Brann the Iconoclast Volume 1 Part 3

The "Doctrine" is ridiculous, in that it establishes a quasi- protectorate over a number of petty powers that have no valid excuse for existing; still it works no injury to any European government not bent on international buccaneering. Uncle Sam's promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine proves him a fool; Europe's frantic objection to it demonstrates that she is a knave.

The Spanish incident served to show that the war spirit is rife throughout Europe, and that her mighty armaments cannot much longer be kept inactive. It proved conclusively that Europe is feverishly eager to set limits to the growing power of this government while such limitation is yet possible--that she cannot view with composure the slightest inclination on the part of America to take a hand in the world's politics. With wealth aggregating seventy-five billions, and as many millions of warlike Americans back of it, the Monroe Doctrine becomes something more than an iridescent dream. When such a nation decides upon "a vigorous foreign policy," the balance of power problem cannot be long confined to the European continent--a fact which explains the pernicious activity of transatlantic governments during our late unpleasantness.

But all the danger of an international complication does not come from across the sea. The war spirit is well-nigh as rife in this country as at Barcelona and Cadiz. The great ma.s.s of the American people would welcome a controversy with any country, with or without good cause. "The glory of the young man is in his strength," and Uncle Sam is young and strong. He longs to grapple with his contemporaries, to demonstrate his physical superiority. He has a cypress shingle on either shoulder and is trailing his star-spangled cutaway down the plank turnpike. While a few mugwumps, like Josef Phewlitzer and Apollyon Halicarna.s.sus Below, and tearful Miss Nancys of the Anglo- maniacal school, are protesting that this country wants peace, Congress, that faithful mirror of public opinion, if not always the repository of wisdom, proves that it is eager for war. And just so sure as the Cleveland interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine is insisted upon, we are going to get it, and that before babes now nursing wear beards. And the "Doctrine," as applied by the administration, will not only be insisted upon, but public opinion will force the hands of our public servants and compel them to push it further. The fact that it is distasteful to our transatlantic brethren makes it ridiculously popular with a people determined to burn gunpowder. Aside from the epidemic of murder which seems to have girdled the globe, the spirit of petty jealousy and a.s.sumed superiority with which Americans are treated in many European countries, has imbued this people with the idea that the quickest way to win the respect of their supercilious neighbors is to slaughter them. Uncle Sam is in an ugly humor and will suffer no legitimate casus belli to be side-tracked by arbitration. He is "dead tired" of having the European ants get on him--of being harried by petty powers whom he knows full well he could wipe from the map of the world. He is just a little inclined to do the Roman Empire act--to take charge of this planet and run it in accordance with his own good pleasure. Some of these days he's going to drive his box-toed boot under John Bull's coat-tails so far that the impudent old tub of tallow can taste leather all the rest of his life.

We may deplore this spirit of contention, but to deny its existence were to write one's self down an irremediable a.s.s. It is in evidence everywhere, from the American senate to the country clown. To argue against the war spirit were like whistling in the teeth of a north wind. You cannot alter a psychological condition with a made-to-order editorial. It is urged that we should sing small, as we are "not prepared for war." We are always prepared.

Hercules did not need a Krupp cannon--he was capable of doing terrible execution with a club. Samson did not wait to forge a Toledo blade--he waltzed into his enemies with an old bone and scattered their shields of iron and helmets of bra.s.s to the four winds of Heaven. The mighty armaments of Europe are costly trifles; whenever America has been called to fight she has revolutionized the science of destruction. It hath been said, "In time of peace prepare for war." Europe bankrupts herself to build steel cruisers and maintain gigantic standing armies; America prepares by strengthening her bank account and developing her natural resources. When the crisis comes she has "the sinews of war," and brains and industry quickly do the rest. It was not necessary for Gulliver to sleep in the land of the Lilliputs with a gun at his side.

Vast armies and costly fleets of battleships in time of peace are indication of conscious weakness. The Western Giant goes unarmed; but let the embattled world tread upon his coat-tails if it dares! The American does not have to be educated to soldiership--he's to the manner born. Those who can build are competent to destroy. Our Civil War was fought by volunteers; yet before nor since in all the struggles of mankind were such terrible engines of destruction launched upon land or sea. Never did so many bullets find their billets. Never did men set their b.r.e.a.s.t.s against the bayonet with such reckless abandon. Never were the seas incarnadined with such stubborn blood. The "Charge of the Six Hundred" was repeated a thousand times. The Pa.s.s of Thermopylae was emulated by plowboys. The Macedonian Phalanx was as nothing to the Rock of Chickamauga. The Bridge of Lodi was duplicated at every stream. The spirit of the Old Guard animated raw recruits. The Retreat of the Ten Thousand became but a holiday excursion. Sailors fought their guns below the water line and went down with flying colors and ringing cheers.

We have been more than once dangerously near a rupture with European powers because of the ridiculous Monroe Doctrine, which a.s.sumes for Uncle Sam a quasi- protectorate over a horde of Latin-American oligarchies masquerading as Republics. We have now been fairly warned that should such a catastrophe occur, we would have to contend with more than one European power. We must either recede from the position we have a.s.sumed or prepare to do battle for the very existence of this government. Such a war would draw all nations of the earth into the b.l.o.o.d.y vortex. If Russia held aloof from the anti-American coalition, she would seize the opportunity to push her fortunes in the Orient, making a collision with the Moslem inevitable. At such a time the latter would be intent upon the extension of territory. Occupy Western Europe with an American war, and the Mohammedan would rise against their oppressors. Unfurl the sacred banner of the Prophet, and millions of murderous fanatics would erase the raids of Goth and Visigoth from the memory of mankind. Turkey, jeered at even by Spain, flouted even by Italy , yet potentially the most powerful nation for evil upon the earth, would spread as by magic over Roumania and Austro-Hungary, and pour through the Alpine pa.s.ses like a torrent of fire upon Germany and France. Back of the much contemned "Sick Man of the East"--whom combined Christendom has failed to frighten--are nearly two hundred million people, scattered from the Pillars of Hercules to the Yellow Sea, all eager to conquer the earth for Islam. They are warriors to a man; their only fear is that they will not find death while battling with "the infidel dog" and be translated bodily to the realm of bliss. Within the memory of living men Christian nations have turned their eyes with fear and trembling to the Bosphorus. Islam is the political Vesuvius of Europe, and is once again casting its lurid light athwart the troubled sky. For years the Moslem has been robbed without mercy and persecuted without remorse.

The bayonet has been held at his throat while strangers reviled his religion. It is no part of his creed to love his enemies and pray for those who despitefully use him. The Koran does not adjure him to turn the other cheek to the smiter. He has nursed his wrath to keep it warm, and prayed for an opportunity to wreak barbaric vengeance upon his oppressors. When Christian Europe marches forth to do battle with America she will need to wear armor upon her back as well as upon her breast, for while terror stalks before, h.e.l.l will lurk behind.

A STORY OF THE SEA.

There have been mortals, favorites of the G.o.ds, to whom it was given to understand the language of the lower animals, and such I have ever envied, for

"Beast and bird have seen and heard That which man knoweth not."

Never could I get beyond an imperfect knowledge of their alphabet, enabling me to spell out here and there a word of little meaning; but the great ocean's never-ceasing speech was ever plain to me, and many a midnight hour I have paced the cool sands that girt my island home, and listened with reverential awe to the secrets it whispered to the sensuous southern breeze that kissed its bosom--strange stories of wreck and wraith, wild wars and desperate deeds, mingled with those of love and honor, shame and sacrifice, crowding upon each other like spectres in a dream.

One night when the new moon hung like a silver crescent pendent from Venus' flaming orb, in a summer sky thick inlaid with patines of pure gold, I heard the lazy waves breaking like slumb'rous thunder upon the long, low beach, and said, "The sea is calling me!" and I went. Far out upon the long pier, where the waves could dash their spray like a shower of cool pearls in my face, I lingered long and listened to a story, sad and strange as a sweet-voiced woman telling in a foreign tongue, and punctuating with tears and sighs, a tale of true love turned awry.

Upon the beach they walked in days that seem to man long, long ago. How brief and strange the little lives of men, and so beset with customs framed to cramp the heart and curse the soul before its time! To me,--here since Time began to build that bridge of sighs and tears that link the two eternities--it seems but yesternight that, hand in hand they wandered here, so wrapt in happiness born of equal love that they heeded not my glories spread forth to tempt their praise. I curled my snowy spray about their feet; flashed back the silver beams of harvest moon in one long, shimmering sheet of mellow light; rolled waves of brilliant phosph.o.r.escence, that seemed like silver billows, diamond-studded, breaking on a beach of gold, and sang the sweetest odes of the poets of ten thousand years; but they heard nor saw aught but the beating of their hearts in holy rhythm and the love-light flaming like fires celestial in each other's eyes.

Anon, bare-armed, bare-limbed, shamed yet happy, they sought the wave, and I cradled them on my bosom and heard them whisper of laws defied and cruel customs set at naught, and the higher law of love; but fearful she spoke and sighed, yet clung the closer to him, as though the earth and sea contained hut one perfect model of a man and that were he.

Hour by hour they hovered near me, and a thousand times she swore to him that their lives were so entwined that separation were death to her, and kissed his lips, his eyes, his hands, and wished she were his wife that they might blazon to the great round world the love they fain would hide from Heaven.

One little year went by and they came again, not walking hand in hand. He spoke to her and she answered with bitter scorn. He touched with trembling lips upon the old days when love was lord of their two lives, but she mocked at love and him and bade him leave her. Then he that was wont to rule first learned to sue, and vainly, for her heart was cold as the ashes of long-forgotten kings, cruel as wintry winds blown across icy northern seas. "It is a guilty love," she said, and he looked at her as if doubting that he heard, then turned and went like one that dreamed; for thought of wrong to her had dwelt not with him; he had but worshiped her as devout Sabaean might the sun and host of Heaven.

Again he came, but he was all alone. Long and lonely he paced the dreary beach beneath a wintry sky, until the cold mists seemed changed to mellow light, the stormy sky to one of summer, gemmed by myriad stars and queened by harvest moon; the cool wind sweeping o'er the barren waste to music and the merry laughter of men and maids; and she was by his side, her love-lit eyes making the blood dance through every vein. He put forth his hand to her, but the sky changed from gold to lead, the driftweed blew about his feet, the cold mist settled down upon him and crept with icy fingers into his heart, and he cursed the lying vision, the shrieking wind, the cold mist and the leaden sky; cursed the day that he first saw her, and said to the waves that tumbled at his feet: "I must be mad. The curse of my race hath fallen upon me; else why do I see that which is not, hear voices that are far away? Why do I cherish the image of a fickle woman, who, swept along by a gust of pa.s.sion or sickly sentiment, thought for a day she loved me, but did not, nor ever loved aught in life but her own selfish self?"

And he called her name to the wind and waves but coupled with it a curse, deep and bitter, as those that burst in sulphur-breath from the parched lips of the d.a.m.ned; and a voice came back from out the gloom that seemed to mock him. Furious as a demon disturbed at some h.e.l.lish rite, he turned and shrieked to the mocking voice and bade it come to him that he might wreak upon its owner such vengeance as would appall the world.

The far lights shone like pale ghosts of lights through the driving mist, and in them loomed two weird forms that seemed an hundred cubits high. Furious he rushed upon and smote them down upon the wet sand and trampled them, and strove with feet and hands to kill; but they cried out for mercy on their lives,--that they were honest fishermen who, hearing a cry but faintly above the roaring waves, had answered it, thinking some boatman might have met mishap and called for aid. The flood of anger spent in blows, he helped them up, wiped the blood and sand from their bronzed faces, gave them his scant purse, and bidding them drink a b.u.mper that h.e.l.l-fiends might drag him from the world before the morn sent them on their way.

The gray dawn found him sleeping with his face upon the wet sand, once trodden by the feet that now trampled on his heart. Then I sent waves, cool and sweet, to kiss his cheek, and he awoke, and waking, said:

"Kisses for me? They are cold, great Mother Ocean; but not so cold as love burned out, leaving but the bitter ashes of contemptuous pity. I dreamed that I was afloat upon thy bosom with her I did so dearly love, and thou wast bearing us beneath a sunset sky to a fair island, fringed with palms and musical with songs of birds and rippling springs, where we two should live forever; that as we floated thus Love's G.o.ddess descended from a golden cloud and opening the white bosom of my bride, yet not my bride, took thence her heart and pressed from it a black drop that fell upon the molten sea, and taking form became a hideous monster that cried, 'My name is Selfishness,' and vanished in the wave. Then breathing upon the cold heart ethereal flame that made it throb like a hero's pulse when trumpets are blown for war, she replaced it, healed the snowy globe with a touch, and, smiling upon me, was caught into the golden cloud that seemed framed of music and the perfume of a thousand flowers. A round arm stole about my neck and we floated heart to heart on to the haven that was to be our Heaven.

"A curse upon your briny waters that seem a world of bitter tears, rank with dead men's bones and the rotting hulls of ships! They have called me back to thy dreary, ever- moaning verge to mock myself for loving one who scorns; for wasting my hot heart upon a block of frozen stone, hoping by foolish prayers and unmanly tears to move the G.o.ds to breathe into it the breath of human life,--to prevail, even as did that old Greek, who became enamored of a statue, less divinely formed, but with the self-same heart.

"'Tis madness leads me to this folly,--the old, old curse that hath hung about our house, like a baleful shadow, for thrice a hundred years, bursting at times into b.l.o.o.d.y feuds without apparent cause, and dreadful mutinies against the laws of man and will of G.o.d. 'Tis vain to further fight with fate!

'Twill drag me down, even as it did my great-grandsire, who climbed fame's dizzy heights and stood, poised in mid- Heaven, the master mind of Britain's mighty world; then, like a tall mountain pine blasted at the top by the writhen bolts of G.o.d, plunged, a falling star, to the depths of everlasting darkness, and died a decade before his death.

Nor iron will descended through my sire from a score of barbarous kings; nor mother's prayerful amulets, woven like golden threads through every low, sweet lullaby that soothed my infancy, can avail me aught. I can but fight and fall. She might have helped me beat back the shadows; but would not--and 'tis well."

Then taking from a case a withered rose, he kissed it, cast it far out upon the wave, watched it dance there, and said with a bitter smile:

"The last link that binds me to other days, and it is broken.

'The wage of sin is death,' and I am dead these long months past and fathoms deep in h.e.l.l, yet walk the earth because nor land nor sea will yield a resting-place among its honored dead to one so ign.o.bly slain."

APOSTLE VS. PAGAN.

COL. R. G. INGERSOLL:

My Dear Colonel:--I have not picked up my pen for the express purpose of annihilating you at one fell swoop.

Even were such the case, I do not flatter myself that your impending doom would cause you to miss meals or lose sleep, for you have become somewhat used to being knocked off the Christmas tree by theological disputants from the back districts. At least once each lunar month for long years past your quivering diaphragm has been slammed up against the shrinking face of nature by mental microbes, or walked on by ambitious doodle-bugs, who wondered next day to learn that you were absorbing your rations with clock-work regularity and doing business at the same old stand. I once saw an egotistical brindle-pup joyfully bestride the collar of an adult wild-cat, and the woeful result convinced me that Ambition and Judgment should blithely foot it hand in hand. That is why, my dear Colonel, I approach you by siege and parallel, instead of capering gayly down your right-o'-way like a youthful William goat seeking a head-end collision with a runaway freight train.

Without any view of paving the way for a future loan, I tell you frankly that I admire you very much. Your public record and private life prove you to be one of G.o.d's n.o.blest--and rarest--works, an honest man. That you are the equal morally and the superior mentally of any man who has presumed to criticize you must be conceded. The prejudices of honesty are ent.i.tled to consideration and the judgment of genius to respect bordering on reverence; but in this age of almost universal inquiry we cannot accept any man, however wise, as infallible pope in the realm of intellect and declare that from his ipse dixit there shall be no appeal. That were intellectual slavery, the most degrading species of bondage, and it is your greatest glory that you have ever been the apostle of liberty--liberty of the hand and liberty of the brain. More than all other men of your generation you have fostered independence of thought and the search for new truth; hence you cannot complain if the fierce light which you have taught the world to turn full and fair upon cults and creeds, should be employed to discern the false logic of the great critic himself.

In your warfare upon hypocrisy and humb.u.g.g.e.ry I am with you heart and soul. I will set my foot as far as who goes farthest in the exposure of frauds and fakes of every cla.s.s and kind, though hedged about with the superst.i.tions of a thousand centuries and licensed by prescriptive right to perpetrate a brutal wrong; but it does not follow because some church communicants are hypocrites that all religion is a humbug; that because the Bible winks at incest and robbery , murder and slavery, the book is but a tissue of foolish falsehoods; that because Almighty G.o.d has not seen proper to reveal Himself in all His supernal splendor to Messrs. Hume and Voltaire, Paine and Ingersoll the world has no good reason for belief in His existence--that because the dead do not come back to us with a diagram of the New Jerusalem it were folly to believe the soul of man immortal.

My dear Colonel, your mighty intellect has not yet comprehended the philosophy of religion. Oratorically you soar like the condor when its shadow falls upon the highest peaks of the Andes, but logically you grope among the pestilential shadows of an intellectual Dismal Swamp, ever mistaking shadow for substance. You are frittering away your mighty intellectual strength with the idiosyncrasies of creeds and the clumsy detail of cults, instead of considering the psychological phenomena of religion in its entirety. You descend from the realm of philosophy to a.s.sume the role of scholastic--to dispute with little men anent points of doctrine, to wrangle with dogmatists regarding their conception of the Deity.

An ignoramus believes the Bible because of the miracles, and because of the miracles an Ingersoll disbelieves it--and both are equally blind . A cult is simply an expression, more or less crude, of the religious sentiment of a people, the poor garment with which finite man clothes Infinity.

Would you quarrel with Science because it is not yet made perfect? Would you condemn music because of an occasional discord? Would you reject history altogether because amid a world of truth there are preserved some fables such as tempted the satire of Cervantes? Would you banish the sun from Heaven because of its spots or declare Love a monster because born of Pa.s.sion?

The real question at issue is not whether the miracles be fact or fable; Mahomet, the duly ordained prophet of Allah, or an ignorant adventurer; Jonah, a delegate of the Deity or the father of Populism--whether Christ was born of an earthly father or drew his vigor direct from the loins of omnipotent G.o.d. Let us leave these details to the dogmatists, these non-essentials to the sectarians. Let us consider the religion of the world in its entirety, with the full understanding that all sects are essentially the same.

The core of all religion is the worship of a Supreme Power, and the belief in man's immortality. That is the central idea, around which the imagination of man has woven many a complicated web, some beautiful as Arachne's robe, some barbaric and repulsive, but all of little worth. The wise man, the true philosopher, will not mistake the machinery of a religion for the religious idea, the garment which ignorance weaves for Omniscience, for G.o.d himself.

Even if we grant that the Creator never yet communicated directly with the creature; that man has not seen with mortal eyes beyond the veil that shrouds the two eternities, it does not follow that religious faith is but arrant folly, that G.o.d is non-extant and man but the pitiful creature of blind force.

The dumb brute knows many things it was never taught, and might not man, the greatest of the animal creation, be gifted with a knowledge not based upon experience? So far as observation goes, there is provision for the satisfaction of every pa.s.sion, and the most powerful of all pa.s.sions is the dread of annihilation--the longing for continual life. If death ends all then here is a violation of "natural law"--a miracle! And you, my dear Colonel, do not believe in miracles. If we discard Revelation and take Reason for our supreme guide, we must infallibly conclude that the devotional instinct implanted in the heart of the entire human race has its correlative that the longing for immortal life which burns in the breast of man was not a brutal mistake, else concede Nature a poor blunderer and all this prattle anent her "immutable laws" mere nonsense.

Before ridiculing Revelation and mocking at Inspiration were it not well to determine their true definition? What is genius but inspiration? and a new truth bodied forth to the world but a revelation? Were it not possible for a genius--an inspired man--to trace the finger of G.o.d in the sunset's splendor as easily as upon tables of stone? to hear the voice of Omnipotence in the murmur of the majestic sea as well as in the thunders of Sinai? to read a divine message of undying love in a mother's lullaby as readily as in the death and resurrection of a Deity? If G.o.d can teach the very insects wisdom and gift even the oyster with instinct, can He communicate with man only by word of mouth or the engraver's burin? Examine the most beautiful woman imaginable with a powerful microscope and you will turn from her with a disgust similar to that of Gulliver when the Brobdingnagian maid placed him astride the nipple of her bosom. Her skin, so fair to the natural eye and velvety to the touch, becomes beneath the microscope suggestive of the hide of a hairless Mexican dog. Religion is a beautiful, an enchanting thing if you do but look at it with the natural eye; but when you employ the advent.i.tious aid of the skeptic's microscope you find flaws enough. It were doubtful if even our boasted American Government, of which you are so proud, could stand such an examination and retain your confidence.

No, my dear Colonel; you will never banish worship from the world by warring upon non-essentials. You may demonstrate that every recorded miracle is a myth-- that the founders of the various cults were but mortal men and the writers of every sacred book but scheming priests.

You may make it gross to sense that the Creator has never held direct communication with the creature, and you have but stripped religion of its tattered vestments--have not laid the weight of your hand upon the impregnable citadel, the universal Fatherhood of G.o.d and Brotherhood of Man. You have never yet talked to the real question. You reject religion because Moses and Mahomet, Luther and Calvin entertained crude ideas of the plans and attributes of the Creator. You pose as an agnostic--a religious Know- nothing--because the Almighty has not taken you completely into his confidence. Because the blind have sometimes led the blind and both have fallen into the foul ditch of fanaticism and cruelty, you infer that not one gleam of supernal glory has pierced the dark vale of human life.

While posing as the apostle of light, you will obscure the scintillations of the stars because the sun is hid; while apotheosizing Happiness you would banish Hope, that mother of which it is born.

But your labors have borne good as well as evil fruit. While your siren eloquence has led some doubting Thomases into the barren desert of Atheism, you have driven others to seek a better reason for their religious faith than barbarous tradition and the vote of ec.u.menical councils. Bigotry has quailed beneath the ringing blows of your iconoclastic hammer, dogmatism become more humble and the priesthood well-nigh forgotten to prate of a h.e.l.l of fire in which the souls of unbaptized babes forever burn. Without intending it, perhaps, you have done more to promote the cause of true religion, more to intellectualize and humanize man's conception of Almighty G.o.d, than any other reformer since the days of Christ.

THE COW.

For the enlightenment of city milkmen who never saw a cow, it may be well to state that this more or less useful animal does not resemble a pump in the slightest particular.

A cow has four feet, but the subsequent one on the right side is her main reliance. With this foot she can strike a blow that no man or woman born can elude. It resembles a load of drunken chain-shot, and searches every cubic yard of atmosphere in a two-acre lot for a victim before it stops.

She is also provided with a caudal appendage that ends in a patent fly-brush. This she uses to wrap around the neck of the milkmaid to prevent her getting away before she has a chance to kick her health corset off and upset the milk.

A cow will eat anything she can steal, from an ear of corn to a hickory shirt. She will leave a square meal especially ordered for her, and gotten up by an imported chef, to fill her measly hide full of straw from a boarding-house bedtick, if she can only steal it. She will work at a crack in a neighbor's barn for six mortal hours, and wear her tongue as thin as a political platform to get an old corn-cob, when she knows she can have a bushel of corn, all sh.e.l.led, by going home for it. She is a born thief, a natural marauder.

Any cow that has been given opportunities for gleaning knowledge can open a gate that fastens with a combination lock, get into a garden, do fifty dollars' worth of damage and be six blocks away before the infuriated owner can ram a charge of slugs into a muzzle-loading gun.

The man who has not lived in a small town, where one-half the inhabitants keep cows and expect them to forage their living off the other half, will never fully realize what he has missed unless he starts a daily paper or falls down stairs with the cook stove. When Mrs. B. and I first went into partnership we decided to raise our own garden truck.

It is the usual mistake of youngsters. During the long winter evenings they sit by the fire and plan their garden. A 640-acre farm, covered a foot deep with patent fertilizers, mortgages and other modern improvements, would not produce the amount of stuff two moonstruck young amateur gardeners confidently expect to yank from a patch of dirt but little bigger than a postage stamp. Thirty dollars for tools and seeds, ninety-seven dollars' worth of labor, and four times that amount of worry and vexation of spirit, results in some forty dollars' worth of "garden sa.s.s," which is promptly referred to the interior department of the neighbors' cows.

I soon learned that an ordinary gate catch was no bar to the educated cattle in my neighborhood, so I added a bolt.