Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie Part 32

Spencer was always the calm philosopher. I believe that from childhood to old age--when the race was run--he never was guilty of an immoral act or did an injustice to any human being. He was certainly one of the most conscientious men in all his doings that ever was born. Few men have wished to know another man more strongly than I to know Herbert Spencer, for seldom has one been more deeply indebted than I to him and to Darwin.

Reaction against the theology of past days comes to many who have been surrounded in youth by church people entirely satisfied that the truth and faith indispensable to future happiness were derived only through strictest Calvinistic creeds. The thoughtful youth is naturally carried along and disposed to concur in this. He cannot but think, up to a certain period of development, that what is believed by the best and the highest educated around him--those to whom he looks for example and instruction--must be true. He resists doubt as inspired by the Evil One seeking his soul, and sure to get it unless faith comes to the rescue. Unfortunately he soon finds that faith is not exactly at his beck and call. Original sin he thinks must be at the root of this inability to see as he wishes to see, to believe as he wishes to believe. It seems clear to him that already he is little better than one of the lost. Of the elect he surely cannot be, for these must be ministers, elders, and strictly orthodox men.

The young man is soon in chronic rebellion, trying to a.s.sume G.o.dliness with the others, acquiescing outwardly in the creed and all its teachings, and yet at heart totally unable to reconcile his outward accordance with his inward doubt. If there be intellect and virtue in the man but one result is possible; that is, Carlyle's position after his terrible struggle when after weeks of torment he came forth: "If it be incredible, in G.o.d's name, then, let it be discredited." With that the load of doubt and fear fell from him forever.

When I, along with three or four of my boon companions, was in this stage of doubt about theology, including the supernatural element, and indeed the whole scheme of salvation through vicarious atonement and all the fabric built upon it, I came fortunately upon Darwin's and Spencer's works "The Data of Ethics," "First Principles," "Social Statics," "The Descent of Man." Reaching the pages which explain how man has absorbed such mental foods as were favorable to him, retaining what was salutary, rejecting what was deleterious, I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution.

"All is well since all grows better" became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward.

Humanity is an organism, inherently rejecting all that is deleterious, that is, wrong, and absorbing after trial what is beneficial, that is, right. If so disposed, the Architect of the Universe, we must a.s.sume, might have made the world and man perfect, free from evil and from pain, as angels in heaven are thought to be; but although this was not done, man has been given the power of advancement rather than of retrogression. The Old and New Testaments remain, like other sacred writings of other lands, of value as records of the past and for such good lessons as they inculcate. Like the ancient writers of the Bible our thoughts should rest upon this life and our duties here. "To perform the duties of this world well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom," says Confucius, great sage and teacher. The next world and its duties we shall consider when we are placed in it.

I am as a speck of dust in the sun, and not even so much, in this solemn, mysterious, unknowable universe. I shrink back. One truth I see. Franklin was right. "The highest worship of G.o.d is service to Man." All this, however, does not prevent everlasting hope of immortality. It would be no greater miracle to be born to a future life than to have been born to live in this present life. The one has been created, why not the other? Therefore there is reason to hope for immortality. Let us hope.[75]

[Footnote 75: "A.C. is really a tremendous personality--dramatic, wilful, generous, whimsical, at times almost cruel in pressing his own conviction upon others, and then again tender, affectionate, emotional, always imaginative, unusual and wide-visioned in his views.

He is well worth Boswellizing, but I am urging him to be 'his own Boswell.'... He is inconsistent in many ways, but with a pa.s.sion for lofty views; the brotherhood of man, peace among nations, religious purity--I mean the purification of religion from gross superst.i.tion--the subst.i.tution for a Westminster-Catechism G.o.d, of a Righteous, a Just G.o.d." (_Letters of Richard Watson Gilder_, p. 375.)]

CHAPTER XXVI

BLAINE AND HARRISON

While one is known by the company he keeps, it is equally true that one is known by the stories he tells. Mr. Blaine was one of the best story-tellers I ever met. His was a bright sunny nature with a witty, pointed story for every occasion.

Mr. Blaine's address at Yorktown (I had accompanied him there) was greatly admired. It directed special attention to the cordial friendship which had grown up between the two branches of the English-speaking race, and ended with the hope that the prevailing peace and good-will between the two nations would exist for many centuries to come. When he read this to me, I remember that the word "many" jarred, and I said:

"Mr. Secretary, might I suggest the change of one word? I don't like 'many'; why not 'all' the centuries to come?"

"Good, that is perfect!"

And so it was given in the address: "for _all_ the centuries to come."

We had a beautiful night returning from Yorktown, and, sitting in the stern of the ship in the moonlight, the military band playing forward, we spoke of the effect of music. Mr. Blaine said that his favorite just then was the "Sweet By and By," which he had heard played last by the same band at President Garfield's funeral, and he thought upon that occasion he was more deeply moved by sweet sounds than he had ever been in his life. He requested that it should be the last piece played that night. Both he and Gladstone were fond of simple music.

They could enjoy Beethoven and the cla.s.sic masters, but Wagner was as yet a sealed book to them.

In answer to my inquiry as to the most successful speech he ever heard in Congress, he replied it was that of the German, ex-Governor Ritter of Pennsylvania. The first bill appropriating money for inland _fresh_ waters was under consideration. The house was divided. Strict constructionists held this to be unconst.i.tutional; only harbors upon the salt sea were under the Federal Government. The contest was keen and the result doubtful, when to the astonishment of the House, Governor Ritter slowly arose for the first time. Silence at once reigned. What was the old German ex-Governor going to say--he who had never said anything at all? Only this:

"Mr. Speaker, I don't know much particulars about de const.i.tution, but I know dis; I wouldn't gif a d----d cent for a const.i.tution dat didn't wash in fresh water as well as in salt." The House burst into an uproar of uncontrollable laughter, and the bill pa.s.sed.

So came about this new departure and one of the most beneficent ways of spending government money, and of employing army and navy engineers. Little of the money spent by the Government yields so great a return. So expands our flexible const.i.tution to meet the new wants of an expanding population. Let who will make the const.i.tution if we of to-day are permitted to interpret it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N.Y._

JAMES G. BLAINE]

Mr. Blaine's best story, if one can be selected from so many that were excellent, I think was the following:

In the days of slavery and the underground railroads, there lived on the banks of the Ohio River near Gallipolis, a noted Democrat named Judge French, who said to some anti-slavery friends that he should like them to bring to his office the first runaway negro that crossed the river, bound northward by the underground. He couldn't understand why they wished to run away. This was done, and the following conversation took place:

_Judge:_ "So you have run away from Kentucky. Bad master, I suppose?"

_Slave:_ "Oh, no, Judge; very good, kind ma.s.sa."

_Judge:_ "He worked you too hard?"

_Slave:_ "No, sah, never overworked myself all my life."

_Judge, hesitatingly:_ "He did not give you enough to eat?"

_Slave:_ "Not enough to eat down in Kaintuck? Oh, Lor', plenty to eat."

_Judge:_ "He did not clothe you well?"

_Slave:_ "Good enough clothes for me, Judge."

_Judge:_ "You hadn't a comfortable home?"

_Slave:_ "Oh, Lor', makes me cry to think of my pretty little cabin down dar in old Kaintuck."

_Judge, after a pause:_ "You had a good, kind master, you were not overworked, plenty to eat, good clothes, fine home. I don't see why the devil you wished to run away."

_Slave:_ "Well, Judge, I lef de situation down dar open. You kin go rite down and git it."

The Judge had seen a great light.

"Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves, howe'er contented, never know."

That the colored people in such numbers risked all for liberty is the best possible proof that they will steadily approach and finally reach the full stature of citizenship in the Republic.

I never saw Mr. Blaine so happy as while with us at Cluny. He was a boy again and we were a rollicking party together. He had never fished with a fly. I took him out on Loch Laggan and he began awkwardly, as all do, but he soon caught the swing. I shall never forget his first capture:

"My friend, you have taught me a new pleasure in life. There are a hundred fishing lochs in Maine, and I'll spend my holidays in future upon them trout-fishing."

At Cluny there is no night in June and we danced on the lawn in the bright twilight until late. Mrs. Blaine, Miss Dodge, Mr. Blaine, and other guests were trying to do the Scotch reel, and "whooping" like Highlanders. We were gay revelers during those two weeks. One night afterwards, at a dinner in our home in New York, chiefly made up of our Cluny visitors, Mr. Blaine told the company that he had discovered at Cluny what a real holiday was. "It is when the merest trifles become the most serious events of life."

President Harrison's nomination for the presidency in 1888 came to Mr.

Blaine while on a coaching trip with us. Mr. and Mrs. Blaine, Miss Margaret Blaine, Senator and Mrs. Hale, Miss Dodge, and Walter Damrosch were on the coach with us from London to Cluny Castle. In approaching Linlithgow from Edinburgh, we found the provost and magistrates in their gorgeous robes at the hotel to receive us. I was with them when Mr. Blaine came into the room with a cablegram in his hand which he showed to me, asking what it meant. It read: "Use cipher." It was from Senator Elkins at the Chicago Convention. Mr.

Blaine had cabled the previous day, declining to accept the nomination for the presidency unless Secretary Sherman of Ohio agreed, and Senator Elkins no doubt wished to be certain that he was in correspondence with Mr. Blaine and not with some interloper.

I said to Mr. Blaine that the Senator had called to see me before sailing, and suggested we should have cipher words for the prominent candidates. I gave him a few and kept a copy upon a slip, which I put in my pocket-book. I looked and fortunately found it. Blaine was "Victor"; Harrison, "Trump"; Phelps of New Jersey, "Star"; and so on.

I wired "Trump" and "Star."[76] This was in the evening.

[Footnote 76: "A code had been agreed upon between his friends in the United States and himself, and when a deadlock or a long contest seemed inevitable, the following dispatch was sent from Mr. Carnegie's estate in Scotland, where Blaine was staying, to a prominent Republican leader:

"'June 25. Too late victor immovable take trump and star.'

WHIP. Interpreted, it reads: 'Too late. Blaine immovable.

Take Harrison and Phelps. CARNEGIE.'" (_James G. Blaine_, by Edward Stanwood, p. 308. Boston, 1905.)]