The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12

by William Cowper Brann

An atheist once solemnly assured me that he couldn't possibly BELIEVE anything which he couldn't PROVE; but when I asked him what led him to take such a lively interest in the welfare of his wife's children, he became almost as angry as a Calvinist whose confession of faith had been called in question. Figure up how many things you can PROVE of those you BELIEVE, and you'll find that you have got to do a credit business or go into intellectual bankruptcy.

But the man who denies the existence of the Deity because he cannot comprehend his origin, is even less a Humbug than the one who knows all about him—the pitiful dogmatizer who devotes his life to the defense of some poor little guess-work interpretation of the mysterious plans of him who brings forth Mazaroth in his season and guides Arcturus with his sons.

Dogmatism is the fecund mother of doubt, a manacle on the human mind, a brake on the golden wheel of Christian progress; and every dogmatizer, whether in science, politics or religion, is consciously or unconsciously, a Humbug. You KNOW, do you? Know what? And who told you? Why, the man in whose mighty intellect was stored the world's wisdom; whose words have come down to us from the distant past as oracles, o'ershadowing even Solomon and Shakespeare, wasn't quite sure of his own existence. Men frequently tell me that what they SEE they know. Well, they've got to drink mighty little Prohibition whisky if they do; otherwise they are liable to see things they'll need an introduction to. The wisest is he that knows only that he knows nothing. Omniscient God only knows. We—you and I—are only troubled with morbid little-ideas, sired by circumstance and damned by folly. We don't even know how the Democracy stands on the silver question or what caused the slump in the late election. . . .

The average human head, like an egg—or a crock of clabber—absorbs the flavor of its surroundings. It is chiefly a question of environment whether we grow up Catholics or Protestants, Republicans or Democrats, Populists or political nondescripts. And yet we adhere to opinions we have inherited with all the tenacity of a dog to a bone or an American miser to a ten dollar bill. We assume that our faith political and our creed religious are founded upon our reason, when they were really made for us by social conditions over which we had little control. We even succeed in humbugging ourselves into the belief that we are the people and that wisdom will die with us, when the fact is that our head is loaded with out-of-date lumber—our every idea moulded or modified by barbarians who were in the bone-yard before Methusaleh was born.

Society is a vast organism in which the individual is but an atom. It is a monstrous tree—a veritable Ygdrasyl— penetrating both the region of darkness and the realm of light. Whatever its peculiarities—whether monarchical or republican, Christian or Pagan—it is a goodly tree when it brings forth good fruit—when its boughs bend with Apples of Hesperides and in its grateful shade is reared the shrine of God. Be it of what shape it may, it is an evil tree when its fruit is Apples of Sodom and it casts a upas-shadow upon the earth. If we cannot gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles, how can a society that is essentially false foster that which is literally true? The body social, of which we proudly boast, is producing dodos instead of King Davids, peanut-politicians instead of heaven-inspired poets, cranks instead of crusaders, Humbugs rather than heroes. Instead of exercising in the campus martius our sons cultivate the Henglish hawkcent and the London lope. In the olden days the glory of the young man was his strength; now it is his chrysanthemum and his collar. And it is going from bad to worse in a ratio of geometrical progression; for how can effeminate men—a canesucking, primping, mincing, affected conglomeration of masculine inanity and asininity beget world-compellers. How can women who care much what is on the outside and little what is on the inside of their heads, and whom a box of lily-white, a French novel, a poodle-dog and another dude will make superlatively happy, suckle aught but fops and fools?

Yet we boast of progress! Progress whither? From the savage who knew nothing to the dude who know less. From the barbarian who'd plundered your baggage, to the civilized Shylock who'd steal the very earth from under your feet. From that state wherein American sovereigns however poor, considered themselves the equals of kings and the superiors of princes, to that moral degradation and national decay in which they purchase the scurvy spawn of petty dukes as husband for our daughters. By the splendor of God, I'd rather be a naked Fiji Islander, dancing about a broiled missionary with a bull-ring in my nose, than a simpering "sawciety" simpleton, wearing my little intellectual apparatus to a frazzle with a study of neckties!

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Some of my critics have kindly suggested that the Lord made a great mistake in not consulting me when he made the world; thereby ascertaining just how I would like to have it. I was not consulted anent the creation of the Cosmos, and perhaps it is just as well for them that I wasn't—they might not be here. Too many forget that while the Lord made the world, the devil has been busy ever since putting on the finishing touches. Why, he began on the first woman before she was a week old, and he has been playing schoolmaster to her sons ever since. I confess to a sneaking respect for Satan, for he is pre- eminently a success in his chosen profession. He's playing a desperate game against omnipotent power and is more than holding his own. He sat into the game with a cash capital of one snake; now he's got half the globe grabbed and an option on the other half.

I have been called a defender of the devil; but I hope that won't prejudice the ladies against me, as it was a woman that discovered him. I confess to the belief that Satan is a gentleman compared with some of his very humble servants. We are told that he is a fallen angel who found pride a stumbling-block—that he tripped over it and plunged down to infinite despair; but tho' he fell further than a pigeon could fly in a week, the world is full of frauds who could not climb up to his level in a month; who can no more claim kinship with him in their cussedness than a thieving hyena can say to the royal beast of Bengal, "Thou art my brother." They are not fallen angels; they are risen vermin. They didn't come down from thrones in heaven like falling stars; they crawled up from holes in the earth like vicious little pismires. What can proud Lucifer have in common with the craven hypocrite, who prays with his lips while plotting petty larceny in his heart? Imagine the lord of the lower world seeking the microscopic souls of men who badger, brow-beat and bully-rag their better halves for spending a dollar for a new calico dress, then blow in a dozen times as much with the dice-box in a bar-room, trying to beat some other long-eared burro out of a thimble- full of bug-juice or a schooner o' beer! I don't believe Satan wants 'em. I think if they dodged the quarantine officers and got in amongst those erstwhile angels now peopling the dark regions of the damned, the doctors of that black abode would decide that they were cholera microbes or itch-bacilli and order the place fumigated.

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