Life, alas, is an intricate illusion. God is a pack of lies under which man staggers to his grave. And man—ah, here we have Nature's only mountebank; here we have Nature's humorous and ingenuous experiment in tragedy. And thought—ah, the tissue-paper chimera that seeks forever to devour life.
It is the cult of the pessimist, the gentle malice of disillusion. And, like all other cults, it sustains its advocates. Thus, the city has no more debonairly-mannered, smiling-souled citizen to offer than Clarence Darrow. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been gently disproving the intelligence of man, the importance of life, and the necessity of thought. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been whimsically deflating the illusions in which man hides from the purposelessness of the cosmos. God, heaven, politics, philosophies, ambition, love—Mr. Darrow has deflated them time and again—charging from $1 to $2 a seat for the spectacle.
This is nothing against Mr. Darrow—that he charges money sometimes. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been enlivening the intellectual purlieus of the city with his debates. And Mr. Darrow's debates have been always worth $1, $2 and even $5—for various reasons. It is worth at least $5 to observe at first hand what a cheering and invigorating effect Mr. Darrow's pessimism has had upon Mr. Darrow after these innumerable years.
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The story concerns itself with a funeral Mr. Darrow attended a few years ago. It is at funerals that Mr. Darrow's gentle malice finds itself crowned by circumstances. For to this son of Schopenhauer death is a weary smile that is proof of all his arguments.
This time, however, Mr. Darrow was curiously stirred. For there lay dead in the coffin a man for whom he had held a deep affection. It was Prof. George B. Foster, the brilliant theologian of the University of Chicago.
During his life Prof. Foster had been a man worthy the steel of Mr. Darrow. Not that Prof. Foster was an unscrupulous optimist. He was merely an intellectual whose congenital tendencies were idealistic, just as Mr. Darrow's psychic and subconscious tendencies were anti-idealistic. And apart from this divergence of congenital tendencies Mr. Darrow and Prof. Foster had a great deal in common. They both loved argument. They both doted upon seizing an idea and energizing it with their egoism. They were, in short, ideal debaters.
Whenever Mr. Darrow and Prof. Foster debated on one of the major issues of reason a flutter made itself felt in the city—even among citizens indifferent to debate. Indifferent or not, one felt that a debate between Prof. Foster and Mr. Darrow was a matter of considerable importance. Things might be disproved or proved on such an occasion.
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They were to have debated on "Is There Immortality?" when Prof. Foster's death canceled the engagement. This was one of the favorite differences of opinion between the two friends. Mr. Darrow, of course, bent all his efforts on disproving immortality. Prof. Foster bent all his on proving it. Considerable excitement had been stirred by the coming debate. The death of the brilliant theologian put an end to it.