Luther Burbank

“ The Women's Christian Temperance Union in Santa Rosa, of which he was an honorary life member, held a meeting of prayer (which only ten women attended!) for the misguided scientist—a meeting that became not so much a time of prayer as an indignation council—yet Burbank refused either to have his soul saved or to recant. They could pillory him for the leering stares of a morbid public. They could burn him, figuratively, at the stake. They could unroll eternal thunder to peal out threats of everlasting damnation, but Burbank remained inflexible on his original platform. ”

“ The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead. Every normal human being has ideals, one or many, to look up to, reach up to, to grow up to. Religion refers to the sentiments and feelings; science refers to the demonstrated everyday laws of Nature. ”

“ On the morning of Friday, January 22, 1926, before Burbank's avowal of disbelief was broadcast through the press, California's gentle patriarch went about his experimental labors with the serenity of one who knows that he has harbored no evil thoughts of his fellowman and that in seventy-seven years of life he has never consciously hurt a living being. ”

“ There are without doubt some human beings in every nation, who, according to our present standards of civilization are truly civilized, but grave doubts may be entertained as to any community or any nation who could in any way measure up even to this standard scale of life, where we find more and more freedom, but even man today is far from free. Slaves yet to war, crime and ignorance—the only "unpardonable sin." Slaves to unnumbered ancient "taboos," superstitions, prejudices and fallacies, which one by one are slowly but surely weakening under the clear light of the morning of science ”

“ Will the growing intelligence of man (Science) forever tolerate the wholesale production of the ever-increasing proportion of idiots, morons, Mongoloids, insane, criminal, weak, destitute, nervous, diseased half men and women who infest the earth to their own sorrow and disgrace and perhaps the ultimate destruction of our present state of civilization? A knowledge of the fundamental laws of nature, not inefficient palliatives, is the first step. Is there a problem equal to the building of a better humanity? ”

“ For the hope of immortality, he believed, is the refuge of cowards, and he could appropriately quote the Bible itself in pointing out that the commonly accepted faith is merely the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen but for which puny man, striving selfishly to improve his position, to increase his goods, always reaches out a grasping hand. Voltaire pictured faith as "deferential credulity." Burbank saw that incredulity may rob us of our smug complacence, but in recompense gives us a sense of sincerity in our efforts to arrive at the truth. ”

“ Science which has opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe and given us light, truth and freedom from fear where once was darkness, ignorance and superstition. There is no personal salvation, there is no national salvation, except through science. ”

“ What is the use of assuring Fundamentalists that science is compatible with religion. They retort at once, 'Certainly not with our religion.'"
Burbank uses the word religion, but it is never misleading. It is, he says, "justice, love, truth, peace and harmony, a serene unity with science and the laws of the universe." It is idealism, and there is not the slightest countenance of any sort of theology in Burbank's use of the word. ”

“ He liked the literary figure, but "the clear light of science teaches us that we must be our own saviors." God? "The God within us is the only available God we know." We must come out from "behind theological barbed-wire fences," into "the great ocean of scientific truth." "Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity." The word "ceremony," he pungently said, "is derived from cerements" or "grave clothes." Very topical, in a chapel. Religion is a matter of feeling, and "feelings are all right if one does not get drunk on them." ”

“ Until that time comes, however, if religion of any name or nature makes man more happy, comfortable, and able to live peaceably with his brothers, it is good.
"But as a scientist I cannot help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired. As for their prophets, there are as many today as ever before, only now science refuses to let them overstep the bounds of common sense. ”

“ How could any voice be raised against a man who had done only good, who had filled the world's gardens with more beautiful flowers than they had ever known before, who in times of hunger and war had helped replenish the world's granaries by his genius, and who had given mankind meaty vegetables and gorgeous fruits such as nature, working blindly, had never before visioned? ”

“ A theory of personal resurrection or reincarnation of the individual is untenable when we but pause to consider the magnitude of the idea. On the contrary, I must believe that rather than the survival of all, we must look for survival only In the spirit of the, good we have done in passing through. This is as feasible and credible as Henry Ford's own practice of discarding the old models of his automobile. When obsolete, an automobile is thrown in the scrap heap. Once here and gone, the human life has likewise served its purpose. If it has been a good life, it has been sufficient. ”

“ For me that is deadly prose.
And prosy was the journey of fifty miles to see the great master of practical science. The Golden Gate was of ancient lead. The hills were sullen. A gray-blue haze screened the fair maid California. ”

“ The first faint glimmerings of choice may be seen in the polarity of the magnet, next we see it perhaps in plants and the more primitive forms of life, and as we mount higher and higher in the scale of life there is more and more freedom of choice and less dependence upon heredity. ”

“ The chief trouble with religion has been too much dependence upon names or words. People fail to discriminate. They do not think. Generally people who think for themselves, instead of thinking according to the rules laid down by others, are considered unfaithful to the established order. In that respect I, too, differ with the established order and established designations." ”

“ A race grows with accumulated experience, just as does a child, and with a racial growth there come new conceptions of religion. There is evolution in religion and religious thought that is as evident as the evolutionary processes in other phases of the world."
Of the western ministers, only one, Rabbi Jacob Nieto, spoke up in partial defense of Burbank's views. "While not going so far as to say that religion today is on a tottering foundation," he told interviewers, "I do believe that it is in a state of transition and that Tom Paine's 'age of reason' is dawning upon the world. ”

“ Burbank answered the question first by an epigram, and he asked that the interview begin with the thought it contained.
"Most people's religion," he said, "is what they would like to believe, not what they do believe. And very few of them stop to examine its foundations."
Then, going on to tell why he does not believe in a resurrection: "The universe is not big enough to contain perpetually all the human souls and the other living beings that have been here for their short spans. ”

“ There is no need for another."
The scientist, who thus took exception to theories of a man whom he had but recently described as "one of the living geniuses who can truly typify our age," then went on to his adopted principle, true in his plant world as in human life, that there is no repetition in nature.
"The theory of reincarnation," he said, "comes, like all other religious theories, from the best qualities in human nature, even if in this as in the others its adherents sometimes fail to carry out the tenets in their lives. ”

“ The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. I don't want to have anything to do with such a God. But while I cannot conceive of such a God, I do recognize the existence of a great universal power—a power which we cannot even begin to comprehend and might as well not attempt to. ”

“ Undermining ancient dogmas is not enough. The people, who begin to see the power of science, must know what men of science, with their trained minds and their grasp of realities, think about man and the universe. ”

“ Nor did Burbank stand alone in his fearless tearing away of old veils.
Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, president of Stanford University, had this to say: "The great accomplishment of science has been to place much of superstition in the discard. Science deals with ascertainable facts. Religion goes farther than science in that it deals with personality and persons. The great difficulties that science has had with religion have come largely from the fact that there has always been a strongly dogmatic quality in organized religion. ”

“ Santa Rosa, nay California, is proud of him, and there must be some temptation to avoid friction. What, no danger in California? Why, here in a suburb of San Francisco I hear of an audience of five thousand Fundamentalists rocking with laughter at some of the elementary truths of science. Even the educated run after iridescent verbiage and shun facts. ”

“ Those who would legislate against the teaching of evolution should also legislate against gravity, electricity and the unreasonable velocity of light, and also should introduce a clause to prevent the use of the telescope, the microscope and the spectroscope or any other instrument of precision which may in the future be invented, constructed or used for the discovery of truth. ”

“ Life is heredity plus environment. At birth of a plant, animal or man, heredity has already been fixed. Environment may now call into action only those tendencies which have been experienced in the age long past, yet may recombine and intensify them in a most surprising way. ”

“ The manhood and womanhood which would make the most of life in service to others is a sublimated form of the best of self which leads the way to a long lifetime of usefulness, happiness, health and peace. ”

“ E. E. Ingram, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Santa Rosa: "If words can be made to mean anything that one wants them to mean, we are bordering on linguistic anarchy. I regard Mr. Burbank's statement as most unfortunate and not worthy either of Mr. Burbank's head or heart. Mr. Burbank does not seem to know the meaning of the words and terms he used."
But Burbank merely smiled, pointing his finger suggestively toward the dictionary, and replied: "I said I am an infidel in the true sense of that word. ”

“ And in the heart of California, where Luther Burbank showed that the only way and truth and life is science. All honor to him that he did not leave it to such obtuse minds to "draw their own conclusions," as so many do. "Science is the only savior," he said to people. ”

“ "And to think of this great country in danger of being dominated by people ignorant enough to take a few ancient Babylonian legends as the canons of modern culture. Our scientific men are paying for their failure to speak out earlier. There is no use now talking evolution to these people. Their ears are stuffed with Genesis." ”

“ "I do not believe what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic.
"However, when it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no." ”

“ All personal, social, moral and national success depends upon the judicious wisdom of our choices made by the aid of science. Narrow personal prejudices and feelings quite too often becloud the issue and ultimate defeat is the inevitable result.
Life as we see it around us on this planet is usually thought to be confined to man, animals and plants, those organisms which grow and reproduce their kind with more or less precision. ”

“ Science is knowledge arranged and classified according to truth, facts and the general laws of nature. ”

“ "Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity." ”

“ James L. Gordon, a modernist type of minister who leans more to the sensational and to the attractions of immediate public interest than toward the old-fashioned, conservative line of church programs. Now, with the discussion of immortality, resurrection and infidelism at the boiling point throughout the country, but particularly in California because its centrally distributing element was located here, Burbank philosophically consented to address the fashionable San Francisco congregation on his beliefs in divinity and eternity. ”

“ Our lives as we live them are passed on to others whether in physical or mental forms tinging all future lives forever. This should be enough for one who lives for truth and service to his fellow passengers on the way. ”

“ All mothers and women who believe that irreparable injuries have been done to the cause of religion by the utterances of Luther Burbank, and who believe in the efficacy of prayer, are invited to join together for a season of prayer for Luther Burbank that his eyes may be opened and our youth may not be led astray from the religion of their fathers. ”

“ Repetition is the means of impressing any quality or character in animal life or in man and by just the same means plants are impressed, and their qualities and habits changed as we desire. All life depends upon a series of selections and repetitions. ”

“ LUTHER BURBANK
Luther Burbank, naturalist, originator of new fruits, flowers, etc., was born in Massachusetts in 1849. He was always devoted to nature study, especially plant life, with which he early began to experiment. He moved to Santa Rosa, California, in 1875, where he conducted Burbank's Experiment Farms. He often had several thousand distinct experiments under way—even at the time of his death growing some five thousand distinct botanical specimens from all over the world. He was also a special lecturer on evolution at Leland Stanford, Jr., University. ”