The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XII Part 9

Spooks and phantoms hover about the undeveloped and diseased, as vultures sail above the dead.

Our ancestors had the idea that they ought to be spiritual, and that good health was inconsistent with the highest forms of piety. This heresy crept into the minds even of secular writers, and the novelists described their heroines as weak and languis.h.i.+ng, pale as lilies, and in the place of health's brave flag they put the hectic flush.

Weakness was interesting, and fainting captured the hearts of all.

Nothing was so attractive as a society belle with a drug-store attachment.

People became ashamed of labor, and consequently, of the evidences of labor. They avoided "sun-burnt mirth"--were proud of pallor, and regarded small, white hands as proof that they had n.o.ble blood within their veins. It was a joy to be too weak to work, too languis.h.i.+ng to labor.

The tide has turned. People are becoming sensible enough to desire health, to admire physical development, symmetry of form, and we now know that a race with little feet and hands has pa.s.sed the climax and is traveling toward the eternal night.

When the central force is strong, men and women are full of life to the finger tips. When the fires burn low, they begin to shrivel at the extremities--the hands and feet grow small, and the mental flame wavers and wanes.

To be self-respecting we must be self-supporting.

n.o.bility is a question of character, not of birth.

Honor cannot be received as alms--it must be earned.

It is the brow that makes the wreath of glory green.

All exercise should be for the sake of development--that is to say, for the sake of health, and for the sake of the mind--all to the end that the person may become better, greater, more useful. The gymnast or the athelete should seek for health as the student should seek for truth; but when athletics degenerate into mere personal contests, they become dangerous, because the contestants lose sight of health, as in the excitement of debate the students prefer personal victory to the ascertainment of truth.

There is another thing to be avoided by all athletic clubs, and that is, anything that tends to brutalize, destroy or dull the finer feelings.

Nothing is more disgusting, more disgraceful, than pugilism--nothing more demoralizing than an exhibition of strength united with ferocity, and where the very body developed by exercise is mutilated and disfigured.

Sports that can by no possibility give pleasure, except to the unfeeling, the hardened and the really brainless, should be avoided.

No gentleman should countenance rabbit-coursing, fighting of dogs, the shooting of pigeons, simply as an exhibition of skill.

All these things are calculated to demoralize and brutalize not only the actors, but the lookers on. Such sports are savage, fit only to be partic.i.p.ated in and enjoyed by the cannibals of Central Africa or the anthropoid apes.

Find what a man enjoys--what he laughs at--what he calls diversion--and you know what he is. Think of a man calling himself civilized, who is in raptures at a bull fight--who smiles when he sees the hounds pursue and catch and tear in pieces the timid hare, and who roars with laughter when he watches the pugilists pound each other's faces, closing each other's eyes, breaking jaws and smas.h.i.+ng noses. Such men are beneath the animals they torture--on a level with the pugilists they applaud.

Gentlemen should hold such sports in unspeakable contempt. No man finds pleasure in inflicting pain.

In every public school there should be a gymnasium.

It is useless to cram minds and deform bodies. Hands should be educated as well as heads. All should be taught the sports and games that require mind, muscle, nerve and judgment.

Even those who labor should take exercise, to the end that the whole body may be developed. Those who work at one employment become deformed.

Proportion is lost. But where harmony is preserved by the proper exercise, even old age is beautiful.

To the well developed, to the strong, life seems rich, obstacles small, and success easy. They laugh at cold and storm. Whatever the season may be their hearts are filled with summer.

Millions go from the cradle to the coffin without knowing what it is to live. They simply succeed in postponing death. Without appet.i.tes, without pa.s.sions, without struggle, they slowly rot in a waveless pool.

They never know the glory of success, the rapture of the fight.

To become effeminate is to invite misery. In the most delicate bodies may be found the most degraded souls. It was the d.u.c.h.ess Josiane whose pampered flesh became so sensitive that she thought of h.e.l.l as a place where people were compelled to sleep between coa.r.s.e sheets.

We need the open air--we need the experience of heat and cold. We need not only the rewards and caresses, but the discipline of our mother Nature. Life is not all suns.h.i.+ne, neither is it all storm, but man should be enabled to enjoy the one and to withstand the other.

I believe in the religion of the body--of physical development--in devotional exercise--in the beat.i.tudes of cheerfulness, good health, good food, good clothes, comrades.h.i.+p, generosity, and above all, in happiness. I believe in salvation here and now. Salvation from deformity and disease--from weakness and pain--from ennui and insanity. I believe in heaven here and now--the heaven of health and good digestion--of strength and long life--of usefulness and joy. I believe in the builders and defenders of homes.

The gentlemen whom we honor to-night have done a great work. To their energy we are indebted for the nearest perfect, for the grandest athletic clubhouse in the world. Let these clubs multiply. Let the example be followed, until our country is filled with physical and intellectual athletes--superb fathers, perfect mothers, and every child an heir to health and joy.

THE LIEDERKRANZ CLUB, SEIDL-STANTON BANQUET.

New York, April 2, 1891

TOAST: MUSIC, n.o.bLEST OF THE ARTS.

IT is probable that I was selected to speak about music, because, not knowing one note from another, I have no prejudice on the subject.

All I can say is, that I know what I like, and, to tell the truth, I like every kind, enjoy it all, from the hand organ to the orchestra.

Knowing nothing of the science of music, I am not always looking for defects, or listening for discords. As the young robin cheerfully swallows whatever comes, I hear with gladness all that is played.

Music has been, I suppose, a gradual growth, subject to the law of evolution; as nearly everything, with the possible exception of theology, has been and is under this law.

Music may be divided into three kinds: First, the music of simple time, without any particular emphasis--and this may be called the music of the heels; second, music in which time is varied, in which there is the eager haste and the delicious delay, that is, the fast and slow, in accordance with our feelings, with our emotions--and this may be called the music of the heart; third, the music that includes time and emphasis, the hastening and the delay, and something in addition, that produces not only states of feeling, but states of thought. This may be called the music of the head,--the music of the brain.

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language. It was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. Beneath the waves is the sea--above the clouds is the sky.

Before man found a name for any thought, or thing, he had hopes and fears and pa.s.sions, and these were rudely expressed in tones.

Of one thing, however, I am certain, and that is, that Music was born of Love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music. Possibly some mother, looking in the eyes of her babe, gave the first melody to the enraptured air.

Language is not subtle enough, tender enough, to express all that we feel; and when language fails, the highest and deepest longings are translated into music. Music is the suns.h.i.+ne--the climate--of the soul, and it floods the heart with a perfect June.

I am also satisfied that the greatest music is the most marvelous mingling of Love and Death. Love is the greatest of all pa.s.sions, and Death is its shadow. Death gets all its terror from Love, and Love gets its intensity, its radiance, its glory and its rapture, from the darkness of Death. Love is a flower that grows on the edge of the grave.

The old music, for the most part, expresses emotion, or feeling-, through time and emphasis, and what is known as melody. Most of the old operas consist of a few melodies connected by unmeaning recitative.

There should be no unmeaning music. It is as though a writer should suddenly leave his subject and write a paragraph consisting of nothing but a repet.i.tion of one word like "the," "the," "the," or "if," "if."

"if," varying the repet.i.tion of these words, but without meaning,--and then resume the subject of his article.

I am not saying that great music was not produced before Wagner, but I am simply endeavoring to show-the steps that have been taken. It was necessary that all the music should have been written, in order that the greatest might be produced. The same is true of the drama, Thousands and thousands prepared the way for the supreme dramatist, as millions prepared the way for the supreme composer.

When I read Shakespeare, I am astonished that he has expressed so much with common words, to which he gives new meaning; and so when I hear Wagner, I exclaim: Is it possible that all this is done with common air?

In Wagner's music there is a touch of chaos that suggests the infinite.

The melodies seem strange and changing forms, like summer clouds, and weird harmonies come like sounds from the sea brought by fitful winds, and others moan like waves on desolate sh.o.r.es, and mingled with these, are shouts of joy, with sighs and sobs and ripples of laughter, and the wondrous voices of eternal love.

Wagner is the Shakespeare of Music.

The funeral march for Siegfried is the funeral music for all the dead; Should all the G.o.ds die, this music would be perfectly appropriate. It is elemental, universal, eternal.