The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12

by William Cowper Brann

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"Work is worship," said the old monks who carried the cross into the Western wilds despite all hardships, in defiance of all dangers—men for whom life was no Momusmasque, but a battle and a march, men who sacrificed all for other's sake, accepting without a sigh disease and death as worldly reward. Those monks were real men, and real men are ever the world's heroes and its hope. The soul of a real man is never hidden behind the cowardly superficies of policy or expediency—his heart is an open book which he who runs may read. Deceive he cannot, for the lie blooms only on the lips of cowards. Public opinion he may treat with kingly contempt, but self-respect is dearer to him than life, though dowered with a monarch's scepter and all the wealth of Ormus and of Ind. There's something in the words of a woman, spoken during the civil war, which indicates that despite all artificiality and folly, beneath the cheap gilding and showy lacquer of life, the heart of the race still beats steady and strong; that above the infinitude of goose-speech and the trumpeting of tin- horns on the housetops may still be heard "the ever-pealing tones of old Eternity." From out the mad hell of the fight a wounded hero was borne to the hospital. Neither pain nor approaching death could break the courage of that heart of oak, but a prurient little preacher, one of those busy smooth-bore bigots whose mission seems to be to cast a shadow on the very sun, convinced the stricken man that he was an awful sinner, whereupon he began crying out that he was doomed to be damned. The nurse, a muscular woman who believed with the old monks that "work is worship," took the parson by the pendulous 8 x 10 ear, led him aside and sweetly said: "Mr. Goody Two-Shoes, if I catch you in this ward again I'll throw you out of the window." The brimstone peddler felt that he had an urgent "call" to other fields. He stood not upon the order of his going, but hit the dim and shadowy distance like Nancy Hanks. He couldn't even wait to pray for his persecutor or take up a collection. In vain the nurse strove to soothe her patient by telling him that the man who gave his life for his native land cannot miss heaven's mercy—he but wailed the louder that he was lost. "You came to me a hero," she cried, "and you shall not leave me a coward. If you must go to hell, go like a man." If Romans nursed by a she-wolf became demigods, what might not Americans be sprung from the loins of such a lioness! Milton has almost made Satan respectable by endowing him with an infernal heroism, by making him altogether and irremediably bad, instead of a moral mugwump—by giving him a heart for any fate instead of picturing him as willing to wound and yet afraid to strike.

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By God's grace, I mean not the kind you catch at camp- meetings with sand-fleas, wood-ticks and other gifts of the Holy Ghost; but rather an end everlasting to brummagem and make-believe, a return to the Ark of the Covenant, a recognition of that fact that the soul is not the stomach —that a man owes debts to his fellows which cannot be cast up at the end of the month and discharged with a given number of dollars. Man was not made for himself alone, but all were made for each and each for all. The doctrine which now prevails of "every man for himself," is the dogma of the devil. It means universal war, shameful wrong and brutal outrage—the strong become intolerable tyrants, the weak go to the wall. It transforms this beautiful world into a basket of adders, each biting, hissing, striving to get its foolish head above its fellows. If the Christian religion contained naught else of worth, its doctrine of self-sacrifice should earn for it the respect of every Atheist in the universe. Through the fogs of ignorance and the clouds of superstition that enshrouded the Biblical ages that touch of the divine shines like a pilot star.

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That Persian poet who prated of "the sorry scheme of things" would deserve pity were he not beneath contempt. He imagined that there was a screw loose in the universe because his quest of pleasure slipped its trolley-pole and could not make the bubble Joy to dance in Folly's cup.

Millions make continual moan that they are not happy when they ought to be thankful that they are not hanged. They shake their puny hands at heaven because not provided with a terrestrial Paradise, when they ought to be giving thanks that I'm not the party who holds the sea in the hollow of his hand. I'd make good Baptists of the whole caboodle—would hold them under water long enough to soak out the original sin. A man complains because Fortune doesn't empty her cornucopia into the pockets of his pantalettes while he whittles a pine box and talks municipal politics instead of humping himself behind an enterprising mule in the cotton-patch. If his sweetheart jilts him, he's in despair, and if she marries him he wishes he were dead. He has the mulligrubs because he cannot plant himself on a Congressional cushion, or because he finds his wife awake and nursing a curtain lecture to keep it warm when he falls through the front fence at 5 o'clock in the morning. It seems never to have occurred to these Werterian wailers that the happiest existence is that of the lower animals—that the human being of fine brain and keen sensibilities cannot possibly be content. It is this very unrest, this heart-hunger that drives a man on to noble deeds—that lifts him out of the gutter where wallow the dull, dumb beasts and places him among the gods. Of suffering and sorrow were born all life's beauty. The kiss of Pyramus and Thisbe is an ecstasy of pain. The hope of immortality sprang from breaking hearts. Nations rise through a mist of tears. Every great life-work is an agony. Behind every song there lurks a sigh. There's an element of sadness in humor itself. The Virgin Mother is known as Our Lady of Pain. The cult of Christ is hallowed by the blood of self-sacrifice and known as the Religion of Sorrow. The first breath of life and the last gasp are drawn in suffering; and between the cradle and the grave there lies a monster-haunted Sahara. Yet men choose the ignis-fatuus called Happiness, and mourn that they cannot cover it with a No. 6 hat. They should pray the gods to transform them into contented goats and turn them out to grass. People who cannot find happiness here begin to look for it in heaven. Eternal beatitude is another ridiculous rainbow. Nirvana is nonsense. If there be a life beyond the grave, it means continued endeavor, and there can be no endeavor unless there's dissatisfaction. The creature cannot rise superior to its creator—and the universe is the result of God's unrest. Had he been perfectly content he would not have made me.

Carlyle—not Mugwump Carlisle of Kentucky, but Thos. Carlyle of Great Britain-the lord of modern literature— says the hell most dreaded by the English is the hell of not making money. We have imported this English Gehenna, duty free, despite Mr. Dingley, and now the man who doesn't succeed in accumulating dollars is socially damned. How many of this generation can understand the remark of Agassiz that he had no time to make money?—can realize that such occupation is not the sole end of man?— that time expended in the accumulation of wealth beyond the satisfaction of simple wants is worse than wasted? It is so because from our numbered days we have stolen years that should have been devoted to soul-development, filled with the sweets of knowledge; hallowed by the perfume of love, made gracious by noble deeds—because we have blasted life's fair fruitage with the primeval eldest curse. Omar strikes one true chord when he doth sing:

"A book of verses, underneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou
Singing beside me in the wilderness—
O wilderness were Paradise enow!"

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