Thomas Paine

Thomas A. Edison

[Reprinted from the Introduction to The Life and Works of Thomas Paine,
Vol.I, Thomas Paine National Historical Association, 1925]

It is, indeed, a privilege to me to be permitted to say a few words by way of introduction to this new biography of a man whom I have always regarded as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic.

It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood. I discovered a set of the writings of Paine on my father's bookshelves when I was thirteen. It was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me then about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember very vividly the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking at that time "What a pity these works are not today the school-books for all children!" My interest in Paine and his writings was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.

Paine's works are a crystallization of acute human reasoning, and they will surely be appreciated more and more as the awakening world reads what he has written.

I have, of course, always been much interested in Paine as an inventor, and I am glad that there is a separate chapter in this biography which reveals this side of the great man's mental activities. It is a phase of the brilliant author's ingenious mind which has been obscured to a great extent by the splendor of his other works. Important as were some of Paine's mechanical inventions, they seem to me of minor interest, however, when we consider "Common Sense," and Paine's planning of this great American republic, of which he may very justly be termed the real founder.

Paine was too great a libertarian to be satisfied with the independence of America, so he went abroad and sought freedom for England with his "Rights of Man." There he was outlawed and hung in effigy for his pains, but "Rights of Man" is today, as has been pointed out, the living Constitution of modern England.

For writing his next great book, "Age of Reason," an important theological work, Paine was burnt in effigy, and was vilified outrageously. But we need only recall the life-stories of the world's great reformers, from Christ down, who have been crucified and burned at the stake, to realize that "the world moves," as Galileo, one of the noblest of the victims of intolerance, insisted, and we may rest assured that, if Thomas Paine did not receive a just measure of appreciation in his lifetime, the world has at last commenced to properly appraise his worth and importance, as is exemplified by this new biography, and the new edition of Paine's writings.

Thomas Paine should be read by his countrymen.