Chapter III: Part 3

Having now had with you our several quarrels
We advance our lance to the subject of morals.
Ethics is a theme from which I can glean
Some substantial hopes for a better day;
When, with our prejudices all put away,
We shall all learn to act and think the things,
Which keep in view the good life to us brings.
While this subject is as plain as a b c
The same for some reason you fail to see.
Morals are the manners and customs one adopts
For himself in private life, while he hops,
Or walks and talks with his fellow men.
Good morals are good habits and bad, bad.
Habits are easily made, and when once had,
They are hard to break for anybody’s sake.
The “stream of thought” seems the road to take,
Where it once had run anywhere under the sun.
Morals are the acts of which life is composed
That we have upon ourselves imposed.
This definition was made by Immanuel Kant,
But as it is self evident, he needn’t want,
All the credit to claim if I use the same.
Laws cause you do as others compel you;
Ethics cause you to do what you like to.
There are only two things that push us along.
Think about it till you rack your brains,
And you’ll find them always pleasures and pains.
Some even take pleasure in their sorrow and grief;
And you’d not be thanked for offering a relief;
Nor for producing a balm to heal their wounds,
From which they suffered, regardless of their grounds.
Men, of their humility have been so proud;
That lugubriously, they’d stand up in any crowd;
Or with their heads bowed and on bended knees,
With the pride of their humbleness you they’d freeze.
The pleasures we desire and the pains we shun,
Were our only motives since the world begun.
Now keep this in mind as its use you’ll find,
As we treat of ethics and its motives behind.
“Self-imposed precepts” are not the moral code,
Prevalent in places where men their guns load,
To meet a fellow man in the public road,
To try out the question with bullets of lead,
On the field of honor, till one or both are dead;
Nor is it the legal code enacted by man,
Making rules against things under ban.
Morals deal with acts men actually intend,
Those motions adapted to some end.
“The wild gesticulations of a lunatic,”
Or of a crazy man who automatically throws a brick,
Bear no relation to the discussion of ethics.
The standards of morals take their hue
From the aims of life men hold in view.
The pessimist says life’s a failure entire,
So to meet the demands his views require,
A scheme of acts adapted to shortening life
To get this set soonest out of the strife,
And all the sad and tragic things,
The whole of existence to them brings,
Would be the highest standard of acts,
Which in goodness one for them enacts.
The optimist takes a very different view,
Life’s a pleasure while he its joys pursue.
For him a general life suited to make,
Life long, broad and deep for his sake,
Would be a good banner at him to shake.
So we say, bad morals are bad, and good, good.
The reason the subject by you is not understood,
Is, that while you must surely know,
You constantly misapply to ethics one word as you go.
The meaning of this word if you don’t get,
Is from stupidity, for you never yet
Went into a store anything to buy or even try,
But a practical demonstration was before your eye.
The first thing you ask about a razor or knife,
Is this, “Is it good?” and the clerk doesn’t cry,
“What do you mean!” if he wants you to buy.
He politely answers, “Both these tools cut good,
As they are warranted, one whiskers, and one wood,
And both of them do their part very good.”
If one of you farmers wished to acquire a cow,
You wouldn’t ask whether she could make a bow;
You would enquire how much milk she gave,
And how much butter, and could she save
You some expense in the way she’d behave.
If such questions had all been left out,
And the seller had known what he was about,
He’d said, “She’s good,” and everything’s understood.
If a female reader went to buy a new spring hat,
And the thing was in style, you would close your chat.
If it was in style, it’s good, every fool knows that,
The bargain’s made and the hat charged to pap.
The same thing is true of skirts and hoops,
Of dogs and cats, and chickens in coops;
You can’t look about or run around,
Without understanding this word always so profound,
And mysterious when applied to my theme;
With yawning face you almost dream,
And look confused when I try to tell what I mean.
You never ask about any of the things I’ve spoke,
Whether they say their prayers and never joke,
To speak of such, you at me your fun poke.
Now we’ll see whether you are sensible folk,
When you try to shed your customary cloak
Of prejudice and mysticism you croak,
Every time you try sense to ethics to apply.
Common sense teaches us there is no reason why,
The definition will not fit conduct every whit,
As it did other things about which I’ve writ.
Conduct is good if its ends come through,
And its natural results are good for me and you.
I take the optimist’s view, life’s a blessing,
And when to you my words I’m addressing,
Say whether I’m right in possessing,
The notion that acts are morally right and good,
That contribute to life as above understood.
In its thickness, breadth and length, all those things,
Which happiness achieve, diminishing man’s stings.
Before us examples have been set by teachers,
By Immanuel Kant better than preachers;
That each one of our actions should lofty be,
That each would be a model for a code of morality.
This form of hedonism I would gladly place
Before the eyes of the whole human race.
Asceticism is a term derived from the Greek,
Applied to monks, signifying the exercises they seek,
By which they distinguish themselves in that they do,
For favor with the deity in the lines they pursue,
Away from their fellow man as much as they can.
Virtue is a term originally meaning prowess,
And as applied to bravery they did possess;
It aroused the ancients to courage in distress.
When the Old Bard sang “the wrath
Of Peleus’ son against those in his path;
When his armies did advance with spear and lance,
Against the Trojans against whom he did advance;
Or of him sulking in his tent, nursing his spleen
Against tall Agamemnon for acts in being mean
Towards him in regard to a captive maid
Upon whom he had his affections laid.”
And all the bloody deeds done by gods and men,
Breathing anger from their nostrils when
Upon each other their darts they did hurl,
And in the dust many bleeding bodies did curl;
As these savage men struggled for their prize;
To their gods whole hecatombs did they sacrifice
Of poor dumb brutes that could not sympathize
With them in their bloody wars and heroic cries.
Out of virtue as thus defined did arise
Asceticism and all the horrid tortures it did devise.
Even now men are so wedded to their inspired books
And things written in them by ancients where one looks
To find every act for you and me so well defined
That they claim that all experience combined,
Cannot those precepts change to suit the age;
Although we point out inconsistency on every page.
They even allege that what by their book is said,
Makes things good or bad under each particular head.
That even as simple a thing as theft,
If out of their book the subject were left,
There would be nothing in our practical observation
To distinguish whether or not stealing was a proper avocation.
Whatever of man’s moral nature the origin may be,
Whether he was created with a certain propensity,
Or whether our tendencies are a matter of growth;
One thing is certain, and needs not any oath,
To prove that our several tastes may be improved,
To treat our fellow man as it him behoved;
And toward ourselves the truer to be,
Until our standards and the right did agree.
If all the acts that you and I must do,
Were written into mandates constantly held in view,
And we should follow them all the way through,
We still would be nothing but very slaves,
Marching under orders of some specially wise knaves.
Now if one in what he does, lives to the very top,
Of his own ideals, him we cannot stop,
Until for him his ideas we raise; he is up to full speed,
For the requirements of all are not if the same meed.
Most of man’s motions should be left to his whims,
Whether he rides or walks, or even swims.
Moral conduct being by each self imposed,
The acts men do will naturally be disclosed,
In the things they like in the tastes disclosed.
When the acts of men are ruled by laws enacted,
From the category of ethics they are subtracted.
No human motions should be forced or restrained,
Unless the welfare of others is to be attained.
In some general sense, everything I do,
To a limited extent, has its natural effect on you.
By two meeting in the road, one of us must turn,
To let the other pass or his rig might overturn.
By breathing the air some oxygen I must consume,
Also infecting what remains by what I exhume.
When in the market I buy my daily supplies,
That alone has a tendency to make the price rise;
So that you have to pay more for your store.
Thus in many and varied ways our motions bear
Some natural disadvantages we should all share,
In our relations each with each as we live everywhere.
Any physical fact, however simple it may look,
May change aspect by the turns it took,
Showing how the morality of any motion,
May appear and disappear, simply by the notion
We have about those unseen motives in its track
Preceding, going with, or following it back.
In presence of ladies a man takes off his hat,
To show respect for them and nothing but that.
The morality of this act is not hard to adjust.
The same gentleman to brush away the dust,
Takes off the same hat in perfect disgust.
In each case the taking off the hat was in view.
The one act was moral, while the other it’s true,
With the question of ethics had nothing to do.
He now takes off his hat at the command of the law,
In the presence of the court where he waits in awe.
Being tired of the hat, he takes it off to sell,
Now the above illustration you know so well,
That its application I’ll leave you to spell.
“Nothing’s good or bad but the thinking makes it so.”
Behold the beauty of ethics, let us make it grow.
If you want plants to thrive, cultivate the soil,
Don’t over fertilize, or you will make them spoil.
We may stimulate our desires for good morals,
And our desire for good deeds, even by quarrels.
We may over stimulate the passions of the youth,
Even when trying upon them to impress the truth.
By unduly stimulating their appetite for gains,
And their desires for pleasures without enduring the pains;
And by excess their natures may be changed.
In that way we destroy their faculty to enjoy,
The real blessings of life born of strife.
Rewards and punishments for acts and omissions,
Are causes for delinquencies and its commissions.
Both have their way their victims to sway,
From the natural paths of right every day.
Every good act brings its consequential pay
And every wrong act its own punishment,
Upon all who upon mischief are always bent.
But to add to the natural consequence of things,
Which their performance usually brings,
This over pay in the nature of rewards,
Drives one on until the pay alone he regards,
And the nature of crimes fades out of view,
While the punishment alone is considered by you.
Thus on we are naturally driven from our path,
Straying out of the right and the pleasures it hath.
Most of our motions should be left open to choice
To develop our selective faculties in acts and voice,
That make us kind and fellows to rejoice.
A certain kind of approval we feel,
That might be compared to the scent flowers yield,
Upon the doing or even contemplation of acts.
There is also a stifling sensation coming about,
The doing of things about which there is a doubt,
As to whether we ought, although never found out,
Think, do, or pursue the thing we’re about.
Conscience is the name applied
To this moving feeling with our faculties allied.
And some say it is a true moral guide.
But experience finds conscience in this plight,
It approves everything we think to be right,
And condemns all things in our sight,
That even from ignorance we deem wrong that may be right.
For conscience’ sake many have been burned at the stake,
To appease its gnawings, and thirst for blood to slake.
Gored by its pricks, Hindu mothers, their own babes,
In innocence swathed, into the seething waves,
Of the River Ganges, writhing, religiously they fling,
While to this river god their hymns they sing,
Galled by conscience the monk and anchorite,
In dark caves, out of human sight,
Tear their flesh and do themselves every spite
To humiliate themselves in heaven’s sight.
What a freak conscience has proved to be,
Is illustrated in a story by Heinrich Heine,
Of a certain judge in a certain state,
Having condemned eight hundred by his mandate,
To be burned at the stake for witchcraft,
One day conscience threw at him its own shaft.
He imagined too that he was guilty of the crime,
That so many others had been during his time.
So to quiet his conscience he paid the fine;
And having declared himself guilty, did resign,
And purge his soul in punishment condign.
Conscience may help us our morals to regulate,
But first of all, we must our conscience educate,
By educating the head by which it is led.
Know the right and do it too as best you can
And conscience will aid you to be a man.
To learn the right, and it pursue,
Read all books and observe the actions of man,
Acquire by your own experience all you can;
Value conduct as you would value your goods,
Digest the subject as you do your foods,
Always keeping in view that present good,
Is often best achieved, when understood,
By enduring pains now to prepare us for pleasures,
In the days to come in greater measures.
After all, the art which makes life a success
In blessing those we love to bless,
Is to find th’ equilibrium of pleasures and pains,
As we do our business losses and gains.
Altruism is a word by Auguste Compte made,
Meaning regard for others, which he truly said,
We should cultivate and human love assimilate.
Sometimes the best thing for others we can do,
Is not to worry them, but our own course pursue,
And to ourselves be true, and they’ll pull through.

Sunday Laws

Having enjoyed our quarrels, before we pause,
Let us take a look at your Sunday laws.
In olden time Sabbath breaking was a crime
Of such deep hue, that if anything you do
On that blessed day, even to earn a dime,
By shoveling snow, just about the time,
You begin to know that you must explore
For a little bread to keep wolf from your door.
Now the reason they did pense, for making that offense,
As I divine the most heinous of their time;
Was, that of all the days, it only took six,
For God the funds to raise and no plans to mix,
To build heaven and earth and all stars to fix;
And that the job was all finished so good,
By sundown Saturday night, as they understood,
That on Sunday He had nothing left to do;
So the Lord had to rest, and now must you.
If mistaken in the reasons as to me it looks,
Plenty of Sunday laws are found in your statute books;
And you can read them all yourself,
By taking them off their shelf.
But all those laws have now grown so very old,
And all the pages that them do hold,
Are all stuck together with moss and rust,
So that if you really and truly must,
Take a look at them yourself to see if they are just,
It would be better to hire some old maid or hag,
Who would supply herself with a dust brush and rag
From their pages to scrub away the mold of decay.
Every few years, say one in ten,
Some one or two of our fanatic men,
Or some great big oratorical fellow,
Who imagines that with all ease he can bellow,
And scare the boys their toys to put away,
On the holy, blessed Sabbath day.
As once happened in my own native state,
In almost a comparatively modern date.
This oratorical man became prosecutor of the law;
And he began in earnest to apply his jaw.
He gave us such a jar, that it was hard a cigar,
Or even a loaf of bread to get near or far.
Finally this one did his feathers plume,
And a race for Congress he began to assume;
Thinking that trip he could easily fly.
We then commenced to sing “as in days gone by,”
Before he was walking about our doors stalking,
Upon our heads to precipitate his wrath,
To keep us all in the old straight and narrow path.
In not such an awfully long time, we awoke to find,
That by somebody’s nudge, our man was criminal judge.
Dead sure now was he that he could scare all the boys away
From everything that looked like work or even play,
On the Sabbath day, and being in the lurch,
Haply a number would stumble into church,
When the choir began to sing and the coin to ring
In the collection box handed around by a sly fox.
Criminal informations for men in every station,
Who in his estimation, were the Sabbath breaking,
And the church forsaking, issued from his court,
Patiently did the folks go their bails,
And barely kept them out of our jails,
Till the humane change of venue came:
Then alas for his fame, nothing but blame,
For his services lent, and the people’s money spent.
By simple non-use laws may die, in the public eye.
When they go out of date, there is no need to legislate;
They are always considered as off the slate.
So let all our captives out with joy and glee,
And let us learn one thing from the Man of Galilee,
That the Sabbath was made for man.

True Religion

To work and love and live and do
For others as for oneself, in my view,
Would be a good religion for me and for you.
To help ourselves and others to educate,
That all false pride, selfishness and hate,
Come from ignorance and is not innate.
It is born of the admiration some bestow
On fools who parade around to make a show
Of their wealth, and also the clothes they wear,
Thinking themselves too good our company to share.
’Tis not the books we read, nor the speed,
That we travel, nor our boasted creed;
’Tis not the strength we have to believe,
All the tales that from others we receive;
Nor the ugly faces we make when we grieve;
Nor those long drawn out sighs we heave;
Nor even the sorrow we feel for crimes,
Committed away back in ancient times,
By Adam and Eve among their vines
Of the lovely Garden of Eden
Where before there was not a weed in.
Go to church if you please, don your bonnet and hike,
Take a front seat or sit with the choir if you like,
Invite others too, but don’t frown if they do
Let you go by yourself if they want you.
When you see a brother come to great grief,
Don’t take that chance to give yourself relief,
Of a burden you’ve carried to get a chance
To heave at him while down, your pious lance;
Put your arms around his neck, his pains to check,
And take some other time his sins to inspect.
Put your money in the missionary field,
To send to all China and all around you feel,
Like saving them from their idols to whom they kneel;
Spread yourself on land and sea to get them in the band;
All this you do and have not charity,
And your religion is not right for me.
Cut out Sunday, sin, satan and hell,
Leave the gods up where they are wont to dwell;
Change all of your songs about heaven above
To things upon our earth and human love;
Put off your mourning, lugubrious whine
And think of man as the one divine;
Learn to talk and walk and act
As if man’s freedom was a real fact.
Let your parsons take off their gowns,
And smooth out all their wrinkly frowns;
And preach about potatoes, corn and hay,
Just as if folks on earth intended to stay.
Let deacons and monks and all their crew,
Find work for themselves to toil and do;
Use all your churches, temples and spires,
According to man’s natural and ordinary desires;
Stop talking about inspired books and creeds,
But show your faith by human thoughts and deeds.
Immaculate conception and total depravity,
Are entirely too heavy for mortal’s gravity;
Baptism, holy unction, and the new birth divine,
Are elements in which gods alone may shine.
All our superstitions and fears and shame,
Originate in reverence for some holy name,
Burned into man by torch, faggot and flame.
Prophets, priests and seers of old,
So long their marvellous tales have told,
That none on earth but the reckless and old,
A doubt against them dare to hold.
Their ancient books and maps and charts,
Are indelibly branded upon our hearts.
From childhood hour at chime of bell
All congregate to hear the preacher tell
Of the garden of Eden where the serpent bold,
To our first mother did his story unfold;
And, that fascinated by that shiny snake,
She has doomed us all to the burning lake,
With no water our scorching thirst to slake.
He tells us too with all his might and main,
That for our crimes the pensive one was slain;
And that by his death on the cruel cross,
We may recoup our first mother’s loss.
That all are bound in the chains of sin,
Steeped in iniquity she did begin,
By that headlong fall our mother Eve fell,
And, unless we believe the tales they tell,
Our lot will be cast with the damned in hell.

Immortality

(A Digression.)

When for us our eyes are closed in silent sleep,
And over our rigid body is spread the sheet,
While loved ones around us sob and weep.
When in black our form is shrouded;
And taken to some church all crowded,
Our last rites to receive at loving hands,
Who over our coffin wreathe their garlands
Of flowers, whose fragrance perfume
The air, while loving hearts with song attune,
The stillness to break in hymns of hope;
And the speaker in his talk to cope
With human grief and doubts and fears,
Says consoling words to dry up our tears.
When in our grave, made with pick and spade,
Our embalmed body is solemnly laid;
Does that end us all and all our parade?
Is that all of life to end in dust?
From which our body came once robust?
Or will there come some unseen power
Our lost life to restore in some distant hour,
By some loud trumpet blast us awake
From deep sleep our slumber to break?
Who pines the answer to know,
May have to wait, or the knowledge forego.
Science teaches that what of life we see,
In man as in vegetation, shrub and tree,
Are manifestations of acts the body performs.
That mystic thing called “thought” man’s life adorns,
Is but the throbbing of the active brain.
That each lobe and part of the brain,
Responds to particular senses we feel.
One convolution smells, one hears, one sees;
One urges locomotion, or brings us to our knees;
As upon them play the subtle waves from without
Receiving the response within of what we’re about.
If all this be true, how can it be
That when this machine is destroyed as we see,
That these results can obtain thus set free.
When the grey matter of the brain is back in dust,
Into its original atoms rudely thrust.
Unless it be that life itself is a thing apart,
And the brain, nerves and throbbing heart,
Are but the instruments through which it plays,
And when this body in which it now stays,
With all of its parts, is dead and gone,
Another new body shall us adorn.
They tell us such things in a book divine;
And that this new body shall shine,
Forever amid the stars and in glory shall walk,
Around a throne and to the king shall talk;
And that under the shade of the tree of life,
Find eternal peace free from toil and strife.

Death

Death always strikes with a terrific blow,
Because it drives us to where we do not know.
All the saddened past has been filled with a guess.
Ages have been spent in trying to relieve its distress.
Men have sought magic and the spells it casts
To answer questions and all inquiries of death asked.
Yet, after all, we simply know that it is the fate
We all must equally share with those we love or hate.
Life is but a short story for us when it is told;
Its brief animation for the young and for the old
Is only an agitation, a ripple on the waves of time.
A few joys, a few sorrows, a few thoughts sublime
As onward we speed into the Great Beyond unknown.
Could we but open the doors and see the paths strown
With all the remains of the billions before us thrown
Into the gaping jaws of death, devouring its own,
We might then unravel its mysteries deep,
We might then have visions of those who sleep;
But into that vast chasm none are allowed to peep.
Vain it is to pry into this oblivion profound,
Vain to attempt its hidden meaning to expound;
Vain to ask why the hungry jaws of this Monster Great
Does not spare our loved ones, why he should immolate
Kings in palaces and peasants in huts of want,
Babes in cradles and aged ones lean and gaunt.
If we are inevitably doomed to this common end;
Should we fear when towards it our journeys tend?
We cannot shun it by fear or by hope,
We must meet it, and with its pangs must cope.
In which ever way our winding paths may lead
Death faces us with its devastating looks of greed.
It comes to us in a thousand different ways;
It visits us at night when the sun has hid its rays;
It greets us at noonday when the sun is high;
No one can escape its ever-vigilant eye;
All the living must yield up to it and die.
Is death a curse, then all the living are cursed;
Is death a blessing, then all the living will be blessed.
It cannot be an evil, nature creates nothing wrong;
And it is only nature while we follow it along.
Mother earth brings us all into this life;
And this same mother calls us back from its strife.
Can it be that our mother would be unkind?
In a universal mother, universal love we find.
Although her children be numbered by millions;
And all her numberless offspring run into billions;
Yet no partiality she shows; all are treated the same;
Her rules are based on fate, break them and bear the blame.
How could her laws be varied to suit her flock?
Anarchy would reign and destroy her stock.
One universal law; death waits us all;
So let us be courageous while we wait its call.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Twentieth Century Epic, by R. B. Garnett