The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XII Part 24

GIFT GIVING.--I believe in the festival called Christmas--not in the celebration of the birth of any man, but to celebrate the triumph of light over darkness--the victory of the sun.

I believe in giving gifts on that day, and a real gift should be given to those who cannot return it; gifts from the rich to the poor, from the prosperous to the unfortunate, from parents to children.

There is no need of giving water to the sea or light to the sun. Let us give to those who need, neither asking nor expecting return, not even asking grat.i.tude, only asking that the gift shall make the receiver happy--and he who gives in that way increases his own joy.

We have no right to enslave our children. We have no right to bequeath chains and manacles to our heirs. We have no right to leave a legacy of mental degradation.

Liberty is the birthright of all. Parents should not deprive their children of the great gifts of nature. We cannot all leave lands and gold to those we love; but we can leave Liberty, and that is of more value than all the wealth of India.

The dead have no right to enslave the living. To worship ancestors is to curse posterity. He who bows to the Past insults the Future; and allows, so to speak, the dead to rob the unborn. The coffin is good enough in its way, but the cradle is far better. With the bones of the fathers they beat out the brains of the children.

RANDOM THOUGHTS.--The road is short to anything we fear.

Joy lives in the house beyond the one we reach.

In youth the time is halting, slow and lame.

In age the time is winged and eager as a flame.

The sea seems narrow as we near the farther sh.o.r.e.

Youth goes hand in hand with hope--old age with fear. .

Youth has a wish--old age a dread.

In youth the leaves and buds seem loath to grow.

Youth shakes the gla.s.s to speed the lingering sands.

Youth says to Time: O crutched and limping laggard, get thee wings.

The dawn comes slowly, but the Westering day leaps like a lover to the dusky bosom of the Ethiop night.

I THINK that all days are substantially alike in the long run. It is no worse to drink on Sunday than on Monday. The idea that one day in the week is holy is wholly idiotic. Besides, these closing laws do no good.

Laws are not locks and keys. Saloon doors care nothing about laws. Law or no law, people will slip in, and then, having had so much trouble getting there, they will stay until they stagger out. These nasty, meddlesome, Pharisaic, hypocritical laws make sneaks and hypocrites. The children of these laws are like the fathers of the laws. Ever since I can remember, people have been trying to make other people temperate by intemperate laws. I have never known of the slightest success. It is a pity that Christ manufactured wine, a pity that Paul took heart and thanked G.o.d when he saw the sign of the Three Taverns; a pity that Jehovah put alcohol in almost everything that grows; a great pity that prayer-meetings are not more popular than saloons; a pity that our workingmen do not amuse themselves reading religious papers and the genealogies in the Old Testament.

Rum has caused many quarrels and many murders.

Religion has caused many wars and covered countless fields with dead.

Of course, all men should be temperate,--should avoid excess--should keep the golden path between extremes--should gather roses, not thorns.

The only way to make men temperate is to develop the brain.

When pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes are stronger than the intellect, men are savages; when the intellect governs the pa.s.sions, when the pa.s.sions are servants, men are civilized. The people need education--facts--philosophy. Drunkenness is one form of intemperance, prohibition is another form. Another trouble is that these little laws and ordinances can not be enforced.

Both parties want votes, and to get votes they will allow unpopular laws to sleep, neglected, and finally refuse to enforce them. These spasms of virtue, these convulsions of conscience are soon over, and then comes a long period of neglectful rest.

THE OLD AND NEW YEAR.--For countless ages the old earth has been making, in alternating light and shade, in gleam and gloom, the whirling circuit of the sun, leaving the record of its flight in many forms--in leaves of stone, in growth of tree and vine and flower, in glittering gems of many hues, in curious forms of monstrous life, in ravages of flood and flame, in fossil fragments stolen from decay by chance, in molten ma.s.ses hurled from lips of fire, in gorges worn by waveless, foamless cataracts of ice, in coast lines beaten back by the imprisoned sea, in mountain ranges and in ocean reefs, in islands lifted from the underworld--in continents submerged and given back to light and life.

Another year has joined his shadowy fellows in the wide and voiceless desert of the past, where, from the eternal hour-gla.s.s forever fall the sands of time. Another year, with all its joy and grief, of birth and death, of failure and success--of love and hate. And now, the first day of the new o'er arches all. Standing between the buried and the babe, we cry, "Farewell and Hail!"--January 1,1893.

KNOWLEDGE consists in the perception of facts, their relations--conditions, modes and results of action. Experience is the foundation of knowledge--without experience it is impossible to know.

It may be that experience can be transmitted--inherited. Suppose that an infinite being existed in infinite s.p.a.ce. He being the only existence, what knowledge could he gain by experience? He could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. He would have no use for what we call the senses.

Could he use what we call the faculties of the mind? He could not compare, remember, hope or fear. He could not reason. How could he know that he existed? How could he use force? There was in the universe nothing that would resist--nothing.

Most men are economical when dealing with abundance, h.o.a.rding gold and wasting time--throwing away the sunshine of life--the few remaining hours, and hugging to their shriveled hearts that which they do not and cannot even expect to use. Old age should enjoy the luxury of giving.

How divine to live in the atmosphere, the climate of grat.i.tude! The men who clutch and fiercely hold and look at wife and children with eyes dimmed by age and darkened by suspicion, giving naught until the end, then give to death the grat.i.tude that should have been their own.

DEATH OF THE AGED.

* From a letter of condolence written to a friend on the death of his mother.

After all, there is something tenderly appropriate in the serene death of the old. Nothing is more touching than the death of the young, the strong. But when the duties of life have all been n.o.bly done; when the sun touches the horizon; when the purple twilight falls upon the past, the present, and the future; when memory, with dim eyes, can scarcely spell the blurred and faded records of the vanished days--then, surrounded by kindred and by friends, death comes like a strain of music. The day has been long, the road weary, and the traveler gladly stops at the welcome inn.

Nearly forty-eight years ago, under the snow, in the little town of Cazenovia, my poor mother was buried. I was but two years old. I remember her as she looked in death. That sweet, cold face has kept my heart warm through all the changing years.

There is no cunning art to trace In any feature, form or face,

Or wrinkled palm, with criss-cross lines The good or bad in peoples' minds.

Nor can we guess men's thoughts or aims By seeing how they write their names.

We could as well foretell their acts By getting outlines of their tracks.

Ourselves we do not know--how then Can we find out our fellow-men?

And yet--although the reason laughs--

We like to look at autographs--

And almost think that we can guess What lines and dots of ink express.

* From the autograph collection of Miss Eva Ingersoll Farrell.