 Have faith in Coolidge by Eugene M. Weeks. Read by Elsie Sowan. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. It is the belief of his New England associates and fellow citizens that Calvin Coolidge possesses the qualities of true American statesmanship. It is appropriate that this conviction and some of the facts that have created it should at this time be set forth. Therefore, this personal sketch of him is offered in appreciation of the man himself and of his fitness for the great responsibilities to which circumstances have so unexpectedly called him. Gerald Shepard Haaland of Boston, Massachusetts, August 24, 1923. Have faith in Coolidge. The story of a personality. Early one night, not long ago, a lean-faced man, fatigued by several hours of hay pitching, undressed by the feeble light of a kerosene lamp and went to bed in an old farmhouse up in Vermont. In the dead of night, a lamp's light shining in his face and his name tremblingly uttered, awakened him to the leadership of the most powerful government in the world. Two hours later, in the presence of his wife and a handful of hastily assembled acquaintances, and by the light of more oil lamps, he was duly and securely sworn into the office of President of the United States, a local justice of the peace who happened to be his father administered, the oath. Then the tired hay pitcher went back to bed. The faint rays of those kerosene lamps shining in the old Vermont farmhouse that historic night revealed a new Calvin Coolidge. Their light seems likely to have started a great illumination of this man that will presently shine round the globe. Calm in a great moment. American history holds no more picturesque and fascinating episode than the falling of the presidential mantle upon Calvin Coolidge. It came simultaneously with as a part of an overwhelming national sorrow. The public mourns as almost never before, but it has found time, even in its grief, to be electrified by the suddenly discovered personality of him who awoke under the eaves of the Vermont farmhouse that August midnight to blink his eyes for a moment in the dull glow of an oil lamp and to hear himself name the personal leader of more than a hundred million citizens. His acts of the succeeding few hours denoted the simple orderliness of his clear mind. To the few gathered about him he revealed first, deepest emotion at the passing of his friend and leader, he sent a message of consolation to the stunned helpmate of the great man whose weary body had released its spirit. He obediently followed the advice of the momentary heads of the government and speedily took his oath of office, availing himself of the adequate even if unusual means immediately out of his hand. He ate a simple farm breakfast, he packed and strapped his trunk, he gave the nation a brief, clear, encouraging message, he stole away a moment to visit his mother's grave, then he went to the nearest railroad station, declined the pump of a special train, and journeyed out of a quiet rural New England into an immeasurable responsibility that will claim him, who knows how long. He went with a calm self-possession that in those memorable hours of August 3rd spoke volumes of hope to a grief-bound nation and a bewildered capital. Calvin Coolidge's journey to Washington that day was in some strange way like the homecoming of a strong able son when death has removed the beloved head of the family. New England in general and Massachusetts in particular may be expected to idolize a bit their native son who has under such dramatic conditions taken his seat in the big chair at the White House. Here's the first from New England to do so since Franklin Pierce, the first from Massachusetts since John Quincy Adams. But in it all you will find the paramount New England sentiment for and about Coolidge today to be this, that the rest of the country shall come to know quite speedily what manner of man Calvin Coolidge really is, and to grasp the surprising fact that his police strike halo and his half-faith in Massachusetts speech are only incidental manifestations of a great intelligence and a great character eminently sufficient to meet every demand that his elevation to supreme authority can make upon them. New England and Massachusetts, fully sharing the nation's grief at the untimely passing of President Harding, are saying to the nation in the world, keep your eyes on this plain quiet decisive citizen of ours who has had to step into the breach. Here's a statement of highest caliber, have faith in Coolidge. Revelations of personality. And it is to the American people's decided advantage to study the man. The view they had of his personality three years ago when a single official act of his gave him the limelight and a nomination was fleeting and insufficient. His conduct of his work at Washington since then was a dutiful performance of an almost colorless job, except that by a wise chief's wisdom Coolidge sat in with the mighty and observed what he learned. Americans at large have yet a great deal to find out about this lean-faced, sandy-complexioned, twangy-voiced, modest-mannered Yankee who registers embarrassing retinence one moment and displays whip-like decisiveness the next. Most of the people outside New England and Washington who have heard of Coolidge have doubtless gained a more or less definite impression that he is a silent, gloomy man without a glimmer of humor, probably very scholarly, certainly unemotional, notoriously no sportsman and unquestionably dripping with New England conservatism. Now, some of these impressions of him have traces of correctness, but some of them haven't. And above it all, the man is intensely human and preeminently a wise leader. Many of these citizens of other localities have had no accurate line on Coolidge's executive abilities. Being a governor, settling a policeman's strike the right way and writing a speech or two that caught the popular fancy have not to them. Constituted prima facie evidence of the ability to swing the White House. Why should they? Haven't other governors of other states sometimes done things too? But the more one checks up the busy years of Calvin Coolidge's private and public life, the more they reveal his unusual fitness for their responsibilities he assumed in the feeble lamp light in the old Vermont farmhouse that morning. It is this that his home friends and neighbors desire to become known far and wide, for when it is known the good fortune that is supposed to have dropped suddenly into the lap of Calvin Coolidge will be found to have descended instead upon his fellow countrymen. Let's close the ranks. Even in these first few days of his leadership his ability to assume promptly and with complete efficiency the reigns of executive authority as notably demonstrated. The oldest inhabitants and observers at the national capitol are astounded at the ease and self possession with which Calvin Coolidge has sat down in the big chair, retained to himself every eminent counselor in the official executive family, attacked quietly and determinately in the accumulation of major matters sufficient to stagger a less able beginner, and manipulated them to the dawning admiration of a nation almost holding its breath. His ability to make even this beginning as an index of the resources, the long-trained habits of correct analysis of action and of decisiveness concealed under the mild, modest exterior of Calvin Coolidge. Men such as the Harding Captain members, each a tower of individualism and each with his own personal freedom of action to consider in its relation to his future, do not overturn time on our custom and remain with a new and coming chief unless he possesses a remarkable something to hold them. Calvin Coolidge has it. It is their confidence in his certainty of statesmanship and the successful use thereof, nothing else. To them he quietly and feelingly said, let's close the ranks and go ahead. They did. The gentlemen of the press as assembled in Washington, nearly 200 of them are hard-boiled. They have to be. They are shrewd, critical, truthful. They have to be that too. They tell the truth about a president or lose their jobs. These newspaper men are very plainly surprised at the facility with which the new president has got started in his work. They rise en masse to tell this world that Calvin Coolidge is among the most approachable, communicative occupants of the big chair that have sat there these many years. Americans like to know everything that there is to know about the president. Then they usually judge him on three points. His broad general ability as an executive. His readiness to understand and help great groups of his citizens. His capacity as a good mixer. And they earn a measure as joyous at his proficiency in the last as they are soberly satisfied with his possession in the first or his activity in the second. This country is going to see Calvin Coolidge give brilliant demonstration of his executive wisdom and is going to see him display a knowledge of and sympathy with the sectional needs of his great Ballywick that were ingrained in him and conspicuously employed during his experience as a leader of a great Commonwealth. His rating as a good mixer on today's basis of popular estimating is probably below par. But anyone who chooses for that reason to look a scant at Calvin Coolidge's qualifications would better look twice and think hard before he does so. A president in the making. An able press has hastened to record with almost the fullness and accuracy of seasoned history, the life and acts of Calvin Coolidge. They commenced that July 4th, 51 years ago when he first saw the light in a little room at the rear of his father's general store in Plymouth, Notch, Vermont. The Chronicle runs through his rather uneventful boyhood on the farm and is not conspicuous career as a country lawyer. Then reaches the era of Coolidge's public life, starting with his becoming Republican city committeeman in Northampton. At Tracy's performance all the way through the state organization up to the governor's chair, touches on his succeeding service as a presiding officer of National Senate, and concludes with his unexpected elevation to the presidency. Viewed in comparison with the careers of other public men who have ascended to the chief magistrate or even lesser heights, Calvin Coolidge's environments and experiences in service are not the most showy on record. But accurately analyzed, they disclose the evidences of his peculiar fitness for supreme leadership. To support New England's belief that the rest of the world will now do well to have faith in Calvin Coolidge, it is necessary only to connect a few high spots in his life with his motives and acts at those times. These disclose the type of man who has so tranquilly assumed the heaviest burden now borne by any executive anywhere in the world. As a small boy, he developed a fondness for attending the town meetings, over which his father presided as moderator for many years. Pegg this because it marked Calvin Coolidge's introduction to government, orderly and disorderly. This, plus his typically solid legal training and habits of keen analysis, gave him an excellent groundwork for his knowledge of men when assembled for collective action. The kind of a youth who could win a gold medal for writing an essay on American history and then tuck it away without exhibiting it to his family to escape the risk of being thought boastful has unusual and detached powers of self restraint. Coolidge did this, which brings to mind the laconic remark of a raw western farmer who heard Coolidge make a speech from the tail end of a railroad train in the last national campaign in which the modest candidate talked about everything and everybody by himself. Wow, how don't blow none. Rich, indeed, is the record of Calvin Coolidge's progress through the political and legislative life of Massachusetts. As people turn to review it today, they are moved to marvel that, notable as they estimated it at the time, they did not appraise it even higher. Being a farmer and a good one before he was a lawyer, he came to have a finger in substantially every piece of good agricultural legislation that came up at the Massachusetts State House after his arrival there. Let farm blocks take notice. Dirt farmers have nothing on Calvin Coolidge. Not yet have Massachusetts political circles forgotten how as chairman of the State Committee on Agriculture, Coolidge metaphorically sweat blood in the interest of a certain historic measure calculated to benefit Massachusetts farmers sanely. And then, when defeated, turn loose the power of his personal influence and put the crusher on a flock of competitive bills that Massachusetts farmers had adjudged impracticable. A sizable part of Coolidge's remarkable equipment for his duties today is his experience. Both as a legislature and governor with the profusion of labor, agricultural, social and welfare issues that happened to sweep through the Massachusetts State House during his official presence there. Scores of the laws that now compose Massachusetts far-famed policies on industrial and business equity and human relations, including soldiers' welfare, either bear the marks of Calvin Coolidge's handy work while on the ranks, or his signature as Chief Magistrate. Let working men and working women and veterans of the wars and people everywhere take notice of that too. And it is well to remember this. During all the period of his public life in Massachusetts, from his first election to the House in 1907, through his service in the Senate, his three-year service period as Lieutenant Governor, and two years' incumbency of Governor's Chair ending in 1920, the public and even his stoutest political opponents have never had other than the highest respect for Calvin Coolidge's soundness and statesmanship, courage and action, and fair play in every public and private relation. He bears the reputation of never having broken a promise. There is in Boston today an old newspaper man, who has not yet ceased to marvel, that at the moment when the official committee was ushered into Coolidge's office of the State House to escort him to the final ceremony of his gubernatorial retirement, he kept the gorgeous delegation waiting three minutes while he carefully read and signed a certain letter he had promised to have ready at that time for the newspaper man. When decisiveness made history. To Coolidge, the handling of the now-famous Boston police strike was all in the day's work. He merely signed no other course to follow than the one he did follow. Privately, he rather suspected it might spell his political finale, but this aspect of it could not have weight with him. He anticipated no public acclaim, no historic performance in the electrifying sentence embodying in his telegram to Samuel Gumpers. There is no right to strike against the public's safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime. In reality, it was the axiomic expression of a conviction springing from a highly trained mind that was concentrated at that moment on an enormous vital principle of the government. So, too, his have faith and Massachusetts speech to the Bay State Senate in accepting its chairmanship and his short do the day's work address on a similar occasion later were natural results of his instinctive ability and impressive diction. His senatorial appeal for brevity on still another like occasion ranks high for its epigrammatic value. Honorable Senators, my sincerest thanks I offer you. Conserve the firm foundation of our institution. Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to the Commonwealth and to yourselves. And be brief. Above all things, be brief. Those citizens who in today's great encounter with domestic and worldwide issues are praying for wise action in the Congress and the White House may take comfort from this utterance by Coolidge to the Massachusetts Senate. Don't hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation. Or from these. Industry cannot flourish if labor languishes. Suspension of one man's profits is suspension of another man's pay envelope. No one man is qualified to dictate to a great nation. And if anyone should be tempted to question Calvin Coolidge's courage or decisiveness, let him recall that at the moment when a delegation of some of Massachusetts, most influential citizens were calling on him to induce him to modify his proposed drastic action in the Boston policeman strike, he gazed silently into their faces, then lifted his pen and signed the now famous law and order proclamation. Is Cal humorous? Is Coolidge devoid of a sense of humor? This grave question needs examination and maybe he hasn't any fun in him. At any rate, he is not boisterous. He does not chortle, unlike Abe Lincoln, Coolidge rarely if ever tells a funny story. Unlike Roosevelt, he pokes little or no fun at his associates. He has been known not to smile broadly for days at a stretch. In public. Smart, subtle sallies have often been shot at him without eliciting even a solitary guffaw. But let's see, what would you say of a college youth who grew sadly weary of the interminable daily hash at his boarding house and who, before attacking the conventional and mysterious mixture one day, looked suspiciously about him and then into the unfriendly eyes of the sermon girl and slightly asked, Maria, where is Fido? In the kitchen, Cal. Cull him in, I want to see him. Here he is, Cal. Ah, alright, Maria. Was it cold, serious information that Chairman Coolidge once imparted to an irate Massachusetts senator when on receiving an official complaint from the said irate statesman that a hostile colleague had in debate consigned him to a certain toward locality? Coolidge announced soothingly, I've looked up the law senator and you don't have to go there. Was he wholly serious when in answer to a charming lady's timid query as to his favorite hobby he replied with a twinkle in his eyes? Running for office, I guess. Just how chronically somber is the temperament of a man who was over the fireplace in the living room at his north Hampton home, this framed motto. A wise owl sat on an oak. The more he saw, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, the more he heard. Why can't we all be like that bird? But let an anxious constituency be comforted. Cal Coolidge has humor, those close to him, and there are several such, a veer of their own knowledge that he has possessed of a normal sense of fun. The point is, he uses it advisedly, not at all publicly, and only when in the Coolidge judgment it is appropriate. Who made him president? If anyone proclaims Calvin Coolidge as a child of destiny, let us be earnestly thankful to destiny. A judge out in Oregon can be said to have started Coolidge on his way to the presidency by precipitating his landslide selection as the vice presidential nominee at Chicago. Shall Judge McCammond therefore be hailed now as the president-maker? Or shall it be the people of Massachusetts who happened to have Coolidge in the governor's office when the police strike came up? Or must we give the credit to the firm old lawyers up in North Hampton, Massachusetts, who gave him the law training that first focused local attention on the young man? Or shall we not admit and enjoy admitting the truth, which is that Colonel John C. Coolidge and his sainted wife, who brought Calvin Coolidge into the world and endowed him with an unusual brain and certain moral qualities, are in this case the real president-makers. And that, being thus endowed, Calvin Coolidge thereafter sought the ways of truth and substantial self-development. So that, when the call came, through whatever devious circumstances, he was equipped and ready. For that is the whole fact of it. There is an old and wise saying that none but an able man will ever reach the White House. In the final analysis, it is Coolidge's sound character and ability, as disclosed to the American people themselves, that placed him in the avenue of direct succession to the presidency. Of himself, Mr. Coolidge said not so very long ago, I have no idea why I have been successful in politics. Certainly I have no secret about it, and it seemed to come naturally that people have desired me to perform certain public functions, which I have undertaken to do. I have felt a personal obligation to give the public the best that I have. Calvin Coolidge's features in the hands of God, the American people, and himself, he will broaden a little in every direction every day he sits in the White House. Governmental storms, if they should come, will not shake him. His remarkable ability to judge the future effect of legislation will be a revelation to the nation. He is magnificently trained for his post, and his hands are free. End of Half-Bath in Coolidge by Eugene M. Weeks. Read by Elsie Selwyn. The Desire for Life Everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be universal. At least that is a view taken by those unacquainted with Oriental faiths, and with Oriental character. Those of us whose knowledge is a trifle wider than those of us who are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dale Grossman. Immortality by Ambrose Beers. The Desire for Life Everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be universal. Those of us whose knowledge is a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the desire is universal, nor even general. If a devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to live always, he has not succeeded in very clearly formulating the desire. The sort of thing that he is pleased to hope for is not what we should call life, and not what many of us would care for. When a man says that everybody has a horror of annihilation, we may be sure that he has not many opportunities for observation, or that he has not availed himself of all that he has. Most persons go to sleep rather gladly, yet sleep is virtual annihilation while it lasts, and if it should last forever, the sleeper would be no worse off after a million years of it than after an hour of it. There are minds sufficiently logical to think of it that way, and to them annihilation is not a disagreeable thing to contemplate and expect. In this matter of immortality people's beliefs appear to go along with their wishes. The man who is content with annihilation thinks he will get it. Those who want immortality are pretty sure they are immortal, and that is a very comfortable allotment of faiths. The few of us that are left unprovided for are those who do not bother themselves much with the matter one way or another. The question of human immortality is the most momentous that the mind is capable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the dead live all other facts are in comparison trivial and without interest, the prospect of obtaining certain knowledge with regard to this stupendous matter is not encouraging. In all countries but those in barbarism the powers of the profoundest and most penetrating intellects have been ceaselessly addressed to the task of limpsing a life beyond this life. Yet today no one can truly say that he knows. It is as much a matter of faith as ever it was. Our modern Christian nations profess a passionate hope and belief in another world. Yet the most popular writer and speaker of his time, the man whose lectures drew the largest audiences, the work of whose pen brought him the highest rewards, was he who most strenuously strove to destroy the ground of that hope and unsettle the foundations of that belief. The famous and popular Frenchman, Professor of Spectacular Astronomy, Camille Flemmeron, affirms immortality because he has talked with departed souls who say that it is true. Yes, Monsour, but surely you know the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are very particular about that. Camille Flemmeron says, I don't repudiate the presumptive arguments of schoolmen. I merely supplement them with something positive. For instance, if you assume the existence of God this argument of the scholastics is a good one. God has implanted in all men the desire of perfect happiness. This desire cannot be satisfied in our lives here. If there were not another life wherein to satisfy it, then God would be a deceiver. Well, a trot. There is more. The desire of perfect happiness does not imply immortality, even if there is a God. For, one, God may not have implanted it, but merely suffers it to exist. As he suffers sin to exist, the desire of wealth, the desire to live longer than we do in this world. It is not held that God implanted all the desires of the human heart. Then why hold that he implanted that of perfect happiness? Two, even if he did, even if a divinely implanted desire entails its own gratification, even if it cannot be gratified in this life, that does not imply immortality. It implies only another life long enough for its gratification just once, and eternity of gratification is not a logical inference from it. Three, perhaps God is a deceiver. Who knows that he is not? Assumption of the existence of a God is one thing. Assumption of the existence of a God who is honorable and candid, according to our conception of honor and candor, is another. Four, there may be an honorable and candid God. He may have implanted in us a desire of perfect happiness. It may be, it is, impossible to gratify that desire in this life. Still, another life is not implied, for God may not have intended us to draw the inference that he is going to gratify it. If omniscient and omnipotent, God must be held to have intended whatever occurs, but no such God is assumed in Mr. Flameron's illustration, and it may be that God's knowledge and power are limited, or that one of them is limited. Mr. Flameron is a learned, if somewhat theatrical astronomer. He has a tremendous imagination, which naturally is more at home in the marvelous and catastrophic than in the orderly regions of familiar phenomenon. To him the heavens are an immense pyrotechnicon, and he is the master of the show and sets off the fireworks. But he knows nothing of logic, which is the science of straight thinking, and his view of things have therefore no value. They are nebulous. Nothing is clearer than that our pre-existence is a dream, having absolutely no basis on anything that we know or can hope to know. Of after-existence there is said to be evidence, or rather testimony, in assurances of those who are in the present enjoyment of it, if it is enjoyable. Whether this testimony has actually been given, and it is the only testimony worth a moment's consideration, is a disputed point. Many persons living this life profess to have received it, but nobody professes, or even has professed, to have received the communication of any kind from one in actual existence of the four life. The souls are yet ungarmented. If such there are, are dumb to question. The land beyond the grave has been, if not observed, yet often and variously described, if not explored and surveyed, yet carefully charted. From among so many accounts of it that we have, he must be fastidious indeed, who cannot be suited. But of the fatherland that spreads before the cradle, the great here to form, wherein we all dwelt if we are to dwell in the hereafter, we have no account. Nobody professes knowledge of that. No testimony reaches our ears of flesh concerning its topography or other features. No one has been so enterprising as to rest from its actual inhabitants, any particulars of their character and appearance. And among educated experts and professional proponents of the worlds to be, there is a general denial of its existence. I am of their way of thinking about that. The fact that we have no recollection of the former life is entirely conclusive of the matter. To have lived an unrecollected life is impossible and unthinkable, for there would be nothing to connect the new life with the old, no thread of continuity, nothing that persisted from the one life to the other. The later birth would be that of another person, an altogether different being, unrelated to the first, a new John Smith succeeding to the late Tom Jones. Let us not be misled here by false analogy. Today I may get a thwack a mazard which will give me an intervening season of unconsciousness between yesterday and tomorrow. Thereafter I may live a green old age with no recollection of anything that I knew or did or was before the accident. Yet I shall be the same person, for between the old life and the new there is a nexus, a thread of continuity, something spanning the gulf from one state to the other, and the same in both. Namely, my body with its habits, capacities, and powers. That is I. That identifies me to others as my former self, authenticates and credentials me as the person that incurred the cranial mischance, dislodging memory. But when death occurs all is dislodged, if memory is, for between two merely mental or spiritual existences memory is the only nexus conceivable. Consciousness of identity is the only identity. To live again without memory of having lived before is to live another. Re-existence without recollection is absurd. There is nothing to re-exist. THE END OF IMMORTALITY by Ambrose Bierce For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. To my honorable friend, Sir C. C. Sir, I was on a point of going abroad to steal a solitary walk when yours of the 12th current came to hand. The high researches and choice-abstracted notions I found therein seemed to heighten my spirits and make my fancy fitter for my intended retirement and meditation. At their unto that the countenance of the weather invited me, for it was a still evening. It was also a clear open sky, not a speck, or the least wrinkle, appeared in the whole face of heaven, to a such a pure deep azure all the hemisphere over, that I wondered what was become of the three regions of the air with their meteors. So, having got into a close field, I cast my face upward, and fell to consider what a rare prerogative the optic virtue of the eye hath, much more the intuitive virtue in the thought, that the one in a moment can reach heaven and the other go beyond it. Therefore, sure that philosopher was but a kind of frantic fool, that would have plucked out both his eyes, because they were a hindrance to his speculations. Moreover, I began to contemplate, as I was in this posture, the vast magnitude of the universe, and what proportion this poor globe of earth might bear with it. For if those numberless bodies which stick in the vast roof of heaven, though they appear to us but as spangles, be some of them thousands of times bigger than the earth, take the sea with it to boot, for they both make but one sphere. Surely the astronomers had reason to term this sphere an invisible point, and a thing of no dimension at all being compared with the whole world. I fell then to think that at the second general destruction it is no more for Almighty God to fire this earth than for us to blow up a small squib, or rather one small grain of gunpowder. As I was musing thus I spied a swarm of gnats, waving up and down the air about me, which I knew to be part of the universe as well as I. And me thought it was a strange opinion of our Aristotle to hold, that the least of those small, insected ephemerins should be more noble than the sun, because it had a sensitive soul in it. I fell to think that in the same proportion which those animalelios bore with me in points of bigness, the same I held with those glorious spirits which are near the throne of the Almighty. What then should we think of the magnitude of the Creator Himself? Doubtless tis beyond the reach of any human imagination to conceive it. In my private devotions I presume to compare Him to a great mountain of light, and my soul seems to discern some glorious form therein. But suddenly, as she would fix her eyes upon the object, her sight is presently dazzled and disgregated with the refulgency and poruscations thereof. Walking a little further I spied a young boisterous bull breaking overhead and ditched to a herd of kind in the next pasture, which made me think that if that fierce, strong animal with others of that kind knew their own strength they would never suffer man to be their master. Then, looking upon them quietly grazing up and down, I fell to consider that the flesh which is daily dished upon our table is but concocted grass, which is reincarnified in our stomachs, and to transmute it to another flesh. I fell also to think what advantage those innocent animals had of man, who as soon as nature cast them into the world, find their meat dressed and cloth laid and the table covered. They find their drink brewed and the buttery open, their beds made and their clothes ready, and though man hath the faculty of reason to make him a compensation for the want of those advantages, yet his reason brings with it a thousand perturbations of mind and perplexities of spirit, griping cares and anguishes of thought, which those harmless, silly creatures were exempted from. Going on I came to repose myself upon the trunk of a tree, and I fell to consider further what advantage that dull vegetable had of those feeding animals, as not to be so troublesome and beholden to nature, nor to be subject to starving, to diseases, to the inclemacy of the weather, and to be far long lived. Then I spied a great stone, and sitting awhile upon it I fell to weigh in my thoughts that the stone was in a happier condition in some respects than either of those sensitive creatures or vegetables I saw before. In regard to that stone, which propagates by assimilation, as the philosophers say, he did neither grass nor hay, nor any ailment for restoration of nature, nor water to refresh its roots, or the heat of the sun to attract the moisture upwards to increase growth, as the others did. As I directed my pace homeward, I spied a kite soaring high in the air, and gently gliding up and down the clear region so far above my head. Then I fell to envy the bird extremely, and repine at his happiness that he should have a privilege to make a nearer approach to heaven than I. Excuse me that I trouble you thus with these rambling meditations, they are to correspond with you in some part, for those accurate fancies of yours lately sent me. So I rest your entire and true servitor. A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Avae in March 2019. A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or the country and for making them beneficial to the public by Jonathan Swift. It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel in the country when they see the streets, the roads and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four or six children, all in rags and impotuning every passenger for an arms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants, who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work or leave their dear native country to fight for the pretender in Spain or sell themselves to the Barbados. I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms or on the backs or at the heels of their mothers and frequently of their fathers is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance. And therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the Commonwealth would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars. It is of a much greater extent and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets. As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk, for a solar year with little other nourishment, at most not above the value of two shillings, with the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging. And it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them, in such a manner as, instead of being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding and partly to the clothing of many thousands. There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas, too frequent among us. Sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast. The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders, from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples, who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many under the present distresses of the kingdom. But this being granted, there will remain a hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miss Kerry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remain a hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question, therefore, is how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed, for we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture, we neither build houses, I mean in the country, nor cultivate land. They can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towerly parts. Although I confess they learned rudiments much earlier, during which time they can, however, be properly looked upon as probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of Cavern, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art. I am assured by our merchants that a boy or girl before twelve years old is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half a crown at most, on the exchange, which cannot turn to account either to the parents or the kingdom, the charge of I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable under the least objection. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy child well-nourished is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassie or a ragoust. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, were of only one-fourth part to be mails, which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine, and my reason is that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may at a year old be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the four or a hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh twelve pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increases to twenty-eight pounds. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. Infants' flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after, for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent. The markets will be more cluttered than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage by lessening the number of papists among us. I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child, in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers, to be about two shillings per annum, rags included, and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have a shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child. Those who are more thrifty, as I must confess the times require, may flay the carcass, the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen. As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting, although I rather recommend buying the children alive and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs. A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on this matter, to offer a refinement among my scheme. He said, that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their dear, he conceived that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age, nor under twelve, so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of work and service, and these to be disposed of by their parents, if alive or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments, for as to the males my American acquaintance assured me from frequent experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys, by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable, and to fatten them would not answer the charge. Then as to the females it would, I think with humble submission, be a loss to the public, because they soon would become breeders themselves, and besides it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice, although indeed very unjustly, as a little bordering upon cruelty, which I confess has always been with me the strongest objection against any project, however so well intended. But in order to justify my friend he confessed that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Sal Manasor, a native of the island for Mosa, who came from thence to London about twenty years ago, and in conversation told my friend that in his country, when a young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons of quality, as a prime dainty, and that in his time the body of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty's prime minister of state, and other great mandarins of the court, in joints from the gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny that if the same youths were made of several plump young girls in this town, who, without one single groat to their fortunes, cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at the playhouse and assemblies in foreign finaries, which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse. Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous and incumbrance. But I am not in the least pain about the matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting, by cold and famine and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the younger labourers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition. They cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to come in labour, they have no strength to perform it, and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come. I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance. For, first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate. Secondly, the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress, and help to pay their landlords' rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown. Thirdly, whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children from two years old and upwards cannot be computed at less than ten shillings apiece per annum, the nation's stock will be thereby increased by fifty thousand pounds per annum, besides the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste, and the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture. Fourthly, the constant breeders, besides the gain of eight shillings per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year. Fifthly, this food would likewise bring great custom to taverns, where the windners will certainly be so prudent as to produce the best receipts for dressing it to perfection, and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good eating, and a skillful cook who understands how to oblige his guests will contrive to make it as expensive as they please. Sixthly, this would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public to their annual profit instead of expense. We should soon see an honest emulation among the married women which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy as they are now of their mares in full, their cows in calves or sows when they are ready to ferro, nor offer to beat or kick them as it is too frequent a practice for fear of a miscarriage. Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barreled beef, the propagation of swine's flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs too frequent at our tables, which are in no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well-grown, fat, yearling child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor's feast or any other public entertainment. But this and many others I omit being studious of brevity. Supposing that one thousand families in this city would be constant customers for infants' flesh, besides others who might have it at merry meetings, particularly weddings and christenings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses, and the rest of the kingdom, where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper, the remaining eighty thousand. I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and it was indeed one principle design in offering it to the world. I desire the reader will observe that I calculate my remedy for this one individual kingdom of Ireland, and for no other than ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon earth. Therefore let no men talk to me of other expedience, of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound, of using neither clothes nor household furniture except what is of our own growth and manufacture, of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury, of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness and gaming in our women, of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance, of learning to love our country wherein we differ even from laplanders and the inhabitants of Toppinambu, of quitting our animosities and factions, nor act any longer like the Jews who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken, of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing, of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants, lastly of putting a spirit of honesty, industry and skill into our shopkeepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure and the goodness, or could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it. Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedience, till he hath at least some glimpse of hope that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them in practice. But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it. After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme and offering a better, I desire the author, or authors, will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for an hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly, there being around a million of creatures in human figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock would leave them in debt of two million of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by profession to the bulk of farmers, cottagers and labourers with their wives and children who are beggars in effect. I desire those politicians who dislike my overture and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer that they will first ask the parents of these mortals whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old in the manner I prescribe and therefore have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from inclemencies of weather and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed, for ever. I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny, the youngest being nine years old and my wife past childbearing. End of A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift Transitions on the Flight of Time by Samuel Johnson This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Perhaps observed by the moralist, with equal reason, that our globe seems particularly fitted for the residents of a being placed here only for a short time, whose task is to advance himself to a higher and happier state of existence by unremitted vigilance of caution and activity of virtue. The duties required of man are such as human nature does not willingly perform, and such as those are inclined to delay who yet intend some time to fulfill them. It was therefore necessary that this universal reluctance should be counteracted, and the drowsiness of hesitation waken into resolve. That the danger of procrastination should be always in view, and the fallacies of security be hourly detected. To this end, all the appearances of nature uniformly conspire. Whatever we see on every side reminds us of the lapse of time and the flux of life. The day and night succeed each other. The rotation of seasons diversifies the year. The sun rises, attains the meridian, declines, and sets. And the moon every night changes its form. The day has been considered as an image of the year, and the year as the representation of life. The morning answers to the spring, and the spring to childhood and youth. The noon corresponds to the summer, and the summer to the strength of manhood. The evening is an emblem of autumn and autumn of declining life. The night, with its silence and darkness, shows the winter, in which all the powers of vegetation are benumbed, and the winter points out the time when life shall cease with its hopes and pleasures. He that is carried forward, however swiftly, by emotion equable and easy, perceives not the change of place but by the variation of objects. If the wheel of life, which rolls thus silently along, passed on through undistinguishable uniformity, we should never mark its approaches to the end of the course. If one hour were like another, if the passage of the sun did not show that the day is wasting, if the change of seasons did not impress upon us the flight of the year, quantities of duration equal to days and years would glide unobserved. If the parts of time were not variously colored, we should never discern their departure or succession, but should live thoughtless of the past and careless of the future, without will and perhaps without power to compute the periods of life, or to compare the time which is already lost with that which may probably remain. But the course of time is so visibly marked that it is observed even by the birds of passage, and by nations who have raised their minds very little above animal instinct. There are human beings whose language does not supply them with words by which they can number five, but I have read of none that have not names for day and night, for summer and winter. Yet it is certain that these admonitions of nature, however forcible, however importunate, are too often vain, and that many who mark with such accuracy the course of time appear to have little sensibility of the decline of life. Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat. So little do we accustom ourselves to consider the effects of time, that things necessary and certain often surprise us like unexpected contingencies. We leave the beauty in her bloom, and after an absence of twenty years wonder at our return to find her faded. We meet those whom we left children, and can scarcely persuade ourselves to treat them as men. The traveler visits in age those countries through which he rambled in his youth, and hopes for merrymen at the old place. The man of business, wearied with unsatisfactory prosperity, retires to the town of his nativity, and expects to play away the last years with the companions of his childhood, and recover youth in the fields where he once was young. From this inattention, so general and so mischievous, let it be every man's study to exempt himself. Let him that desires to see others happy make haste to give while his gift can be enjoyed, and remember that every moment of delay takes away something from the value of his benefaction. And let him who purposes his own happiness reflect that while he forms his purpose the day rolls on in the night cometh when no man can work. End of Monitions on the Flight of Time by Samuel Johnson, read by Quaker Woodworker. A Mystery of Crowds by Lafcadio Hearn This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Who has not at some time leaned over the parapet of a bridge to watch the wrinklings and dimplings of the current below? To wonder at the trembling permanency of surface shapes that never change, though the substance of them is never for two successive moments the same. The mystery of the spectacle fascinates, and it is worth thinking about. Symbols of the riddle of our own being are those shuttering forms. In ourselves likewise, the substance perpetually changes with the flow of the infinite stream, but the shapes, though ever agitated by various inter-opposing forces, remain throughout the years. And who has not been fascinated also by the sight of the human stream that pours and pulses through the streets of some great metropolis? This too has its currents and counter-currents and edi-inks, all strengthening or weakening according to the tide rise or tide ebb of the city's sea of toil. But the attraction of the greater spectacle for us is not really the mystery of motion, it is rather the mystery of man. As outside observers we are interested chiefly by the passing forms and faces, by their intimations of personality, their suggestions of sympathy or repulsion. We soon cease to think about the general flow, for the atoms of the human current are visible to our gaze. We see them walk and deem their movements sufficiently explained by our own experience of walking. And, nevertheless, the motions of the visible individual are more mysterious than those of the always invisible molecule of water. I am not forgetting the truth that all forms of motion are ultimately incomprehensible. I am referring only to the fact that our common relative knowledge of motions, which are supposed to depend upon will, is even less than our possible relative knowledge of the behavior of the atoms of a water current. Everyone who has lived in a great city is aware of certain laws of movement which regulate the flow of population through the more crowded thoroughfares. We need not, for present purposes, concern ourselves about the complex middle currents of the living river, with their thunder of hooves and wheels. I shall speak of the side currents only. On either footpath, the crowd naturally divides itself into an upward and a downward stream. All persons going in one direction take the right-hand side. All going in the other direction take the left-hand side. By moving with either one of these two streams, you can proceed even quickly. But you cannot walk against it. Only a drunken or insane person is likely to attempt such a thing. Between the two currents there is going on, by reason of the pressure, a continual self-displacement of individuals to left and right alternately. Such a yielding and swerving as might be represented, in a drawing of the double current, by zig-zag medial lines ascending and descending. This constant yielding alone makes progress possible without, at the contrary, streams would quickly bring each other to a standstill bilateral pressure. But it is especially where two crowd streams intersect each other, as at street angles, that the systematic self-displacement is worthy of study. Everybody observes the phenomenon, but few persons think about it. Whoever really thinks about it will discover that there is a mystery in it. A mystery which no individual experience can fully explain. In any throng street of a great metropolis, thousands of people are constantly turning aside to left or right in order to pass each other. Whenever two persons walking in contrary directions come face-to-face in such a press, one of three things is likely to happen. Either there is a mutual yielding, or one makes room for the other, or else both, in their endeavor to be accommodating, step at once in the same direction, and as quickly repeat the blunder by trying to correct it, and so keep dancing to and fro in each other's way. Until the first to perceive the absurdity of the situation stands still, or until the more irritable actually pushes his vis-a-vis to one side. But these blunders are relatively infrequent. All necessary yielding, as a rule, is done quickly and correctly. Of course, there must be some general law regulating all this self-displacement, some law in accord with the universal law of motion in the direction of least resistance. You have only to watch any crowded street for half an hour to be convinced of this. But the law is not easily found or formulated. There are puzzles in the phenomenon. If you study the crowd movement closely, you will perceive that those encounters in which one person yields to make way for the other are much less common than those in which both parties give way. But a little reflection will convince you that, even in cases of mutual yielding, one person must have necessity yield sooner than the other. Though the difference in time of the impulse manifestation should be, as it often is, altogether inappreciable. For the sum of character, physical and psychical, cannot be precisely the same in two human beings. No two persons can have exactly equal faculties of perception and will, nor exactly similar qualities of that experience which expresses itself in mental and physical activities. And therefore, in every case of apparent mutual yielding, the yielding must really be successive, not simultaneous. Now, although what we might hear call the personal equation proves that in every case of mutual yielding, one individual necessarily yields sooner than the other, it does not at all explain the mystery of the individual impulse in cases where the yielding is not mutual. It does not explain why you feel at one time that you are about to make your vis-a-vis give place, and feel at another time that you must yourself give place. What originates the feeling? A friend once attempted to answer this question by the ingenious theory of a sort of eye-dual between every two persons coming face to face in a street throng. But I feel sure that his theory could account for the psychological facts in scarcely half a dozen of a thousand such encounters. The greater number of people hurrying by each other in a dense press rarely observe faces. Only the disinterested eyed wearer has time for that. Hundreds actually pass along the street with their eyes fixed upon the pavement. Certainly it is not the man in a hurry who can guide himself by ocular snapshot views of physiognomy. He is usually absorbed in his own thoughts. I have studied my own case repeatedly. While in a crowd I seldom look at faces. But without any conscious observation I am always able to tell when I should give way. Or when my vis-a-vis is going to save me that trouble. My knowledge is certainly intuitive, a mere knowledge of feeling. And I know not with what to compare it except that blind faculty by which, in absolute darkness, one becomes aware of the proximity of bulky objects without touching them. And my intuition is almost infallible. If I hesitate to obey it, a collision is the invariable consequence. Furthermore, I find that whenever automatic or at least semi-conscious action is replaced by reasoned action, in plainer words whenever I begin to think about my movements, I always blunder. It is only while I am thinking of other matters, only while I am acting almost automatically, that I can thread a dense crowd with ease. Indeed, my personal experience has convinced me that what pilots one quickly and safely through a thick press is not conscious observation at all, but unreasoning intuitive perception. Now intuitive action of any kind represents inherited knowledge, experience of past lives. In this case, the experience of past lives incalculable. Utterly incalculable? Why do I think so? Well, simply because this faculty of intuitive self-direction in a crowd is shared by man with very inferior forms of animal being. Evolutional proof that it must be a faculty immensely older than man. Does not a herd of cattle, a herd of deer, a flock of sheep offer us the same phenomenon of mutual yielding? Or a flock of birds, gregarious birds especially, crows, sparrows, wild pigeons? Or a shoal of fish? Even among insects, bees, ants, termites, we can study the same law of intuitive self-displacement. The yielding in all these cases must still represent an inherited experience unimaginably old. Could we endeavor to retrace the whole course of such inheritance? The attempt would probably lead us back, not only to the very beginnings of sentient life upon this planet, but further. Back into the history of non-sentient substance, back even to the primal evolution of those mysterious tendencies which are stored up in the atoms of elements. Such atoms we know of only as points of multiple resistance, incomprehensible knittings of incomprehensible forces. Even the tendencies of atoms doubtless represent accumulations of inheritance. But here thought checks with a shock at the eternal barrier of the infinite riddle. End of A Mystery of Crowds by Lafcadio Hearn Read by Quaker Woodworker Notes on Pianos by Lawton Mackle This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dale Grossman Notes on Pianos by Lawton Mackle A piano is an instrument with 88 keys and 20 installments. You play on the keys and pay on the installments, the latter being by far the more difficult performance. If you do not play in time, you are called down by your critics. If you do not pay on time, you are called on by your collectors. The keys are arranged in two rows, short, fat, blondes in front, and tall, skinny brunettes behind. There are three pedals, one for each foot and one for good measure. The damper pedal, or muffler cutout, which puts an end to conversation. The softstinuto pedal, which helps the piano sustain what it has to sustain. And the soft pedal, which is seldom used, and then only by request. There are two kinds of pianos, uprights and prostrates. Uprights are used in homes where there is standing room only. Prostrates are used in concert halls. Virtuosi prefer them, because they can hit a piano much harder when it's down. The upright piano is frequently pitched in a flat. It remains there until pitched out by the neighbors. An advantage that this piano possesses is that it keeps the player's back turned to his hearers, which is a great savings of his feelings. Another advantage is that the top serves as a mantelpiece annex. Brick-a-brack that won't stand heat, but will stand noise, is put there. Anything is appropriate, cupids, chapparduses, brass bowls, painted vases. The only requirement for a place on this repository is that the object be able to make some buzzing, twanging, wheezing, or humming sound when the strings are struck. Prostrates are built to endure. Their black finish bespeaks the hard life they lead. A conflict between one of these indestructible pianos and an irresistible pianist is called a recital. A noncombatant lifts the lid and the fight begins. First round, nocturne, merely warming up. Second round, etude, livelier, but not too much heavy hitting. Third round, scherzo, considerably hotter, fighting in close. Fourth round, apachonato, real slugging. Fifth round, rhapsodie, the piano receives fearful punishment, knocked out in the final cadenza, but the pianist sprains wrist. To learn to play the piano, the first thing is to acquire a good touch, or tread, as it is properly called. Unfortunately, there is a divergence of opinion among authorities as to what a good tread consists in. The famous dictum of Professor Biskie of Moscow Conservatory, that you should hammer the hammers, being offset by the equally famous assertion of Herodomus Dudulsak, the noted Viennese pedagogue, that you should not strike the ivories at all, but massage them, or knead them. Herododulsak and his eminent pupils maintain that his tread is the only normal one, that it has the naturalness of a cat walking on the keyboard. But the astute Russian insinuates that it produces tangled chords and scales that are short-weight. But these methods have been rendered obsolete by the heel and toe technique of the player piano. This wonderful instrument in pregnanting the feet with melody and rhythm has given rise to the modern dances, for a person who makes a habit of playing the pianola simply has to tattle the music out of his ankles. Even more remarkable is the way in which the piano footy has simplified musical composition. The masters of the past had to toil away painfully with pen and ink, whereas the composer of today can attain the same results with a roll of paper and a ticket punch. Judging from the progress we have made and are still making, it is safe to predict that the composer of the future will use a shotgun. The End of Notes on Pianos by Lotton Mackle On the Social Element in Religion by Frederick Schliermacher, 1768-1834 Published in 1799. Translated by George Ripley. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Those among you who are accustomed to regard religion as a disease of the human mind cherish also the habitual conviction that it is an evil more easily born, even though not to be cured, so long as it is only insulated individuals here and there who are infected with it. It is said that the common danger is raised to the highest degree and everything put at stake as soon as a too close connection is permitted between many patients of this character. In the former case it is probably by a judicious treatment, as it were, by an anti-flegistic regimen and by a healthy spiritual atmosphere to ward off the violence of the paroxysms. It is not entirely to conquer the exciting cause of the disease to attenuate it to such a degree that it shall be almost innocuous. But in the latter case we must despair of every other means of cure except that which would proceed from some internal, beneficent operation of nature. For the evil is attended with more alarming symptoms and more fatal in its effects when the too great proximity of other infected persons feeds and aggravates it in every individual. The whole mass of vital air is then quickly poisoned by a few. The most vigorous frames are smitten with the contagion. All the channels in which the functions of life should go on are destroyed. All the juices of the system are decomposed and seized with a similar feverish delirium. The sound spiritual life and productions of whole ages and nations are involved in irremediable ruin. Hence our antipathy to the Church to every institution which is intended for the communication of religion is always more prominent than that which you feel to religion itself. Hence also priests as the pillars and the most efficient members of such institutions are of all men, the objects of your greatest abomination. Even those among you who hold a little more indulgent opinion with regard to religion and deem it rather a singularity than a disorder of the mind and insignificant rather than a dangerous phenomenon cherish quite as unfavorable impressions of all social organizations for its promotion. A slavish immolation of all that is free and peculiar, a system of lifeless mechanisms and barren ceremonies. These, they imagine, are the inseparable consequences of every such institution and are the ingenious and elaborate work of men who with almost incredible success have made a great merit of things which are either nothing in themselves or which any other person was quite as capable of accomplishing as they. I should pour out my heart but very imperfectly before you on a subject to which I attach the utmost importance, if I did not undertake to give you the correct point of view with regard to it. I need not here repeat how many of the perverted endeavors and melancholy fortunes of humanity you charge upon religious associations. This is clear as light in a thousand utterances of your predominant individuals. Nor will I stop to refute these accusations one by one in order to fix the evil upon other causes. Let us rather submit the whole conception of the Church to a new examination and from its central point throughout its whole extent erected again upon a new basis without regard to what it has actually been, either to or to what experience may suggest concerning it. If religion exists at all, it must needs possess a social character. This is founded not only in the nature of man but still more in the nature of religion. You will acknowledge that it indicates a state of disease, a signal perversion of nature when an individual wishes to shut up within himself anything which he has produced and elaborated by his own efforts. It is the disposition of man to reveal and to communicate whatever is in him in the indispensable relations and mutual dependence not only of practical life but also of his spiritual being by which he is connected with all others of his race. And the more powerfully he is wrought upon by anything, the more deeply it penetrates his inward nature. So much the stronger is this social impulse, even if we regard it only from the point of view of the universal endeavour to behold the emotions which we feel ourselves as they are exhibited by others so that we may obtain a proof for their example that our experience is not beyond the sphere of humanity. You perceive that I am not speaking here of the endeavour to make others similar to ourselves nor of the conviction that what is exhibited in one is essential to all. It is merely my aim to ascertain the true relation between our individual life and the common nature of man, and clearly to set it forth. But the peculiar object of this desire for communication is unquestionably that in which man feels that he is originally passive, namely his observations and emotions. He is here impelled by the eager wish to know whether the power which has produced them in him is not something foreign and unworthy. Hence we see man employed from his early childhood in communicating these observations and emotions, the conceptions of his understanding concerning whose origin there can be no doubt. He allows to rest in his own mind and still more easily to determine to refrain from the expression of his judgments. But whatever acts upon his senses, whatever awakens his feelings of that he desires to obtain witnesses with regard to that he longs for those who will sympathize with him. How should he keep to himself those very operations of the world upon his soul, which are the most universal and comprehensive, which appear to him as of the most stupendous and resistless magnitude? How should he be willing to lock up within his own bosom those very emotions which impel him with the greatest power beyond himself, and in the indulgence of which he becomes conscious that he can never understand his own nature from himself alone? It will rather be his first endeavor whenever a religious view gains clearness in his eye, or a pious feeling penetrates his soul to direct the attention of others to the same object, and as far as possible to communicate to their hearts the elevated impulses of his own. If then the religious man is urged by his nature to speak, it is the same nature which secures to him the certainty of hearers. There is no element of his being with which at the same time there is implanted in man such a lively feeling of his total inability to exhaust it by himself alone, as with that of religion. A sense of religion has no sooner gone upon him than he feels the infinity of its nature and the limitation of his own. He is conscious of embracing but a small portion of it, and that which he cannot immediately reach he wishes to perceive as far as he can from the representations of others who have experienced it themselves and to enjoy it with them. Hence he is anxious to observe every manifestation of it, and seeking to supply his own deficiencies he watches for every tone which he recognizes as proceeding from it. In this manner mutual communications are instituted. In this manner everyone feels equally the need both of speaking and hearing. But the imparting of religion is not to be sought in books, like that of intellectual conceptions and scientific knowledge. The pure impression of the original product is too far destroyed in this medium, which in the same way that dark-colored objects absorb the greatest proportion of the rays of light, swallows up everything belonging to the pious emotions of the heart, which cannot be embraced in the insufficient symbols from which it is intended again to proceed. Nay, in the written communications of religious feeling, everything needs a double and triple representation for that which originally represented must be represented in its turn, and yet the effect on the whole man in its complete unity can only be imperfectly set forth by continued and varied reflections. It is only when religion is driven out from the society of the living that it must conceal its manifold life under the dead letter. Neither can the intercourse of heart with heart on the deepest feelings of humanity be carried on in common conversation. Many persons who are filled with zeal for the interests of religion have brought it as a reproach against the manners of our age, that while all other important subjects are so freely discussed in the intercourse of society, so little should be said concerning God and divine things. I would defend ourselves against this charge by maintaining that this circumstance at least does not indicate contempt or indifference toward religion, but a happy and very correct instinct. In the presence of joy and merriment, where earnestness itself must yield to railery and wit, there can be no place for that which should be always surrounded with holy veneration and awe. Religious views, pious emotions, and serious considerations with regard to them, these we cannot throw up to one another in such small crumbs as the topics of light conversation. And when the discourse turns upon sacred subjects, it should rather be a crime than a virtue to have an answer ready for every question and a rejoiner for every remark. Hence the religious sentiment retires from such circles as are too wide for it to the more confidential intercourse of friendship and to the mutual communications of love, where the eye and the maintenance are more expressive than words, and where even a holy silence is understood. But it is impossible for divine things to be treated in the usual manner of society, where the conversation consists in striking flashes of thought gaily and rapidly alternating with one another. A more elevated style is demanded for the communication of religion, and a different kind of society which is devoted to this purpose must hence be formed. It is becoming, indeed, to apply the whole richness and magnificent of human discourse to the loftiest subject which language can reach, not as if there were any adornment with which religion could not dispense, but because it would show a frivolous and unholy disposition in the heralds if they did not bring together the most copious resources within their power and consecrate them all to religion, so that they might thus perhaps exhibit it in its appropriate greatness and dignity. Hence it is impossible without the aid of poetry to give utterance to the religious sentiment in any other than an oratorical manner with all the skill and energy of language and freely using, in addition, the service of all the arts which can contribute to flowing and passionate discourse. He, therefore, whose heart is overflowing with religion, can open his mouth only before an auditory, where that which is presented with such a wealth of preparation can produce the most extended and manifold effects. Would that I could present before you an image of the rich and luxurious life in this city of God, when its inhabitants come together, each in the fullness of his own inspiration, which is ready to stream forth without constraint, but at the same time each is filled with a holy desire to receive and to appropriate to himself everything which others wish to bring before him. If one comes forward before the rest, it is not because he is entitled to this distinction in virtue of an officer of a previous agreement, nor because pride and conceitedness have given him presumption. It is rather a free impulse of the spirit, a sense of the most heartfelt unity of each with all, a consciousness of entire equality, a mutual renunciation of all first and last, of all the arrangements of earthly order. He comes forward to communicate to others as an object of sympathizing contemplation, the deepest feelings of his soul while under the influence of God, to lead them to the domain of religion in which he breathes his native air, and to infect them with the contagion of his own holy emotions. He speaks forth the divine which stirs his bosom, and in holy silence the assembly follows the inspiration of his words. Whether he unveils a secret mystery or with prophetic confidence connects the future with the present, whether he strengthens old impressions by new examples, or is led by the lofty visions of his burning imagination into other regions of the world and into other order of things, the sense of his audience everywhere accompanies his own, and when he returns into himself from his wanderings through the kingdom of God, his own heart and that of each of his hearers are the common dwelling place of the same emotion. If now the agreement of his sentiments with that which they feel be announced to him, whether loudly or low, then there are holy mysteries, not merely significant emblems, but justly regarded natural indications of a peculiar consciousness and peculiar feelings, invented and celebrated a higher choir as it were, which in its own lofty language answers to the appealing voice. But not only, so to speak, for such a discourse is music without tune measure, so there is also a music among the holy, which may be called discourse without words, the most distinct and expressive utterance of the inward man. The muse of harmony, whose intimate relation with religion, although it has been for a long time spoken of and described, is yet recognized only by few, as always presented upon her daughters the most perfect and magnificent productions of her selectist scholars in honor of religion. It is in sacred hymns and choirs, with which the words of the poet are connected only by slight and airy bands, that these feelings are breathed forth, which precise language is unable to contain, and thus the tones of thought and emotion alternate with each other in mutual support until all is satisfied and filled with the holy and the infinite. Of this character is the influence of religious men upon one another, such as their natural and eternal union. Do not take it ill of them that this heavenly bond, the most consummate product of the social nature of man, but to which it does not attain until it becomes conscious of its own high and peculiar significance, that this should be deemed of more value in their sight than the political union which you esteem so far above everything else, but which will nowhere ripen to manly beauty, and which compared to the former appears far more constrained than free, far more transitory than eternal. But we're now in the description which I have given of the community of the pious is that distinction between priests and laymen, which you are accustomed to designate as a source of so many evils. A false appearance has deceived you. This is not a distinction between persons, but only one of condition and performance. Every man is a priest, so far as he draws others around him into the sphere which he has appropriated to himself, and in which he professes to be a master. Everyone is a layman, so far as he is guided by the counsel and experience of another within the sphere of religion, where he is comparatively a stranger. There is not here the tyrannic aristocracy, which you describe with such hatred, but this society is a priestly people, a perfect republic, where everyone is alternately ruler and citizen, where everyone follows the same power in another, which he feels also in himself, and with which he too governs others. How then could the spirit of accord and division, which you regard as the inevitable consequence of all religious combinations, find a congenial home within this sphere? I see nothing but that all is one, and that all the differences which actually exist in religion by means of this very union of the pious are gently blended with one another. I have directed your attention to the different degrees of religiousness. I have pointed out to you the different modes of insight and the different corrections in which this all seeks for itself the supreme object of its pursuit. Do you imagine that this must needs give birth to sex and thus destroy all free and reciprocal intercourse in religion? It is true indeed in contemplation that everything which is separated into various parts and embraced in different divisions must be opposed and contradictory to itself. But consider, I pray you, how life is manifested in a great variety of forms, how the most hostile elements seek out one another here, and for this very reason what we separate in contemplation all flows together in life. They, to be sure, who on one of these points bear the greatest resemblance to one another will present the strongest mutual attraction, and they cannot on that account compose an independent whole. For the degrees of this affinity imperceptively diminish and increase, and in the midst of so many transitions there is no absolute repulsion, no total separation, even between the most discordant elements. Take what you will of these masses which have assumed an organic form according to their own inherent energy. If you do not forcibly divide them by a mechanical operation, no one will exhibit an absolutely distinct and homogenous character, but the extreme points of each will be connected at the same time with those which display different properties and properly belong to another mass. If the pious individuals who stand on the same degree of a lower order form a closer union with one another, there are yet some always included in the combination who have a presentiment of higher things. These are better by all who belong to the higher social class than they understand themselves, and there is a point of sympathy between the two which is concealed only from the latter. If those combine in whom one of the modes of insight which I have described is predominant there will always be some among them who understand at least both the modes, and since they in some degree belong to both they form a connecting link between two spheres which would otherwise be separated. Thus the individual who is more inclined to share a religious connection between himself and nature is yet by no means opposed in the essentials of religion to him who prefers to trace the footsteps of the Godhead in history, and there will never be wanting those who can pursue both paths with equal unity. Thus in whatever manner you divide the vast province of religion you will always come back to the same point. If unbounded universality of insight be the first and original supposition of religion, and hence also most naturally its fairest and ripest fruit, you perceive that it cannot be otherwise than that in proportion as an individual advances in religion and the character of his piety becomes more pure, the whole religious world will more and more appear to him as an indivisible whole. The spirit of separation in proportion as it insists upon a rigid division is a proof of imperfection. The highest and most cultivated minds always perceive a universal connection, and for the very reason that they perceive it they also establish it. Since everyone comes in contact only with his immediate neighbor, but at the same time has an immediate neighbor on all sides, and in every direction, he is in fact indissolubly linked in with the whole. Mystics and naturalists in religion, they too whom the Godhead is a personal being, and they to whom it is not. They who have arrived at a systematic view of the universe, and they who behold it only in its elements or only in obscure chaos. All, notwithstanding, should be only one, for one band surrounds them all, and they can be totally separated only by a violent and arbitrary force. Every specific combination is nothing but an integral part of the whole. Its peculiar characteristics are almost evanescent, and are gradually lost in outlines that become more and more indistinct, and at least those who feel themselves thus united will always be the superior portion. Once then, but through a total misunderstanding, have arisen that wild and disgraceful zeal for prosilism to a separate and peculiar form of religion, and that horrible expression. No salvation except with us. As I have described to you the society of the pious, and as it must needs be according to its intrinsic nature, it aims merely at reciprocal communication and subsists only between those who are already in possession of religion, of whatever character it may be. How then can it be its vocation to change the sentiments of those who now acknowledge a definite system, or to introduce and consecrate those who are totally destitute of one? The religion of this society as such consists only in the religion of all the pious taken together, as each one beholds it in the rest. It is infinite. No single individual can embrace it entirely. Since so far as it is individual, it ceases to be one. And hence no man can attain such elevation and completeness as to raise himself to its level. If any one then has chosen a part in it for himself, whatever it may be, were it not an absurd procedure for society to wish to deprive him of that which is adapted to his nature, since Ratu comprised this also within its limits, and hence someone must needs possess it. And to what end should it desire to cultivate those who are yet strangers to religion? Its own special characteristic, the infinite whole, of course it cannot impart to them, and the communication of any specific element cannot be accomplished by the whole, but only by individuals. But perhaps then the universal, the indeterminate, which might be presented when we seek that which is common to all the members. Yet we are aware that as a general rule nothing can be given or communicated in the form of the universal and indeterminate. For a specific object and precise form are requisite for this purpose. Otherwise in fact that which is presented would not be a reality but a nullity. Such a society accordingly can never find a measure for this undertaking. And how could it so far abandon its fear as to engage in this enterprise, the need on which it is founded, the essential principle of religious sociability points to no such purpose. Individuals unite with one another and compose a whole. The whole rests in itself and needs not to strive for anything beyond. Hence whatever is accomplished in this way for religion is the private affair of the individual for himself. And if I may say so, more in his relations out of the church than in it. Compelled to descend to the lower grounds of life from the circle of religious communion where the mutual existence of life in God afford him the most elevated enjoyment and where his spirit penetrated with holy feelings soars to the highest summit of consciousness, it is his consolation that he can connect everything with which he must there be employed with that which always retains the deepest significance in his heart. As he descends from such lofty regions to those whose whole endeavor and pursuit are limited to earth, he easily believes, and you must pardon him the feeling that he has passed from intercourse with gods and muses to a race of coarse barbarians. He feels like a steward of religion among the unbelieving, a herald of piety among the savages. He hopes, like Norpheus, or an Ampheon, to charm the multitude with his heavenly tones. He presents himself among them, like a priestly form, clearly and brightly exhibiting the lofty spiritual sense which fills his soul in all his actions and in the whole compass of his being. If the contemplation of the holy and the godly awakens a kindred emotion in them, how joyful does he cherish the first presages of religion in a new heart, and a delightful pledge of its growth even in a harsh and foreign clime. With what triumph does he bear the neo-fight with him to the exalted assembly? This action for the promotion of religion is only the pious yearning of the stranger after his home. The endeavor to carry his fatherland with him in all his wanderings, and everywhere to find again its laws and customs as the highest and most beautiful elements of his life. But the fatherland itself, happy in its own resources, perfectly sufficient for its own wants, knows no such endeavor. End of on the Social Element in Religion by Frederick Schliermacher, published in 1799.