P. G. Wodehouse - "The Intrusion of Jimmy"

Finley Peter Dunne - "Observations by Mr. Dooley"

James Harrington - "The Commonwealth of Oceana"

Abraham Lincoln - "Lincoln Letters"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Lectures Of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Vol. I

C >> Col. Robert Green Ingersoll >> Lectures Of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Vol. I




An eastern monarch said to a hermit, "Come with me and I will give you
power." "I have all the power that I know how to use," replied the
hermit. "Come," said the king, "I will give you wealth." "I have no
wants that money can supply." "I will give you honor." "Ah! honor
cannot be given; it must be earned." "Come," said the king, making a
last appeal, "and I will give you happiness." "No," said the man of
solitude; "there is no happiness without liberty, and he who follows
cannot be free." "You shall have liberty too." "Then I will stay." And
all the king's courtiers thought the hermit a fool.

Now and then somebody examines, and, in spite of all, keeps up his
manhood and has courage to follow where his reason leads. Then the
pious get together and repeat wise saws and exchange knowing nods and
most prophetic winks. The stupidly wise sit owl-like on the dead limbs
of the tree of knowledge, and solemnly, hoot. Wealth sneers, and
fashion laughs, and respectability passes on the other side, and scorn
points with all her skinny fingers, and, like the snakes of
superstition, writhe and hiss, and slander lends her tongue, and infamy
her brand, perjury her oath, and the law its power; and bigotry
tortures and the church kills.

The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason that a robber
dislikes a sheriff, or that a thief despises the prosecuting witness.
Tyranny likes courtiers, flatterers, followers, fawners, and
superstition wants believers, disciples, zealots, hypocrites, and
subscribers. The church demands worship, the very thing that man should
give to no being, human or divine. To worship another is to degrade
yourself. Worship is awe, and dread, and vague fear, and blind hope.
It is the spirit of worship that elevates the one and degrades the many;
and manacles even its own hands. The spirit of worship is the spirit of
tyranny. The worshiper always regrets that he is not the worshiped. We
should all remember that the intellect has no knees, and that whatever
the attitude of the body may be, the brave soul is always found erect.
Whoever worships, abdicates. Whoever believes, at the commands of
power, tramples his own individuality beneath his feet, and voluntarily
robs himself of all that renders man superior to brute.

The despotism of faith is justified upon the ground that Christian
countries are the grandest and most prosperous of the world. At one
time the same thing could have been truly said in India, in Egypt, in
Greece, in Rome, and in every country that has in the history of the
world, swept to empire. This argument proves too much not only, but the
assumption upon which it is based is utterly false. Numberless
circumstances and countless conditions have produced the prosperity of
the Christian world. The truth is that we have advanced in spite of
religious zeal, ignorance, and opposition. The church has won no
victories for the rights of man. Over every fortress of tyranny has
waved, and still waves, the banner of the church. Wherever brave blood
has been shed the sword of the church has been wet. On every chain has
been the sign of the cross. The alter and the throne have leaned
against and supported each other. Who can appreciate the infinite
impudence of one man assuming to think for others? Who can imagine the
impudence of a church that threatens to inflict eternal punishment upon
those who honestly reject its claims and scorn its pretensions? In the
presence of the unknown we have all an equal right to guess.

Over the vast plain called life we are all travelers, and not one
traveler is perfectly certain that he is going in the right direction.
True it is that no other plain is so well supplied with guideboards. At
every turn and crossing you find them, and upon each one is written the
exact direction and distance. One great trouble is, however, that these
boards are all different, and the result is that most travelers are
confused in proportion to the number they read. Thousands of people are
around each of these signs, and each one is doing his best to convince
the traveler that his particular board is the only one upon which the
least reliance can be placed, and that if his road is taken the reward
for so doing will be infinite and eternal, while all the other roads are
said to lead to hell, and all the makers of the other guideboards are
declared to be heretics, hypocrites, and liars. "Well," says a traveler
"you may be right in what you say, but allow me at least to read some of
the other directions and examine a little into their claims. I wish to
rely a little upon my own judgment in a matter of such great
importance." "No sir!" shouts the zealot; "that is the very thing you
are not allowed to do. You must go my way, without investigation or you
are as good as damned already." "Well," says the traveler, "if that is
so, I believe I had better go your way." And so most of them go along,
taking the word of those who know as little as themselves. Now and then
comes one who, in spite of all threats, calmly examines the claims of
all, and as calmly rejects them all. These travelers take roads of
their own, and are denounced by all the others as infidels and atheists.

In my judgment every human being should take a road of his own. Every
mind should be true to itself; should think, investigate and conclude
for itself. This is a duty alike incumbent upon pauper and prince.
Every soul should repel dictation and tyranny, no matter from what
source they come--from earth or heaven, from men or gods. Besides, every
traveler upon this vast plain should give to every other traveler his
best idea as to the road that should be taken. Each is entitled to the
honest opinion of all. And there is but one way to get an honest
opinion upon any subject whatever. The person giving the opinion must
be free from fear. The merchant must not fear to lose his custom, the
doctor his practice, nor the preacher his pulpit. There can be no
advance without liberty. Suppression of honest inquiry is retrogression,
and must end in intellectual night. The tendency of orthodox religion
today is towards mental slavery and barbarism. Not one of the orthodox
ministers dare preach what he thinks if he knows that a majority of his
congregation think otherwise. He knows that every member of his church
stands guard over his brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He
knows that he is not expected to search after the truth, but that he is
employed to defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory in which stands
a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.

Is it desirable that all should be exactly alike in their religious
convictions? Is any such thing possible? Do we not know that there are
no two persons alike in the whole world? No two trees, no two leaves,
no two anythings that are alike? Infinite diversity is the law.
Religion tries to force all minds into one mold. Knowing that all
cannot believe, the church endeavors to make all say that they believe.
She longs for the unity of hypocrisy, and detests the splendid diversity
of individuality and freedom.

Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give
up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is
mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is
the living coffin of his dead soul. In this sense every church is a
cemetery and every creed an epitaph. We should all remember that to be
like other folks is to be unlike ourselves, and that nothing can be more
detestable in character than servile imitation. The great trouble with
imitation is that we are apt to ape those who are in reality far below
us. After all, the poorest bargain that a human being can make is to
trade off his individuality for what is called respectability.

There is no saying more degrading than this: "It is better to be the
tail of a lion than the head of a dog." It is a responsibility to think
and act for yourself. Most people hate responsibility; therefore they
join something and become the tail of some lion. They say, "My party can
act for me--my church can do my thinking. It is enough for me to pay
taxes and obey the lion to which I belong without troubling myself about
the right, the wrong, or the why or the wherefore of anything whatever."
These people are respectable. They hate reformers, and dislike
exceedingly to have their minds disturbed. They regard convictions as
very disagreeable things to have. They love forms, and enjoy, beyond
everything else, telling what a splendid tail their lion has, and what a
troublesome dog their neighbor is. Besides this natural inclination to
avoid personal responsibility is and always has been the fact that every
religionist has warned men against the presumption and wickedness of
thinking for themselves. The reason has been denounced by all
Christendom as the only unsafe guide. The church has left nothing
undone to prevent, man following the logic of his brain. The plainest
facts have been covered with the mantle of mystery. The grossest
absurdities have been declared to be self-evident facts. The order of
nature has been, as it were, reversed, in order that the hypocritical
few might govern the honest many. The man who stood by the conclusion
of his reason was denounced as a scorner and hater of God and his holy
church. From the organization of the first church until this moment
every member has borne the marks of collar and chain, and whip. No man
ever seriously attempted to reform a church without being cast out and
hunted down by the hounds of hypocrisy. The highest crime against a
creed is to change it. Reformation is treason.

Thousands of young men are being educated at this moment by the various
churches. What for? In order that they may be prepared to investigate
the phenomena by which we are surrounded? No! The object, and the only
object, is that they may be prepared to defend a creed. That they may
learn the arguments of their respective churches and repeat them in the
dull ears of a thoughtless congregation. If one after being thus
trained at the expense of the Methodists turns Presbyterian or Baptist,
he is denounced as an ungrateful wretch. Honest investigation is
utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason that if
you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think
it wrong, the church will investigate you. The consequence of this is
that most of the theological literature is the result of suppression, of
fear, of tyranny, and hypocrisy.

Every orthodox writer necessarily said to himself, "If I write that, my
wife and children may want for bread, I will be covered with shame and
branded with infamy, but if I write this, I will gain position, power
and honor. My church rewards defenders and burns reformers." Under
these conditions, all your Scotts, Henrys and McKnights have written;
and weighed in these scales what are their commentaries worth? They are
not the ideas and decisions of honest judges, but the sophisms of the
paid attorneys of superstition. Who can tell what the world has lost by
this infamous system of suppression? How many grand thinkers died with
the mailed hand of superstition on their lips? How many splendid ideas
have perished in the cradle of the brain, strangled in the poisonous
coils of that python, the church!

For thousands of years a thinker was hunted down like an escaped
convict. To him, who had braved the church, every door was shut, every
knife was open. To shelter him from the wild storm, to give him a crust
of bread when dying, to put a cup of water to his cracked and bleeding
lips; these were all crimes, not one of which the church ever did
forgive; and with the justice taught of God his helpless children were
exterminated as scorpions and vipers.

Who at the present day can imagine the courage, the devotion to
principle, the intellectual and moral grandeur it once required to be an
infidel, to brave the church, her racks, her fagots, her dungeons, her
tongues of fire--to defy and scorn her heaven and her devil and her God?
They were the noblest sons of earth. They were the real saviors of our
race, the destroyers of superstition and the creators of science. They
were the real Titans who bared their grand foreheads to all the
thunderbolts of all the gods. The church has been, and still is, the
great robber. She has rifled not only the pockets but the brains of the
world. She is the stone at the sepulcher of liberty; the upas tree in
whose shade the intellect of man has withered; the gorgon beneath whose
gaze the human heart has turned to stone.

Under her influence even the Protestant mother expects to be in heaven,
while her brave boy, who is fighting for the rights of man, shall writhe
in hell. It is said that some of the Indian tribes place the heads of
their children between pieces of bark until the form of the skull is
permanently changed. To us this seems a most shocking custom, and yet,
after all, is it as bad as to put the souls of our children in the
straight-jacket of a creed, to so utterly deform their minds that they
regard the God of the bible as a being of infinite mercy, and really
consider it a virtue to believe a thing just because it seems
unreasonable? Every child in the Christian world has uttered its
wondering protest against this outrage. All the machinery of the church
is constantly employed in thus corrupting the reason of children. In
every possible way they are robbed of their own thoughts and forced to
accept the statements of others. Every Sunday-school has for its object
the crushing out of every germ of individuality. The poor children are
taught that nothing can be more acceptable to God than unreasoning
obedience and eyeless faith, and that to believe that God did an
impossible act is far better than to do a good one yourself. They are
told that all the religions have been simply the John the Baptist of
ours; that all the gods of antiquity have withered and sunken into the
Jehovah of the Jews; that all the longings and aspirations of the race
are realized in the motto of the Evangelical Alliance, "Liberty in non-
essentials;" that all there is, or ever was of religion can be found in
the apostle's creed; that there is nothing left to be discovered; that
all the thinkers are dead, and all the living should simply be
believers; that we have only to repeat the epitaph found on the grave of
wisdom; that graveyards are the best possible universities, and that the
children must be forever beaten with the bones of the fathers.

It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a God would choose for his
companions during all eternity the dear souls whose highest and only
ambition is to obey. He certainly would now and then be tempted to make
the same remark made by an English gentleman to his poor guest. This
gentleman had invited a man in humble circumstances to dine with him.
The man was so overcome with honor that to everything the gentleman said
he replied, "Yes." Tired at last with the monotony of acquiescence, the
gentleman cried out, "For God's sake, my good man, say 'No' just once,
so there will be two of us."

Is it possible that an infinite God created this world simply to be the
dwelling-place of slaves and serfs? Simply for the purpose of raising
orthodox Christians; that he did a few miracles to astonish them; that
all the evils of life are simply his punishments, and that he is finally
going to turn heaven into a kind of religious museum, filled with
Baptist barnacles, petrified Presbyterians, and Methodist mummies? I
want no heaven for which I must give my reason; no happiness in exchange
for my liberty, and no immortality that demands the surrender of my
individuality. Better rot in the windowless tomb to which there is no
door but the red mouth of the pallid worm, than wear the jeweled collar
even of a God.

Religion does not and cannot contemplate man as free. She accepts only
the homage of the prostrate, and scorns the offerings of those who stand
erect. She cannot tolerate the liberty of thought. The wide and sunny
fields belong not to her domain. The star-lit heights of genius and
individuality are above and beyond her appreciation and power. Her
subjects cringe at her feet covered with the dust of obedience. They
are not athletes standing posed by rich life and brave endeavor like the
antique statues, but shriveled deformities studying with furtive glance
the cruel face of power.

No religionist seems capable of comprehending this plain truth. There is
this difference between thought and action: For our actions we are
responsible to ourselves and to those injuriously affected; for
thoughts there can, in the nature of things, be no responsibility to
gods or men, here or hereafter. And yet the Protestant has vied with
the Catholic in denouncing freedom of thought, and while I was taught to
hate Catholicism with every drop of my blood, it is only justice to say
that in all essential particulars it is precisely the same as every
other religion. Luther denounced mental liberty with all the coarse and
brutal vigor of his nature; Calvin despised from the very bottom of his
petrified heart anything that even looked like religious toleration, and
solemnly declared to advocate it was to crucify Christ afresh. All the
founders of all the orthodox churches have advocated the same infamous
tenet. The truth is that what is called religion is necessarily
inconsistent with free thought.

A believer is a songless bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle
parting the clouds with tireless wings.

At present, owing to the inroads that have been made by liberals and
infidels, most of the churches pretend to be in favor of religious
liberty. Of these churches we will ask this question: "How can a man
who conscientiously believes in religious liberty worship a God who does
not?" They say to us: "We will not imprison you on account of your
belief, but our God will. We will not burn you because you throw away
the sacred scriptures; but their Author will," "We think it an infamous
crime to persecute our brethren for opinion's sake; but the God whom we
ignorantly worship will on that account damn his own children forever."
Why is it that these Christians do not only detest the infidels, but so
cordially despise each other? Why do they refuse to worship in the
temples of each other? Why do they care so little for the damnation of
men, and so much for the baptism of children? Why will they adorn their
churches with the money of thieves, and flatter vice for the sake of
subscription? Why will they attempt to bribe science to certify to the
writings of God? Why do they torture the words of the great into an
acknowledgment of the truth of Christianity? Why do they stand with hat
in hand before presidents, kings, emperors and scientists, begging like
Lazarus for a few crumbs of religious comfort? Why are they so
delighted to find an allusion to providence in the message of Lincoln?
Why are they so afraid that some one will find out that Paley wrote an
essay in favor of the Epicurean philosophy, and that Sir Isaac Newton
was once an infidel? Why are they so anxious to show that Voltaire
recanted, that Paine died palsied with fear; that the Emperor Julian
cried out, "Galilean, thou hast conquered;" that Gibbon died a
Catholic; that Agassiz had a little confidence in Moses; that the old
Napoleon was once complimentary enough to say that he thought Christ
greater than himself or Caesar; that Washington was caught on his knees
at Valley Forge; that blunt old Ethan Allen told his child to believe
the religion of her mother; that Franklin said, "Don't unchain the
tiger;" that Volney got frightened in a storm at sea, and that Oakes
Ames was a wholesale liar?

Is it because the foundation of their temple is crumbling, because the
walls are cracked, the pillars leaning, the great dome swaying to its
fall, and because science has written over the high altar its mene,
mene, tekel, upharsin, the old words destined to be the epitaph of all
religions?

Every assertion of individual independence has been a step towards
infidelity. Luther started toward Humboldt, Wesley toward Bradlaugh. To
really reform the church is to destroy it. Every new religion has a
little less superstition than the old, so that the religion of science
is but a question of time. I will not say the church has been an
unmitigated evil in all respects. Its history is infamous and glorious.
It has delighted in the production of extremes. It has furnished
murderers for its own martyrs. It has sometimes fed the body, but has
always starved the soul. It has been a charitable highwayman, a
generous pirate. It has produced some angels and a multitude of devils.
It has built more prisons than asylums. It made a hundred orphans while
it cared for one. In one hand it carried the alms-dish, and in the other
a sword. It has founded schools and endowed universities for the purpose
of destroying true learning. It filled the world with hypocrites and
zealots, and upon the cross of its own Christ it crucified the
individuality of man. It has sought to destroy the independence of the
soul, and put the world upon its knees. This is its crime. The
commission of this crime was necessary to its existence. In order to
compel obedience it declared that it had the truth and all the truth;
that God had made it the keeper of all his secrets; his agent and his
vice-agent. It declared that all other religions were false and
infamous. It rendered all compromises impossible, and all thought
superfluous. Thought was an enemy, obedience was its friend.
Investigation was fraught with danger; therefore investigation was
suppressed. The holy of holies was behind the curtain. All this was
upon the principle that forgers hate to have the signature examined by
an expert, and that imposture detests curiosity.

"He that hath ears to hear let him hear," has always been one of the
favorite texts of the church.

In short, Christianity has always opposed every forward movement of the
human race. Across the highway of progress it has always been building
breastworks of bibles, tracts, commentaries, prayerbooks, creeds, dogmas
and platforms, and at every advance the Christians have gathered behind
these heaps of rubbish and shot the poisoned arrows of malice at the
soldiers of freedom.

And even the liberal Christian of today has his holy of holies, and in
the niche of the temple of his heart has his idol. He still clings to a
part of the old superstition, and all the pleasant memories of the old
belief linger in the horizon of his thoughts like a sunset. We
associate the memory of those we love with the religion of our
childhood. It seems almost a sacrilege to rudely destroy the idols that
our fathers worshiped, and turn their sacred and beautiful truths into
the silly fables of barbarism. Some throw away the old testament and
cling to the new, while others give up everything except the idea that
there is a personal God, and that in some wonderful way we are the
objects of His care.

Even this, in my opinion, as science, the great iconoclast, marches
onward, will have to be abandoned with the rest. The great ghost will
surely share the fate of the little ones. They fled at the first
appearance of the dawn, and the other will vanish with the perfect day.
Until then, the independence of man is little more than a dream.
Overshadowed by an immense personality--in the presence of the
irresponsible and the infinite, the individuality of man is lost, and he
falls prostrate in the very dust of fear. Beneath the frown of the
absolute, man stands a wretched, trembling slave--beneath his smile be
is at best only a fortunate serf. Governed by a being whose arbitrary
will is law, chained to the chariot of power, his destiny rests in the
pleasure of the unknown. Under these circumstances what wretched object
can he have in lengthening out his aimless life?

And yet, in most minds, there is a vague fear of what the gods may do,
and the safe side is considered the best side.

A gentleman walking among the ruins of Athens came upon a fallen statue
of Jupiter. Making an exceedingly low bow, he said: "Jupiter, I salute
thee." He then added: "Should you ever get up in the world again, do
not forget, I pray you, that I treated you politely while you were
prostrate."

We have all been taught by the church that nothing is so well calculated
to excite the ire of Deity as to express a doubt as to His existence,
and that to deny it is an unpardonable sin. Numerous well-attested
instances were referred to, of atheists being struck dead for denying
the existence of God. According to these religious people, God is
infinitely above us in every respect, infinitely merciful, and yet He
cannot bear to hear a poor finite man honestly question His existence.
Knowing as He does that His children are groping in darkness and
struggling with doubt and fear; knowing that He could enlighten them if
He would, He still holds the expression of a sincere doubt as to His
existence the most infamous of crimes.