by Susan Jacoby
To settle some theory, he would trifle with the life of any patient in his power. By the same reasoning he will justify the vivisection of animals and patients. He will say that it is better that a few animals should suffer than that one human being should die; and that it is far better that one patient should die, if through the sacrifice of that one, several may be saved.
Brain without heart is far more dangerous than heart without brain.
Have these scientific assassins discovered anything of value? They may have settled some disputes as to the action of some organ, but have they added to the useful knowledge of the race?
It is not necessary for a man to be a specialist in order to have and express his opinion as to the right or wrong of vivisection. It is not necessary to be a scientist or a naturalist to detest cruelty and love mercy. Above all the discoveries of the thinkers, above all the inventions of the ingenious, above all the victories won on fields of intellectual conflict, rise human sympathy and a sense of justice.
I know that good for the human race can never be accomplished by torture. I also know that all that has been ascertained by vivisection could have been done by the dissection of the dead. I know that all the torture has been useless. All the agony inflicted has simply hardened the hearts of the criminals, without enlightening their minds.
It may be that the human race might be physically improved if all the sickly and deformed babes were killed, and if all the paupers, liars, drunkards, thieves, villains, and vivisectionists were murdered. All this might, in a few ages, result in the production of a generation of physically perfect men and women; but what would such beings be worth,—men and women healthy and heartless, muscular and cruel—that is to say, intelligent wild beasts?
Never can I be the friend of one who vivisects his fellow-creatures. I do not wish to touch his hand.
When the angel of pity is driven from the heart; when the fountain of tears is dry,—the soul becomes a serpent crawling in the dust of the desert.
—Robert Ingersoll to Philip G. Peabody, May 27, 1890
Appendix B
Robert Ingersoll’s Eulogy for Walt
Whitman, March 30, 1892
My friends: Again, we, in the mystery of Life, are brought face to face with the mystery of Death. A great man, a great American, the most eminent citizen of this Republic, lies dead before us, and we have met to pay a tribute to his greatness and his worth.
I know he needs no words of mine. His fame is secure. He laid the foundations of it deep in the human heart and brain. He was, above all I have known, the poet of humanity, of sympathy. He was so great that he rose above the greatest that he met without arrogance, and so great that he stooped to the lowest without conscious condescension. He never claimed to be lower or greater than any of the sons of men.
He came into our generation a free, untrammeled spirit, with sympathy for all. His arm was beneath the form of the sick. He sympathized with the imprisoned and despised, and even on the brow of crime he was great enough to place the kiss of human sympathy.
One of the greatest lines in our literature is his, and the line is great enough to do honor to the greatest genius that has ever lived. He said, speaking of an outcast: “Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you.”
His charity was wide as the sky, and wherever there was human suffering, human misfortune, the sympathy of Whitman bent above it as the firmament bends above the earth.
He was built on a broad and splendid plane—ample, without appearing to have limitations—passing easily for a brother of mountains and seas and constellations; caring nothing for the little maps and charts with which timid pilots hug the shore, but giving himself freely with recklessness of genius to winds and waves and tides; caring for nothing as long as the stars were above him. He walked among men, among writers, among verbal varnishers and veneerers, among literary milliners and tailors, with the unconscious majesty of an antique god.
He was the poet of that divine democracy which gives equal rights to all the sons and daughters of men. He uttered the great American voice; uttered a song worthy of the great Republic. No man ever said more for the rights of humanity, more in favor of real democracy, of real justice. He neither scorned nor cringed, was neither tyrant nor slave. He asked only to stand the equal of his fellows beneath the great flag of nature, the blue and stars.
He was the poet of Life. It was a joy simply to breathe. He loved the clouds; he enjoyed the breath of morning, the twilight, the wind, the winding streams. He loved to look at the sea when the waves burst into whitecaps of joy. He loved the fields, the hills; he was acquainted with the trees, with birds, with all the beautiful objects of the earth. He not only saw these objects, but understood their meaning, and he used them that he might exhibit his heart to his fellow-men.
He was the poet of Love. He was not ashamed of that divine passion that has built every home in the world; that divine passion that has painted every picture and given us every real work of art; that divine passion that has made the world worth living in and has given some value to human life.
He was the poet of the natural, and taught men not to be ashamed of what is natural. He was not only the poet of democracy, not only the poet of the great Republic, but he was the poet of the human race. He was not confined to the limits of this country, but his sympathy went out over the seas to all the nations of the earth.
He stretched out his hand, and he felt himself the equal of all kings and all princes, and the brother of all men, no matter how high, no matter how low.
He has uttered more supreme words than any writer of our century, possibly of almost any other. He was, above all things, a man, and above genius, above all the snowcapped peaks of intelligence, above all art, rises the true man. Greater than all is the true man, and he walked among his fellow-men as such.
He was the poet of Death. He accepted all life and all death, and he justified all. He had the courage to meet all, and was great enough and splendid enough to harmonize all and to accept all there is of life as a divine melody …
He was absolutely true to himself. He had frankness and courage, and he was as candid as light. He was willing that all the sons of men should be absolutely acquainted with his heart and brain. He had nothing to conceal. Frank, candid, pure, serene, noble, and yet for years he was maligned and slandered, simply because he had the candor of nature. He will be understood yet, and that for which he was condemned—his frankness, his candor—will add to the glory and greatness of his fame.
He wrote a liturgy for mankind; he wrote a great and splendid psalm of life, and he gave to us the gospel of humanity—the greatest gospel that can be preached.
He was not afraid to live, not afraid to die. For many years he and death were near neighbors. He was always willing and ready to meet and greet this king called death, and for many months he sat in the deepening twilight waiting for the night, waiting for the light.
He never lost his hope. When the mists filled the valleys, he looked upon the mountain tops, and when the mountains in darkness disappeared, he fixed his gaze upon the stars.
In his brain were blessed memories of the day, and in his heart were mingled the dawn and dusk of life.
He was not afraid; he was cheerful every moment. The laughing nymphs of day did not desert him. They remained that they might clasp the hands and greet with smiles the veiled and silent sisters of the night. And when they did come, Walt Whitman stretched his hand to them. On one side were the nymphs of the day, and on the other the silent sisters of the night, and so, hand in hand, between smiles and tears, he reached his journey’s end.
From the frontier of life, from the western wave-kissed shore, he sent us messages of content and hope, and these messages seem now like strains of music blown by the “Mystic Trumpeter” from Death’s pale realm.
To-day we give back to Mother Nature, to her clasp and kiss, one of the bravest, sweetest souls that ever lived in human clay.
Charitable as the air and generou
s as Nature, he was negligent of all except to do and say what he believed he should do and say.
And I to-day thank him, not only for you but for myself, for all the brave words he has uttered. I thank him for all the great and splendid words he has said in favor of liberty, in favor of man and woman, in favor of motherhood, in favor of fathers, in favor of children, and I thank him for the brave words he has said of death.
He has lived, he has died, and death is less terrible than it was before. Thousands and millions will walk down into the “dark valley of the shadow” holding Walt Whitman by the hand. Long after we are dead the brave words he has spoken will sound like trumpets to the dying.
And so I lay this little wreath upon this great man’s tomb. I loved him living, and I love him still.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. Robert Green Ingersoll (hereafter RGI), “Individuality,” The Works of Robert Ingersoll (New York, 1900), vol. 1, p. 201.
2. RGI, “Centennial Oration,” Works, vol. 9, p. 74.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 93.
5. In C. H. Cramer, Royal Bob: The Life of Robert G. Ingersoll (New York, 1952), p. 102.
6. RGI, “The Gods,” Works, vol. 1, p. 88.
7. RGI, Works, vol. 8, p. 191.
8. In Roger E. Greeley, Ingersoll: Immortal Infidel (Buffalo, NY, 1977), p. 160.
9. Mason City Republican, June 11, 1885, cited in Cramer, Royal Bob, p. 218.
10. RGI, “Some Mistakes of Moses,” Works, vol. 2, pp. 130–131.
11. RGI, Works, vol. 8, p. 393.
12. Ibid., pp. 394–395.
13. Philadelphia Times, September 25, 1885.
14. Theodore Roosevelt, Gouverneur Morris (Oyster Bay, NY, 1975), p. 174.
15. RGI to John Ingersoll, August 1, 1891, quoted in Orvin Larson, American Infidel: Robert G. Ingersoll (New York, 1962), p. 195.
16. Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday (New York, 1959), pp. 48–49.
17. New York Times, July 22, 1899.
18. Edgar W. Howe, The Atchison-Daily Globe, July 21, 1899, quoted in Roger Greeley, Ingersoll: Immortal Infidel, p. 158.
CHAPTER I
The Making of an Iconoclast
1. Edward G. Smith, The Life & Reminiscences of Robert Green Ingersoll (New York, 1904), cited in C. H. Cramer, Royal Bob, p. 20.
2. Cameron Rogers, Colonel Bob Ingersoll: A Biographical Narrative of the Great American Orator and Agnostic (New York, 1927), p. 2.
3. Larson, American Infidel, p. 15.
4. RGI, “Why I Am an Agnostic,” Works, vol. 4, p. 27.
5. Ibid., p. 25.
6. Ibid, p. 24.
7. RGI, letter to Utica Herald, November 5, 1877, in Frank Smith, Robert G. Ingersoll: A Life (Buffalo, NY, 1990), p. 19.
8. RGI, “On the Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child,” Works, vol. 1, pp. 377–379.
9. RGI, Works, vol. 12, p. 172.
10. Ibid., pp. 172–173.
11. Quoted in Larson, American Infidel, p. 46.
12. RGI to Ebon Clark Ingersoll, April 24, 1862, Ingersoll Papers, Illinois State Historical Library.
13. Affidavit by Lt. Col. Meek, Truth Seeker, August 9, 1924, cited in Cramer, Royal Bob, p. 54.
14. RGI, “An Address to the Colored People,” Works, vol. 9, p. 7.
15. Ibid., p. 6.
16. RGI, Works, vol. 5, p. 302.
17. Ibid., pp. 302–303.
CHAPTER II
The Political Insider and the Religious Outsider
1. RGI, “The Gods,” Works, vol. 1, p. 9.
2. RGI, “Centennial Oration,” Works, vol. 9, p. 55.
3. Chicago Times, June 16, 1876.
4. A History and Criticism of American Public Address, ed. William Norwood Brigance (New York, 1943), pp. 370–371.
5. Mark Twain, “The Chicago G.A.R. Festival,” in Autobiography of Mark Twain, ed. Harriet Elinor Smith (Berkeley, CA, 2011), vol. 1, p. 69.
6. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ, 1953), vol. 5, pp. 419–420.
7. RGI to Clint Farrell, November 9, 1884.
8. Commonwealth, Topeka, Kansas, November 21, 1884.
9. New York Tribune, April 4, 1885.
10. New York Sun, August 26, 1876.
11. Harry Thurston Peck, “What Is Good English?” and Other Essays (New York, 1899), p. 236.
12. New York Times, May 24, 1880.
13. In George E. Macdonald, Fifty Years of Freethought (New York, 1929), vol. 2, pp. 123–124.
14. Sidney Warren, American Freethought, 1860–1914 (New York, 1943), pp. 94–95.
15. RGI, “A Tribute to Philo D. Beckwith,” Works, vol. 12, pp. 482–483.
16. RGI, “A Tribute to Walt Whitman,” Works, vol. 12, p. 476.
17. Dowagiac Times, January 19, 1893.
CHAPTER III
Champion of Science
1. RGI, “Superstition,” Works, vol. 4, pp. 325–326.
2. New York Times, September 23, 1876.
3. Ibid.
4. RGI, “The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child,” Works, vol. 1, pp. 392–395.
5. “Apostate’s Creed,” Christian Worker’s Magazine, in Cramer, Royal Bob, p. 128.
6. RGI, “The Ghosts,” Works, vol. 1, p. 288.
7. RGI, “The Gods,” Works, vol. 1, pp. 44–45.
8. RGI, “Orthodoxy,” Works, vol. 2, p. 259.
9. Herman E. Kittredge, Ingersoll: A Biographical Appreciation (New York, 1911).
10. Hamlin Garland, Roadside Meetings (New York, 1930), p. 44.
11. Ibid., p. 47.
12. “Interview with Col. Robert Ingersoll,” Truth Seeker, September 5, 1885.
13. Ibid.
14. RGI, “A Tribute to Henry Ward Beecher,” Works, vol. 12, pp. 419, 423–424.
15. Boston Investigator, July 20, 1880.
CHAPTER IV
The Humanistic Freethinker
1. Proceedings of the National Convention to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Held in Cincinnati, January 31 and February 1, 1872 (Philadelphia, 1872), pp. viii–x, in Morton Borden, Jews, Turks, and Infidels (Chapel Hill, NC, 1984), p. 69.
2. Chicago Tribune, August 27, 1900, in Cramer, Royal Bob, p. 232.
3. RGI, “A Lay Sermon,” Works, vol. 4, p. 223.
4. RGI, “Some Interrogation Points,” Works, vol. 11, pp. 185–186.
5. RGI, “Eight Hours Must Come,” Works, vol. 11, pp. 451–453.
6. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Modern Library edition combined with On the Origin of Species (New York, 1948), pp. 500–501.
7. Henry Ward Beecher, “Communism Denounced,” New York Times, July 30, 1877.
8. RGI, “Civil Rights,” Works, vol. 11, p. 2.
9. National Republican, Washington, DC, October 17, 1883.
10. “Speech to the ‘Opening Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, January 19 and 20, 1869,’” Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
11. RGI, “Eight Hours Must Come,” p. 487.
12. RGI, “Should the Chinese Be Excluded?” North American Review, July 1893.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. RGI, “What Is Religion?” Works, vol. 4, p. 505.
16. RGI, Preface to Helen Hamilton Gardener, Men, Women, and Gods, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks30207.
17. “Woman’s Right to Divorce,” New York World, 1988, Works, vol. 8, p. 385.
18. Ingersoll, “Preface to ‘For Her Daily Bread,’” Works, vol. 12, p. 49.
19. RGI, Preface, Men, Women, and Gods.
20. RGI, “The Liberty of Man, Woman, and Child,” Works, vol. 1, p. 371.
21. “Working Girls,” New York World, December 2, 1888.
22. Ibid.
23. RGI, “Secular Thought,” August 25, 1898, Works, vol. 8, p. 391.
24. RGI, “Secularism,” Works, vol. 11, p. 405.
25. Ibid., p
. 406.
26. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (New York, 1864), p. 415.
CHAPTER V
Church and State
1. RGI, “Address to the Jury in the Trial of C. B. Reynolds,” Works, vol. 11, p. 109.
2. Ibid., p. 108.
3. Ibid., p. 117.
4. New York Times, May 20, 1887.
5. D. McAllister, “Testimonies to the Religious Defect of the Constitution” (Philadelphia, 1874), quoted in Borden, Jews, Turks, and Infidels, p. 41.
6. RGI, “God in the Constitution,” Works, vol. 11, pp. 124–125.
7. RGI, “Thomas Paine,” Works, vol. 1, p. 128.
8. Ibid., p. 134.
9. Ibid., p. 133.
10. Ibid., p. 153.
11. Ibid., p. 164.
12. Moncure Daniel Conway, The Life of Thomas Paine (New York, 1892), vol. 2, p. 428.
13. RGI, “Thomas Paine,” North American Review, August 1892.
14. See Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York, 2006), pp. 9–11.
15. RGI, “Some Mistakes of Moses,” Works, vol. 2, p. 31.
16. Ibid., p. 32.
17. RGI, “Our Schools,” Works, vol. 11, pp. 471–472.