The Place of Science in a Liberal Education by Bertrand Russell, from Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. 1. Science to the Ordinary Reader of Newspapers is represented by a varying selection of sensational triumphs, which is wireless telegraphy and aeroplanes, radioactivity, and the marvels of modern alchemy. It is not of this aspect of science that I wish to speak. Science in this aspect consists of detached, up-to-date fragments, interesting only until they are replaced by something newer and more up-to-date, displaying nothing of the systems of patiently constructed knowledge, out of which, almost as a casual incident, have come the practically useful results which interest the man in the street. The increased command over the forces of nature which is derived from science is undoubtedly an amply sufficient reason for encouraging scientific research. But this reason has been so often urged and is so easily appreciated that other reasons, to my mind quite as important, are apt to be overlooked. It is with these other reasons, especially with the intrinsic value of a scientific habit of mine informing our outlook on the world that I shall be concerned in what follows. The instance of wireless telegraphy will serve to illustrate the difference between the two points of view. Almost all the serious intellectual labor required for the possibility of this invention is due to three men, Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz. In alternating layers of experiment and theory, these three men built up the modern theory of electromagnetism and demonstrated the identity of light with electromagnetic waves. The system which they discovered is one of profound intellectual interests, bringing together and unifying an endless variety of apparently detached phenomena and displaying accumulative mental power which cannot but afford delight to every generous spirit. The mechanical details which remain to be adjusted in order to utilize their discoveries for a practical system of telegraphy demanded no doubt very considerable ingenuity, but had not that broad sweep and that universality which could give them intrinsic interest as an object of disinterested contemplation. From the point of view of training the mind of giving that well-informed, impersonal outlook which constitutes culture in the good sense of this much misused word, it seems to be generally held indisputable that a literary education is superior to one based on science. Even the warmest advocates of science are apt to rest their claims on the contention that culture ought to be sacrificed to utility. Those men of science who respect culture when they associate with men learned in the classics are apt to admit, not merely politely but sincerely, a certain inferiority on their side compensated doubtless by the services which science renders to humanity, but nonetheless real. And so long as this attitude exists among men of science, it tends to verify itself. The intrinsically valuable aspects of science tend to be sacrificed to them merely useful and little attempt is made to preserve that leisurely, systematic survey by which the finer quality of mind is formed and nourished. But even if there be in present fact any such inferiority as is supposed in the educational value of science, this is, I believe, not the fault of science itself, but the fault of the spirit in which science is taught. If its full possibilities were realized by those who teach it, I believe that its capacity of producing those habits of mind which constitute the highest mental excellence would be at least as great as that of literature and more particularly of Greek and Latin literature. In saying this I have no wish whatever to disparage a classical education, I have not myself enjoyed its benefits, and my knowledge of Greek and Latin authors is derived almost wholly from translations, but I am firmly persuaded that the Greeks fully deserve all the admiration that is bestowed upon them and that it is a very great and serious loss to be unacquainted with their writings. It is not by attacking them, but by drawing attention to neglected excellences in science that I wish to conduct my argument. One defect however does seem inherent in a purely classical education, namely a too exclusive emphasis on the past. By the study of what is absolutely ended and can never be renewed, a habit of criticism towards the present and the future is engendered. The qualities in which the present excels are qualities to which the study of the past does not direct attention and to which therefore the student of Greek civilization may easily become blind. In what is new and growing there is apt to be something crude, insolent, even a little vulgar, which is shocking to the man of sensitive taste. Quivering from the rough contact he retires to the trim gardens of a polished past, forgetting that they were reclaimed from the wilderness by men as rough and earth-soiled as those from whom he shrinks in his own day. The habit of being unable to recognize merit, until it is dead, is too apt to be the result of a purely bookish life, and a culture based wholly on the past will seldom be able to pierce through everyday surroundings to the essential splendor of contemporary things, or to the hope of still greater splendor in the future. My eyes saw not the men of old, and now their age away has rolled. I weep to think I shall not see the heroes of posterity. So says the Chinese poet, but such impartiality is rare in the more pugnacious atmosphere of the West, where the champions of past and future fight a never-ending battle, instead of combining to seek out the merits of both. This consideration, which militates not only against the exclusive study of the classics, but against every form of culture which has become static, traditional, and academic, leads inevitably to the fundamental question, what is the true end of education? But before attempting to answer this question, it will be well to define the sense in which we are to use the word education. For this purpose I shall distinguish the sense in which I mean to use it from two others, both perfectly legitimate, the one broader, and the other narrower, in the sense in which I mean to use the word. In the broader sense education will include not only what we learn through instruction, but all that we learn through personal experience, the formation of character through the education of life. Of this aspect of education, vitally important as it is, I will say nothing, since its consideration would introduce topics quite far into the question with which we are concerned. In the narrower sense education may be confined to instruction, the imparting of definite information on various subjects, because such information in and for itself is useful in daily life. Elementary education, reading, writing, and arithmetic is almost wholly of this kind. But instruction, necessary as it is, does not per se constitute education in the sense in which I wish to consider it. Education in the sense in which I mean it may be defined as the formation, by means of instruction, of certain mental habits and a certain outlook on life and the world. It remains to ask ourselves what mental habits and what sort of outlook can be hoped for as the result of instruction. When we have answered this question we can attempt to decide what science has to contribute to the formation of the habits and outlook which we desire. Our whole life is built upon a certain number, not a very small number, of primary instincts and impulses. Only what is in some way connected with these instincts and impulses appears to us to be desirable or important. There is no faculty, whether reason or virtue, or whatever it may be called, that can take our active life and our hopes and fears outside the region controlled by these first movers of all desire. Each of them is like a queen bee, aided by a hive of workers gathering honey. But when the queen is gone the workers languish and die and the cells remain empty of their expected sweetness. So with each primary impulse in civilized man it is surrounded and protected by a busy swarm of attendant derivative desires which store up in its service whatever honey the surrounding world affords.  What was formally full of zest and so obviously worth doing that it raised no questions has now grown dreary and purposeless. With a sense of disillusion we inquire the meaning of life and decide perhaps that all is vanity. The search for an outside meaning that can compel an inner response must always be disappointed. All meaning must be at the bottom related to our primary desires and when they are extinct no miracle can restore to the world the value which they reflected upon it. The purpose of education therefore cannot be to create any primary impulse which is lacking in the uneducated. The purpose can only be to enlarge the scope of those that human nature provides by increasing the number and variety of attendant thoughts and by showing where the most permanent satisfaction is to be found. Under the impulse of a Calvinistic horror of the natural man this obvious truth has been too often misconceived in the training of the young. Nature has been falsely regarded as excluding all that is best in what is natural and the endeavor to teach virtue has led to the production of stunted and contorted hypocrites instead of full-grown human beings. From such mistakes in education a better psychology or a kinder heart is beginning to preserve the present generation. We need therefore waste no more words on the theory that the purpose of education is to thwart or eradicate nature. But although nature must supply the initial force of desire nature is not in the civilized man the spasmodic fragmentary and yet violent set of impulses that it is in the savage. Each impulse has its constitutional ministry of thought and knowledge and reflection through which possible conflicts of impulses are seen and temporary impulses are controlled by the unifying impulse which may be called wisdom. In this way education destroys the crudity of instinct and increases through knowledge the wealth and variety of the individual's contacts with the outside world making him no longer an isolated fighting unit but a citizen of the universe embracing distant countries remote regions of space and vast stretches of past and future within the circle of his interests. It is this simultaneous softening in the insistence of desire and enlargement of its scope that is the chief moral end of education. Closely connected with this moral end is the more purely intellectual aim of education the endeavor to make us see and imagine the world in an objective manner as far as possible as it is in itself and not merely through the distorting medium of personal desire. The complete attainment of such an objective view is no doubt an ideal indefinitely approachable but not actually and fully realizable. Education considered as a process of forming our mental habits and our outlook on the world is to be judged successful in proportion as its outcome approximates to this ideal in proportion that is to say as it gives us a true view of our place in society of the relation of the whole human society to its non-human environment and of the nature of the non-human world as it is in itself apart from our desires and interests. If this standard is admitted we can return to the consideration of science inquiring how far science contributes to such an aim and whether it is in any respect superior to its rivals in educational practice. Two. Two opposite and at first sight conflicting merits belong to science as against literature and art. The one which is not inherently necessary but is certainly true at the present day is hopefulness as to the future of human achievement and in particular as to the useful work that may be accomplished by any intelligent student. This merit and the cheerful outlook which it engenders prevent what might otherwise be the depressing effect of another aspect of science to my mind also a merit and perhaps its greatest merit. I mean the irrelevance of human passions and of the whole subjective apparatus where scientific truth is concerned. Each of these reasons for preferring the study of science requires some amplification. Let us begin with the first. In the study of literature or art our attention is perpetually riveted upon the past. The men of Greece or of the Renaissance did better than any men do now. The triumphs of former ages so far from facilitating fresh triumphs in our own age actually increase the difficulty of fresh triumphs by rendering originality harder of attainment. Not only is artistic achievement not cumulative but it seems even to depend upon a certain freshness and naivete of impulse and vision which civilization tends to destroy. Hence comes to those who have been nourished on the literary and artistic productions of former ages a certain peevishness and undue fastidiousness toward the present from which there seems no escape except into the deliberate vandalism which ignores tradition and in the search after originality achieves only the eccentric. But in such vandalism there is none of the simplicity and spontaneity out of which great art springs. Theory is still the canker in its core and insincerity destroys the advantages of a merely pretended ignorance. The despair thus arising from an education which suggests no preeminent mental activity except that of artistic creation is wholly absent from an education which gives the knowledge of scientific method. The discovery of scientific method except in pure mathematics is a thing of yesterday. Speaking broadly we may say that it dates from Galileo. Yet already it has transformed the world and its success proceeds with ever accelerating velocity. In science men have discovered an activity for the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius. In science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors where one man of supreme genius has invented a method a thousand lesser men can apply it. No transcendent ability is required in order to make useful discoveries in science. The edifice of science needs its masons, bricklayers and common laborers as well as its foremen, master builders and architects. In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius. In science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement. In science the man of real genius is the man who invents a new method. The notable discoveries are often made by his successors who can apply the method with fresh vigor unimpaired by the previous labor of perfecting it but the mental caliber of the thought required for their work, however brilliant is not so great as that required by the first inventor of the method. There are in science immense numbers of different methods appropriate to different classes of problems but over and above them all there is something not easily definable which may be called the method of science. It was formally customary to identify this with the inductive method and to associate it with the name of Bacon. But the true inductive method was not discovered by Bacon and the true method of science is something which includes deduction as much as induction logic and mathematics as much as botany and geology. I shall not attempt the difficult task of stating what the scientific method is but I will try to indicate the temper of mind out of which the scientific method grows which is the second of the two merits that were mentioned above as belonging to a scientific education. The kernel of the scientific outlook is a thing so simple, so obvious, so seemingly trivial that the mention of it may almost excite derision. The kernel of the scientific outlook is the refusal to regard our own desires, tastes and interests as affording a key to the understanding of the world. Stated thus baldly, this may seem no more than a trite truism but to remember it consistently in matters arousing our passionate partisanship is by no means easy especially where the available evidence is uncertain and inconclusive. A few illustrations will make this clear. Aristotle I understand considered that the stars must move in circles because the circle is the most perfect curve. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, he allowed himself to decide a question of fact by an appeal to aesthetic comoral considerations. In such a case it is at once obvious to us that this appeal was unjustifiable. We know now how to ascertain as a fact the way in which the heavenly bodies move and we know that they do not move in circles or even in accurate ellipses or in any other kind of simply describable curve. This may be painful to a certain hankering after simplicity of pattern in the universe but we know that in astronomy such feelings are irrelevant. Easy as this knowledge seems now, we owe it to the courage and insight of the first inventors of scientific method and more especially to Galileo. We may take as another illustration Malthus' doctrine of population. This illustration is all the better for the fact that his actual doctrine is now known to be largely erroneous. It is not his conclusions that are valuable but the temper and method of his inquiry. As everyone knows it was to him that Darwin owed an essential part of his theory of natural selection. And this was only possible because Malthus' outlook was truly scientific. His great merit lies in considering man not as the object of praise or blame but as a part of nature, a thing with a certain characteristic behavior from which certain consequences must follow. If the behavior is not quite what Malthus' supposed, if the consequences are not quite what he inferred, that may falsify his conclusions but does not impair the value of his method. The objections which were made when his doctrine was new, that it was horrible and depressing, that people ought not to act as he said they did and so on, were all such as implied an unscientific attitude of mind, as against all of them his calm determination to treat man as a natural phenomenon marks an important advance over the reformers of the 18th century and the revolution. Under the influence of Darwinism the scientific attitude towards man has now become fairly common and is to some people quite natural, though to most it is still a difficult and artificial intellectual contortion. There is however one study which is as yet almost wholly untouched by the scientific spirit. I mean the study of philosophy. Philosophers and the public imagine that the scientific spirit must pervade pages that bristle with allusions to ions, germ plasms, and the eyes of shellfish. But as the devil can quote scripture, so the philosopher can quote science. The scientific spirit is not an affair of quotation, of externally acquired information. Any more than manners are an affair of the etiquette book. The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know. It involves suppressions of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be. Now in philosophy this attitude of mind has not yet been achieved. Self-absorption, not personal, but human, has marked almost all attempts to conceive the universe as a whole. Mind, or some aspect of it, thought or will or sentience, has been regarded as the pattern after which the universe is to be conceived, for no better reason at bottom than that such a universe would not seem strange and would give us the cozy feeling that every place is like home. To conceive the universe as essentially progressive, or essentially deteriorating, for example, is to give to our hopes and fears a cosmic importance which may, of course, be justified, but which we have as yet no reason to suppose justified. Until we have learned to think of it in ethically neutral terms, we have not arrived at a scientific attitude in philosophy, and until we have arrived at such an attitude, it is hardly to be hoped that philosophy will achieve any solid results. I have spoken so far largely of the negative aspect of the scientific spirit, but it is from the positive aspect that its value is derived. The instinct of constructiveness, which is one of the chief incentives to artistic creation, can find in scientific systems a satisfaction more massive than any epic poem. Disinterested curiosity, which is the source of almost all intellectual effort, finds with astonished delight that science can unveil secrets which might well have seemed forever undiscoverable, the desire for a larger life and wider interest, for an escape from private circumstances, and even from the whole recurring human cycle of birth and death, is fulfilled by the impersonal cosmic outlook of science as by nothing else. To all these must be added as contributing to the happiness of the man of science, the admiration of splendid achievement, and the consciousness of an estimable utility to the human race. A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet. End of The Place of Science in a Liberal Education by Bertrand Russell. A plea for Captain John Brown by Henry David Thoreau. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A plea for Captain John Brown by Henry David Thoreau. Read to the citizens of Concord Mass Sunday evening, October 30, 1859. I trust that you will pardon me for being here. I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It caused us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with and admiration of him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do. First, as to his history, I will endeavor to omit as much as possible what you have already read. I need not describe this person to you, for probably most of you have seen and will not soon forget him. I am told that his grandfather, John Brown, was an officer in the Revolution, that he himself was born in Connecticut about the beginning of this century, but early went with his father to Ohio. I heard him say that his father was a contractor who furnished beef to the army there in the war of 1812, that he accompanied him to the camp and assisted him in that employment, seeing a good deal of military life, more perhaps than if he had been a soldier, for he was often present at the councils of the officers. Especially, he learned by experience how armies are supplied and maintained in the field. A work which, he observed, requires at least as much experience and skill as to lead them in battle. He said that few persons had any conception of the cost, even the pecuniary cost of firing a single bullet in war. He saw enough at any rate to disgust him with a military life, indeed to excite in him a great abhorrence of it. So much so that though he was tempted by the offer of some petty office in the army, when he was about 18, he not only declined that, but he also refused to train when warned and was fined for it. He then resolved that he would never have anything to do with any war, unless it were a war for liberty. When the troubles in Kansas began, he sent several of his sons thither to strengthen the party of the Free State men, fitting them out with such weapons as he had, telling them that if the troubles should increase and there should be need of him, he followed to assist them with his hand and counsel. This, as you all know, he soon after did, and it was through his agency, far more than any others, that Kansas was made free. For a part of his life he was a surveyor, and at one time he was engaged in wool-growing, and he went to Europe as an agent about that business. There, as everywhere, he had his eyes about him and made many original observations. He said, for instance, that he saw why the soil of England was so rich. And that of Germany, I think it was, so poor, and he thought of writing to some of the crowned heads about it. It was because in England the peasantry live on the soil which they cultivate, but in Germany they are gathered into villages at night. It is a pity that he did not make a book of his observations. I should say that he was an old-fashioned man in respect for the Constitution and his faith in the permanence of the Union. In his memory he deemed to be wholly opposed to these, and he was its determined foe. He was, by descent and birth, a New England farmer, a man of great common sense, deliberate and practical as that class is, and tenfold more so. He was like the best of those who stood at Concord Bridge once on Lexington Common and on Bunker Hill, only he was firmer and higher-principled than any that I have chance to hear of as there. There was no abolition lecturer that converted him. Ethan Allen and Stark, with whom he may in some respects be compared, were rangers in a lower and less important field. He could bravely face their country's foes, but he had the courage to face his country herself when she was in the wrong. A Western writer says to account for his escape from so many perils that he was concealed under a rural exterior, as if in that prairie land a hero should have good rights whereas citizens dress only. He did not go to the college called Harvard, good old Alma Mater as she is. He was not fed on the pap that is there furnished. As he phrased it, I know no more of grammar than one of your calves. But he went to the great University of the West, where he sedulously pursued the study of liberty for which he had early betrayed fondness, and having taken many degrees, he finally commenced the public practice of humanity in Kansas, as you all know. Such were his humanities and not any study of grammar. He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way and write it up a falling man. He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but for the most part see nothing at all, the Puritans. It would be in vain to kill him. He died lately in the time of Cromwell, but he reappeared here. Did he not? Some of the Puritan stock are said to have come over and settled in New England. They were a class that did something else than celebrate their forefather's day and deep parched corn in remembrance of that time. They were neither Democrats nor Republicans, but men of simple habits, straightforward, prayerful, not thinking much of rulers who did not fear God, not making many compromises, nor seeking after available candidates. In his camp, as one has recently written, and as I have myself heard him state, he permitted no profanity, no man of loose morals was suffered to remain there unless, indeed, as a prisoner of war. I would rather, said he, have the smallpox, yellow fever and cholera all together in my camp than a man without principle. It is a mistake, sir, that our people make when they think that bullies are the best fighters or that they are the fit men to oppose these Southerners. Give me men of good principles, God-fearing men, men who respect themselves and with a dozen of them I will oppose any hundred such men as these Buford Ruffians. He said that if one offered himself to be a soldier under him, who was forward to tell what he could or would do, if he could only get sight of the enemy, he had but little confidence in him. He was never able to find more than a score or so of recruits whom he would accept and only about a dozen among them his sons in whom he had perfect faith. When he was here, some years ago, he showed to a few a little manuscript book, his orderly book, I think he called it, containing the names of his company in Kansas and the rules by which they bound themselves. And he stated that several of them had already sealed the contract with their blood. When someone remarked that with the addition of a chaplain, it would have been a perfect Cromwellian troop, he observed that he would have been glad to add a chaplain to the list if he could have found one who could fill that office worthily. It is easy enough to find one for the United States Army. I believe that he had prayers in his camp morning and evening, nevertheless. He was a man of Spartan habits and at 60 was scrupulous about his diet at your table, excusing himself by saying that he must eat sparingly and fair hard as became a soldier or one who was fitting himself for difficult enterprises, a life of exposure. A man of rare common sense and directness of speech as of action, a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles. That was what distinguished him, not yielding to a whim or transient impulse, but carrying out the purpose of a life. I noticed that he did not overstate anything but spoke within bounds. I remember particularly how in his speech here he referred to what his family had suffered in Kansas without ever giving the least vent to his pent-up fire. It was a volcano with an ordinary chimney-flu. Also referring to the deeds of certain border ruffians, he said rapidly pairing away his speech like an experienced soldier keeping a reserve of force and meaning, they had a perfect right to be hung. He was not in the least a rhetorician. Was not talking to Buncombe or any of his constituents anywhere had no need to invent anything but to tell the simple truth and communicate his own resolution. Therefore he appeared incomparably strong and eloquence in Congress and elsewhere seemed to me at a discount. It was like the speeches of Cromwell compared with those of an ordinary king. As for his tact and prudence, I will merely say that at a time when scarcely a man from the Free States was able to reach Kansas by any direct route, at least without having his arms taken from him, he, carrying what imperfect guns and other weapons he could collect, openly and slowly drove an ox cart through Missouri, apparently in the capacity of a surveyor with a surveying compass exposed in it and so passed on its suspected and had ample opportunity to learn the designs of the enemy. For some time after his arrival he still followed the same profession when, for instance, he saw a knot of the Ruffians on the prairie discussing, of course, the single topic which then occupied their minds. He would perhaps take his compass and one of his sons and proceed to run an imaginary line right through the very spot on which that conclave had assembled and when he came up to them he would naturally pause and have some talk with them, learning their news, discussed all their plans perfectly and having thus completed his real survey he would resume his imaginary one and run on his line till he was out of sight. When I expressed surprise that he could live in Kansas at all with a price set upon his head and so large a number including the authorities exasperated against him he accounted for it by saying it is perfectly well understood that I will not be taken. Much of the time for some years he has had to skulk in swamps suffering from poverty and from sickness which was the consequence of exposure befriended only by Indians and a few whites but though it might be known that he was lurking in a particular swamp his foes commonly did not care to go in after him he could even come out into a town where there were more border Ruffians than free state men and transact some business without delaying long and yet not be molested for said he no little handful of men were willing to undertake it and a large body could not be got together in season as for his recent failure we do not know the facts about it it was evidently far from being a wild and desperate attempt his enemy Mr. Valendingham is compelled to say that it was among the best planned executed conspiracies that ever failed to mention his other successes was it a failure or did it show a want of good management to deliver from bondage a dozen human beings and walk off with them by broad daylight for weeks if not months at a leisurely pace through one state after another for half the length of the North conspicuous to all parties with a price set upon his head going into a courtroom on his way and telling what he had done thus convincing Missouri profitable to try to hold slaves in his neighborhood and this not because the government menials were lenient but because they were afraid of him yet he did not attribute his success foolishly to his star or to any magic he said truly that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him was as one of his prisoners confessed because they lacked a cause a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked when the time came few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defense of what they knew to be wrong they did not like that this should be their last act in this world but to make haste to his last act and its effects the newspapers seem to ignore or perhaps are really ignorant of the fact that there are at least as many as two or three individuals to a town throughout the North present speaker does about him and his enterprise I do not hesitate to say that they are an important and growing party we aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels pretending to read history and our bibles but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only 17 white men and 5 Negroes were concerned in the late enterprise but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told why do they still dodge the truth they are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact which they do not distinctly face that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded they at most only criticize the tactics though we wear no crepe the thought of that man's position and probable fate is spoiling many a man's day here at the north for other thinking if any one who has seen him here can pursue successfully any other train of thought I do not know what he is made of if there is any such who gets his usual allowance of sleep I will warrant him to fatten easily under any circumstances which do not touch his body or purse I put a piece of paper and a pencil under my pillow and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark the whole my respect for my fellow men except as one may outweigh a million is not being increased these days I have noticed the cold blooded way in which newspaper writers and men generally speak of this event as if an ordinary malifactor the one of unusual pluck as the governor of Virginia is reported to have said using the language of the cockpit the gamest man he ever saw had been caught and were about to be hung dreaming of his foes when the governor thought he looked so brave it turns what sweetness I have to gall to hear or hear of the remarks of some of my neighbors when we heard at first that he was dead one of my townsmen observed that he died as the fool dyeth which pardon me for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living others craven-hearted said disparagingly that he threw his life away because he resisted the government which way have they thrown their lives prey such as would praise a man for attacking a singly an ordinary band of thieves or murderers I hear another ask Yankee-like what will he gain by it as if he expected to fill his pockets by this enterprise such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense if it does not lead to a surprise party if he does not get a new pair of boots or a vote of thanks it must be a failure but he won't gain anything by it well no I don't suppose he could get four and six pence a day for being hung take the year round but then he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul and such a soul when you do not no doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood but that is not the market that heroes will lead to such do not know that like the seed is the fruit and that in the moral world when good seed is planted good fruit is inevitable and does not depend on our watering and cultivating that when you plant or bury a hero in this field a crop of heroes is sure to spring up this is a seed of such force and vitality that it does not ask our leave to germinate the momentary charge in obedience to a blundering command proving what a perfect machine the soldier is has properly enough been celebrated by a poet laureate but the steady and for the most part successful charge of this man for some years against the legions of slavery in obedience to an infinitely higher command is as much more memorable than that as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine do you think that that will go unsung served him right a dangerous man he is undoubtedly insane so they proceed to live their sane and wise and all together admirable lives reading their Plutarch a little but chiefly pausing at that feet of Putnam who was let down into a wolf's den and in this wise they nourish themselves for brave and patriotic deeds sometime or other the trekked society could afford to print that story of Putnam district schools with the reading of it for there is nothing about slavery or the church in it unless it occurs to the reader that some pastors are wolves in sheep's clothing the American board of commissioners for foreign missions even might dare to protest against that wolf I have heard of boards and of American boards but a chances that I never heard of this particular lumber till lately and yet I hear of northern men and women and children by families a lifetime membership in such societies as these a life membership in the grave you can get buried cheaper than that our foes are in our midst and all about us there is hardly a house but is divided against itself for our foe is the all but universal woodenness of both head and heart the want of vitality in man which is the effect of our vice and hence our begotten fear superstition bigotry persecution and slavery of all kinds we are mere figureheads upon a hulk with livers in the place of hearts the curse is the worship of idols which at length changes the worshipper into a stone image himself and the new englander is just as much an idolater as the hindu this man was an exception for he did not set up even a political graven image between him and his god a church that can never have done with excommunicating christ while it exists away with your broad and flat churches and your narrow and tall churches take a step forward and invent a new style of outhouses invent assault that will save you and defend our nostrils the modern christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers in the liturgy provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly afterward all his prayers begin with now i lay me down to sleep and he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go to his long rest he has consented to perform certain old established charities too after a fashion but he does not wish to hear of any new fangled ones he doesn't wish to have any supplementary articles added to the contract to fit it to the present time he shows the whites of his eyes on the Sabbath and the blacks of the week the evil is not merely a stagnation of blood but a stagnation of spirit many no doubt are well disposed but sluggish by constitution and by habit and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are accordingly they pronounce this man insane for they know that they could never act as he does as long as they are themselves we dream of foreign countries of other times and races of men placing them at a distance in history or space but let some significant event like the present occur in our midst and we discover often this distance and this strangeness between us and our nearest neighbors they are our austrias and chinas and south sea islands our crowded society becomes well spaced all at once clean and handsome to the eye a city of magnificent distances and why it was that we never got beyond compliments and surfaces with them before we become aware of as many bursts between us and them as there are between a wandering tartar and a chinese town the thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the marketplace impassable seas suddenly find their level between us or dumb steps stretch themselves out there it is the difference of constitution of intelligence and faith of streams and mountains that make the true and impassable boundaries between individuals and between states none but the like-minded can come plenipotentiary to our court i read all the newspapers i could get within a week after this event and i do not remember in them a single expression of sympathy for these men i have since seen one noble statement in a boston paper not editorial some voluminous sheets decided not to print the full report of brown's words to the exclusion of other matter it was as if a publisher should reject the manuscript of the new testament and print wilson's last speech the same journal which contained this pregnant news was chiefly filled in parallel columns with the reports of the political conventions that were being held but the descent to them was too steep they should have been spared this contrast been printed in an extra at least to turn from the voices and deeds of earnest men to the cackling of political conventions office seekers and speech makers who did not so much as lay an honest egg but where their breasts bear upon an egg of chalk their great game is the game of straws or rather that universal aboriginal game of the platter at which the indians cried hubbub exclude the reports of religious and political conventions and publish the words of a living man but i object not so much to what they have omitted as to what they have inserted even the liberator called it a misguided wild and apparently insane effort as for the herd of newspapers and magazines i do not chance to know an editor in the country who will deliberately print anything which he knows will ultimately and permanently reduce the number of his subscribers they do not believe that it would be expedient how can they print the truth if we do not say pleasant things they argue nobody will attend to us and so they do like some traveling auctioneers who sing an obscene song in order to draw a crowd around them republican editors obliged to get their sentences ready for the morning edition and accustomed to look at everything by the twilight of politics express no admiration nor true sorrow even but call these men deluded fanatics mistaken men insane or crazed it suggests what a sane set of editors we are blessed with not mistaken men who know very well on which side their bread is buttered at least a man does a brave and humane deed and at once on all sides we hear people in parties declaring i didn't do it nor countenance him to do it in any conceivable way it can't be fairly inferred from my past career i for one am not interested to hear you define your position i don't know that i ever was or ever shall be i think it is mere egotism or impertinent at this time you needn't take so much pains to wash your skirts of him no intelligent man will ever be convinced that he was any creature of yours he went and came and he himself informs us under the auspices of john brown and nobody else the republican party does not perceive how many his failure will make to vote more correctly than they would have them they have counted the votes of pennsylvania and co but they have not correctly counted captain brown's vote he has taken the wind out of their sails the little wind they had and they may as well lie to and repair what though he did not belong to your clique though you may not to prove of his methods or his principles recognize his magnanimity would you not like to claim kindredship with him in that though in no other thing he is like or likely to you do you think that you would lose your reputation so what you lost at the spiral you would gain at the bomb if they do not mean all this then they do not speak the truth and say what they mean they are simply at their old tricks still and who calls him crazy that he was a conscientious man very modest in his demeanor apparently inoffensive until the subject of slavery was introduced when he would exhibit a feeling of indignation unparalleled the slave ship is on her way crowded with its dying victims new cargos are being added in mid ocean a small crew of slave holders countenanced by a large body of passengers is smothering four millions under the hatches and yet the politician asserts that the only proper way by which deliverance is to be obtained is by the quiet diffusion of the sentiments of humanity without any outbreak as if the sentiments of humanity were ever found unaccompanied by its deeds and you could disperse them all finished to order the pure article as easily as water with a watering pot and so lay the dust what is that that I hear cast overboard the bodies of the dead that have found deliverance that is the way we are diffusing humanity and its sentiments with it prominent and influential editors accustomed to deal with politicians men of an infinitely lower grade say in their ignorance that he acted on the principle of revenge they do not know the man they must enlarge themselves to conceive of him I have no doubt that the time will come to see him as he was they have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle and not a politician or an Indian of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed if Walker may be considered the representative of the South I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North he did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things he did not recognize unjust human laws but resisted them as he was bid for once we are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood no man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature knowing himself for a man the equal of any and all governments in that sense he was the most American of us all he needed no babbling lawyer making false issues to defend him he was more than a match for all the judges that American voters or office holders of whatever grade can create he could not have been tried by a jury of his peers because his peers did not exist when a man stands up serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind rising above them literally by a whole body even though he were of late the vilest murderer who has settled that matter with himself the spectacle is a sublime one didn't you know it eliberators ye tribunes, ye Republicans and we become criminal in comparison do yourselves the honor to recognize him he needs none of your respect as for the Democratic journals they're not human enough to affect me at all I do not feel indignation at anything they may say I am aware that I anticipate a little that he was still at the last accounts alive in the hands of his foes but that being the case I have all along found myself thinking and speaking of him as physically dead I do not believe in erecting statues to those who still live in our hearts whose bones have not yet crumbled in the earth around us but I would rather see the statue of Captain Brown in the Massachusetts State Houseyard than that of any other man whom I know I rejoice that I live in this age that I am his contemporary what a contrast when we turn to that political party which is so anxiously shuffling him and his plot out of the its way and looking around for some available slaveholder perhaps to be its candidate at least for one who will execute the fugitive state law and all those other unjust laws which he took up arms to a null insane a father and six sons and one son-in-law and several more men besides as many at least as twelve disciples all struck with insanity at once while the same tyrant holds with a firmer grip than ever his four millions of slaves and a thousand sane editors his abetters in their country and their bacon just as insane were his efforts in Kansas ask the tyrant who is his most dangerous foe the sane man or the insane do the thousands who know him best who have rejoiced at his deeds in Kansas and have afforded him material aid there think him insane such a use of this word is a mere trope with most who persist in using it and I have no doubt that many of the rest have already in silence retracted their words read his admirable answers to Mason and others how they are dwarfed and defeated by the contrast on the one side half brutish half timid questioning on the other truth clear as lightning crashing into their obscene temples they are made to stand with pilot and gessler and the inquisition how ineffectual their speech and action and what avoid their silence they are but helpless tools it was a great work it was no human power that gathered them about this preacher what of massachusetts and the north sent a few sane representatives to congress for of late years to declare with effect what kind of sentiments all their speeches put together and boiled down and probably they themselves will confess it do not match for manly directness and force and for simple truth the few casual remarks of crazy john brown that man who knew you are about to hang to send to the other world though not to represent you there no he was not our representative in any sense he was too fair a specimen of a man to represent the like of us who then were his constituents if you read his words understandingly you will find out in his case there is no idle eloquence no maid nor maiden speech no professor truth is his inspirer and earnestness the polisher of his sentences he could afford to lose his sharps rifles while he retained his faculty of speech a sharps rifle of infinitely sureer and longer range and the new york herald reports the conversation verbatim it does not know of what undying words it has made the vehicle i have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the report of that conversation still called the principal in it insane it has the ring of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and habits of life than an ordinary organization secure take any sentence of it any questions that i can honorably answer i will not otherwise so far as i am myself concerned i have told everything truthfully i value my word sir the few who talk about his vindictive spirit while they really admire his heroism no test by which to detect a noble man no amalgam to combine with his pure gold they mix their own dross with it it is a relief to turn from these slanders to the testimony of his more truthful but frightened jailers and hangmen governor wise speaks far more justly and appreciatingly of him than any northern editor or politician or public personage that i chance to have heard from i know that you can afford to hear him again on this subject he says they are themselves mistaken who take him to be madman he is cool collected and indomitable and it is but just to him to say that he was humane to his prisoners and he inspired me with the great trust in his integrity as a man of truth he is a fanatic vain and garrulous i leave that part to mr wise but firm truthful and intelligent his men too who survive are like him colonel washington says that he was the coolest and firmest man he ever saw in defying danger and death with one son dead by his side and another shot through he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand and held his rifle with the other and commanded his men with the utmost composure encouraging them to be firm and to sell their lives as dear as they could of the three white prisoners brown, stevens and copic it was hard to say which was most firm almost the first northern men whom the slave holder has learned to respect the testimony of mr valendingham though less valuable is of the same purport that it is vain to underrate either the man or his conspiracy he is the farthest possible removed from the ordinary ruffian fanatic or madman all is quiet at harper's fairy say the journals what is the character of that calm which follows when the law and the slave holder prevail i regard this event as a touchstone designed to bring out with glaring their stinkness the character of this government we need to be thus assisted to see it by the light of history it needed to see itself when a government puts forth its strength on the side of injustice to maintain slavery and kill the liberators of the slave it reveals itself a merely brute force or worse a demoniacal force it is the head of the plug uglies it is more manifest than ever that tyranny rules i see this government to be effectually allied with france and austria in a pressing mankind there sits a tyrant holding fettered four millions of slaves here comes their heroic liberator the critical and diabolical government looks up from its seat on the gasping four millions and inquires with an assumption of innocence what do you assault me for am i not an honest man cease agitation on this subject or i will make a slave of you too or else hang you we talk about a representative government but what a monster of a government is that where the noblest faculties of the mind and the whole heart are not represented by a tiger or ox stalking over the earth with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot away heroes have fought well on their stumps when their legs were shot off but i never heard of any good done by such a government as that the only government that i recognize and it matters not how few are at the head of it or how small its army is that power that establishes justice in the land never that which establishes injustice what shall we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies standing between it and those whom it oppresses a government that pretends to be christian and crucifies a million christs every day treason where does such treason take its rise i cannot help thinking of you as you deserve you governments can you dry up the fountains of thought hi treason when it is resistance to tyranny here below has its origin in and is first committed by the power that makes and forever recreates man when you have caught and hung all these human rebels you have accomplished nothing but your own guilt for you have not struck at the fountain head you presume to contend with a foe against whom west point cadets and rifled canon point not can all the art of the canon founder tempt matter to turn against its maker is the form in which the founder thinks he cast it more essential than the constitution of it and of himself the united states have a couple of four million slaves they are determined to keep them in this condition and massachusetts is one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape such are not all the inhabitants of massachusetts but such are they who rule and are obeyed here it was massachusetts as well as virginia that put down this insurrection at harpers fairy she sent the marines there and she will have to pay the penalty of her sin suppose that there is a society in this state that out of its own purse and magnanimity saves all the fugitive slaves that run to us and protects our colored fellow citizens and leaves the other work to the government so called is not that government fast losing its occupation and becoming contemptible to mankind if private men are obliged to perform the offices of government to protect the weak and dispense justice then the government becomes only a hired man or a clerk to perform menial or indifferent services of course that is but the shadow of a government who existence necessitates a vigilant committee what should we think of the oriental caddy even behind whom worked in secret a vigilant committee but such is the character of our northern states generally each has its vigilant committee and to a certain extent these crazy governments recognize and accept this relation they say virtually we'll be glad to work for you on these terms only don't make a noise about it and thus the government its salary being insured withdraws into the back shop taking the constitution with it and bestows most of its labor on repairing that when I hear it at work sometimes when I go by it reminds me at best of those farmers who in winter contrive to turn a penny by following the coopering business and what kind of spirit is their barrel made to hold they speculate in stocks and bore holes in mountains but they are not competent to lay out even a decent highway the only free road the underground railroad is owned and managed by the vigilant committee they have tunneled under the whole breadth such a government is losing its power and respectability as surely as water runs out of a leaky vessel and is held by one that can contain it I hear many condemn these men because they were so few when were the good and the brave ever in a majority would you have had him wait till that time came till you and I came over to him the very fact that he had no rabble or troop or hirelings about him would alone distinguish from ordinary heroes his company was small indeed because few could be found worthy to pass muster each one who laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man culled out of many thousands if not millions apparently a man of principle of rare courage and devoted humanity ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow man it may be doubted if there were their equals in these respects in all the country I speak of his followers only for their leader no doubt scoured the land far and wide seeking to swell his troop these alone were ready to step between the oppressor and the oppressed surely they were the very best men you could select to be hung that was the greatest compliment which this country could pay them they were ripe for her gallows she has tried a long time she has hung a good many to write one before when I think of him and his six sons and his son-in-law not to enumerate the others enlisted for this fight proceeding coolly, reverently humanely to work for months if not years sleeping and waking upon it summering and wintering the thought without expecting any reward but a good conscience while almost all America stood ranked on the other side I say again that it affects me as a sublime spectacle if he had any journal advocating his cause any organ as the phrase is monotonously and wearisomely playing the same old tune and then passing round the hat it would have been fatal to his efficiency if he had acted in any way so as to be let alone by the government he might have been suspected it was the fact that the tyrant must give place to him or he to the tyrant that distinguished him from all the reformers of the day that I know it was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slave-holder in order to rescue the slave I agree with him they who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slave-holder but no others such will be more shocked by his life than by his death I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me at any rate I do not think it is quite sane for one to spend his whole life in talking or writing about this matter unless he is continuously inspired and I have not done so a man may have other affairs to attend to I do not wish to kill nor to be killed in the circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable we preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day look at the policemen's billy and handcuffs look at the jail look at the gallows look at the chaplain of the regiment we are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army so we defend ourselves and our henroosts I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of sharps rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them when we are insulted by other nations or to hunt Indians or shoot fugitive slaves with them or the like I think that for once the sharps rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause the tools were in the hands of one who could use them the same indignation he said to have cleared the temple once will clear it again the question is not about the weapon but the spirit in which you use it no man has appeared in America as yet who loved his fellow man so well and treated him so tenderly he lived for him he took up his life and he laid it down for him what sort of violence is that which is encouraged not by soldiers but by peaceable citizens for so much by laymen not so much by the fighting sects as by the Quakers and not so much by Quaker men as by Quaker women this event advertises me that there is such a fact as death the possibility of a man's dying it seems as if no man had ever died in America before for in order to die you must first have lived I don't believe in the herces and pauls and funerals that they had had there was no death in this case because there had been no life they merely rotted or sloughed off pretty much as they had rotted or sloughed along no temples veil was rent only a hole dug somewhere let the dead bury their dead the best of them fairly ran down like a clock Franklin, Washington they were let off without dying they were merely missing one day to pretend that they are going to die or that they have died for ought that I know nonsense, I'll defy them to do it they haven't got life enough in them they'll delinquest like fungi and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the spot where they left off only half a dozen or so have died since the world began do you think that you are going to die, sir? no there's no hope of you you haven't got your lesson yet stay after school we make a needless ado about capital punishment taking lives when there's no life to take memento mori we don't understand that sublime sentence which some worthy got sculptured on his gravestone once we've interpreted it in a groveling and sniveling sense we've wholly forgotten how to die but be sure you do die nevertheless do your work and finish it if you know how to begin you will know when to end these men in teaching us how to die have at the same time taught us how to live if this man's acts and words do not create a revival it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do it is the best news that America has ever heard it has already quickened the feeble pulse of the north and infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart than any number of years of what is called commercial and political prosperity could how many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for one writer says that Brown's peculiar monomania made him to be dreaded by the Missourians as a supernatural being sure enough a hero in the midst of us cowards is always so dreaded he is just that thing inferior to nature he has a spark of divinity in him unless above himself he can erect himself how poor a thing is man newspaper editors argue also that it is a proof of his insanity that he thought he was appointed to do this work which he did that he did not suspect himself for a moment they talk as if it were impossible that a man could be divinely appointed in these days to do any work whatever as if vows and religion were out of date as connected with any man's daily work as if the agent to abolish slavery could only be somebody appointed by the president or by some political party they talk as if a man's death were a failure and his continued life be it of whatever character were a success when I reflect to what a cause this man devoted himself and how religiously and then reflect causes his judges and all who condemn him so angrily influently devote themselves I see that they are as far apart as the heavens and earth are asunder the amount of it is our leading men are a harmless kind of folk and they know well enough that they were not divinely appointed but elected by the votes of their party who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung is it indispensable to any northern man is there no resource but to cast this man also to the minotaur if you do not wish it say so distinctly while these things are being done beauty stands veiled and music is a screeching lie think of him of his rare qualities such a man as it takes ages to make and ages to understand no mock hero nor the representative of any party a man such as the sun may not rise upon again in this benighted land to whose making went the costliest material the finest adamant sent to be the redeemer of those in captivity and the only use to which you can put him is to hang him at the end of a rope you who pretend to care for Christ crucified consider what you are about to do to him who offered himself to be the savior of four millions of men any man knows when he is crucified and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point the murderer always knows that he is justly punished but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience it is an audacious government and is taking a step towards its own dissolution is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong are laws to be enforced simply because they were made or declared by any power of men to be good if they are not good is there any necessity for a man's being a tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves is it the intention of lawmakers that good men shall be hung ever are judges to interpret the law according to the letter and not the spirit what right have you to enter into a compact with yourself that you will do thus or so against the light within you is it for you to make up your mind to form any resolution whatever and not accept the convictions that are forced upon you and which ever pass your understanding I do not believe in lawyers in that mode of attacking or defending a man because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground and in cases of the highest importance it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not let lawyers decide trivial cases businessmen may arrange that among themselves if they were the interpreters of the everlasting laws which rightfully bind man that would be another thing a counterfeiting law factory standing half in a slave land and half in free what kind of laws for free men can you expect from that I am here to plead his cause with you I plead not for his life but for his character his immortal life and so it becomes your cause wholly and is not his in the least some 1800 years ago Christ was crucified this morning perchance captain brown was hung these are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links he is not old brown any longer he is an angel of light I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanist man in all the country should be hung perhaps he saw it himself the most fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance doubting if a prolonged life if any life can do as much good as his death misguided garrulous insane vindictive so you write in your easy chairs and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the armory clear as a cloudless sky true as the voice of nature is no man sent me here it was my own prompting here I acknowledge no master in human form and in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds addressing his captors who stand over him I think my friends you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity and it would be perfectly right for anyone to interfere with you so far as to free those you willfully and wickedly hold in bondage and referring to his movement it is in my opinion the greatest service a man can render to God I pity the pouring bondage that have none to help them that is why I am here not to gratify any personal animosity revenge or vindictive spirit it is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged that are as good as you and as precious in the sight of God you don't know your testament when you see it I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people oppressed by the slave power just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful I wish to say furthermore that you had better all you people at the south prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it the sooner you are prepared the better you may dispose of me very easily I am nearly disposed of now but this question is still to be settled this Negro question I mean the end of that is not yet I foresee a time when the painter will paint that scene no longer going to Rome for a subject the poet will sing it the historian record it and with the landing of the pilgrims and the declaration of independence it will be the ornament of some future national gallery when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here we shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown then and not till then we will take our revenge this is the end of a plea for Captain John Brown by Henry David Thoreau read by Matthew Wester for LibriVox.org Public Prayer by John Newton this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by T. Wellington Public Prayer it is much to be desired that our hearts might be so affected with the sense of divine things and so closely engaged when we worshiping God that it might not be in the power of little circumstances to interrupt and perplex us and to make us think the service wearisome and the time in which we employ in it tedious but as our infirmities are many and great and the enemy of our souls is watchful to discompose us if care is not taken by those who lead in social prayer the exercise which is approved by the judgment may become and an occasion of sin Length of Prayers the chief fault of many good prayers is that they are too long not that I think we should pray by the clock and limit ourselves precisely to a certain number of minutes but it is better of the two that the hearers should wish the prayer had been longer than spend half the time in wishing it was over this is frequently owing to an unnecessary enlargement upon every circumstance that offers as well as the repetition of the same things if we have been copious in pleading for spiritual blessings it may be best to be brief and summary in the article of intercession for others or if the frame of our spirits or the circumstances of affairs lead us to be more large in particular in laying the cases of others before the Lord respect should be had to this intention the former part of the prayer there are doubtless seasons when the Lord is pleased to favor those who pray with peculiar liberty they speak because they feel they have a wrestling spirit and hardly know how to leave off when this is the case those who join with them are seldom worried though the prayer should be protracted something beyond the usual limits but I believe it sometimes happens both in prayer and in preaching that we are apt to spin out our time to the greatest length when we have in reality the least to say long prayers should in general be avoided especially where several persons are to pray successively or else even spiritual hearers will be unable to keep up their attention and here I would just notice an impropriety we sometimes meet with that when a person gives expectation that is just going to conclude his prayer something not thought of in its proper place occurring that instant in his mind leads him as it were to begin again but unless it is a matter of singular importance it would be better omitted for that time preaching in prayers the prayers of some good men are more like preaching than praying they rather express the Lord's mind to the people than the desires of the people to the Lord indeed this can hardly be called prayer it might in another place stand for part of a good sermon but will afford little help to those who desire to pray with their hearts prayer should be sententious and made up of breathings to the Lord either of confession petition or praise it should be not only scriptural and evangelical but experimental a simple and unstudied expression of the wants and feelings of the soul it will be so if the heart is lively and affected in the duty it must be so if the edification of others is the point in view method in prayer several books have been written to assist in the gift and exercise of prayer and many useful hints may be borrowed from them but a too close attention to the method therein recommended gives an air of study and formality and offends against that simplicity which is so essentially necessary to a good prayer that no degree of acquired abilities can compensate for the want of it it is possible to learn to pray mechanically and by rule but it is hardly possible to do so with acceptance and benefit to others when the several parts of invocation, adoration confession, petition et cetera follow each other in a stated order the hearer's mind generally goes before the speaker's voice and we can form a tolerable conjecture what is to come next on this account we often find that unlettered people who have had little or no help for books or rather have not been fettered by them can pray with an unction and savor in an unpremeditated way while the prayers of persons of much superior abilities perhaps even of ministers themselves are though accurate and regular so dry and starched that they afford little either of pleasure or profit to spiritual mind the spirit of prayer is the fruit and token of the spirit of adoption the study addresses with which some approach the throne of grace reminds us of a stranger's coming to a great man's door he knocks and waits sends in his name and goes through a course of ceremony before he gains admittance while a child of the family uses no ceremony at all but enters freely when he pleases because he knows he is at home it is true we ought always to draw near the Lord with great humiliation of spirit and a sense of our unworthiness but this spirit is not always expressed or promoted by a pompous enumeration of the names and titles of the God with whom we have to do or by fixing in our minds beforehand the exact order in which we propose to arrange the several parts of our prayer some attention to method may be proper for the prevention of repetitions and plain people may be a little defective in it sometimes but this defect will not be half so tiresome and disagreeable as a studied and artificial exactness peculiarities of manner many perhaps most people who pray in public have some favorite word or expression which recurs too often in their prayers and is frequently used as a mere expletive having no necessary connection with the sense of which they are speaking the most disagreeable of these is when the name of the blessed God with the addition perhaps of one or more epithets as great, glorious, holy almighty, etc is introduced so often and without necessity as seems neither to indicate a due reverence in the person who uses it nor suited to excite reverence in those who hear I will not say that this is taking the name of God in vain in the usual sense of the phrase it is however a great impropriety and should be guarded against it would be well if they who use redundant expressions had a friend to give them a caution so that they might with a little care be retrenched and hardly any person can be sensible of the little peculiarities he may inadvertently adopt unless he is told of them there are several things likewise respecting the voice and manner of prayer which a person may with due care correct in himself and which if generally corrected would make meeting for prayer more pleasant than sometimes they are very loud speaking is a fault when the size of the place and the manner of the hearers do not render it necessary the end of speaking in public is to be heard and when that end is attained a greater elevation of the voice in frequency is hurtful to the speaker and is more likely to confuse a hearer than fix his attention I do not deny but allowance must be made for constitution and the warmth of the passions which dispose some people speak louder than others yet such will do well to restrain themselves as much as they can it may seem indeed to indicate great earnestness and that the heart is much affected yet it is often but false fire it may be thought speaking with power but a person who is favored with the Lord's presence may pray with power in a moderate voice and there may be very little of the power of the spirit though the voice should be heard in the street and neighborhood the other extreme of speaking too low is not so frequent but if we are not heard we might as well altogether hold our peace it exhausts the spirit and wearies the attention to be listening for any length of time with a very low voice some words or senses will be lost which will render what is heard less intelligible and agreeable if the speaker could be heard by the person furthest distant from him the rest will hear of course the tone of the voice is likewise to be regarded some have a tone in prayer so very different from their usual way of speaking that their nearest friends if not accustomed to them they know them by their voice sometimes the tone is changed perhaps more than once so that if our eyes do not give us more certain information than our ears we might think two or three persons had been speaking by turns it is a pity that when we approve what is spoken we should be so easily disconcerted by an awkwardness of delivery yet so it often is and probably so it will be in the present week in a perfect state of human nature it is more to be lamented than wondered at that sincere Christians are sometimes forced to confess he is a good man and his prayers as to their substance are spiritual and judicious but there is something so displeasing in his manner that I am always uneasy when I hear him informality in prayer contrary to this and still more offensive of talking to the Lord in prayer it is their natural voice indeed but it is that expression of it which they use upon the most familiar and trivial occasions the human voice is capable of so many inflections and variations that it can adapt itself to the different sensations of the mind as joy, sorrow, fear desire, etc if a man was pleading for his life or expressing his thanks to the king for a pardon and decency would teach him a suitableness of manner and anyone who could not understand his language might know by the sound of his words that he was not making a bargain or telling a story how much more when we speak to the king of kings should the consideration of his glory and our own vileness and of the important concerns we are engaged in before him impress us with an air of seriousness and reverence and prevent us from speaking to him as if it was all together such and one as ourselves the liberty to which we are called by the gospel does not at all encourage such a pertness and familiarity as would be unbecoming to use towards a fellow worm who was a little advanced above us in worldly dignity I shall be glad if these hints may be of any service to those who desire to worship God and who wish that whatever has a tendency to damp the spirit of devotion either in themselves or in others might be avoided end of public prayer by John Newton this recording read by T. Wellington is in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this recording by James Christopher JXChristopher at Yahoo.com from 1947 to 1969 the Air Force investigated unidentified flying objects under Project Blue Book the project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio was terminated December 17, 1969 of a total of 12,618 sightings reported to Project Blue Book 701 remained unidentified the decision to discontinue UFO investigations was based on an evaluation of a report prepared by the University of Colorado entitled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects a review of the University of Colorado's report by the National Academy of Sciences previous UFO studies and Air Force experience in investigating UFO reports during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s as a result of these investigations studies and experience gained from investigating UFO reports since 1948 the conclusions of Project Blue Book were 1. No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security 2. There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as unidentified represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge and 3. There was no evidence that sightings categorized as unidentified were extra-terrestrial vehicles. With the termination of Project Blue Book, the Air Force regulation establishing and controlling the program for investigating and analyzing UFOs was rescinded. Documentation regarding the former Blue Book investigation was permanently transferred to the Modern Military Branch, National Archives and Records Service, 8th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington DC, 20408 and is available for public review and analysis. Since the termination of Project Blue Book nothing has occurred that would support a resumption of UFO investigations by the Air Force. Given the current environment of steadily decreasing defense budgets, it is unlikely the Air Force would become involved in such a costly project in the foreseeable future. There are a number of universities and professional scientific organizations that have considered UFO phenomena during periodic meetings and seminars. A list of private organizations interested in aerial phenomena may be found in gales encyclopedia of associations. Interest and timely review of UFO reports by private groups ensures that sound evidence is not overlooked by the scientific community. Persons wishing to report UFO sighting should be advised to contact local law enforcement agencies. Point of contact. News media requiring Project Blue Book files should contact the National Archives Public Affairs Office<PHONE_NUMBER> Public query should be addressed to the Project Blue Book Archivist at<PHONE_NUMBER> For queries not related to Project Blue Book contact the National Archives receptionist at<PHONE_NUMBER> Current as of June 1995 End of USAF fact sheet 95-03 Unidentified Flying Objects and Air Force Project Blue Book This recording by James Christopher at yahoo.com So you've got to the end of our race course said the tortoise even though it does consist of an infinite series of distances I thought some Wiseacre or other had proved that the thing couldn't be done It can be done said Achilles it has been done Solvitor ambulando you see the distances were constantly diminishing and so but if they had been constantly increasing the tortoise interrupted then I shouldn't be here Achilles modestly replied and you would have got several times around the world by this time you flatter me I mean said the tortoise for you are a heavy weight and no mistake well now would you like to hear of a race course that most people fancy they can get to the end of in two or three steps while it really consists of an infinite number of distances each one longer than the previous one very much indeed and warrior as he drew from his helmet few warriors possessed pockets in those days an enormous notebook and a pencil proceed and speak slowly please short hand isn't invented yet that beautiful first proposition of Euclid the tortoise murmur dreamily you admire Euclid passionately so far at least as one can admire a treatise that won't be published for some centuries to come well now let's take a little bit of that argument in the first proposition just two steps and the conclusion drawn from them kindly enter them in your notebook and in order to refer to them conveniently let's call them A B and Z A things that are equal to the same are equal to each other B the two sides of the triangle are things that are equal to the same Z the two sides of this triangle are equal to each other readers of Euclid will grant I suppose that Z follows logically from A and B so that anyone who accepts A and B is true must accept Z as true undoubtedly the youngest child in a high school as soon as high schools are invented which will not be till some 2,000 years later will grant that and if some reader had not yet accepted A and B as true he might still accept the sequence as a valid one I suppose no doubt such a reader might exist he might say I accept as true the hypothetical proposition that if A and B be true Z must be true but I don't accept A and B as true such a reader would do wisely in abandoning Euclid and taking to football and might there not also be some reader who would say I accept A and B as true but I don't accept the hypothetical certainly there might be he also had better take to football and neither of these readers the tortoise continued is as yet under any logical necessity to accept Z as true quite so Achilles assented well now I want you to consider me as a reader of the second kind and to force me logically to accept Z as true a tortoise playing football would be Achilles was beginning and anomaly of course the tortoise hastily interrupted don't wonder from the point let's have Z first and football afterwards I am to force you to accept Z am I Achilles said musingly and your present position is that you accept but you don't accept the hypothetical let's call it C said the tortoise but you don't accept C if A and B are true Z must be true that is my present position said the tortoise then I must ask you to accept C I'll do so said the tortoise as soon as you have entered it in that notebook of yours what else have you got in it only a few memoranda said Achilles nervously fluttering the leaves a few memoranda of of the battles in which I have distinguished myself plenty of blank leaves I see the tortoise cheerily remarked we shall need them all Achilles now right as I dictate A things that are equal to the same are equal to each other B the two sides of this triangle are things that are equal to the same C if A and B are true Z must be true Z the two sides of this triangle are equal to each other you should call it D not Z it comes next to the other three if you accept A and B and C you must accept Z and why must I? because it follows logically from them if A and B and C are true Z must be true you don't dispute that I imagine if A and B and C are true Z must be true the tortoise thoughtfully repeated that's another hypothetical isn't it and if I failed to see its truth I might accept A and B and C and still not accept Z mightn't I the candid hero admitted though such obtuse-ness would certainly be phenomenal still the event is possible so I must ask you to grant one more hypothetical very good and quite willing to grant it as soon as you've written it down we will call it D if A and B and C are true Z must be true have you entered that in your notebook? I have Achilles joyfully exclaimed as you ran the pencil into its sheath and at last we've got to the end of this ideal of course now that you accept A and B and C and D of course you accept Z do I? said the tortoise innocently let's make that quite clear I accept A and B and C and D suppose I still refuse to accept Z then logic would take you by the throat and force you to do it Achilles triumphantly replied logic would tell you you can't help yourself now that you've accepted A and B and C and D you must accept Z whatever logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down so enter it in your book please we will call it E if A and B and C and D are true Z must be true until I've granted that of course I needn't grant Z so it's quite a necessary step you see I see said Achilles and there was a touch of sadness in his tone hear the narrator having pressing business at the bank was obliged to leave the happy pair I did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards when he did so Achilles was still seated on the back of the much enduring tortoise and was writing in his notebook which appeared to be nearly full the tortoise was saying have you got that last step written down unless I've lost count that makes a thousand and one there are several millions more to come and would you mind a personal favour considering what a lot of instruction this colloquia of ours will provide for the logicians of the 19th century would you mind adopting a pun that my cousin the mock turtle will then make and allowing yourself to be renamed tortoise spelt T-A-U-G-H-T dash U-S as you please replied the weary warrior in the hollow tones of despair as he buried his face in his hands provided that you for your part would adopt a pun the mock turtle never made and allow yourself to be renamed Achilles spelt A-K-I-L-L-E-A-S-E end of what the tortoise said to Achilles by Lewis Carroll read by Ross Clement