At Paine Hall, Boston, August 25, 1889.
* The eulogy pronounced at the funeral of Horace Shaver In
Paine Hall last Sunday was the tribute of one great man to
another. To have Robert G. Ingersoll speak words of praise
above the silent form is fame; to deserve these words is
immortality.--The Boston Investigator, August 28, 1889.
HORACE SEAVER was a pioneer, a torch-bearer, a toiler in that great
field we call the world--a worker for his fellow-men. At the end of his
task he has fallen asleep, and we are met to tell the story of his long
and useful life--to pay our tribute to his work and worth.
He was one who saw the dawn while others lived in night. He kept his
face toward the "purpling east" and watched the coming of the blessed
day.
He always sought for light. His object was to know--to find a reason for
his faith--a fact on which to build.
In superstition's sands he sought the gems of truth; in superstition's
night he looked for stars.
Born in New England--reared amidst the cruel superstitions of his age
and time, he had the manhood and the courage to investigate, and he had
the goodness and the courage to tell his honest thoughts.
He was always kind, and sought to win the confidence of men by sympathy
and love. There was no taint or touch of malice in his blood. To him
his fellows did not seem depraved--they were not wholly bad--there was
within the heart of each the seeds of good. He knew that back of every
thought and act were forces uncontrolled. He wisely said: "Circumstances
furnish the seeds of good and evil, and man is but the soil in which
they grow." Horace Seaver was crowned with the wreath of his own deeds,
woven by the generous hand of a noble friend. He fought the creed, and
loved the man. He pitied those who feared and shuddered at the thought
of death--who dwelt in darkness and in dread.
The religion of his day filled his heart with horror.
He was kind, compassionate, and tender, and could not fall upon his
knees before a cruel and revengeful God--he could not bow to one
who slew with famine, sword and fire--to one pitiless as pestilence,
relentless as the lightning stroke. Jehovah had no attribute that he
could love.
He attacked the creed of New England--a creed that had within it
the ferocity of Knox, the malice of Calvin, the cruelty of Jonathan
Edwards--a religion that had a monster for a God--a religion whose
dogmas would have shocked cannibals feasting upon babes.
Horace Seaver followed the light of his brain--the impulse of his heart.
He was attacked, but he answered the insulter with a smile; and even he
who coined malignant lies was treated as a friend misled. He did not
ask God to forgive his enemies--he forgave them himself. He was sincere.
Sincerity is the true and perfect mirror of the mind. It reflects the
honest thought. It is the foundation of character, and without it there
is no moral grandeur.
Sacred are the lips from which has issued only truth. Over all wealth,
above all station, above the noble, the robed and crowned, rises the
sincere man. Happy is the man who neither paints nor patches, veils nor
veneers. Blessed is he who wears no mask.
The man who lies before us wrapped in perfect peace, practiced no art to
hide or half conceal his thought. He did not write or speak the double
words that might be useful in retreat. He gave a truthful transcript of
his mind, and sought to make his meaning clear as light.
To use his own words, he had "the courage which impels a man to do
his duty, to hold fast his integrity, to maintain a conscience void
of offence, at every hazard and at every sacrifice, in defiance of the
world."
He lived to his ideal. He sought the approbation of himself. He did not
build his character upon the opinions of others, and it was out of the
very depths of his nature that he asked this profound question:
"What is there in other men that makes us desire their approbation, and
fear their censure more than our own?"
Horace Seaver was a good and loyal citizen of the mental republic--a
believer in, intellectual hospitality, one who knew that bigotry is
born of ignorance and fear--the provincialisms of the brain. He did
not belong to the tribe, or to the nation, but to the human race. His
sympathy was wide as want, and, like the sky, bent above the suffering
world.
This man had that superb thing called moral courage--courage in its
highest form. He knew that his thoughts were not the thoughts of
others--that he was with the few, and that where one would take his
side, thousands would be his eager foes. He knew that wealth would
scorn and cultured ignorance deride, and that believers in the creeds,
buttressed by law and custom, would hurl the missiles of revenge and
hate. He knew that lies, like snakes, would fill the pathway of his
life--and yet he told his honest thought--told it without hatred and
without contempt--told it as it really was. And so, through all his
days, his heart was sound and stainless to the core.
When he enlisted in the army whose banner is light, the honest
investigator was looked upon as lost and cursed, and even Christian
criminals held him in contempt. The believing embezzler, the orthodox
wife-beater, even the murderer, lifted his bloody hands and thanked God
that on his soul there was no stain of unbelief.
In nearly every State of our Republic, the man who denied the
absurdities and impossibilities lying at the foundation of what is
called orthodox religion, was denied his civil rights. He was not
canopied by the aegis of the law. He stood beyond the reach of sympathy.
He was not allowed to testify against the invader of his home, the
seeker for his life--his lips were closed. He was declared dishonorable,
because he was honest. His unbelief made him a social leper, a pariah,
an outcast. He was the victim of religious hate and scorn. Arrayed
against him were all the prejudices and all the forces and hypocrisies
of society. All mistakes and lies were his enemies. Even the Theist was
denounced as a disturber of the peace, although he told his thoughts in
kind and candid words. He was called a blasphemer, because he sought to
rescue the reputation of his God from the slanders of orthodox priests.
Such was the bigotry of the time, that natural love was lost. The
unbelieving son was hated by his pious sire, and even the mother's heart
was by her creed turned into stone.
Horace Seaver pursued his way. He worked and wrought as best he could,
in solitude and want. He knew the day would come. He lived to be
rewarded for his toil--to see most of the laws repealed that had made
outcasts of the noblest, the wisest, and the best. He lived to see the
foremost preachers of the world attack the sacred creeds. He lived to
see the sciences released from superstition's clutch. He lived to see
the orthodox theologian take his place with the professor of the
black art, the fortune-teller, and the astrologer. He lived to see
the greatest of the world accept his thought--to see the theologian
displaced by the true priests of Nature--by Humboldt and Darwin, by
Huxley and Haeckel.
Within the narrow compass of his life the world was changed. The
railway, the steamship, and the telegraph made all nations neighbors.
Countless inventions have made the luxuries of the past the necessities
of to-day. Life has been enriched, and man ennobled. The geologist has
read the records of frost and flame, of wind and wave--the astronomer
has told the story of the stars--the biologist has sought the germ of
life, and in every department of knowledge the torch of science sheds
its sacred light.
The ancient creeds have grown absurd. The miracles are small and mean.
The inspired book is filled with fables told to please a childish world,
and the dogma of eternal pain now shocks the heart and brain.
He lived to see a monument unveiled to Bruno in the city of Rome--to
Giordano Bruno--that great man who two hundred and eighty-nine years ago
suffered death for having proclaimed the truths that since have
filled the world with joy. He lived to see the victim of the church a
victor--lived to see his memory honored by a nation freed from papal
chains.
He worked knowing what the end must be--expecting little while he
lived--but knowing that every fact in the wide universe was on his side.
He knew that truth can wait, and so he worked patient as eternity.
He had the brain of a philosopher and the heart of a child.
Horace Seaver was a man of common sense.
By that I mean, one who knows the law of average. He denied the Bible,
not on account of what has been discovered in astronomy, or the length
of time it took to form the delta of the Nile--but he compared the
things he found with what he knew.
He knew that antiquity added nothing to probability--that lapse of time
can never take the place of cause, and that the dust can never gather
thick enough upon mistakes to make them equal with the truth.
He knew that the old, by no possibility, could have been more wonderful
than the new, and that the present is a perpetual torch by which we know
the past.
To him all miracles were mistakes, whose parents were cunning and
credulity. He knew that miracles were not, because they are not.
He believed in the sublime, unbroken, and eternal march of causes and
effects--denying the chaos of chance, and the caprice of power.
He tested the past by the now, and judged of all the men and races of
the world by those he knew.
He believed in the religion of free thought and good deed--of character,
of sincerity, of honest endeavor, of cheerful help--and above all, in
the religion of love and liberty--in a religion for every day--for
the world in which we live--for the present--the religion of roof and
raiment, of food, of intelligence, of intellectual hospitality--the
religion that gives health and happiness, freedom and content--in the
religion of work, and in the ceremonies of honest labor.
He lived for this world; if there be another, he will live for that.
He did what he could for the destruction of fear--the destruction of
the imaginary monster who rewards the few in heaven--the monster who
tortures the many in perdition.
He was a friend of all the world, and sought to civilize the human race.
For more than fifty years he labored to free the bodies and the souls
of men--and many thousands have read his words with joy. He sought the
suffering and oppressed. He sat by those in pain--and his helping hand
was laid in pity on the brow of death.
He asked only to be treated as he treated others. He asked for only what
he earned, and had the manhood cheerfully to accept the consequences of
his actions. He expected no reward for the goodness of another.
But he has lived his life. We should shed no tears except the tears of
gratitude. We should rejoice that he lived so long.
In Nature's course, his time had come. The four seasons were complete
in him. The Spring could never come again. The measure of his years was
full.
When the day is done--when the work of a life is finished--when the gold
of evening meets the dusk of night, beneath the silent stars the tired
laborer should fall asleep. To outlive usefulness is a double death.
"Let me not live after my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff of younger
spirits."
When the old oak is visited in vain by Spring--when light and rain no
longer thrill--it is not well to stand leafless, desolate, and alone. It
is better far to fall where Nature softly covers all with woven moss and
creeping vine.
How little, after all, we know of what is ill or well! How little of
this wondrous stream of cataracts and pools--this stream of life, that
rises in a world unknown, and flows to that mysterious sea whose shore
the foot of one who comes has never pressed! How little of this life we
know--this struggling ray of light 'twixt gloom and gloom--this strip of
land by verdure clad, between the unknown wastes--this throbbing moment
filled with love and pain--this dream that lies between the shadowy
shores of sleep and death!
We stand upon this verge of crumbling time. We love, we hope, we
disappear. Again we mingle with the dust, and the "knot intrinsicate"
forever falls apart.
But this we know: A noble life enriches all the world.
Horace Seaver lived for others. He accepted toil and hope deferred.
Poverty was his portion. Like Socrates, he did not seek to adorn his
body, but rather his soul with the jewels of charity, modesty, courage,
and above all, with a love of liberty.
Farewell, O brave and modest man!
Your lips, between which truths burst into blossom, are forever closed.
Your loving heart has ceased to beat. Your busy brain is still, and from
your hand has dropped the sacred torch.
Your noble, self-denying life has honored us, and we will honor you.
You were my friend, and I was yours. Above your silent clay I pay this
tribute to your worth.
Farewell!