• iLniBiBAisy • J90& 38p iWoncttre 5D. Contoap MY PILGRIMAGE TO THE WISE MEN OF THE EAST. With 16 illustrations from pho tographs. 8vo, $3-oo, net. Postage extra. AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MEMORIES, AND EX PERIENCES. With portraits and facsimile letters. In two volumes, 8vo, $6.00, net. Postpaid, $6.43. EMERSON AT HOME AND ABROAD. i2mo, $1.50. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston and New York. MY PILGRIMAGE TO THE WISE MEN OF THE EAST WlW-^ IZ-C-IA^, 2. MY PILGRIMAGE TO/ THE WISE MEN OF THE EAST BT MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY rgsjigggagas: BOSTON AND NEW" YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (jC&e $iiber£ibe pce&i, Cambcibge 1906 COPYRIGHT I906 BY MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published October 1906 CONTENTS Prolegomena 1-18 CHAPTER I The Cult of Patriotism — Robert G. Ingersoll — A black mark on the Declaration of Independence — Pilgrimages to Virginia — The ori ginal aborigines — The first church in North America — Cruelties of colonization — Christmas reunions of reTolutionary -veterans — A Song of Seventy-six — Mary Washington — Seamy side of the Re-volution 15-36 CHAPTER II A witch hunt at Washington — Yellow Springs, Ohio — Cincinnati — Judge Hoadly — Journey to Salt Lake City — John W. Young — Mormonism and human nature — Elder Penrose as a preacher — Mormon wires and Mormon husbands — The fate of repudiated wives 37-46 CHAPTER III San Francisco — Red Cross Knights — Chinese Joss and theatre — Voy aging southward — Flying fish and sunfish — Delia Bacon — Shake- speare-Baconism — Honolulu Sabbath — Captain Cook — Legends — Pele-Jehovah — Rev. Titus Coan — Samoans — Phenomena — New Zealand — Dr. Richard Garnett — Pearl-divers — Our floating Utopia # 47-69 CHAPTER IV The Melbourne Cup — Joss House — Sects in Victoria — Governor of Victoria — Bishop of Melbourne — Rev. Charles Strong — Austra lian insanity — Ballarat gold mines — Hon. Peter Lalor — Hon. A. Inglis Clark — Hobart — Campbellites — Nature's oddities — Relics of transportation times — Extinction of Tasmanians — My ordeal in Sydney — Impaled with Bishop Moorhouse and Rev. Charles Strong — Fusion of Freethought and Spiritualism — The Botany Bay myth — Justice Windeyer 70-96 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER V Colonial Chauvinism — King George's Sound — Weird coast names — Australian aborigines — An uncivilizable maiden — Dangers of fed eration — Krakatoan lava — Voltaire and Wesley on the Lisbon earthquake 97-107 CHAPTER VI Ceylon — Plain living and high thinking — Talks with the Buddhist Perera — Origin of Whittington's cat — "Rodyas" — A Sinhalese law court — Judge Arunachalam and his wife at Kattura — A ram ble with Sinhalese gentlemen — My Buddhist plea for a suffering snake — Hindu shrines in Buddhist temples — The learned priest Subhuti — Sinhalese homes — A Moslem on Heber's verse about Ceylon — Temple at Khandy — A Moslem sermon — Kellania — Buddhist folk-tales — "Merits" — Nirvana — My Christmas lec ture at Colombo — High priest of Adam's Peak — Conferences with Buddhists in their college — An unpublished Pitaka — " Covetous- ness " — Of actions at once right and sinful — The extinct order of female priests — English masqueraders — Bishop Mcllvaine and Bishop Temple 108-142 CHAPTER VII New Year's eve in Cinnamon Gardens — Hon. P. Ramanathan's ban quet — Devil-dances — Sinhalese demonology — Entertainment in the palace of Mutu Kumara Swamy — The Nautch dancers — " The Martyr of Truth " (Harischandra) — Wagnerite music . 143-161 CHAPTER VHI Arabi in Exile — Relations between Egyptians and English in Colombo — Arabi's Mohammedan Christianity — Adam's Peak and Ararat — How Arabi's life was saved — The English defenders of Arabi — Arabi's situation at seventy — Conjurers — The giant turtle of Colombo — The heart and life of Buddhism in Ceylon . 162-173 CHAPTER IX Madras — Temple dancers — Talk with students — Juggenauth — St. Thome1 — A Portuguese Thomas — Legend of Savatri — New Dis coveries concerning Thomas — Pain and piety — A Jain parable — Good will to man — A Buddhist carol .... 174-194 CONTENTS vii CHAPTER X Adyar — Mme. Blavatsky and her confession — The Theosophists — An American receiving the Buddhist pansala — The attempted fraud on the Broughtons — Letter of Commissioner Broughton — — Origin of Koothoomi — Revelations of Mme. Coulomb . 195-214 CHAPTER XI Calcutta — Keshub Chunder Sen and his death — Jogendra Chandra Ghosh and Positivism — Mozoomdar and Dr. Tyndall — Exposition — Holy pictures — Miracle plays and Hindu theatres — Kalighat festival — Sir William Hunter — A learned fakir — Kali — Salva tion Army — Entertainment by Prince Furrok Shah — Christian errors about " idols " — A dream interview with Kali . 215-247 CHAPTER XII Exploring Bengal — A conference of religions — Moslem Christianity — Dr. Rajendralala Mitra on Christian polytheism — Hon. Syed Ameer Ali — Dr. Ananda Cumara Swamy — The marvellous dolls — Maharajah Sir Jotendra Mohun Tajore — The demonized Buddha — Buddha-Gaya — Root of Buddha's Bo-tree — Letter from Dr. Mitra — Buddhist-Hindu-philosophy — Benares — Monkey Temple — Deer Park and legend of the Mango Girl — " The Toy-Cart " — Our Western Buddha 248-276 CHAPTER XIII Delhi palaces — Pillar of Asoka — The Minar Pillar — Purana Keela — The Taj at Agra — Akbar — The Parliament of Religions — Oriental ethics — The Jehanara mosque .... 277-301 CHAPTER XIV Allahabad — Manwaysh festival — Ganges immersions — A Chris tian-Brahman debate — Relic of cobra-worship — River deities — Christian and Brahman doctrines of sacrifice . . . 302-316 CHAPTER XV Bombay — Alexander Agassiz — Missionaries — England in India — "The Old Missionary" — Nelacantah Goreh — Professor Peterson — Hindu hymn — A drive with Judge West — Shankuran Pandit — The Towers of Silence — Zoroastrianism — The zenana — Ra- mabai — Keshub Chunder Sen and his monument — Bhakti (faith) viii CONTENTS — Indian sects — Faults of English colonists — Samuel Laing, M. P., "A Modern Zoroastrian" — The ideal Jain temple . . 317-342 CHAPTER XVI Homeward — The Flying Dutchman — Our ' Lady of the Peking ' — A letter of John Bright — " Chinese Gordon " in the Soudan and in Palestine — Pilgrimage to the Krupp Gun Works at Essen, Ger many — Address at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania . . 343-350 CHAPTER XVII Seeking the Beloved 351-381 CHAPTER XVIH Addenda 1905, 1906 382-409 Index 411 Moncube D. Conway (photogravure) . . . Frontispiece Letter of R. G. Ingeksoll 22 Waskaduwe Subhuti, a Leakned Buddhist Author . . 118 A Buddhist Temple 120 Khandy Temple 122 SUMANGALA, PRIEST OF ADAM'S PeAK 130 Buddhist Pbiests of Ceylon 132 Hon. P. Ramanathan, Solicitob-Geneeal of Ceylon . 134 Devil-Dancers 144 Achmet Arabi, " the Egyptian " 162 Vibchand R. Gandhi, the Chief Religious Leadeb among the Jains of India 190 The Jain Symbolical Picture 192 Madame Blayatsky 196 Keshub Chunder Sen 216 Hon. Syed Ameeb Ali 252 Stupa 264 Castle of the Panda vas 282 Pundita Ramabai . 332 Samuel Laing, M. P., Authob of " A Modern Zoroastrian " 340 Letter of John Bright 346 Sib William W. Hunter 404 MY PILGRIMAGE TO THE WISE MEN OF THE EAST PROLEGOMENA AMID the fantastic Apocryphal fables one poetic tale has found its way into the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. " And it came to pass when Jesus the Lord was born at Bethlehem of Judah, in the time of Herod the King, behold Wise Men came from the East to Jerusalem, as Zoroaster had predicted : and they had with them gifts, gold, incense, and myrrh ; and they worshipped him and offered unto him their gifts. Then lady Mary took one of his swaddling bands and gave it to them as a little reward, and they received it from her with great honour. And the same hour there appeared unto them an angel in the form of the star which had been the guide of their way before ; and following the leading of its light they departed into their own country. " And there the kings and their princes came to them asking what they had seen or done, how they had gone and returned, what they had brought with them. And they showed them the swaddling band which lady Mary had given them ; wherefore they celebrated a festival, and kindled fire according to their custom and worshipped it, and cast the swaddling band into it, and the fire seized it and absorbed it into itself. But when the fire went out, they drew forth the swaddling band just as it was at first, as if the fire had not touched it. Therefore they began to 2 MY PILGRIMAGE kiss it, and to place it on their heads and eyes, saying, Verily this is undoubted truth ; it is indeed a great thing that the fire could not burn nor destroy it. They took it thence and with the greatest honour deposited it among their treasures." It is evident from the context that this little tale has been inserted from some foreign source. The next sen tence begins, " Now when Herod saw that the Wise Men had departed and not returned to him," but nothing is said of their having seen Herod at all. Their star-angel is Zoroaster himself, who shines through this legend of primitive pilgrims from Persia treasuring even the small est new truth which their flame could absorb but not con sume. I have dreamed of missionaries travelling to the East as if returning this visit of the Wise Men : they say, " Show us, O elder brothers, the swaddling band your fire could not consume, that we may press it to our eyes and lips ; for the bands borne west are consumed ! " It was in studying the Oriental books in my youth that I learned that in all the earth were growing the flowers and fruits of the human heart, concerning which one Wise Man said, " Keep thy heart above all that thou guardest ; for out of it are the issues of life." On May 1, 1859, I preached in Cincinnati a discourse on " East and West," my text being, " The night is far spent, the day is at hand ; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light." It was at the first assembling of the congregation after nearly half of them had left us to found a new Unitarian society, "The Church of the Redeemer." Along with my personal distress at parting with so many friends who could not follow me in my repudiation of Supernatural- PROLEGOMENA 3 ism, I still felt a sort of relief in having no further need for compromise with the Past. All the rationalists of the city had crowded to my side ; and in the enthusiasm of a crisis I said : — " The sun of civilization rose in the East, and ever journeys Westward. And it is not a fancy, but a fact, that Humanity, as much as the earth, is divided into night and day — historically, East and West. What is the dif ference of night and day ? One is the time for dreams, the other for realities ; one has visions, the other actual ities. Let us not undervalue the Night out of which our race has emerged ; it was a healthful and beautiful slum ber which it found there, and by which it was made strong for the day of toil which awaited it. Sciolists speak of the ' dark ages,' as if darkness were the sole characteristic of those times. I tell you glorious stars shone, and splendid worlds rolled on their orbits of light, in that primal darkness. It was a time of dreams, indeed, but they were dreams which the Earth exists and toils to carve into reality. It was the mission of that Oriental world to dream, and it fulfilled its mission grandly: it dreamed out an Eden, a Golden Age; it caught the per fect vision which is bequeathed to our Day under the name of Christianity. We may safely judge this child hood of the world by the phenomena of our own indi vidual childhood; you know that in our childhood we are not practical, but build air castles, yet a true man hood will follow youth's visions. So the Orient achieved no great practical works ; its Edens and Ages of Gold fade into poems under the analysis of history. These grandeurs were the rearing of that skilful architect, Im agination, out of very insignificant materials. But there came a time of waning. Visions and speculations grew 4 MY PILGRIMAGE fainter and fainter ; the moon and the stars were paling in the sky. No prophet could add another tint to the lunar rainbow, which hovered with mystic light over the young world, but could only tell of golden treasures which the future was to find at the rainbow's end. The East had given its message to the world, and must retire." The doctrinaire provincialism of that discourse is ex cusable in part by my youth, which was disproportionate to my twenty-seven years, but still more by the exaltation in which American reformers were all livipg before War came to show that our idealized New World was to repeat and intensify the brutal regime of Europe. After the terrible decade I published (1870) " The Earthward Pil grimage." I allowed the work to go out of print, when it was having a fair sale, because some of its statements no longer satisfied me. At the request of the Rationalist Press Association in London I recently revised the vol ume to find if the publication might not be made with supplementary notes, but conclude that the task is im possible. In reporting " how I left the world to come for that which is," my criticisms on the abandoned dogmas and delusions do not seem unfair, but the world into which I entreated people to follow me is not " that which is," but a mirage of the " Celestial City " thrown by Transcen dentalism on the horizon of the world. Millennial dreams survive in my necessitarian " progress," my deity is still dynamic and external, the " collectivist " superstition of some divinity in masses of men lingers ; and, worst of all, there pervades the book the fatal fallacy that evil is good in the making. There are indeed many pages which in an empirical way, or by implication, are inconsistent with the errors, as PROLEGOMENA 5 I now deem them ; and I am reminded by the first chap ter of " The Earthward Pilgrimage " of my consciousness of being far from any shrine in the direction I was travel ling. " There came to me one who spoke with a voice not to be disobeyed. He laid on me a burden, and gave me a shield called Truth, and said : ' Henceforth thou shalt be a pilgrim. From a world believing in the incredible, adoring where it should abhor, thou shalt depart never to return. Whither, shall be opened to thee as thou shalt journey ; whence, is already plain.' " The concluding pages of that first chapter, written on the threshold of my new world, may fairly preface the present work, originally prepared as a part of my Autobiography : — " The Interpreter lit his candle and said : ' Do you remember the picture I formerly showed you, in a private room, of a very grave person ? ' 'I do, indeed,' I said ; ' and this was the fashion of it ; it had eyes lifted up to heaven, the best of books in its hand, the law of truth was written upon its lips, the world was behind its back, it stood as if it pleaded with men, and a crown of gold did hang over its head.' ' That picture,' he said, ' gradu ally became so dingy, that once, when an old artist came hither, I accepted his offer to clean and retouch it ; you shall see it as he left it.' On entering the well-known room, I saw that the portrait had been changed in several particulars. The grave person's eyes now looked down ward ; the book, partially closed, was placed on one side ; and the world, which had been behind, was now immedi ately under his eyes, and covered with inscriptions ; the crown of gold suspended over his head had changed to luminous dust. When I asked the meaning of this change, the Interpreter said : ' I will show you a new scene com manded by this house, which will unfold the significance 6 MY PILGRIMAGE of the picture.' Thereupon, he took me to the top of the house, from which could be seen the two rival cities. What was my surprise to see a dark cloud gathered over the City of Otherworldliness, with lightnings flashing from it, while over the so-called City of Destruction shone a beau tiful rainbow ! ' Thus,' said the Interpreter, ' that which exalteth itself must be abased, and that which humbleth itself shall be exalted. The city which, from being the domain of the lowly friend of man, the carpenter's son, has been given over to those who care more for bishoprics and fine livings than for mankind, has become the City of Destruction ; while that which has cared rather for man whom it can, than for God whom it cannot, benefit, has become the City of Humanity, which shall endure for ever.' " The Interpreter then said that, as there were unhap pily few pilgrims as yet going in my direction, he would be able to accompany me on a part of the way. I was not so near, he said, as I might suppose. ' That great metropolis which you see is not the city you seek ; it is Bothworlds- burg, and, though commercially connected with the City of Humanity, owns allegiance to the Prince of Otherworld liness, whose powerful agencies therein are marked by its spires. Its inhabitants pass six sevenths of their time in this world, and during the other seventh pray to their Prince, and protest louldly against taking any thought at all for this life. The confines of Bothworldsburg blend with those of the City of Humanity, which you can hardly trace out from here, and, indeed, may have some difficulty in finding. You must go through the tedious paths of Study, Reality, and Devotion, and when you arrive at the suburbs you will still have to be a pilgrim amid many nights and days before you reach the heart of the city. PROLEGOMENA 7 After arriving there, you will be left a good deal to your own guidance : the inhabitants are very busy ; they do not sit on purple clouds blowing golden trumpets. The only prayer to the Lord of that city is work ; the only praise is virtue. Its treasures are not obvious, but in hard ores. You will find the pavements golden only when you can transmute them to gold ; and only if you have found a pearl to carry in your own breast will its gates become pearl.' " When a mind starts out under the impulse of a religious sentiment in a direction radically different from that in which it had been trained, it is not a revolution but an evolution that is begun. The important thing is not this or that incident of experience, but the new way of looking at things. Assuming that such a mind would not break with its Past, its circle of sympathies and friendships, except for loyalty to truth, and consequently not bend the commanding facts to suit personal prejudices or interests, it can hardly fail to find that it undergoes a new birth. It then follows steadily that its whole mental environment must become new, — even as an early apostle discovered that in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availed anything, but a new creation. Thus my whole little world of conceptions must be revised from a new standpoint. How many books are to be found which deal with the mental and moral facts of human life without prejudice and without estimating them by some traditional stand ard or authority? How many travellers have told me about Eastern and Oriental religions, — about Catholics, Mormons, Jews, or "Pagan" systems, — without merely measuring them by their remoteness from or proximity to their own particular beliefs ? How many can tell me, — without any thought whatever about what they think good 8 MY PILGRIMAGE for those foreign " souls," — exactly what fruits of simple human happiness those trees are bearing for individual hearts and homes ? When one ceases to regard mankind as masses rushing into prseternatural heavens and hells, the torments or joys of human beings in this world become of supreme importance. Intellectually we all necessarily stand on the shoulders of the Past, but here too the revision must determine whether our stand is on real or unreal shoulders. With far less learning than the great writers on Buddha, Zoro aster, Solomon, Jesus, I was compelled to bring on them the searchlight of my simple earthly point of view, apart from all academic or theological interpretations, whether of their worshippers or their antagonists. In 1882 an invitation was received by me to give lec tures in Australia. Two eminent gentlemen of Melbourne, Robert J. Jeff ray and Henry G. Turner, who on occasional visits to London had attended my chapel, volunteered to make arrangements for the lectures; my South Place people were content that after nearly twenty years in their service I should enjoy a voyage round the world, lecturers being at hand to take my place ; my wife, whose mother (beloved of all who knew her) was able to stay with her, decided that I should go ; and so, after being honoured by our fellow-villagers of Bedford Park with a dinner, I found myself — July 21, 1883 — on the ship Arizona bound for New York. I have always been healthy and happy at sea, but on that beautiful July day when we passed out of land there rolled from my shoulders a burden of which I had been hardly more conscious than of the weight of the atmos phere. Since my youth a public teacher, in the stormy PROLEGOMENA 9 life-voyage of more than thirty years I had been as one of the crew always under orders, and with but few intervals wherein I could enjoy the easy chair of a passenger and be myself a learner instead of a preacher. And now at fifty, having reached the conscious need of revising my beliefs and taking stock of my ideas, — lo, here shone my splendour of opportunity ! In one of my early years I became curious about the infinitesimal world, and, providing myself with a micro scope and some books on that study, was sufficiently interested to begin an essay which I called " The Circum navigation of a Dew-drop." But I did not get far. The dew-drop was too deep for me. Out of it swarmed surmises about the origin of life, the development of forms, and the moral mysteries of infusorial combats and cannibalism. For such problems I had no competency ; and as for the physical revelations of the microscope, I could only recite the discoveries of scientific investigators. And in the great globe which I was to circumnavigate, how little had I seen except through the eyes and lenses of others ! So it might continue in matters of large import, — the physical, political, commercial conditions of the countries through which I was to travel. Grateful am I to sit at the feet of any master, and nothing could give me more hap piness than to find a master in the field to which the en ergies of my life have been given, — religion and religions. But herein my researches and experiences gradually developed eyes of my own. Whether they are strong or feeble, exact or inexact, they are my own organically, my only ones; and if they cannot weigh the full value of what they see there is always the hope that others will derive from a truthful report some contribution to know ledge, — if only an example of visual perversity ! 10 MY PILGRIMAGE A company of gentlemen travelling in a far country — savants, artists, writers — casually met together after they had travelled over the same road, and talked about what they had observed. One had added some rare spe cimens to his collection of butterflies, but could not recall the exquisite landscapes of which an artist had sketches ; nor had either noticed the peasants photographed by the anthropologist ; and none of those remembered seeing a wondrous mirage which had been observed by another of the company. While they were exchanging their in teresting observations, in no case the same, a child passed by with a fragment of yellow-tinted stone in its hand ; a geologist present examined the stone, saw gold in it, was guided by the child to the spot where it was found, and the company formed themselves into a syndicate to buy up a new gold district. Each of us has his own experiences, his particular train ing of cares and trials, a personal history combined with his individuality ; each of us sees really only what he has a mind (of his own) to see. Even impressions that some thought childish have proved to be of equal importance with the most imposing phenomena. I sat on the deck of the Arizona and read a wonderful work — "The Undiscovered Country," by W. D. How- ells. It would have brought joy to Shakespeare had he foreseen that words of his own would make the title of a book so veined with poetry and wisdom. "Wisdom" is a word one connects with a man or a book less frequently as one grows older ; but it is surely a secret of Wisdom to see the romance of our time while it is passing. It is easy to recognize the fairyland of our childhood when it is irrevocably lost, easy to recognize the romance of fore going generations when it has written itself in events and PROLEGOMENA 11 contrasts : but who will rehearse the romance of the hour that is shining ? In this novel Howells takes up the su perstitions grouped under the name of Spiritualism, shows us the depth of human tenderness to which this despised thing appeals, reveals the religious sentiment that plays into the hands of impostors. In a sense, the whole world is mainly an undiscovered country. Ancient Spiritisms, systematized and grown re spectable, hide the realities under veils of fable embroid ered by poetry and art. Naked truth is ashamed. And there is pathos in this. Had the real earth been sweet and maternal, mankind would not have woven for it those veils lustrous with loves and graces, angels and madonnas. Through rents in the veils made by science the reality revealed in glimpses is so cold and hard that even the disillusioned must use the illusions (quasi-pathologically) for their urgent effects. In Howells's novel the two Har vard scholars detect the lovely " medium," but are dis armed, and even made virtual accomplices, when they discover that she is there alone in mortal combat for the life of her father, saved from fatal despair by her pre tended messages from his dead wife. The sympathetic youths represent all scientific sceptics in their tenderness for the illusions that are happy. Bigotry is not so tender, but eager to reduce to tatters all veils but its own, espe cially if the others are pretty. Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. In an undis covered world we do now and then, fortunately, discover each other — individually — and especially when out of our habitat. On the Arizona the famous Catholic, Mon- seigneur Capel, took evident pleasure in promenading with an eminent Jewish writer ; an evangelist going out to assist revivalist Moody chatted pleasantly with the 12 MY PILGRIMAGE accomplished actress, Georgie Cayvan, without warning her that on the stage she was charming crowds to hell. A Baltimore Doctor of Divinity, aware of my heresies, conversed with me without the least " holier-than-thou " accent. In a vision I saw the Catholic Monseigneur leap at the Jew's throat, and the Doctor of Divinity preparing a stake — the evangelist bringing faggots and fire — for my poor heretical self. But Steam is a comrade of Lati- tudinarianism. The ancient persecutors never experienced long voyages away from their conventicles, with non-elect companies and schismatics, through fogs, near icebergs, amid ocean wastes, with only a thin partition separating them and their opponents from a common abyss. Goethe said to a friend that he believed in immortality but did not wish to enjoy it with the people who believe in it here. Could we all content ourselves with one world at a time we could fraternize on our planet as on a larger ship floating through space, its passengers races and nations, all eager to get at each other's wit and wisdom ; even as at an entertainment on the Arizona our orthodox Doctor of Divinity, in presiding, invited the Jew, the Catholic, the actress, and the heretic to amuse the com pany, — invited us with a cordiality which gave mystical significance to his opening words : " We feel secure on this ship, thanks to the heavenly Father ; but on some other ships people are not so safe ! " Ah, if this amiable Doctor of Divinity could only attain to the idea of a heavenly Father watching as vigilantly and lovingly over the Buddhist ship, — the Brahman, Moslem, Parsi, Confucian ships, — as over the " Ship of Zion " bearing him and his co-religionists ! the sun to rise on them, the winds to waft, the waves to support them ! It seems that Protestantism, the religion of the most PROLEGOMENA 13 powerful race, has become the only one that excludes any human being from the paternal care of its deity. The Roman Catholic Church has so universalized its Purga tory that the doctrine of an eternal hell has virtually diminished into an antiquated phrase. Parsism even in the time of Zoroaster prophesied the conversion of Ahriman, as Judaism did that of Leviathan. Educated Christians do not believe in the old hell, nor in the eter nity of any kind of misery, but the tenacity with which they maintain the old terrors in catechism and creed proves that their " religion " does not aim or hope for a happy earth. Happiness is reserved for another world. But has not this world as much right to happiness as any other ? Unhappiness is the root of all evil. From it springs meanness, vice, crime, bitterness, injustice. Hap piness is the sacred spirit, the mother of virtues. What imaginable function has religion except to promote human happiness ? If there be a universal Heart it suffers from every human sigh and tear, it bleeds with every falling sparrow, it " answereth man in the joy of his heart." CHAPTER I The Cult of Patriotism — Robert G. Ingersoll — A black mark on the Declaration of Independence — Pilgrimages to Virginia — The original aborigines — The first church in North America — Cruelties of coloni zation — Christmas reunions of revolutionary veterans — A Song of Seventy-six — Mary Washington — Seamy side of the Revolution. AS we were entering New York harbour one of the wealthiest Americans came out on his fine steam- yacht and carried off his returning son. This young man had been such a genial and unpretending comrade on our voyage that it was only when we were approaching the figure of Liberty that her torch enlightened us as to her remoteness from Equality, the lesson being further impressed upon us — the millionless and yachtless — by our slow progress through the Customs. But the inequality created by pecuniary conditions is not all to the advantage of the millionaire. The com paratively impecunious are sure to invest him, without respect to his merits or demerits, with an unpleasing reputation. I never met this millionaire, but was told by honourable and well-informed business men that he was an irreproachable domestic character, not luxurious or self-indulgent, forbearing and generous towards those with whom he had dealings, and that like Dives in the parable he was popularly consigned to a bad place simply because he was rich. In New York my two sons, who had settled there, had made pleasant plans for me, and I remained long enough to meet eminent men ; among them John Jay, Cyrus 16 MY PILGRIMAGE Field, William and Joseph Choate, Whitelaw Reid, Evarts, Stedman, Youmans, Godkin, Gilder, Charles A. Dana, Randolph Robinson, Horace White. I found them all optimists in their view of public affairs. North and South were now hand in hand, they said, and municipal corruption in New York nearly at an end. At that time the Jingo did not exist in America : in Europe one might occasionally meet countrymen who paid tribute for passing most of their time abroad by loud encomiums of everything in America and disparagement of "the Old World." One of these, a cultured gentleman from Massachusetts, a bachelor of some wealth, passed his time with literary men and artists in Europe. Once when we were dining together in Paris he broke out with denunciations of Europe as a century behind America, and I said, " My friend, I have been meeting you, and always gladly, for twenty-five years, but never in America. It is always in London, Paris, or in Rome. Even when I have been occasionally in Boston and have inquired for you, they have reported you in Europe. How can you bear to absent yourself from that perfect country?" After a few moments he whispered : " The fault is not in America, but in me ; I am not good enough to live in America ! " For myself, it was at a moment when I was not warlike enough for America, as related in my Autobiography, that I was transplanted to London. Always retaining my American citizenship, I yet could not conceive of a country as lovable apart from the people in it. There survives in us the instinct that leads a bird to brood on its eggs ; but as it is not supposable that the bird has any maternal sentiment towards an egg, it seems hardly natural that any enthusiasm should arise in a nation for the inanimate THE CULT OF PATRIOTISM 17 materials out of which its population is produced. In early youth I was possessed by a passionate love of Virginia because the State was personified as the fair " Mother of States and of Statesmen," and was denounced by North ern people because of Slavery, — which had become our new religion. When I gave up that religion I was able to analyze " patriotism," and recognize that it was largely a cult. An ancient Persian said, " Diversities of religion have divided the world into seventy-two nations." Our proslavery religion endeavoured to add another. So soon as the gods mingle in human discussions soul is sundered from soul. The story of Babel looks like a poetic fable by which some primitive sceptic conveyed his theory that mankind worked together harmoniously to build up civ ilization, but when they reached a point where disputes about gods arose they could no longer understand each other, and all their achievement went to ruin. Each builder surrounded his god with some " sacred soil " and defensive frontiers, and when he had persuaded or tempted others to join him, and others had been compelled to come in, the cult of " patriotism" arose. All enthusiasm for one's country not based on the wise and just men and women in it, and the freedom and happiness of its inhab itants, is of artificial cultivation. And for that very reason patriotism, in this egoistic sense, is able to overpower natural instincts and emotions ; just as a religious cult in all time has shown its power to train men to worship and fight for cruel deities whom their unsophisticated sentiment would abhor. The natural evolution of patriotism would be to consider it as the expansion of the family sentiment. It is not an egoistic but an unselfish feeling which causes us to be especially concerned with that which is within our reach, 18 MY PILGRIMAGE and for which we are to some extent responsible. A child run over at my door, or a murder near my residence, pro duces a more profound emotion in me than the destruction of multitudes in some distant land. It is an artificial patriotism which leads men to national expansions dic tated by pride, and it is also a subversive patriotism when it leads to aggressions for the sake of any national interest. The gentlemen whom I have mentioned as having met in New York, some of my early friends, had like myself memories of the years when as boys we lit patriotic bon fires for our country's criminal victories over Mexico ; we remembered well the glories gained by our flag by the massacres of our poor aborigines ; and how patriotism had summoned us to run with the bloodhounds to hunt men and women escaping from slavery and return them to bondage. It could not occur to any of them that in a few years that same kind of patriotism would summon us to rejoice in a repetition on Spain of the outrage on Mexico, or to be elated when, after freeing four millions of coloured people, we should proceed to purchase ten mil lions of them, and slay and torture them into submission. Still less could any of us imagine that the artificial cultiva tion and cult of flag-worship could blind our nation as a whole to the monstrous absurdity that we should assume control over any foreign — especially any coloured — race when we are unable to protect our own negro citizens from being freely slain and even burned alive. It was inevitable that an old student of literature and art should estimate a country by its great men and women, — thinkers, writers, artists, — to whom he could look up. Many of those at whose feet I had sat in America were dead, and American art was to such an ex tent transplanted to Europe that it was difficult to set ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 19 my native land above England and France ; but it seemed a sufficient compensation for the loss of the high peaks if the plains were smiling with fine harvests. I was assured by good observers that the American people were receiving better wages and living in happier homes than the masses of any other country, that they were being educated, and there must spring up a race of thinkers greater than our lost masters. It was a stage in my pilgrimage to visit in his hand some mansion in New York a man who had for some time appeared to me the most striking figure in religious America, — Robert G. Ingersoll. Many years before a young relative of my wife, William Jenckes, had sent me to London a book on " The Gods," apparently made up of occasional addresses by Ingersoll. He was then styled Colonel Ingersoll because of his services in the Union War, and he had also been a member of Congress. In one of these lectures he had said, " An honest God is the no blest work of man," which became a sort of Western pro verb. In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the Ingersolls, and went over to Charlestown to hear him lecture. His subject was " The Mistakes of Moses," and it was a mem orable experience. Our lost leaders, — Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, — who had really spoken to disciples rather than to the nation, seemed to have contributed something to form this organ by which their voice could reach the people. Every variety of power was in this ora tor, — logic and poetry, humour and imagination, sim plicity and dramatic art, moral earnestness and bound less sympathy. The wonderful power which Washington's attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, ascribed to Thomas Paine of insinuating his ideas equally into learned and 20 MY PILGRIMAGE unlearned had passed from Paine's pen to Ingersoll's tongue. The effect on the people was indescribable. The large theatre was crowded from pit to dome. The people were carried from plaudits of his argument to loud laugh ter at his humorous sentences, and his flexible voice carried the sympathies of the assembly with it, at times moving them to tears by his pathos. That which especially attracted me in Ingersoll's lec tures and pamphlets was that his affirmations were con veyed by negations. My friend and relative, Moncure Robinson, Sr., of Philadelphia, recognized the great power of Ingersoll, but deplored its being used to pull down without building up. But I found that what my venerable friend was thinking of was not the destruction of dogmas or of creeds, but his feeling that churches were valuable in stitutions, and that Ingersoll did not even attempt to found any institution that could assist in the spiritual culture and charities of which families had need. But I felt that this was the only kind of work that could be done really by free thought. Were it to build up any institution it might be founded on scientific doctrines necessarily tran sient, and imitate the pious habit by fortifying and de fending some particular form of unbelief. The perfect freedom of Ingersoll's mind was often illustrated in his lecture; as for instance, after having cited from the Bible some narrative of terrible cruelty ascribed to the command of Jehovah, he paused for nearly a minute, then lifting his hand and looking upward he said solemnly, " I trust that God, if there be a God, will take notice that I am down here on earth denouncing this libel on his character." The country was full of incidents and anecdotes relat ing to these marvellous lectures. Once when he was lectur- INGERSOLL'S PLEA 21 ing at San Francisco on a Sunday evening in a crowded theatre, some man in the audience cried, " Do you believe in baptism ? " Ingersoll replied good-naturedly, " Yes, — especially with soap ! " Long before his reputation as a free thinker was made he was noted in the West for his great ability in defend ing persons in danger of injustice. George Hoadly, for mer governor of Ohio, told me that on one occasion he defended an humble man charged with manslaughter, which had occurred in some broil. Ingersoll came into court and after listening to the prosecution arose and said, " On my way to this room I stopped at the house of a poor woman. She had been confined while her husband was in prison — the prisoner at the bar. The woman lay on her bed with the infant beside her, and with tears in her eyes she said to me, ' Send me back my husband ; he is a good husband, a good father, an industrious man. Oh, send me back my husband ! '" There was a moment's silence after Ingersoll said this in his tender voice, and then one of the jury cried out, " By God, Bob, we '11 do it!" Ingersoll never started out in life to be a leader of free thought. He was a very able lawyer, and by his profes sion gained reputation and wealth ; his religious icono- clasm was incidental* In his experience in many States he saw much of the provincial narrowness and intolerance arising from what he considered superstition, and now and then in the intervals of the court sittings he would speak to small clubs of secularists or admirers of Thomas Paine ; , these addresses found their way to the public and excited pulpit denunciations, and as he was always ready to answer, his audiences swelled until it was difficult to get a seat in the always crowded theatres. 22 MY PILGRIMAGE There was nothing of the scoffer about Ingersoll ; he did not fling epithets, but argued his case before the crowd as if they were judges and jurymen. In all the lectures of his which I have heard I remarked the chastity of his mind and speech. Even at the cost of a strong point he would avoid dwelling on biblical details which he thought obscene. Of course he did not fail to assert that there were such passages, and in answer to clergymen contend ing that morality depended on the Bible, Ingersoll said, " I will give any respectable clergyman a thousand dollars if he will read to his congregation on Sunday every word of a chapter I shall select from the Bible." This challenge was of course not accepted, and it was a blow all the more effective because of the orator's always unblemished per sonal character and his charities. There were several months during which an ailment of the throat prevented Ingersoll from speaking in public. Curiosity and interest in the South led me to an assembly in Brooklyn met to welcome a Southern revivalist, — Rev. Sam Jones, — who said in his address, " The only way with infidels is to stop their talking ; a touch on the throat of Ingersoll" — a burst of laughter from the preachers present ended the sentence. It was something like the scene in Lucian where the gods descend to attend invisibly a debate on their own existence between two Athenians. The atheist getting the better of the argu ment, the champion of the gods breaks out with personal vituperation, much to the delight of Zeus, who says, " That is the way ! when you try to argue you are dumb as a fish ! " There being no possibility of personal abuse in Ingersoll's case, this revivalist suggests to Jupiter the only method by which the great lawyer's arguments could be met, — strangulation. But meanwhile Ingersoll in his [Letter Jrom Robert G. Ingersoll]