Suicide of Judge Normile
Reply to the Western Watchman.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1892)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 7.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/suicide-of-judge-normile/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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*A reply to the Western Watchman, published in the St. Louis
    Globe Democrat, Sept. 1, 1892.

Question. Have you read an article in the Western Watchman, entitled
"Suicide of Judge Normile"? If so, what is your opinion of it?

Answer. I have read the article, and I think the spirit in which it
is written is in exact accord with the creed, with the belief, that
prompted it.

In this article the writer speaks not only of Judge Normile, but of
Henry D'Arcy, and begins by saying that a Catholic community had been
shocked, but that as a matter of fact the Catholics had no right "to
feel special concern in the life or death of either," for the reason,
"that both had ceased to be Catholics, and had lived as infidels and
scoffers."

According to the Catholic creed all infidels and scoffers are on
the direct road to eternal pain; and yet, if the Watchman is to be
believed, Catholics have no right to have special concern for the fate
of such people, even after their death.

The church has always proclaimed that it was seeking the lost—that
it was trying in every way to convert the infidels and save the
scoffers—that it cared less for the ninety-nine sheep safe in the fold
than for the one that had strayed. We have been told that God so loved
infidels and scoffers, that he came to this poor world and gave his life
that they might be saved. But now we are told by the Western Watchman
that the church, said to have been founded by Christ, has no right to
feel any special concern about the fate of infidels and scoffers.

Possibly the Watchman only refers to the infidels and scoffers who
were once Catholics.

If the New Testament is true, St. Peter was at one time a Christian;
that is to say, a good Catholic, and yet he fell from grace and not only
denied his Master, but went to the extent of swearing that he did not
know him; that he never had made his acquaintance. And yet, this same
Peter was taken back and became the rock on which the Catholic Church is
supposed to rest.

Are the Catholics of St. Louis following the example of Christ, when
they publicly declare that they care nothing for the fate of one who
left the church and who died in his sins?

The Watchman, in order to show that it was simply doing its duty, and
was not actuated by hatred or malice, assures us as follows: "A warm
personal friendship existed between D'Arcy and Normile and the managers
of this paper." What would the Watchman have said if these men had
been the personal enemies of the managers of that paper? Two warm
personal friends, once Catholics, had gone to hell; but the managers
of the Watchman, "warm personal friends" of the dead, had no right to
feel any special concern about these friends in the flames of perdition.
One would think that pity had changed to piety.

Another wonderful statement is that "both of these men determined to go
to hell, if there was a hell, and to forego the joys of heaven, if there
was a heaven."

Admitting that heaven and hell exist, that heaven is a good place, and
that hell, to say the least, is, and eternally will be, unpleasant, why
should any sane man unalterably determine to go to hell? It is hard to
think of any reason, unless he was afraid of meeting those Catholics in
heaven who had been his "warm personal friends" in this world. The truth
is that no one wishes to be unhappy in this or any other country. The
truth is that Henry D'Arcy and Judge Normile both became convinced that
the Catholic Church is of human origin, that its creed is not true, that
it is the enemy of progress, and the foe of freedom. It may be that
they were in part led to these conclusions by the conduct of their "warm
personal friends."

It is claimed that these men, Henry D'Arcy and Judge Normile "studied"
to convince themselves "that there was no God, that they went back to
Paganism and lived among the ancients," and "that they soon revelled
in the grossness of Paganism." If they went back to Paganism, they
certainly found plenty of gods. The Pagans filled heaven and earth with
deities. The Catholics have only three, while the Pagans had hundreds.
And yet there were some very good Pagans. By associating with Socrates
and Plato one would not necessarily become a groveling wretch. Zeno was
not altogether abominable. He would compare favorably, at least, with
the average pope. Aristotle was not entirely despicable, although wrong,
it may be, in many things. Epicurus was temperate, frugal and serene. He
perceived the beauty of use, and celebrated the marriage of virtue and
joy. He did not teach his disciples to revel in grossness, although his
maligners have made this charge. Cicero was a Pagan, and yet he uttered
some very sublime and generous sentiments. Among other things, he said
this: "When we say that we should love Romans, but not foreigners, we
destroy the bond of universal brotherhood and drive from our hearts
charity and justice."

Suppose a Pagan had written about "two warm personal friends" of his,
who had joined the Catholic Church, and suppose he had said this:
"Although our two warm personal friends have both died by their own
hands, and although both have gone to the lowest hell, and are now
suffering inconceivable agonies, we have no right to feel any special
concern about them or about their sufferings; and, to speak frankly, we
care nothing for their agonies, nothing for their tears, and we mention
them only to keep other Pagans from joining that blasphemous and
ignorant church. Both of our friends were raised as Pagans, both were
educated in our holy religion, and both had read the works of our
greatest and wisest authors, and yet they fell into apostasy, and
studied day and night, in season and out of season, to convince
themselves that a young carpenter of Palestine was in fact, Jupiter,
whom we call Stator, the creator, the sustainer and governor of all."

It is probable that the editor of the Watchman was perfectly
conscientious in his attack on the dead. Nothing but a sense of
religious duty could induce any man to attack the character of a "warm
personal friend," and to say that although the friend was in hell, he
felt no special concern as to his fate.

The Watchman seems to think that it is hardly probable or possible
that a sane Catholic should become an infidel. People of every religion
feel substantially in this way. It is probable that the Mohammedan is
of the opinion that no sane believer in the religion of Islam could
possibly become a Catholic. Probably there are no sane Mohammedans. I do
not know.

Now, it seems to me, that when a sane Catholic reads the history of
his church, of the Inquisition, of centuries of flame and sword, of
philosophers and thinkers tortured, flayed and burned by the "Bride of
God," and of all the cruelties of Christian years, he may reasonably
come to the conclusion that the Church of Rome is not the best possible
church in this, the best possible of all worlds.

It would hardly impeach his sanity if, after reading the history of
superstition, he should denounce the Hierarchy, from priest to pope. The
truth is, the real opinions of all men are perfectly honest no matter
whether they are for or against the Catholic creed. All intelligent
people are intellectually hospitable. Every man who knows something of
the operations of his own mind is absolutely certain that his wish has
not, to his knowledge, influenced his judgment. He may admit that his
wish has influenced his speech, but he must certainly know that it has
not affected his judgment.

In other words, a man cannot cheat himself in a game of solitaire and
really believe that he has won the game. No matter what the appearance
of the cards may be, he knows whether the game was lost or won. So, men
may say that their judgment is a certain way, and they may so affirm in
accordance with their wish, but neither the wish, nor the declaration
can affect the real judgment. So, a man must know whether he believes a
certain creed or not, or, at least, what the real state of his mind
is. When a man tells me that he believes in the supernatural, in the
miraculous, and in the inspiration of the Scriptures, I take it for
granted that he is telling the truth, although it seems impossible to me
that the man could reach that conclusion. When another tells me that he
does not know whether there is a Supreme Being or not, but that he does
not believe in the supernatural, and is perfectly satisfied that the
Scriptures are for the most part false and barbarous, I implicitly
believe every word he says.

I admit cheerfully that there are many millions of men and women who
believe what to me seems impossible and infinitely absurd; and,
undoubtedly, what I believe seems to them equally impossible.

Let us give to others the liberty which we claim for ourselves.

The Watchman seems to think that unbelief, especially when coupled
with what they call "the sins of the flesh," is the lowest possible
depth, and tells us that "robbers may be devout," "murderers penitent,"
and "drunkards reverential."

In some of these statements the Watchman is probably correct. There
have been "devout robbers." There have been gentlemen of the highway,
agents of the road, who carried sacred images, who bowed, at holy
shrines for the purpose of securing success. For many centuries the
devout Catholics robbed the Jews. The devout Ferdinand and Isabella
were great robbers. A great many popes have indulged in this theological
pastime, not to speak of the rank and file. Yes, the Watchman is
right. There is nothing in robbery that necessarily interferes with
devotion.

There have been penitent murderers, and most murderers, unless impelled
by a religious sense of duty to God, have been penitent. David, with
dying breath, advised his son to murder the old friends of his father.
He certainly was not penitent. Undoubtedly Torquemada murdered without
remorse, and Calvin burned his "warm personal friend" to gain the
applause of God. Philip the Second was a murderer, not penitent, because
he deemed it his duty. The same may be said of the Duke of Alva, and of
thousands of others.

Robert Burns was not, according to his own account, strictly virtuous,
and yet I like him better than I do those who planned and carried into
bloody execution the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Undoubtedly murderers have been penitent. A man in California cut the
throat of a woman, although she begged for mercy, saying at the same
time that she was not prepared to die. He cared nothing for her prayers.
He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He made a motion for
a new trial. This was denied. He appealed to the governor, but the
executive refused to interfere. Then he became penitent and experienced
religion. On the scaffold he remarked that he was going to heaven; that
his only regret was that he would not meet the woman he had murdered,
as she was not a Christian when she died. Undoubtedly murderers can be
penitent.

An old Spaniard was dying. He sent for a priest to administer the last
sacraments of the church. The priest told him that he must forgive all
his enemies. "I have no enemies," said the dying man, "I killed the last
one three weeks ago." Undoubtedly murderers can be penitent.

So, I admit that drunkards have been pious and reverential, and I might
add, honest and generous.

Some good Catholics and some good Protestants have enjoyed a hospitable
glass, and there have been priests who used the blood of the grape for
other than a sacramental purpose. Even Luther, a good Catholic in his
day, a reformer, a Doctor of Divinity, gave to the world this couplet:
    "Who loves not woman, wine and song,
    Will live a fool his whole life long."

The Watchman, in effect, says that a devout robber is better than an
infidel; that a penitent murderer is superior to a freethinker, in the
sight of God.

Another curious thing in this article is that after sending both men to
hell, the Watchman says: "As to their moral habits we know nothing."

It may then be taken for granted, if these "warm personal friends" knew
nothing against the dead, that their lives were, at least, what the
church calls moral. We know, if we know anything, that there is no
necessary connection between what is called religion and morality.
Certainly there were millions of moral people, those who loved mercy
and dealt honestly, before the Catholic Church existed. The virtues were
well known, and practiced, before a triple crown surrounded the cunning
brain of an Italian Vicar of God, and before the flames of the _Auto da
fe_ delighted the hearts of a Christian mob. Thousands of people died
for the right, before the wrong organized the infallible church.

But why should any man deem it his duty or feel it a pleasure to say
harsh and cruel things of the dead? Why pierce the brow of death with
the thorns of hatred? Suppose the editor of the Watchman had died, and
Judge Normile had been the survivor, would the infidel and scoffer have
attacked the unreplying dead?

Henry D'Arcy I did not know; but Judge Normile was my friend and I
was his. Although we met but a few times, he excited my admiration and
respect. He impressed me as being an exceedingly intelligent man, well
informed on many subjects, of varied reading, possessed of a clear and
logical mind, a poetic temperament, enjoying the beautiful things in
literature and art, and the noble things in life. He gave his opinions
freely, but without the least arrogance, and seemed perfectly willing
that others should enjoy the privilege of differing with him. He was, so
far as I could perceive, a gentleman, tender of the feelings of others,
free and manly in his bearing, "of most excellent fancy," and a most
charming and agreeable companion.

According, however, to the Watchman, such a man is far below a "devout
robber" or a "penitent murderer." Is it possible that an assassin like
Ravillac is far better than a philosopher like Voltaire; and that all
the Catholic robbers and murderers who retain their faith, give greater
delight to God than the Humboldts, Haeckels and Darwins who have filled
the world with intellectual light?

Possibly the Catholic Church is mistaken. Possibly the Watchman is in
error, and possibly there may be for the erring, even in another world,
some asylum besides hell.

Judge Normile died by his own hand. Certainly he was not afraid of
the future. He was not appalled by death. He died by his own hand. Can
anything be more pitiful—more terrible? How can a man in the flowing
tide and noon of life destroy himself? What storms there must have
been within the brain; what tempests must have raved and wrecked; what
lightnings blinded and revealed; what hurrying clouds obscured and hid
the stars; what monstrous shapes emerged from gloom; what darkness fell
upon the day; what visions filled the night; how the light failed; how
paths were lost; how highways disappeared; how chasms yawned; until one
thought—the thought of death—swift, compassionate and endless—became
the insane monarch of the mind.

Standing by the prostrate form of one who thus found death, it is far
better to pity than to revile—to kiss the clay than curse the man.

The editor of the Watchman has done himself injustice. He has not
injured the dead, but the living.

I am an infidel—an unbeliever—and yet I hope that all the children of
men may find peace and joy. No matter how they leave this world, from
altar or from scaffold, crowned with virtue or stained with crime, I
hope that good may come to all.

R. G. Ingersoll.

Is Suicide a Sin
  • These letters were published in the New York World, 1894.

Col. Ingersoll's First Letter.

I DO not know whether self-killing is on the increase or not. If it
is, then there must be, on the average, more trouble, more sorrow,
more failure, and, consequently, more people are driven to despair. In
civilized life there is a great struggle, great competition, and many
fail. To fail in a great city is like being wrecked at sea. In the
country a man has friends; he can get a little credit, a little help,
but in the city it is different. The man is lost in the multitude. In
the roar of the streets, his cry is not heard. Death becomes his only
friend. Death promises release from want, from hunger and pain, and so
the poor wretch lays down his burden, dashes it from his shoulders and
falls asleep.

To me all this seems very natural. The wonder is that so many endure and
suffer to the natural end, that so many nurse the spark of life in huts
and prisons, keep it and guard it through years of misery and want;
support it by beggary, by eating the crust found in the gutter, and to
whom it only gives days of weariness and nights of fear and dread. Why
should the man, sitting amid the wreck of all he had, the loved ones
dead, friends lost, seek to lengthen, to preserve his life? What can the
future have for him?

Under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself. When life
is of no value to him, when he can be of no real assistance to others,
why should a man continue? When he is of no benefit, when he is a burden
to those he loves, why should he remain? The old idea was that God made
us and placed us here for a purpose and that it was our duty to remain
until he called us. The world is outgrowing this absurdity. What
pleasure can it give God to see a man devoured by a cancer; to see the
quivering flesh slowly eaten; to see the nerves throbbing with pain? Is
this a festival for God? Why should the poor wretch stay and suffer? A
little morphine would give him sleep—the agony would be forgotten and
he would pass unconsciously from happy dreams to painless death.

If God determines all births and deaths, of what use is medicine and why
should doctors defy with pills and powders, the decrees of God? No one,
except a few insane, act now according to this childish superstition.
Why should a man, surrounded by flames, in the midst of a burning
building, from which there is no escape, hesitate to put a bullet
through his brain or a dagger in his heart? Would it give God pleasure
to see him burn? When did the man lose the right of self-defence?

So, when a man has committed some awful crime, why should he stay and
ruin his family and friends? Why should he add to the injury? Why should
he live, filling his days and nights, and the days and nights of others,
with grief and pain, with agony and tears?

Why should a man sentenced to imprisonment for life hesitate to still
his heart? The grave is better than the cell. Sleep is sweeter than the
ache of toil. The dead have no masters.

So the poor girl, betrayed and deserted, the door of home closed against
her, the faces of friends averted, no hand that will help, no eye that
will soften with pity, the future an abyss filled with monstrous shapes
of dread and fear, her mind racked by fragments of thoughts like clouds
broken by storm, pursued, surrounded by the serpents of remorse, flying
from horrors too great to bear, rushes with joy through the welcome door
of death.

Undoubtedly there are many cases of perfectly justifiable suicide—cases
in which not to end life would be a mistake, sometimes almost a crime.

As to the necessity of death, each must decide for himself. And if a man
honestly decides that death is best—best for him and others—and acts
upon the decision, why should he be blamed?

Certainly the man who kills himself is not a physical coward. He may
have lacked moral courage, but not physical. It may be said that some
men fight duels because they are afraid to decline. They are between two
fires—the chance of death and the certainty of dishonor, and they take
the chance of death. So the Christian martyrs were, according to their
belief, between two fires—the flames of the fagot that could burn but
for a few moments, and the fires of God, that were eternal. And they
chose the flames of the fagot.

Men who fear death to that degree that they will bear all the pains and
pangs that nerves can feel, rather than die, cannot afford to call the
suicide a coward. It does not seem to me that Brutus was a coward or
that Seneca was. Surely Antony had nothing left to live for. Cato was
not a craven. He acted on his judgment. So with hundreds of others who
felt that they had reached the end—-that the journey was done, the
voyage was over, and, so feeling, stopped. It seems certain that the man
who commits suicide, who "does the thing that ends all other deeds,
that shackles accident and bolts up change" is not lacking in physical
courage.

If men had the courage, they would not linger in prisons, in almshouses,
in hospitals; they would not bear the pangs of incurable disease, the
stains of dishonor; they would not live in filth and want, in poverty
and hunger, neither would they wear the chain of slavery. All this can
be accounted for only by the fear of death or "of something after."

Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life, had no fear. He
knew that he could defeat the Emperor. He knew that "at the bottom of
every river, in the coil of every rope, on the point of every dagger,
Liberty sat and smiled." He knew that it was his own fault if he allowed
himself to be tortured to death by his enemy. He said: "There is
this blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has exits
innumerable, and as I choose the house in which I live, the ship in
which I will sail, so will I choose the time and manner of my death."

To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble. Under the Roman law
persons found guilty of certain offences were not only destroyed,
but their blood was polluted and their children became outcasts. If,
however, they died before conviction their children were saved. Many
committed suicide to save their babes. Certainly they were not cowards.
Although guilty of great crimes they had enough of honor, of manhood,
left to save their innocent children. This was not cowardice.

Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity. Men lose their
property. The fear of the future overpowers them. Things lose
proportion, they lose poise and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of
frenzy, kill themselves. The disappointed in love, broken in heart—the
light fading from their lives—seek the refuge of death.

Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways—who mangle their
throats with broken glass, dash themselves from towers and roofs, take
poisons that torture like the rack—such persons must be insane. But
those who take the facts into account, who weigh the arguments for and
against, and who decide that death is best—the only good—and then
resort to reasonable means, may be, so far as I can see, in full
possession of their minds.

Life is not the same to all—to some a blessing, to some a curse, to
some not much in any way. Some leave it with unspeakable regret, some
with the keenest joy and some with indifference.

Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing upon the number
of suicides. The fear of God, of judgment, of eternal pain will stay the
hand, and people so believing will suffer here until relieved by natural
death. A belief in eternal agony beyond the grave will cause such
believers to suffer the pangs of this life. When there is no fear of the
future, when death is believed to be a dreamless sleep, men have
less hesitation about ending their lives. On the other hand, orthodox
religion has driven millions to insanity. It has caused parents to
murder their children and many thousands to destroy themselves and
others.

It seems probable that all real, genuine orthodox believers who kill
themselves must be insane, and to such a degree that their belief is
forgotten. God and hell are out of their minds.

I am satisfied that many who commit suicide are insane, many are in the
twilight or dusk of insanity, and many are perfectly sane.

The law we have in this State making it a crime to attempt suicide is
cruel and absurd and calculated to increase the number of successful
suicides. When a man has suffered so much, when he has been so
persecuted and pursued by disaster that he seeks the rest and sleep of
death, why should the State add to the sufferings of that man? A man
seeking death, knowing that he will be punished if he fails, will take
extra pains and precautions to make death certain.

This law was born of superstition, passed by thoughtlessness and
enforced by ignorance and cruelty.

When the house of life becomes a prison, when the horizon has shrunk and
narrowed to a cell, and when the convict longs for the liberty of death,
why should the effort to escape be regarded as a crime?

Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view. I do not take
gods, heavens or hells into account. My horizon is the known, and my
estimate of life is based upon what I know of life here in this world.
People should not suffer for the sake of supernatural beings or for
other worlds or the hopes and fears of some future state. Our joys, our
sufferings and our duties are here.

The law of New York about the attempt to commit suicide and the law
as to divorce are about equal. Both are idiotic. Law cannot prevent
suicide. Those who have lost all fear of death, care nothing for law and
its penalties. Death is liberty, absolute and eternal.

We should remember that nothing happens but the natural. Back of every
suicide and every attempt to commit suicide is the natural and efficient
cause. Nothing happens by chance. In this world the facts touch each
other. There is no space between—no room for chance. Given a certain
heart and brain, certain conditions, and suicide is the necessary
result. If we wish to prevent suicide we must change conditions. We must
by education, by invention, by art, by civilization, add to the value
of the average life. We must cultivate the brain and heart—do away with
false pride and false modesty. We must become generous enough to help
our fellows without degrading them. We must make industry—useful work
of all kinds—honorable. We must mingle a little affection with our
charity—a little fellowship. We should allow those who have sinned to
really reform. We should not think only of what the wicked have done,
but we should think of what we have wanted to do. People do not hate the
sick. Why should they despise the mentally weak—the diseased in brain?

Our actions are the fruit, the result, of circumstances—of
conditions—and we do as we must.

This great truth should fill the heart with pity for the failures of our
race.

Sometimes I have wondered that Christians denounced the suicide; that
in olden times they buried him where the roads crossed, drove a stake
through his body, and then took his property from his children and gave
it to the State.

If Christians would only think, they would see that orthodox religion
rests upon suicide—that man was redeemed by suicide, and that without
suicide the whole world would have been lost.

If Christ were God, then he had the power to protect himself from the
Jews without hurting them. But instead of using his power he allowed
them to take his life.

If a strong man should allow a few little children to hack him to death
with knives when he could easily have brushed them aside, would we not
say that he committed suicide?

There is no escape. If Christ were, in fact, God, and allowed the
Jews to kill him, then he consented to his own death—refused, though
perfectly able, to defend and protect himself, and was, in fact, a
suicide.

We cannot reform the world by law or by superstition. As long as there
shall be pain and failure, want and sorrow, agony and crime, men and
women will untie life's knot and seek the peace of death.

To the hopelessly imprisoned—to the dishonored and despised—to those
who have failed, who have no future, no hope—to the abandoned, the
brokenhearted, to those who are only remnants and fragments of men and
women—how consoling, how enchanting is the thought of death!

And even to the most fortunate, death at last is a welcome deliverer.
Death is as natural and as merciful as life. When we have journeyed
long—when we are weary—when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk,
for the cool kisses of the night—when the senses are dull—when
the pulse is faint and low—when the mists gather on the mirror
of memory—when the past is almost forgotten, the present hardly
perceived—when the future has but empty hands—death is as welcome as a
strain of music.

After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life. Next to eternal
happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the cool earth, disturbed by
no dream, by no thought, by no pain, by no fear, unconscious of all and
forever.

The wonder is that so many live, that in spite of rags and want, in
spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and pain, they, limp and stagger
and crawl beneath their burdens to the natural end. The wonder is
that so few of the miserable are brave enough to die—that so many are
terrified by the "something after death"—by the spectres and phantoms
of superstition.

Most people are in love with life. How they cling to it in the arctic
snows—how they struggle in the waves and currents of the sea—how they
linger in famine—how they fight disaster and despair! On the crumbling
edge of death they keep the flag flying and go down at last full of hope
and courage.

But many have not such natures. They cannot bear defeat. They are
disheartened by disaster. They lie down on the field of conflict and
give the earth their blood.

They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters. We should not curse or
blame—we should pity. On their pallid faces our tears should fall.

One of the best men I ever knew, with an affectionate wife, a charming
and loving daughter, committed suicide. He was a man of generous
impulses. His heart was loving and tender. He was conscientious, and
so sensitive that he blamed himself for having done what at the time he
thought was wise and best. He was the victim of his virtues. Let us be
merciful in our judgments.

All we can say is that the good and the bad, the loving and the
malignant, the conscientious and the vicious, the educated and the
ignorant, actuated by many motives, urged and pushed by circumstances
and conditions—sometimes in the calm of judgment, sometimes in
passion's storm and stress, sometimes in whirl and tempest of
insanity—raise their hands against themselves and desperately put out
the light of life.

Those who attempt suicide should not be punished. If they are insane
they should if possible be restored to reason; if sane, they should be
reasoned with, calmed and assisted.

R. G. Ingersoll.

Col. Ingersoll's Reply to His Critics

IN the article written by me about suicide the ground was taken that
"under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself."

This has been attacked with great fury by clergymen, editors and
the writers of letters. These people contend that the right of
self-destruction does not and cannot exist. They insist that life is the
gift of God, and that he only has the right to end the days of men; that
it is our duty to bear the sorrows that he sends with grateful patience.
Some have denounced suicide as the worst of crimes—worse than the
murder of another.

The first question, then, is:

Has a man under any circumstances the right to kill himself?

A man is being slowly devoured by a cancer—his agony is intense—his
suffering all that nerves can feel. His life is slowly being taken.
Is this the work of the good God? Did the compassionate God create the
cancer so that it might feed on the quiverering flesh of this victim?

This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination to conceive, is of no
use to himself. His life is but a succession of pangs. He is of no use
to his wife, his children, his friends or society. Day after day he is
rendered unconscious by drugs that numb the nerves and put the brain to
sleep.

Has he the right to render himself unconscious? Is it proper for him to
take refuge in sleep?

If there be a good God I cannot believe that he takes pleasure in the
sufferings of men—that he gloats over the agonies of his children. If
there be a good God, he will, to the extent of his power, lessen the
evils of life.

So I insist that the man being eaten by the cancer—a burden to himself
and others, useless in every way—has the right to end his pain and pass
through happy sleep to dreamless rest.

But those who have answered me would say to this man: "It is your duty
to be devoured. The good God wishes you to suffer. Your life is the gift
of God. You hold it in trust and you have no right to end it. The cancer
is the creation of God and it is your duty to furnish it with food."

Take another case: A man is on a burning ship, the crew and the rest
of the passengers have escaped—gone in the lifeboats—and he is left
alone. In the wide horizon there is no sail, no sign of help. He cannot
swim. If he leaps into the sea he drowns, if he remains on the ship he
burns. In any event he can live but a few moments.

Those who have answered me, those who insist that under no circumstances
a man has the right to take his life, would say to this man on the deck,
"Remain where you are. It is the desire of your loving, heavenly Father
that you be clothed in flame—that you slowly roast—that your eyes be
scorched to blindness and that you die insane with pain. Your life is
not your own, only the agony is yours."

I would say to this man: Do as you wish. If you prefer drowning to
burning, leap into the sea. Between inevitable evils you have the right
of choice. You can help no one, not even God, by allowing yourself to be
burned, and you can injure no one, not even God, by choosing the easier
death.

Let us suppose another case:

A man has been captured by savages in Central Africa. He is about to
be tortured to death. His captors are going to thrust splinters of pine
into his flesh and then set them on fire. He watches them as they make
the preparations. He knows what they are about to do and what he is
about to suffer. There is no hope of rescue, of help. He has a vial of
poison. He knows that he can take it and in one moment pass beyond their
power, leaving to them only the dead body.

Is this man under obligation to keep his life because God gave it, until
the savages by torture take it? Are the savages the agents of the good
God? Are they the servants of the Infinite? Is it the duty of this man
to allow them to wrap his body in a garment of flame? Has he no right to
defend himself? Is it the will of God that he die by torture? What would
any man of ordinary intelligence do in a case like this? Is there room
for discussion?

If the man took the poison, shortened his life a few moments, escaped
the tortures of the savages, is it possible that he would in another
world be tortured forever by an infinite savage?

Suppose another case: In the good old days, when the Inquisition
flourished, when men loved their enemies and murdered their friends,
many frightful and ingenious ways were devised to touch the nerves of
pain.

Those who loved God, who had been "born twice," would take a fellow-man
who had been convicted of "heresy," lay him upon the floor of a dungeon,
secure his arms and legs with chains, fasten him to the earth so that
he could not move, put an iron vessel, the opening downward, on his
stomach, place in the vessel several rats, then tie it securely to his
body. Then these worshipers of God would wait until the rats, seeking
food and liberty, would gnaw through the body of the victim.

Now, if a man about to be subjected to this torture, had within his hand
a dagger, would it excite the wrath of the "good God," if with one quick
stroke he found the protection of death?

To this question there can be but one answer.

In the cases I have supposed it seems to me that each person would have
the right to destroy himself. It does not seem possible that the man was
under obligation to be devoured by a cancer; to remain upon the ship and
perish in flame; to throw away the poison and be tortured to death by
savages; to drop the dagger and endure the "mercies" of the church.

If, in the cases I have supposed, men would have the right to take their
lives, then I was right when I said that "under many circumstances a man
has a right to kill himself."

Second.—I denied that persons who killed themselves were physical
cowards. They may lack moral courage; they may exaggerate their
misfortunes, lose the sense of proportion, but the man who plunges the
dagger in his heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps
from some roof and dashes himself against the stones beneath, is not and
cannot be a physical coward.

The basis of cowardice is the fear of injury or the fear of death, and
when that fear is not only gone, but in its place is the desire to die,
no matter by what means, it is impossible that cowardice should exist.
The suicide wants the very thing that a coward fears. He seeks the very
thing that cowardice endeavors to escape.

So, the man, forced to a choice of evils, choosing the less is not a
coward, but a reasonable man.

It must be admitted that the suicide is honest with himself. He is to
bear the injury; if it be one. Certainly there is no hypocrisy, and just
as certainly there is no physical cowardice.

Is the man who takes morphine rather than be eaten to death by a cancer
a coward?

Is the man who leaps into the sea rather than be burned a coward? Is
the man that takes poison rather than be tortured to death by savages or
"Christians" a coward?

Third.—I also took the position that some suicides were sane; that
they acted on their best judgment, and that they were in full possession
of their minds. Now, if under some circumstances, a man has the right to
take his life, and, if, under such circumstances, he does take his life,
then it cannot be said that he was insane.

Most of the persons who have tried to answer me have taken the ground
that suicide is not only a crime, but some of them have said that it
is the greatest of crimes. Now, if it be a crime, then the suicide must
have been sane. So all persons who denounce the suicide as a criminal
admit that he was sane. Under the law, an insane person is incapable of
committing a crime. All the clergymen who have answered me, and who have
passionately asserted that suicide is a crime, have by that assertion
admitted that those who killed themselves were sane.

They agree with me, and not only admit, but assert that "some who have
committed suicide were sane and in the full possession of their minds."

It seems to me that these three propositions have been demonstrated to
be true: First, that under some circumstances a man has the right
to take his life; second, that the man who commits suicide is not a
physical coward, and, third, that some who have committed suicide were
at the time sane and in full possession of their minds.

Fourth.—I insisted, and still insist, that suicide was and is the
foundation of the Christian religion.

I still insist that if Christ were God he had the power to protect
himself without injuring his assailants—that having that power it was
his duty to use it, and that failing to use it he consented to his own
death and was guilty of suicide.

To this the clergy answer that it was self-sacrifice for the redemption
of man, that he made an atonement for the sins of believers. These ideas
about redemption and atonement are born of a belief in the "fall
of man," on account of the sins of our first "parents," and of the
declaration that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of
sin." The foundation has crumbled. No intelligent person now believes in
the "fall of man"—that our first parents were perfect, and that their
descendants grew worse and worse, at least until the coming of Christ.

Intelligent men now believe that ages and ages before the dawn of
history, man was a poor, naked, cruel, ignorant and degraded savage,
whose language consisted of a few sounds of terror, of hatred and
delight; that he devoured his fellow-man, having all the vices, but
not all the virtues of the beasts; that the journey from the den to the
home, the palace, has been long and painful, through many centuries
of suffering, of cruelty and war; through many ages of discovery,
invention, self-sacrifice and thought.

Redemption and atonement are left without a fact on which to rest. The
idea that an infinite God, creator of all worlds, came to this grain
of sand, learned the trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and
scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put him to death that
he might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few believers from
the consequences of his own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and
natural brain.

In no mythology can anything more monstrously unbelievable be found.

But if Christ were a man and attacked the religion of his times because
it was cruel and absurd; if he endeavored to found a religion of
kindness, of good deeds, to take the place of heartlessness and
ceremony, and if, rather than to deny what he believed to be right and
true, he suffered death, then he was a noble man—a benefactor of his
race. But if he were God there was no need of this. The Jews did not
wish to kill God. If he had only made himself known all knees would have
touched the ground. If he were God it required no heroism to die. He
knew that what we call death is but the opening of the gates of eternal
life. If he were God there was no self-sacrifice. He had no need to
suffer pain. He could have changed the crucifixion to a joy.

Even the editors of religious weeklies see that there is no escape from
these conclusions—from these arguments—and so, instead of attacking
the arguments, they attack the man who makes them.

Fifth.—I denounced the law of New York that makes an attempt to
commit suicide a crime.

It seems to me that one who has suffered so much that he passionately
longs for death should be pitied, instead of punished—helped rather
than imprisoned.

A despairing woman who had vainly sought for leave to toil, a woman
without home, without friends, without bread, with clasped hands, with
tear-filled eyes, with broken words of prayer, in the darkness of night
leaps from the dock, hoping, longing for the tearless sleep of
death. She is rescued by a kind, courageous man, handed over to the
authorities, indicted, tried, convicted, clothed in a convict's garb and
locked in a felon's cell.

To me this law seems barbarous and absurd, a law that only savages would
enforce.

Sixth.—In this discussion a curious thing has happened. For several
centuries the clergy have declared that while infidelity is a very good
thing to live by, it is a bad support, a wretched consolation, in the
hour of death. They have in spite of the truth, declared that all
the great unbelievers died trembling with fear, asking God for mercy,
surrounded by fiends, in the torments of despair. Think of the thousands
and thousands of clergymen who have described the last agonies of
Voltaire, who died as peacefully as a happy child smilingly passes from
play to slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who fell into his last sleep
as serenely as a river, running between green and shaded banks, reaches
the sea; the despair of Thomas Paine, one of the bravest, one of the
noblest men, who met the night of death untroubled as a star that meets
the morning.

At the same time these ministers admitted that the average murderer
could meet death on the scaffold with perfect serenity, and could
smilingly ask the people who had gathered to see him killed to meet him
in heaven.

But the honest man who had expressed his honest thoughts against the
creed of the church in power could not die in peace. God would see to it
that his last moments should be filled with the insanity of fear—that
with his last breath he should utter the shriek of remorse, the cry for
pardon.

This has all changed, and now the clergy, in their sermons answering me,
declare that the atheists, the freethinkers, have no fear of death—that
to avoid some little annoyance, a passing inconvenience, they gladly
and cheerfully put out the light of life. It is now said that infidels
believe that death is the end—that it is a dreamless sleep—that it is
without pain—that therefore they have no fear, care nothing for gods,
or heavens or hells, nothing for the threats of the pulpit, nothing for
the day of judgment, and that when life becomes a burden they carelessly
throw it down.

The infidels are so afraid of death that they commit suicide.

This certainly is a great change, and I congratulate myself on having
forced the clergy to contradict themselves.

Seventh.—The clergy take the position that the atheist, the
unbeliever, has no standard of morality—that he can have no real
conception of right and wrong. They are of the opinion that it is
impossible for one to be moral or good unless he believes in some Being
far above himself.

In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he
believes in some Being superior to himself?

What is morality? It is the best thing to do under the circumstances.
What is the best thing to do under the circumstances? That which will
increase the sum of human happiness—or lessen it the least. Happiness
in its highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which increases
or preserves or creates happiness is moral—that which decreases it, or
puts it in peril, is immoral.

It is not hard for an atheist—for an unbeliever—to keep his hands
out of the fire. He knows that burning his hands will not increase his
well-being, and he is moral enough to keep them out of the flames.

So it may be said that each man acts according to his intelligence—so
far as what he considers his own good is concerned. Sometimes he is
swayed by passion, by prejudice, by ignorance—but when he is really
intelligent, master of himself, he does what he believes is best for
him. If he is intelligent enough he knows that what is really good for
him is good for others—for all the world.

It is impossible for me to see' why any belief in the supernatural is
necessary to have a keen perception of right and wrong. Every man who
has the capacity to suffer and enjoy, and has imagination enough to give
the same capacity to others, has within himself the natural basis of
all morality. The idea of morality was born here, in this world, of the
experience, the intelligence of mankind. Morality is not of supernatural
origin. It did not fall from the clouds, and it needs no belief in
the supernatural, no supernatural promises or threats, no supernatural
heavens or hells to give it force and life. Subjects who are governed
by the threats and promises of a king are merely slaves. They are not
governed by the ideal, by noble views of right and wrong. They are
obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed by rewards—by
alms.

Right and wrong exist in the nature of things. Murder was just as
criminal before as after the promulgation of the Ten Commandments.

Eighth.—The clergy take the position that the atheist, the
unbeliever, has no standard of morality—that he can have no real
conception of right and wrong. They are of the opinion that it is
impossible for one to be moral or good unless he believes in some Being
far above himself.

In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he
believes in some Being superior to himself?

What is morality? It is the best thing to do under the circumstances.
What is the best thing to do under the circumstances? That which will
increase the sum of human happiness—or lessen it the least. Happiness
in its highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which increases
or preserves or creates happiness is moral—that which decreases it, or
puts it in peril, is immoral.

It is not hard for an atheist—for an unbeliever—to keep his hands
out of the fire. He knows that burning his hands will not increase his
well-being, and he is moral enough to keep them out of the flames.

So it may be said that each man acts according to his intelligence—so
far as what he Considers his own good is concerned. Sometimes he is
swayed by passion, by prejudice, by ignorance—but when he is really
intelligent, master of himself, he does what he believes is best for
him. If he is intelligent enough he knows that what is really good for
him is food for others—for all the world.

It is impossible for me to see why any belief in the supernatural is
necessary to have a keen perception of right and wrong. Every man who
has the capacity to suffer and enjoy, and has imagination enough to give
the same capacity to others, has within himself the natural basis of
all morality. The idea of morality was born here, in this world, of the
experience, the intelligence of mankind. Morality is not of supernatural
origin. It did not fall from the clouds, and it needs no belief in
the supernatural, no supernatural promises or threats, no supernatural
heavens or hells to give it force and life. Subjects who are governed
by the threats and promises of a king are merely slaves. They are not
governed by the ideal, by noble views of right and wrong. They are
obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed by rewards—by
alms.

Right and wrong exist in the nature of things.

Murder was just as criminal before as after the promulgation of the Ten
Commandments.

Eighth.—Many of the clergy, some editors and some writers of
letters who have answered me, have said that suicide is the worst of
crimes—that a man had better murder somebody else than himself. One
clergyman gives as a reason for this statement that the suicide dies in
an act of sin, and therefore he had better kill another person. Probably
he would commit a less crime if he would murder his wife or mother.

I do not see that it is any worse to die than to live in sin. To say
that it is not as wicked to murder another as yourself seems absurd.
The man about to kill himself wishes to die. Why is it better for him to
kill another man, who wishes to live?

To my mind it seems clear that you had better injure yourself than
another. Better be a spendthrift than a thief. Better throw away your
own money than steal the money of another—better kill yourself if you
wish to die than murder one whose life is full of joy.

The clergy tell us that God is everywhere, and that it is one of the
greatest possible crimes to rush into his presence. It is wonderful
how much they know about God and how little about their fellow-men.
Wonderful the amount of their information about other worlds and how
limited their knowledge is of this.

There may or may not be an infinite Being. I neither affirm nor deny. I
am honest enough to say that I do not know. I am candid enough to admit
that the question is beyond the limitations of my mind. Yet I think I
know as much on that subject as any human being knows or ever knew, and
that is—nothing. I do not say that there is not another world, another
life; neither do I say that there is. I say that I do not know. It seems
to me that every sane and honest man must say the same. But if there is
an infinitely good God and another world, then the infinitely good
God will be just as good to us in that world as he is in this. If this
infinitely good God loves his children in this world, he will love them
in another. If he loves a man when he is alive, he will not hate him the
instant he is dead.

If we are the children of an infinitely wise and powerful God, he knew
exactly what we would do—the temptations that we could and could not
withstand—knew exactly the effect that everything would have upon us,
knew under what circumstances we would take our lives—and produced
such circumstances himself. It is perfectly apparent that there are many
people incapable by nature of bearing the burdens of life, incapable of
preserving their mental poise in stress and strain of disaster, disease
and loss, and who by failure, by misfortune and want, are driven to
despair and insanity, in whose darkened minds there comes like a flash
of lightning in the night, the thought of death, a thought so strong,
so vivid, that all fear is lost, all ties broken, all duties, all
obligations, all hopes forgotten, and naught remains except a fierce and
wild desire to die. Thousands and thousands become moody, melancholy,
brood upon loss of money, of position, of friends, until reason
abdicates and frenzy takes possession of the soul. If there be an
infinitely wise and powerful God, all this was known to him from the
beginning, and he so created things, established relations, put in
operation causes and effects, that all that has happened was the
necessary result of his own acts.

Ninth.—Nearly all who have tried to answer what I said have been
exceedingly careful to misquote me, and then answer something that I
never uttered. They have declared that I have advised people who were in
trouble, somewhat annoyed, to kill themselves; that I have told men who
have lost their money, who had failed in business, who were not good in
health, to kill themselves at once, without taking into consideration
any duty that they owed to wives, children, friends, or society.

No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle alone if he
is able to help. No man has a right to desert his children if he can
possibly be of use. As long as he can add to the comfort of those he
loves, as long as he can stand between wife and misery, between child
and want, as long as he can be of any use, it is his duty to remain.

I believe in the cheerful view, in looking at the sunny side of things,
in bearing with fortitude the evils of life, in struggling against
adversity, in finding the fuel of laughter even in disaster, in having
confidence in to-morrow, in finding the pearl of joy among the flints
and shards, and in changing by the alchemy of patience even evil things
to good. I believe in the gospel of cheerfulness, of courage and good
nature.

Of the future I have no fear. My fate is the fate of the world—of
all that live. My anxieties are about this life, this world. About the
phantoms called gods and their impossible hells, I have no care, no
fear.

The existence of God I neither affirm nor deny, I wait. The immortality
of the soul I neither affirm nor deny. I hope—hope for all of the
children of men. I have never denied the existence of another world, nor
the immortality of the soul. For many years I have said that the idea
of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart,
with its countless waves of hope and fear beating against the shores and
rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor
of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to
ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long
as love kisses the lips of death.

What I deny is the immortality of pain, the eternity of torture.

After all, the instinct of self-preservation is strong. People do not
kill themselves on the advice of friends or enemies. All wish to be
happy, to enjoy life; all wish for food and roof and raiment, for
friends, and as long as life gives joy, the idea of self-destruction
never enters the human mind.

The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the rights of others,
the robbers of the poor, those who put wages below the living point, the
ministers who make people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain;
these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering and the helpless
down to death.

It will not do to say that God has appointed a time for each to die. Of
this there is, and there can be, no evidence. There is no evidence that
any god takes any interest in the affairs of men—that any sides with
the right or helps the weak, protects the innocent or rescues the
oppressed. Even the clergy admit that their God, through all ages, has
allowed his friends, his worshipers, to be imprisoned, tortured and
murdered by his enemies. Such is the protection of God. Billions of
prayers have been uttered; has one been answered? Who sends plague,
pestilence and famine? Who bids the earthquake devour and the volcano to
overwhelm?

Tenth.—Again, I say that it is wonderful to me that so many men, so
many women endure and carry their burdens to the natural end; that so
many, in spite of "age, ache and penury," guard with trembling hands the
spark of life; that prisoners for life toil and suffer to the last; that
the helpless wretches in poorhouses and asylums cling to life; that the
exiles in Siberia, loaded with chains, scarred with the knout, live
on; that the incurables, whose every breath is a pang, and for whom the
future has only pain, should fear the merciful touch and clasp of death.

It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the grave; a short
journey. The suicide hastens, shortens the path, loses the afternoon,
the twilight, the dusk of life's day; loses what he does not want, what
he cannot bear. In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of madness,
or in the calm of thought and choice, the beleaguered soul finds the
serenity of death.

Let us leave the dead where nature leaves them. We know nothing of any
realm that lies beyond the horizon of the known, beyond the end of life.
Let us be honest with ourselves and others. Let us pity the suffering,
the despairing, the men and women hunted and pursued by grief and shame,
by misery and want, by chance and fate until their only friend is death.

Robert G. Ingersoll.

Suicide a Sin
  • New York Journal, 1805. An Interview.

Question. Do you think that what you have written about suicide has
caused people to take their lives?

Answer. No, I do not. People do not kill themselves because of the
ideas of others. They are the victims of misfortune.

Question. What do you consider the chief cause of suicide?

Answer. There are many causes. Some individuals are crossed in love,
others are bankrupt in estate or reputation, still others are diseased
in body and frequently in mind. There are a thousand and one causes that
lead up to the final act.

Question. Do you consider that nationality plays a part in these
tragedies?

Answer. No, it is a question of individuals. There are those whose
sorrows are greater than they can bear. These sufferers seek the peace
of death.

Question. Do you, then, advise suicide?

Answer. No, I have never done so, but I have said, and still say, that
there are circumstances under which it is justifiable for a person to
take his life.

Question. What do you think of the law which prohibits
self-destruction?

Answer. That it is absurd and ridiculous. The other day a man was
tried before Judge Goff for having tried to kill himself. I think he
pleaded guilty, and the Judge, after speaking of the terrible crime of
the poor wretch, sentenced him to the penitentiary for two years.
This was an outrage; infamous in every way, and a disgrace to our
civilization.

Question. Do you believe that such a law will prevent the frequency of
suicides?

Answer. By no means. After this, persons in New York who have made up
their minds to commit suicide will see to it that they succeed.

Question. Have your opinions been in any way modified since your first
announcement of them?

Answer. No, I feel now as I have felt for many years. No one can
answer my articles on suicide, because no one can satisfactorily refute
them. Every man of sense knows that a person being devoured by a cancer
has the right to take morphine, and pass from agony to dreamless sleep.
So, too, there are circumstances under which a man has the right to end
his pain of mind.

Question. Have you seen in the papers that many who have killed
themselves have had on their persons some article of yours on suicide?

Answer. Yes, I have read such accounts, but I repeat that I do not
think these persons were led to kill themselves by reading the articles.
Many people who have killed themselves were found to have Bibles or
tracts in their pockets.

Question. How do you account for the presence of the latter?

Answer. The reason of this is that the theologians know nothing.
The pious imagine that their God has placed us here for some wise and
inscrutable purpose, and that he will call for us when he wants us. All
this is idiotic. When a man is of no use to himself or to others, when
his days and nights are filled with pain and sorrow, why should he
remain to endure them longer?

Suicide a Sin
  • New York Herald, 1897. An Interview.

COL. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL was seen at his house and asked if he had read
the Rev. Merle St. Croix Wright's sermon.

Answer. Yes. I have read the sermon, and also an interview had with
the reverend gentleman.

Long ago I gave my views about suicide, and I entertain the same views
still. Mr. Wright's sermon has stirred up quite a commotion among the
orthodox ministers. This commotion may always be expected when anything
sensible comes from a pulpit. Mr. Wright has mixed a little common
sense with his theology, and, of course this has displeased the truly
orthodox.

Sense is the bitterest foe that theology has. No system of supernatural
religion can outlive a good dose of real good sense. The orthodox
ministers take the ground that an infinite Being created man, put him
on the earth and determined his days. They say that God desires every
person to live until he, God, calls for his soul. They insist that
we are all on guard and must remain so until relieved by a higher
power—the superior officer.

The trouble with this doctrine is that it proves too much. It proves
that God kills every person who dies as we say, "according to nature."
It proves that we ought to say, "according to God." It proves that God
sends the earthquake, the cyclone, the pestilence, for the purpose of
killing people. It proves that all diseases and all accidents are his
messengers, and that all who do not kill themselves, die by the act,
and in accordance with the will of God. It also shows that when a man is
murdered, it is in harmony with, and a part of the divine plan. When God
created the man who was murdered, he knew that he would be murdered, and
when he made the man who committed the murder, he knew exactly what he
would do. So that the murder was the act of God.

Can it be said that God intended that thousands should die of famine and
that he, to accomplish his purpose, withheld the rain? Can we say that
he intended that thousands of innocent men should die in dungeons and on
scaffolds?

Is it possible that a man, "slowly being devoured by a cancer," whose
days and nights are filled with torture, who is useless to himself and
a burden to others, is carrying out the will of God? Does God enjoy
his agony? Is God thrilled by the music of his moans—the melody of his
shrieks?

This frightful doctrine makes God an infinite monster, and every human
being a slave; a victim. This doctrine is not only infamous but it is
idiotic. It makes God the only criminal in the universe.

Now, if we are governed by reason, if we use our senses and our minds,
and have courage enough to be honest; if we know a little of the world's
history, then we know—if we know anything—that man has taken his
chances, precisely the same as other animals. He has been destroyed
by heat and cold, by flood and fire, by storm and famine, by countless
diseases, by numberless accidents. By his intelligence, his cunning, his
strength, his foresight, he has managed to escape utter destruction. He
has defended himself. He has received no supernatural aid. Neither has
he been attacked by any supernatural power. Nothing has ever happened in
nature as the result of a purpose to benefit or injure the human race.

Consequently the question of the right or wrong of suicide is not in any
way affected by a supposed obligation to the Infinite.

All theological considerations must be thrown aside because we see and
know that the laws of life are the same for all living things—that when
the conditions are favorable, the living multiply and life lengthens,
and when the conditions are unfavorable, the living decrease and life
shortens. We have no evidence of any interference of any power superior
to nature. Taking into consideration the fact that all the duties and
obligations of man must be to his fellows, to sentient beings, here in
this world, and that he owes no duty and is under no obligation to any
phantoms of the air, then it is easy to determine whether a man under
certain circumstances has the right to end his life.

If he can be of no use to others—if he is of no use to himself—if
he is a burden to others—a curse to himself—why should he remain? By
ending his life he ends his sufferings and adds to the well-being
of others. He lessens misery and increases happiness. Under such
circumstances undoubtedly a man has the right to stop the pulse of pain
and woo the sleep that has no dream.

I do not think that the discussion of this question is of much
importance, but I am glad that a clergyman has taken a natural and a
sensible position, and that he has reasoned not like a minister, but
like a man.

When wisdom comes from the pulpit I am delighted and surprised. I feel
then that there is a little light in the East, possibly the dawn of a
better day.

I congratulate the Rev. Mr. Wright, and thank him for his brave and
philosophic words.

There is still another thing. Certainly a man has the right to avoid
death, to save himself from accident and disease. If he has this right,
then the theologians must admit that God, in making his decrees, took
into consideration the result of such actions. Now, if God knew that
while most men would avoid death, some would seek it, and if his decrees
were so made that they would harmonize with the acts of those who would
avoid death, can we say that he did not, in making his decrees, take
into consideration the acts of those who would seek death? Let us
remember that all actions, good, bad and indifferent, are the necessary
children of conditions—that there is no chance in the natural world in
which we live.

So, we must keep in mind that all real opinions are honest, and that all
have the same right to express their thoughts. Let us be charitable.

When some suffering wretch, wild with pain, crazed with regret, frenzied
with fear, with desperate hand unties the knot of life, let us have
pity—Let us be generous.

Suicide and Sanity
  • New York Press, 1897. An Interview.

Question. Is a suicide necessarily insane? was the first question, to
which Colonel Ingersoll replied:

Answer. No. At the same time I believe that a great majority of
suicides are insane. There are circumstances under which suicide is
natural, sensible and right. When a man is of no use to himself, when he
can be of no use to others, when his life is filled with agony, when the
future has no promise of relief, then I think he has the right to cast
the burden of life away and seek the repose of death.

Question. Is a suicide necessarily a coward?

Answer. I cannot conceive of cowardice in connection with suicide. Of
nearly all things death is the most feared. And the man who voluntarily
enters the realm of death cannot properly be called a coward. Many men
who kill themselves forget the duties they owe to others—forget their
wives and children. Such men are heartless, wicked, brutal; but they are
not cowards.

Question. When is the suicide of the sane justifiable?

Answer. To escape death by torture; to avoid being devoured by a
cancer; to prevent being a burden on those you love; when you can be of
no use to others or to yourself; when life is unbearable; when in all
the horizon of the future there is no star of hope.

Question. Do you believe that any suicides have been caused or
encouraged by your declaration three years ago that suicide sometimes
was justifiable?

Answer. Many preachers talk as though I had inaugurated, invented,
suicide, as though no one who had not read my ideas on suicide had ever
taken his own life. Talk as long as language lasts, you cannot induce
a man to kill himself. The man who takes his own life does not go to
others to find reasons or excuses.

Question. On the whole is the world made better or worse by suicides?

Answer. Better by some and poorer by others.

Question. Why is it that Germany, said to be the most educated of
civilized nations, leads the world in suicides?

Answer. I do not know that Germany is the most educated; neither do I
know that suicide is more frequent there than in all other countries. I
know that the struggle for life is severe in Germany, that the laws
are unjust, that the government is oppressive, that the people are
sentimental, that they brood over their troubles and easily become
hopeless.

Question. If suicide is sometimes justifiable, is not killing of born
idiots and infants hopelessly handicapped at birth equally so?

Answer. There is no relation between the questions—between suicides
and killing idiots. Suicide may, under certain circumstances, be right
and killing idiots may be wrong; killing idiots may be right and suicide
may be wrong. When we look about us, when we read interviews with
preachers about Jonah, we know that all the idiots have not been killed.

Question. Should suicide be forbidden by law?

Answer. No. A law that provides for the punishment of those who
attempt to commit suicide is idiotic. Those who are willing to meet
death are not afraid of law. The only effect of such a law would be to
make the person who had concluded to kill himself a little more careful
to succeed.

Question. What is your belief about virtue, morality and religion?

Answer. I believe that all actions that tend to the well-being of
sentient beings are virtuous and moral. I believe that real religion
consists in doing good. I do not believe in phantoms. I believe in
the uniformity of nature; that matter will forever attract matter in
proportion to mass and distance; that, under the same circumstances,
falling bodies will attain the same speed, increasing in exact
proportion to distance; that light will always, under the same
circumstances, be reflected at the same angle; that it will always
travel with the same velocity; that air will forever be lighter than
water, and gold heavier than iron; that all substances will be true
to their natures; that a certain degree of heat will always expand the
metals and change water into steam; that a certain degree of cold will
cause the metals to shrink and change water into ice; that all atoms
will forever be in motion; that like causes will forever produce like
effects, that force will be overcome only by force; that no atom
of matter will ever be created or destroyed; that the energy in the
universe will forever remain the same, nothing lost, nothing gained;
that all that has been possible has happened, and that all that will be
possible will happen; that the seeds and causes of all thoughts, dreams,
fancies and actions, of all virtues and all vices, of all successes
and all failures, are in nature; that there is in the universe no power
superior to nature; that man is under no obligation to the imaginary
gods; that all his obligations and duties are to be discharged and done
in this world; that right and wrong do not depend on the will of an
infinite Being, but on the consequences of actions, and that these
consequences necessarily flow from the nature of things. I believe that
the universe is natural.

Is Avarice Triumphant
    *A reply to General Rush Hawkins' article, "Brutality and
    Avarice Triumphant," published in the North American Review,
    June, 1891.

THERE are many people, in all countries, who seem to enjoy individual
and national decay. They love to prophesy the triumph of evil. They
mistake the afternoon of their own lives for the evening of the world.
To them everything has changed. Men are no longer honest or brave, and
women have ceased to be beautiful. They are dyspeptic, and it gives them
the greatest pleasure to say that the art of cooking has been lost.

For many generations many of these people occupied the pulpits. They
lifted the hand of warning whenever the human race took a step in
advance. As wealth increased, they declared that honesty and goodness
and self-denial and charity were vanishing from the earth. They doubted
the morality of well-dressed people—considered it impossible that the
prosperous should be pious. Like owls sitting on the limbs of a dead
tree, they hooted the obsequies of spring, believing it would come no
more.

There are some patriots who think it their duty to malign and slander
the land of their birth. They feel that they have a kind of Cassandra
mission, and they really seem to enjoy their work. They honestly believe
that every kind of crime is on the increase, that the courts are
all corrupt, that the legislators are bribed, that the witnesses are
suborned, that all holders of office are dishonest; and they feel like a
modern Marius sitting amid the ruins of all the virtues.

It is useless to endeavor to persuade these people that they are wrong.
They do not want arguments, because they will not heed them. They need
medicine. Their case is not for a philosopher, but for a physician.

General Hawkins is probably right when he says that some fraudulent
shoes, some useless muskets, and some worn-out vessels were sold to the
Government during the war; but we must remember that there were millions
and millions of as good shoes as art and honesty could make, millions of
the best muskets ever constructed, and hundreds of the most magnificent
ships ever built, sold to the Government during the same period. We must
not mistake an eddy for the main stream. We must also remember another
thing: there were millions of good, brave, and patriotic men to wear the
shoes, to use the muskets, and to man the ships.

So it is probably true that Congress was extravagant in land subsidies
voted to railroads; but that this legislation was secured by bribery
is preposterous. It was all done in the light of noon. There is not the
slightest evidence tending to show that the general policy of hastening
the construction of railways through the Territories of the United
States was corruptly adopted—not the slightest. At the same time,
it may be that some members of Congress were induced by personal
considerations to vote for such subsidies. As a matter of fact, the
policy was wise, and through the granting of the subsidies thousands
of miles of railways were built, and these railways have given to
civilization vast territories which otherwise would have remained
substantially useless to the world. Where at that time was a wilderness,
now are some of the most thriving cities in the United States—a
great, an industrious, and a happy population. The results have
justified the action of Congress.

It is also true that some railroads have been "wrecked" in the United
States, but most of these wrecks have been the result of competition. It
is the same with corporations as with individuals—the powerful combine
against the weak. In the world of commerce and business is the great
law of the survival of the strongest. Railroads are not eleemosynary
institutions. They have but little regard for the rights of one another.
Some fortunes have been made by the criminal "wrecking" of roads, but
even in the business of corporations honesty is the best policy, and the
companies that have acted in accordance with the highest standard, other
things being equal, have reaped the richest harvest.

Many railways were built in advance of a demand; they had to develop the
country through which they passed. While they waited for immigration,
interest accumulated; as a result foreclosure took place; then
reorganization. By that time the country had been populated; towns were
springing up along the line; increased business was the result. On the
new bonds and the new stock the company paid interest and dividends.
Then the ones who first invested and lost their money felt that they had
been defrauded.

So it is easy to say that certain men are guilty of crimes—easy
to indict the entire nation, and at the same time impossible to
substantiate one of the charges. Everyone who knows the history of
the Star-Route trials knows that nothing was established against the
defendants, knows that every effort was made by the Government to
convict them, and also knows that an unprejudiced jury of twelve men,
never suspected of being improperly influenced, after having heard
the entire case, pronounced the defendants not guilty. After this, of
course, any one can say, who knows nothing of the evidence and who cares
nothing for the facts, that the defendants were all guilty.

It may also be true that some settlers in the far West have taken timber
from the public lands, and it may be that it was a necessity. Our laws
and regulations were such that where a settler was entitled to take up a
certain amount of land he had to take it all in one place; he could not
take a certain number of acres on the plains and a certain number of
acres in the timber. The consequence was that when he settled upon
the land—the land that he could cultivate—he took the timber that he
needed from the Government land, and this has been called stealing. So I
suppose it may be said that the cattle stole the Government's grass and
possibly drank the Government's water.

It will also be admitted with pleasure that stock has been "watered" in
this country. And what is the crime or practice known as watering stock?

For instance, you have a railroad one hundred miles long, worth, we will
say, $3,000,000—able to pay interest on that sum at the rate of six per
cent. Now, we all know that the amount of stock issued has nothing to do
with the value of the thing represented by the stock. If there was
one share of stock representing this railroad, it would be worth three
million dollars, whether it said on its face it was one dollar or one
hundred dollars. If there were three million shares of stock issued on
this property, they would be worth one dollar apiece, and, no matter
whether it said on this stock that each share was a hundred dollars or a
thousand dollars, the share would be worth one dollar—no more, no less.
If any one wishes to find the value of stock, he should find the value
of the thing represented by the stock. It is perfectly clear that, if a
pie is worth one dollar, and you cut it into four pieces, each piece is
worth twenty-five cents; and if you cut it in a thousand pieces, you do
not increase the value of the pie.

If, then, you wish to find the value of a share of stock, find its
relation to the thing represented by all the stock.

It can also be safely admitted that trusts have been formed. The reason
is perfectly clear. Corporations are like individuals—they combine.
Unfortunate corporations become socialistic, anarchistic, and cry out
against the abuses of trusts. It is natural for corporations to defend
themselves—natural for them to stop ruinous competition by a profitable
pool; and when strong corporations combine, little corporations suffer.
It is with corporations as with fishes—the large eat the little; and it
may be that this will prove a public benefit in the end. When the large
corporations have taken possession of the little ones, it may be that
the Government will take possession of them—the Government being the
largest corporation of them all.

It is to be regretted that all houses are not fireproof; but certainly
no one imagines that the people of this country build houses for the
purpose of having them burned, or that they erect hotels having in view
the broiling of guests. Men act as they must; that is to say, according
to wants and necessities. In a new country the buildings are cheaper
than in an old one, money is scarcer, interest higher, and consequently
people build cheaply and take the risks of fire. They do not do this
on account of the Constitution of the United States, or the action of
political parties, or the general idea that man is entitled to be free.
In the hotels of Europe it may be that there is not as great danger of
fire as of famine.

The destruction of game and of the singing birds is to be greatly
regretted, not only in this country, but in all others. The people
of America have been too busy felling forests, ploughing fields, and
building houses, to cultivate, to the highest degree, the aesthetic side
of their natures. Nature has been somewhat ruthless with us. The storms
of winter breasted by the Western pioneer, the whirlwinds of summer,
have tended, it may be, to harden somewhat the sensibilities; in
consequence of which they have allowed their horses and cattle to bear
the rigors of the same climate.

It is also true that the seal-fisheries are being destroyed, in the
interest of the present, by those who care nothing for the future. All
these things are to be deprecated, are to be spoken against; but we
must not hint, provided we are lovers of the Republic, that such things
are caused by free institutions.

General Hawkins asserts that "Christianity has neither preached nor
practiced humanity towards animals," while at the same time "Sunday
school children by hundreds of thousands are taught what a terrible
thing it is to break the Sabbath;" that "museum trustees tremble with
pious horror at the suggestion of opening the doors leading to the
collections on that day," and that no protests have come "from lawmakers
or the Christian clergy." Few people will suspect me of going out of my
way to take care of Christianity or of the clergy. At the same time, I
can afford to state the truth. While there is not much in the Bible with
regard to practicing humanity toward animals, there is at least this:
"The merciful man is merciful to his beast." Of course, I am not
alluding now to the example set by Jehovah when he destroyed the cattle
of the Egyptians with hailstones and diseases on account of the sins of
their owners.

In regard to the treatment of animals Christians have been much like
other people.

So, hundreds of lawmakers have not only protested against cruelty to
animals, but enough have protested against it to secure the enactment of
laws making cruelty toward animals a crime. Henry Bergh, who did as much
good as any man who has lived in the nineteenth century, was seconded
in his efforts by many of the Christian clergy not only, but by hundreds
and thousands of professing Christians—probably millions. Let us be
honest.

It is true that the clergy are apt to lose the distinction between
offences and virtues, to regard the little as the important—that is to
say, to invert the pyramid.

It is true that the Indians have been badly treated. It is true that the
fringe of civilization has been composed of many low and cruel men. It
is true that the red man has been demoralized by the vices of the white.
It is a frightful fact that, when a superior race meets an inferior, the
inferior imitates only the vices of the superior, and the superior those
of the inferior. They exchange faults and failings. This is one of the
most terrible facts in the history of the human race.

Nothing can be said to justify our treatment of the Indians. There is,
however, this shadow of an excuse: In the old times, when we lived along
the Atlantic, it hardly occurred to our ancestors that they could ever
go beyond the Ohio; so the first treaty with the Indians drove them back
but a few miles. In a little while, through immigration, the white race
passed the line, and another treaty was made, forcing the Indians still
further west; yet the tide of immigration kept on, and in a little while
again the line was passed, the treaty violated. Another treaty was
made, pushing the Indians still farther toward the Pacific, across the
Illinois, across the Mississippi, across the Missouri, violating at
every step some treaty made; and each treaty born of the incapacity of
the white men who made it to foretell the growth of the Republic.

But the author of "Brutality and Avarice Triumphant" made a great
mistake when he selected the last thirty years of our national life as
the period within which the Americans have made a change of the national
motto appropriate, and asserted that now there should be in place of the
old motto the words, "Plundering Made Easy."

Most men believe in a sensible and manly patriotism. No one should be
blind to the defects in the laws and institutions of his country. He
should call attention to abuses, not for the purpose of bringing his
country into disrepute, but that the abuses may cease and the defects
be corrected. He should do what he can to make his country great,
prosperous, just, and free. But it is hardly fair to exaggerate the
faults of your country for the purpose of calling attention to your own
virtues, or to earn the praise of a nation that hates your own. This is
what might be called wallowing in the gutter of reform.

The thirty years chosen as the time in which we as a nation have passed
from virtue to the lowest depths of brutality and avarice are, in fact,
the most glorious years in the life of this or of any other nation.

In 1861 slavery was, in a legal sense at least, a national institution.
It was firmly imbedded in the Federal Constitution. The Fugitive Slave
Law was in full force and effect. In all the Southern and in nearly all
of the Northern States it was a crime to give food, shelter, or raiment
to a man or woman seeking liberty by flight. Humanity was illegal,
hospitality a misdemeanor, and charity a crime. Men and women were sold
like beasts. Mothers were robbed of their babes while they stood under
our flag. All the sacred relations of life were trampled beneath the
bloody feet of brutality and avarice. Besides, so firmly was slavery
fixed in law and creed, in statute and Scripture, that the tongues of
honest men were imprisoned. Those who spoke for the slave were mobbed by
Northern lovers of the "Union."

Now, it seems to me that those were the days when the motto could
properly have been, "Plundering Made Easy." Those were the days of
brutality, and the brutality was practiced to the end that we might make
money out of the unpaid labor of others.

It is not necessary to go into details as to the cause of the then
condition; it is enough to say that the whole nation, North and South,
was responsible. There were many years of compromise, and thousands of
statesmen, so-called, through conventions and platforms, did what they
could to preserve slavery and keep the Union. These efforts corrupted
politics, demoralized our statesmen, polluted our courts, and poisoned
our literature. The Websters, Bentons, and Clays mistook temporary
expedients for principles, and really thought that the progress of
the world could be stopped by the resolutions of a packed political
convention. Yet these men, mistaken as they really were, worked and
wrought unconsciously in the cause of human freedom. They believed that
the preservation of the Union was the one important thing, and that it
could not be preserved unless slavery was protected—unless the North
would be faithful to the bargain as written in the Constitution. For
the purpose of keeping the nation true to the Union and false to itself,
these men exerted every faculty and all their strength. They exhausted
their genius in showing that slavery was not, after all, very bad,
and that disunion was the most terrible calamity that could by any
possibility befall the nation, and that the Union, even at the price of
slavery, was the greatest possible blessing. They did not suspect that
slavery would finally strike the blow for disunion. But when the time
came and the South unsheathed the sword, the teachings of these men as
to the infinite value of the Union gave to our flag millions of brave
defenders.

Now, let us see what has been accomplished during the thirty years of
"Brutality and Avarice."

The Republic has been rebuilt and reunited, and we shall remain one
people for many centuries to come. The Mississippi is nature's protest
against disunion. The Constitution of the United States is now the
charter of human freedom, and all laws inconsistent with the idea that
all men are entitled to liberty have been repealed. The black man knows
that the Constitution is his shield, that the laws protect him, that our
flag is his, and the black mother feels that her babe belongs to her.
Where the slave-pen used to be you will find the schoolhouse. The dealer
in human flesh is now a teacher; instead of lacerating the back of a
child, he develops and illumines the mind of a pupil.

There is now freedom of speech. Men are allowed to utter their thoughts.
Lips are no longer sealed by mobs. Never before in the history of our
world has so much been done for education.

The amount of business done in a country on credit is the measure of
confidence, and confidence is based upon honesty. So it may truthfully
be said that, where a vast deal of business is done on credit, an
exceedingly large per cent. of the people are regarded as honest. In our
country a very large per cent. of contracts are faithfully fulfilled.
Probably there is no nation in the world where so much business is
done on credit as in the United States. The fact that the credit of the
Republic is second to that of no other nation on the globe would seem to
be at least an indication of a somewhat general diffusion of honesty.

The author of "Brutality and Avarice Triumphant" seems to be of the
opinion that our country was demoralized by the war. They who fight for
the right are not degraded—they are ennobled. When men face death and
march to the mouths of the guns for a principle, they grow great; and if
they come out of the conflict, they come with added moral grandeur; they
become better men, better citizens, and they love more intensely than
ever the great cause for the success of which they put their lives in
pawn.

The period of the Revolution produced great men. After the great victory
the sons of the heroes degenerated, and some of the greatest principles
involved in the Revolution were almost forgotten.

During the Civil war the North grew great and the South was educated.
Never before in the history of mankind was there such a period of moral
exaltation. The names that shed the brightest, the whitest light on
the pages of our history became famous then. Against the few who were
actuated by base and unworthy motives let us set the great army that
fought for the Republic, the millions who bared their breasts to
the storm, the hundreds and hundreds of thousands who did their duty
honestly, nobly, and went back to their wives and children with no
thought except to preserve the liberties of themselves and their
fellow-men.

Of course there were some men who did not do their duty—some men false
to themselves and to their country. No one expects to find sixty-five
millions of saints in America. A few years ago a lady complained to the
president of a Western railroad that a brakeman had spoken to her with
great rudeness. The president expressed his regret at the incident, and
said among other things: "Madam, you have no idea how difficult it is
for us to get gentlemen to fill all those places."

It is hardly to be expected that the American people should excel all
others in the arts, in poetry, and in fiction. We have been very busy
taking possession of the Republic. It is hard to overestimate the
courage, the industry, the self-denial it has required to fell the
forests, to subdue the fields, to construct the roads, and to build the
countless homes. What has been done is a certificate of the honesty and
industry of our people.

It is not true that "one of the unwritten mottoes of our business morals
seem to say in the plainest phraseology possible: 'Successful wrong is
right.'" Men in this country are not esteemed simply because they are
rich; inquiries are made as to how they made their money, as to how
they use it. The American people do not fall upon their knees before the
golden calf; the worst that can be said is that they think too much
of the gold of the calf—and this distinction is seen by the calves
themselves.

Nowhere in the world is honesty in business esteemed more highly than
here. There are millions of business men—merchants, bankers, and men
engaged in all trades and professions—to whom reputation is as dear as
life.

There is one thing in the article "Brutality and Avarice Triumphant"
that seems even more objectionable than the rest, and that is the
statement, or, rather, the insinuation, that all the crimes and the
shortcomings of the American people can be accounted for by the fact
that our Government is a Republic. We are told that not long ago a
French official complained to a friend that he was compelled to employ
twenty clerks to do the work done by four under the empire, and on being
asked the reason answered: "It is the Republic." He was told that, as
he was the head of the bureau, he could prevent the abuse, to which he
replied: "I know I have the power; but I have been in this position for
more than thirty years, and am now too old to learn another occupation,
and I must make places for the friends of the deputies." And then it
is added by General Hawkins: "And so it is here."

It seems to me that it cannot be fairly urged that we have abused the
Indians because we contend that all men have equal rights before the
law, or because we insist that governments derive their just powers from
the consent of the governed. The probability is that a careful reading
of the history of the world will show that nations under the control of
kings and emperors have been guilty of some cruelty. To account for the
bad we do by the good we believe, is hardly logical. Our virtues should
not be made responsible for our vices.

Is it possible that free institutions tend to the demoralization of men?
Is a man dishonest because he is a man and maintains the rights of men?
In order to be a moral nation must we be controlled by king or emperor?
Is human liberty a mistake? Is it possible that a citizen of the great
Republic attacks the liberty of his fellow-citizens? Is he willing to
abdicate? Is he willing to admit that his rights are not equal to the
rights of others? Is he, for the sake of what he calls morality, willing
to become a serf, a servant or a slave?

Is it possible that "high character is impracticable" in this Republic?
Is this the experience of the author of "Brutality and Avarice
Triumphant"? Is it true that "intellectual achievement pays no
dividends"? Is it not a fact that America is to-day the best market in
the world for books, for music, and for art?

There is in our country no real foundation for these wide and sweeping
slanders. This, in my judgment, is the best Government, the best
country, in the world. The citizens of this Republic are, on the
average, better clothed and fed and educated than any other people. They
are fuller of life, more progressive, quicker to take advantage of
the forces of nature, than any other of the children of men. Here
the burdens of government are lightest, the responsibilities of the
individual greatest, and here, in my judgment, are to be worked out the
most important problems of social science.

Here in America is a finer sense of what is due from man to man than
you will find in other lands. We do not cringe to those whom chance has
crowned; we stand erect.

Our sympathies are strong and quick. Generosity is almost a national
failing. The hand of honest want is rarely left unfilled. Great
calamities open the hearts and hands of all.

Here you will find democracy in the family—republicanism by the
fireside. Say what you will, the family is apt to be patterned after the
government. If a king is at the head of the nation, the husband imagines
himself the monarch of the home. In this country we have carried into
the family the idea on which the Government is based. Here husbands and
wives are beginning to be equals.

The highest test of civilization is the treatment of women and children.
By this standard America stands first among nations.

There is a magnitude, a scope, a grandeur, about this country—an
amplitude—that satisfies the heart and the imagination. We have our
faults, we have our virtues, but our country is the best.

No American should ever write a line that can be sneeringly quoted by an
enemy of the great Republic.

Robert G. Ingersoll.