Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  It was Robert G. Ingersoll’s opinion that there is rather too little than too much suicide in the world — that people are so cowardly as to live on long after endurance has ceased to be a virtue. This view is but a return to the wisdom of the ancients, in whose splendid civilization suicide had as honorable place as any other courageous, reasonable and unselfish act. Antony, Brutus, Cato, Seneca — these were not of the kind of men to do deeds of cowardice and folly. The smug, self-righteous modern way of looking upon the act as that of a craven or a lunatic is the creation of priests, Philistines and women. If courage is manifest in endurance of profitless discomfort it is cowardice to warm oneself when cold, to cure oneself when ill, to drive away mosquitoes, to go in when it rains. The “pursuit of happiness,” then, is not an “inalienable right,” for that implies avoidance of pain. No principle is involved in this matter; suicide is justifiable or not, according to circumstances; each case is to be considered on its merits and he having the act under advisement is sole judge. To his decision, made with whatever light he may chance to have, all honest minds will bow. The appellant has no court to which to take his appeal. Nowhere is a jurisdiction so comprehensive as to embrace the right of condemning the wretched to life.

  Suicide is always courageous. We call it courage in a soldier merely to face death — say to lead a forlorn hope — although he has a chance of life and a certainty of “glory.” But the suicide does more than face death; he incurs it, and with a certainty, not of glory, but of reproach. If that is not courage we must reform our vocabulary.

  True, there may be a higher courage in living than in dying — a moral courage greater than physical. The courage of the suicide, like that of the pirate, is not incompatible with a selfish disregard of the rights and interests of others — a cruel recreancy to duty and decency. I have been asked: “Do you not think it cowardly when a man leaves his family unprovided for, to end his life, because he is dissatisfied with life in general?” No, I do not; I think it selfish and cruel. Is not that enough to say of it? Must we distort words from their true meaning in order more effectually to damn the act and cover its author with a greater infamy? A word means something; despite the maunderings of the lexicographers, it does not mean whatever you want it to mean. “Cowardice” means the fear of danger, not the shirking of duty. The writer who allows himself as much liberty in the use of words as he is allowed by the dictionary-maker and by popular consent is a bad writer. He can make no impression on his reader, and would do better service at the ribbon-counter.

  The ethics of suicide is not a simple matter; one can not lay down laws of universal application, but each case is to be judged, if judged at all, with a full knowledge of all the circumstances, including the mental and moral make-up of the person taking his own life — an impossible qualification for judgment. One’s time, race and religion have much to do with it. Some people, like the ancient Romans and the modern Japanese, have considered suicide in certain circumstances honorable and obligatory; among ourselves it is held in disfavor. A man of sense will not give much attention to considerations of that kind, excepting in so far as they affect others, but in judging weak offenders they are to be taken into the account. Speaking generally, then, I should say that in our time and country the following persons (and some others) are justified in removing themselves, and that to some of them it is a duty:

  One afflicted with a painful or loathsome and incurable disease.

  One who is a heavy burden to his friends, with no prospect of their relief.

  One threatened with permanent insanity.

  One irreclaimably addicted to drunkenness or some similarly destructive or offensive habit.

  One without friends, property, employment or hope.

  One who has disgraced himself.

  Why do we honor the valiant soldier, sailor, fireman? For obedience to duty? Not at all; that alone — without the peril — seldom elicits remark, never evokes enthusiasm. It is because he faced without flinching the risk of that supreme disaster — or what we feel to be such — death. But look you: the soldier braves the danger of death; the suicide braves death itself! The leader of the forlorn hope may not be struck. The sailor who voluntarily goes down with his ship may be picked up or cast ashore. It is not certain that the wall will topple until the fireman shall have descended with his precious burden. But the suicide — his is the foeman that never missed a mark, his the sea that gives nothing back; the wall that he mounts bears no man’s weight And his, at the end of it all, is the dishonored grave where the wild ass of public opinion

  “Stamps o’er his head but can not break his sleep.”

  THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY

  The Devil’s Dictionary is Ambrose Bierce’s most famous book, though it took many years to achieve that status and features a rather convoluted publication history. While editing the “Town Crier” page of the News Letter in San Francisco during the 1860’s, Bierce suggested the idea of a “Comic Dictionary.” In the 1870’s he wrote a series of comic definitions for 48 words, which he entitled The Demon’s Dictionary. Beginning in 1881, as editor-in-chief of a weekly magazine, The Wasp, Bierce wrote numerous installments of The Devil’s Dictionary.

  Later that decade, he wrote a series of words for what he called The Cynic’s Dictionary. In 1906, Doubleday, Page and Company published Bierce’s collection, The Cynic’s Word Book, which contained definitions to 500 words, from A to L. Five years later, Volume Seven of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce added 500 M to Z words under Bierce’s preferred title, The Devil’s Dictionary. Frederic Tabor Cooper in the July 1911 issue of The Bookman described this “greatly amplified edition” as being a “curiously caustic piece of irony.” Vanity Fair of London praised Bierce as among “the front rank of American critics, if indeed he does not head them all,” and then went on to say, “If you have not read Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary you have a matchless pleasure before you.”

  The 1906 edition published by Doubleday, Page and Company

  A later edition

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Preface

  A

  B

  C

  D

  E

  F

  G

  H

  I

  J

  K

  L

  M

  N

  O

  P

  Q

  R

  S

  T

  U

  V

  W

  X

  Y

  Z

  Author’s Preface

  The Devil’s Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. In that year a large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic’s Word Book, a name which the author had not the power to reject or happiness to approve. To quote the publishers of the present work:

  “This more reverent title had previously been forced upon him by the religious scruples of the last newspaper in which a part of the work had appeared, with the natural consequence that when it came out in covers the country already had been flooded by its imitators with a score of ‘cynic’ books — The Cynic’s This, The Cynic’s That, and The Cynic’s t’Other. Most of these books were merely stupid, though some of them added the distinction of silliness. Among them, they brought the word ‘cynic’ into disfavor so deep that any book bearing it was discredited in advance of publication.”

  Meantime, too, some of the enterprising humorists of the country had helped themselves to such parts of the work as served their needs, and many of its definitions, anecdotes, phrases and so forth, had become more or less current in popular speech. This explanation is made, not with any pride of priority in trifles, but in simple denial of possible charges of plagiarism, which is no trifle. In merely resuming his own the author hopes to be held guiltless by those to whom the work is addressed — enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense
to sentiment, wit to humor and clean English to slang.

  A conspicuous, and it is hoped not unpleasant, feature of the book is its abundant illustrative quotations from eminent poets, chief of whom is that learned and ingenius cleric, Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J., whose lines bear his initials. To Father Jape’s kindly encouragement and assistance the author of the prose text is greatly indebted.

  A.B.

  A

  ABASEMENT, n. A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.

  ABATIS, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.

  ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne.

  Poor Isabella’s Dead, whose abdication

  Set all tongues wagging in the Spanish nation.

  For that performance ‘twere unfair to scold her:

  She wisely left a throne too hot to hold her.

  To History she’ll be no royal riddle —

  Merely a plain parched pea that jumped the griddle.

  –G.J.

  ABDOMEN, n. The temple of the god Stomach, in whose worship, with sacrificial rights, all true men engage. From women this ancient faith commands but a stammering assent. They sometimes minister at the altar in a half-hearted and ineffective way, but true reverence for the one deity that men really adore they know not. If woman had a free hand in the world’s marketing the race would become graminivorous.

  ABILITY, n. The natural equipment to accomplish some small part of the meaner ambitions distinguishing able men from dead ones. In the last analysis ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity. Perhaps, however, this impressive quality is rightly appraised; it is no easy task to be solemn.

  ABNORMAL, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.

  ABORIGINIES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

  ABRACADABRA.

  By Abracadabra we signify

  An infinite number of things.

  ‘Tis the answer to What? and How? and Why?

  And Whence? and Whither? — a word whereby

  The Truth (with the comfort it brings)

  Is open to all who grope in night,

  Crying for Wisdom’s holy light.

  Whether the word is a verb or a noun

  Is knowledge beyond my reach.

  I only know that ‘tis handed down.

  From sage to sage,

  From age to age —

  An immortal part of speech!

  Of an ancient man the tale is told

  That he lived to be ten centuries old,

  In a cave on a mountain side.

  (True, he finally died.)

  The fame of his wisdom filled the land,

  For his head was bald, and you’ll understand

  His beard was long and white

  And his eyes uncommonly bright.

  Philosophers gathered from far and near

  To sit at his feet and hear and hear,

  Though he never was heard

  To utter a word

  But “Abracadabra, abracadab,

  Abracada, abracad,

  Abraca, abrac, abra, ab!”

  ‘Twas all he had,

  ‘Twas all they wanted to hear, and each

  Made copious notes of the mystical speech,

  Which they published next —

  A trickle of text

  In the meadow of commentary.

  Mighty big books were these,

  In a number, as leaves of trees;

  In learning, remarkably — very!

  He’s dead,

  As I said,

  And the books of the sages have perished,

  But his wisdom is sacredly cherished.

  In Abracadabra it solemnly rings,

  Like an ancient bell that forever swings.

  O, I love to hear

  That word make clear

  Humanity’s General Sense of Things.

  –Jamrach Holobom

  ABRIDGE, v.t. To shorten.

  When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

  Oliver Cromwell

  ABRUPT, adj. Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon~shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author’s ideas that they were “concatenated without abruption.”

  ABSCOND, v.i. To “move in a mysterious way,” commonly with the property of another.

  Spring beckons! All things to the call respond;

  The trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.

  –Phela Orm

  ABSENT, adj. Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of another.

  To men a man is but a mind. Who cares

  What face he carries or what form he wears?

  But woman’s body is the woman. O,

  Stay thou, my sweetheart, and do never go,

  But heed the warning words the sage hath said:

  A woman absent is a woman dead.

  –Jogo Tyree

  ABSENTEE, n. A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.

  ABSOLUTE, adj. Independent, irresponsible. An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign’s power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.

  ABSTAINER, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

  Said a man to a crapulent youth: “I thought

  You a total abstainer, my son.”

  “So I am, so I am,” said the scapegrace caught —

  “But not, sir, a bigoted one.”

  –G.J.

  ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.

  ACADEME, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

  ACADEMY, n. [from ACADEME] A modern school where football is taught.

  ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.

  ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney’s position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.

  ACCORD, n. Harmony.

  ACCORDION, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.

  ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.

  “My accountability, bear in mind,”

  Said the Grand Vizier: “Yes, yes,”

  Said the Shah: “I do—’tis the only kind

  Of ability you possess.”

  –Joram Tate

  ACCUSE, v.t. To affirm another’s guilt or unworth; most commonly as a justification of ourselves for having wronged him.

  ACEPHALOUS, adj. In the surprising condition of the Crusader who absently pulled at his forelock some hours after a Saracen scimitar had, unconsciously to him, passed through his neck, as related by de Joinville.

 
; ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.

  ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgement of one another’s faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.

  ACQUAINTANCE, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.

  ACTUALLY, adv. Perhaps; possibly.

  ADAGE, n. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.

  ADAMANT, n. A mineral frequently found beneath a corset. Soluble in solicitate of gold.

  ADDER, n. A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living.

  ADHERENT, n. A follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get.

  ADMINISTRATION, n. An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. A man of straw, proof against bad-egging and dead-catting.

  ADMIRAL, n. That part of a war-ship which does the talking while the figure-head does the thinking.

  ADMIRATION, n. Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.

  ADMONITION, n. Gentle reproof, as with a meat-axe. Friendly warning.

  Consigned by way of admonition,

  His soul forever to perdition.

  –Judibras

  ADORE, v.t. To venerate expectantly.

  ADVICE, n. The smallest current coin.

  “The man was in such deep distress,”