The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 17, 1904, Page 14

THE 'SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. p 03, by Thomas Pitch Robert G. Ingersoll out of this life he was the greatest English speaking orator in the land. The Christian world is of the opinion that he misused his great powers, but few will deny him their possession. He was full of virile, aggressive, original thoughts, which he clothed in graphic, forceful and beautiful language. He was an artist in choosing, grouping &nd shading words. He was an ad- mirable elocutionist and & great actor. He knew how to rub the smell of the mp from a written speech and how to memorize it so perfectly as to divest it of all appearance of being the off- spring of preparation. He knew how to mingle pathos with humor, philoso- phy with passion and analytical logic with stinging invective. The art of which he was a great mas. ter is passing away. There are few, if &ny, public speakers in this country to-day who hold the same rank in pub. lic estimation and influence as orators that was held by Clay and Webster and Prentiss and Phillips and Sumner and Yancey and Beecher and Chapin and Baker and Starr-King in the times in which they lived. This is due in part to the fact that *be great, burning, living issues of forty years ago have passed away, and forests grow above the graves of those who perished amid the shock of arms in order to secure freedom to the slave and life to the nation. An eloquent speech is as much the child of the oc- casion as of the orator, and the eco- nomic questions of this day call rather for logical reasoning than for passion- ate appeal. The inexorable laws of de- mand and supply affect oratory as well as more material commodities. C. old the ambitious youth studied to become an“rator, in the hope that by his elo- quence he might achieve a seat in the legislative hall. Now he plots to be- come a millionaire, for he knows full well that the surest way to obtain the toga is mot to earn it by cuitivating mental powers to be devoted to public service, but to buy it from the bosses who lead the ward heelers—those mod- - ern Pretorian Guards who sell Senater- ships as th totypes soid the im- perial purple—for so much gold counted down upon the drumheads. The press has also been a potent in- strumentality in procuring the passing of the orator, for people do not care to be jostled in a crowd when they can read the speeches next morning while comfortably seated at the breakfast table. Whatever the reason may be the fact is patent that the voices which of old could stir the blood of listeners as with the blare of trumpets and tingle their eyelids to tears have gone into the great sllence, and their succeasors come not, for commercialism has discouraged the orator and driven him from the path along which high ambition once pointed the way to fame. ir pr Ingersoll held the stage longer than any of his compeers, because he left the beaten path and discussed the prob- lem of the ages fearlessly and elo- quently from his own point of view. He was not—as has sometimes been said—"an infidel for revenue only.” He was an honest apostie of the gospel of annihilation. He believed in eternal death as sincerely as Calvin belleved in eternal damnation, and he roasted orthodoxy in speech as relentlessly as Calvin roasted Servetus at the stake. Ingersoll believed that the dying in- fant passed on forever—never to live again, save in the grasses and the flow- ers. Calvin believed that God snatched the smiling child from its mcthers arms only to hurl its predestined baby soul into an abyss of unendirg torture. Ingersoll denied the existence of a personal god, or of a prearranged fate for man. Calvin asserted that there was an individual creator, whose de- light was to call into existence millions of eouls, whom in the hour of their birth he foredoomed to eternal flames. Both Calvin and Ingersoll were honest in their beliefs and both were wrong, Calvinism bhas not helped Christian- ity. Our human sense of justice is shocked by the doctrine of salvation by selection of a few and eternal torture of the many. The late Benjamin F. Butler once re- lated in my hearing an incident of his student life at an orthodox college. The rules required every scholar to at- tend upon divine service three times every Sunday. “One Monday morn- ing,” said Butler, “I sent a letter to the president of the college, requesting to be exempted from compliance with this rule. I recalled the fact to the president that in his sermon of the day before he had stated that probably not more than one soul in twenty would be elected for salvation; that the other nineteen, in order to illustrate the glory of God, must burn forever, and that their sufferings would be greater in proportion as their opportunities while on earth for religious insiruction ‘were larger. I reminded the president ~ that the proportion of one to nineteen would not only exclude al] the students from salvation, but that even some of the professors would be placed on the fuel pile. I said that I could not hope to be preferred to a college professor, and since I had to go to hell anyhow I did not wish, on account of having listened to three sermons a week while on earth, to be accorded hereafter a pit ticket near the boiler. I therefore respectfully requested to be’ excused from further attendance at chapel.” “Did the president excuse you, gen- eral?” queried a listener. “He did,” was Butler's reply. “He excused me not only from further at- tendance. at church, but from further attendance at that college.” The principle of evolution does not sustain the doctrine of Ingersoll and cthers that the life of a man ceases with the life of his body, for if man has been evolved from lower forms of life, who shall say that a higher form of life may not be evolved from man? The invertebrate dics and the fish ap- pears; the fish perishes and the am- phiblous antmal appears; he gives way to the reptile, who the mammal, and from the mammal is developed man. Eut why stop here? The materialist tells us that our belief in a future existence is born of our vanity; that we consider ourselves of so much consequence that one life is not enough for us. Is it not greater vanity for man to assume that he is g0 perfect that natures great process of evolution' must stop with him? The materialist says “Angels? What do vou want with angels? A God? What do you want with a*God? A higher order of bting than we?" It strikes me, my Christian friend, that you are rath- er hard to satisfy. It strikes me that nature has done her level best right here. Look at him! The insect! Crawling over the surface of this particular atom of the universe which we call the earth and complacently insisting that the vast planetary systems which daily born nto space are so many chemieal experiments for his delectation and that the nighkl_v round of stars is a heavenly circus for his amusemert. The worm, wriggling upon the ground, un- able to live but in one element of his little world. The wiid goosec, that can live in three elements, is his physical supczlnr; any dog can cutrun him and any flea can outjump him. He is un- able even to gaze at the embers in ether without blinking, .and vyet he fancies that nature is so enamored of him as to cease all further efforts at development; that the acme has been reached inhim; that he is perched upon the pinnacle of creation, when in truth he is but one link in the endless chain which stretches out over the purple paths of space frcm the depths of night to the home of the singing stars. is sucdecded by’ Because our mortal senses cannot perceive the beings evolved from us and into which we merge, shall we therefore say that there are no such beings? Can you see the wind, which sometimes whirls forests and villages in demon waltzes to the music of the shaking hills? Can you see (he elec- trical force which saturates earth amd air when a copper wire is drpp- ped into sulphuric acid? Does the fish in the sea know that there are animals who walk the earth? Did anybody ever believe the humorist's story of the educated oyster who rec- ognized his master’s whistle and re- sponded to his caress? If man is the offspring of inferior life, why shall he not be in turn the parent of superior life? The invis- ible body that dwells within and rules this physical body, and goes out of it at death: the electric pattern on which the bionlasms weave nerve and muscle and vein and bone and cuticle —the astral body of the Buddhist, the spiritual body of which Paul speaks, has indeed no form that the physical eye can see and no substance that th: an seize. But why may the wunseen fingers of the spiritual body control visible mat- ter even as the unseen fingers of the not electric magnet wrest from the un- seen grasp of the attraction of gravi- tation the po: ion of an iron rod? Because in the development below man memory does not survive dissolu- tion of the physical form it does not follow that such will be the case with man. Because we can not recollect when we ‘were oysters or apes it is not certain that our sublimer essences — i l : By Heith Gordon. — (Copyright, 1804, by T. C. McClure.) HE saffron radiance of the electric lights, that bloomed as yel- low rosebuds on the walls, flooded the balcony. Here and there a lamp with a red shade glowed like a carbuncle. From the palmroom be- low the aroma of black coffee greeted the nostrils delicately. One of the musicians trailed his hand over the keys of the piano and at the sound the violinists adjusted their in- struments with affectionate care. The men at the bass viol, ’cello and flute stood at attention and in another mo- ment the music began again. It seemed to roll through the place in waves, the thin edges of which went curling through the open doors and out into the darkness of the street, where the passers-by slackened their steps to listen. The half dozen persons who sat in the balcony listening succumbed even more completely to its charm. “Lovers—lovers everywhere!” mur- mured Agnes Jennings mirthfully, as her gaze wandered idly over the scene before her. Her companion’s answering smile was somewhat abstracted. While she 'had been watching the others he had been watching her. It was a habit he had acquired, and it was particular- ly in moments like this, when her head was thrown back against the chalr, her eyes were touched with dreaminess and the shadowy smile was quivering on her lips. There were, indeed, two absorbed couples near them, and Richardson obediently pretended to be interested in them. Of the older pair, the man was of the stout, flushed, prosperous type 80 common in our cities. “I'm as good as you are” was written in every line of his face. But as he gazed at the woman beside him, who was oppressively pink of cheek, bright of eye and black of hair— you saw that he made one exception. For the moment he was an idealist and she was his ideal! In some clumsy, speechless way he showed that he felt that he wasn't 8o good as she—that he aspired—that he loved! “He has forgotten that he’s the suc- cessful Tim O'Donohue,” remarked Richardson laughingly. “He has for- gotten how he started with a pick-ax and spade and Wow wears a diamond in his shirt front—he has forgotten every- thing but her.” He finished the sentence as if he were speaking to himself, and his compan- jon paid him the tribute of a lingering glance in which a question mark was barely perceptible. Then she returned to her derisive contemplation of the lovers once more. “They certainly are naive,” was her next comment, as with a droll smile she watched the other couple—a slen- der girl with sweet blue eyes and a lordly youth with & reassuring breadth of shoulder and crisp dark hair. The blue eyes were gazing up at him as if he were a godling, as in fact he looked. “The cunning ..irgs!” ejaculated Miss Jennings softly, as the youth's hand gently touched the girl's as it lay on the arm of the chair. “S-h-h, don’t move!” she cautioned, as Richardson shifted his position to get a ‘better glance of them. “You'll attract thelr attention, and then they will sit up stiff and straight and talk of the weath- Apparently they were oblivious to the people about them as well as to the laughing scrutiny turned upon them, as they sat gazing blissfully into each oth- er's eyes. “Now, what do you suppose they see there?” drawled Richardson, going back to t{ls interrupted contemplation of Agnes’ profile. She laughed lightly. “Everything floating in a rose colored mist. Nothing but joy, joy, joy! In- visible music—and always themselves together and happy,” she hazarded. “It's a bit cruel to think how different it will really be, isn't it?” As she turned toward him with a look grown pensive Richardson was filled with a sudden optimism. “It may come true. You can’t tell!” There was something vaguely sug- gestive in his tone, and Miss Jennings looked again. She was half inclined to believe—but no! The music stopped. The youth’s dark head was bent toward the girl, and he was murmuring to her in low, muffled tones. The man whos. appearance suggested contracts shrewdl: and prof- itably carried through was making a palpable effort to say something that was determined not to be said. He shifted In his chair, and the red of his face grew darker, while his companion chatted composedly —too composedly, Richardson thought, as his speculative glance came home to the lady at his side. “Isn’t it odd?” said she, breaking the silence, “that they are so unconscious? They don’t seem to notice us—to think that perhaps we are watching them. Fancy forgetting everything like that!"” Her listener’s eyes seemed to be re- duced to mere points. He felt oddly nettled at her words, and as quick as a flash decided to make an experiment. ‘Was she really so cold and impersonal as she seemed? Well, it was decreed that he should find out some time, and this was perhaps as good a time as any. “My dear girl,” he began in a fath- erly tone, “it is only in the shallows that one thinks of the opinion of the public. Don't you know that in the real moments of life—the moments that mean something—one cares as lit- tle about the public as about the leaves on the trees? Don't you know that it must be so?” She opened her lips to protest, but he gave her no chance to speak. “Now put yourself in the place of these people here. Suppose,” he man- aged to fling a word of teasing sar- casm into his words, “suppose, for in- stance, that I—here and now—should tell you that I love you; that I've loved you since the day we met for the first time; that I cannot and will not live without you; that—-" He stopped abruptly in order to take a fresh start. Something—urgent, earnest, appealing—had crowded the mockery out of his voice. It had the ring of appeal. It sounded far too much In earnest. He called the mock- ery to his ald once more and resumed: “What if T should tell you that I would rather have your love than the power of a king or the wealth of a Croesus? That I should count it fine and wonderful beyond all imagining, a moment to die for—if I could read in your eyes that you love me, that some day you will be my wife.” ' His voice had become provokingly husky. It was a full second before he eéo:’ldrwv-rhhvemotllntru.l- léry. “Suppose than I should say all this and much more that I can think of to you, here and now, to the accompani- ment of this bewitching musle, could *you sit and listen unmoved? Wouldn’t there be some change in your expres- sion—and in mine—by which a curious person who was looking on might dis- cover what all the world loves? And— would we care very much?” He was leaning forward, his ' strong, muscular hands clasped loosely before him, a whimsical smile on his lips. ‘With a thrill of triumph he saw that she wag not listening unmoved even to the supposition. But she kept a bold front. “Do I seem to be melting?” she in- quired with a touch of deflance which comported ill with the tumultuous beating/of her heart and a most an- noying feeling of tremulousness about the lips. It was too absurd. But at least he should not know how embar- rassed she was. Then-he proceeded calmly with his odious suppositions. “But that was not all. Suppose that I should tell you that though I love you as a man can love but once, though you are to me the scent of the roses, the sweetness of music, the dear- est joy of life, I am honor bound to another. Would there be anything to show that you cared?” Slowly the color faded from her face. She realized it, but she could not help it, for she feit still and cold and mo- tionless. Then, almost piteously, her eyes sought his. Triumph and glad- ness were visible there. His look was a caress. The place—the music—the people momentarily vanished from her consciousness. She felt as if they were alone in the world—a fuller, happler world than she had even before dreamed of. His low, pleased, tantalizing laugh recalled her. Her cheeks went scar- let and her eyes blazed. “Agnes! Agnes!” he admonished, us- ing her first name without a sign of apology, precisely as if he intended using it always fn the future. “Beware, my dear girl. If those others,” nod- ding toward the couples whom she had so lately criticized, “were less absorbed in their own affairs I am afrald they would be justified in thinking that we are having a lovers’ quarrel.” “You wretch,” she said at last. It really seemed the only thing to do—to smile and make the best of it. Then her glance strayed to the others. It ‘was a trifie more sympathetic than be- fore. O’'Donohue, as they had named him, sat silent, uncomfortable—happy. The godling and the blue-eyed girl were talking, but were perhaps saying more with their eyes than with their lips. “Might I have the honor of your at- tention?” pleaded Richardson’s volce meekly. She turned toward himj trying hard to look serious, but the corners of her mouth wavered. “‘Suppose,” the voice was a bit breath- less, “‘suppose I were to tell you that the first part was true—terribly true— the part about my caring for you?” he questioned. “The rest. of course, was nonsense.” Little waves of color swept over her face and disappeared in the duskiness of her hair. She gave him one quick glance and her lids covered her eyes and shut out their message. In the convenient shadow of the chair his big brown hand closed over hers with a touch—gentle, firm, supreme. There were three pairs of lovers—but alas! no audjence. will not recollect when they were men. Unless conditions are similar and im- mutable {t cannot be certainly sald how far any existence may remember its previous existence, and the law of evolution is the law of changs. No message has ever been brought from the realms of ether saying that our diviner selves leave their memories at the portals of the tomb, and it may well be claimed that man is that link In the chain of existence where the ex- periences of the previous life pass the ordeal of physical dissolution and ac- companies the new life into its new con- ditions; that man is that link in the chain of existences where the mental life, the spiritual life, the conscious- ness of existence leaves its envelopment, its body, its late habitation to dissolve into gases the while it sails wander- ing but not forgetting into the dawn. Surely there is no conflict between science and religion with respect to the after life, but rightly considered each fits the other closely and harmoniously and it really requires less credulity to belleve that we shall live consclously hereafter than to believe we have lived consciously heretofore. It is the vexed and disappointed spirit that accepts the doctrine of annihila- tion. It is the man that “fears his /fate too much” and who knows “that his deserts are small” who lays hold on annihilation. It is the sensualist ‘who seeks for his gospel In the puerili- ties of science and finds nothing that can satisfy at last. ‘When a man dies we are able to re- produce his life and actions through the p! s of mental reckoning, which we call memory. Can it be logically claimed that the originating power goes into nothingness? 1Is it in the economy of the universe that any power is irre- trievably lost? Does not every force find form and energy in some of the processes of nature and its laws? If it be true that God geometrizes, is it not also true’ that he dips his pen in infinitude to write the answer? Teke the human faculties and at- tributes and find me in all the lexicons of bioplasm a formula to account for their origin or define their essence. ‘What is hope? It is the rustle of the wings of futurity against the walls of our prison house. What is fear? It is only a retroactive condition without, which hope should beat its wings against futile air. What is memory? It is a picture gallery of the brain, the photographs in which are lodized by “the light that never shone on sea or shore,” and sensitized by the essential bromides of thought and feeling arising from the soul of man. What is con- sciousness? It is the pulse of God— the telephone answering back the story of the eternities. What is consclence? It is a tollhouse on the way to justi- fication, a reminder that we are an- swerable to a law. What is will? It is a helmsman self-constituted who yet steers with his eye forever fixed on the polar star of destiny. What are intuitions? And are not aspirations, and intul- tions, and will, and consclence, and consciousness, and memory, and hope, and fear, each as real and as answer- able as a mathematical problem? And yet which of these conditions—the most common to humanity—finds its type or its predicate In matter? Can you put a padlock upon hope? or re- solve fear by the use of acids? Can you tie up in a pocket handkerchief the promises and the prophecies and the presentiments, which at one time or an- other fall into every life? Is there no longer any Ingersoll? Has that mighty intellect, which fed upon both the visible and the occult, which gathered wisdom alike from the leaves of books and the lips of humanity, which drew inspiration from the wash of seas, and the blaze of suns, and the glitter of stars, which voiced its knowl- edge with a sorcery that swayed the minds and souls of men, and carried them from earth to heaven with the passion of its entrancing music—is that mighty intellect no more? Has it gone out like the flame of a candle? Had it no existence separate from the once pulsing but now vanished mass of fibers and nerves and veins which con- tained it? Often and again in the olden golden days Ingersoll and I have discussed the hereafter, and though we differed ut- terly we were always friends. In the midst of ologies and isms [ am stin dwelling—in the darkness, still groping and hoping for the light, whils he has learned it all. Maybe he has now as- certained that his earthly vision was distorted by his surroundings, and that Moses was_not the only one who made’ mistakes.