Brann the Iconoclast Volume 12 Part 16

Do not interpret too literally. What I warn you against is the habit, all too common, of imagining ourselves rich because we have counted the golden h.o.a.rd of others. One may admire the Medicean Venus without becoming a sculptor, or have Plato at his fingers' ends and ever remain a fool. Were I an artist I would study with attention the works of all the great masters; but when I put my hand to my own task I would turn my back upon them all and my face to nature. My work would then be a "creation,"

not a copy. Did I aspire to be truly learned I would study the words of the world's wisest--then dig for wisdom on my own behoof, I would thus become a philosopher instead of a parrot.

I have been frequently called an iconoclast, and bad as the t.i.tle is popularly supposed to be, I trust it is not altogether undeserved. I have striven to break foolish idols and shatter false ideals, to hurl unclean G.o.ds from their pedestals in the public pantheon. A work of destruction is not, I admit, of a high order. Anybody may destroy; it requires genius to build up. The wonder of the ancient world sank to ruin irremediable beneath the torch of a morbid dude who had rather be "d.a.m.ned to everlasting fame" than altogether forgotten. A hungry wolf may destroy a human life which Almighty G.o.d has brought to perfection through long years of labor. But destruction is sometimes necessary. The seas must be cleared of pirates before commerce can flourish; the antiquated and useless building must come down before the school- house or business block can occupy the site. In the great cities are men who do nothing but destroy old buildings-- professional wreckers of those works of man that have outlived their usefulness. They build nothing; but are they, therefore, to be condemned? So in the social world, a man may be a professional wrecker, without the constructive ability to build a political platform on a piecrate, and still be useful, indispensable. The wrecker of bad buildings does not contract to put good ones in their places; nor is the iconoclast under any obligation to find a heavenly grace for every false G.o.d that falls beneath his hammer, a saint for every sinner he holds up to scorn, a new truth for every old falsehood he fells to earth. He may, if he thinks proper, leave that labor to others and go on, with brand and bomb, bludgeon and bill-hook, wrecking, destroying--playing John the Baptist to a greater to come after.

A great many good people have taken the trouble to inform me that I am a pessimist. Perhaps so; but I am not worrying much about it. A pessimist is a person somewhat difficult to define. The fool who smokes in a powder-house, or believes that his neighbors always speak well of him behind his back; the wife who encourages her husband to pay court to other women on the supposition that no harm can ensue; the banker who accepts a man's unsecured note because he is a church member and powerful in prayer, and the servant girl who lights the fire with kerosene--then goes to join the angels taking your household goods and G.o.ds with her--are certainly not pessimists; they are only idiots.

It is easy enough to say that a pessimist is a person afflicted with an incurable case of mulligrubs--one whom nothing in all earth or heaven or hades pleases; one who usually deserves nothing, yet grumbles if he gets it. But we should not forget that every reform this world has known; every effort that has lifted man another notch above the brute level; every star in our flag of freedom; every line and letter in our const.i.tution of human liberty; every gem of knowledge that gleams in the great world's intellectual crown of glory; every triumph of science and religion, philosophy and mechanics was the work of pessimists, so-called--of men who were not satisfied with the world's condition and set determinedly to work to better it.

They strove with their full strength against those conditions panegyrized and poetized by the smirking optimists of their time, and thereby incurred the enmity of pedants and self-sufficient purists,--were denounced and denied, belittled and belied.

But, says the enthusiastic optimist, things are not what they used to be. When a college of cardinals gave Galileo to the gaoler for maintaining that "the world do move;"

when Christ cast forth the money manipulators and purged the porches of the temple of the disreputable dove dealers; when Luther raised the standard of revolt and the Puritan packed his grip there were cruel wrongs to right. But look at us now! We've got a const.i.tution and a Confession of Faith, prize rings and Parisian gowns, sent missionaries to Madagascar and measured Mars' two moons. Of course we've made some mendicants, but please admire the multifarious beauty of our millionaires! Who can doubt that we've triumphed over the world, the flesh and the devil?

Have not the Spanish inquisition and the English Court of High Commission gone glimmering? Do we bore the tongues of Quakers or amputate the ears of non-conformists as in Auld Lang Syne? Do we not run troublesome wives into the divorce court instead of into the river, as was once our wont,--scientifically roast our criminals with electricity instead of pulling their heads off with a hair halter? Do we not fight our political battles with wind instead of war clubs? Have not our great partisan paladins subst.i.tuted gall for Greek fire?

Progressing we certainly are, but the devil has adapted the Fabian tactics and is leading us a wild dance through unprofitable deserts. While we have been shattering ethnic images he has been building new idols. While we have been dragging the Phalaris Bull from its pedestal the Golden Calf of ancient Israel has reached maturity and maternity and its progeny is now worshipped in a thousand pantheons.

Everywhere the false and the true, the good and the evil, the lambent light of heaven and the sulphurous shadows of h.e.l.l meet and blend. Nowhere, yet everywhere, floats the white veil and flaming ensign of the modern Mokanna-- and we stand wrangling about the proper cut of a collar; debating whether the Gadarenes, whose swine the outcast devils drowned, were Jews or Gentiles; dogmatizing anent the proper form of baptism; doubting with which hand we should tip the hat; wondering if Joseph's coat were a sack or a swallow-tail--ninety-and-nine out of every hundred wasting upon childish trifles the strength given us to do the work of demi-G.o.ds--and every foolish breath, every heartbeat bearing us across Time's narrow sands into the broad bosom of that sea which hath no sh.o.r.e!

What does the all-seeing sun that has for so many centuries glared down upon this wretched farce-tragedy, think of it all? And yet man boasts that he is the mortal image of immortal G.o.d! It was for this trifling, straddling biped, intent only upon getting his goose-head above the foolish geese, that the Regent of the universe suffered ignominy and death. I sometimes think that had the Almighty cast the human horoscope he would never have given Noah a hint to go in out of the wet.

I am no perfectionist. I do not build the spasmodic sob nor spill the scalding tear because all men are not Sir Galahads in quest of the Holy Grail, and all women angels with two pair o' reversible wings and the aurora borealis for a hat-band. I might get lonesome in a world like that. I do not expect to see religion without cant, wealth without want, and virtue without vice; but I do hope to see the human race devote itself to grander aims than following the fashions and camping on the trail of the cart- wheel dollar. I want to see more homes and fewer hovels, more men and fewer dudes. I want to see more women with the moral courage to brave the odium of being old maids rather than the pitiful weakness to become loveless wives.

I want to see more mothers who would rather be queens of their homes than the favorites of fashionable circles; women who would rather have the love of their husbands than the insolent admiration of the whole he-world--women who do not know too much at 15 and too little at 50.

I want to see more men who are not a constant reminder of a monkey ancestry. Some philosopher once remarked: "As between men and dogs, give me dogs." I have been often tempted to indorse the sentiment--and I am not much of a lover of dogs either. I want to see men who are not fops in their youth, fools in their prime and egotists in their old age--a race of manly men to whom life is not a lascivious farce; whose G.o.d is not gold; who do not worship at the shrine of the Pandemian Venus nor devote their lives to the service of Mammon, "the least erect of all the angelic host that fell from heaven." I want to see men who scorn the pusillanimity of the policy-prayer, who, --like Caesar, dare tell greybeards the truth e'en though it cost a crown; men of leonine courage, men of iron mould, men strong of hand and heart, who defiantly throw down the gage to destiny--who can trample h.e.l.l itself beneath their proud feet, even while it consumes them.

The dream may be Utopian. I much fear it will never be made a blessed reality by either philosophy or religion.

We have had both for forty centuries, yet the fool has become ever more offensive and the liar has overrun the land.

Yet we imagine that because we no longer live in caves and fight naked with the wild beasts of the forest for our food we are away up at the head of the procession, with Greek civilization distanced and all the other times and half times nowhere.

Human development, like the earth, the sun, the stars-- like all things brought into being by the breath of Omnipotent G.o.d--travels ever in a circle. Savagery and ignorance, barbarism and ambition, civilization and sybaritism, dudeism and intellectual decay; then once more savagery and ignorance proclaim the complete circle,--that we have traveled from nadir to zenith and from zenith to nadir-- when once again we begin with painful steps and slow to repace the path which carries us to the very verge of G.o.dhood and wreathes our brows with immortal bays, then brings us down--even while we think we mount--until we touch a level beneath the very brute. Such has ever been the world's history, and such it will ever be until a force is found that can transform this circle into a straight line --that can blend the rugged manhood of the barbarism with the graces of our higher civilization and give us wisdom without weakness and culture without cowardice; that can incorporate us as corpuscles in the social organism without eliminating every spark of G.o.d-like individuality, making us helpless dependents upon social, political and religious precedent.

If the Car of Progress travels in a circle--and history says it does; if neither science, philosophy nor religion can deflect it from its seemingly predestined path--and the condition of their birth-place proclaims their failure so to do--where is hope? Must the human race forever go the weary round of birth and death, like Buddhist souls wandering through all that's fair and foul, until it finds Nirvana in the destruction of the world? Not so, for there is a hope--a blessed hope--that like.

"A poising eagle burns above the unrisen morrow."

That hope is in the union of all the mighty forces that make for the emanc.i.p.ation of mankind,--a union of religion and philosophy, science and woman. And of these the first is the last and the last is the first in point of power and importance.

When I reflect that until within comparatively recent times women were slaves, I don't much wonder that the old civilizations went to the dogs--that the millennium is not yet due. Trying to make a civilization that would stick without the help of woman were like building a c.o.c.ktail with a basis of b.u.t.termilk. G.o.d gave her to man to be an helpmeet, not a plaything. I don't think that she can help him much by going into politics, or becoming a crusading she-Peter-the-Hermit while her own children need her care, but I do believe that the wife and mother--that erstwhile ignorant drudge, raised by G.o.d's great mercy to royalty-- made Queen of the home, and thereby absolute Empress of the great round earth--is to be the dynamics of a new and grander civilization that can never recede; that the womanly woman, self-poised as a star, pure as the polar snows, fit companion for the true n.o.bleman of nature, is to be the Providence that will lead humanity, step by step, ever onward and upward, until our cruel age of iron is transformed into an age of gold in which there'll be neither millionaire nor mendicant, master nor slave--in which Selfishness will be considered the worst of crimes and Love the all-powerful law.

Such, ladies, is my dream of the future. You see, with true mannish instinct, I throw the work of the world's salvation upon the women. I don't know, however, but it's retributive justice. If you got us fired out of the first Paradise it is your duty to find another and put us in possession. But really with all due respect to Sacred Writ, I could never accept that serpent story without considerable salt. My observation--and experience--has been that men are much more addicted to the snake habit than are women. I gather from Genesis that after the Edenic reptile had done the damage it was condemned to go upon its belly all the days of its life. That indicates that it was not only a good conversationalist, but had legs.

Now I submit it to you in all seriousness: which member of the original family was most likely to see such a serpent as that? I think I should have given Adam the Keeley cure, then cross.e.xamined him a little before laying the burden of the blame on Eve. If the latter was really the tempter she was probably trying to reach the heart of her hubby by that direct route, the stomach--lost heaven for love, as too many of her daughters have since done.

The fact that Adam was not willing to father her fault proved him unworthy of his wife, and the bad example he set is too often followed by many of his sons--who attribute all their trials and tribulations to the patient wives whose watchful care keeps them out of the penitentiary.

Whatever may have been Eve's fortune, Adam was no great loser by being ejected from Eden, for the man who possesses the love of a good woman carries Paradise with him wherever he goes. A woman's love can transform a hovel into a heaven and fill it with supernal sunshine--and her scorn can make perdition of a palace and put in all the fancy touches.

Woman is the only thing extant, if Genesis be believed, that was not evolved from a solid slug of nothing. That I presume, is why she amounts to something. Nothing was good enough raw material of which to make the father of mankind; but when the Almighty came to create our common mother he required something more substantial than a hole in the atmosphere.

I always bank on a boy who has a good mother, regardless of what the old man may be. The fathers of philosophers have sometimes been fools, but their mothers never.

A wise man may beget dudes or a good man practical politicians; but it's his misfortune, not his fault. The good Lord expects no man to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. I have yet to hear of a single man who became distinguished in any line of human endeavor according to his father the credit for his greatness. Character is moulded at the mother's knee, and in the light of her loving eyes is born that ambition which buoys man up in a sea of troubles--that drive him on through dangers and difficulties, straight to the shining goal.

The Nineteenth century marks the culmination of an era of human triumphs, a brilliant coruscation of victories over the cohorts of Ignorance and Prejudice; but its crown of imperishable glory is the recognition that woman was created to be man's companion and co-laborer instead of his chattel, his joint sovereign of the earth instead of his slave. Fronting the dawn of a grander day, her hand ungyved and her brain unfettered; with broader opportunities for usefulness and boasting a n.o.bler beauty than during the dark and dreary centuries that lie behind her like a hideous dream--such is the woman of the Nineteenth century, and upon the shapely shoulders of this new Pallas I hang my second Providence, to her loving hands I commit the destiny of the race, to her true heart the salvation of the world.

BRANN'S REPLY TO SLATTERY.

[Ex-Priest Joseph Slattery, in his lecture at Waco, Texas, in the interest of the A.P.A., bitterly denounced the ICONOCLAST. During the Slattery lecture Brann rose, pointed his finger at Slattery and said: "You lie and you know it, and I refuse to listen to you." Brann then turned on his heel and walked out. He then hired the same opera house at his own expense and replied to Slattery.]

Fellow Americans: The ICONOCLAST does not please ex- Priest Slattery, "Baptist minister in good standing," and I am not surprised. Its mission, as its name implies, is to expose Frauds and abolish Fakes, to make unrelenting war upon Humbugs and Hypocrites, hence it is not remarkable that Slattery should regard its existence as a personal affront. It is ever the galled jade that winces; or, to borrow from the elegant pulpit vernacular of the Rev. Sam Jones, "it's the hit dog that yelps."

Slattery would have you believe that I'm a rank atheist who's trying to rip religion up by the roots and bang it across a barbed wire fence in close companionship with the hides of Protestant preachers. This charge has been hurled at me by various sectarian papers and malicious ministers; but not one iota of evidence has ever been submitted. It is simply a bald a.s.sertion born of sanctified malice, a brazen libel, similar to that which charges the Pope with trying to subvert the American government. I defy Slattery and all that unclean brood of moral vultures, a.s.sa.s.sins of character and thieves of reputation which trail in his wake and applaud his infamies, to produce one line I ever wrote, or quote one sentence I ever uttered disrespectful of ANY religion, Pagan, Protestant or Catholic.

If in the wilds of Central Africa I should find a man bowing down to a dried toad, a stuffed snake or a Slattery, I'd remove my hat as a tribute of respect, not to his judgment, but to his honesty. I have no word of condemnation for any religious faith, however fatuous it may appear to me, that has comforted the dying or consoled the living --that has cast one gleam of supernal sunshine into the dark vale where grope, each beneath his burthen of sorrow, the sons of men. I am not warring upon religious faith, but on falsehood; not upon Christ, but on those who disgrace his cause--who mistake bile for benevolence, gall for G.o.dliness and chronic laziness for "a call to preach."

Nor have I taken the Pope of Rome under my apostolic protection. The Popes managed to exist for a great many years before I was born, and, despite the a.s.saults of Slattery, will doubtless continue in business at the old stand for several years to come. I was raised a Protestant, and--thank G.o.d!--I'm no apostate. I learned Protestantism at my mother's knee, and from my father's pulpit; but I did not learn there that the Church of Rome is the "Scarlet Woman," nuns unclean creatures and priests the sworn enemies of my country. I learned that but for the Church of Rome the "glad tidings of great joy," which Christ brought to a dying world, would have been irredeemably lost in that dismal intellectual night known as the Dark Ages. I was taught that for centuries the Church of Rome was the repository, not only of the Christian faith, but of civilization itself. I was taught that the Catholic is the mother of the Protestant church, and that no matter how unworthy a parent may be, a child should not become the herald of its mother's shame.

And while being taught my duty as a Protestant, my education as an American citizen was not neglected. I was taught that this was a land of religious liberty, where every man is privileged to worship G.o.d in his own way, or ignore him altogether: that it was my duty to insist upon this right, both for myself and for my fellows.

That is why I am the uncompromising enemy of the A.P.A.

Any attempt to debar an American citizen from the honors and emoluments of a public office because of his religious faith, or non-faith, is a flagrant violation of a fundamental principle of this Republic. And no patriot; no man in whose veins there pulses one drop of the blood of the Conscript Fathers, or who would recognize the G.o.ddess of Liberty if he met her in the road; no man imbued with the tolerant spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ will aid or abet such an un-Christian and un-American movement.

The A.P.A. is the b.a.s.t.a.r.d sp.a.w.n of Ignorance and Intolerance, was conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity.

There may be some honest men connected with the movement; but if honest they should get their heads trepanned to give their brains room to grow. They are as unable as a mule-eared rabbit to comprehend either the broad principles upon which this government is grounded, or its political and religious history. No man--not even Judas Iscariot Slattery--is to blame for his ignorance; so we should humbly pray, Father forgive them, they know not what they do. Nor is the Church of Rome responsible for the shameless apostate's lack of information.

It did all that it could to transform him from an ignorant little beggar into an educated gentleman--but even the Pope cannot make a silk purse of a sow's ear. It is no fault of the Church of Rome that he's densely ignorant of the very text-book truths of history; that he knows nothing of that Reformation of which he talks so glibly; that he is unable to comprehend the genius of the government upon which he has conferred his more or less valuable citizenship. The fault, if fault it be, lies with the Almighty, who gave him a bad heart and a worse head.

American Protective a.s.sociation, eh? That signifies that Uncle Sam is in need of protection. I had hitherto supposed that the gentleman in the highwater pants and star-bespangled cutaway was able to protect himself; but it now appears that unless he crawls under the aegis of the redoubtable Slattery he is--to again borrow from the most popular of all Protestant divines--"a gone sucker."

Think of placing Uncle Sam under the protection of a man who is an apostate in religion and a renegade in politics--of an Irishman who apostrophizes the British flag!

Think of that kind of a bird presuming to tell the grandsons of Revolutionary soldiers their duties as American citizens.

Slattery a.s.sures us that we need protection from the Pope. There was a time when the proudest monarchs of Europe trembled at the Papal nod; but gradually the Pope has been shorn of temporal power, confined ever more to the realm of spiritual, until to-day he exerts about as little influence on the political destiny of this world as does Dr.

Cranfill with his little Prohibition craze. But Slattery will have it that the Pope is gradually undermining American inst.i.tutions--leads us to infer that, sooner or later, he'll blow our blessed const.i.tution at the moon and scatter fragments of the G.o.ddess of Liberty from Dan to Beersheba, from Cape Cod to Kalamazoo. The Pope, it appears, is a veritable Guy Faux, who is tunnelling beneath our national capitol with a keg of giant powder in one hand and a box of lucifer matches in the other. What's the evidence? Why, out in San Francisco, so Slattery says-- but as Slattery's been convicted of lying it were well to call for papers--a Catholic school-board was elected and employed only Catholic teachers. The same awful thing happened in Detroit--if Slattery's telling the truth, which is doubtful in the extreme. Then what? With a pride worthy a more American act, this illogical idiot informs us that "when the Protestants captured the school-boards of those cities they discharged every one of the Catholic teachers and put only good Protestants on guard." And at that Baptist brethren--with water on the brain--who boast of Roger Williams, cheered so loudly as to be in danger of lockjaw. In the exuberant imagination of Slattery and his dupes there appears to be a wonderful difference between tweedledum and tweedledee. It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that what is sauce for the Protestant goose should be sauce for the Catholic gander.

They d.a.m.n the Catholics for doing the very thing for which they commend the Protestant. That's the logic of the A.P.A.--the Aggregation of Pusillanimous a.s.ses. In my humble opinion both were engaged in very small business.

The only difference in the offenders that I can see is that while the Catholics are saying nothing, the Protestants are loudly boasting of their vicious subversion of the American principle of religious liberty. The circ.u.mstance is a sharp reminder that if we are to preserve a government of the people, for the people and by the people, we've got to keep religion of ALL kinds out of our politics, just as the framers of the federal const.i.tution intended that we should do. Mixing religion and politics is like mixing whiskey and water--it spoils both.

Slattery would have you believe that our Catholic citizens are simply emissaries of the Pope, to whom they owe allegiance both spiritual and temporal, and that they will, at the first opportunity, subvert American inst.i.tutions and make this Nation simply a satrapy of the Vatican.

The American Catholic takes his theology from Rome; he takes his politics from the ec.u.menical council of his party--from the national convention of that partisan organization to which he may chance to belong.

That there can be no "Catholic conspiracy" against the free inst.i.tutions of this country must be evident to every man of common sense from the simple fact that Catholics are divided among all the political parties-- are continually voting against each other. Now I appeal to your judgment--lay aside your religious prejudices for the moment and look at the matter from a non-partisan, non-sectarian standpoint: If our Catholic fellow-citizens be under the thumb of the Pope politically, as the apostate now evangelizing for the A.P.A. would have us believe; and if the Pope desires to make himself temporal ruler of this land, or in any manner direct its affairs, would they not be found voting as a unit--a mighty political machine --instead of being as badly divided on secular questions as the Baptists themselves? San Antonio is a Catholic stronghold, yet a prominent Roman Catholic was overwhelmingly defeated in the last mayoralty election. And I could cite you hundreds of instances where Catholics have voted against men of their own religious faith and elected Protestants or infidels.

Again: If the Pope is plotting against America; and if all manner of crime be considered a virtue when committed by Catholics in furtherance of his ends, as Slattery would have you believe, then it were well to keep a sharp eye on apostate priests. How are we to know that they are not emissaries of the Vatican, commissioned to stir the Protestants up to persecute their brethren in Christ and thereby solidify the Catholic vote? No one, not even Slattery, has accused the Pope of being a fool; and certain it is that the A.P.A. movement, if persisted in, will have the effect of driving the Catholics of this country to political unity in self-defense. Persecution, political ostracism for religious opinion's sake, will infallibly bring about those very conditions which Slattery, Hicks, et al. declare that the Pope desires. The communicants of the Church of Rome will no longer vote as Democrats or Republicans, but as Catholics --and then? With unlimited wealth, and such a political machine at the command of a man so ambitious and unscrupulous as we are asked to believe the Pope to be, the capture of the federal government and the political domination of this country were as easy as lying! The Protestants, divided into a hundred warring factions, many of them farther apart theologically than Episcopalianism and Catholicism, could offer no resistance to such a political machine, and they would receive but cold comfort from the liberal element, which has suffered so long from their petty persecutions.