040. Plagiarism

Plagiarism

Exo_20:15 : ’93Thou shalt not steal.’94

Steal what? Overcoats? Furniture? Dry-goods? Horses? United States bonds? Merchandise? Silver? Gold? Do not so limit the command. This Sinaitic thunder rolls out not only against the purloining of the goods of others, but against the theft of intellectual possessions.

It is high time that somewhere a sermon be preached on the subject of plagiarism, a sin which comes down through the centuries, and is now abroad among the people. Dean Swift stopped at a church in Shropshire, England, and heard one of his own sermons preached by the rector of the place. Pope’92s Essay on Man was first anonymously published, and was claimed by another author.

It is a most practical subject, for there are in our great assemblies every Sunday hundreds of persons who, perhaps in greater or less extent, are earning their livelihood by their pen, and there are young lawyers, and there are young clergymen, and young editors who are fashioning their intellectual habits; and then there are those who are giving their entire life to imparting instruction, and, more than all, there are hundreds of parents, who need to give the right bias on this subject to their children’97for in our day all the boys and girls come to the art of literary composition.

It is not a subject that you can adjourn to the realm of taste or whimsicality. It is a question of ethics, of right and wrong, of practical morals, and is charged with tremendous issues. Much of the world’92s knowledge is common property and can no more be fenced in or kept under lock and key or chained fast to an author’92s desk than you can sell or buy the atmosphere. Such are all the facts of history. Such are all the statistics of the world. Such is the realm of anecdote and of logic. Such are all the theories of science and religion. Each age borrows and appropriates the accumulated knowledge of the past ages. Each year is the lawful heir of the preceding year, and every century the legatee of former centuries. But the classification of facts and the peculiar presentation of knowledge may be private property.

Plagiarism begins when you appropriate without credit some one else’92s way of putting things. All the facts of history are the property of the world, common property; but who would deny the copyright of Bancroft to the History of the United States, or the copyright of Prescott to the Conquest of Mexico, or the copyright of Motley to the Dutch Republic. Telegraphy is a common property, but would it not have been right for Professor Morse to have a patent right in his invention? The one hundred and fourteen thousand words of the English vocabulary are common property, but was not Noah Webster right in keeping a royalty on his unabridged dictionary? The cotton-gin added millions of dollars to the value of property in the South, but who is in sympathy with an attempt to swindle Eli Whitney out of his invention.

There are scores of the best men and women in England and the United States who are kept in semi-pauperism and are coughing their life away at writing desks from which they would long ago have been emancipated if they had had rightful control of the financial interests of their literary children. The insufficient international copyright law between England and the United States, which lasted so many years, has sanctioned a depredation that amounts to wholesale and infamous brigandage. On both sides the sea the punishment for purloining a bale of cotton or a tierce of rice or a can of oil or a barrel of apples or a ton of coal or a load of wood, is imprisonment’97Tombs Court, disgrace, ejection from all respectable society; but for the larceny of intellectual toil on both sides the sea’97toil that may have racked the brain and shattered the nerves, and destroyed the health through years and years of fatigue’97the punishment was a derisive smile. When a great book was published either in Great Britain or the United States, the first question was, which publishing house on the opposite side the water should steal it? The time will come when the boundary line between meum and tuum of a literary plain will be as distinctly marked as the boundary line between two homesteads.

This countenancing of international larceny has had its effect upon individuals, and editors have to be on their guard lest the poem or the essay that comes into their office shall be the possession of somebody else than its pretended originator. The vice has gone on until it has crept on some of the platforms and into some of the pulpits. It is a most bedwarfing vice. It is most ruinous to mind and most damaging to soul. No man can keep such a sin and keep his religion. It is mental suicide. The man’92s capacity for origination shrivels up.

No one ever yet successfully plagiarized without being found out. The newspaper press of the day is a detective on the track of all such desperadoes. There was a time when such a vice could be carried on year after year, and it was covered up with the cloak of deceit, and ever and anon ecclesiastical courts tried some-one for purloining John Wesley’92s sermons or Jeremy Taylor’92s sermons, and they were found out by mere accident. But now, all the literary and scientific and religious knowledge of the world turns over at least once a week, and most of it turns over every day. Each one of the great dailies sends forth in each publication enough material for one volume. They go forth through the mails by the ton. A man might as well hoist a ladder in a village at noonday and try to steal the town clock without being observed as to expect to carry off literary work in our time and not be found out. The newspaper editor, scissors in hand and mucilage on the table, sits up to his chin in exchanges from the four winds of heaven.

Besides that, all the world is traveling now. Fares are so cheap and transit is so rapid that before every preacher and before every lecturer, and before every religious exhorter there may sit persons from the most unexpected quarter, and if they heard three years ago something delivered in New Orleans which you deliver in Brooklyn, the discovery will be reported. Quote from all books that you can lay your hands on, quote from all directions’97it is a merit to have breadth of reading to be able to quote’97but be sure to announce the fact that it is a quotation. Ah! how many are making a mistake in this thing. It is a mistake that a man cannot afford to make. Four commas upside down, two at the beginning of the paragraph and two at the close of the paragraph, would have saved many a man’92s integrity and usefulness. One would think that if the fact that it is a wrong to misappropriate the brain work of others is not a sufficient barrier to the evil, the perils of the undertaking would be savingly appalling.

Plagiarists have no idea of the damage they do. I have submitted to an amount of imposition to which I shall submit no longer. Contrary to the advice of my friends I have never published one word about it. The time has come for me in a kindly spirit, without any acerbity, to make a protest. In justice to myself, and at the same time as a practical lesson to all Christian workers, I am going to present three or four facts.

I lectured in Detroit, Michigan, one Friday evening, On the following night, Saturday night, I received a telegram as I was about to go on a platform at a distant city, a telegram from Detroit, saying in substance: ’93What does all this mean? The lecture you delivered here in Detroit is identical with one delivered a few nights ago in the City of Chicago by another lecturer.’94 Editorials, many editorials written on the subject, telegrams flying through the country on the subject. A Chicago journalist told me he had received four telegrams from the newspaper press of New York in regard to the matter. The history of my lecture was that it was the first lecture I ever delivered, I ever prepared, and it was twenty-one years old; it was just of age! and I had delivered it in at least a hundred cities on this and the other side the sea, and it had been largely reported. I do not take the responsibility of saying that the lecturer in Chicago plagiarized my lecture, I do not take the responsibility because I do not know, but I will say that if I had not been able by ten thousand witnesses to prove the priority of my lecture, it would have been very damaging to me.

Another fact: Just after I came to Brooklyn, I preached a sermon on ’93Hagar in the Wilderness.’94 The sermon was taken down by a stenographer and was printed. Ten years after, a member of my church asked me to reproduce that sermon, saying it had done him some good. I took up the stenographic report of that sermon, read it carefully, and as nearly as I could reproduced it. Before that week was out I received four letters, one from Pittsburg, one from Chicago, one from Boston, and one from Louisville, Kentucky, saying in substance: ’93How is this? Our Monday morning papers say you preached a sermon on ’91Hager in the Wilderness,’92 that you preached it the day before in the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Why, that very sermon was preached in our city one or two months ago by a minister or an evangelist. Did you take it from him, or did he take it from you?’94 I sat down and wrote four indignant letters, and carried them in my pocket, as I am accustomed to do with such letters, and finally burned them up. I knew what a plight those plagiarists would be in if I referred my correspondents to the newspapers which had published that sermon ten years before. I was wrong in condoning their faults. I shall never let such thieves again escape.

I say now, as I have said before, that if Christian workers in any part of the world want to employ my sermons in places where there is no pastor, and to read them in churches and in halls and in houses, as they are read on both sides of the sea, they have full liberty to do so. I believe what I preach is the truth of the Gospel and the wider it goes the better I am pleased. The officers of my church understood that whoever else was crowded in church, gentlemen of the press should never be crowded. Years ago I prayed God for this result which has come in the opening in a marvelous way through the secular as well as the religious press for the full publication of my sermons week by week in all the cities of Christendom. I am grateful to God for this opportunity and I am grateful to all journalists and all reporters who give me the privilege. But is it right that an opportunity like this should be abused by plagiarists to put me in a wrong light? I tell you the nuisance has become intolerable.

Another illustration: Years ago, I received a letter from the President of the Wesleyan Conference in Australia, saying in substance: ’93Yesterday we suspended from the ministry a preacher, not for preaching your sermons exactly, but for saying that one of your sermons was his. The subject was the ’91Mutilation of the Scriptures,’92 the text was Jeremiah thirty-six and twenty-three: ’91And it came to pass that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, Jehoiakim cut it with the penknife.’92’93 The President of the Wesleyan Conference went on to inform me that this preacher had in the cities of New Zealand and Australia preached this sermon, and finally he was announced to preach in Melbourne, and a gentleman who had received a book from London containing fifty of my sermons, among others the very sermon, carried the book with him to church, thinking perhaps the sermon might be repeated in Melbourne, and when the preacher arose and announced his text the inquisitive auditor in the pew opened the book, and without any notes, and from memory the preacher went through the whole discourse, not changing a word. He was arraigned before the ecclesiastical court, and, of course, denied the plagiarism, for a man who will steal will lie, but the book of sermons was produced, and he was immediately suspended from the ministry. Am I not right, I ask you as common-sense men and women, in uttering a protest?

I have a more remarkable case, and it is comparatively recent. A Pittsburg journal, one of our most prominent papers, printed a reportorial statement. It was not printed in any unkindness to me because I am personally acquainted with the editor; but the reporter says that he interviewed ’93an eminent divine’94 of Pittsburg, and that ’93eminent divine’94 gave him the following statement: ’93The sermons of Talmage are frequently stolen by rural ministers, yet I once heard of a case where he was caught in the act himself. On the occasion referred to, he preached an unusually eloquent sermon which was afterward published as his own. On the following Sabbath a Methodist minister of Brooklyn preached the same sermon. A friend asked him why he had preached Talmage’92s sermon so soon after he had delivered it himself. He denied the insinuation indignantly, and being pressed on the point produced an English newspaper containing the sermon, thus admitting his own guilt, but pulling Talmage from his pedestal at the same time. Talmage once preached a sermon on the owl, the vulture, the bat, the chameleon, and the snail. A certain minister who was then, and is still, located within a hundred miles of Pittsburg used the sermon on the following Sabbath. The exposure of this action, in connection with other causes, caused a dissolution of his relations with that congregation. Before leaving, however, he delivered a farewell sermon, which was especially sarcastic, and which his hearers afterward learned was also the property of Talmage.’94 Now, if that ’93eminent minister’94 of Pittsburg will prove that some minister in Brooklyn preached a sermon identical with anything I preached, and I cannot prove that I previously preached and printed it either in this country or in Europe, I will put for distribution among the poor of Pittsburg a thousand dollars in the hand of the editor of the paper spoken of. A thousand dollars for the poor of that city, the pastors of that city to be the jury in the matter. A thousand dollars will buy a great many shoes for bare feet in the cold weather. Now, if that ’93eminent divine’94 of Pittsburg is accurately reported, he is a calumniator. Is it not time that in justice to myself and my church I file this caveat? I sat in my own pulpit in Brooklyn and heard a clergyman standing before me preach one of my own sermons verbatim. I suppose the sermon, without any name attached, had been printed somewhere.

The trouble is when plagiarists are caught they go to pleading, generally, unconscious assimilation, or unwitting appropriation. They happened to read it and it stuck fast to them! And they did not realize it. False! No man makes a mistake like that without knowing it. A man no more makes that mistake than does by mistake a sneak-thief put his hand in your cash box. Unconscious assimilation, indeed!

In my first country settlement I had a great deal of interest in raising a splendid flock of fowls. I used to go out two or three times a day and admire them. One morning I went to the hennery and they were all gone. I thought at the time that the man who took them was a criminal; but I find out in these days perhaps it was only a case of unconscious assimilation! I suppose he just walked away and they stuck fast to him! I tell you that with the vast resources, legitimate resources open before literary men in this day, plagiarism is inexcusable.

I say these things not only in justice to myself, but as a lesson to all Christian workers here and elsewhere. Be yourself and no one else. All the work you do for Christ that is effective you will do with your own weapons. God has given you just enough faculty to do all the work he ever expects of you. Use all books and all the intellectual toil of others only as a whetstone to sharpen your own battle-ax. Your own way will be more effective for good than anybody else’92s way employed by you, though there were fifty per cent. more genuine in that way. David broke down under Saul’92s armor, but he had been a shepherd’92s boy, and he knew how to use a sling, and he took five smooth pebbles from the brook and he had five times more ammunition than was necessary, for it only took one pebble skilfully hurled to crack like an eggshell Goliath’92s cranium.

Above all, my dear friends, saturate yourselves with Scriptural knowledge and with Scriptural style. No copyright of that book of books. Daniel Webster said if he had ever come to any perspicuity of style it was by long time perusal of the Scriptures. Rufus Choate having with forensic magnetism aroused judge and jury and court-room to highest pitch of enthusiasm, whelmed them with Scriptural peroration. It is the most magnificent book ever written, and it is all at your disposal. Do you want history? Quote Moses. Do you want blank verse? Quote Habakkuk. Do you want the spectral? Quote Ezekiel. Do you want the pastoral? Quote Ruth. Do you want a battle march? Quote Joshua. Do you want argument? Quote Paul. Do you want pathos? Quote John. Do you want all tenderness and all omnipotence? Quote Christ. Equip yourself from all sources. Read all good books. Listen to all oratorios. Examine all pictures. Bring botany and geology and astronomy and history and poetry and arch’e6ology. Gather all these up and then mass your troops for one great Gospel campaign, and remember it closes at sundown. Alas! how many lose the battle of life because either they do not start early enough, or they make fatal mistakes after they have started. For those two reasons Napoleon lost Waterloo. History tells us, and Victor Hugo in his most popular work powerfully dramatizes the fact, that the night before the memorable eighteenth of June, 1815, there was a great deluge of rain, and the ground was so soaked that Napoleon could not move his artillery, and he had to wait until the ground was somewhat settled; so that instead of opening the battle as he had expected at six o’92clock in the morning, he opened it at nearly twelve at noon. Of course, that gave time for Blucher to come up with his reenforcements, and to join Wellington and to overthrow the great Frenchman. Had there been no rain that night, and had the battle opened at six o’92clock in the morning instead of at twelve o’92clock at noon, or near twelve, the battle might have been ended by noon in the overthrow of the English army, for Napoleon had nearly a hundred more guns than Wellington. The difference between six and twelve o’92clock for Napoleon was the difference between defeat and victory.

And that is the way I see a great many people losing the battle of life. They start too late. They wait until their foes are re-enforced and re-enforced and other battalions of temptation fall into line. Instead of opening the battle in the morning of life they open it in the noon of life; at twelve instead of six. Oh, you cannot do in an afternoon what was intended for a whole day. What a lesson for all of the young. Oh, the stupendous difference between six o’92clock and twelve o’92clock.

And then avoid making a fatal mistake. Many have been destroyed by one mistake. Only one false entry. Only one fraud. Only one plagiarism. Only one experiment in sin. Only one evil companionship. Only one day of dissipation. Only one night of wassail. Only one fall. Only those are safe who are bounded on the north and the south and the east and the west and above and beneath by the grace of God. Your beautiful intentions will avail nothing unless they are divinely upheld. They will be a beautiful suspension bridge with buttresses not strong enough to hold the strain. Make Christ your ally, and you make heaven an annex of time.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage