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             INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION

                           CHAPTER 15.

                     HIS DOMESTIC TEACHINGS

                  Woman, Love, Marriage, Home.

     It has been written, that upon the urn inclosing the ashes of
our reformer should be the words, "Liberator of Men." Without
attributing to the author of the latter any lack of comprehension,
I would substitute, "Liberator of Man, Woman, and Child." And even
this, as far as woman is concerned, is hardly adequate. Ingersoll
was more than the liberator of woman: he was a worshiper, an
adorer, of woman; and he stood as her uncompromising champion, --
her invincible defender from every form and manifestation of
barbaric cruelty and theological bigotry, whether it first appeared
during the earliest historic times, or during the days preceding
his death. No one who is not both profoundly and widely familiar
with his thought and work can possibly realize the full truth and
justness of this statement. For a comprehensive view of Ingersoll
on a given point is not to be obtained at random, or at a passing
glance. Nor is such a view to be had through a mental microscope:
the field to be surveyed is too large -- he is too big a man.

     Thus we find that one of his strongest objections to the
Jewish and Christian cosmogony and theology, from creation to the
ascension of Christ, is the position of inferiority and degradation
to which woman is therein assigned. Jehovah's attempt to induce
Adam to select "an helpmeet for him" from among the "cattle," "the
fowl of the air," and the "beasts of the field"; the failure of
Adam so to select a companion, and the consequent creation of woman
from one of his ribs, thus placing her on a plane somewhat higher
than that of the beast, but lower than that of man; the attributing
of all the sins of the world to the first woman, through her
tempting of Adam to fall; the curse which Jehovah placed upon
maternity; her degradation by sanctioning polygamy, concubinage,
and slavery; the failure of Christ to recognize her equality with
man; her calumniation and stigmatization by the early Christian
"fathers" -- all this (and much more) gave bitter and unpardonable
offense to Ingersoll's sense of justice and of the sacredness of
womanhood. Indeed, it would have required only the teachings of the
Bible, and the attitude of the church, in reference to woman, to
make Ingersoll an implacable enemy of the Christian religion.

     And, putting entirely aside, for the present, his purely anti-
theological propaganda, what a knight-like gallant he was; How he
did shiver with his intellectual lance the battle-axes and
bludgeons which the savagery, selfishness, and cant of "the
stronger sex" had raised above the head of women! We should search
in vain this wondrously flexible language of ours for a word of
love, adoration, liberation, vindication, or defense that he did
not use in her behalf. He was her champion from the first. While
the wise judges of the law were denying Susan B. Anthony the right
of trial by jury for the crime of having voted, Ingersoll was
declaring: "Woman has all the rights I have, and one more, and that
is the right to be protected, because she is the weaker." He
insisted, that woman is better than man, that she has greater
burdens and responsibilities, and that it is for that reason that
her faults are considered greater. He contended, that woman is not 
the intellectual inferior, but, potentially at least, the
intellectual equal, of man, and, moreover, that the men who assert
the contrary "cannot, by offering themselves in evidence,
substantiate their declaration." He believed that she would become
man's successful rival in every department of artistic and
intellectual endeavor. She had already achieved many triumphs in
law, medicine, art, sculpture, and literature, and of the latter
had raised the moral standard. He would give to her, as to man, all
the education that she is capable of receiving. In other words, he
would open wide to her the only gateway that leads to absolute
moral and intellectual freedom. "The parasite of woman is the
priest," he said; therefore, he would educate her out of the
orthodox church. "There will never be a generation of great men,"
he declared, "until there has been a generation of free women -- of
free mothers." He failed to discern either justice or reason in
giving to the brutal and ignorant negro (or to the brutal and
ignorant white man) the right to vote, while denying it to the
refined, educated, and intellectual mother; and so he would extend
to woman, not the "privilege" of, but her inalienable moral and
political right to, a voice in the affairs of town and city, state
and nation. In short, to woman, as to man, he would apply the
Ingersollian Golden Rule: --

     "Give to every other human being every right that you claim
for yourself."

     But while this brief resume will serve to indicate, with some
degree of adequacy, Ingersoll's regard for, and loyalty to woman,
it is to such passages as the following, that we must turn for the
underlying secret of that regard and loyalty. It is through the
crystalline clearness of such passages, that we perceive, in woman,
the Ingersollian ideal of humanity and beauty: --

     "I not only admire woman as the most beautiful object ever
created, but I reverence her as the redeeming glory of humanity,
the sanctuary of all the virtues, the pledge of all perfect
qualities of heart and head."

And again, to the same effect: --

     "The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this
world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life has
been a success."

     This elevation of woman to the very summit of humanity will
enable us to understand, not only with the head, but with the
heart, Ingersoll's exaltation of love in the following prose-poem,
which, for appositeness and delicacy of imagery, poetic truth,
insouciance, and verbal melody (be it said in passing), has been
equaled by none but the master lyricists of our tongue: --

     "Love is the only bow on life's dark cloud. It is the morning
and the evening star. It shines upon the babe' and sheds its
radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of
poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every
heart -- builder of every home, kindlier of every fire on every
hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the
world with melody -- for music is the voice of love. Love is the 
magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and
makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the
perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred
passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it,
earth is heaven, and we are gods."

     After the preceding, we shall not wonder that Ingersoll was an
uncompromising champion of monogamic marriage, -- certainly not if
we recall his fundamental maxim: "The only way to be happy yourself
is to make somebody else so." But if he was an uncompromising
champion of monogamy, he was an implacable enemy of all ideas and
practices tending to discredit it. Indeed, if than to defend
marriage there was anything which he did out of deeper conviction,
 with greater earnestness, it was to attack celibacy; and if than
to attack celibacy there was anything which he did out of deeper
conviction, with greater earnestness, it was to attack polygamy. To
him, celibacy was "the essence of vulgarity" -- "the most obscene
word in our language," while polygamy was "the infamy of infamies"
-- a thing the "filth" of which "all the languages of the world are
insufficient to express."

     With such hatred of polygamy, is it any surprise, by the way,
that he regarded the following, from Shakespeare: -- (Sonnet CXVI)
as "the greatest line in the poetry of the world" --

     "Love is not love
      Which alters when it alternation finds."

     And after his characterization of celibacy, as above, can we
wonder that the advocates of that doctrine fare at his hands no
better than this? --

     "I believe in marriage, and I hold in utter contempt the
opinions of those long-haired men and short haired women who
denounce the institution of marriage."

Or this? --

     "Back of all churches is human affection. Back of all
theologies is the love of the human heart. Back of all your priests
and creeds is the adoration of one woman by the one man, and of the
one man by the one woman. Back of your faith is the fireside; back
of your folly is the family; and back of all your holy mistakes and
your sacred absurdities is the love of husband and wife, of parent
and child."

     Continuing in natural sequence, we find that Ingersoll's ideal
of the institution which he so steadfastly championed was quite
removed from that of the great majority of individuals, theological
or lay. To him, the "citadel and fortress of civilization," "the
holiest institution among men," was something more than a
"solemnized" or "legalized" ceremonial contract. While
ecclesiastical, social, and civil institutions, laws, and customs
might prescribe the ceremony, and furnish the witnesses, no one but
the two parties to the contract -- not even God himself, if he
exist -- could effect the real marriage. All others, whether in  
heaven or on earth, were simply either curios onlookers or impudent
intruders. It was therefore the knot intrinsic of human love, and
that alone, which constituted true marriage. He says: --

     "Love is a transfiguration. It ennobles, purifies and
glorifies. In true marriage two hearts burst into flower. Two lives
unite. They melt in music. Every moment is a melody. Love is a
revelation, a creation. From love the world borrows its beauty and
the heavens their glory. Justice, self-denial, charity and pity are
the children of love. * * *  Without love all glory fades, the
noble falls from life, art dies, music loses meaning and becomes
mere motions of the air, and virtue ceases to exist."

     After this presentation of the Ingersollian view of love and
marriage, we naturally proceed to a consideration of the
importance, or rather, the absolute essentiality and sacredness,
which, in his philosophy, the great humanitarian assigned to the
family and the home. In his innumerable utterances concerning them,
as in nearly all his utterances on other themes, he has not merely
expressed the profoundest soul-born reasons and convictions: he has
clothed the latter in ideal beauty. Thus, in the following, the
family is glorified as the very foundation of all present worth,
not only, but as the hope and salvation of the future: --

     "Civilization rests upon the family. The good family is the
unit of good government. The virtues grow about the holy hearth of
home -- they cluster, bloom, and shed their perfume round the
fireside where the one man loves the one woman. Lover -- husband --
wife -- mother -- father -- child -- home! -- without these sacred
words, the world is but a lair, and men and women merely beasts."

And again: --

     "I believe in the religion of the family. I believe that the
roof-tree is sacred, from the smallest fiber that feels the soft
cool clasp of earth, to the topmost flower that spreads its bosom
to the sun, and like a spendthrift gives its perfume to the air.
The home where virtue dwells with love is like a lily with a heart
of fire -- the fairest flower in the world."

     He would convert mankind to this "religion of the family," --
this blessed "gospel of the fireside": --

     "Let me tell you * * * it is far more important to build a
home than to erect a church. The holiest temple beneath the stars
is a home that love has built. And the holiest altar in all the
wide world is the fireside around which gather father and mother
and the sweet babes."

     With the world domestically evangelized, or Ingersollized,
rather, we should have, not occasional, but innumerable pictures
like this: --

     "If upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven, it is
when we pass a home in winter, at night, and through the windows,
the curtains drawn aside, we see the family about the pleasant
hearth; the old lady knitting; the cat playing with the yarn; the 
children wishing they had as many dolls or dollars or knives or
somethings, as there are sparks going out to join the roaring
blast; the father reading and smoking, and the clouds rising like
incense from the altar of domestic joy. I never passed such a house
without feeling that I had received a benediction." And no one with
heart and brain ever read such a passage without feeling the same
way.

     But, as we should naturally suppose, Ingersoll's philosophy
offered something more than even the preceding incomparably
beautiful and inspiring ideas of love and marriage, of family and
home. His "religion of the family," his "gospel of the fireside,"
did not end with a glimpse of the loved and loving father, mother,
and babes "about the pleasant hearth" -- did not conclude with the
"benediction" which we have just received. The philosophy that
placed all human life on the firm basis of happiness as "the only
good" did not content itself with pictures, which, even though
momentarily real, might be, after all, as purely temporal, as
transient, as they were beautiful. Far from it, that philosophy
would make those pictures the idealistic reflections of enduring
realities. Indeed, it was with the "benediction," that Ingersoll's
domestic evangelization really commenced.

     I have stated that Ingersoll was not only the "Liberator of
Man," but the "Liberator of Man, Woman, and Child." Having
accordingly shown, as fully as is here practicable, that he was
woman's liberator outside the family circle, it is my next pleasure
to show that he was her liberator within that circle, -- the
liberator of the wife and mother.

     "But from what," will perhaps he asked, "did he liberate her?"
He liberated her from the idea that there must be a "head of the
family" -- a "boss." He liberated her from the heartless time-
sanctified doctrine of the divine rights of domestic kings -- from
the tyrant of the fireside -- the Jehovah of the hearth. He
demolished the latter's petty throne, and on its ruins made "a
happy fireside clime to weans and wife." He commanded the husband
to be a gentleman; bade the wife arise, Minerva-like, from her
swollen knees; and he wrote, in glowing gold, on the somber walls
of millions of orthodox homes: "Liberty, Equality, and Love." If
this alone had been his earthly task, paeans of praise should rise
to his memory from every hearth in Christendom.

     Any idea that savored of tyranny filled his liberty-loving,
justice-loving soul with indignation and repugnance. 
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