MRS. GORE'S LECTURE.

About three dozen persons collected together in the upper hall of the Y. M. C. A., on last Saturday evening, to hear Mrs. Gore advocate Christianity as against Infidelity, and to review the Woodhull platform. Mrs. Gore is an elderly lady of comfortable rotundity and matronly proportions. Her lecture appeared to be addressed principally to "erratic" Spiritualists; the lecturer complaining that so many of this new and important body of religionists -as we must now admit them to be-have wandered away from the great center, God, and are now without circumference or orbit. The whole lecture pivoted upon this point, that everything must have a center; without center there could be no circumference; without centripetal force, we would be forever wandering off like comets; the centrifugal force would carry us off at a tangent into what we used to call, before the recent discoveries of science, "empty space. This, I may say, is what geometricians would call a self-evident proposition, so the point of debate really narrows down to the question, "Shall we have the God of Theology for our center, or Nature, which is law?" Late in the evening, the lecturer rang in an agreeable change in the way of a triangle for illustration. She sketched it imaginatively, with the point of a parasol, upon the wall in the rear of the platform. Drawing the base of the triangle, she assumed that one end of it represented this new "Religion of Humanity," without any God, and the other end represented Christianity and conservatism (and I mentally added, and the worship of money-getting and Mrs. Grundy). On this ground, she said, the great battle is to be fought in the coming revolution, which she declared is impending, and even now knocking at the door. And here was naturally introduced what little was said upon the Woodhull platform. The lecturer was evidently not at all unfriendly to Mrs. Woodhull, though having brought us together to hear the latter's views combated, she must per force say something. We were therefore told that Mrs. Woodhull's especial object was to subvert the government and bring about a revolution; that her views upon the marriage question would be the destruction of the home; that homes being the center of governments, whatever undermines the one must destroy the other, and that therefore total anarchy and chaos must be the outcome of the Woodhull platform.

This closed the lecture, but at this point occurred the feature of the evening. Mrs. Woodhull's young daughter had slipped in a little while previously, to the back part of the hall, and taken a quiet seat there. When the Woodhull platform was taken up, however, she changed base and came to the front, sitting where she could both see and be seen, her expressive face beaming meanwhile with interest and animation. The scene began to assume a dramatic interest. As Mrs. Gore finished, Miss Woodhull arose. Her manner was modest but self-possessed. Every eye was turned upon her, as she said:

"You say, Mrs. Gore, that Mrs. Woodhull's doctrines are destructive of home. Suppose I, a young girl, have lost my father; suppose my mother dies also; what becomes of my home? Does society provide me with one? No! I may starve, or go into the street-society cares not! Hence I must be self-reliant, self-dependent. Neither must I depend on marriage for a support or a home, but upon my own exertions."

This is the substance and meaning, if not the exact words that this brave little girl said, and when she sat down, it was amid a round of applause from within the hall and from the crowd who had collected outside around the open door, and were standing on tiptoe and peering over each other's heads to catch a glimpse of the strange scene. L.

VICTORIA C. WOODHULL IN SAN JOSE.

ED. COMMON SENSE: This noted lady appeared before a San Jose audience on the evenings of the 9th and 10th inst., giving her two lectures, "Reformation or Revolution-which?" and "Woman-the Wife and Mother." Her audiences were fair, but not large, composed of the best and most intelligent of our citizens, who listened with profound and respectful attention, frequently applauding her most radical utterances.

Mrs. Woodhull, unlike all reformers who have preceded her, descends from the world of effects and grapples with causes. No pen can truthfully report her. The eloquence that she sometimes pours forth from her impassioned soul, as she paints in vivid flashes the wrongs of her sex, startles her audiences like the lurid lightning's glare across the gathering darkness of a coming storm. Again she seems to stand in awful majesty, hurling in vindictive torrents forged thunderbolts at the systems that bind and fetter and torture both soul and body. But in her appeals to the better natures of her hearers for respect and appreciation, for womanhood and motherhood, does she stand forth in all the grandeur of transfigured womanhood, a very goddess of love and beauty. "Tis then she wins all hearts and melts them to tears.

It is the unanimous verdict of all who heard her that she is sincere and terribly in earnest, however much they may differ with her in her social theories. No lecturer has been more respectfully received in this city than was Mrs. Woodhull. Even the lecture which called forth the virtuous "hisses" of a San Francisco audience was listened to here with the most respectful attention, owing, no doubt, to our rustic ignorance of metropolitan manners.

I am not so sure but the treatment the lady received at San Francisco is a compliment to her ability, although not intended as such. When our nakedness or deformity is revealed we instinctively try to hide it, but if our garments are too meager we seek to put out the light that reveals it; so the virtuous people of that benighted city of sandhills, groping in the darkness, were startled when the Woodhull like a blazing meteor flashed upon them, revealing the rottenness of their social life, causing them to instinctively seek to hide their corruption; which, failing to do, they vainly tried to put out the light that makes their deformity transparent.

Let the people everywhere give her a respectful hearing, and if her teachings are erroneous, meet them with arguments and overthrow them. Those who persecute have read history to little purpose if they think they can overthrow even an error with such arguments as San Francisco has offered in answer to her theories.

CHARACTER OF GOD.

A REPLY TO "C. B. s."

ED. COMMON SENSE: A correspondent of your live paper, in No. 5, over the initials "C. B. S.," asks the the question, "Do human spirits have a continuous individualized existence?" I do not propose to answer this question in full; but will simply reply to the closing paragraph. "All matter," says C. B. S., "returns to the fountain from which it sprang. True, but not without a change in its quality and condition. To say our aspiration for eternal life is proof of its existence he says looks like carrying our selfishness beyond the grave." This is all right. The time will never come in spirit life when we shall cease to be selfish, in the highest sense of the term. We never shall cease to be natural beings, and it is perfectly natural for all to pursue that course which each believes will yield the greatest amount of happiness. Jesus and Socrates were quite as selfish as Judas or Nero. They were all pursuing happiness from their individual standpoints of perception.

But, says C. B. S., "May not mankind afford to lose their individuality after death to become a part of God?" Are we not a part of God from the moment we have life? Can we become more so by dying? To me such an idea is an absurdity. What kind of a God must it be who could add unto himself by the annihilation of his own children? He could not be perfect, or he would need no such additions, and he must possess a thousand times more selfishness (low at that) than the mortals he "gobbles up," for they are content to retain their own identity and let others do the same. Truly God has not made man, but man has made God, and a curious one he is. Most of

men's errors in doctrine arise from a false conception of the character of that force we commonly call God; and I hope your correspondent will make plain some of the glaring inconsistencies herein set forth before he goes any farther with his proof against the continuous existence of B. F. F.

man.

San Francisco, June 14, 1874.

Right here it may not be out of place to say a word to contributors. COMMON SENSE is not designed to be a controversial journal. Each article written for it should stand upon its own merits; and we desire to avoid that kind of contention which may degenerate into personalities, or even into an effort to get the better of an antagonist in an

argument, knowing that in such cases principles are easily lost sight of, and quibbles are apt to take their place. We, perhaps imprudently, permitted "C. B. S." to invite a discussion. If he continues it, we trust he will do so in the spirit of an unselfish seeker for the truth.-[Ed.

The opponents of the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating drinks in this city are organizing a strong party to defeat the temperance people. They have organized a "Personal Liberty League," and are confident of success, having much more money at their command than the other side.

ED. COMMON SENSE: I have lately been studying Edgar A. Poe's "Eureka," and I notice, among other startling things in it, he asserts that "Space and Duration are one." Kant, John Stuart Mill and others have announced that time and space have no real existence, but are merely "forms of human thought;" but Herbert Spencer denies this Kantian view, and disproves it, showing that they are something real, but like everything else we know, are prethe multiform phenomena of Mind and Matter are simply sented to us delusively through our consciousness, wherein transfigurations of One Supreme Mystery.

This "

'Eureka" of Poe's, when I read it, some years ago, was one of the first things that led me to serious reflection upon the enigma of creation and existence. What a wondrous mind Poe's must have been to have so long previously anticipated truths that are only now being enunciated by the great professors of philosophy and science. He was the intellectual peer of Shelley in respect of his advancement beyond his day; and, poor fellow! it was absolutely enough to make him drink himself to death as he did, having to associate with a generation so far behind him as to be utterly incapable of appreciating him. In "Eureka," he shows Matter to be nothing but Attraction and Repulsion-that is to say Force, which is now accepted by thinkers and scientists as the final word of human research, the Cause of All; and what Force is independently of our recognition of it in consciousness, what it really is outside of consciousness which creates all the material panorama for consciousness and the mind

also, or consciousness by which it becomes an object of our perception, we can never know, just because we know nothing that is not given us in consciousness.

CATHARINE F. WINDLE.

THE SPIRIT ART GALLERY.-The strange collection of "Spirit Pictures" is still on exhibition at 420 Kearny street, and the curious of whatever faith should pay them a visit. The most remarkable thing about them is the large amount of artistic work in the drapery of the figures and the very brief time, less than two hours, required to finish each of the pictures. The critic will notice that of the thirty portraits in the room twenty-five are taken from the same point of view-three-quarter, left-while only Four are front or nearly front views. one is taken with the face turned in the other direction. tion is so precisely similar that any one of the pictures The style of execuwould be instantly recognized as by the same artist, if it could be seen apart from the collection. There is a striking similarity also in the form of the forehead and the shape of the mouth of most of the pictures; yet the expression of the countenance varies greatly, and several of the heads represent persons of strongly marked characteristics. The price of admission is but 25 cents, not enough to deter any one from the satisfaction of a visit.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

E. H. Heywood, a vigorous and original thinker, editor of The Word, Princeton, Mass., has just published an essay the object of which is to show that financial monopolies hinder enterprise and defraud both labor and capital; that panics and business revulsions, caused by arbitrary interference with production and exchange, will be effecJually prevented only through free money. He maintains that whatever Nature creates, water, land, coal, etc., man cannot rightly sell. It belongs to the human family, and should be as free as air; adding only the cost of fitting it for human uses. He asserts that the elements indispensable to a sound currency are security, choice and cheapness; it must be reliable, unmonopolizable and obtainable at cost. Restricting money to the narrow basis of coin values he deems bad policy, and wholly unnecessary. The credit of the Government is sufficient for the security of the holder. This currency should be receivable for all dues to the Government; and the people should have just as much of it as they require. It does not come within the province of Government to limit the circulating medium of the country. We have as yet had no time to give the work a careful reading. Address Co-operative Publishing Co., Princeton, Mass.

The Religio Philosophical Publishing House of Chicago favors us with copies of several works published by that company, including "The True History of the Man called Jesus Christ," a work purporting to come from spirits who were living men at the beginning of the Christian era. It is given through the mediumship of Alexander Smyth, and is a 16mo. of 356 pages, fine print. It speaks of Jesus as a man, whose traits of character were amiability, justice, truthfulness and benevolence. The price of the book is two dollars, on receipt of which the publishers will mail to any address.

Same publishers send copies of The Biography of Satan, a historical exposition of the devil and his fiery dominions, disclosing the oriental origin of the belief in a devil and future endless punishment. Price 60 cents.

A pamphlet of 100 pages, containing a discourse by Parker Pillsbury on the Observance of the Sabbath, and fifty pages of self-contradictions of the bible, all for 25 cents, is published by S. S. Jones, Chicago; also, The Vestal, a collection of articles in prose and poetry, through the mediumship of M. J. Wilcoxson, same price.

MRS. C. FANNIE ALLYN continues to speak to large audiences in Mercantile Library Hall, on Sundays, afternoon and evening. Her discourses are entirely extempore, and many of them contain good thought well expressed. The great variety of subjects furnished by the audience, all woven into one discourse, necessarily make the addresses of this speaker somewhat desultory in character, aud as such they are unsatisfactory to those who delight in clear, logical, and connected reasoning; yet many sensible ideas can be gleaned from her improvisations, and the poetical portions certainly contain many fine passages.

NOTES FROM CORRESPONDENTS.

The following are brief extracts from letters received at this office. The first is from a town which shall be nameless, and our readers can judge with how much force it applies to their own section :

"The mass of the people here are in the sphere of utter indifferentism, so far as intellectual or spiritual growth is concerned. If you can suggest any way of making money you can command their ears at once."

Mrs. H. C. Nichols, writing from San Diego, June 7th, says: "Brother York has been lecturing to us for the past six Sundays, and while so doing organized a society called Unity Society.' Bro. York is an earnest speaker, and his lectures are replete with fresh, vigorous thought. His audiences have been large and appreciative. Many orthodox people have been to hear him, and no doubt some of the weak ones felt hurt to hear their pet dogmas stripped down to plain facts. If one half the time spent in trying to save souls was spent in scientific lecturing, and upon subjects relating to human welfare, much good would be done and many more souls saved. To know God's laws and obey them is all we need, for time and eternity. Wishing you a grand success with your paper, I am most truly yours, etc.

Mr. A. C. Stowe, in a private letter written to the editor several weeks since, says: "I consider the Social Question the most important, the most momentous question of the age. It is the question of all questions, because the very life and perpetuity of the race hang upon it. The health, the intellectual vigor and the social harmony hang upon it. Do we need a better political system, a better religi

ous and a better social structure? Give us better men and women. Do we need a well developed and rounded manhood and womanhood? Give us better children; give us the conditions for better children."

No one can reasonably find fault with this position; but this is not what is generally understood as "the social question," although it is connected with it. The writer

continues:

"The question of human improvement demands our careful consideration. Men rack their brains and spend their fortunes to improve their stock-cattle, horses, sheep and swine; is it not time that some attention was directed to the genus homo? Some of the same kind of wisdom and intelligence in behalf of mankind that lower forms receive?"

The following notice appeared under the marriage head in the Gardiner (Maine) Fountain in 1843 :

"We, the undersigned, have pledged ourselves to each other for life, or as long as we can live in harmony and sustain the conjugal relations. This we do without conforming to the laws and customs of this nation in regard to marriage, believing it to be an affair exclusively our own, and that no others, whether of friends, church, or state, have aught to do or say in the matter. We deem it necessary to give this notice, that our friends and the public may know of our union, that we may not be exposed to slander. (Signed) Benjamin F. Shaw, Harriet N. Howard."

Alfred Russell Wallace estimates that it required 500,000 years for the deposits in the Kent cavern to cover, to the depth at which they were found, the articles of human workmanship which have been exhumed there.

THE EIGHT HOUR LAW.

A discussion on this question took place at Dashaway Hall Sunday afternoon, Gen. Winn opening the debate. He made few points, and none that were new. He characterized the employees of the Government as slaves who dare not say their souls are their own; who vote as they are directed, and who never get up public meetings to sustain the eight hour law. That is always done by mechanics and laboring men. He closed by claiming to be a hard worker himself.

Here followed fifteen minutes of music and literary exercises. Mr. Davis sang a song, with piano accompaniment by Mr. Currier. Mrs. Olmstead read Chiquita, in excellent style; Mrs. Melville sang and played; Mr. Healy read "The Grocer," in a serio-comic style, and Mr. Waldron gave Drake's Address to the Flag.

Then Mr. Healy made a very amusing address in reply to Gen. Winn. He said he knew Gen. Winn could not be a shirker of work, as he must have worked more than eight hours a day to have produced the sensation he has in this State. It is true, he said, that the men in Government employ do not agitate. They do their agitating before they get in, leaving the independent mechanics outside to agitate till they in turn get on the inside. He thought the eight-hour men better pay some attention to the bakers, car-drivers, and some other workmen who are employed fourteen to twenty hours a day.

Brief remarks were made by Mr. Lund and Mr. Mills, the latter getting in a fling at the woman crusaders, whom he characterized as poor, ignorant things, who do not know what they are about.

Capt. Smith said as machinery now does much of the work formerly done by human hands, men really ought not to work more than four hours a day, and need not, if all would do their share. He spoke a few earnest words in favor of making temperance men of the working classes, and driving the whisky sellers into the ranks of the laborers. Mr. Battersby, after a few remarks on the manner in which the employees at the Navy Yard and on other public works are marched to the polls to vote, spoke highly in favor of shorter hours for labor, in order to give the working man time to cultivate his mind. He then reminded the audience that the fifth anniversary of the organization of the Society for Self-Culture is at hand, and should not be allowed to pass without notice. He then gave a brief history of the Society, told of the good it has accomplished in securing opportunity for the utterance of radical thought, and closed with good wishes for its future usefulness.

The question selected for debate to-morrow afternoon is the Local Option Law, Dr. Merrick being expected to take a leading part in the discussion.

Property, not Man, is king, and lawgiver, and judge. It owns everything but Man, and has but just relinquished ownership of him. Its control over earth and every material thing is absolutely unlimited.

John Stuart Mill remarks about rents, that "if air, light, electricity, and the chemical agents, could like land be engrossed and appropriated, rent would be exacted from them also.'

The effect of land monopoly on labor is instant and constant. It accompanies labor wherever it goes, and hedges it in by obstructions which yield not until the laborer is compelled to part with the fruits of his effort.

Whatever takes or consumes wealth, without returning an equivalent, by just so much impoverishes mankind, and this loss must be restored by those who work.

CAPITAL AND LABOR.

BY HUGH BYRON BROWN.

The great problem for solution and settlement in the fifteenth century was that of religious liberty as against authority, as embodied in Romanism. The great achievement of the eighteenth century was the solution by our fathers of the question whether there could be a church without a bishop, and a state without a king; and that of our own time, was the abolition of chattel slavery, and the repudiation of the principle of the right of property in man.

The next great question that challenges the attention of the world, and which will not down at the bidding of a subsidized press, a wealth-serving pulpit, or of incompetent and pur-blind statesmen, is, the equitable adjustment and honest division of the profits arising from the joint efforts of labor and capital-in a word, the labor question. That labor has never received an equitable share of the wealth it creates is a fact that few will deny and none can successfully disprove. That a monstrous injustice is daily being done everywhere to the real creators of wealth needs no other proof than that furnished by a comparison of the condition of the laborer, everywhere, with that of the capitalist.

Wealth being the product of labor, it would be natural to suppose that its creators would be its principal possessors; but this is not the case, anywhere, and never has been. By cunning legislation, and for the want of any equitable measure of equivalents in the commerce of mankind, the wealth of the world centralizes in the hands of a few persons, who did not and could not give an equivalent for it.

There is not, and never has been, in the public conscience a just conception of right in the matter of the remuneration of labor; and in consequence, all our laws, customs and usages discriminate in favor of the capital class as against the laboring.

No science has made less progress, and has been studied to so little purpose as that of Sociology. The principles governing the exchanges of mankind are as imperfect and as inequitable as were those known and used by the people of antiquity. For the want of such a measure there is not, and cannot be a fair and equitable exchange made between men in any direction. And in the absence of such a principle and with the certain knowledge of the tendency of wealth to centralize in the hands of a few, it has never occurred to legislators that while protecting men from robbers and assassins they should also protect them by legislation against human selfishness, which is the greatest of all

robbers!—Truth Seeker.

SUBSCRIBERS who are interested in sustaining this paper can do a great deal by bringing it to the notice of their liberal acquaintances. In this way the subscription list could soon be doubled. There probably is no subscriber who could not, with a little effort, procure at least one new one. While it is now certain that the paper will grow into a wide sphere of usefulness, it is none the less true that its power for good may be impaired and the day of its prosperity greatly delayed by the holding back of radicals who appear to be waiting for its firm establishment before they do anything to aid it. Now is the time. want an organ, let them make the fact manifest in a subthe Spiritualists and Free Thinkers of this coast really Pay your subscriptions, and ask others to do the same. Circulate the paper among your friends, and induce one at least to subscribe.

stantial manner.

If

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