The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XI Part 19

In the days of savagery the strong devoured the weak--actually ate their flesh. In spite of all the laws that man has made, in spite of all advance in science, literature and art, the strong, the cunning, the heartless still live on the weak, the unfortunate, and foolish. True, they do not eat their flesh, they do not drink their blood, but they live on their labor, on their self-denial, their weariness and want.

The poor man who deforms himself by toil, who labors for wife and child through all his anxious, barren, wasted life--who goes to the grave without even having had one luxury--has been the food of others. He has been devoured by his fellow-men. The poor woman living in the bare and lonely room, cheerless and fireless, sewing night and day to keep starvation from a child, is slowly being eaten by her fellow-men. When I take into consideration the agony of civilized life--the number of failures, the poverty, the anxiety, the tears, the withered hopes, the bitter realities, the hunger, the crime, the humiliation, the shame--I am almost forced to say that cannibalism, after all, is the most merciful form in which man has ever lived upon his fellow-man.

Some of the best and purest of our race have advocated what is known as Socialism. They have not only taught, but, what is much more to the purpose, have believed that a nation should be a family; that the government should take care of all its children; that it should provide work and food and clothes and education for all, and that it should divide the results of all labor equitably with all.

Seeing the inequalities among men, knowing of the dest.i.tution and crime, these men were willing to sacrifice, not only their own liberties, but the liberties of all.

Socialism seems to be one of the worst possible forms of slavery.

Nothing, in my judgment, would so utterly paralyze all the forces, all the splendid ambitions and aspirations that now tend to the civilization of man. In ordinary systems of slavery there are some masters, a few are supposed to be free; but in a socialistic state all would be slaves.

If the government is to provide work it must decide for the worker what he must do. It must say who shall chisel statues, who shall paint pictures, who shall compose music, and who shall practice the professions. Is any government, or can any government, be capable of intelligently performing these countless duties? It must not only control work, it must not only decide what each shall do, but it must control expenses, because expenses bear a direct relation to products.

Therefore the government must decide what the worker shall eat and wherewithal he shall be clothed; the kind of house in which he shall live; the manner in which it shall be furnished, and, if this government furnishes the work, it must decide on the days or the hours of leisure.

More than this, it must fix values; it must decide not only who shall sell, but who shall buy, and the price that must be paid--and it must fix this value not simply upon the labor, but on everything that can be produced, that can be exchanged or sold.

Is it possible to conceive of a despotism beyond this?

The present condition of the world is bad enough, with its poverty and ignorance, but it is far better than it could by any possibility be under any government like the one described. There would be less hunger of the body, but not of the mind. Each man would simply be a citizen of a large penitentiary, and, as in every well regulated prison, somebody would decide what each should do. The inmates of a prison retire early; they rise with the sun; they have something to eat; they are not dissipated; they have clothes; they attend divine service; they have but little to say about their neighbors; they do not suffer from cold; their habits are excellent, and yet, no one envies their condition. Socialism destroys the family. The children belong to the state. Certain officers take the places of parents. Individuality is lost.

The human race cannot afford to exchange its liberty for any possible comfort. You remember the old fable of the fat dog that met the lean wolf in the forest. The wolf, astonished to see so prosperous an animal, inquired of the dog where he got his food, and the dog told him that there was a man who took care of him, gave him his breakfast, his dinner, and his supper with the utmost regularity, and that he had all that he could eat and very little to do. The wolf said, "Do you think this man would treat me as he does you?" The dog replied, "Yes, come along with me." So they jogged on together toward the dog's home. On the way the wolf happened to notice that some hair was worn off the dog's neck, and he said, "How did the hair become worn?" "That is," said the dog, "the mark of the collar--my master ties me at night." "Oh," said the wolf, "Are you chained? Are you deprived of your liberty? I believe I will go back. I prefer hunger."

It is impossible for any man with a good heart to be satisfied with this world as it now is. No one can truly enjoy even what he earns--what he knows to be his own, knowing that millions of his fellow-men are in misery and want. When we think of the famished we feel that it is almost heartless to eat. To meet the ragged and shivering makes one almost ashamed to be well dressed and warm--one feels as though his heart was as cold as their bodies.

In a world filled with millions and millions of acres of land waiting to be tilled, where one man can raise the food for hundreds, millions are on the edge of famine. Who can comprehend the stupidity at the bottom of this truth?

Is there to be no change? Are "the law of supply and demand," invention and science, monopoly and compet.i.tion, capital and legislation always to be the enemies of those who toil?

Will the workers always be ignorant enough and stupid enough to give their earnings for the useless? Will they support millions of soldiers to kill the sons of other workingmen? Will they always build temples for ghosts and phantoms, and live in huts and dens themselves? Will they forever allow parasites with crowns, and vampires with mitres, to live upon their blood? Will they remain the slaves of the beggars they support? How long will they be controlled by friends who seek favors, and by reformers who want office? Will they always prefer famine in the city to a feast in the fields? Will they ever feel and know that they have no right to bring children into this world that they cannot support? Will they use their intelligence for themselves, or for others?

Will they become wise enough to know that they cannot obtain their own liberty by destroying that of others? Will they finally see that every man has a right to choose his trade, his profession, his employment, and has the right to work when, and for whom, and for what he will?

Will they finally say that the man who has had equal privileges with all others has no right to complain, or will they follow the example that has been set by their oppressors? Will they learn that force, to succeed, must have a thought behind it, and that anything done, in order that it may endure, must rest upon the corner-stone of justice?

Will they, at the command of priests, forever extinguish the spark that sheds a little light in every brain? Will they ever recognize the fact that labor, above all things, is honorable--that it is the foundation of virtue? Will they understand that beggars cannot be generous, and that every healthy man must earn the right to live? Will honest men stop taking off their hats to successful fraud? Will industry, in the presence of crowned idleness, forever fall upon its knees, and will the lips unstained by lies forever kiss the robed impostor's hand?--North American Review, March, 1887.

ART AND MORALITY.

ART is the highest form of expression, and exists for the sake of expression. Through art thoughts become visible. Back of forms are the desire, the longing, the brooding creative instinct, the maternity of mind and the pa.s.sion that give pose and swell, outline and color.

Of course there is no such thing as absolute beauty or absolute morality. We now clearly perceive that beauty and conduct are relative.

We have outgrown the provincialism that thought is back of substance, as well as the old Platonic absurdity, that ideas existed before the subjects of thought. So far, at least, as man is concerned, his thoughts have been produced by his surroundings, by the action and interaction of things upon his mind; and so far as man is concerned, things have preceded thoughts. The impressions that these things make upon us are what we know of them. The absolute is beyond the human mind. Our knowledge is confined to the relations that exist between the totality of things that we call the universe, and the effect upon ourselves.

Actions are deemed right or wrong, according to experience and the conclusions of reason. Things are beautiful by the relation that certain forms, colors, and modes of expression bear to us. At the foundation of the beautiful will be found the fact of happiness, the gratification of the senses, the delight of intellectual discovery and the surprise and thrill of appreciation. That which we call the beautiful, wakens into life through the a.s.sociation of ideas, of memories, of experiences, of suggestions of pleasure past and the perception that the prophecies of the ideal have been and will be fulfilled.

Art cultivates and kindles the imagination, and quickens the conscience.

It is by imagination that we put ourselves in the place of another. When the wings of that faculty are folded, the master does not put himself in the place of the slave; the tyrant is not locked in the dungeon, chained with his victim. The inquisitor did not feel the flames that devoured the martyr. The imaginative man, giving to the beggar, gives to himself.

Those who feel indignant at the perpetration of wrong, feel for the instant that they are the victims; and when they attack the aggressor they feel that they are defending themselves. Love and pity are the children of the imagination.

Our fathers read with great approbation the mechanical sermons in rhyme written by Milton, Young and Pollok. Those theological poets wrote for the purpose of convincing their readers that the mind of man is diseased, filled with infirmities, and that poetic poultices and plasters tend to purify and strengthen the moral nature of the human race. Nothing to the true artist, to the real genius, is so contemptible as the "medicinal view."

Poems were written to prove that the practice of virtue was an investment for another world, and that whoever followed the advice found in those solemn, insincere and lugubrious rhymes, although he might be exceedingly unhappy in this world, would with great certainty be rewarded in the next. These writers a.s.sumed that there was a kind of relation between rhyme and religion, between verse and virtue; and that it was their duty to call the attention of the world to all the snares and pitfalls of pleasure. They wrote with a purpose. They had a distinct moral end in view. They had a plan. They were missionaries, and their object was to show the world how wicked it was and how good they, the writers, were. They could not conceive of a man being so happy that everything in nature partook of his feeling; that all the birds were singing for him, and singing by reason of his joy; that everything sparkled and shone and moved in the glad rhythm of his heart. They could not appreciate this feeling. They could not think of this joy guiding the artist's hand, seeking expression in form and color. They did not look upon poems, pictures, and statues as results, as children of the brain fathered by sea and sky, by flower and star, by love and light.

They were not moved by gladness. They felt the responsibility of perpetual duty. They had a desire to teach, to sermonize, to point out and exaggerate the faults of others and to describe the virtues practiced by themselves. Art became a colporteur, a distributer of tracts, a mendicant missionary whose highest ambition was to suppress all heathen joy.

Happy people were supposed to have forgotten, in a reckless moment, duty and responsibility. True poetry would call them back to a realization of their meanness and their misery. It was the skeleton at the feast, the rattle of whose bones had a rhythmic sound. It was the forefinger of warning and doom held up in the presence of a smile.

These moral poets taught the "unwelcome truths," and by the paths of life put posts on which they painted hands pointing at graves. They loved to see the pallor on the cheek of youth, while they talked, in solemn tones, of age, decrepitude and lifeless clay.

Before the eyes of love they thrust, with eager hands, the skull of death. They crushed the flowers beneath their feet and plaited crowns of thorns for every brow.

According to these poets, happiness was inconsistent with virtue. The sense of infinite obligation should be perpetually present. They a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of superiority. They denounced and calumniated the reader.

They enjoyed his confusion when charged with total depravity. They loved to paint the sufferings of the lost, the worthlessness of human life, the littleness of mankind, and the beauties of an unknown world. They knew but little of the heart. They did not know that without pa.s.sion there is no virtue, and that the really pa.s.sionate are the virtuous.

Art has nothing to do directly with morality or immorality. It is its own excuse for being; it exists for itself.

The artist who endeavors to enforce a lesson, becomes a preacher; and the artist who tries by hint and suggestion to enforce the immoral, becomes a pander.

There is an infinite difference between the nude and the naked, between the natural and the undressed. In the presence of the pure, unconscious nude, nothing can be more contemptible than those forms in which are the hints and suggestions of drapery, the pretence of exposure, and the failure to conceal. The undressed is vulgar--the nude is pure.

The old Greek statues, frankly, proudly nude, whose free and perfect limbs have never known the sacrilege of clothes, were and are as free from taint, as pure, as stainless, as the image of the morning star trembling in a drop of perfumed dew.

Morality is the harmony between act and circ.u.mstance. It is the melody of conduct. A wonderful statue is the melody of proportion. A great picture is the melody of form and color. A great statue does not suggest labor; it seems to have been created as a joy. A great painting suggests no weariness and no effort; the greater, the easier it seems. So a great and splendid life seems to have been without effort. There is in it no idea of obligation, no idea of responsibility or of duty. The idea of duty changes to a kind of drudgery that which should be, in the perfect man, a perfect pleasure.

The artist, working simply for the sake of enforcing a moral, becomes a laborer. The freedom of genius is lost, and the artist is absorbed in the citizen. The soul of the real artist should be moved by this melody of proportion as the body is unconsciously swayed by the rhythm of a symphony. No one can imagine that the great men who chiseled the statues of antiquity intended to teach the youth of Greece to be obedient to their parents. We cannot believe that Michael Angelo painted his grotesque and somewhat vulgar "Day of Judgment" for the purpose of reforming Italian thieves. The subject was in all probability selected by his employeer, and the treatment was a question of art, without the slightest reference to the moral effect, even upon priests. We are perfectly certain that Corot painted those infinitely poetic landscapes, those cottages, those sad poplars, those leafless vines on weather-tinted walls, those quiet pools, those contented cattle, those fields flecked with light, over which bend the skies, tender as the breast of a mother, without once thinking of the ten commandments. There is the same difference between moral art and the product of true genius, that there is between prudery and virtue.

The novelists who endeavor to enforce what they are pleased to call "moral truths," cease to be artists. They create two kinds of characters--types and caricatures. The first never has lived, and the second never will. The real artist produces neither. In his pages you will find individuals, natural people, who have the contradictions and inconsistencies inseparable from humanity. The great artists "hold the mirror up to nature," and this mirror reflects with absolute accuracy.

The moral and the immoral writers--that is to say, those who have some object besides that of art--use convex or concave mirrors, or those with uneven surfaces, and the result is that the images are monstrous and deformed. The little novelist and the little artist deal either in the impossible or the exceptional. The men of genius touch the universal.

Their words and works throb in unison with the great ebb and flow of things. They write and work for all races and for all time.

It has been the object of thousands of reformers to destroy the pa.s.sions, to do away with desires; and could this object be accomplished, life would become a burden, with but one desire--that is to say, the desire for extinction. Art in its highest forms increases pa.s.sion, gives tone and color and zest to life. But while it increases pa.s.sion, it refines. It extends the horizon. The bare necessities of life const.i.tute a prison, a dungeon. Under the influence of art the walls expand, the roof rises, and it becomes a temple.

Art is not a sermon, and the artist is not a preacher. Art accomplishes by indirection. The beautiful refines. The perfect in art suggests the perfect in conduct. The harmony in music teaches, without intention, the lesson of proportion in life. The bird in his song has no moral purpose, and yet the influence is humanizing. The beautiful in nature acts through appreciation and sympathy. It does not browbeat, neither does it humiliate. It is beautiful without regard to you. Roses would be unbearable if in their red and perfumed hearts were mottoes to the effect that bears eat bad boys and that honesty is the best policy.

Art creates an atmosphere in which the proprieties, the amenities, and the virtues unconsciously grow. The rain does not lecture the seed. The light does not make rules for the vine and flower.

The heart is softened by the pathos of the perfect.

The world is a dictionary of the mind, and in this dictionary of things genius discovers a.n.a.logies, resemblances, and parallels amid opposites, likeness in difference, and corroboration in contradiction. Language is but a mult.i.tude of pictures. Nearly every word is a work of art, a picture represented by a sound, and this sound represented by a mark, and this mark gives not only the sound, but the picture of something in the outward world and the picture of something within the mind, and with these words which were once pictures, other pictures are made.

The greatest pictures and the greatest statues, the most wonderful and marvelous groups, have been painted and chiseled with words. They are as fresh to-day as when they fell from human lips. Penelope still ravels, weaves, and waits; Ulysses' bow is bent, and through the level rings the eager arrow flies. Cordelia's tears are falling now. The greatest gallery of the world is found in Shakespeare's book. The pictures and the marbles of the Vatican and Louvre are faded, crumbling things, compared with his, in which perfect color gives to perfect form the glow and movement of pa.s.sion's highest life.

Everything except the truth wears, and needs to wear, a mask. Little souls are ashamed of nature. Prudery pretends to have only those pa.s.sions that it cannot feel. Moral poetry is like a respectable ca.n.a.l that never overflows its banks. It has weirs through which slowly and without damage any excess of feeling is allowed to flow. It makes excuses for nature, and regards love as an interesting convict. Moral art paints or chisels feet, faces, and rags. It regards the body as obscene. It hides with drapery that which it has not the genius purely to portray. Mediocrity becomes moral from a necessity which it has the impudence to call virtue. It pretends to regard ignorance as the foundation of purity and insists that virtue seeks the companionship of the blind.

Art creates, combines, and reveals. It is the highest manifestation of thought, of pa.s.sion, of love, of intuition. It is the highest form of expression, of history and prophecy. It allows us to look at an unmasked soul, to fathom the abysses of pa.s.sion, to understand the heights and depths of love.

Compared with what is in the mind of man, the outward world almost ceases to excite our wonder. The impression produced by mountains, seas, and stars is not so great, so thrilling, as the music of Wagner.

The constellations themselves grow small when we read "Troilus and Cres-sida," "Hamlet," or "Lear." What are seas and stars in the presence of a heroism that holds pain and death as naught? What are seas and stars compared with human hearts? What is the quarry compared with the statue?

Art civilizes because it enlightens, develops, strengthens, enn.o.bles. It deals with the beautiful, with the pa.s.sionate, with the ideal. It is the child of the heart. To be great, it must deal with the human. It must be in accordance with the experience, with the hopes, with the fears, and with the possibilities of man. No one cares to paint a palace, because there is nothing in such a picture to touch the heart. It tells of responsibility, of the prison, of the conventional. It suggests a load--it tells of apprehension, of weariness and ennui. The picture of a cottage, over which runs a vine, a little home thatched with content, with its simple life, its natural sunshine and shadow, its trees bending with fruit, its hollyhocks and pinks, its happy children, its hum of bees, is a poem--a smile in the desert of this world.

The great lady, in velvet and jewels, makes but a poor picture. There is not freedom enough in her life. She is constrained. She is too far away from the simplicity of happiness. In her thought there is too much of the mathematical. In all art you will find a touch of chaos, of liberty; and there is in all artists a little of the vagabond--that is to say, genius.