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             INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION

                           CHAPTER 16.

                     HIS DOMESTIC TEACHINGS
                           (Concluded)

            Children -- Their Rearing and Education.

     Since the preceding presentation of Ingersoll as the liberator
and champion of the wife and mother necessarily involves the
logical correlative that he was also the liberator and champion of
children, the latter fact requires no specific insistence here; and
we may therefore pass, without undue delay, to the presentation of
his views on the subject concerned. But we shall be able to
appreciate more fully, more clearly, more justly, the extent to
which he was the liberator and champion of children, if we recall,
in so passing, the principal counter ideas of the subject which
were prevalent when he began his anti-theological humanitarian
crusade.

     I refer to the ideas of childhood which were prevalent when he
began his crusade, and I term that crusade anti-theological
humanitarian, for the simple and obvious reason that the ideas of
childhood to which he objected were indissolubly associated with
orthodox Christianity. Beneath them, like mire beneath a bed of
noxious weeds, was the dogma of total depravity, while above and
around them were the ominous and threatening clouds of
foreordination, predestination, and everlasting punishment. In the
midst of this horrid nightmare, this mental miasma, this moral
morass, the lot of childhood was pitiable in the extreme. The
sweetest child, -- the fairest human flower that blossomed into
smiles in the sunshine of a mother's eyes, -- was scarcely more
fortunate than a domestic animal. Indeed, it was, in one respect,
less fortunate; for the animal had no soul to be depraved in the
first place, nor to be damned in the second. Surely this meant, to
the proverbial dog, something more than the crumbs that fell from
his master's table!

     In those gloomy orthodox days, instead of being welcomed as
blossoms are welcomed in the sunshine and fragrance of the garden,
children were regarded as divine charges -- incarnations of awful
responsibilities from on high. Parents believed in a tyrant in
heaven. They knew precisely what he exacted from them, and they
were intelligent enough, and only enough, to recognize a perfect
analogy between their relations to that tyrant and their children's
relations to them. They realized that they themselves could not be
orthodox and happy at the same time; and so the melodious laughter,
the irrepressibly joyous prattle, of child-hood became, in their
ears, a hideous din of irreverence. Feeling the grave
responsibility that rested upon them, they sought to secure for
their children supernal bliss hereafter, in exchange for orthodox
misery now. They transformed the home into a penitentiary, the
nursery into a sepulcher, the cradle into a coffin. Every day then
was what the really orthodox would like to have Sunday now, and
every Sunday then was what our most exemplary penitentiary would be
if it were located in the center of our largest cemetery. Certain
as these parents were of all things theological, there were at
least three things of which they were doubly certain, despite the
mutual contradiction between the last two: That "hell is paved with

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             INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION

infants' skulls," that all children are totally depraved, and that
'to spare the rod is to spoil the child.' ["He that spareth his rod
hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes."]
They knew that countless children had been damned, that countless
others would be, that all ought to be, but that a few might be
spared if the rod was not. There being no means of distinguishing
the "few," excepting perhaps the ordinary signs of ill health,
which frequently passed for piety, they applied the rod with
uniform generosity.

     Of course, even as early as the beginning of Ingersoll's
career, many parents -- and I here refer to them as parents only --
had passed far above and beyond this stage of primitive orthodoxy.
They had already emerged from the jungle, and were commencing to
breathe the air of freedom, -- to welcome the dawn's expanding
dome, -- to bask in the sunlight of kindness and reason. In short,
they were growing somewhat heretical. Instead of putting their
"stubborn and rebellious" sons to death, as directed in Exodus and
Leviticus; instead of delivering them to the "elders" of the city,
to be stoned to death, as directed in Deuteronomy, and in the New
England blue-laws, -- laws based largely upon the Bible, -- they
chose to prolong their lives and "break" their "wills," in
accordance with the more humane, if less scriptural, teachings of
some such gentle kindergarten advocate as John Wesley, for example.
To be sure, it often happened that this preference for the Wesleyan
method produced precisely the same result that was formerly
produced by the more strictly biblical method. But even so, the
parents could console themselves with the blessed thought, that
both methods bore the orthodox sanction; and that even if, in the
application of the more modern one, the exigencies of the case
concerned required the exercise of seemingly undue zeal, they had
done what they conceived to be their "level best."

     Thus in the average orthodox home, the idea of arbitrary and
humiliating obedience, born of tyranny and "original sin," was
carried out in detailed perfection. From the iron throne of Jehovah
in heaven, to the cradle of the tenderest babe on earth, the chain
of cruelty hung unbroken. The husband lived "in fear and
trembling," at the frightful mercy of Jehovah; the wife, at the
mercy of both Jehovah and the husband; the children, at the mercy
of all. They were the sport and prey, the helpless galley-slaves,
of orthodoxy. Under such conditions, the ideal family life, -- the
ideal child-life, -- was not only unknown, but impossible. The sky
was overcast; the clouds seemed always lowering, the atmosphere
gloomy and oppressive. Through the day seemed long, the night came
early; and the real hearth-fire was out: it had never been kindled.
The parents, fearing the untimely removal of their children as a
jealous judgment of Jehovah, often withheld from them their natural
love. The parental affection of children thus reared scarcely
differed in kind or degree from that which the whipped cur
manifests for its master.

     If we apply here what seems to be the supreme test of
nobility, namely, that the commiseration of an individual is
invariably in direct ratio to the helplessness of its object, we
shall scarcely need to be told, that, against the old ideas of
rearing children, -- against the Wesleyan nursery methods, --


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Ingersoll revolted with as intense indignation as against orthodox
Christianity itself. Indeed, we shall readily perceive that his
"gospel of the fireside "was not circumscribed by the relations of
husband and wife, but that it encompassed, with a beneficence as
wide as it was tender, the cradle of even the lowliest babe. He
says: --

     "If women have been slaves, what shall I say of children; of
the little children in a alleys and sub-cellars; the little
children who turn pale when they hear their father's footsteps; the
little children who run away when they only hear their names called
by the lips of a mother; littler children -- the children of
poverty, the children of crime, the children of brutality, wherever
they are -- flotsam and jetsam upon the wild, mad sea of life -- my
heart goes out to them, one and all."

     Passing from this declaration of sympathy and commiseration to
his ideas and teachings on the subject of childhood, we find that
the latter, like the rest of his philosophy, are preeminently sane,
natural, and humane -- the unified product of a perfectly logical
brain and a perfectly human heart -- the triune efflorescence of
reason, compassion, and love of the ideal. Nothing is more evident
in any of his works than is this fact throughout his utterances
concerning the treatment of children. Wherever he touches the
subject, purposely or incidentally, it is clarified and ennobled by
the inimitable Ingersollian garnishment of reason and beauty.

     In the first place, since no one is born of his own volition,
Ingersoll taught, as a fundamental proposition of reason and
justice, that every babe should be sincerely welcomed. Not in even
the remotest sense should it be regarded or treated as either a
theological charge or an economic burden. Next to maternity itself
stood, in his tender and sympathetic regard, the helplessness and
innocence of childhood. Gifted, like the born poet that he was,
with imaginative sympathy which enabled him, for the time, to live
and love, to yearn and suffer, as a little child, and perceiving,
as only the intuitive philosopher can, how absolutely dependent is
the salvation of the future upon the cradles of the present, he
believed and taught that "a child should know no more sorrow than
a bird or a flower." This was but a natural idealistic sequence of
his fundamental declaration, that every babe should be sincerely
welcomed. For the sweet children, -- the stainless flowers of human
kind, -- he would have the air and light of liberty, -- the
sunshine of love and affection, -- everywhere. Concerning the old
idea, that "little children should be seen, not heard"; that they
should always be somewhat serious; and that, at table, they should
deport themselves as though eating were a religious ceremony, he
said: --

     "I like to see the children at table, and hear each one
telling of the wonderful things he has seen and heard. I like to
hear the clatter of knives and forks and spoons mingling with their
happy voices. I had rather hear it than any opera that was ever put
upon the boards. Let the children have liberty. Be honest and fair
with them; be just; be tender, and they will make you rich in love
and joy."



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             INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION

     He spurned the very thought of limiting their happiness, as is
shown by this matchless eloquence, aimed at the Puritan Sabbath --
the day which cast so dark a shadow over his own boyhood: --

     "The laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred
still. Strike with hand of fire, O weird musician! thy harp strung
with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with
symphonies sweet and dim, deft tocher of organ keys; blow, bugler,
blow, until the silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves,
and charm the lovers wandering midst the vine-clad hills: but know,
your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood's
happy laugh -- the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every
heart with joy. O rippling river of laughter! thou art the blessed
boundary line between the breasts of men; and every wayward wave of
thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O Laughter! rose-
lipped daughter of Joy, make dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch
and hold and glorify all the tears of grief."

     And so, with Ingersoll, the happiness of childhood was of
transcendent importance.

     As to the general conduct of children, he knew that, in at
least one fundamental respect, the latter are precisely like their
elders -- they seek happiness, according to their light; and he
believed that if, in this purely natural course, mistakes are made,
they call, not for the qualities of a parental Torquemada or
martinet, but for reason and justice, as in the case of adults, and
for something more -- affection. He said: --

     "I tell you the children have the same rights that we have,
and we ought as though they were human beings. They should be
reared with love, with kindness, with tenderness, and not with
brutality."

     He denounced the heartless, infamous doctrine, that children
can be "spoiled" with love and affection. Indeed, it was these very
influences, guided by intelligence, that he proposed as the only
agency of correction or reformation: --

     "When your child commits a wrong, take it in your arms; let it
feel your heart beat against its heart; let the child know that you
really and truly and sincerely love it. Yet some Christians, good
Christians, when a child commits a fault, drive it from the door
and say: 'Never do you darken this house again.' Think of that! And
then those same people will get down on their knees and ask God to
take care of the child they have driven from home. I will never ask
God to take care of my child unless I am doing my level best in
that same direction.

     But I will tell you what I say to my children: 'Go where you
will; commit what crime you may; fall to what depth of degradation
you may; you can never commit any crime that will shut my door, my
arms, or my heart to you. As long as I live you shall have one
sincere friend.'"

     After the preceding, it may be well, in the interest of those
who would retain their children beneath the native roof-tree, to
quote the following --

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     " * * * Make your home happy. Be honest with them. Divide
fairly with them in everything.

     "Give them a little liberty and love, and you can not drive
them out of your house. They will want to stay there.

     " * * * do not commence at the cradle and shout 'Don't!'
Don't!' 'Stop!' That is nearly all that is said to a child from the
cradle until he is twenty-one years old, and when he comes of age
other people begin to saying 'Don't!' And the church says 'Don't!'
and the party he belongs to says 'Don't!'

     "I despise that way of going through this world. Let me have
liberty -- just a little. Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me
what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come
to my grave and truthfully say: 'He who sleeps here never gave us
a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an
unkind word.'"

     This resolution, so manly, so noble, so near to pathos in its
tenderness, leaves in the mind no doubt, that, of all the hideous,
inhuman features of the old doctrine of rearing children, the idea
of corporal punishment -- "the gospel of ferule and whips," as he
termed it -- filled Ingersoll with greatest indignation. Possessing
a heart that instinctively shrank from the infliction of pain;
dowered with imaginative sympathy that not only enabled but
impelled him to put himself in the place of others, even of babes,
the mental picture of parents beating and scarring their own flesh
was one which he could not contemplate with toleration: --

     "Think of being fed and clothed by children you had whipped --
whose flesh you had scarred! Think of feeling in your of death upon
your withered lips, your withered cheeks, the kisses and the tears
of one whom you had beaten -- upon whose flesh were still the marks
of your lash!"

     Whether "conscience is born of love," as stated by
Shakespeare, and just what weight we should attach to Ingersoll's
suggestion that conduct depends upon the imagination, it may be
difficult to say; but it does seem certain, that, if all possessed
imagination equal to his, there would be no beaters of babes.

     Notwithstanding the strong influence which sentiment exerted
in his revolt at the idea of corporal punishment, Just as strong if
not stronger influence was exerted by reason. For here, again, "his
brain took counsel of his heart." This is clearly and forcibly
evident in many a passage like the following: --

     "The man who cannot raise children without whipping them ought
not to have them. The man who would mar the flesh of a boy or girl
is unfit to have the control of a human being. The father who keeps
a rod in his house keeps a relic of barbarism in his heart. There
is nothing reformatory in punishment; nothing reformatory in fear.
Kindness, guided by intelligence, is the only reforming force. An
appeal to brute force is an abandonment of love and reason, and
puts father and child upon a savage equality; the savageness in the
heart of the father prompting the use of the rod or club, produces
a like savageness in the victim."

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             INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION

     These splendid convictions -- these royal children of the
heart and brain -- often found expression in rare rhetorical form.
Was more pungent irony, more humiliating satire, than the following
ever used in a sweeter, manlier cause? --

     "I do not believe in the government of the lash. If any one of
you ever expects to whip your children again, I want you to have a
photograph taken of yourself when you are in the act, with your
face red with vulgar anger, and the face of the little child, with
eyes swimming in tears and the little chin dimpled with fear, like
a piece of water struck by a sudden cold wind. Have the picture
taken. If the little child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter
way to spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the cemetery,
when the maples are clad in tender gold, and little secret runners
are coming, like poems of regret, from the sad heart of the earth
-- and set down upon the grave and look at that photograph, and
think of the flesh now dust that you beat."

     And why, it may be asked in passing, did he suggest "an autumn
afternoon"? Because afternoon, the death of day, the retrospective
time, and autumn, the death of nature, the season of sadness, make
all sad things seem doubly so. He suggested an autumn afternoon
because he was a poet and artist, who, unlike the other great
reformers (as already pointed out), instinctively clothed his
profoundest moral and intellectual convictions in the garments of
ideal beauty.

     As showing further, and perhaps even more intimately, his
tender regard for childhood, the following letters to Mr. and Mrs.
John C. Ingersoll, at the death of their son, are of interest here:
[John C. Ingersoll was the son of Ebon Clark Ingersoll, Robert's
brother.] --

                                        "400 Fifth Avenue,
                                             Dec. 20, '91

"Dear John and Lolla:

     "I know that your hearts are almost broken over the death of
dear little Wilston -- and I know that I can say nothing that can
save you a tear. But there is one thing in which there is at least
a ray of comfort: -- The dear little fellow had no fear, and went
away on the outflowing tide of sleep. He had not lived long enough
to have dread of death. That is something in which there is a
little comfort. He is now beyond all suffering, and that is a sweet
thought. But whether there is any comfort or not, I know that you
must bear the burden. I wish I could help you but I cannot. All I
can say is that I love you both, and that my heart feels your
grief. All send love to you and yours and to the dear babe that
lies asleep.

                                          "Yours always,

                                               Robert."

     A day later, prevented from being present: --

     "* * * There is no words deep enough and tender enough to

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             INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION

soften your grief, or to lighten your burden. I know that the stars
have all gone out, and the world seems poor and barren. * * * Time,
of course, will in some little degree dull the edge of pain. I wish
I could write words of meaning enough to lessen your sense of loss.
But I cannot. I know how I should feel under like circumstances,
and so I know that my words are nothing. But I love you both. Kiss
the dear babe Walston for me. * * *"

Still later: --

     "Had it been possible, I should have been with you when you
laid little Walston to rest. I thought of you all that day. I know
that you will bear it because you cannot choose, but it seems
almost a sacrilege for me to write about your loss. * * * A world
with in it is an awful world -- but we are compelled to carry our
burdens, and the best way is to forget if we can. * * * My heart
goes out to the mother that has buried her babe."

These letters, which recall, in sympathy and pathos, the wondrous
words of "Whence and Whitlier?" in Chapter 5, could be greatly
multiplied.

     No less characteristically radical, interesting, and valuable
than his ideas of the purely domestic side of rearing children are
his ideas of the more intellectual aspect of the problem. Here also
love, liberty, and honesty, -- the last two especially, -- should
constitute, according to him, the prevailing influence. Of the
necessity for mental honesty, he says: --

     "Let us be honest. Let us preserve the veracity of our souls.
Let education commence in the cradle -- in the lap of the loving
mother. This is the first school. The teacher, the mother, should
be absolutely honest.

     "The nursery should not be an asylum for lies.

     "Parents should be modest enough to be truthful -- honest
enough to admit their ignorance. Nothing should be taught as true
that cannot be demonstrated."

And of the necessity for mental liberty: --

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

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

     Speaking only a few months before his death, he observed: --

     "William Kingdon Clifford, one of the greatest men of this
century, said: 'If there is one lesson that history forces upon us
in every page, it is this: Keep your children away from the priest,
or he will make them the enemies of mankind.'


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             INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION

     "In every orthodox Sunday-school children are taught to
believe in devils. Every little brain becomes a menagerie, filled
with wild beasts from hell. The imagination is polluted with the
deformed, the monstrous and malicious. To fill the minds of
children with leering fiends -- with mocking devils -- is one of
the meanest and bassist of crimes. In these pious prisons -- these
divine dungeons -- these Protestant and Catholic inquisitions --
children are tortured with these cruel lies. Here they are taught
that to really think is wicked; that to express your honest thought
is blasphemy; and that to live a free and joyous life, depending on
fact instead of faith, is the sin against the Holy Ghost.

     Children are taught -- thus corrupted and deformed -- become
the enemies of investigation -- of progress. They are no longer
true to themselves. They have lost the veracity of the soul. In the
language of Professor Clifford, 'they are the enemies of the human
race.'

     "So I say to all fathers and mothers, keep your children away
from priests and ministers; away from orthodox Sunday-schools; away
from the slaves of superstition."

     With the children thus protected at the start from the
warping. blighting, degrading influences of superstition -- with
"Love the only priest," according to one of his fundamental maxims
-- and with absolute mental honesty and perfect mental liberty the
aim and gift of every parent, Ingersoll would undertake the
realization of the public educational reforms and ideals indicated
in Chapter 12. He would undertake the mental, moral, and physical
development -- harmonious and unified -- of every child. He would
undertake the process, not merely of "universal education," which
is already advocated and practiced by even the narrowest sects, but
the process of educating the child universally, which has never
been practiced nor advocated by any sect, nor allowed in even a
secular public school. He would undertake the realization of a
curriculum in which nature, and nature only, should bound the
intellectual horizon of the pupil. He would commence at the cradle.
In the sunlight of love, in the open air of honesty and liberty, he
would shape the lever of "real education" -- "the only lever
capable of raising mankind."






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