The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VI Part 29

Certainly none of these things are above nature. We do not need the a.s.sistance of the Holy Ghost in these matters. We know that men are united by common interests, common purposes, common dangers--by race, climate and education. It is no more wonderful that people live in families, tribes, communities and nations, than that birds, ants and bees live in flocks and swarms.

If we know anything, we know that language is natural--that it is a physical science. But if we take the ground occupied by the Cardinal, then we insist that everything that cannot be accounted for by man, is supernatural. Let me ask, by what man? What man must we take as the standard?

Cosmas or Humboldt, St. Irenaeus or Darwin? If everything that we cannot account for is above nature, then ignorance is the test of the supernatural. The man who is mentally honest, stops where his knowledge stops. At that point he says that he does not know. Such a man is a philosopher. Then the theologian steps forward, denounces the modesty of the philosopher as blasphemy, and proceeds to tell what is beyond the horizon of the human intellect.

Could a savage account for the telegraph, or the telephone, by natural causes? How would he account for these wonders? He would account for them precisely as the Cardinal accounts for the Catholic Church.

Belonging to no rival church, I have not the slightest interest in the primacy of Leo XIII., and yet it is to be regretted that this primacy rests upon such a narrow and insecure foundation.

The Cardinal says that "it will appear almost certain that the original Greek of St. Irenaeus, _which is unfortunately lost_, contained either [--Greek--], or some inflection of [--Greek--], which signifies primacy."

From this it appears that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome rests on some "inflection" of a Greek word--and that this supposed inflection was in a letter supposed to have been written by St. Irenaeus, which has certainly been lost. Is it possible that the vast fabric of papal power has this, and only this, for its foundation? To this "inflection" has it come at last?

The Cardinal's case depends upon the intelligence and veracity of his witnesses. The Fathers of the church were utterly incapable of examining a question of fact. They were all believers in the miraculous. The same is true of the apostles. If St. John was the author of the Apocalypse, he was undoubtedly insane. If Polycarp said the things attributed to him by Catholic writers, he was certainly in the condition of his master.

What is the testimony of St. John worth in the light of the following?

"Cerinthus, the heretic, was in a bathhouse. St. John and another Christian were about to enter. St. John cried out: 'Let us run away, lest the house fall upon us while the enemy of truth is in it.'" Is it possible that St. John thought that G.o.d would kill two eminent Christians for the purpose of getting even with one heretic?

Let us see who Polycarp was. He seems to have been a prototype of the Catholic Church, as will be seen from the following statement concerning this Father: "When any heretical doctrine was spoken in his presence he would stop his ears." After this, there can be no question of his orthodoxy. It is claimed that Polycarp was a martyr--that a spear was run through his body, and that from the wound his soul, in the shape of a bird, flew away. The history of his death is just as true as the history of his life.

Irenaeus, another witness, took the ground that there was to be a millennium--a thousand years of enjoyment in which celibacy would not be the highest form of virtue. If he is called as a witness for the purpose of establishing the divine origin of the church, and if one of his "inflections" is the basis of papal supremacy, is the Cardinal also willing to take his testimony as to the nature of the millennium?

All the Fathers were infinitely credulous. Every one of them believed, not only in the miracles said to have been wrought by Christ, by the apostles, and by other Christians, but every one of them believed in the Pagan miracles. All of these Fathers were familiar with wonders and impossibilities. Nothing was so common with them as to work miracles, and on many occasions they not only cured diseases, not only reversed the order of nature, but succeeded in raising the dead.

It is very hard, indeed, to prove what the apostles said, or what the Fathers of the church wrote. There were many centuries filled with forgeries--many generations in which the cunning hands of ecclesiastics erased, obliterated or interpolated the records of the past--during which they invented books, invented authors, and quoted from works that never existed.

The testimony of the "Fathers" is without the slightest value.

They believed everything--they examined nothing. They received as a waste-basket receives. Whoever accepts their testimony will exclaim with the Cardinal: "Happily, men are not saved by logic."

Robert G. Ingersoll.

IS DIVORCE WRONG?

By Cardinal Gibbons, Bishop Henry C. Potter, and Colonel Robert G.

Ingersoll.

THE attention of the public has been particularly directed of late to the abuses of divorce, and to the facilities afforded by the complexities of American law, and by the looseness of its administration, for the disruption of family ties. Therefore the _North American Review_ has opened its pages for the thorough discussion of the subject in its moral, social, and religious aspects, and some of the most eminent leaders of modern thought have contributed their opinions.

The Rev. S. W. Dike, LL.D., who is a specialist on the subject of divorce, has prepared some statistics touching the matter, and, with the a.s.sistance of Bishop Potter, the four following questions have been formulated as a basis for the discussion:

1. Do you believe in the principle of divorce under any circ.u.mstances?

2. Ought divorced people to be allowed to marry under any circ.u.mstances?

3. What is the effect of divorce on the integrity of the family?

4. Does the absolute prohibition of divorce where it exists contribute to the moral purity of society?

Editor North American Review,

Introduction by the Rev. S. W. Dike, LL.D.

I AM to introduce this discussion with some facts and make a few suggestions upon them. In the dozen years of my work at this problem I have steadily insisted upon a broad basis of fact as the only foundation of sound opinion. We now have a great statistical advance in the report of the Department of labor. A few of these statistics will serve the present purpose.

There were in the United States 9,937 divorces reported for the year 1867 and 25,535 for 1886, or a total 328,716 in the twenty years. This increase is more than twice as great as the population, and has been remarkably uniform throughout the period. With the exception of New York, perhaps Delaware, and the three or four States where special legislative reforms have been secured, the increase covers the country and has been more than twice the gain in population. The South apparently felt the movement later than the North and West, but its greater rapidity there will apparently soon obliterate most existing differences. The movement is well-nigh as universal in Europe as here.

Thirteen European countries, including Canada, had 6,540 divorces in 1876 and 10,909 in 1886--an increase of 67 per cent. In the same period the increase with us was 72.5 per cent. But the ratios of divorce to population are here generally three or four times greater than in Europe. The ratios to marriage in the United States are sometimes as high as 1 to 10, 1 to 9, or even a little more for single years. In heathen j.a.pan for three years they were more than 1 to 3. But divorce there is almost wholly left to the regulation of the family, and practically optional with the parties. It is a re-transference of the wife by a simple writing to her own family.

1. The increase of divorce is one of several evils affecting the family.

Among these are hasty or ill-considered marriages, the decline of marriage and the decrease of children,--too generally among cla.s.ses pecuniarily best able to maintain domestic life,--the probable increase in some directions of marital infidelity and s.e.xual vice, and last, but not least, a tendency to reduce the family to a minimum of force in the life of society. All these evils should be studied and treated in their relations to each other. Carefully-conducted investigations alone can establish these latter statements beyond dispute, although there can be little doubt of their general correctness as here carefully made. And the conclusion is forced upon us that the toleration of the increase of divorce, touching as it does the vital bond of the family, is so far forth a confession of our western civilization that it despairs of all remedies for ills of the family, and is becoming willing, in great degree, to look away from all true remedies to a dissolution of the family by the courts in all serious cases. If this were our settled purpose, it would look like giving up the idea of producing and protecting a family increasingly capable of enduring to the end of its natural existence. If the drift of things on this subject during the present century may be taken as prophetic, our civilization moves in an opposite direction in its treatment of the family from its course with the individual.

2. Divorce, including these other evils related to the family, is preeminently a social problem. It should therefore be reached by all the forces of our great social inst.i.tutions--religious, educational, industrial, and political. Each of these should be brought to bear on it proportionately and in cooperation with the others. But I can here take up only one or two lines for further suggestion.

3. The causes of divorces, like those of most social evils, are often many and intricate. The statistics for this country, when the forty-three various statutory causes are reduced to a few cla.s.ses, show that 20 per cent, of the divorces were based on adultery, 16 on cruelty, 38 were granted for desertion, 4 for drunkenness, less than 3 for neglect to provide, and so on. But these tell very little, except that it is easier or more congenial to use one or another of the statutory causes, just as the old "omnibus clause," which gave general discretion to the courts in Connecticut, and still more in some other States, was made to cover many cases. A special study of forty-five counties in twelve States, however, shows that drunkenness was a direct or indirect cause in 20.1 per cent, of 29,665 cases. That is, it could be found either alone or in conjunction with others, directly or indirectly, in one-fifth of the cases.

4. Laws and their administration affect divorce. New York grants absolute divorce for only one cause, and New Jersey for two. Yet New York has many more divorces in proportion to population, due largely to a looser system of administration. In seventy counties of twelve States 68 per cent, of the applications are granted. The enactment of a more stringent law is immediately followed by a decrease of divorces, from which there is a tendency to recover. Personally, I think stricter methods of administration, restrictions upon remarriage, proper delays in hearing suits, and some penal inflictions for cruelty, desertion, neglect of support, as well as for adultery, would greatly reduce divorces, even without removing a single statutory cause. There would be fewer unhappy families, not more. For people would then look to real remedies instead of confessing the hopelessness of remedy by appeals to the courts. A mult.i.tude of petty ills and many utterly wicked frauds and other abuses would disappear. "Your present methods," said a Nova Scotian to a man from Maine a few years ago, "are simply ways of multiplying and magnifying domestic ills." There is much force in this.

But let us put reform of marriage laws along with these measures.

5. The evils of conflicting and diverse marriage and divorce laws are doing immense harm. The mischief through which innocent parties are defrauded, children rendered illegitimate, inheritance made uncertain, and actual imprisonments for bigamy grow out of divorce and remarriage, are well known to most. Uniformity through a national law or by conventions of the States has been strongly urged for many years.

Uniformity is needed. But for one, I have long discouraged too early action, because the problem is too difficult, the consequences too serious, and the elements of it still too far out of our reach for any really wise action at present. The government report grew immediately out of this conviction. It will, I think, abundantly justify the caution. For it shows that uniformity could affect at the utmost only a small percentage of the total divorces in the United States. _Only 19.9 percent of all the divorced who were married in this country obtained their divorces in a different State from the one in which their marriage had taken place, in all these twenty years, 80.1 per cent, having been divorced in the State where married_. Now, marriage on the average lasts 9.17 years before divorce occurs, which probably is nearly two-fifths the length of a married life before its dissolution by death. From this 19.9 per cent, there must, therefore, be subtracted the large migration of married couples for legitimate purposes, in order to get any fair figure to express the migration for divorce. But the movement of the native population away from the State of birth is 22 or 23 per cent.

This, however, includes all ages. For all who believe that divorce itself is generally a great evil, the conclusion is apparently inevitable that the question of uniformity, serious as it is, is a very small part of the great legal problem demanding solution at our hands.

This general problem, aside from its graver features in the more immediate sphere of sociology and religion, must evidently tax our publicists and statesmen severely. The old temptation to meet special evils by general legislation besets us on this subject. I think comparative and historical study of the law of the family, (the _Familienrecht_ of the Germans), especially if the movement of European law be seen, points toward the need of a pretty comprehensive and thorough examination of our specific legal problem of divorce and marriage law in this fuller light, before much legislation is undertaken.

Samuel W. Dike.

However much men may differ in their views of the nature and attributes of the matrimonial contract, and in their concept of the rights and obligations of the marriage state, no one will deny that these are grave questions; since upon marriage rests the family, and upon the family rest society, civilization, and the highest interests of religion and the state. Yet, strange to say, divorce, the deadly enemy of marriage, stalks abroad to-day bold and unblushing, a monster licensed by the laws of Christian states to break hearts, wreck homes and ruin souls. And pa.s.sing strange is it, too, that so many, wise and far-seeing in less weighty concerns, do not appear to see in the evergrowing power of divorce a menace not only to the sacredness of the marriage inst.i.tution, but even to the fair social fabric reared upon matrimony as its corner-stone.

G.o.d inst.i.tuted in Paradise the marriage state and sanctified it. He established its law of unity and declared its indissolubility. By divine authority Adam spoke when of his wife he said: "This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh."*

* Gen., ii., 23-24.

But like other things on earth, marriage suffered in the fall; and little by little polygamy and divorce began to a.s.sert themselves against the law of matrimonial unity and indissolubility. Yet the ideal of the marriage inst.i.tution never faded away. It survived, not only among the chosen people, but even among the nations of heathendom, disfigured much, 'tis true, but with its ancient beauty never wholly destroyed.

When, in the fullness of time, Christ came to restore the things that were perishing, he rea.s.serted in clear and unequivocal terms the sanct.i.ty, unity, and indissolubility of marriage. Nay, more. He gave to this state added holiness and a dignity higher far than it had "from the beginning." He made marriage a sacrament, made it the type of his own never-ending union with his one spotless spouse, the church. St. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, says: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies....

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh."*

* Ephes., v., 25-31.

In defence of Christian marriage, the church was compelled from the earliest days of her existence to do frequent and stern battle. But cultured pagan, and rough barbarian, and haughty Christian lord were met and conquered. Men were taught to master pa.s.sion, and Christian marriage, with all its rights secured and reverenced, became a ruling power in the world.

The Council of Trent, called, in the throes of the mighty moral upheaval of the sixteenth century, to deal with the new state of things, again proclaimed to a believing and an unbelieving world the Catholic doctrine of the holiness, unity, and indissolubility of marriage, and the unlawfulness of divorce. The council declared no new dogmas: it simply reaffirmed the common teaching of the church for centuries. But some of the most hallowed attributes of marriage seemed to be objects of peculiar detestation to the new teachers, and their abolition was soon demanded. "The leaders in the changes of matrimonial law," writes Professor Woolsey, "were the Protestant reformers themselves, and that almost from the beginning of the movement.... The reformers, when they discarded the sacramental view of marriage and the celibacy of the clergy, had to make out a new doctrine of marriage and of divorce."*

The "new doctrine of marriage and of divorce," pleasing as it was to the sensual man, was speedily learned and as speedily put in practice. The sacredness with which Christian marriage had been hedged around began to be more and more openly trespa.s.sed upon, and restive shoulders wearied more and more quickly of the marriage yoke when divorce promised freedom for newer joys.

To our own time the logical consequences of the "new doctrine" have come. To-day "abyss calls upon abyss," change calls for change, laxity calls for license. Divorce is now a recognized presence in high life and low; and polygamy, the first-born of divorce, sits shameless in palace and in hovel. Yet the teacher that feared not to speak the words of truth in bygone ages is not silent now. In no uncertain tones, the church proclaims to the world to-day the unchangeable law of the strict unity and absolute indissolubility of valid and consummated Christian marriage.

To the question then, "Can divorce from the bond of marriage ever be allowed?" the Catholic can only answer no.