Life Everlasting

John Fiske

John Fiske

Life Everlasting

NOTE

On the evening of December 19, 1900, Mr. Fiske delivered in Sanders Theatre, Cambridge, the address here printed. It was given at the request of Harvard University, in accordance with the terms of the Ingersoll lectureship, but it stood clearly in Mr. Fiske's mind as a continuation, and in a sense the completion, of that series of philosophic studies successively issued under the titles, "The Destiny of Man viewed in the Light of his Origin," "The Idea of God as affected by Modern Knowledge," and "Through Nature to God." Mr. Fiske delayed the publication of "Life Everlasting," and it is possible that he designed amplifying it. Yet, as he stated in his Preface to "The Idea of God," that both that book and "The Destiny of Man" were printed exactly as delivered, "without the addition, or subtraction, or alteration of a single word," so he may have intended to print this study in the same way. At any rate it is now printed exactly as it was delivered, his perfectly clear manuscript being carefully followed.

4 Park Street, Boston

Autumn, 1901

THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP

Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, who died in Keene, County of Cheshire, New Hampshire, Jan. 26, 1893

First. In carrying out the wishes of my late beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as declared by him in his last will and testament, I give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where my late father was graduated, and which he always held in love and honor, the sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for the establishment of a Lectureship on a plan somewhat similar to that of the Dudleian lecture, that is – one lecture to be delivered each year, on any convenient day between the last day of May and the first day of December, on this subject, "the Immortality of Man," said lecture not to form a part of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by any Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruction, though any such Professor or Tutor may be appointed to such service. The choice of said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious denomination, nor to any one profession, but may be that of either clergyman or layman, the appointment to take place at least six months before the delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be safely invested and three fourths of the annual interest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for his services and the remaining fourth to be expended in the publishment and gratuitous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which is always to be furnished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same lecture to be named and known as "the Ingersoll lecture on the Immortality of Man."

LIFE EVERLASTING

Few incidents in ancient history are more tragic than the death of Pompey. The spectacle of the mighty warrior who had conquered the Orient and contended with Cæsar for the mastery of the world, a defeated and despairing fugitive, treacherously murdered and lying unburied on the Egyptian strand, was one that drew tears from Cæsar himself and from many another. Yet among the poets of the sixteenth century Renaissance there was one who took a different view of the matter. In an epigram of incomparable beauty Francesco Molsa exclaims: —

Dux, Pharea quamvis jaceas inhumatus arena,

Non ideo fati est sævior ira tui:

Indignum fuerat tellus tibi victa sepulcrum;

Non decuit cЕ“lo, te, nisi, Magne, tegi!

It is almost impossible to preserve in a translation the peculiar charm of these lines, but a friend of mine in one of the pleasant student days of forty years ago produced this happy and fitting paraphrase: —

We grieve not, Pompey, that to thee

No earthly tomb was given;

All lands subdued, nought else was free

To shelter thee but Heaven!

Here the art of the poet lies in the boldness with which he seizes upon one of the most subtle and startling effects of contrast. In the very circumstance which to the ancient mind was the acme of humiliation and horror his genius discerns the occas