The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
We devote our energies to the propagation of a religion
which Reason, that pitiless monarch of the mind, tells us
must as inevitably pass as did those of Isis and Bel and
Cybele, leaving in the earth's all-absorbing bosom only a
few shattered altars and broken fanes. We are striving to
win and wear the immortelles, only to be told that mighty
empires have passed from the memory of mankind, and
proud kings who may have ruled the world, sunk into the
far depths of Time and been forgotten. We divide into
classes industrial and sets social and give Pride free rein to
vaunt herself, knowing that the hour will surely come when
not even a Hilprecht can distinguish between the prince's
ashes and the pauper's dust--can e'en so much as say,
"This cold dead earth, o'er which lizards crawl and from
which springs the poisonous worm and noxious weed, once
lived and loved." We busy ourselves about the style of a
coat or the cut of a corsage; we dispute anent our faiths
and plan new follies; we struggle for wealth that we may
flaunt a petty opulence in our fellows' faces and win the
envy of fools--and the span of Life but three score and ten,
while a thousand years are but as one tick of the horologe
of Time! We quarrel about our political creeds and religious
cults, as though it made any difference whether we wore
white or yellow badges, sacrificed at the shrine of Jupiter or
worshiped in the temples of Jehovah. Why so hot, little
man? Look up! Thou seest that sun? 'Tis the same that
shone on this debris when it was the throbbing metropolis
of a world. The self-same moon that looks so
peacefully down smiled on the midnight tryst in Nippur's
scented groves or Babylon's hanging gardens; the same
stars that now fret Heaven's black vault with astral fire
winked and blinked 11,000 years ago while the sandaled
feet of youth, on polished cedar floors, beat out the
rhythmic passion of its blood. There too were the Heaven
of requited love and the Hell of breaking hearts; there too
were women beauteous as the dawn and ambitious men,
grasping with eager hands at what they fondly thought the
ever-fadeless bays; there too were crowned kings and
fashion's sumptuous courts, chanting priests and tearful
penitents--the same farce tragedy of Life and Death. And
now an unsightly heap of rubbish marks this once bright
theater in which prince and pauper each played his part--
marks it, and nothing more. But the sun shines on, and the
stars, and the silver moon still draws the restless wave
around a rolling world. How small we are, how ephemeral,
how helpless in God's great hand! Is it not strange that we
do not cling, each to the others, like shipwrecked mariners
riding the stormy waters on some frail raft and looking with
dilating eyes into the black abyss?--that we waste our little
lives in wild wars and civic strife?--that all our souls are
concentrated in that one word, selfishness?--that we have
time to hate? If History be Philosophy teaching by
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