iron bridge over the Wear at Sunder-
land, was made from his model. Yet he appears to
have derived no more profit from this than from his
writings.
Burke's Reflections appeared in 1790. Paine lost
no time in replying, and his Rights of Man was sold
by the hundred thousand. The Government tried to
suppress the work by bribery; and that failing, a
prosecution was begun. Paine's defence was con-
ducted by Erskine, but the jury returned a verdict of
Guilty " without the trouble of deliberation." The
intended victim of despotism was, however, beyond
its reach. He had been elected by the departments
of Calais and Versailles to sit in the National As-
sembly. A splendid reception awaited him at Calais,
and his journey to Paris was marked by popular
demonstrations. At the trial of Louis XVI., he spoke
and voted for banishment instead of execution. He
was one of the Committee appointed to frame the
Constitution of 1793, but in the close of that year,
having become obnoxious to the Terrorists, he was
deprived of his seat as " a foreigner," and imprisoned
in the Luxembourg for no better reason. At the
time of his arrest he had written the first part of The
Age of Reason. While in prison he composed the
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS III
second part, and as he expected every day to be guil-
lotined, it was penned in the very presence of Death.
Liberated on the fall of Robespierre, Paine returned
to America; not, however, without great difficulty,
for the British cruisers were ordered to intercept him.
From 1802 till his death he wrote and published many
pamphlets on religious and other topics, including
the third part of The Age of Reason. His last years
were full of pain, caused by an abscess in the side,
which was brought on bj his imprisonment in Paris.
He expired, after intense suffering, on June 8, 1809,
placidly and without a struggle. 56
Paine's last hours were disturbed by pious visitors
who wished to save his immortal soul from the wrath
of God :-
One afternoon a very old lady, dressed in a large
scarlet-hooded cloak, knocked at the door and in-
quired for Thomas Paine. Mr. Jarvis, with whom
Mr. Paine resided, told her he was asleep. " I am
very sorry,'' she said, " for that, for I want to see
him particularly." Thinking it a pity to make an
old woman call twice, Mr. Jarvis took her into Mr.
Paine's bedroom and awoke him. He rose upon one
elbow ; then, with an expression of eye that made
the old woman stagger back a step or two, he asked,
"What do you want?'' "Is your name Paine?"
" Yes." " Well, then, I come from Almighty God
to tell you, that if you do not repent of your sins,
and believe in our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, you
will be damned and " " Poh, pon, it is not true;
you were not sent with any such impertinent mess-
age : Jarvis make her go away pshaw ! he would
not send such a foolish ugly old woman about his
messages : go away, go back, shut the door.'' 5T
56 Life of Thomas Paine. By Clio Rickman. 1819. p. 187.
57 Rickman, pp. 182-183.
112 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
Two weeks before his death, his conversion was at-
tempted by two Christian ministers, the Rev. Mr.
Milledollar and the Rev. Mr. Cunningham :
The latter gentleman said, " Mr. Paine, we visit
you as friends and neighbours ; you have now a full
view of death, you cannot live long, and whoever
does not believe in Jesus Christ will assuredly be
damned." " Let me," said Mr. Paine, " have none
of your popish stuff; get away with you, good morn-
ing good morning." The Rev. Mr. Milledollar at-
tempted to address him, but he was interrupted in the
same language. When they were gone he said to Mrs.
Heddon, his housekeeper, "do not let them come
here again ; they intrude upon me." They soon re-
newed their visit, but Mrs. Hedden told them they
could not be admitted, and that she thought the at-
tempt useless, for if God did not change his mind,
she was sure no human power could. 5 - 8
Another of these busybodies was the Rev. Mr. Har-
grove, a Swedenborgian or New Jerusalemite mini-
ster. This gentleman told Paine that his sect had
found the key for interpreting the Scriptures, which
had been lost for four thousand years. '* Then,"
said Paine, " it must have been very rusty."
Even his medical attendant did not scruple to
assist in this pious enterprise. Dr. Manley's letter to
Cheetham, one of Paine's biographers, says that he
visited the dying sceptic at midnight, June 5-6, two
days before he expired. After tormenting him with
many questions, to which he made no answer, Dr.
Manley proceeded as follows :
Mr. Paine, you have not answered my questions;
will you answer them? Allow me to ask again, do
you believe, or let me qualify the question do you
wish to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God ?
as Rickman, p. 184.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 113
After a pause of some minutes he answered, " I have
no wish to believe on that subject.'' I then left him,
and know not whether he afterwards spoke to any
person on the subject.
Sherwin confirms this statement. He prints a letter
from Mr. Clark, who spoke to Dr. Manley on the sub-
ject. " I asked him plainly," said Mr. Clark, " Did
Mr. Paine recant his religious sentiments? I would
thank you for an explicit answer, sir. He said, "No,
he did not." 59
Mr. Willet Hicks, a Quaker gentleman who fre-
quently called on Paine in his last illness, as a friend
and not as a soul-snatcher, bears similar testimony.
" In some serious conversation I had with him a short
time before his death," declared Mr. Hicks, " he said
his sentiments respecting the Christian religion were
precisely the same as they were when he wrote The
Age of Reason." 60
Lastly, we have the testimony of Cheetham himself,
who was compelled to apologize for libelling Paine
during his life, and whose biography of the great
sceptic is a continuous libel. Even Cheetham is
bound to admit that Paine " died as he had lived, an
enemy to the Christian religion."
Notwithstanding this striking harmony of evidence
as to Paine' s dying in the principles of Freethought,
the story of his " recantation " gradually developed,
until at last it was told to the children in Sunday-
schools, and even published by the Religious Tract
Society. Nay, it is being circulated to this very day,
as no less true than the Gospel itself, although it was
triumphantly exposed by William Cobbett over a cen-
tury ago. " This is not a question of religion," said
59 Sherwin's Life of Paine, p. 225.
60 Cheetham's Life of Paine, p. 152.
114 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
Cobbett, '' it is a question of moral truth. Whether
Mr. Paine's opinions were correct or erroneous, has
nothing to do with this matter."
Cobbett investigated the libel on Paine on the very
spot where it originated. Getting to the bottom of
the matter, he found that the source of the mischief
was Mary Hinsdale, who had formerly been a servant
to Mr. Willet Hicks. This gentleman sent Paine
many little delicacies in his last illness, and Mary
Hinsdale conveyed them. According to her story,
Paine made a recantation in her presence, and as-
sured her that if ever the Devil had an agent on earth,
he who wrote The Age of Reason was undoubtedly
that person. When she was hunted out by Cobbett,
however, " she shuffled, she evaded, she affected not
to understand," and finally said she had " no recol-
lection of any person or thing she saw at Thomas
Paine's house." Cobbett's summary of the whole
matter commends itself to every sensible reader :
This is, I think, a pretty good instance of the
lengths to which hypocrisy will go. The whole
story, as far as it related to recantation ... is a lie
from beginning to end. Mr. Paine declares in his
last Will that he retains all his publicly expressed
opinions as to religion. His executors, and many
other gentlemen of undoubted veracity, had the same
declaration from his dying lips. Mr. Willett Hicks
visited him to nearly the last. This gentleman says
that there was no change of opinion intimated to
him ; and will any man believe that Paine would
have withheld from Mr. Hicks that which he was so
forward to communicate to Mr. Hicks 's servant
girl? 61
We have to remember that the first part of The Age
of Reason was entrusted to Joel Barlow, when Paine
61 Republican, February 13, 1824, Vol. IX., p. 221.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 115
was imprisoned at Paris, and the second part was
written in gaol in the very presence of Death. Dr.
Bond, an English surgeon, who was by no means
friendly to Paine' s opinions, visited him in the Lux-
embourg, and gave the following testimony :
Mr. Paine, while hourly expecting to die, read to
me parts of his Age of Reason; and every night
when I left him to be separately locked up, and ex-
pected not to see him alive in the morning, he
always expressed his firm belief in the principles of
that book, and begged I would tell the world such
were his dying opinions. 62
Surely when a work was written in such circum-
stances it is absurd to charge the author with recant-
ing his opinions through fear of death. Citing once
more the words of his enemy Cheetham, it is incon-
testable that Thomas Paine " died as he had lived, an
enemy to the Christian religion."
One of Paine's intimate friends, Colonel Fellows,
was met by Walt Whitman, the American poet, soon
after 1840 in New York. Whitman became well-
acquainted with the Colonel, who was then about
seventy-eight years of age, and described him as
" a remarkably fine old man." From conversations
with him, Whitman became convinced that Paine
had been greatly calumniated. Thirty-five years
later, addressing a meeting at Lincoln Hall, Phila-
delphia, on Sunday, January 28, 1887, the democratic
poet said : " Thomas Paine had a noble personality,
as exhibited in presence, face, voice, dress, manner,
and what may be called his atmosphere and magnet-
ism, especially the later years of his life. I am sure
of it. Of the foul and foolish fictions yet told about
the circumstances of his decease, the absolute fact is
62 Rickman, p. 194.
Il6 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
that as he lived a good life, after its kind, he died
calmly and philosophically, as became him." 63
COURTLANDT PALMER.
COURTLANDT PALMER was born on March 25, 1843.
He was of good family and independent fortune,
which he taxed for the support of advanced causes.
He was President of the Nineteenth Century Club in
New York, established for the free discussion of
" burning " questions in religion and philosophy.
Among its members was Colonel Ingersoll, whom
Palmer desired to speak at his grave if the malady
from which he suffered should prove fatal.
Mrs. Palmer did not share her husband's Agnos-
ticism. She felt that it would be a relief to her if
some liberal Christian Minister said a few words over
her husband's corpse. Out of tenderness to her feel-
ings he consented to the proposal.
Palmer died in July, 1888. After bidding the mem-
bers of his family an affectionate farewell, he said :
" The general impression is that Freethinkers are
afraid of death. I want you one and all to tell the
whole world that you have seen a Freethinker die
without the least fear of what the hereafter may be."
At the funeral, after Ingersoll had delivered the ad-
dress desired by Palmer, the Rev. R. H. Newton per-
formed a religious service on behalf of the wife and
family; but he creditably refrained from any pious
allusions to the dead Agnostic, and confined his brief
address to a eulogy of Palmer's character.
63 Walt Whitman, Specimen Days in America (English
edition), p. 150; Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine, ii, 432.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 117
RABELAIS.
FRANCOIS RABEI.AIS, " the grand jester of France," as
Bacon calls him, was born at Chinon, in Touraine, in
1483, the same year in which Luther and Raphael
saw the light. He joined the Church and became a
monk. His heretical humour brought him into
trouble, and he was once rescued by a military friend
from the in pace, a form of burying alive. But this
did not damp his spirits, though it made him cautious;
for he dreaded the idea of being burnt .alive " like a
herring," seeing that he was " dry enough already
by nature." He veiled his profound wisdom with the
j oiliest buffoonery. On one occasion he printed dme
(soul) as dne (jackass) several times, and said it was a
printer's blunder ! " Rabelais," says Coleridge,
" had no mode of speaking the truth in those days
but in such a form as this "; his buffoonery was " an
amulet against the monks and bigots." Despite the
plain language of Pantagruel, Coleridge maintained
that " the morality of the work is of the most refined
and exalted kind." 64 Elsewhere the same great poet
and critic said, " I could write a treatise in proof and
praise of the morality and moral elevation of Rabe-
lais' work, which would make the church stare and
the conventicle groan." 65 Coleridge, indeed,
classed Rabelais " with the great creative minds of
the world," with Shakespeare, Dante and Cervantes.
" Attempts have been made," says Mr. Walter
Besant, "to prove that Rabelais was a Christian. To
suppose this is, in my mind, not only seriously to
misunderstand the spirit of his book, but that of his
64 Table Talk (Bohn) p. 97.
65 Miscellanies, ^Esthetic and Literary (Bohn), p. 127.
n INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
time." The cure of Meudon sapped the Church
with satire from within. But on February 19, 1552,
he resigned his living at Meudon and L,e Mans. Mr.
Besant concludes that " the old man, now that life
was drawing to its close, now that his friends were
dead, dispersed, and in exile, discerned at last the
wickedness of continuing to say masses, which were
to him empty forms, in the cause of a Church which
was full of absurdities and corruptions." 67
Many of his friends had perished in prison or at
the stake, but Rabelais died a natural death in his
bed. His end came, it is said, on April 9, 1553, at a
house in the Rue des Jardins, Paris. Many stories
were told of his death-bed, and may be found in the
bibliophile Jacob's (Paul Lacroix) introduction to the
Charpentier edition of Rabelais' works. When he
had received the extreme unction, he said aloud that
they had greased his boots for the great journey.
When the priest in attendance asked if he believed in
the real presence of Jesus Christ in the holy wafer, he
replied meekly : " I believe in it, and I rejoice there-
in; for I think I see my God as he was when he
entered Jerusalem triumphant and seated on an ass."
Towards the end they put on his Benedictine robe;
whereupon he punned upon a Psalm Beati qui mori-
untur in Domino ( r< Blessed are they who die in the
Lord "). A messenger from Cardinal du Bellay being
brought to the bedside, he said in a feeble voice,
" Tell monseigneur I am going to seek the great Per-
haps." Gathering his strength for a last effort, he
cried out in a burst of laughter, " Draw the curtain,
the farce is over."
66 Rabelais, by Walter Besant, p. 186.
67 p. 46.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS IIQ
These stories may be partly apocryphal, yet, as
Jacob remarks, they are " in keeping with the char-
acter of Rabelais and the spirit of his writings."
WINWOOD READE.
WILLIAM WINWOOD READE, the African traveller and
naturalist, was a nephew of Charles Reade, the
novelist. His researches are drawn upon in Dar-
win's Descent of Man, in the index of which his
name may be distinguished. Turning his attention
to literature, he wrote the Martyrdom of Man, a re-
markable book, showing a perfect grasp of human
evolution and an absolute freedom from theology.
This was followed by a Freethought novel, The Out-
cast. He died on April 24, 1875. An obituary
notice appeared in the London Daily Telegraph, on
April 27, bearing unmistakable evidence of having
been written by Charles Reade. It says : " He wrote
his last work, The Outcast, with the hand of death
upon him. Two zealous friends carried him out to
Wimbledon, and there, for a day or two, the air
seemed to revive him; but on Friday night he began
to sink, and on Saturday afternoon died in the arms
of his beloved uncle, Mr. Charles Reade." Winwood
Reade not only rejected belief in immortality, but he
regarded it as making many men and women, and
even nations, " spiritual prisoners of the Shadow of
Death, even while living." " From beside the grave
opening to receive him," said his friend Moncure D.
Conway, " he warned these life-long victims that the
only victory over death is to concentrate themselves
on life." (Addresses and Reprints, p. 273).
120 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON.
J. M. ROBERTSON was born in the Isle of Arran on
November 14, 1856. An address to the Tyneside
Sunday Lecture Society, in 1904, on " What to read,"
contains an interesting reference to the meagre educa-
tion available to him as a boy :
You will not suppose me ... to be satisfied with
the education given in our ordinary popular schools,
or with the social state of things in which young
people have to begin (as I began) to work for a living
at thirteen, or with the amount of leisure that is thus
far possible to the mass of the workers at any age.
In the early 'eighties we find him both lecturing
and writing for the Freethought cause in Edinburgh
and Glasgow. In 1884 he went to London and be-
came closely associated with Charles Bradlaugh. He
worked on the National Reformer, which he edited
after Bradlaugh's death in 1891 till the paper ceased
publication in 1893. He was an omnivorous reader,
and his studies embraced a very wide field. Among
active workers for Freethought he was the most pro-
lific writer that has yet appeared. The list of his
published books and pamphlets in the British Museum
fills twelve and a half columns of the catalogue, and
this does not include all his pamphlets, to say nothing
of his articles in the periodical Press. His Short
History of Freethought is well known, and in the
opinion of many Freethinkers holds the most import-
ant place in any estimate of his work. But perhaps
his name will be longest remembered by the series
of writings in which he discusses the problem of the
historicity of Christ. This series includes Christ-
ianity and Mythology (1900), The History of Christ-
ianity (1902), Pagan Christs (1903), The Historical
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 121
Jesus (1916), The Jesus Problem (1917), and Jesus
and Judas (1927). Robertson's intimate acquaintance
with the literature of the subject, for and against, his
wealth of illustration from Comparative Religion, and
his close logical argument, make this series of writ-
ings a body of constructive criticism that stands by
itself in the literature of Christology. His style was
sometimes heavy but never obscure, and his scholar-
ship was exceptionally accurate for a self-taught man.
Robertson was a determinist and, it need hardly be
said, rejected the idea of the survival of personality
after death. In 1900 he wrote a pamphlet, Thomas
Paine: An Investigation, which is a scathing exposure
of Christian calumnies regarding Paine's private life,
and in particular of the story of his death-bed recanta-
tion.
For a few years Robertson was a member of the
National Secular Society, and at the time of his death
was an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press
Association.
In 1895 he stood as an independent Radical candi-
date for Northampton, Bradlaugh's old constituency,
but was defeated. From 1906 to 1918, however, he
represented in the House of Commons the Tyneside
Division, Northumberland, as a Liberal, and during
four years of this period he was Parliamentary Secre-
tary to the Board of Trade.
For some months previously to his death Robert-
son's health had been failing. He attended a meeting
of the Bradlaugh Centenary Committee in December.
On Thursday January 5, 1933, he was at work on two
books which he was writing, and in the evening was
listening-in to a wireless talk on Saving, a subject in
which he had long been keenly interested. Shortly
afterwards he had a " stroke," and with it the end
had come. His remains were cremated on January 7,
122 INFIDEI, DEATH-BEDS
and in accordance with his own oft-expressed wish
there was no ceremony of any kind at the funeral.
Authorities : Robertson's works and The Literary
Guide, February, 1933.
MADAME ROLAND.
AMONG the Girondists who perished in 1793 w T as
Madame Roland. She was nourished on scepticism,
complains Carlyle; but he allows her " as brave a
heart as ever beat in woman's bosom." " Like a
white Grecian statue," he says, " serenely complete,
she shines in that black wreck of things." While in
prison she bore herself with fortitude, writing her
Memoirs, and addressing cheerful letters to her
daughter, her husband, and her friends. Feeling
that she was doomed, she determined to go before the
Revolutionary Tribunal alone. M. Chaveau-Lagarde,
a lawyer, wished to defend her, but she declined his
services. " You would lose your life," she said,
" without saving mine. I know my doom. To-mor-
row I shall cease to exist." On October 9 she was
driven in the tumbril to the guillotine, clad in white,
with her long black hair hanging down to her girdle.
With her was a prisoner named Lamarche, whom she
endeavoured to cheer. She renounced her right to
be executed first, so that her dejected companion
might be spared the pain of seeing her blood. Sam-
son would not consent to this. " Will you," she
gaily asked, " refuse a lady her last request?" and he
yielded. " O Liberty, what crimes are committed in
thy name!" she exclaimed, but she bowed before the
statue nevertheless, knowing that Liberty was holy
though worshipped mistakenly with cruel rites.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 123
She said her husband would not survive her, and
he did not. On learning her fate, he left the kind
friends who were harbouring him at Rouen, and the
next day he was found dead at the foot of a tree on
the road to Paris. He had thrust a cane-sword into
his own heart. Beside him was a letter, in which he
said that he " died, as he lived, virtuous and honest,"
refusing to " remain longer on an earth polluted with
crimes." The most touching feature in the suicide
of this stern Republican and Freethinker was the fact
that by taking his own life, and anticipating the
Tribunal, he secured his property to his daughter.
Authorities: Carlyle, French Revolution, Bk. V.,
chap. ii. Barriere, Memoires Particuliers de Mme.
Roland.
GEORGE SAND.
GEORGE SAND was the pen-name of Amantine Lucile
Aurore Dudnevant. Her maiden name was Dupin.
She was born at Paris on July 5, 1804, and she died at
Nohant on June 8, 1876, after establishing her fame
as one of the finest of French prose writers. She be-
lieved in God, says Plauchat, but " certainly not in
the vengeful and merciless God of the orthodox."
Her last work was a critical notice of Renan's Dia-
logues et Fragments Philosophiques in Le Temps,
only a month before her decease. Towards the end
of May she took to her bed, from which she never
rose again. She was suffering from internal paralysis,
and medical skill was of no avail. On the 8th of
June, at nine in the morning, she " expired in calm-
*24 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
ness and serenity." M Before the end she said : "It
is death; I do not ask for it, but neither do I regret
it." George Sand's biographer in English, Bertha
Thomas, writes :
Up to the last hour she preserved consciousness
and lucidity. The words, " Ne touchez pas a la ver-
dure," among the last that fell from her lips, were
understood by her children, who knew her wish that
the tree should be undisturbed under which in the
village cemetery she was soon to find a resting-
place. 70
Such was the peaceful death of the great writer,
whom Mrs. Browning hailed in two glorious sonnets
as " large-brained woman and large-hearted man,"
and whom Flaubert himself addressed as *' chere
maitre."
JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH SCHILLER.
SCHILLER, after Goethe the greatest of the German
poets, was born in 1759. Though he was brought up
in a religious atmosphere, Christianity never exer-
cised any serious influence on him and he had little
respect for it as a factor in cultural progress. His
History of the Thirty Years' War shows that he re-
garded that struggle as something more than a local
contest; it was a revolt against the spirit of authority
inherent in all dogmatic religion. His hold even on
theism was slight. In a letter to Goethe he wrote :
68 Plauchat, GaUrie Contemporaine, Pt. II.
69 George Sand, by Bertha Thomas, p. 245.
Ibid.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 125
A healthy poetic nature wants, as you yourself
say, no moral law, no rights of man, no political
metaphysics. You might have added as well, it
wants no deity, immortality, to stay and support it-
self withal.
His Gods of Greece, to which Mrs. E. B. Browning
replied in Pan is Dead, gave offence to many of the
orthodox, and he afterwards erased part of it. The
Greek gods, he felt, had vanished from the world and
taken with them all that was fairest in colour and
sound, leaving us the husk of the word. In his poem
Resignation, he makes the unbeliever say that the
illusions of superstition are holy only because they
are covered up by the giant shadow of our own fears.
Schiller's best works were written during the last
fifteen years of his life, every day of which brought
its load of pain. He died on May 9, 1805. Car-
lyle gives a detailed account of the poet's last ill-
ness :
Feeling that his end was come, he addressed him-
self to meet it as became him; not with affected
carelessness or superstitious fear, but with the quiet
unpretending manliness which had marked the tenor
of his life. Of his friends and family he took a
touching but a tranquil farewell; he ordered that
his funeral should be private, without pomp or
parade. Someone inquiring how he felt, he said,
" Calmer and calmer " ; simple but memorable
words, expressive of the mild heroism of the man.
About six he sank into a deep sleep; once for a
moment he looked up with a lively air, and said,
" Many things were growing plain and clear to
himl'' Again he closed his eyes; and his sleep
deepened and deepened, till it changed into the sleep
from which there is no awakening; and all that re-
mained of Schiller was a lifeless form, soon to be
mingled with the clods of the valley. (Life of
Schiller, p. 166.)
126 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
THIS glorious poet of Atheism and Republicanism
was born at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, on
August 4, 1792. His whole life was a daring defiance
of the tyranny of Custom. In 1811, when less than
nineteen, he was expelled from Oxford University for
writing The Necessity of Atheism. After writing
Queen Mab and several political pamphlets, besides
visiting Ireland to assist the cause of reform in that
unhappy island, he was deprived of the guardianship
of his two children by Lord Chancellor Eldon on
account of his heresy. Leaving England, he went
to Italy, where his principal poems were composed
with remarkable rapidity during the few years of life
left him. His death occurred on July 8, 1822. He
was barely thirty, yet he had made for himself a
deathless fame as the greatest lyrical poet in English
literature.
Shelley was drowned in a small yacht off Leghorn.
The only other occupants of the boat were his friend
Williams and a sailor lad, both of whom shared his
fate. The squall which submerged them \vas too
swift to allow 7 of their taking proper measures for
their safety. Shelley's body was recovered. In
one pocket w'as a volume of ^schylus, in the other
a copy of Keats's poems, doubled back as if hastily
thrust away. He had evidently been reading "Isa-
bella," and " Lamia," and the waves cut short his
reading for ever. It was an ideal end, although so
premature; for Shelley was fascinated by the sea,
and always expressed a preference for death by
drowning. His remains were cremated on the sea-
coast, in presence of Leigh Hunt, Trelawny, and
Byron. Trelawny snatched the heait from the flames,
and it is still preserved by Sir Percy Shelley. The
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 127
ashes were coffered, and soon after buried in the
Protestant cemetery at Rome, close by the old ceme-
tery, where Keats was interred a beautiful open
space, covered in summer with violets and daisies, of
which Shelley himself had written " It might make
one in love \vith death to think that one should be
buried in so sweet a place." Trelawny planted six
young cypresses and four laurels. On the tomb-stone
was inscribed a Latin epitaph by Leigh Hunt, to
which Trelawny added three lines from Shakespeare's
Tempest, one of Shelley's favourite plays.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,
COR CORDIUM.
Natus iv. Aug. MDCCXCII.
Obiit. vii. Jul. MDCCCXXII.
" Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."
And there at Rome, shadowed by cypress and
laurel, covered with sweet flowers, and surrounded
by the crumbling ruins of a dead empire, rests the
heart of hearts.
Shelley's Atheism cannot be seriously disputed, and
Trelawny makes a memorable protest against the
foolish and futile attempts to explain it a\vay :
The principal fault I have to find is that the
Shelley an writers being Christians themselves, seem
to think that a man of genius cannot be an Atheist,
and so they strain their own faculties to disprove
what Shelley asserted from the very earliest
stage of his career to the last day of his
life. He ignored all religions as superstitions . . .
A clergyman wrote in the visitors' book at the Mer
de Glace, Chamouni, something to the following
effect : " No one can view this sublime scene, and
deny the existence of God." Under which Shelley,
using a Greek phrase, wrote "P. B. Shelley, Athe-
128 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
ist," thereby proclaiming his opinion to all the
world. And he never regretted having done so. T1
Trelawny's words should be printed on the fore-
front of Shelley's works, so that it might never be
forgotten that " the poet of poets and purest of men"
was an Atheist.
HERBERT SPENCER.
SPENCER was born at Derby in 1820. His parents
were originally Methodists, but at an early age he
showed an inclination to think for himself in theo-
logical matters. He will always be remembered as
the first who used the word " evolution " to express
a philosophic view of the universe as a whole, con-
sistently maintaining that evolutionary principles
apply alike to the organic and the inorganic world.
(First Principles, 6th ed. pp. 218-224; On the Study
of Sociology, pp. 6, 46). Another important part of
his teaching is his insistence on the need of the com-
plete secularization of morals. He is the best known
of the expounders of Agnosticism, the view that man
is incapable of assured knowledge concerning " ulti-
mate reality."
In Facts and Comments (p. 201), written the year
before his death, he denies emphatically the common
Christian assertion that Freethinkers " occupy them-
selves exclusively with material interests." But he
finds no ground whatever for belief in a future life,
which is a superstition handed down from the savage.
As there is no evidence of the existence of conscious-
71 Records of Byron and Shelley, Vol. I., pp. 243-245.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 1 29
ness apart from brain, " we seem obliged to relin-
quish the thought that consciousness continued after
physical organization has become inactive."
Spencer '' passed peacefully away " on December
8, 1903, and his remains were cremated at Golder's
Green. On September 16 he wrote to John Mor-
ley stating that he contemplated the end " as not far
off an end to which I look forward with satisfac-
tion " and that he had " interdicted any such cere-
mony as is performed over the bodies or ashes of
those who adhere to the current creed."
Authority : D. Duncan, The Life and Letters of
Herbert Spencer, 1908.
BENEDICT SPINOZA.
BENEDICT SPINOZA (Baruch Despinosa) was born in
Amsterdam on November 24, 1632. His father was
one of the Jewish fugitives from Spain who settled
in the Netherlands to escape the dreaded Inquisition.
With a delicate constitution, and a mind more prone
to study than amusement, the boy Spinoza gave him-
self to learning and meditation. He was soon com-
pelled to break away from the belief of his family and
his teachers; and after many vain admonitions, he
was at length excommunicated. His anathema was
pronounced in the Synagogue on July 27, 1656. It
was a frightful formula, cursing him by day and
night, waking and sleeping, sitting and standing,
and prohibiting every Jew from holding any com-
munication with him, or approaching him within a
distance of four cubits. Of course it involved his exile
from home, and soon afterwards he narrowly escaped
a fanatic's dagger.
1 30 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
The rest of Spinoza's life was almost entiiely that of
a scholar. He earned a scanty livelihood by polish-
ing lenses, but his physical wants \vere few, and he
subsisted on a few pence per day. His writings are
such as the world will not willingly let die, and his
Ethics places him on the loftiest heights of philosophy,
where his equals and companions may be counted on
the fingers of a single hand. Through Goethe and
Heine, he exercised a potent influence on Germany
and therefore on European thought. His subtle Pan-
theism identifies God with Nature, and denies to deity
all the attributes of personality.
His personal appearance is described by Colerus, the
Dutch pastor, who some years after his death gathered
all the information about him that could be procured.
He was of middle height and slenderly built; wdth
regular features, a broad and high forehead, large
dark lustrous eyes, full dark eyebrows, and long curl-
ing hair of the same hue. His character was worthy
of his intellect. He made no enemies except by his
opinions. " Even bitter opponents," as Dr. Martin-
eau says, " could not but own that he was singularly
blameless and exacting, kindly and disinterested.
Children, young men, servants, all who stood to him
in any relation of dependence, seem to have felt the
charm of his affability and sweetness of temper." 72
Spinoza was lodging, at the time of his death, with
a poor Dutch family at the Hague. They appear to
have regarded him with veneration, and to have given
him every attention. But the climate was too rigorous
for his Southern temperament.
The strict and sober regimen which was recom-
mended by frugality was not unsuited to his delicate
constitution ; but, in spite of it, his emaciation in-
72 A Study of Spinoza. By Dr. James Martineau, p. 104.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 131
creased, and, though he made no change in his
habits, he became so far aware of his decline as on
Sunday, February 20, 1677, to send for his medical
friend Meyer from Amsterdam. That afternoon Van
der Spijck and his wife had been to church, in
preparation for the Shrovetide communion next day,
and on their return at 4 p.m., Spinoza had come
downstairs and, whilst smoking his pipe, talked with
them long about the sermon. He went early to
bed ; but was up again next morning (apparently
before the arrival of Meyer), in time to come down
and converse with his host and hostess before they
went to church. The timely appearance of the
physician enabled her to leave over the fire a fowl to
be boiled for a basin of broth. This, as well as
some of the bird itself, Spinoza took with a relish,
on their return from church about mid-day. There
was nothing to prevent the Van der Spijcks from
going to the afternoon service. But on coming out
of the church they were met by the startling news
that at 3 p.m. Spinoza had died ; no one being with
him but his physician. 73
Dr. Martineau hints that perhaps " the philosopher
and the physician had arranged together and carried
out a method of euthanasia," but as he admits that
"there is no tittle of evidence" for such a thing, it is
difficult to understand why he makes such a gratuitous
suggestion.
Pious people, who judged every philosopher to be
an Atheist, reported that Spinoza had cried out several
times in dying, " Oh God, have mercy on me, a miser-
able sinner !" Colerus investigated this story and
found it an invention. Dr. Meyer was the only per-
son with Spinoza when he died, so that it was im-
possible for the scandal-mongers to have heard his last
words. Besides, his hostess denied the truth of all
73 Ibid, pp. 101, 102.
132 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
such statements, adding that " what persuaded her of
the contrary was that, since he began to fail, he had
always shown in his sufferings a stoical fortitude." 74
DAVID FREDERICK STRAUSS.
STRAUSS 's life of Jesus once excited universal contro-
versy in the Christian world, and the author's name
was opprobrious in orthodox circles. So important
was the work, that it was translated into French by
Littre, and into English by George Eliot. Subse-
quently, Strauss published a still more heterodox book,
The Old Faith and the New, in which he asserts that
" if we would speak as honest, upright men, we must
acknowledge we are no longer Christians," and strenu-
ously repudiates all the dogmas of theology as founded
on ignorance and superstition.
This eminent German Freethinker died in the
Spring of 1874, of cancer in the stomach, one of the
most excruciating disorders.
But in these very sufferings the mental greatness
and moral strength of the sufferer proclaimed their
most glorious victory. He was fully aware of his
condition. With unshaken firmness he adhered to
the convictions which he had openly acknowledged
in his last work (The Old Faith and the New), and
he never for a moment repented having written them.
But with these convictions he met death with such
repose and with such unclouded serenity of mind,
that it was impossible to leave his sick room with-
out the impression of a moral sanctity which we all
the more surely receive from greatness of soul and
74 La Vie de Spinoza, par Colerus ; Saisset's CEuvres de
Spinoza, Vol. II., p. xxxvii.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 133
mastery of mind over matter, the stronger are the
hindrances in the surmounting of which it is mani-
fested. 75
Strauss left directions for his funeral. He expressly
forbade all participation of the Church in the cere-
mony, but on the day of his interment a sum of money
was to be given to the poor. "On February 10 (1874)
therefore," says his biographer, " he was buried with-
out ringing of bells or the presence of a clergyman,
but in the most suitable manner, and amid the lively
sympathy of all, far and near."
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE.
SWINBURNE was born in London in 1837. He was
brought up piously, but before his twenty-first year
had abandoned all belief in Christianity. The choruses
in Atalanta in Calydon (1865), and Erechtheus
(1876), dramas cast in the mould of ancient Greek
tragedy; Poems and Ballads (1866); and Songs Before
Sunrise (1871) stamp him as one of the world's
greatest lyric poets. These poems and his odes and
sonnets show both his marvellous sense of the music
of words and his intense antipathy to all forms of re-
ligious or political tyranny. For Swinburne lyric
poetry was the medium through which he expressed
himself as the missionary of Freethought and Repub-
licanism to a continent that boasted of its spiritual
heritage, but was really fettered by a superstition
which the best minds of classical antiquity would have
rejected with scorn. This note is resonant in "The
73 Edward Zeller, David Frederick Strauss in his Life and
Writings, p. 148.
134 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
Hymn of Man," and " Mater Triumphalis." The
second of the sonnets entitled " Two Leaders " -
Newman and Carlyle are meant may be quoted as
affording an insight into Swinburne's Atheism as an
expression of his revolt against the God-and-King
idea :
With all our hearts we praise you whom ye hate,
High souls that hate us ; for our hopes are higher,
And higher than yours the goal of our desire,
Though high your ends be as your hearts are great.
Your world of Gods and Kings, of shrine and state,
Was of the night when hope and fear stood nigher,
Wherein man walked by light of stars and fire
Till man b\- day stood equal to his fate.
Honour not hate we give you, love not fear,
Last prophets of past kind, who fill the dome
Of great dead gods with wrath and wail, nor hear
Time's word and man's : "Go honoured hence, go home,
Night's childless children ; here your hour is done ;
Pass with the stars, and leave us with the sun."
He rejected utterly the idea of a future life. This
is seen again and again in his poetry, but unmistak-
ably in the Garden of Proserpine.
Swinburne died very peacefully on April 10, 1909.
Up to the last he chatted cheerfully with his friends,
and his illness was brief and almost painless. He was
buried in the cemetery of Bonchtirch, " in the midst
of the graves of his family." This is the story as re-
lated by Edmund Gosse in The Life of Algernon
Charles Swinburne (1917). But Mr. Gosse has sup-
pressed an important part of the story. Swinburne
left instructions in his will that there should be no re-
ligious ceremony at his funeral. Yet his sole execu-
tor, Theodore Watts-Dunton, allowed the rector of
Bonchurch to read part of the Church of England
burial service, and to offer some pious reflections of
his own. Several of those present cried "Shame !"
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 135
It was "shame " awarded to the dead body of the
man who had protested so vehemently against the be-
trayal of his friend Burton (Freethinker, April 25,
1909).
JOSEPH SYMES.
SYMES was born at Portland on January 29, 1841.
Brought up a Methodist, in 1864 he offered himself
as candidate for the Ministry and was sent to the Wes-
leyan College, Richmond. In 1867 he went on cir-
cuit as a preacher, but within five years found the
fundamental doctrines of Christianity incredible and
resigned. He delivered his first Freethought lecture
at Newcastle, on December 17, 1876, and later con-
tributed to the National Reformer and the Free-
thinker. He offered to conduct the latter in 1883
during Foote's imprisonment. At the end of this year
he went to Melbourne, where he established the
Liberator.
During the twenty-three years that Symes spent in
Australia his life was one continuous battle for Free-
thought. Not only was he constantly in the courts
for a considerable part of this period, but he was also
lecturing, debating, editing his paper, and writing
pamphlets. For details of this work the reader must
refer to his series of articles in the Freethinker (1906),
"My Twenty Years' Fight for Freethought in Aus-
tralia." Among his numerous pamphlets may be men-
tioned : Christianity at the Bar of Science; Christ-
ianity Essentially a Persecuting Religion : and The
Life and Death of my Religion. One of his favourite
lecture-subjects was, " The Christ of the New Testa-
ment not Historic but Dramatic."
136 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
Symes returned to England in 1906, and died on
December 29 of the same year. The conclusion of a
series of articles, " They are coming round," ap-
peared in the Freethinker of December 30. He was in
harness till within a few days of his death. Shortly
before his last illness, which came very suddenly, he
spoke to Foote, with some feeling of pride, of the way
in which he was standing the English winter. " A
few days afterwards he was very ill, but he refused to
have a doctor until Christmas night." (The Free-
thinker, January 6, 1907).
JOHN TOLAND.
TOLAND was one of the first to call himself a Free-
thinker. He W 7 as born at Redcastle, near London-
derry, in Ireland, on November 30, 1670; and he died
at Putney on March n, 1722. His famous work,
Christianity not Mysterious was brought before Par-
liament, condemned as heretical, and ordered to be
burnt by the common hangman. One member pro-
posed that the author himself should be burnt; and as
Thomas Aikenhead had been hanged at Edinburgh
for blasphemy in the previous year, it is obvious that
Toland incurred great danger in publishing his views.
Among other writings, Toland's Letters to Serena
achieved distinction. They were translated into
French by the famous Baron D'Holbach, and Lange,
in his great History of Materialism, says that " the
second letter handles the kernel of the whole ques-
tion of Materialism." Lange also says that " Toland
is one of those benevolent beings who exhibit to us a
good character in the complete harmony of all the
sides of human existence."
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 137
For some years before his death, Toland lived in
obscure lodgings with a carpenter at Putney. His
health was broken, and his circumstances were poor.
His last illness was painful, but he bore it with great
fortitude. According to one of his most intimate
friends, he looked earnestly at those in the room a few
minutes before breathing his last, and on being asked
if he wanted anything, he answered, " I want nothing
but death." His biographer, Des Maizeaux, says that
" he looked upon death without the least perturbation
of mind, bidding farewell to those that w r ere about
him, and telling them he was going to sleep."
LUCILIO VANINI.
LUCILIO VANINI was born at Taurisano, near Naples,
in 1584 or 1585. He studied theology, philosophy,
physics, astronomy, medicine, and civil and ecclesi-
astical law. At Padua he became a doctor of canon
and civil law, and was ordained a priest. Resolving
to visit the academies of Europe, he travelled through
France, England, Holland and Germany. According
to Fathers Mersenne and Garasse, he formed a project
of promulgating Atheism over the whole of Europe.
The same priests allege that he had fifty thousand
Atheistic followers at Paris ! One of his books was
condemned to the flames by the Sorbonne. Vanini
himself met eventually with the same fate. Tried at
Toulouse for heresy, he was condemned as an Atheist,
and sentenced to the stake. At the trial he protested
his belief in God, and defended the existence of Deity
with the flimsiest arguments; so flimsy, indeed, that
one can scarcely read them, without suspecting that he
I3 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
was pouring irony on his judges. They ordered him
to have his tongue cut out before being burnt alive.
It is said that he afterwards confessed, took the com-
munion, and declared himself ready to subscribe the
tenets of the Church.
But if he did so, he certainly recovered his natural
dignity when he had to face the worst. Le Mercure
Franfais, \vhich cannot be suspected of partiality to-
wards him, reports that " he died with as much con-
stancy, patience, and fortitude as any other man ever
seen; for setting forth from the Conciergerie joyful
and elate, he pronounced in Italian these words :
' Come, let us die cheerfully like a philosopher !' '
There is a report that, on seeing the pile, he cried
out, " Ah, my God !" On which a bystander said,
"You believe in God, then." " No," he retorted,
" it's a mere phrase." Father Garasse says that he
uttered many other notable blasphemies, refused to
ask forgiveness of God, or of the King, and died
furious and defiant. So obstinate was he, that pincers
had to be employed to pluck out his tongue. Presi-
dent Gramond, author of the History of France Under
Louis XIII., writes : " I saw him in the tumbril as
they led him to execution, mocking the Cordelier who
had been sent to exhort him to repentance, and insult-
ing our Saviour by these impious words, ' He sweated
with fear and weakness, and I, I die undaunted.' "
Vanini's martyrdom took place at Toulouse on Feb-
ruary 19, 1619. He was only thirty-four, an age,
Camile Desmoulins said, " fatal to revolutionists."
(The reader may consult M.X. Rousselot's CEuvres
Philosophiques de Vanini, avec une Notice sur sa Vie
et ses Ouvrages. Paris, 1842).
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 139
VOLNEY.
CONSTANTINE FRANCOIS DE CHASSEBCEUF, known in
literature by the name of Volney, and the author of
the famous Ruins of Empires, was born in 1757. He
was a great traveller, and his visits to Oriental
countries were described so graphically and philo-
sophically, that Gibbon wished he might go over the
whole world and record his experiences for the delight
and edification of mankind. His Atheism was always
unconcealed, and in his famous Ruins he always ex-
hibits theology and priestcraft as the constant enemies
of civilization. His sceptical History of Samuel,
which is sometimes wrongly ascribed to Voltaire, was
written within a year of his death.
A very foolish story about Volney 's " cowardice "
in a storm is still circulated in pious tracts. It is said
that he threw himself on the deck of the vessel, crying
in agony, " Oh, my God, my God!" "There is a
God, then, Monsieur Volney?" said one of the pass-
engers. " Oh, yes," he exclaimed. "There is, there
is, Lord save me ! ' ' When the vessel arrived safely in
port, goes the story, he " returned to his atheistical
sentiments."
This nonsense probably originated in the Tract
Magazine, for July, 1832, where it appears very much
amplified, and in many respects different. It appears
in a still different form in the eighth volume of the
Evangelical Magazine. Beyond that it is lost in the
obscurity which always surrounds the birth of these
edifying fictions.
Volney died at Paris on April 25, 1820, leaving
a large part of his fortune to be spent on prize essays
on the subject of language. Adolphe Bossange, in a
notice of the life and writings of Volney, prefixed to
140 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
the 1838 (Paris) edition of his works, gives the follow-
ing account of his last hours :
His health, which had always been delicate, be-
came languid, and soon he felt his end was approach-
ing. It was worthy of his life.
" I know the custom of your profession," he said
to the doctor three days before he died; "but 1
wish you not to play on my imagination like that of
other patients. I do not fear death. Tell me frankly
what you think of my condition, for I have arrange-
ments to make." The doctor seemed to hesitate.
" I know enough," said Volney, " let them bring a
notary."
He dictated his will with the utmost calmness ;
and not abandoning at the last moment the idea
which had never ceased to occupy his mind during
twenty-five years, and doubtless fearing that his
labours would be brought to a cessation by his death,
he devoted the sum of 24,000 francs to founding an
annual prize for the best essay on the philosophical
study of languages.
Volney's death in the principles which guided his
laborious and useful life was so notorious that the
Abbe Migne, in his great Catholic Dictionary, says,
" It appears that in his last moments he refused the
consolations of religion."
VOLTAIRE.
FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET, generally known by the
name of Voltaire, was born at Chatenay, on February
20, 1694. He died in Paris, on May 30, 1778. To
write his life during those eighty-three years would be
to give the intellectual history of Europe.
76 Dictionnaire de Biographic Chrtticnne et Anti-Chrtt-
ienne.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 141
While Voltaire \vas living at Fcrney in 1768, he
gave a curious exhibition of that profane sportiveness
which was a strong element in his character. On
Easter Sunday he took his Secretary Wagniere with
him to commune at the village church, and also "to
lecture a little those scoundrels who steal continu-
ally." Apprised of Voltaire's sermon on theft, the
Bishop of Anneci rebuked him, and finally "forbade
every curate, priest, and monk of his diocese to con-
fess, absolve or give the communion to the seigneur
of Ferney, without his express orders, under pain of
interdiction." With a wicked light in his eyes, Vol-
taire said he would commune in spite of the Bishop;
nay, that the ceremony should be gone through in his
chamber. Then ensued an exquisite comedy, which
shakes one's sides even as described by the stolid Wag-
niere. Feigning a deadly sickness, Voltaire took to
his bed. The surgeon, who found his pulse was ex-
cellent, was bamboozled into certifying that he was in
danger of death. Then the priest was summoned to
administer the last consolation. The poor devil at
first objected, but Voltaire threatened him with legal
proceedings for refusing to bring the sacrament to a
dying man, who had never been excommunicated.
This was accompanied with a grave declaration that
M. de Voltaire " had never ceased to respect and to
practise the Catholic religion." Eventually the priest
came " half dead with fear." Voltaire demanded ab-
solution at once, but the Capuchin pulled out of his
pocket a profession of faith, drawn up by the Bishop,
which Voltaire was required to sign. Then the
comedy deepened. Voltaire kept demanding absolu-
tion, and the distracted priest kept presenting the
document for his signature. At last the Lord of
Ferney had his way. The priest gave him the wafer,
and Voltaire declared, " Having God in my mouth,"
142 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
that he forgave his enemies. Directly he left the
room, Voltaire leapt briskly out of bed, where a
minute before he seemed unable to move. " I have
had a little trouble," he said to Wagniere, " with this
comical genius of a Capuchin; but that was only for
amusement, and to accomplish a good purpose. Let
us take a turn in the garden. I told you I would be
confessed and commune in my bed, in spite of M.
Biord." "
Voltaire treated Christianity so lightly that he con-
fessed and took the sacrament for a joke. Is it wonder-
ful if he did the same thing 011 his death-bed to secure
the decent burial of his corpse ? He remembered his
own bitter sorrow and indignation, which he expressed
in burning verse, when the remains of poor Adrienne
L,ecouvreur were refused sepulture because she died
outside the pale of the Church. Fearing similar
treatment himself, he arranged to cheat the Church
again. By the agency of his nephew, the Abb Mig-
not, the Abb Gautier was brought to his bedside, and
according to Condorcet he " confessed Voltaire, re-
ceiving from him a profession of faith, by which he
declared that he died in the Catholic religion, wherein
he was born." 78 This story is generally credited, but
its truth is by no means indisputable; for in the Abbe
Gautier's declaration to the Prior of the Abbey of
Scellieres, where Voltaire's remains were interred, he
says that when he visited M. de Voltaire, he found
him " unfit to be confessed."
The curate of St. Sulpice was annoyed at being fore-
stalled by the Abbe Gautier, and as Voltaire was his
parishioner, he demanded " a detailed profession of
77 Parton's Life of Voltaire, Vol. II., pp. 410-415.
78 Condorcet's Vie de Voltaire, p. 144.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 143
faith and a disavowal of all heretical doctrines." He
paid the dying Freethinker many unwelcome visits, in
the vain hope of obtaining a full recantation, which
would be a fine feather in his hat. The last of these
visits is thus described by Wagniere, who was an eye-
witness to the scene. We take Carlyle's translation :
Two days before that mournful death, M. 1'Abbe
Mignot, his nephew, went to seek the Cure of St.
Sulpice and the Abbe Gautier, and brought them
into his uncle's sick room ; who, on being informed
that the Abbe Gautier was there, " Ah, well!" said
he, " give m'm my compliments and my thanks."
The Abbe spoke some words to him, exhorting him
to patience. The Cure of St. Sulpice then came for-
ward, having announced himself, and asked of M. de
Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the
divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ ? The sick man
pushed one of his hands against the Cure's calotte
(coif), shoving him back, and cried, turning abruptly
to the other side, *' Let me die in peace (Laissez-moi
mourir en paix)." The Cure seemingly considered
his person soiled, and his coif dishonoured, by the
touch of the philosopher. He made the sick-nurse
give him a little brushing, and then went out with
the Abbe Gautier. 79
A further proof that Voltaire made no real recan-
tation lies in the fact that the Bishop of Troyes sent a
peremptory dispatch to the Prior of Scellieres, which
lay in his diocese, forbidding him to inter the here-
tic's remains. The dispatch, however, arrived too
late, and Voltaire's ashes remained there until 1791,
when they were removed to Paris and placed in the
Pantheon, by order of the National Assembly.
Voltaire's last moments are described by Wagniere.
79 Carlyle's Essays, Vol. II. (People's Edition), p. 161.
144 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
We again take Carlyle's translation :
He expired about a quarter past eleven at night,
with the most perfect tranquillity, after having
suffered the crudest pains in consequence of those
fatal drugs, which his own imprudence, and especi-
ally that of the persons who should have looked to
it, made him swallow. Ten minutes before his last
breath he took the hand of Morand, his valet-de-
chambre, who was watching him ; pressed it, and
said, " Adieu, mon cher Morand, je me meurs
Adieu, my dear Morand, I am gone." These are the
last words uttered by M. de Voltaire.*
Such are the facts of Voltaire's decease. He made
no recantation, he refused to utter or sign a confession
of faith, but with the connivance of his nephew, the
Abbe Mignot, he tricked the Church into granting
him a decent burial, not choosing to be flung into a
ditch or buried like a dog. His heresy was never
seriously questioned at the time, and the clergy actu-
ally clamoured for the expulsion of the Prior, who had
allowed his body to be interred in a church vault. 81
Many years afterwards the priests pretended that
Voltaire died raving. They declared that Marshal
Richelieu was horrified by the scene and obliged to
leave the chamber. From France the pious concoc-
tion spread to England, until it was exposed by Sir
Charles Morgan, who published the following extracts
from a letter by Dr. Burard, who, as assistant
physician, was constantly about Voltaire in his last
moments :
I feel happy in being able, while paying homage to
truth, to destroy the effects of the lying stories
which have been told respecting the last moments of
80 Carlyle, Vol. II., p. 160.
* x Parton, Vol. II., p. 165.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 145
Mons. de Voltaire. I was, by office, one of those
who were appointed to watch the whole progress of
his illness, with M.M. Tronchin, Lorry, and Try, his
medical attendants. I never left him for an instant
during his last moments, and I can certify that we
invariably observed in him the same strength of
character, though his disease was necessarily at-
tended with horrible pain. (Here follow the details of
his case.) We positively forbade him to speak in order
to prevent the increase of a spitting of blood, with
which he was attacked; still he continued to com-
municate with us by means of little cards, on which
he wrote his questions ; we replied to him verbally,
and if he was not satisfied, he always made his obser-
vations to us in writing. He therefore retained his
faculties up to the last moment, and the fooleries
which have been attributed to him are deserving of
the greatest contempt. It could not even be said that
such or such person had related any circumstance of
his death as being witness to it ; for at the last, admis-
sion to his chamber was forbidden to any person.
Those who came to obtain intelligence respecting the
patient, waited in the saloon, and other apartments
at hand. The proposition, therefore, which has been
put in the mouth of Marshal Richelieu is as un-
founded as the rest.
Paris, April 3, 1819. (Signed) BuRARD. 82
Another slander appears to emanate from the Abbe
Barruel, who was so well informed about Voltaire that
he calls him " the dying Atheist," when, as all the
world knows, he was a Deist.
In his last illness he sent for Dr. Tronchin. When
the Doctor came, he found Voltaire in the greatest
agony, exclaiming with the utmost horror " I am
abandoned by God and man." He then said, " Doc-
tor, I will give you half of what I am worth, if you
will give me six months' life." The doctor an-
82 Philosophy of Morals, by Sir Charles Morgan.
146 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
swered, " Sir, you cannot live six weeks." Voltaire
replied, " Then I shall go to hell, and you will go
with me!" and soon after expired.
When the clergy are reduced to manufacture such
contemptible rubbish as this, they must indeed be in
great straits. It is flatly contradicted by the evidence
of every contemporary of Voltaire.
Our readers will, we think, be fully satisfied that
Voltaire neither recanted nor died raving, but re-
mained a sceptic to the last; passing away quietly, at
a ripe old age, to the " undiscovered country from
whose bourne no traveller returns," and leaving be-
hind him a name that brightens the tracks of time.
JAMES WATSON.
JAMES WATSON was one of the bravest heroes in the
struggle for a free press. He was one of Richard Car-
lile's shopmen, and took his share of imprisonment
when the Government tried to suppress Thomas
Paine's Age of Reason and several other Freethought
publications. In fighting for the unstamped press, he
was again imprisoned in 1833. As a publisher he was
notorious for his editions of Paine, Mirabaud, Volney,
Shelley, and Owen. He died on November 29, 1874,
aged seventy-five, " passing away in his sleep, without
a struggle, without a sigh." ' 83
JOHN WATTS.
JOHN WATTS was at one time sub-editor of the
Reasoner, and afterwards, for an interval, editor of
the National Reformer. He was the author of several
publications, including Half Hours with Freethinkers
3 James Watson by W. J. L,inton, p. 86.
INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS 147
in collaboration with Charles Bradlaugh. His death
took place on October 31, 1866, and the following
account of it was written by Dr. George Sexton and
published in the National Reformer of the following
week :
At about half past seven in the evening he breathed
his last, so gently that although I had one of his
hands in mine, and his brother the other in his,
the moment of his death passed almost unobserved
by either of us. No groan, no sigh, no pang indi-
cated his departure. He died as a candle goes out
when burned to the socket.
George Sexton afterwards turned Christian, at least
by profession; but, after what he had written of the
last moments of John Watts, he could scarcely pre-
tend that unbelievers have any fear of death.
WOOLSTON.
THOMAS WOOLSTON was born at Northampton in 1669,
and he died in London in 1733. He was educated at
Sidney College, Cambridge, taking his M.A. degree,
and being elected a fellow. Afterwards he was
deprived of his fellowship for heresy. Entering into
holy orders, he closely studied divinity, and gained a
reputation for scholarship, as well as for sobriety and
benevolence. His profound knowledge of ecclesi-
astical history gave him a contempt for the Fathers, in
attacking whom he reflected on the modern clergy.
He maintained that miracles were incredible, and that
all the supernatural stories of the New Testament
must be regarded as figurative. For this he was
prosecuted on a charge of blasphemy and profaneness,
148 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
but the action dropped through the honourable inter-
vention of Whiston. Subsequently he published Six
Discourses on Miracles, which were dedicated to six
bishops. In these the Church was assailed in homely
language, and her doctrines were mercilessly ridiculed.
Thirty thousand copies are said to have been sold.
A fresh prosecution for blasphemy was commenced,
the Attorney-General declaring the Discourses to be
" the most blasphemous book that ever was published
in any age whatever." Woolston ably defended him-
self, but he was found guilty, and sentenced to one
year's imprisonment and a fine of ^100. Being too
poor to pay the fine Christian charity detained him
permanently in the King's Bench Prison. With a
noble courage he refused to purchase his release by
promising to refrain from promulgating his views,
and prison fever at length released him from his
misery. The following account of his last moments
is taken from the Daily C our ant of Monday, January
29, 1733 :
On Saturday night, about nine o'clock, died Mr.
Woolston, author of the Discourses on our Saviour's
Miracles, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. About
five minutes before he died he uttered these words :
" This is a struggle which all men must go through,
and which I bear not only with patience but willing-
ness." Upon which he closed his eyes, and shut
his lips, with a seeming design to compose his face
with decency, without the help of a friend's hand,
and then he expired.
Without the help of a friend's hand ! Helpless and
friendless, pent in a prison cell, the brave old man
faced Death in solitary grandeur, yielding, for the first
and last time, to the Lord of all.
PART II
CHAPTER I.
How THE ANCIENTS VIEWED DEATH.
THE remarks which follow have reference only to
historical religions antedating Christianity, and are in-
tended to emphasize the contrast between Pagan and
Christian ideas of death. In studying the concep-
tions of the future life held by the ancients we must
bear in mind that the same views did not persist
throughout the history of any given people. Some-
times outside influences caused a change in the pre-
vailing notions of death and the future state, some-
times doctrines seemed to gain a new lease of life after
having been long on the wane, and, above all, there is
nearly always traceable, as soon as a certain stage of
culture is reached, a marked difference between the
conceptions of the cultivated classes and those of the
common people.
Egypt is probably, though not certainly, the
original home of agriculture and of the most ancient
civilization. The materials for the study of its re-
ligion, and especially of its funeral ritual, are not only
the oldest extant, but are abundant and of varied
character. The collection of spells or charms known
to us as The Book of the Dead, but called by the
Egyptians themselves the book of the " coming forth
152 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
in the day-time," goes back to a remote antiquity,
and the Pyramid Texts and the records brought to
light by many excavations are much older. What im-
presses the student of these sources is the central im-
portance of the doctrine of a future life in the Egyptian
religion of historic times. We do not know of any
other ancient people that made the same elaborate
efforts to attend to their dead and to secure their wel-
fare in the next world. The preparation of his tomb
and the recording thereon of the chief incidents of his
life in this world began with the Egyptian's first
sense of responsibility to himself and his family. It
was the duty of his successors to depict on the walls of
the tomb his employments in the other world. Here,
as everywhere else, ideas concerning the abode of the
dead underwent an evolution. At first this abode
seems to have been a kind of shadow-world that could
hardly be described as attractive. When a paradise
for the worthy " souls " first appeared it was supposed
to be situated in one of the most fertile spots of the
Nile delta, but later it was transferred to the Milky
Way, and this follows the usual lines of development
to astral immortality in other religious systems.
Originally there were many local divinities and
cults, and they never became completely fused into a
consistent system. In the course of time, however,
Osiris, the local deity of Abydos and Busiris, acquired
a solar character. He gave the Egyptians laws, intro-
duced agriculture, and later travelled over the earth
as an apostle of civilization, " making little use of
armed force, but winning the hearts of men for the
most part by persuasion and teaching." He was
essentially a saviour-god and the Greeks identified him
with their Dionysos. His death and resuscitation,
whereby he becomes the judge of the dead, with power
to award eternal life or condemn to the lake of fire, is
153
the pivot on which revolves nearly everything that
really matters in the ancient Egyptian mythology.
Three elements entered into the nature of man,
according to the Egyptian system the corruptible
body, the ba, usually interpreted to mean the " living
soul," and the ka, the spiritual double or divine
counter-part of the deceased. The New Testament
ideas of body, soul and spirit correspond fairly closely
with this division. In the age of the pyramids the
preservation of the body by embalming was considered
the first duty of the survivors, probably because the
idea of a physical resurrection had now become
definitely established, and the complete body was con-
sidered necessary for deceased's happiness in the next
world.
On various grounds the Egyptian religion has been
described by some Christian writers as " the least
spiritual " in the world. The criticism is one-sided.
The idea of the efficacy of magic is prominent in the
Egyptian system; the future life is represented as a
replica of the present; and the features of a primitive
animal worship persisted down to a late period. Never-
theless, under Amenhotep IV. (about 1375 B.C.) we
find developed an " inspiring universalism " in re-
ligion, with lofty conceptions of one deity, God no
longer of the Nile Valley only, but of all men every-
where. In the judgment of souls before Osiris the
emphasis is on the candidate's moral conduct, not on
the observance of ritual acts or the faithful accept-
ance of doctrine. In the Book of the Dead, of the
forty-two crimes enumerated to which the deceased
had to plead " not guilty," there is nothing directly
or indirectly associated with the idea of intellectual
doubt. Even for those finally condemned at the
" last judgment " the torments were not eternal.
In their conception of the destiny of mankind after
154 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
death the Babylonians and Assyrians stood in marked
contrast with the Egyptians. The future life did not
occupy a prominent place in the beliefs of the people.
Despite the exceptional influence of astrology in the
Babylonian system, there is no evidence that the spirits
of departed men ever had a celestial home, or that the
doctrine of future rewards and punishments was ever
evolved by the hierarchy, the favour of the gods being
usually manifested by prosperity in this world. The
main interest of the Babylonian mythology to us is its
close affinity to the early Hebrew views concerning
the creation of the world, the "soul," the nether world
and the lot of the dead. Nearly all the popular
legends and superstitions of the Hebrews on these sub-
jects may be traced to the ideas current among the
Babylonians.
The early religion of Yahweh was concerned prim-
arily with the continued existence of the nation, and
assigned no definite future life to the individual,
whose idea of " soul " followed the same lines of an-
cestor-worship as can be traced more clearly in the
religion of early Rome. The Hebrew Sheol, like
Homer's Hades, was the abode of both the righteous
and the wicked, and there they led a shadowy life,
which, however, reflected the realities of the upper
world much more faintly than Hades did. No amount
of ingenuity can read into such texts as Ecclesiastes iii.
and ix. anything but the idea of complete extinction
for the individual. No idea of retribution was associ-
ated with Sheol. But during the centur} 7 and a half
immediately preceding the Christian era the Jews
elaborated, mainly from Persian sources, a theology of
the future world, with all the recognized machinery
of heaven and hell, angels and spirits, to which the
Christian system has accustomed us, and particularly
of hell with its fire, demons and varied torments. Des-
HOW THE ANCIENTS VIEWED DEATH 155
pite all disclaimers on the part of liberal Christians of
the twentieth century, some of the details of this gro-
tesque mythology have found their way into our
Synoptic Gospels. In the Book of Revelation they
appear in a more crude form, giving prominence to the
last judgment, the millennium, and the personal
activities of Satan.
It is not correct to say that the Greek religious
world " germinated out of itself," but it preserved cer-
tain peculiar features till the decay of Paganism.
Sacrifices and libations to the dead must have existed
in very early times since excavations at Mycenae and
other places show them to have prevailed long before
the Homeric age. In Homer, however, only slight in-
dications are found of offerings to the dead. His
underworld is a land of shades presided over by Hades,
and under this again is Tartarus, the prison of the
rebellious Titans, and in later classical mythology a
place for the wicked in general, corresponding to the
" abyss " of apocalyptic literature. In Homer death
was by no means welcomed, for the Greeks were
accustomed to quite a joyous life on earth and the
underworld had nothing similar to offer them. The
frequent references in the great Athenian writers,
especially in the dramatists, to the dead and the offer-
ing of sacrifice, show that these ideas had acquired a
great vogue at some period and contrast noticeably
with the paucity of such references in Homer. The
difference may be due to migration or to the adoption
of a different method of disposing of the dead.
In Greek literature it is always necessary to consider
how far the poet or philosopher is simply utilizing
mythological material for art purposes or as a text for
pure speculation. Plato was seriously interested in
the question of the soul and its survival of death, but
as a philosopher, not as a theologian. In his day
156 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
there was little real belief in immortality among the
educated Athenians, and many of the inscriptions on
tombs show that doubters among the " common
people " were far from few. To meet with a wide-
spread and dominant desire for " eternal life," we
have to wait till the Orphic and other mysteries, with
rites of initiation and baptism, of purification from
guilt, and the religious sects associated with them, be-
came influential shortly before the Roman period. The
rites and worship of Dionysos were important features
of Orphism, and Hades became divided into two apart-
ments, the Elysian Fields for the initiated and Tar-
tarus for the wicked. The beliefs of the mysteries and
the very phrases used in them are reflected noticeably
in some of Paul's Epistles.
The Romans had no mythology except what, to-
wards the end of the Republic, they borrowed from
the Greeks and naturalized, sometimes under protest
from Cato and other typical Romans of the old school.
Their early religion shows the essential features of
ancestor worship, the " piety " that centred round
hearth and home, and the importance of the family as
the unit of the communal life. Of " gods " in the
proper sense of the word, those that were indigenous
supervised agricultural processes, Jupiter dominating
all the rest. At an early date new elements became
incorporated into the ancient system, but it w ; as not
till the extension of Roman sway over the Mediter-
ranean and the East that foreign influences, especially
Greek, Egyptian and Syrian, made serious inroads on
the old national religion. These inroads continued
for a long period and their effects form part of the
early history of Roman Christianity. Towards the
end of the Republic the educated Roman had little real
religion and his hold on belief in a future life was
slight; but the passionate protests of the poet Lucre-
HOW THE ANCIENTS VIEWED DEATH 157
tius against the fear of death, and of gods that were
concerned with the life or lot of men, indicate that
the old superstitions still had some influence on the
mass of the people. But the popular and the philo-
sophic ideas of the other world, long current among
the Greeks and the Romans, find full expression in
Virgil's poetry. At one time the Roman Tartarus
must have been a very real place for the populace, but
the fear of it never dominated life as the Christian
hell has done. Future punishment was inflicted for
offences against the moral law, not for unbelief, and
there was no vindictiveness in the idea of a Tartarus
reserved for the wicked. Neglect of the traditional re-
ligious rites was a species of disloyalty to the State.
But in the poets and statesmen of the Augustan age
and the early years of the Empire we find, in regard
to belief in a future life, either outspoken denial or a
firmly agnostic attitude. Catullus, in oft quoted lines,
perhaps expresses the real view of the majority of
cultivated Romans of his time :
Suns may set and suns may rise,
But we, when once our brief light dies,
In one long night must close our eyes.
In his beautiful little treatise On Old Age, Cicero
says that at the most the survival of the soul after
death is only a probability. He adds, and the same
idea is found elsewhere in his writings, that whether
extinction or survival awaits him, he view 7 s either
alternative without fear. He speaks of death as " the
cessation of toil and release from distress," and this
represents the attitude of a large proportion of Stoics
and all Epicureans. In a letter to Servius Sulpicius,
however, he denied the survival of consciousness
after death and says we ought not to desire it. Lucre-
tius and Pliny not only reject the idea of continued
existence, but welcome death as the end of all things
158 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
for the individual. Tacitus, writing of Agricola, his
father-in-law, hoped that his character would live in
men's memory. Those Romans who still needed a re-
ligion that assured them an immortal life had to im-
port one, and on the establishment of the Empire the
State did not discourage such importations unless they
clashed with Emperor-worship. There was a wide
choice of religions available, all offering " the crown
of life " as the reward of initiation and the acceptance
of certain doctrines. "The Orontes has flowed into
the Tiber," wrote Juvenal, the satiric poet. It is as
significant as it is true, for at Antioch the Orontes
was then used as a great sewer.
CHAPTER II.
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF DEATH.
WHEN we pass from the Greek and Roman attitude to
death in the most cultured period of classical antiquity,
and study Christian conceptions of the " last things,"
and the hopes and fears associated with them, from
the early expectation of the approaching advent of "a
new heaven and a new earth," down to the stories of
infidel death-beds in our own time, we enter a different
world of ideas and ideals. No one perhaps has ex-
pressed this contrast more vigorously than Lecky :
Death in itself was made incomparably more
terrible by the notion that it was not a law but a
punishment; that suffering's inconceivably greater
than those of Earth awaited the great masses of the
human race beyond the grave ; that an event which
was believed to have taken place ages before we were
born, or small frailties such as the best of us cannot
escape, were sufficient to bring men under this con-
demnation ; that the only paths to safety were to be
found in ecclesiastical ceremonies ; in the assistance
of priests ; in an accurate choice between competing
theological doctrines. At the same time the largest
and most powerful of the Churches of Christendom
ias, during many centuries, done its utmost to in-
l6o INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
tensify the natural fear of death by associating it with
loathsome and appalling surroundings. (The Map of
Life, pp. 321-2.)
Though Christianity has been the most exclusive
and intolerant of all the great religious systems, every
item of its theology has been borrowed. " With re-
gard to the belief in heaven, in the immortality of the
soul, in the reunion of the dead, and in a future retri-
bution, the Pagan world differed from the Christian in
nothing save in the grounds for such beliefs." (J. A.
Farrer, Paganism and Christianity, p. 108). The
Christian heaven, as far as the New Testament affords
any idea of it, combines the two inconsistent views,
that God was to establish his Kingdom over men on
earth, and that the place of future bliss existed in the
skies. The latter, with all the fantastic embellish-
ments of apocalyptic literature a great white throne,
gold, jewels, harps was destined to become the tradi-
tional notion; but it is far from attractive to educated
Protestants of the twentieth century, who have dis-
covered that heaven is not a place at all but a state of
mind. This traditional notion was essentially Oriental,
carrying us back to the geocentric theory of astron-
omy, with a solid sky above and dark depths below it.
For the modern man astronomy and geology have
completely discredited the New Testament idea of a
definitely located heaven and hell.
The conception of a celestial immortality is not
primitive. It was at first closely associated with the
rising and setting of suns and stars, imagined as
quite near to the earth, and afterwards with the idea
of a physical resurrection. This crude and repellent
idea is prominent in the religion of Zoroaster, from
which the Jews took it over, and the Parsees still be-
lieve in it. It gives scope for vivid representation of
the punishment to follow death, It is hardly neces-
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF DEATH l6l
sary to say here that the New Testament stories of the
resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ are hope-
lessly contradictory and are probably late additions
to the original versions. Their main features follow
the mythical accounts of the resurrection and ascen-
sion of the other Saviour-gods.
Christian theology has also been influenced by
Platonic speculation in regard to the immortality of
the soul; but the conception of the survival of a
purely spiritual entity, the " soul," is radically
different from that of a bodily resurrection, and may
have been influenced by different methods of dispos-
ing of the dead. Christianity has adopted the more
gross and repugnant of the two views, and that is why
Roman Catholics and many Protestants vehemently
oppose crematio<n.
Roman Catholics and Protestants alike affect to con-
trast Christian hope with the dismal prospect of the
Secularist; but the corner-stone of their theology, in
regard to death and the next world, has always been,
except for the early martyrs and enthusiasts, the fear
of future punishment rather than the expectation of
future bliss. In all religions we find fanatical adher-
ents willing to face death and even to seek the occa-
sion for it, and Church historians assign special
honours to some of the early Christians as martyrs for
the faith. We may doubt whether these Christians
represent the highest type of martyrdom. "However
much we may admire the Christian martyrs," says Sir
John Seeley, " yet how can we compare their self-
devotion with that of the Spartan three hundred or
the Roman Decius? Those heroes surrendered all,
and looked forward to nothing but the joyless as-
phodel meadow or ' drear Cocytus with its languid
stream.' But the Christian martyr might well die
162 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
with exultation, for what he lost was poor compared
with that which he hoped instantly to gain." (Ecce
Homo, p. 99.)
In cultivating the fear of death Christianity stands
apart, in a class by itself among the great religions of
the world. The prominence of an eternal hell in the
Christian theology, the hymns containing graphic
details of its victims' agonies, the pictorial representa-
tions of the tortured in works of high art, have been
dealt with so often that they need only be mentioned
here. But the anticipated felicity of contemplating
the anguish of the unredeemed, associated with
Christian saints for centuries, throws a unique light
on the spirit of the religion of Christ and Paul.
Belief in purgatory was formally declared by the
Council of Trent to be a matter of Catholic faith.
Whether the ancient Egyptians believed in an inter-
mediate state of purification or not has been the sub-
ject of considerable dispute; but there seems to be no
doubt that they believed in the efficacy of prayers for
the dead. The idea of temporal punishment, pending
purgation from all taint and guilt, is clearly traceable
in Plato and in Virgil. In the second book of the
Republic Plato says that astrologers and hypocrites
travelled about the country, pretending that their
offerings and expiations delivered the souls of the dead
enduring the penalties of their crimes. Plato died in
347 B.C. It is interesting to turn from his soul-sav-
ing fraternity to an advertisement of the Association
of the Crusade of Prayer for the souls of Purgatory, in
The Tablet of November 7, 1931. This Association
was established, with the Pope's blessing, in 1892.
The Roman Catholics, however, rightly maintain that
prayers foe the dead were common among Christians
at an early period. The Reformers rejected the doc-
trine with great determination; but there have been
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF DEATH 163
ever since intermittent discussions as to whether it is
Scriptural or not. In the Anglican Church there is
now a strong tendency to restore it and even in some
of the other Protestant bodies to accept it in a revised
form.
There is little justification for singling out the
Roman Catholic Church for special condemnation for
intensifying the fear of death, except in so far as she
made a lucrative traffic of purgatory. It is true that
throughout the Middle Ages Death was a grim figure
persistently dogging the footsteps of men and women.
It is also true that Roman Catholics still adhere liter-
ally to the view that death is the result of sin and to
the belief in a material eternal hell, views held to-day
by few educated Protestants; but there is no room for
doubt as to which of the two bodies represents the
orthodox faith. Hell-fire and Satan are still very im-
portant weapons in the equipment of the Salvation
Army. No doubt a large proportion of the Roman
Catholic population of Europe is dominated by abject
fear of death; but here we meet with that " flock " of
men and women on a low level of culture to whom
orthodox Christianity has always appealed, and the
ecclesiastical organization in possession of the one
and only key to salvation, has been able to quarantine
the faithful from the influence of modern humanism.
We have only to read, in the literature of the period,
the story of the Methodist Revival in England, and to
note the grim emphasis on the reality of hell, in order
to see what part the fear of death and the future
played in Wesley's success. Relying on the authority
of the Bible, the Protestant sects gave a special vitality
to such doctrines as original sin, predestination, elec-
tion and grace, and justification by faith, and
heightened the awfulness of the curse of inherited
guilt. James Cotter Morison said that these doctrines,
164 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
as enunciated by Paul, had probably " added more to
human misery than any other utterances made by
man." J. A. Froude also expressed his abhorrence of
the idea of predestination. Man was doomed, he says,
" unless exempted by special grace," to live in sin on
earth and to be eternally miserable when he left it.
L,ecky declared that Jonathan Edwards's Original Sin
is " one of the most detestable books that have ever
issued from the pen of man." Even to-day among
a large proportion of "liberal" Protestants the re-
pudiation of an eternal hell is not referred to any
standard of human ethics but to the interpretation of
some word or passage in the New Testament. For
various reasons which cannot be discussed here, one
tendency of the Reformation was to concentrate more
attention and energy on worldly matters; but it was
the Renaissance that first stimulated the criticism of
religious authority, and pointed the way to modern
humanism.
The whole Christian conception of man, his origin
and his destiny, is inseparably connected with the
Genesis account of the Creation and the Fall, which
the organized Church, Catholic or Protestant, long
fought to maintain at all costs. But this is by no
means the whole explanation of Christian doctrine
concerning a future life. The New Testament not
only endorses in the most emphatic terms the false
dogma that man fell from a primitive state of inno-
cence, but it is steeped in the superstitious beliefs
taken over from the Persians and from the mysteries
or the Orphic rites which were closely allied to them.
That the Christian scheme of redemption, the fusion
of these two sets of doctrine, should have been trans-
mitted with so little protest from generation to genera-
tion for more than a thousand years, is one of the
arresting facts in the intellectual history of Europe.
THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF DEATH 165
If the cultivated Greek could rise " lightly from the
banquet of life to pass into that unknown land with
whose destiny speculation had but dallied," and the
Roman could lie down " almost as lightly to rest after
his course of public duty," how did the new religion
effect so complete and enduring a transformation in
man's attitude to death and a future life? The reasons
are not so recondite as they seem. The Christians
took over the Jewish scriptures which gave a very
definite account of the origin of the world and man,
and ready-made " explanations " of much that had
previously been matter of vague speculation, and
the Jewish Messiah became identified with one of the
many Saviour-gods of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Various influences, in particular the growth of the idea
of Imperialism as a result of the conquests of Alex-
ander the Great, and later the extension of Roman
sway over the civilized world, had prepared the way
for an age of universalism, and this applied to the re-
ligious as well as to the political life. The old local
cults were in a state bordering on disintegration in the
cities, but might be fused with the new " revelation "
into one great world-religion. For its complete
triumph Christianity had to wait several centuries
during which it surmounted strong opposition.
Nevertheless, when it did triumph the organization of
the Roman Empire brought the irresistible factor of its
statecraft to aid in welding the "gospel of salvation"
into the most thorough-going supernaturalism that has
ever existed, and Rome's legal system, her wealth and
prestige, were applied to the cultural enslavement of
Europe as no similar forces had ever been applied be-
fore. In a few centuries the " one true faith " suc-
ceeded in petrifying the heart of a Continent, for all
the necessary conditions were present, first in the
Christian scheme of salvation itself, and secondly in
l66 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
the political and social life of the Empire. The fear
of death became a carefully tended " segregated sur-
vival." It is as easy to cultivate the mental as the
material soil to produce a given crop. Until our own
day the views that man was a fallen creature, that hell
was a real place and that there was only one road of
escape from it, were as true for the philosopher as for
the peasant. The tomb was man's earliest temple and
for centuries remained the greatest of all his institu-
tions. It is still the greatest institution in Christ-
endom.
CHAPTER III.
THE FREETHINKER'S ATTITUDE TO DEATH.
IN Protestant quarters the wide-spread change of tone
towards belief in a material hell is part of the humani-
tarian revolt against dogmas that once passed without
challenge and were amply supported by biblical texts.
But it is not only in regard to hell that modernism has
made serious inroads on the traditional views of the
next world. Canon Streeter tells us that the old con-
ceptions of heaven and hell, quite definite enough for
the early or the medieval Church, are now " intel-
lectually discredited, even at the level of education
which the Elementary School has made universal."
The other world is sensibly decreasing in popularity,
so much so that it is frequently urged that the Pro-
testant pulpit is losing its power because the old note
of conviction in regard to sin, judgment and future re-
tribution is absent from the sermon of to-day. This
indifference to the future life, it must not be forgotten,
has asserted itself despite all that has been done to
foster the belief by a powerful hierarchy, by control
of the child, and by the official support of the State.
The complaints of the " fundamentalists " are wide-
spread and completely refute the absurd plea of an
innate desire for immortality. In spite of the vogue of
168 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
Spiritualism, this change of tone in regard to the here-
after has taken place side by side with an entirely
changed attitude to the present world and to merely
temporary happiness. It is reflected in the general
literature of the day, and is the most significant of all
comments on the stories once circulated about infidel
death-beds. No stronger confirmation could be re-
quired for the statement of Dr. Woods Hutchinson,
that " one of the principal consolations of religion
consists in allaying the fear which it has itself con-
jured up."
Those who have had concrete experience of men
and women shortly before death bear almost unani-
mous testimony to their calm and resignation. Sir
Henry Halford, one of the leading physicians of the
nineteenth century, says :
Of the great number of those to whom it has been
my painful professional duty to have administered in
the last hours of their lives, I have sometimes felt
surprised that so few have appeared reluctant to go
" to that undiscovered country from whose bourne
no traveller returns."
Similar testimony is given by Sir William Osier, Dr.
Robert Mackenna and other medical practitioners of
high eminence. Robert C. Adams, the son of the
Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, thus contrasts the death-
bed of the " infidel " with that of the Christian :
An intelligent physician states that he has wit-
nessed more fear of death and more distress upon the
death-bed among Christians than among unbelievers.
He says he has never witnessed a painful death of an
unbeliever. (Travels in Faith from Tradition to
Reason, 1884, p. 186.)
All this accords perfectly well with what has usually
been the average Freethinker's attitude to death.
But to-day he dismisses the " consolations " of re-
THE FREETHINKER'S ATTITUDE TO DEATH 169
ligion as less reputable than ever. The study of Com-
parative Religion has deprived Christianity of every
unique claim once made for it, and " spirit " and
" soul " are traced to their origin in the beliefs of the
primitive savage. At the same time evolution has
shown that man is an animal amongst animals, sub-
ject to the same laws of birth and growth, and that
there is no more mystery about his death than there is
about the death of a chimpanzee. Dr. J. Y. Simpson,
Professor of Natural Science in New College, Edin-
burgh, emphasizes strongly the difficulties of accept-
ing evolution and maintaining " an inherent immor-
tality for man " (Man and the Attainment of Im-
mortality, p. 232). And apart from considerations
based upon science the Freethinker is apt to notice
that each system or creed spurns nearly every other's
speculations on the subject as mere guesses or degrad-
ing superstitions. He sees that in a large part of
Protestant Christendom heaven and hell are neither
openly rejected nor actively disbelieved, they are just
survivals that have no practical influence on life.
But with more direct bearing on the present-day at-
titude of most cultivated men to life and death, Free-
thinkers feel that if we could now receive the same
" assurance " of immortality, and on the same terms,
as obtained only a century ago, it would deprive life
of its highest values. Death is an indispensable
factor in the moral world. The sense of personal loss
when our relatives and friends die in the prime of life
is natural enough, but there is nothing in this corres-
ponding to an artificially fostered desire for survival.
Professor Albert Ladenburg, in 1903, at a meeting of
the Association of German Scientists and Physicians,
said that he did " not know of a single scientifically
proved fact to which we can appeal in support of the
belief in immortality," and that those who hold to it
170 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
do so because they have not examined the grounds of
their belief. He quoted the opinion of Wundt, the
eminent psychologist, that personal immortality is in-
consistent with " psychic investigation," and that it
would be well if we regarded it "as an intolerable
fate."
CHAPTER IV.
SOME CHRISTIAN DEATH-BEDS.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. In the fierce duels between
Roman Catholics and Protestants we find in evidence
the same mendacities as both have circulated in regard
to Freethinkers. A pamphlet entitled The Dying
Pillow, compiled by the Rev. W. Wileman, which ran
through twelve editions, presents a number of promi-
nent Roman Catholics in the same category as Vol-
taire and other " infidels " in their " terror-stricken"
anticipation of death. Roman Catholics retort by re-
counting the last Days of Luther and constrasting the
death-bed of Mary Queen of Scots with Elizabeth's.
Here the Christian is essentially true to his nature
and his creed. He is " on the safe side," and craven
timidity in the face of death is considered a necessary
consequence of obstinate apostasy.
ALEXANDER VI. (POPE).
RODRIGO BORGIA (Pope Alexander VI.) was born in
1431 and died in 1503. To break the power of the
Italian princes and appropriate their possessions for
the benefit of his own children, he employed the
172 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
ordinary weapons of his time perjury, poison and the
dagger. The charges against him include also incest
and apostasy. In 1492 he was " elevated " to the
papal chair, of which he had already assured himself
by flagrant bribery. During his pontificate Savon-
arola, who had urged his deposition, was burned, and
the censorship of books was introduced. According
to one account he died by partaking accidentally of
poisoned wine, intended for ten cardinals, his guests.
Another story relates that he died of fever. But the
circumstance that his son, Caesar, was simultaneously
attacked with the like symptoms, and " the aspect of
the body, which was hideously disfigured," serve to
confirm the suspicion of poison. (Gregorovius, His-
tory of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, VII.,
pp. 516-521).
BONIFACE VIII. (POPE).
BENEDETTO G.^TANO was born in 1235, an d pro-
claimed Pope Boniface VIII. in 1294. He consistently
used his office to enrich his nephew. Dante (Inferno)
calls him the "Prince of the New Pharisees." L. C.
Jane says that he aimed " to free the Church from all
obligations to the State "; that ultimately he fell a
victim to the hostility of a single Roman family, the
Colonna; and that " his death in a frenzy of impotent
rage and cursing marks the fall of the universal
dominion of the Papacy." (The Interpretation of
History, p. 103). He died in 1303, having for two
clays refused food, through fear of poison. His last
days are described by Gregorovius as " beyond
measure terrible." Feelings of fear, suspicion, re-
venge and loneliness tortured his spirit. It was re-
SOME CHRISTIAN DEATH-BEDS 173
ported that he shut himself up in his room, " beat his
head in frenzy against the wall, and was at last found
dead in his bed." (Rome in the Middle Ages, V. 595.)
JESUS CHRIST.
EVERY scholar who has critically investigated the
Gospel story of the life of Jesus Christ admits now
that, whether the narrative contains a nucleus of his-
tory or not, a mass of myth has surrounded it. Here,
however, \ve are concerned with the record as it
stands written.
It is not improbable that Jesus at first expected that
God would intervene on his behalf and that he would
be acclaimed as the Messiah. When he saw more and
more clearly that a revolt against the Roman power
was hopeless he declared that the Kingdom of God is
not of this world. At this stage of his mission he pre-
pared for the martyrdom that is so often the lot of the
prophet. But till the last act of the drama he was per-
suaded that he was under God's care, and shortly be-
fore the end he announced that his second advent was
near at hand.
He spoke " with authority," a claim which no other
teacher could make in the same sense, he raised the
dead, he was Lord of the Sabbath, and through him
alone could man live for ever. Despite all this
" authority," at his death, which was the culmination
of his mission to save mankind, he " began to be
sorrowful and very heavy," prayed that his cup of
bitterness " might pass from him," and at the very
last exclaimed, " My God ! my God ! why hast thou
forsaken me?"
174 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
Many " liberal " Protestants to-day deny that the
strong language used by Jesus about the future life
was meant to be taken literally. Let them settle that
themselves. What matters is the tragic fact that for
more than a thousand years his language convinced
Christians that an eternal hell is a real place, and that
its penalties are incurred as the result of unbelief. No
other " spiritual " authority has done so much to
drench the world in blood.
WILLIAM COWPER.
COWPER the poet was born in 1731. His father was
the rector of Great Berkhamstead. It was in his
thirty-second year that Cowper began to feel " a
terrible conviction of sin," and from then until his
death in 1800 he had frequent periods of religious
melancholia, with occasional moments of exaltation,
when " he regarded himself as converted." In one of
his more dismal fits of despondency he upbraided him-
self fiercely for having written John Gilpin. Not long
before his death, in answer to the inquiry of his doctor
as to how he felt, the poet exclaimed, " Feel ! I feel
unutterable despair." W. M. Rossetti says : " The
end was gloomy : religious despair was busy in tor-
menting his mind, and dropsy his body." In his
poetry Cowper refers more than once to Voltaire, of
whom he says :
" An Infidel in health, but what when sick?
Oh, then a text would touch him to the quick."
The self-tormenting poet's own life and death afford
the most appropriate comment on these lines, and on
the tragic influence of his theology.
SOME CHRISTIAN DEATH-BEDS 175
THOMAS CRANMER.
CRANMER was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in
1532. It is impossible to acquit him of complicity in
the burning of Frith and Lambert for denying the
doctrine of trausubstantiation, and of Friar Forrest
for upholding the papal supremacy. Nor did he pro-
test against the burning of two Anabaptists, a man
and a woman. He drifted towards Protestantism, but
trembled at the near approach of a painful death, re-
nounced the Reformed faith, and signed seven recan-
tations. Nevertheless, face to face with the stake in
1556 he grew braver. Holding in the flames the hand
with which he had signed the recantation, he ex-
claimed, " Ah ! that unworthy right hand !" (Cham-
bers Encyclopedia, III., 541). Yet the Roman Catho-
lic writer, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, in his book on Cranmer,
makes much of the burning of Frith and Lambert, but
has not a word of admiration for the Protestant
" martyr."
JOHN VIII. (POPE).
POPE JOHN VIII. was troubled throughout his ponti-
ficate (872-882) by the Saracens, whom he was obliged
to buy off by a yearly tribute. He tried to unite the
Eastern Church with Rome but was defeated by the
craft of Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who had
been excommunicated by Pope Nicholas I. Accord-
ing to the annalist Fulda, John was murdered by
members of his own household. Poison was admini-
stered to him, but as it worked too slowly his skull
was fractured by a blow from a hammer. (Gregor-
ovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, III., p. 204).
I? INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
JOHNSON was born in 1709. His whole life was
clouded by his fear of death. (BoswelPs Life of John-
son, Hill's edition, ii. 106). Being told of Hume's
statement that he " was no more uneasy to think he
should not be after this life than that he had not been
before he began to exist " Johnson replied that Hume
was either a madman or a liar (iii., 295). He re-
marked once to Boswell and Mrs. Knowles that death
is a terrible thing and that no man can be sure of his
salvation. He died in 1784. His doctor, it is true,
said that before the end actually came Johnson's fears
were calmed and absorbed by his faith and his trust
in the merits of Christ; but it is evident from Bos-
well's account of his last illness that he required a lot
of " soothing " and " comforting." He was restless
and awkward and terribly concerned about the
spiritual condition of nearly every one with whom he
came into contact (BoswelPs Life, Hill, IV., 411-418).
LEO X. (POPE).
GIOVANNI DE' MEDICI became Leo X. in 1513. He
was a scholar and liberally supported poets and artists.
He excommunicated Luther and conferred on our
Henry VIII. the title " Defender of the Faith." He
is reported to have exclaimed, Quantas divitias nobis
dedit haec de Christo fabula ! (What a lot of wealth
this fable about Christ has brought us !). He certainly
delighted in the things of sense, and to his contem-
poraries appeared one of the most magnificent of
Popes. He died in 1521. According to one report he
was poisoned; according to another he contracted a
loathsome disease, a disease with which every "class,
SOME CHRISTIAN DEATH-BEDS 177
married or unmarried, clergy or laity," was then said
to be infected. (J. W. Draper, History of the Intel-
lectual Development of Europe, ii. 232). Gregor-
ovius says : " An incurable malady, exile, imprison-
ment, enemies, a conspiracy of cardinals, wars, lastly
the loss of all his nearest relations and friends
darkened the joyous days of the Pope."
MARTIN LUTHER.
LUTHER was born in 1483 and died in 1546. The
stories of his last days are interesting as an indication
of the spirit of mendacity that inspires Christians in
their charges against each other. What standard of
veracity will they observe in dealing with the death-
bed of a Voltaire? Mgr. Segur says that Luther
" died forlorn of God, blaspheming to the very end."
(Plain Talk about the Protestantism of To-day, pp.
224-6). Luther's biographer, Hartmann Grisar, the
Jesuit, tells a different story altogether. According
to him, within twenty years of the Reformer's death
a report was in circulation that he committed suicide.
"It is barely credible to us to-day what inventions
grew up in the sixteenth century, both on the Catholic
and the Protestant side, about the deaths of well-
known public men who happened to be the object of
animosity to one party or the other." (Luther, vi., pp.
382-3). This was truly Nemesis triumphant, for
Luther himself did much to pave the way for such
stories, frequently relating fearsome tales of the
deaths of Catholics or unbelievers.
178 INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
CARDINAL MANNING.
HENRY EDWARD MANNING was born in 1808 and died
in 1892. In 1840 he became Archdeacon of
Chichester, but eleven years later joined the Church of
Rome. In 1875 he was created Cardinal. One of his
utterances has become a " familiar quotation " among
" No Popery " alarmists : " The will of an imperial
race is to be bent, broken, and subdued to the Faith "
(quoted in the Quarterly Review, Vol. 126, p. 294).
For a considerable part of his life and the same is
true of Cardinal Newman he was almost obsessed
by the idea of death and the future life. On Septem-
ber 23, 1888, he wrote in his Diary : " I have but one
desire and prayer, that is to make a good end." Dr.
R. F. Horton says that as Manning drew near to this
" end " he was oppressed with an awful anxiety about
the future (England's Danger, 1899, p. 139.)
HUGH MILLER.
HUGH MILLER was born in 1802. He was a pious
member of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, but
throughout his life was interested in science and liter-
ature. From his seventeenth to his thirty-fourth
year he worked as a stonemason. The Old Red Sand-
stone (1841) and some of his other geological works
are not only remarkable from a scientific point of view,
but they are written in a clear, attractive style. In
the middle decades of the nineteenth century the
" conflict between religion and science " meant for
most practical purposes the controversy concerning the
age of the earth as estimated by the geologists. The
Testimony of the Rocks, written in 1856, is an attempt
SOME CHRISTIAN DEATH-BEDS 179
to reconcile Genesis and geology. Miller saw plainly
enough that the theologian had often made himself
" eminently ridiculous " by not restricting himself
to his proper province; but to declare the " introduc-
tion to the Scriptures " to be a " picturesque myth "
that was the rejection of the authority of revelation
altogether. Under the strain of this and other work
his brain gave way and he shot himself on December
23, 1856. The tragedy of the thing is heightened to-
day when the Genesis account of the Creation and the
Fall is so completely discredited as the result not only
of science but of historical criticism.
GEORGE TYRRELL.
GEORGE TYRRELL was born in Dublin in 1861, and
brought up in the Anglican communio<n. He soon
came to the conclusion that in regard to his religious
faith it must be " Rome or nothing," and was re-
ceived into the Roman Catholic Church in 1879. In
the following year he became a member of the Society
of Jesus. It was the question of eternal punishment
that " constituted the first chapter in the long history
of his rupture with the Society." Finally, the Jesuits
suspended him and Pius X. deprived him of the
Sacrament on the ground that he was a Modernist.
During this period of strain and stress he sometimes
yearned to return to the Anglican fold, to the Church
of Westcott and Hort. Many of TyrrelPs writings
will long retain their interest for the Freethinker. In
Essays on Faith and Immortality (1914) he criticizes
acutely some of the "arguments " for man's survival
of death.
l8o INFIDEL DEATH-BEDS
The details of Tyrrell 's last moments are related in
Chapter xxii (written by his niece, Miss M. D. Petre)
of the Autobiography and Life of George Tyrrell
(Vol. II.). In a codicil to his will, dated January i,
1909, six months before his death, Tyrrell declared
that there was 110 basis for the rumour that he made
any sort of " retractation of those Catholic principles"
which he had defended against the Vatican decrees.
During his last illness he repeated this statement.
Official Catholic burial was refused him, but the
Abbe Bremond read a funeral address a service for
which the Bishop of Southwark afterwards forbade
him to say Mass.
Printed and Published by
THE PIONEER PRESS (G. W. Foote & Co., Ltd.)
61 Farringdon Street. London, E.G. 4.
The names marked with an asterisk were not included
in previous editions.
TART
I.
X
Page
Page
Amberley, Lord ... 15
Frederick the Great... 59
Baskerville, John ... 15
Gambetta 60
Bayle, Pierre ... 16
Garibaldi 63
Bentham, Jeremy ... 17
Gendre, Isaac ... 64
Bert, Paul 19
Gibbon 64
Bolingbroke, Lord ... 21
Godwin 66
*Bradlaugh, Charles ... 22
Goethe 67
Broussais, Francois ... 25
Grote, George ... 70
Bruno, Giordano ... 26
Helvetius 71
Buckle, Henry Thomas 28
Hetherington, Henry 72
*Burton, Sir Richard F. 29
Hobbes, Thomas ... 75
Byron, Lord 31
Holyoake, Austin ... 78
Carlile, Richard ... 33
*Holyoake, George J. 80
Clifford, William K. 34
Hugo, Victor ... 81
Clootz, Anacharsis... 35
Hume, David ... 84
Collins, Anthony ... 36
*Ingersoll, Robert G. 87
Comte, Auguste ... 38
*Jefferies, Richard ... 89
Condorcet 39
* Julian the Apostate 89
*Conway, Moncure D 40
*Lessing 90
Cooper, Robert ... 41
Littr6 92
D'Alembert 42
*Lloyd, J. T 95
Danton 43
*Martin, Emma ... 96
Darwin, Charles Robert 45
Martineau, Harriet ... 97
Darwin, Erasmus ... 46
*Meredith, George ... 98
Delatnbre 47
Meslier, Jean 100
Diderot, Denis ... 48
Mill, James 101
Dolet, Etienne ... 51
Mill, John Stuart ... 102
Eliot, George ... 53
Mirabeau 104
*Ferrer, Francisco ... 54
*Ostwald, Wilhelin ... 106
*Feuerbach, Ludwig A. 55
Owen, Robert ... 107
*Foote, George William 56
Paine, Thomas ... 108
INDEX. (Continued.)
PART I. (continued).
Page
Palmer, Courtlandt... 116
Rabelais 117
Reade, Win wood ... 119
*Robertson, J. M. ... 120
Roland, Madame ... 122
Sand, George ... 123
Schiller 124
Shelley 126
*Spencer, Herbert ... 128
vSpinoza 129
Strauss
*Swinburne
*Symes, Joseph
Toland, John
Vanini
Volney
Voltaire
Watson, James
Watts, John ...
Woolston, Thomas
Page
.. 132
133
- 135
.. 136
137
139
.. 140
. 146
.. 146
.. 147
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
How the Ancients Viewed Death
Page
CHAPTER II.
The Christian View of Death
159
CHAPTER III.
The Freethinker's Attitude to Death
167
CHAPTER IV.
Some Christian Death-beds
171
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subsequent yearly subscription of five shillings.
The liability of members is limited to i, in case the
Society should ever be wound up.
The Society's affairs are managed by an elected Board of
Directors, one-third of whom retire (by ballot), each year,
but are eligible for re-election.
Friends desiring to benefit the Society are invited to make
donations, or to insert a bequest in the Society's favour in
their wills. The now historic decision of the House of Lords
in re Bowman and Others v . the Secular Society, Limited, in
1917, a verbatim report of which may be obtained from its
publishers, the Pioneer Press, or from the Secretary, makes
it quite impossible to set aside such bequests.
A Form of Bequest. The following is a sufficient form of
bequest for insertion in the wills of testators :
I give and bequeath to the Secular Society, Limited,
the sum of ^ free from Legacy Duty, and I direct
that a receipt signed by two members of the Board of
the said Society and the Secretary thereof shall be a
good discharge to my Executors for the said Legacy.
It is advisable, but not necessary, that the Secretary
should be formally notified of such bequests, as wills some-
times are lost or mislaid. A form of membership, with full
particulars, will be sent on application to the Secretary,
R. H. ROSKTTI, 62 Farringdon Street, London, E.G. 4.
A 000 108 544 8