THE BURKE TRIAL II: DOCTOR OF LOVE

As the first week of the trial ended, most of Santa Rosa was probably wondering: Are both of them crazy?

Dr. Willard Burke was on trial for the attempted murder of Lu Etta Smith, the mother of an infant she claimed Burke had fathered. The courtroom at the Sonoma County courtroom was packed that December of 1910 because the District Attorney had brought charges that Burke had tried to murder the woman and child in their sleep by using dynamite. There’s much more background to this story that can be found in the previous article, which has hyperlinks to further pre-trial coverage of the matter. This is the sixth article on the Burke case.

(RIGHT: Dr. Burke portrait in the Illustrated Atlas of Sonoma County, 1898)

Burke’s lawyer wanted to prove three things: That there was reasonable doubt that Burke had committed the crime; that Burke was held in high esteem (Luther Burbank was one of many prominent locals who testified as a character witness, and his original defense lawyer, Hiram Johnson, had to resign because he had just been elected governor of California); and most of all, they wanted to prove Smith was a gold-digger and as mad as a hatter. No, strike that: Madder than.

Even in the first hours after the explosion, Burke and his supporters were furiously spinning that Smith was insane. She was suicidal, they said, and had threatened to drown the baby. During the trial Burke’s lawyer offered hours of hearsay testimony that portrayed Smith as loopy and likely clinically schizophrenic. Much was made over her muddled philosophy, which whipped together everything from astral travel to palm reading to bits of Hinduism to Blavatskyan Theosophy. But there was a big risk with using that as part of Burke’s defense: He had some pretty screwy ideas, too.

After the first day of the trial, the District Attorney made public a 5,000 word letter he wrote to Lu Etta. “It dealt with the evolution of the race, the duties of mankind, the relation of the sexes, a wonderful grouping of ideas,” reported the Press Democrat, and the next day the paper printed excerpts, transcribed below. Boy, is it ever a “grouping of ideas,” but I’d use the adjective “incoherent” instead of “wonderful.” A few excerpts:

Sometimes the compulsory maintenance of an unhappy marriage is defended on the ground of moral interest of society. Those who make the claim have no clear idea of the matter.

The Recording Angel issues no marriage certificates. Betrothals in Heaven are authorized by instinctive affinity, sanctioned by Love, consummated by Abandon and witnessed by Silence. Such a ceremony is lawless, wordless, thoughtless.

Where there is affinity here is the opportunity for obedience. Where there is repulsion it, too, must be obeyed. Affinities come together; repulsions do not.

Love is more than passion, but it lives not without passion. It cannot live on passion alone. Passion born of Affinity is divine.

Love is affinity one for another, but on planes or grades. You and I are absolute abandon of Love if we would allow it so.

It’s possible (but very, very unlikely) that the PD cherry-picked to garble his writings and make him look eccentric – if not downright nuts. But even if that were the case, the crux of his message comes across clear: Adultery is perfectly okay when two people are deeply in love.

As shocking as that assertion was, it also imperiled Burke’s defense, given that the District Attorney was trying to prove the baby was the doctor’s love-child. Apparently realizing that the writings could be damning, the next day the Press Democrat published an “epitome of the Burke creed, written by a friend of Dr. Burke.” If this wasn’t written by Burke himself, the author had studied well at the same school of word-salad composition. An excerpt:

After reading that stuff, you can bet that tongues were clucking all over Santa Rosa; the good doctor’s ideas about sex and the Divine sound not unlike the sexual mysticism of Thomas Lake Harris, the controversial founder of the Fountaingrove community. And it is possible that Burke actually knew Harris, who came here in 1875; before he studied medicine, Burke was a Bachelor Valley (Lake County) farmer in the 1870s.

This frothy mix of ideas that declared the “Life-God” had created “various organs and functions of which we may come consciously in close touch with the Divine thought” was clearly over the line to Santa Rosa’s clerics. That Sunday the rector of the Episcopal Church denounced “the underlying falsity of the philosophy of free love,” without mentioning Burke by name. These notions “are not only un-Christian but anti-Christian,” said the rector, who closed by asking, “I beg you to instruct your children so that they shall share our feeling.”

BURKE ON “MARRIAGE”

Marriage is a discipline of character when its basis is a sincere love, and the concessions that daily life demands are gladly made in the spirit of love.

All human experience shows us that a socially enforced marriage cannot be an education in anything but spiritual bitterness, the gentle are of nagging, and all uncharitableness.

Sometimes the compulsory maintenance of an unhappy marriage is defended on the ground of moral interest of society. These who make the claim have no clear idea of the matter. The world-old fallacy is the notion that to change one’s mind is to undermine one’s character, and that when a person has made his bed, society in the pursuit of its own moral interest, should make him lie on it.

When the marriage relation has for any reason become a state of wretchedness, rather than of mutual happiness and helpfulness, it is no longer rightfully performing the function or perfecting individual life.

THE NOBLE WOMAN

The “noble woman” is she who has faith in the Divine and courage enough to live Nature’s ways, no matter what the results, no matter what the popular standard of morals that are contrary to the dictates of divine Nature. The noble are not among those who teach and practice contrary to the Nature that gave them existence.

Where there is affinity here is the opportunity for obedience. Where there is repulsion it, too, must be obeyed. Affinities come together; repulsions do not. It is Divinity (in these) manifesting.

When any one condemns anything in the universe that is natural, as is done by many in condemnation of Divine ways, Nature is Good [sic] speaking to us.

The Recording Angel issues no marriage certificates. Betrothals in Heaven are authorized by instinctive affinity, sanctioned by Love, consummated by Abandon and witnessed by Silence. Such a ceremony is lawless, wordless, thoughtless.

Love is more than passion, but it lives not without passion. It cannot live on passion alone. Passion born of Affinity is divine. Passion born of the brain or the body is abortive–humanly abortive. Nature says: “Be utterly passionate where there is Affinity and then it will be pure.” Human morality says: “You should not be passionate or you cannot be pure.”

Love is affinity one for another, but on planes or grades. You and I are absolute abandon of Love if we would allow it so.

THE VOLUNTARY FAMILY

Society must accept the fact of a sincere love between a man and a woman who would live together, as the only workable and decent foundation of the marriage relation. It is a natural marriage, but may not be legal, but the legal is not as high an authority as the natural.

The family of expediency is fast disappearing because the household has ceased to be a necessary economic group. The only family that can take place IS THE VOLUNTARY FAMILY, held together not by expediency, but by choice.

THE MARRIAGE RELATION

Sometimes the compulsory maintenance of an unhappy marriage is defended on the ground of moral interest of society. Those who make the claim have no clear idea of the matter. The world-old fallacy is the notion that to change one’s mind is to undermine one’s character, and that when a person has made his bed, society in the pursuit of its own moral interest, should make him lie on it.

When the marriage relation has for any reason become a state of wretchedness, rather than of mutual happiness and helpfulness, it is no longer rightly performing the function of perfecting individual life.

Marriage entered into from economical or social consideration have in the past been accepted as entirely proper and reputable, and while for some time to come they will still be made under the influence of ideas and forces that are destined to disappear, they can no longer be regarded as the best marriages.

– Press Democrat, December 10, 1910

DR. BURKE’S PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE IS EPITOMIZED

On Saturday there was given out an epitome of the Burke creed, written by a friend of Dr. Burke. It is the construction the defense at the trial will put upon the remarkable document dealing with love, marriages,  and “voluntary families,” and therefore it is of considerable interest. It is printed [here] and will doubtless be read with much interest. It is entitled, “An Epitome of the Teachings of Dr. Burke.”

[..]

An Epitome of the Teachings of Dr. Burke

The whole creation, from star-mist to man is a manifested or executed thought of Life-God.

Everything has its place in the economy of the whole, and at every instant of time all things are at their logical, hence their right level, according to the laws of growth, the evolutionary process, and the balancing of cause and effect, which stands as the equilibrating force in all development, or action.

Life-God is spirit, finer in substance than physical vision or perception can see or feel, but the power of Spirits is according to the agent or wheel used in its distribution.

All the way up the line of creation since the first nebuicus [sic] segregation. Life has been giving progressively fuller and fuller expression of itself, until in Man we find the highest form through which physical manifestation can be made.

In Man, we find the perfected mechanism–a most marvelous mysterious, live machine through the various organs and functions of which we may come consciously in close touch with the Divine thought.

Of all the offices of the physical being, that of procreation stands at the highest point of honor–as in that is direct co-operation between the human and the Divine in the effect of promoting human life. One cannot exist without food and drink, yet the means to satisfy these absolute needs can be so abused as to destroy life instead of sustaining it, and the same is true of this highest nature of man–the sexual nature–if the conditions for its expression are not in line with the highest good, it brings deepest misery in its train.

None of the natural functions of the body should be condemned in themselves; it is only in the abuse of the function or the organ that evil exists. And it is through the equilibrating action of the law of cause and effect, that we learn where the line of use diverges into that of abuse.

To recognize the Divine thought in all the workings of nature is the true spirit of worship. It is this recognition which stays the hand of the surgeon here–making him look deeply for a possible solution of physical difficulties which will leave inviolate the sacredness of the human physical temple.

All of our woes, mental as well as well [sic] as physical, we bring upon ourselves–usually through ignorance–in our journeyings up the highway of evolution into the perfected human beings which our great Exemplar has shown us is the goal toward which human life tends.

We cannot force this recognition upon anyone, each for himself stands upon his own plane of enfoldment, and through his voice of Life as it speaks to him in the only language which he can understand–his physical sensations.

– Press Democrat, December 11, 1910

RECTOR DISCUSSES BURKE PHILOSOPHY

As a prelude to his morning service at the Episcopal Church on Sunday the rector, the Rev. George E. Swan, without mentioning Dr. Burke’s name, alluded to the teachings of the Burke philosophy on love. Among other things the rector said:

“It is not difficult to find the underlying falsity of the philosophy of free love. It lies close to the surface–an absorbing, individualistic selfishness which is the antithesis and contradiction of true love.

“Love loses all thought of self in seeking to bless its object and finds its happiness not in its own well being, but in that of another.

“Veneer of Religionism”

“A thin veneer of false religionism is sought in order to add respectability to that which rightly deserves the reprobation of all decent people.

“God is good and all is God, and therefore nothing is bad or wicked’ this is a religionism that contains as much untruth as can be well crowded into one.

“It is self-evident that in spite of this logic, evil and wickedness are ever-present factors in life, which cannot well be ignored or denied, but must be reckoned with.

“It might seem unquestionable that there are some things and some persons that are not God and therefore ‘all is not God,’ bit that on the contrary, people are able to set themselves up in opposition to God, to deny his truth and disobey his commandments.

[..]

“Most of the views upon this subject which we deplore are based upon a fatalistic and materialistic view of the universe and of life, and are not only un-Christian but anti-Christian.

“While we must have charity for individuals, we can have none towards these erroneous teachings.

“I beg you to instruct your children so that they shall share our feeling.”

– Press Democrat, December 13, 1910