Ingersollia Part 26

336. Ingersoll Muses by Napoleon's Tomb

A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon--a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity--and gazed upon the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble, where rest at last the ashes of the restless man. I leaned over the bal.u.s.trade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide--I saw him at Toulon--I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris--I saw him at the head of the army of Italy--I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand--I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids--I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo--at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like Winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster--driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris--clutched like a wild beast--banished to Elba.

I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where chance and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made--of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant, and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the Autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky--with my children upon my knees and their arms about me; I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder known as Napoleon the Great. And so I would, ten thousand times.

337. Eulogy on J. G. Blaine

This is a grand year--a year filled with recollections of the Revolution; filled with the proud and tender memories of the past; with the sacred legends of liberty; a year in which the sons of freedom will drink from the fountains of enthusiasm; a year in which the people call for a man who has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon the field; a year in which they call for the man who has torn from the throat of treason the tongue of slander--for the man who has s.n.a.t.c.hed the mask of Democracy from the hideous face of rebellion; for this man who, like an intellectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and challenged all comers, and who is still a total stranger to defeat. Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country and the maligners of her honor. For the Republican party to desert this gallant leader now is as though an army should desert their General upon the field of battle. James G. Blaine is now and has been for years the bearer of the sacred standard of the Republican party.

338. A Model Leader

The Republicans of the United States want a man who knows that this Government should protect every citizen, at home and abroad; who knows that any Government that will not defend its defenders and protect its protectors is a disgrace to the map of the world. They demand a man who believes in the eternal separation and divorcement of church and school.

They demand a man whose political reputation is as spotless as a star; but they do not demand that their candidate shall have a certificate of moral character signed by a Confederate Congress. The man who has, in full, heaped and rounded measure, all these splendid qualifications is the present grand and gallant leader of the Republican party--James G.

Blaine. Our country, crowned with the vast and marvelous achievements of its first century, asks for a man worthy of the past and prophetic of her future; asks for a man who has the audacity of genius; asks for a man who is the grandest combination of heart, conscience and brain beneath her flag. Such a man is James G. Blaine.

339. Abraham Lincoln

This world has not been fit to live in fifty years. There is no liberty in it--very little. Why, it is only a few years ago that all the Christian nations were engaged in the slave trade. It was not until 1808 that England abolished the slave trade, and up to that time her priests in her churches and her judges on her benches owned stock in slave ships, and luxuriated on the profits of piracy and murder; and when a man stood up and denounced it they mobbed him as though he had been a common burglar or a horse thief. Think of it! It was not until the 28th day of August, 1833, that England abolished slavery in her colonies; and it was not until the 1st day of January, 1862, that Abraham Lincoln, by direction of the entire North, wiped that infamy out of this country; and I never speak of Abraham Lincoln but I want to say that he was, in my judgment, in many respects the grandest man ever President of the United States. I say that upon his tomb there ought to be this line--and I know of no other man deserving it so well as he: "Here lies one who having been clothed with almost absolute power never abused it except on the side of mercy."

340. Swedenborg

Swedenborg was a man of great intellect, of vast acquirements, and of honest intentions; and I think it equally clear that upon one subject, at least, his mind was touched, shattered and shaken. Misled by a.n.a.logies, imposed upon by the bishop, deceived by the woman, borne to other worlds upon the wings of dreams, living in the twilight of reason and the dawn of insanity, he regarded every fact as a patched and ragged garment with a lining of the costliest silk, and insisted that the wrong side, even of the silk, was far more beautiful than the right.

341. Jeremy Bentham

The glory of Bentham is, that he gave the true basis of morals, and furnished the statesmen with the star and compa.s.s of this sentence: "The greatest happiness of the greatest number."

342. Charles Fourier

Fourier sustained about the same relation to this world that Swedenborg did to the other. There must be something wrong about the brain of one who solemnly a.s.serts that "the elephant, the ox and the diamond were created by the Sun; the horse, the lily, and the ruby, by Saturn; the cow, the jonquil and the topaz, by Jupiter; and the dog, the violet and the opal stones by the earth itself." And yet, forgetting these aberrations of the mind, this lunacy of a great and loving soul, for one, that's in tender-est regard the memory of Charles Fourier, one of the best and n.o.blest of our race.

343. Auguste Comte

There was in the brain of the great Frenchman--Auguste Comte--the dawn of that happy day in which humanity will be the only religion, good the only G.o.d, happiness the only object, rest.i.tution the only atonement, mistake the only sin, and affection guided by intelligence, the only savior of mankind. This dawn enriched his poverty, illuminated the darkness of his life, peopled his loneliness with the happy millions yet to be, and filled his eyes with proud and tender tears. When everything connected with Napoleon, except his crimes, shall be forgotten, Auguste Comte will be lovingly remembered as a benefactor of the human race.

344. Herbert Spencer

Herbert Spencer relies upon evidence, upon demonstration, upon experience; and occupies himself with one world at a time. He perceives that there is a mental horizon that we cannot pierce, and that beyond that is the unknown, possibly the unknowable. He endeavors to examine only that which is capable of being examined, and considers the theological method as not only useless, but hurtful. After all G.o.d is but a guess, throned and established by arrogance and a.s.sertion.

Turning his attention to those things that have in some way affected the condition of mankind, Spencer leaves the unknowable to priests and believers.

345. Robert Collyer

I have the honor of a slight acquaintance with Robert Collyer. I have read with pleasure some of his exquisite productions. He has a brain full of the dawn, the head of a philosopher, the imagination of a poet and the sincere heart of a child. Had such men as Robert Collyer and John Stuart Mill been present at the burning of Servetus, they would have extinguished the flames with their tears. Had the presbytery of Chicago been there, they would have quietly turned their backs, solemnly divided their coat tails, and warmed themselves.

346. John Milton

England was filled with Puritan gloom and Episcopal ceremony. All religious conceptions were of the grossest nature. The ideas of crazy fanatics and extravagant poets were taken as sober facts. Milton had clothed Christianity in the soiled and faded finery of the G.o.ds--had added to the story of Christ the fables of Mythology, He gave to the Protestant Church the most outrageously material ideas of the Deity.

He turned all the angels into soldiers--made heaven a battlefield, put Christ in uniform, and described G.o.d as a militia general. His works were considered by the Protestants nearly as sacred as the Bible itself, and the imagination of the people was thoroughly polluted by the horrible imagery, the sublime absurdity of the blind Milton.

347. Ernst Haeckel

Amongst the bravest, side by side with the greatest of the world in Germany, the land of science--stands Ernst Haeckel, who may be said not only to have demonstrated the theories of Darwin, but the monistic conception of the world. He has endeavored--and I think with complete success--to show that there is not, and never was, and never can be, the creator of anything. Haeckel is one of the bitterest enemies of the church, and is, therefore, one of the bravest friends of man.

348. Professor Swing, a Dove amongst Vultures

Professor Swing was too good a man to stay in the Presbyterian Church.

He was a rose amongst thistles; he was a dove amongst vultures; and they hunted him out, and I am glad he came out. I have the greatest respect for Professor Swing, but I want him to tell whether the 109th Psalm is inspired.

349. Queen Victoria and George Eliot