The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1899-08-05
What is Thought Of Him by a
Catholic Critic.
HR WAS NOT AN ORIGINAL THINKER
He Had Ceased to Interest the
General Public.
HIS FALSE VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY

HIS FALSE VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY
Was the Victim of Intellectual
Color Blindness.
The following editorial in the New
York Freeman's Journal on the death OF
Col. Robert G. Ingersoll is evidently
the production of Rev. L. A. Lambert,
the famous controversialist:
For some years before his death Rob-
ert G. Ingersoll had been falling away
from public attention. He was growing
old, and took less conspicuous part in
politics and other public affairs. This is
busy world society lives fast and re-
quires variety and novelty in its stimu-
lants. The idol of today is apt to be
relegated to the lumber garret tomor-
row. 1t requires great man to attract
general public attention by his ability;
greater, in good or evil, to hold it
long, and still greater to hold it per-
manently and pass his name down to
posterity as landmark in the rapid
current of time.
After his lecture on Moses, and one
or two others, the public became famil-
lar with Ingersoll's whole range OF
thought on philosophy and theology. 1t
was narrow. range, and his subsequent
lectures and magazine articles were a
repetition of Moses, ghosts, etc. Pass
ing events gave occasion for variety in
the way of depression, but ON the whole
lngersoll's lectures for the last few years
were a repetition of the first two or
three that brought him to public notice.
Had it not been for his great oratorical
powers, his wit that amused and his gift
of story-telling-so dear to an American
audience-he would years ago have suf-
fered the fate of forgotten actors, poets
and novelists.
He was not an original thinker, nor a
profound thinker on the thoughts of
others. There are artists in Rome and
other art centers of Europe who con-
fine themselves to making copies of the
masterpieces Of great painters. By rea-
son of their vividness and freshness these
copies are preferred by superficial pic
ture-buyers to the originals, somewhat
dimmed by age and dust and smoke.
What these copyists are to the great
masters, the orator of agnosticism was
to the infdel and atheistic writers of
the eighteenth century. Their writings
were his storehouse of argument and
misinformation. His wit and rhetoric
clothed their arguments in more modern
dress and made them more attractive to
the superficial by their freshness and
piquancy. But the new paint added no
element of strength to the originals.
1t is question whether Ingersoll ever
had clear idea OF what he believed.
His lectures and writings are almost ex-
clusively devoted to telling what he did
not believe. Instead of seeking some-
thing positive and permanent to hold to,
he was forever ferreting to find defects
in what others held as positive and per-
manent.
His trend of mind was to destroy
rather than to construct. To destroy one
needs not to know the nature or con-
stituents of the thing one destroys. The
child with match can destroy palace,
but cannot build hut where the palace
Stood A man can destroy a watch
without knowing its intricate machinery,
but without such knowledge he cannot
construct it. Because of this mental
trend, it is question whether Ingersoll
comprehended any system of philosophy
as whole, even that Of agnosticism-if
it can be called system-which he pro-
fessed. His mental .Jc saw systems OF
philosophy and systems of religion as
one sees objects in a broken or distorted
mirror-in fragmentary or distorted
state. He lacked that faculty by which
system and things are seen in their to-
tality and in their due and proper rela-
ton to the universal whole.
Owing to this inability to grasp phil
osophical systems in their totality and
see that they must stand or fall as a
whole, 1ngersoll had no philosophical
system. He took principle from one
system and another principle from an
other system, and failed to see that the
two principles are contradictory of each
other. Many instances of this indiscrinl-
mate selection of principles are to be
found in his lectures. If there is any
thing he insisted on and reiterated more
than another it is liberty, freedom Of
thought, freedom Of will. No one has