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Published for the Secular Society Ltd.
The Pioneer Press (G.W. Foot and Co. Ltd.)
61, Farringdon Street, E.C.4
Introduction
Amberley, Lord
Baskerville, John
Bayle, Pierre
Bentham, Jeremy
Bert, Paul
Bolingbroke, Lord
Bradlaugh, Charles
Broussais, Francois
Bruno, Giordano
Buckle, Henry Thomas
Burton, Sir Richard F.
Byron, Lord
Carlile, Richard
Clifford, William K.
Clootz, Anacharsis
Collins, Anthony
Comte, Auguste
Condorcet
Conway, Moncure D.
Cooper, Robert
D'Alembert
Danton
Darwin, Charles Robert
Darwin, Erasmus
Delambre
Diderot, Denis
Dolet, Etienne
Eliot, George
Ferrer, Francisco
Feuerbach, ltidwig A.
Foote, George William
Frederick the Great
Gambetta, Leon
Garibaldi
Gendre, Isaac
Gibbon, Edward
Godwin, William
Goethe, Johann W.
Grote, George
Helvetius
Hetherington, Henry
Hobbes, Thomas
Holyoake, Austin
Holyoake, George J.
Hugo, Victor
Hume, David
Ingersoll, Robert G.
Jefferies, Richard
Julian the Apostate
Lessing, Gothold
Littre, M
Lloyd, J. T.
Martin, Emma
Martineau, Harriet
Meredith, George
Meslier, Jean
Mill, James
Mill, John Stuart
Mirabeau
Ostwald, Wilhelm
Owen, Robert
Paine, Thomas
Palmer, Courtlandt
Rabelais
Reade, Winwood
Robertson, J. M.
Roland, Madame
Sand, George
Schiller
Shelley
Spencer, Herbert
Spinoza
Strauss
Swinburne
Symes, Joseph
Toland, John
Vanini
Volney
Voltaire
Watson, James
Watts, John
Woolston, Thomas
Chapter I - How the Ancients Viewed Death
Chapter II - The Christian View of Death
Chapter III - The Freethinker's Attitude to Death
Chapter IV - Some Christian Death-beds
Pope Alexander VI
Pope Boniface VIII
Jesus Christ
William Cowper
Thomas Crammer
Pope John VIII
Samuel Johnson
Pope Leo X
Martin Luther
Cardinal Manning
Hugh Miller
George Tyrrell
I am responsible for the whole of Part II of the present edition, and for the records of those Freethinkers whose names are marked in the Index.
A.D.M.
Pictorial art has been pressed into the service of this plea for religion, and in such orthodox periodicals as the British Workman, to say nothing of the hordes of pious inventions which are circulated as tracts, expiring skeptics have been portrayed in agonies of terror, gnashing their teeth, wringing their hands, rolling their eyes, and exhibiting every sign of despair.
One minister of the gospel, the Rev. Erskine Neale, has not thought it beneath his dignity to compose an extensive series of these holy frauds, under the title of Closing Scenes. This work was, at one time, very popular and influential; but its specious character having been exposed, it has fallen into disrepute, or at least into neglect.
The real answer to these arguments, if they may be called such, is to be found in the body of the present work. I have narrated in a brief space, and from the best authorities, the "closing scenes" in the lives of many eminent Freethinkers during the last three centuries. They are not anonymous persons without an address, who cannot be located in time or space, and who simply serve "to point a moral or adorn a tale." Their manor are in most cases historical, and in some cases familiar to fame; great poets, philosophers, historians, and wits, of deathless memory, who cannot be withdrawn from the history of our race without robbing it of much of its dignity and splendor.
In some instances I have prefaced the story of their deaths with a short, and in others with a lengthy, record of their lives. The ordinary reader cannot be expected to possess a complete acquaintance with the career and achievements of every great soldier of progress; and I have therefore considered it prudent to afford such information as might be deemed necessary to a proper appreciation of the character, the greatness, and the renown, of the subjects of my sketches. When the hero of the story has been the object of calumny or misrepresentation, when his death has been falsely related, and simple facts, have been woven into a tissue of lying absurdity, I have not been content with a bare narration of the truth; I have carried the war into the enemy's camp, and refuted their mischievous libels.
One of our greatest living thinkers entertains "the belief that the English mind, not readily swayed by rhetoric, moves freely under the pressure of facts." [NOTE: Dr. E.B. Taylor: Preface to second edition of; "PRIMITIVE CULTURES] I may therefore venture to hope that the facts I have recorded will have their proper effect on the reader's mind. Yet it may not be impolitic to examine the orthodox argument as to death-bed repentance.
Carlyle, in his Essay on Voltaire, utters a potent warning against anything of the kind: --
Surely the parting agonies of a fellow-mortal, when the spirit of our brother, rapt in the whirlwinds and thick ghastly vapors of death, clutches blindly for help, and no help is there, are not the scenes where a wise faith would seek to exult, when it can no longer hope to alleviate! For the rest, to touch farther on those their idle tales of dying horrors, remorse, and the like; to write of such, to believe them, or disbelieve them, or in anywise discuss them, were but a continuation of the same inaptitude. He who, after the imperturbable exit of so many Cartouches and Thurtells, in every age of the world can continue to regard the manner of a man's death as a test of his religions orthodoxy, may boast himself impregnable to merely terrestrial logic.There is a great deal of truth in this vigorous passage. I fancy, however, that some of the dupes of priestcraft are not absolutely impregnable to terrestrial logic, and I discuss the subject for their sakes, even at the risk of being held guilty of "inaptitude."
[ESSAYS; Vol. II, p. 161 (Peoples Edition)]
Throughout the world the religion of mankind is determined by the geographical accident of their birth. In England men grow up Protestants; in Italy, Catholics; in Russia, Greek Christians; in Turkey, Mohammedans; in India, Brahmans; in China, Buddhists or Confucians. What they are taught in their childhood they believe in their manhood; and they die in the faith in which they have lived.
Here and there a few men think for themselves. If they discard the faith in which they have been educated, they are never free from its influence. it meets them at every turn, and is constantly, by a thousand ties, drawing them back to the orthodox fold. The stronger resist this attraction, the weaker succumb to it. Between them is the average man, whose tendency will depend on several things. If he is isolated, or finds but few sympathizers, he may revert to the ranks of faith; if he finds many of the same opinion with himself, he will probably display more fortitude. Even Freethinkers are gregarious, and in the worst as well as the best sense of the words, the saying of Novalis is true -- "My thought gains infinitely when it is shared by another."
But in all cases of reversion, the skeptic invariably turns to the creed of his own country. What does this prove? Simply the power of our environment, and the force of early training. When "infidels" are few, and their relatives are orthodox, what could be more natural than what is called "a death-bed recantation?" Their minds are enfeebled by disease, or the near approach of death; they are surrounded by persons who continually urge them to be reconciled to the popular faith; and is it astonishing if they sometimes yield to these solicitations? Is it wonderful if, when all grows dim, and the priestly carrion-crow of the death-chamber mouths the perfunctory shibboleths, the weak brain should become dazed, and the poor tongue mutter a faint response?
Should the dying man be old, there is still less reason for surprise. Old age yearns back to the cradle, and as Dante Rossetti says: --
"Life all past Is like the sky when the sun sets in it, Clearest where furthest off."The "recantation" of old men, if it occurs, is easily understood. Having been brought up in a particular religion, their earliest and tenderest memories may be connected with it; and when they lie down to die they may mechanically recur to it, just as they may forget whole years of their maturity, and vividly remember the scenes of their childhood. Those who have read Thackeray's exquisitely faithful and pathetic narrative of the death of old Col. Newcome, will remember that as the evening chapel bell tolled its last note, he smiled, lifted his head a little, and cried Adsum! ("I am present"), the boy's answer when the names were called at school.
Cases of recantation, if they were ever common, which does not appear to be true, are now exceedingly rare; so rare, indeed, that they are never heard of except in anonymous tracts, which are evidently concocted for the glory of God, rather than the edification of Man. Skeptics are at present numbered by thousands, and they can nearly always secure at their bedsides the presence of friends who share their unbelief. Every week, the Freethought journals report quietly, and as a matter of course, the peaceful end of "infidels" who, having lived without hypocrisy, have died without fear. They are frequently buried by their heterodox friends, and never a week passes without the Secular Burial. Service, or some other appropriate words, being read by skeptics over a skeptic's grave.
Christian ministers know this. They usually confine themselves, therefore, to the death-bed stories of Paine and Voltaire, which have been again and again refuted. Little, if anything, is said about the eminent Freethinkers who have died in the present generation. The priests must wait half a century before they can hope to defame them with success. Our cry to these pious sutlers is Hands off!" Refute the arguments of Freethinkers, if you can; but do not obtrude your disgusting presence in the death chamber, or vent your malignity over their tombs.
Supposing, however, that every Freethinker turned Christian on his death-bed. It is a tremendous stretch of fancy, but I make it for the sake of argument. What does it prove? Nothing, as I said before, but the force of our surroundings and early training. It is a common saying among Jews, when they hear of a Christian proselyte, "Ah, wait till he comes to die!" As a matter of fact, converted Jews generally die in the faith of their race; and the same is alleged as to the native converts that are made by our missionaries in India.
Heine has a pregnant passage on this point. Referring to Joseph Schelling, who was "an apostate to his own thought," who deserted the altar he had himself consecrated," and returned to the crypts of the past," Heine rebukes the "old believers," who cried Kyrie eleison ("Lord, have mercy in honor of such a conversion." That," he says proves nothing for their doctrine. It only proves that man turns to religion when he is old and fatigued, when his physical and mental force has left him, when he can no longer enjoy nor reason. So many Freethinkers are converted on their death-beds! ... But at least do not boast of them. These legendary conversions belong at best to pathology, and are a poor evidence for your cause. After all, they only prove this, that it was impossible for you to convert those Freethinkers while they were healthy in body and mind." [NOTE: [De l'Allemagne, Vol. I, p. 174]
Renan has some excellent words on the same subject in his delightful volume of autobiography. After expressing a rooted preference for a sudden death, he continues: "I should be grieved to go through one of those periods of feebleness, in which the man who has possessed strength and virtue is only the shadow and ruins of himself, and often, to the great joy of fools, occupies himself in demolishing the life he had laboriously built up. Such an old age is the worst gift the gods can bestow on man. If such a fate is reserved for me, I protest in advance against the fatuities that a softened brain may make me say or sign. It is Renan sound in heart and head, such as I am now, and not Renan half destroyed by death, and no longer himself, as I shall be if I decompose gradually, that I wish people to listen to and believe." [NOTE: Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse, p. 377]
To find the best passage on this topic in our own literature we must go back to the seventeenth century, and to Selden's 'Table Talk,' a volume in which Coleridge found "more weighty bullion sense" than he "ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer." Selden lived in a less mealy-mouthed age than ours, and what I am going to quote smacks of the blunt old times; but it is too good to miss, and all readers who are not prudish will thank me for citing it. "For a priest," says Selden, "to turn a man when he lies a dying, is just like one that has a long time solicited a woman, and cannot obtain his end; at length he makes her drunk, and so lies with her." It is a curious thing that the writer of these words helped to draw up the Westminster Confession of faith.
For my own part, while I have known many Freethinkers who were steadfast to their principles in death, I have never known a single case of recantation. The fact is, Christians are utterly mistaken on this subject. it is quite intelligible that those who believe in a vengeful. God, and an everlasting hell, should tremble on "the brink of eternity"; and it is natural that they should ascribe to others the same trepidation. But a moment's reflection must convince them that this is fallacious. The only terror in death is the apprehension of what lies beyond it, and that emotion is impossible to a sincere disbeliever. Of course the orthodox may ask, "But is there a sincere disbeliever?" To which I can only reply, like Diderot, by asking, "Is there a sincere Christian?"
Professor Tyndall, while repudiating Atheism himself, has borne testimony to the earnestness of others who embrace it. "I have known some of the most pronounced among them," he says, "not only in life but in death - seen them approaching with open eyes the inexorable goal, with no dread of a hangman's whip, with no hope of a heavenly crown, and still as mindful of their duties, and as faithful in the discharge of them, as if their eternal future depended on their latest deeds." [NOTE: Fortnightly Review, November 1877]
Lord Bacon said, "I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death." True, and the physical suffering, and the pang of separation, are the same for all. Yet the end of life is as natural as its beginning, and the true philosophy of existence is nobly expressed in the lofty sentence of Spinoza, "A free man thinks less of nothing than of death."
"So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his conch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."G.W.F.
[Bryan, Thanatopsies]
NOTE for the computer edition 1991: Lord Amberley was the father of Bertrand Russell, the famous philosopher-Freethinker- Atheist, and Bertrand Russell was the son who was legally denied a "skeptical" education as stipulated in Lord Amberley's will.
Stranger,
Beneath this cone, in unconsecrated ground,
A friend to the liberties of mankind directed
His body to be inured.
May the example contribute to emancipate thy
Mind from the idle fears of Superstition
And the wicked arts of Priesthood.
This virtuous man and useful citizen took precautions against
"the wicked arts of priesthood." "His will," says Mr. Leslie
Stephen, "professed open contempt for Christianity, and the
biographers who reproduce the document always veil certain passages
with lines of stars as being far too indecent (i.e., irreverent)
for repetition." [NOTE: Dictionary of National Biography.]The final moments of this great scholar are described by a friend who had the account from an attendant. "M. Bayle died," says M. Seers' "with great tranquillity and without anybody with him. At nine o'clock in the morning his landlady entered his chamber; he asked her, but with a dying voice, if his fire was kindled, and died a moment after, without M. Basnage, (Author of the first History of the Jews) or me, or any of his friends with him."
Born on February 15, 1748, Bentham died on June 6, 1832. By a will dating as far back as 1769, his body was left for the purposes of science, "not out of affectation of singularity, but to the intent and with the desire that mankind may reap some small benefit in and by my decease, having hitherto had small opportunities to contribute thereto while living." A memorandum affixed shows that this clause was deliberately confirmed two months before his death.
Dr. Southwood Smith delivered a lecture over Bentham's remains, three days after his death, in the Webb Street School of Anatomy. He thus described the last moments of his illustrious friend: --
Some time before his death, when he truly believed he was near that hour, he said to one of his disciples, who was watching over him: "I now feel that I am dying; our care must be to minimis the pain. Do not let any of the servants come into my room and keep away the youth: it will be distressing to them, and they can be of no service. Yet I must not be alone: you will remain with me, and you only; and then we shall have reduced the pain to the least possible amount." Such were his last thoughts and feelings.Mr. Leslie Stephen relates a similar story in the 'Dictionary of National Biography.' As a Utilitarian, Bentham regarded happiness as the only good and pain as the only evil. He met death "serenely," but like a sensible man he "minimized the pain."
[Dr. Southwood Smith's Lecture, p. 62]
During Garnbetta's short-lived government Paul Bert held the post of Minister of Public Instruction. In 1886 he went out to Tonquin as Resident-General. Hard work and the pestilential climate laid him low and he succumbed to dysentery. When the news of his death reached the French Chamber, M. Freycinet thus announced the event from the tribune: --
I announce with the deepest sorrow the death of M. Paul Bert. He died literally on the field of honor, broken down by the fatigues and hardships which he so bravely endured in trying to carry out the glorious task which he had undertaken. The Chamber loses by his death one of its most eminent members, Science one of its most illustrious votaries, France one of her most loving and faithful children, and the Government a fellow-worker of inestimable value, in whom we placed the fullest confidence. Excuse me, gentlemen, if because my strength fails me I am unable to proceed.The sitting was raised as a mark of respect, and the next day the Chamber voted a public funeral and a pension to Paul Bert's family. Bishop Freppel opposed the first vote on the ground that the deceased was an inveterate enemy of religion, but he was ignominiously beaten, the majority against him being 379 to 45. Despite this miserable protest, while Paul Bert's body was on its way to Europe the clerical party started a canard about his "conversion." Perhaps the story originated in the fact that he had daily visited the Hanoi Hospital, distributing books and medicines and speaking kind words to the nuns in attendance. It was openly stated and unctuously commented on in the religious journals, that the Resident-General had sent for a Catholic bishop on his death-bed and taken the sacrament; and as inventions of this kind are always circumstantial, it was said that the Papal Nuticio at Lisbon had received this intelligence. But on December 29 the Papal Nuncio telegraphed that his name had been improperly used; and two days later, when the French war- ship touched at the Suez Canal, Madame Bert telegraphed that the story was absolutely and entirely false.
Bolingbroke's philosophical writings show him to have been a Deist. He believed in God, but he rejected Revelation. His views are advanced and supported with erudition, eloquence, and masterly irony. The approach of death, which was preceded by the excruciating disease of cancer in the cheek, did not produce the least change in his convictions. According to Goldsmith, "He was consonant with himself to the last; and those principles which he had all along avowed, he confirmed with his dying breath, having given orders that none of the clergy should be permitted to trouble him in his last moments." ['Life of Lord Bilingbroke:' Works, IX, p. 248: Tegg. 1835.]
In 1860 he established the National Reformer, an uncompromisingly Atheistic journal, which at first had to contend against a host of difficulties, including a Government prosecution to compel him to find securities against the publication of matter of a blasphemous or seditious nature. His successful defence resulted in the repeal of the Security Laws. Bradlaugh's knowledge of the law was wide, but apart from this he always showed remarkable penetration in perceiving the legal points involved in the charges brought against him. In 1876, When he and Mrs. Besant were prosecuted for publishing a Malthusian work, his accurate knowledge of the law again stood him in good stead. They were convicted, but the conviction was quashed on appeal.
In 1866 Bradlaugh founded the National Secular Society and remained its President until 1890. The Society is still flourishing and keeps a strong current of popular Freethought in movement all over England.
Bradlaugh first became a candidate for Parliament in 1868, but was not elected till 1880. He asked to be allowed to make affirmation of allegiance, instead of taking the Oath, but a Select Committee reported against his claim. The story of his Parliamentary struggle and his subsequent triumph, the last stage in which only came at the time of his death, cannot be related here. It is a thrilling story and reveals the character of the man as it stands written, in every chapter of his career from his first encounter with the Rev. J.G. Packer. In 1886 Bradlaugh was allowed to take his seat and two years later, through his instrumentality, a Bill was carried permitting an affirmation to be made in all cases where an oath was required by law.
Although a considerable part of Bradlaugh's life was devoted to political work, it is probably as the "image-breaker," the protagonist of Freethought, that he will be longest remembered. A bare list of the names of those: with whom he debated would probably fill several pages of this book. It is needless to say that he never left any room for doubt as to what his real convictions were. He has himself told us that "about the middle of 1850" he was "honored by the British Banner with a leading article "vigorously assailing" him for his lectures against Christianity. This "assailing" never ceased during his life, and was by no means confined to his views and opinions. He wrote numerous pamphlets. The 'Plea for Atheism' appeared in 1877 and has frequently been reprinted. 'Humanity's Gain from Unbelief' has also had a wide circulation. In the debate with the Rev. W.M. Westerby on Has or is Man a Soul? (1879), and elsewhere, he shows his complete rejection of belief in a future life.
Bradlaugh died on January 30, 1891. His daughter, Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner, took minute precautions to procure "signed testimony from those who had been attending him," that during his last illness he had never uttered a word directly or indirectly bearing upon religion. The last words she heard him speak during the night of his death "were reminiscent of his voyage to India." Despite this testimony the traditional Christian falsehoods on this subject are still circulated and the writer of this notice is constantly encountering them. As recently as Alay, 1932, Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner found it necessary to refute the absurd story about her father's holding a watch and challenging God to kill him in sixty seconds. (The Literary Guide, p. 84.) Such mendacities no longer yield the amusement of novelty to Freethinkers, they are rather considered a tribute to Bradlaugh's greatness.
Authority: Charles Bradlaugh (1894) and Did Charles Bradlaugh die an Atheist? (1913), both by Mrs. H. Bradlaugh Bonner.
I was an infant when my mother went
To see an Atheist burned. She took me there
The dark-robed priests were met around the pile,
The multitude was gazing silently;
And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,
Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,
Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth
The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;
His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon
His death-pang rent my heart! The insensate mob
Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.
Giordano Bruno was born at Nola, near Naples, in 1548, ten
years after the death of Copernicus, and ten years before the
birth of Bacon. At the age of fifteen he became a novice in the
monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, and after his year's
novitiate expired he took the monastic vows. Studying deeply, he
became heretical, and an act of accusation was drawn up against
the boy of sixteen. Eight years later he was threatened with
another trial for heresy. A third process was more to be dreaded,
and in his twenty-eighth year Bruno fled from his persecutors. He
visited Rome, Noli, Venice, Turin and Padua. At Milan he made the
acquaintance of Sir Philip Sidney. After teaching for some time
in the university, he went to Chambery, but the ignorance and
bigotry of its monks were too great for his patience. He next
visited Geneva, but although John Calvin was dead, his dark
spirit still remained, and only flight preserved Bruno from the
fate of Servetus. Through Lyons he passed to Toulouse, where he
was elected Public Lecturer to the University. In 1579 he went to
Paris. The streets were still foul with the blood of the
Bartholomew massacres, but Bruno declined a professorship at the
Sorbonne, a condition of which was attending mass. Henry the
Third, however, made him Lecturer extraordinary to the
University. Paris at letigth became too hot to hold him, and he
went to London, where he lodged with the French Ambassador. His
evenings were mostly spent with Sir Philip Sidney, Fulke
Greville, Dyer and Hervey. So great was his fame that he was
invited to read at the University of Oxford, where he also, held
a public debate with its orthodox professors on the Copernican
astronomy. Leaving London in 1584, he returned to Paris, and
there also he publicly disputed with the Sorbonne. His safety
being once more threatened, he went to Marburg, and thence to
Wittenberg, where he taught for two years. At Helenstadt he was
excommunicated by Boetius, Repairing to Frankfort, he made the
acquaintance of a nobleman, who lured him to Venice and betrayed
him to the Inquisition. The Venetian Council transferred him to
Rome, where be languished for seven years in a pestiferous
dungeon, and was repeatedly tortured, according to the hellish
code of the Inquisition. At length, on February 10th, 1600, he
was led out to the Church of Santa Maria, and sentenced to be
burnt alive, or, as the Holy Church hypocritically phrased it, to
be punished "as mercifully as possible, and without effusion of
blood" Haughtily raising his bead, he exclaimed: "You are more
afraid to pronounce my sentence than I to receive it." He was
allowed a week's grace for recantation, but without avail; and on
the 17th of February, 1600, he was burnt to death on the Field of
Flowers. To the last he was brave and defiant; he contemptuously
pushed aside the crucifix they presented him to kiss; and, as one
of his enemies said, he died without a plaint or a groan.Such heroism stirs the blood more than the sound of a trumpet. Bruno stood at the stake in solitary and awful grandeur. There was not a friendly face in the vast crowd around him. It was one man against the world. Surely the knight of Liberty, the champion of Freethought, who lived such a life and died such a death, without hope of reward on earth or in heaven, sustained only by his indomitable manhood, is worthy to be accounted the supreme martyr of all time. He towers above the less disinterested martyrs of Faith like a colossus; the proudest of them might walk under him without bending.
Authorities: M. Bartholomess, 'Jordano Bruno,' 2 vols. I Frith, 'Life of Giordano Bruno.'
Sir Richard was a very good friend of mine, and one whom I held in high esteem. Sir Richard once said, "I know nothing about my soul, I get on very well without one. It is rather hard to inflict a soul on me in the decline of my life." (The Dead Pulpit, p. 269.)Burton's niece, Georgina M. Stisted, says: --
The shock of so fatal a terminus to his illness would have daunted most Romanists desirous of effecting a death-bed conversion. It did not daunt Isabel. No sooner did she perceive that her husband's life was in danger, than she sent messengers in every direction for a priest. Mercifully, even the first to arrive, a man of peasant extraction, who had been appointed to the parish, came too late to molest one then far beyond the reach of human folly and superstition. (The True Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, p. 413-4.)In Burton's 'Selected Papers on Anthropology, etc.' (p. 165-6), published in 1924, may be found many sarcastic references to Holy Week in Rome and its theatricals, to "the horde of harpies" that prey on visitors, the contrast between the richly decorated churches, and the crowd of beggars imploring alms "in God's name," and to the brisk trade in "holy things -- images, crucifixes and rosaries, blessed by his Holiness.
Swinburne knew Burton and protested in vigorous verse against what he considered an outrage on decency committed by the "priests and soulless serfs of priests"
who swarm With vulturous acclamation, loud in lies, About his dust while yet his dust is warm Who mocked as sunlight mocks their base blind eyes, Their godless ghost of godhead.
Byron was born at Holles Street, London, on January 22nd, 1788. His life was remarkably eventful for a poet, but its history is so easily accessible, and so well known, that we need not summaries it here. His death occurred at Missolonghi on April 19th, 1824. Greece was then struggling for independence, and Byron devoted his life and fortune to her cause. His sentiments on this subject are expressed with power and dignity in the lines written at Missolonghi on his thirty-sixth birthday. The faults of his life were many, but they were redeemed by the glory of his death.
Exposure, which his declining health was unfitted to bear, brought on a fever, and the soldier-poet of freedom died without proper attendance, far from those he loved. He conversed a good deal at first with his friend Parry, who records that "he spoke of death with great composure." The day before he expired, when his friends and attendants wept round his bed at the thought of losing him, he looked at one of them steadily, and said, half smiling, "Oh questa a una bella seena!" -- Oh this is a fine scene! After a fit of delirium, he called his faithful servant Fletcher, who offered to bring pen and paper to take down his words. "Oh no," he replied, "there is no time. Go to my sister -- tell her -- go to Lady Byron -- you will see her, and say . . ." Here his voice became indistinct. For nearly twenty minutes he mattered to himself, but only a word now and then could be distinguished. He then said, "Now, I have told you all." Fletcher replied that he had not understood a word. "Not understand me?" exclaimed Byron, with a look of the utmost distress, "what a pity! -- then it is too late; all is over." He tried to utter a few more words, but none were intelligible except "my sister -- my child." After the doctors had given him a sleeping draught, he reiterated, "Poor Greece! -- poor town! -- My poor servants! my hour is come! -- I do not care for death -- but why did I not go home? -- There are things that make the world dear to me: for the rest I am content to die." He spoke also of Greece, saying, "I have given her my time, my means, my health -- and now I give her my life! what could I do more?" About six o'clock in the evening he said, "Now, I shall go to sleep." He then fell into the slumber from which he never woke. At a quarter past six on the following day, he opened his eyes and immediately shut them again. The physicians felt his pulse -- he was dead. [Byron's Life and Letters, by Thomas Moore, p. 684-688]
His work was done. As Swinburne wrote in 1865, "A little space was allowed him to show at least an heroic purpose, and attest a high design; then, with all things unfinished before him and behind, he fell asleep after many troubles and triumphs. Few can have ever gone wearier to the grave: none with less fear." [Preface (p. 28) to a Selection from Byron's poems, 1865] The pious guardians of Westminster Abbey denied him sepulture in its holy precincts, but he found a grave at Hucknall, and "after life's fitful fever be sleeps well."
Byron's own views on the subject of death-beds were expressed in a letter to Murray, dated June 7th, 1820. "A death-bed," he wrote, "is a matter of nerves and constitution, not of religion." He also remarked that "Men died calmly before the Christian era, and since, without Christianity."
For a week he had known that it might come at any moment and looked to it steadfastly. So calmly bad he received the warning which conveyed this knowledge that it seemed at the instant as if he did not understand it . . . He gave careful and exact directions as to the disposal of his works . . . More than this, his interest in the outer world, his affection for his friends and his pleasure in their pleasures, did not desert him to the very last He still followed the course of events, and asked for the public news on the morning of his death, so strongly did he hold fast his part in the common weal and in active social life. [Lectures and Asseys, p. 26]Clifford was a great loss to "the good old cause." He was a most valiant soldier of progress, cut off before a tithe of his work was accomplished.
"He praised his love of truth and moral courage," says Professor Fraser, "as superior to almost any other he had ever known, and by his will he made him one of his executors." [Ibid] "Yet bigotry was then so rampant, that Bishop Berkeley, who, according to Pope, had every virtue under heaven, actually said in the Guardian that the author of 'A Discourse on Freethinking' "deserved to be denied the common benefits of air and water." Collins afterwards engaged in controversy with the clergy, wrote against priestcraft, and debated with Dr. Samuel Clarke " about necessity and the moral nature of man, stating the arguments against human freedom with a logical force unsurpassed by any necessitarian." [Ibid] With respect to Collins's controversy on "the soul," Professor Huxley says: "I do not think anyone can read the letters which passed between Clarke and Collins without admitting that Collins, who writes with wonderful Power and closeness of reasoning, has by far the best of the argument, so far as the possible materiality of the soul goes; and that in this battle the Goliath of Freethinking overcame the champion of what was considered orthodoxy. [Critiques and Addresses, p. 324] According to Berkeley, Collins had announced "that he was able to demonstrate the impossibility of God's existence," but this is Probably the exaggeration of an opponent. We may be sure, however, that he was a thorough skeptic with regard to Christianity. His death is thus referred to in the Biographia Britannica: --
Notwithstanding all the reproaches cast upon Mr. Collins as an enemy to religion, impartiality obliges us to remark, what is said, and generally believed to be true, upon his death-bed he declared "That, as be had always endeavored, to the best of his abilities to serve his God, his King, and his country, so he was persuaded he was going to the place which God had designed for those who love him": to which he added that "The Catholic religion is to love God, and to love man"; and he advised such as were about him to have a constant regard to these principles.There is probably a good deal apocryphal in this passage, but it is worthy of notice that nothing is said about any dread of death. Another memorable fact is that Collins left his library to an opponent, Dr. Sykes. It was large and curious, and always open to men of letters. Collins was so earnest a seeker for truth, and so candid, a controversialist, that he often furnished his antagonists with books to confute himself.
He died on September 5th, 1857, of the painful disease of cancer in the stomach, M. Littre, his greatest disciple, thus describes his last days: "The fatal hour arrived, M. Comte, who had borne his malady with the greatest fortitude, met with no less firmness the approach of death. His bodily weakness became extreme, and he expired without pain, having around him some of his most cherished disciples." [E. Litte, Auguste Comte et la Philosophie Positive, p. 643]
Conway died in Paris in 1907. His latest writings and utterances make it clear that up to the time of his death he took a keen interest in the progress of Freethought. "To the last I never found him despairing, never even apathetic," says Mr. J.M. Robertson (The Life Pilgrimage of Moncur D. Conway, p. 69.)
At a moment when the hand of death is suspended over me, my theological opinions remain unchanged; months of deep and silent cogitation, under the pressure of long suffering, have confirmed rather than modified them. I calmly await, therefore, all risk attached to these convictions. Conscious that, if mistaken, I have always been sincere, I apprehend no disabilities for impressions I cannot resist.Robert Cooper was not related to Thomas Cooper, to whose lectures on God and a Future Life be wrote a reply in 1856,
Danton would not flee. "They dare not" arrest him, he said; but he was soon a prisoner in the Luxembourg. "What is your name and abode?" they asked him at the tribunal. "My name is Danton," he answered, "a name tolerably known in the Revolution: my abode will soon be Annihilation; but I shall live in the Pantheon of History." Replying to his infamous indictment, his magnificent voice "reverberates with the roar of a lion in the toils." The President rings his bell, enjoining calmness, says Carlyle, in a vehement manner, "What is it to thee how I defend myself?" cries Danton; "the right of dooming me is thine always. The voice of a man speaking for his honor and life may well drown the jingling of thy bell!"
On the way to the guillotine Danton bore himself proudly. Poor Camille Desmoulins struggled and writhed in the cart, which was surrounded by a howling mob. "Calm, my friend," said Danton, "heed not that vile canaille." Herault de Sechelles, whose turn it was to die first, tried to embrace his friend, but the executioners prevented him. "Fools," said Danton, "you cannot prevent our heads from meeting in the basket." At the foot of the scaffold the thought of home flashed through his mind. "O my wife," he exclaimed, "my well-beloved, I shall never see thee more then." But recovering himself, he said, "Danton, no, weakness!" Looking the executioner in the face, he cried with his great voice, "You will show my head to the crowd; it is worth showing; you don't see the like in these days. "The next minute that head, the one that might have guided France best, was severed from his body by the knife of the guillotine. What a man this Danton was! With his Herculean form, his huge black head, his mighty voice, his passionate nature, his fiery courage, his poignant wit, his geniality, and his freedom from cant, he was a splendid and unique figure. An Atheist, he perished in trying to arrest bloodshed. Robespierre, the Deist, continued the bloodshed till it drowned him. The two men were as diverse in nature as in creed, and Danton killed by Robespierre, as Courtois said, was Pyrrhus killed by a woman!
[The reader may consult Carlyle's French Revolution, Book vi., Ch. ii., and Jules Claretie's Camille Desmoulins et les Dantonistes, Ch. vi.]
Darwin died on April 19, 1882, in the plenitude of his fame, having outlived the opposition of ignorance and bigotry, and witnessed the triumph of his ideas. His last moments are described by his eldest son Francis: --
No special change occurred during the beginning of April, but on Saturday 15th he was seized with giddiness while sitting at dinner in the evening, and fainted in an attempt to reach his sofa. On the 17th he was again better, and in my temporary absence recorded for me the progress of an experiment in which I was engaged. During the night of April 18th, about a quarter to twelve, he had a severe attack and passed into a faint, from which he was brought back to consciousness with great difficulty. He seemed to recognize the approach of death, and said "I am not the least afraid to die." All the next morning he suffered from terrible nausea and faintness, and hardly rallied before the end came.No one in his senses would have supposed that he was "afraid to die," yet it is well to have the words recorded by the son who was present. In the second edition of 'Infidel Deathbeds' this notice ended with the words: "Pious ingenuity will be unable to traduce the deathbed of Charles Darwin." But "pious ingenuity" is not easily slain. Sir Francis Darwin as recently as January, 1916, had to refute a lying story about his father's agonizing deathbed, and the story cropped up again, with embellishments, in The Churchman's Magazine for March, 1925.
Diderot tasted imprisonment in 1749, and many times afterwards his liberty was menaced. Nothing, however, could intimidate or divert him from his task; and he never quailed when the ferocious beast of persecution, having tasted the blood of meaner victims, turned an evil and ravenous eye on him.
Carlyle's brilliant essay on Diderot is ludicrously unjust. The Scotch puritan was quite unable to judge the French Atheist. A greater than Carlyle wrote: "Diderot is Diderot, a peculiar individuality; whoever holds him or his doings cheaply is a Philistine, and the name of them is legion." Goethe's dictum outweighs that of his disciple.
Born at Langres in 1713, Diderot died at Paris 1784. His life was long, active and fruitful. [In Diderot and the Encyclopedists, Vol. I, p. 39-40, John Morley gives an interesting description of Diderot's personal appearance.] His conversational powers were great, and showed the fertility of his genius. "When I recall Diderot," wrote Maister, "the immense variety of his ideas, the amazing multiplicity of his knowledge, the rapid flight, the warmth, the impetuous tumult of his imagination, all the charm and all the disorder of his conversation, I venture to liken his character to Nature herself, exactly as he used to conceive her -- rich, fertile, abounding in germs of every sort, gentle and fierce, simple and majestic, worthy and sublime, but without any dominating principle, without a master and without a God."
Checkered as Diderot's life had been, his closing years were full of peace and comfort. Superstition was mortally wounded, the Church was terrified, and it was clear that the change the philosophers had worked for was at hand. As John Morley says, "the press literally teemed with pamphlets, treatises, poems, histories, all shouting from the house-tops open destruction to beliefs which fifty years before were actively protected against so much as a whisper in the closet. Every form of literary art was seized and turned into an instrument in the remorseless attack on L'Infame."
In the Spring of 1784 Diderot was attacked by what be felt was his last illness. Dropsy set in, and in a few months the end came. A fortnight before his death he was removed from the upper floor in the Rue Taranne, which he had occupied for thirty years, to palatial rooms provided for him by the Czarina in the Rue de Richelieu. Growing weaker every day he was still alert in mind: --
He did all he could to cheer the people around him, and amused himself and them by arranging his pictures and his books. In the evening, to the last, he found strength to converse on science and philosophy to the friends who were eager as ever for the last gleanings of his prolific intellect. Tn the last conversation that his daughter heard him carry on, his last words were the pregnant aphorisin that the first step towards philosophy is incredulity.Grimm gives a slightly different account of Diderot's death, omitting the apricot, and stating that his words to his wife were, "It is long since I have eaten with so much relish." [Quoted from the 'Revue Retrospective in Assezat's complete edition of Diderot] The cur'e of St. Roch, in whose parish he died, had scrupled at first about burying him, on account of his skeptical reputation and the doctrines expounded in his writings; but the priest's scruples were overcome, partly by a present of "fifteen or eighteen thousand livres."On the evening of the 30th July, 1784, he sat down to table, and at the end of the meal took an apricot. His wife, with kind solicitude, remonstrated. Mais quel diable de nial veux-tu que cela me fasse? (How the deuce can that hurt me?) he said, and ate the apricot. Then he rested his elbow on the table, trifling with some sweetmeats, His wife asked him a question; on receiving no answer, she looked up and saw he was dead. He had died as the Greek poets say that men died in the golden age -- they passed away as if mastered by Sleep. [Morley, Vol. II, p. 259-260]
According to Morley, an effort was made to convert Diderot, or at least to wring from him something like a retractation: --
The priest of St. Sulpice, the center of the philosophic quarter came to visit him three or four times a week, hoping to achieve at least the semblance of a conversion. Diderot did not encourage conversation on theology, but when pressed he did not refuse it. One day when they found, as two men of sense will always find, that they had ample common ground in matters of morality and good works, the priest ventured to hint that an exposition of such excellent maxims, accompanied by a slight retraction of Diderot's previous works, would have a good effect on the world. "I dare say it would, monsieur le curd, but confess that I should be acting an impudent lie." And no word of retractation was ever made. [Morley Vol. II, p. 258]If judging men by the company they keep is a safe rule, we need have no doubt as to the sentiments which Diderot entertained to the end. Grimm tells us that on the morning of the very day he died " he conversed for a long time and with the greatest freedom with his friend the Baron D'Holbach," the famous author of the System of Nature, compared with whom, says Morley, "the most eager Nascent or Denier to be found in the ranks of the assailants of theology in our own day is timorous and moderate." These men were the two most earnest Atheists of their generation. Both were genial, benevolent, and conspicuously generous. D'Holbach was learned, eloquent, and trenchant; and Diderot, in Comte's opinion, was the greatest genius of the eighteenth century.
Dolet got his first taste of persecution in 1533, when he was thrown into prison for denouncing in a Latin oration the burning alive of Jean de Cartuce at Toulouse. During the remaining thirteen years of his life he was five times imprisoned, and nearly half his days were spent in confinement.
Sentence of death for blasphemy was pronounced on Dolet in the Chambre Ardents at Paris on August 2, 1546. He was condemned to be hanged, and then burnt with his books on the Place Maubert; and his widow and children were beggared by the confiscation of his goods to the king. It was also ordered that he should be put to the torture before his execution, and questioned about his companions; and "if the said Dolet shall cause any scandal or utter any blasphemy, his tongue shall be cut out, and he shall be burnt alive." The next day be met his doom. He was hanged first, and then (for they were not very particular), probably while he still breathed, the faggots were lighted, and Dolet and his books were consumed in the flames. It is said that instead of a prayer he uttered a pun in Latin -- Non dolet ipse Dolet, sed pia turba doiet. -- "Dolet himself does not grieve, but the pious crowd grieves." Yet the confessor who attended him at the stake invented the miserable falsehood that the martyr had acknowledged his errors. "I do not believe a word of it," wrote the great Erasmus, "it is the usual story which these people invent after the death of their victims." Dolet's real sentiments are expressed in the noble cantique, full of resignation and courage, which he composed in prison when death was imminent. A Rongh translation: -- "A good heart, sustained with patience, never bends under evil, bewails or moans, but is always victor. Courage, my soul, and show such a heart; let your confidence be seen in trial; every noble heart, every constant warrior, maintains his fortitude even unto death," [Authorities: R.C. Christie, 'Enenne Dolet,' Joseph Boulmier, 'Enenne Dolet.']
Though the prosecutions of Foote for "blasphemous libels" published in the Freethinker, constitute an important chapter in the story of his life, it is impossible here to enter into details concerning them. He was served with his first summons in July, 1882, and at the Court of Queen's Bench was compelled to find securities for 600. (English pounds) The next trial arose out of the illustrations in the Christmas number of the same year and had more serious consequences. For this offence he was, in March, 1883, sentenced by Judge North, a Roman Catholic, to twelve months' imprisonment. Nearly two months later Foote was tried again on the first indictment, before Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, and defended himself in a speech which is now one of the classics in the literature of its kind. For a detailed account of these prosecutions the reader is referred to Foote's Prisoiner for Blasphemy, and the Defence of Free Speech. The latter has just been republished by the Pioneer Press, and contains an interesting Introduction by Mr. H. Cutner.
Apart from his thirty-five years' work on the Freethinker, during the whole of this period Foote was in various other ways -- writing books and pamphlets, lecturing and debating -- serving the cause to which he had early decided to devote his life. In 1882 appeared 'The God the Christians Swear by,' during Charles Bradlaugh's parliamentary struggle, 'Blasphemy no crime,' and 'Death's Test,' afterwards enlarged into 'Infidel Deathbeds.' The last, like 'A Lie in Five Chapters?' (1892), in which he ran to earth the story of a "converted Atheist," which the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes had started, was more than an exposure of "lying for the glory of God." Foote discerned as clearly as any man ever did the influence of superstitious beliefs on personality, and the fatal ease with which they are made to serve the purposes of the professional soul-saver. 'The Bible Handbook,' in which W.P. Ball collaborated, appeared in 1885, and 'Crimes of Christianity in 1887. In producing the latter, which is a veritable store-house of historical facts for the Freethought propagandist, he had the assistance of his life-long friend, J.M. Wheeler. 'Rome or Atheism' (1892) shows that power of going straight to the point which characterized all Foote's work. It also shows exactly where he himself stood. The Newman brothers are made the text for a keen analysis of the Roman Catholic's "certitude" and the Protestant's "right to private judgment"; the disintegration of Protestantism is seen to be inevitable; and the field will be left to the two great protagonists who already "march steadily forward to their Armageddon." His views on death and a future life are concisely expressed in "The Gospel of Secularism," contributed to Religious Systems of the World. The Secularist, he says, will give no assent to any proposition of whose truth he is not assured, and "declines to traffic in supernatural hopes and fears."
Foote appreciated every great piece of literature, and his knowledge of ancient and modern writers, and of ecclesiastical history, was almost encyclopedic. Some of his finest literary criticism may be found in 'Shakespeare and Other Literary Essays.' (Pioneer Press, 1929.)
Ever since Foote entered upon his campaign in London a large proportion of his time was spent in lectures and debates in different parts of Great Britain. He was a powerful speaker, clear and logical, at times very witty, and in his perorations rising to heights of real oratory.
In 1890 he succeeded Bradlaugh as President of the National Secular Society -- a position which he held for twenty-five years. Through his instrumentality The Secular Society, Limited, was formed in 1898: it affords legal security to the acquisition, by bequest or otherwise, of funds for Secular purposes. The decision of the House of Lords in the Bowman case makes this security absolute.
Foote died on October 17, 1915. The details of his last illness and death are related in the Freethinker of October 31, 1915, by Mr. Chapman Cohen, who speaks with full knowledge of the facts --
To me it will always be some consolation that he died as he would have wished -- in harness . . . When I saw him on the Friday (two days) before his death he said, "I have had another setback, but I am a curious fellow and may get all right again." But he looked the fact of death in the face with the same courage and determination that he faced Judge North many years ago. A few hours before he died he said calmly to those around him, "I am dying." And when the end came his head dropped back on the pillow, and with a quiet sigh, as of one falling to sleep, he passed away.
When the old king was on his death-bed, one of his subjects, solicitous about his immortal soul, sent him a letter full of pious advice. "Let this, he said, "be answered civilly; the intention of the writer is good." Shortly after, on August 17, 1786, Frederick died in his own fashion. Carlyle says: --
For the most part he was unconscious, never more than half conscious. As the wall clock above his head struck eleven, he asked: What o'clock?" "Eleven," answered they. "At four," murmured he, "I will arise." One of his dogs sat on its stool near him; about midnight he noticed it shivering for cold: "Throw a quilt over it," said or beckoned he; that, I think, was his last completely conscious utterance. Afterwards, in a severe choking fit, getting at last rid of the phlegm, he said, "La montagne est passle nous irons mieux -- We are on the hill, we shall go better now." [Frederick the Great, Vol. VI, p. 694, edition, 1869]Better it was. The pain was over, and the brave old king, who had wrestled with all Furope and thrown it, succumbed quietly to the inevitable defeat which awaits us all.
Like almost every eminent Republican, Cambetta was a Freethinker. As Mr. Frederic Harrison says, "he systematically and formally repudiated any kind of acceptance of theology." During his lifetime he never entered a Church, even when attending a marriage or a funeral, but stopped short at the door, and let who would go inside and listen to the mummery of the priest. In his own expressive words, he declined to be "rocked asleep by the myths of childish religions." He professed himself an admirer and a disciple of Voltaire -- l'admirateur et le disciple de Voltaire. Every member of his ministry was a Freethinker, and one of them, the eminent scientist Paul Bert, a militant Atheist. Speaking at a public meeting not long before his death, Cambetta called Comte the greatest thinker of this century; that Comte who proposed to "reorganize society, without God and without king, by the systematic cultus of humanity."
When John Stuart Mill died, a Christian journal, which died itself a few weeks after, declared he had gone to hell, and wished all his friends, and disciples would follow him. Several pions prints expressed similar sentiments with regard to Ganibetta. Passing by the English papers, let us look at a few French ones. The Due de Broglie's organ, naturally anxious to insult the statesman who had so signally beaten him, said that "he died suddenly after hurling defiance at God." The 'Pays,' edited by that pious bully, Paul de Cassagnac, said -- "He dies, paisoned by his own blood. He set himself up against God. He has fallen. It is fearful. But it is just."
These tasteful exhibitions of Christian charity show that Gambetta lived and died a Freethinker. Yet the sillier sort of Christians have not scrupled to insinuate and even argue, that he was secretly a believer. One asinine priest, M. Feuillet des Conches, formerly Vicar of Notre Dame des Victoires, and then honorary Chamberlain to the Pope, stated in the London Tiines that, about two years before his death, Gambetta came to his church with a brace of big wax tapers which he offered in memory of his mother. He also added that the great orator knelt before the Virgin, dipped his finger in holy water, and made the sign of the cross. Was there ever a more absurd story? Gambetta was a remarkable Looking man, and extremely well known. He could not have entered a church unobserved, and had he done so, the story would have gone round Paris the next day. Yet nobody heard of it till after his death. Either the priest mistook some portly dark man for Gambetta, or he was guilty of a pious fraud.
According to another story, Gambetta said "I am lost," when the doctors told him he could not recover. But the phrase Je suis perdu has no theological significance. Nothing is more misleading than a literal translation. Gambetta simply meant "It is all over then." This monstrous perversion of a simple phrase could only have arisen from sheer malice or gross ignorance of French.
While lying on his death-bed Gambetta listened to Rabelais, Moligre, and other favourite but not very pious authors, read aloud by a young student who adored him. Almost his last words, as recorded in the 'Times,' were these -- "Well, I have suffered so much, it will be a deliverance." The words are calm, collected, and truthful. There is no rant and no quailing. It is the natural language of a strong man confronting Death after long agony. Shortly after he breathed his last. No priest administered "the consolations of religion," and he expressly ordered that he should be buried without religious rites.
We have no account of Garibaldi's last moments, but he died daily in his crippled and helpless old age, and his cheerful fortitude was known to all. He desired his body to be cremated, and gave strict orders that no priest should officiate at his funeral. He also had his sarcophagus built at Caprera, but the family yielded to the wish of the Government, and he was buried at Rome.
A second case of death-bed conversion of an eminent Liberal to Roman Catbolicism, suggested probably by that of the great French philologist Littre, has passed the round of the Swiss papers. A few days ago the veteran leader of the Freiburg Liberals, M. Isaac Gendre, died. The 'Ami du Peuple,' the organ of the Freiburg Ultramontanes, immediately set afloat the sensational news that when M. Gendre found that his last hour was approaching, he sent his brother to fetch a priest, in order that the last sacraments might be administered to him, and the evil which he had done during his life by his persistent Liberalism might be atoned by his repentance at the eleventh hour, This brother, M. Alexandre Gendre, now writes to the paper stating that there is not one word of truth in this story. What possible benefit can any Church derive from the invention of such tales? Doubtless there is a credulous residuum which believes that there must be "some truth" in anything which has once appeared in print.It might be added that many people readily believe what pleases them, and that a lie which has a good start is very hard to run down.
Gibbon did not long survive the completion of his great woirk. The last volumes of the Decline and Fall were published on May 8, 1788, and he died on January 14, 1794, His malady was dropsy. After being twice tapped in November, he removed to the house of his devoted friend, Lord Sheffield. A week before he expired he was obliged for the sake of the highest medical attendance, to return to his lodgings in St. James's Street, London. The following account of his last moments was written by Lord Sheffield: --
During the evening he complained much of his stomach, and of a feeling of nausea. Soon after nine he took his opium draught and went to bed. About ten he complained of much pain, and desired that warm napkins might be applied to his stomach. He almost incessantly expressed a sense of pain till about four o'clock in the morning, when he said he found his stomach much easier. About seven the servant asked whether he should send for Mr. Farquhar (the doctor). He answered, No; that he was as well as the day before. At about half-past eight be got out of bed, and said he was "plus adroit" than he had been for three mouths past, and got into bed again without assistance, better than usual. About nine he said he would rise. The servant, however, persuaded him to remain in bed till Mr. Parquhar, who was expected at eleven, should come. Till about that hour be spoke with great facility. Mr. Farquhar came at the time appointed, and he was then visibly dying. When the valet-de-chambre returned, after attending Mr. Farquhar out of the room, Mr. Gibbon said, " Pour-quoi est ec que vous me quittez?" (Why do you leave me?) This was about half-past eleven. At twelve o'clock he drank some brandy and water from a teapot, and desired his favourite servant to stay with him. These were the last words he pronounced articulately. To the last he preserved his senses; and when he could no longer speak, his servant having asked a question, he made a sign to show that he understood him. He was quite tranquil, and did not stir, his eyes half shut. About a quarter before one he ceased to breathe. [The valet-de-chambre observed that he did not, at any time, evince the least sign of alarm or apprehension of death.] -- (Last Days of Gibbon, in Milman's edition of Gibbon, Vol. I., Introduction.)James Cotter Morison, in his admirable monograph on Gibbon, which forms a volume of Macmillan's "English Men of Letters" series, quotes the whole of this passage with the exception of the last sentence. In our opinion the words we show in brackets are the most important in the extract, and should not have been withheld.
I leave behind me a manuscript, in a considerable state of forwardness for the press, entitled, 'The Genius of Christianity Unveiled: in a Series of Essays.' I am most unwilling that this, the concluding work of a long life, and written, as I believe, in the full maturity of my understanding, should be consigned to oblivion. It has been the main object of my life, since I attained to years of discretion, to do my part to free the human mind from slavery. I adjure you therefore, or whomsoever else into whose hands these papers may fall, not to allow them to be consigned to oblivion.Mrs Shelley seems to have disregarded this solemn adjuration, for the work was not published till 1873, when it was issued by Kegan Paul, to whose Life of William Godwin we are indebted.
Goethe's "truly Julian hatred of Christianity" became less intense with advancing years; but throughout life he rejected its cardinal doctrines on intellectual grounds and regarded some of them as serious hindrances to the growth of personality. Christianity's attitude to Nature, the doctrine of total depravity, the cult of sorrow and its extremely unfavourable influence on art, and the orthodox scheme of salvation generally -- all these elements of the faith strongly repelled Goethe.
In his later years he avowed to Eckermann, a kind of German Boswell who has left us in his 'Conversations with Goethe' many interesting notes on the poet and his Weimar circle of friends, that the name which he would prefer to all others was 'Befreier' ("liberator"). Only eleven days before his death, writing to Eckermann, he said that Biblical questions can be viewed from two standpoints, either as a study in religious origins or from the standpoint of the Church, which, feeble and transitory as it is, will continue as long as there are weak human beings in existence to need her good offices. In his letters to Zelter, the musician, one of the dearest of all his friends -- Goethe's last letters, written after he had entered his eighties -- are numerous passages showing his repugnance to Christianity's low estimate of human nature. His last letter to Zelter, a long one dated March 11, 1832, does not contain a word directly bearing on religion, but near the end there is a remark so Goethean to the core that it deserves quotation: "It is strange that the English, the French, and now the Germans, too, like to express themselves incomprehensibly, just as others like to listen to what is incomprehensible." Again and again in reading Goethe we note this detestation of obscurantisin, of that verbiage which expressed nothing real, and which he was never weary of arraigning as one of the banefill infiliences of his time.
Goethe as a thinker and investigator in the domain of natural science has been the subject of interesting dissertations by Helmholtz and Virchow. The notion of evolution, in its broadest aspect, had taken complete possession of him.
It, would be interesting to consider at length the poet's views on Theism. Occasionally he speaks like a thorough-going Agnostic, sometimes like a Pantheist, and frequently when he refers to God he qualifies the word with a possessive pronoun -- "my," "your," "his," or "their" God occurs fairly often. "If an ultimate phenomenon," he said to Eckermann, "has astonished us, we ought to rest content, nothing higher can be granted to us, and we ought not to seek anything behind it."
All attempts to prove that Goethe believed in immortality, in the Christian sense, are futile. Here is his opinion on this subject, as expressed when he was seventy-five years old: --
This occupation with ideas of immortality is for people of rank, and especially for ladies who have nothing to do. But a man of real worth who has something to do here, and must toil and struggle to produce day by day, leaves the future world to itself, and is active and useful in this.This does not reflect the mood of the moment, it represents Goethe's typical attitude to the question of man's survival of physical death.
On March 22, 1832, Germany's greatest son, the poet and thinker whom Strauss declared to be "a world in himself," died an almost ideal death. His suffering was slight and he had no consciousness of the approaching end. Eckerrnann saw his body prepared for burial, and noted the peace and firmness of the features -- " a perfect man lay in great beauty before me." "More light!" This was the poet's last utterance. His meaning was of course purely physical, but it was symbolic of his life and his life's work.
Authorities: The reader may consult the Freethinker of January 31 and February 7, 1932.
The Rev. Peter Anton, in his 'Masters of History,' obviously takes his account of Grote's death from this source, but it is worth noticing that he enhances, instead of weakening, the panegyric. "The great historian," he says, "passed away tranquilly and without pain; and thus was brought to a close a career singularly devoted, conscientious, and laborious, a life rich in virtue and honour and the esteem of the wise and the good." Three centuries ago Grote might have been burnt to death; but the custodians of Westminster Abbey are now anxious to enrich their precincts with celebrities, and the Atheist historian is interred there with Freethinkers like Ephraim Chambers, Sir Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin.
It is fanaticism that puts arms into the hands of Christian princes; it orders Catholics to massacre heretics; it brings out upon the earth again those tortures that were invented by such monsters as Phalaris, as Busiris, as Nero; in Spain it piles and lights up the fires of the Inquisition, while the pious Spaniards leave their ports and sail across distant seas, to plant the Cross and spread desolation in America. Turn your eyes to north or south, to east or west; on every side you see the consecrated knife of Religion raised against the breasts of women, of children, of old men, and the earth all smoking with the blood of victims immolated to false gods or the Supreme Being, and prescilting one vast, sickening horrible chariiel-house of intolerance.Marmotitel described Helvetius as "liberal, generous, unostentatious, and benevolent." His death was mourned by a wide circle of friends and dependants. "Day by day," says Condorcet, "he felt his strength failing, An attack of gout, which flew to the head and chest, deprived him at first of consciousness, and soon of life." [Essay by Condorcet, prefixed to the AEuvres of Helvetius (1784).
As life is uncertain, it behoves every one to make preparations for death; I deem it therefore a duty incumbent on me, ere I quit this life, to express in writing, for the satisfaction and guidance of esteemed friends, my feelings and opinions in reference to our common principles. I adopt this course that no mistake or misapprehension may arise through the false reports of those who officiously and obtrusively obtain access to the death-beds of avowed infidels to priesteraft and superstition; and who, by their annoying importunities, labour to extort from an opponent, whose intellect is already worn out and subdued by protracted physical suffering, some trifling admission, that they may blazon it forth to the world as a Death-bed Confession, and a triumph of Christianity over infidelity.Hetherington wrote this Testament nearly two years before his death, but he signed it with a firm hand three days before he breathed his last, in the presence of Thomas Cooper, who left it at the Reasoner office for "the inspection of the curicus or sceptical." Thomas Cooper became a Christian, but he could not repudiate what he printed at the time, or destroy his "personal testimony," as he called it, to the consistency with which Hetherington died in the principles of Freethought.In the first place, then, I calmly and deliberately declare that I do not believe in the popular notion of the existence of an Almighty, All-Wise and Benevolent God -- possessing intelligence, and conscious of his own operations; because these attributes involve such a mass of absurdities and contradictions, so much cruelty and injustice on his part to the poor and destitute portion of his creatures -- that, in my opinion, no rational reflecting mind can, after disinterested investigation, give credence to the existence of such a Being. 2nd. I believe death to be an eternal sleep -- that I shall never live again in this world, or another, with a consciousness that I am the same identical person that once lived, performed the duties, and exercised the functions of a human being. 3rd. I consider priesteraft and superstition the greatest obstacle to human improvement and happiness. During my life I have, to the best of my ability, sincerely and strenuously exposed and opposed them, and die with a firm conviction that Truth, Justice, and Liberty will never be permanently established on earth till every vestige of priesteraft and superstition shall be utterly destroyed. 4th. I have ever considered that the only religion useful to man consists exclusively of the practice of morality, and in the mutual interchange of kind actions. In such a religion there is no room for priests -- and when I see them interfering at our births, marriages and deaths, pretending to conduct us safely through this state of being to another and happier world, any disinterested person of the least shrewdness and discernment must perceive that their sole aim is to stultify the minds of the people by their incomprehensible doctrines, that they may the more effectually fleece the poor deluded sheep who listen to their empty babblings and mystifications. 5th. As I have lived so I die, a determined opponent to their nefarious and plundering system. I wish my friends, therefore, to deposit my remains in unconsecrated ground, and trust they will allow no priest, or clergyman of any denomination, to interfere in any way whatever at my funeral. My earnest desire is, that no relation or friend shall wear black or any kind of mourning, as I consider it contrary to our rational principles to indicate respect for a departed friend by complying with a hypocritical custom. 6th. I wish those who respect me, and who have laboured in our common cause, to attend my relnains to their last resting place, not so much in consideration of the individual, as to do honour to our just, benevolent and rational principles. I hope all true Rationalists will leave pompous displays to the tools of priesteraft and superstition.
This parson's son was destined to be hated by the clergy for his heresy. The Great Fire of 1666, following the Great Plague of the previous year, excited popular superstition, and to appease the wrath of God, a new Bill was introduced in Parliament against Atheism and profaneness. The Committee to which the Bill was entrusted were empowered to "receive information touching" heretical books, and Hobbes's 'Leviathan' was mentioned "in particular." The old philosopher, then verging on eighty, was naturally alarmed. Bold as he was in thought, his inherited physical timidity shrank from the prospect of the prison, the scaffold, or the stake. He made a show of conformity, and according to Bishop Kennet, who is not an irreproachable witness, he partook of the sacrament. It was said by some, however, that he acted thus in compliance with the wishes of the Devonshire family, who were his protectors, and whose private chapel he attended. A noticeable fact was that he always went out before the sermon, and when asked his reason, he answered that "they could teach him nothing but what he knew." He spoke of the chaplain, Dr. Jasper Mayne, as "a very silly fellow."
Hated by the clergy, and especially by the bishops; owing his liberty and perhaps his life to powerful patrons; fearing that some fanatic might take the parsons' hints and play the part of an assassin; Hobbes is said to have kept a lighted candle in his bedroom. The fact, if it be such, is not mentioned in Professor Croom Robertson's exhaustive biography." [Hobbs. By George Croom Robertson (1886) It is perhaps a bit of pious gossip. But were the story authentic, it would not show that Hobbes had any supernatural fears. He was more apprebensive of assassins than of ghosts and devils. Being vety old, too, and his life precarious, he might well desire a light in his bedroom in case of accident or sudden sickness.
Hobbes does not appear to have troubled himself about death. Bishop Kennet relates that only "the winter before he died he made a warm greatcoat, which he said must last him three years, and then he would have such another." Even so late as August, 1676, four months before his deceas