J.B. Bury - "The Idea of Progress"

Thomas Hardy - "Late Lyrics and Earlier"

Feodor Dostoevsky - "The Grand Inquisitor by Feodor Dostoevsky"

Emile Zola - "The Three Cities Trilogy: Paris, Vol. 3"

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




Man has advanced just as he has mingled his thought with his labor. As
he has grown he has taken advantage of the forces of nature; first of
the moving wind, then of the falling water and finally of steam. From
one step to another he has obtained better houses, better clothes, and
better books, and he has done it by holding out every incentive to the
ingenious to produce them. The world has said, give us better clubs and
guns and cannons with which to kill our fellow Christians. And whoever
will give us better weapons and better music, and better houses to live
in, we will robe him in wealth crown him in honor, and render his name
deathless. Every incentive was held out to every human being to improve
these things, and that is the reason we have advanced in all mechanical
arts. But that gentleman in the dugout not only had his ideas about
politics, mechanics, and agriculture; he had his ideas also about
religion. His idea about politics was "Might makes right." It will be
thousands of years, may be, before mankind will believe in the saying
that "right makes might." He had his religion. That low skull was a
devil factory. He believed in Hell, and the belief was a consolation to
him. He could see the waves of God's wrath dashing against the rocks of
dark damnation. He could see tossing in the whitecaps the faces of
women, and stretching above the crests the dimpled hands of children;
and he regarded these things as the justice and mercy of God. And all
today who believe in this eternal punishment are the barbarians of the
nineteenth century. That man believed in a devil, that had a long tail
terminating with a fiery dart; that had wings like a bat--a devil that
had a cheerful habit of breathing brimstone, that had a cloven foot,
such as some orthodox clergymen seem to think I have. And there has not
been a patentable improvement made upon that devil in all the years
since. The moment you drive the devil out of theology, there is nothing
left worth speaking of. The moment they drop the devil, away goes
atonement. The moment they kill the devil, their whole scheme of
salvation has lost all of its interest for mankind. You must keep the
devil and, you must keep Hell. You must keep the devil, because with no
devil no priest is necessary. Now, all I ask is this--the same privilege
to improve upon his religion as upon his dug-out, and that is what I am
going to do, the best I can. No matter what church you belong to, or
what church belongs to us. Let us be honor bright and fair.

I want to ask you: Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest
if there was one at that time, had told these gentlemen in the dug-out:
"That dug-out is the best boat that can be built by man; the pattern of
that came from on high, from the great God of storm and flood, and any
man who says he can improve it by putting a stick in the middle of it
and a rag on the stick, is an infidel, and shall be burned at the
stake;" what, in your judgment--honor bright--would have been the
effect upon the circumnavigation of the globe? Suppose the king, if
there was one, and the priest, if there was one--and I presume there was
a priest, because it was a very ignorant age--suppose the king and
priest had said: "The tomtom is the most beautiful instrument of music
of which any man can conceive; that is the kind of music they have in
Heaven; an angel sitting upon the edge of a glorified cloud, golden in
the setting sun, playing upon that tom-tom, became so enraptured, so
entranced with her own music, that in a kind of ecstasy she dropped it--
that is how we obtained it; and any man who says it can be improved by
putting a back and front to it, and four strings, and a bridge, and
getting a bow of hair with rosin, is a blaspheming wretch, and shall die
the death,"--I ask you, what effect would that have had upon music? If
that course had been pursued, would the human ears, in your judgment,
ever have been enriched with the divine symphonies of Beethoven?
Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, had said "That
crooked stick is the best plow that can be invented, the pattern of that
plow was given to a pious farmer in an exceedingly holy dream, and that
twisted straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted things, and any man
who says he can make an improvement upon that plow, is an atheist;"
what, in your judgment, would have been the effect upon the science of
agriculture?

Now, all I ask is the same privilege to improve upon his religion as
upon his mechanical arts. Why don't we go back to that period to get
the telegraph? Because they were barbarians. And shall we go to
barbarians to get our religion? What is religion? Religion simply
embraces the duty of man to man. Religion is simply the science of
human duty and the duty of man to man--that is what it is. It is the
highest science of all. And all other sciences are as nothing, except
as they contribute to the happiness of man. The science of religion is
the highest of all, embracing all others. And shall we go to the
barbarians to learn the science of sciences? The nineteenth century
knows more about religion than all the centuries dead. There is more
real charity in the world today than ever before. There is more thought
today than ever before. Woman is glorified today as she never was
before in the history of the world. There are more happy families now
than ever before--more children treated as though they were tender
blossoms than as though they were brutes than in any other time or
nation. Religion is simply the duty a man owes to man; and when you
fall upon your knees and pray for something you know not of, you neither
benefit the one you pray for nor yourself. One ounce of restitution is
worth a million of repentances anywhere, and a man will get along faster
by helping himself a minute than by praying ten years for somebody to
help him. Suppose you were coming along the street, and found a party
of men and women on their knees praying to a bank, and you asked them,
"Have any of you borrowed any money of this bank?" "No, but our
fathers, they, too, prayed to this bank." "Did they ever get any?"
"No, not that we ever heard of." I would tell them to get up. It is
easier to earn it, and it is far more manly.

Our fathers in the "good old times,"--and the best that I can say of the
"good old times" is that they are gone, and the best I can say of the
good old people that lived in them is that they are gone, too--believed
that you made a man think your way by force. Well, you can't do it.
There is a splendid something in man that says: "I won't; I won't be
driven." But our fathers thought men could be driven. They tried it in
the "good old times." I used to read about the manner in which the
early Christians made converts--how they impressed upon the world the
idea that God loved them. I have read it, but it didn't burn into my
soul. I didn't think much about it--I heard so much about being fried
forever in Hell that it didn't seem so bad to burn a few minutes. I
love liberty and I hate all persecutions in the name of God. I never
appreciated the infamies that have been committed in the name of
religion until I saw the iron arguments that Christians used. I saw,
for instance, the thumb-screw, two little innocent looking pieces of
iron, armed with some little protuberances on the inner side to keep it
from slipping down, and through each end a screw, and when some man had
made some trifling remark, for instance, that he never believed that God
made a fish swallow a man to keep him from drowning, or something like
that, or, for instance, that he didn't believe in baptism. You know
that is very wrong. You can see for yourself the justice of damning a
man if his parents happened to baptize him in the wrong way--God cannot
afford to break a rule or two to save all the men in the world. I
happened to be in the company of some Baptist ministers once--you may
wonder how I happened to be in such company as that--and one of them
asked me what I thought about baptism. Well, I told them I hadn't
thought much about it--that I had never sat up nights on that question.
I said: "Baptism--with soap--is a good institution." Now, when some man
had said some trifling thing like that, they put this thumb-screw on
him, and in the name of universal benevolence and for the love of God--
man has never persecuted man for the love of man; man has never
persecuted another for the love of charity--it is always for the love of
something he calls God, and every man's idea of God is his own idea. If
there is an infinite God, and there may be--I don't know--there may be a
million for all I know--I hope there is more than one--one seems so
lonesome. They kept turning this down, and when this was done, most men
would say: "I will recant." I think, I would. There is not much of
the martyr about me. I would have told them: "Now you write it down,
and I will sign it. You may have one God or a million, one Hell or a
million. You stop that--I am tired."

Do you know, sometimes I have thought that all the hypocrites in the
world are not worth one drop of honest blood. I am sorry that any good
man ever died for religion. I would rather let them advance a little
easier. It is too bad to see a good man sacrificed for a lot of wild
beasts and cattle. But there is now and then a man who would not swerve
the breadth of a hair. There was now and then a sublime heart willing
to die for an intellectual conviction, and had it not been for these men
we would have been wild beasts and savages today. There were some men
who would not take it back, and had it not been for a few such brave,
heroic souls in every age we would have been cannibals, with pictures of
wild beasts tattooed upon our breasts, dancing around some dried-snake
fetish. And so they turned it down to the last thread of agony, and
threw the victim into some dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence and
darkness, he might suffer the agonies of the fabled damned. This was
done in the name of love, in the name of mercy, in the name of the
compassionate Christ. And the men that did it are the men that made our
Bible for us.

I saw, too, at the same time, the Collar of torture. Imagine a circle
of iron, and on the inside a hundred points almost as sharp as needles.
This argument was fastened about the throat of the sufferer. Then he
could not walk nor sit down, nor stir without the neck being punctured
by these points. In a little while the throat would begin to swell, and
suffocation would end the agonies of that man. This man, it may be, had
committed the crime of saying, with tears upon his cheeks, "I do not
believe that God, the father of us all, will damn to eternal perdition
any of the children of men." And that was done to convince the world
that God so loved the world that He died for us. That was in order that
people might hear the glad tidings of great joy to all people.

I saw another instrument, called the scavenger's daughter. Imagine a
pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the
points as well and just above the pivot that unites the blades a circle
of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower,
the feet; and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head of the
victim would be forced, and in that position the man would be thrown
upon the earth, and the strain upon the muscle would produce such agony
that insanity took pity. And this was done to keep people from going to
Hell--to convince that man that he had made a mistake in his logic--and
it was done, too, by Protestants--Protestants that persecuted to the
extent of their power, and that is as much as Catholicism ever did.
They would persecute now if they had the power. There is not a man in
this vast audience who will say that the church should have temporal
power. There is not one of you but what believes in the eternal divorce
of church and state. Is it possible that the only people who are fit to
go to heaven are the only people not fit to rule mankind?

I saw at the same time the rack. This was a box like the bed of a
wagon, with a windlass at each end, and ratchets to prevent slipping.
Over each windlass went chains, and when some man had, for instance,
denied the doctrine of the trinity, a doctrine it is necessary to
believe in order to get to Heaven--but, thank the Lord, you don't have
to understand it. This man merely denied that three times one was one,
or maybe he denied that there was ever any Son in the world exactly as
old as his father, or that there ever was a boy eternally older than his
mother--then they put that man on the rack. Nobody had ever been
persecuted for calling God bad--it has always been for calling him
good. When I stand here to say that, if there is a Hell, God is a
fiend, they say that is very bad. They say I am trying to tear down the
institutions of public virtue. But let me tell you one thing: there is
no reformation in fear--you can scare a man so that he won't do it
sometimes, but I will swear you can't scare him so bad that he won't
want to do it. Then they put this man on the rack and priests began
turning these levers, and kept turning until the ankles, the hips, the
shoulders, the elbows, the wrists, and all the joints of the victim were
dislocated, and he was wet with agony, and standing by was a physician
to feel his pulse. What for? To save his life? Yes. In mercy? No.
But in order that they might have the pleasure of racking him once more.
And this was the Christian spirit. This was done in the name of
civilization, in the name of religion, and all these wretches who did it
died in peace. There is not an orthodox preacher in the city that has
not a respect for every one of them. As, for instance, for John Calvin,
who was a murderer and nothing but a murderer, who would have disgraced
an ordinary gallows by being hanged upon it. These men when they came
to die were not frightened. God did not send any devils into their
death-rooms to make mouths at them. He reserved them for Voltaire, who
brought religious liberty to France. He reserved them for Thomas Paine,
who did more for liberty than all the churches. But all the inquisitors
died with the white hands of peace folded over the breast of piety. And
when they died, the room was filled with the rustle of the wings of
angels, waiting to bear the wretches to Heaven.

When I read these frightful books it seems to me sometimes as though I
had suffered all these things myself. It seems sometimes as though I
had stood upon the shore of exile, and gazed with tearful eyes toward
home and native land; it seems to me as though I had been staked out
upon the sands of the sea, and drowned by the inexorable, advancing
tide; as though my nails had been torn from my hands, and into the
bleeding quick needles had been thrust; as though my feet had been
crushed in iron boots; as though I had been chained in the cell of
Inquisition, and listened with dying ears for the coming footsteps of
release; as though I had stood upon the scaffold and saw the glittering
axe fall upon me; as though I had been upon the rack and had seen,
bending above me, the white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I had
been taken from my fireside, from my wife and children, taken to the
public square, chained; as though fagots had been piled about me; as
though the flames had climbed around my limbs and scorched my eyes to
blindness, and as though my ashes had been scattered to the four winds
by all the countless hands of hate. And, while I so feel, I swear that
while I live I will do what little I can to augment the liberties of
man, woman and child. I denounce slavery and superstition everywhere.
I believe in liberty, and happiness, and love, and joy in this world. I
am amazed that any man ever had the impudence to try and do another
man's thinking. I have just as good a right to talk theology as a
minister. If they all agreed I might admit it was a science, but as all
disagree, and the more they study the wider they get apart, I may be
permitted to suggest, it is not a science. When no two will tell you
the road to Heaven,--that is, giving you the same route--and if you
would inquire of them all, you would just give up trying to go there,
and say I may as well stay where I am, and let the Lord come to me.

Do you know that this world has not been fit for a lady and gentleman to
live in for twenty-five years, just on account of slavery. It was not
until the year 1808 that Great Britain abolished the slave trade, and up
to that time her judges, her priests occupying her pulpits, the members
of the royal family, owned stock in the slave ships, and luxuriated upon
the profits of piracy and murder. It was not until the same year that
the United States of America abolished the slave trade between this and
other countries, but carefully preserved it as between the states. It
was not until the 28th day of August, 1833, that Great Britain abolished
human slavery in her colonies; and it was not until the 1st day of
January, 1863, that Abraham Lincoln, sustained by the sublime and heroic
North, rendered our flag pure as the sky in which it floats. Abraham
Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many respects, the grandest man ever
president of the United States. Upon his monument these words should be
written: "Here sleeps the only man in the history of the world, who,
having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it, except
upon the side of mercy."

For two hundred years the Christians of the United States deliberately
turned the cross of Christ into a whipping-post. Christians bred hounds
to catch other Christians. Let me show you what the Bible has done for
mankind: "Servants, be obedient to your masters." The only word coming
from that sweet Heaven was, "Servants, obey your masters." Frederick
Douglas told me that he had lectured upon the subject of freedom twenty
years before he was permitted to set his foot in a church. I tell you
the world has not been fit to live in for twenty-five years. Then all
the people used to cringe and crawl to preachers. Mr. Buckle, in his
history of civilization, shows that men were even struck dead for
speaking impolitely to a priest. God would not stand it. See how they
used to crawl before cardinals, bishops and popes. It is not so now.
Before wealth they bowed to the very earth, and in the presence of
titles they became abject. All this is slowly, but surely changing. We
no longer bow to men simply because they are rich. Our fathers worshiped
the golden calf. The worst you can say of an American now is, he
worships the gold of the calf. Even the calf is beginning to see this
distinction.

The time will come when no matter how much money a man has, he will not
be respected unless he is using it for the benefit of his fellow-men.
It will soon be here. It no longer satisfies the ambition of a great
man to be king or emperor. The last Napoleon was not satisfied with
being the emperor of the French. He was not satisfied with having a
circlet of gold about his head. He wanted some evidence that he had
something of value within his head. So he wrote the life of Julius
Caesar, that he might become a member of the French academy. The
emperors, the kings, the popes, no longer tower above their fellows.
Compare, for instance, King William and Helmholtz. The king is one of
the anointed by the Most High, as they claim--one upon whose head has
been poured the divine petroleum of authority. Compare this king with
Helmholtz, who towers an intellectual Colossus above the crowned
mediocrity. Compare George Eliot with Queen Victoria. The queen is
clothed in garments given her by blind fortune and unreasoning chance,
while George Eliot wears robes of glory woven in the loom of her own
genius. And so it is the world over. The time is coming when a man
will be rated at his real worth, and that by his brain and heart. We
care nothing now about an officer unless he fills his place. No matter
if he is president, if he rattles in the place nobody cares anything
about him. I might give you an instance in point, but I won't. The
world is getting better and grander and nobler every day.

Now, if men have been slaves, if they have crawled in the dust before
one another, what shall I say of women? They have been the slaves of
men. It took thousands of ages to bring women from abject slavery up to
the divine height of marriage. I believe in marriage. If there is any
Heaven upon earth, it is in the family by the fireside and the family
is a unit of government. Without the family relation that is tender,
pure and true, civilization is impossible. Ladies, the ornaments you
wear upon your persons tonight are but the souvenirs of your mother's
bondage. The chains around your necks; and the bracelets clasped upon
your white arms by the thrilled hand of love, have been changed by the
wand of civilization from iron to shining, glittering gold. Nearly
every civilization in this world accounts for the devilment in it by the
crimes of woman. They say woman brought all the trouble into the world.
I don't care if she did. I would rather live in a world full of trouble
with the women I love, than to live in Heaven with nobody but men. I
read in a book an account of the creation of the world. The book I have
taken pains to say was not written by any God. And why do I say so?
Because I can write a far better book myself. Because it is full of
barbarism. Several ministers in this city have undertaken to answer me--
notably those who don't believe the Bible themselves. I want to ask
these men one thing. I want them to be fair.

Every minister in the City of Chicago that answers me, and those who
have answered me had better answer me again--I want them to say, and
without any sort of evasion--without resorting to any pious tricks--I
want them to say whether they believe that the Eternal God of this
universe ever upheld the crime of polygamy. Say it square and fair.
Don't begin to talk about that being a peculiar time, and that God was
easy on the prejudices of those old fellows. I want them to answer that
question and to answer it squarely, which they haven't done. Did this
God, which you pretend to worship, ever sanction the institution of
human slavery? Now, answer fair. Don't slide around it. Don't begin
and answer what a bad man I am, nor what a good man Moses was. Stick to
the text. Do you believe in a God that allowed a man to be sold from
his children? Do you worship such an infinite monster? And if you do,
tell your congregation whether you are not ashamed to admit it. Let
every minister who answers me again tell whether he believes God
commanded his general to kill the little dimpled babe in the cradle.
Let him answer it. Don't say that those were very bad times. Tell
whether He did it or not, and then your people will know whether to hate
that God or not. Be honest. Tell them whether that God in war captured
young maidens and turned them over to the soldiers; and then ask the
wives and sweet girls of your congregation to get down on their knees
and worship the infinite fiend that did that thing. Answer! It is your
God I am talking about, and if that is what God did, please tell your
congregation what, under the same circumstances, the devil would have
done. Don't tell your people that is a poem. Don't tell your people
that is pictorial. That won't do. Tell your people whether it is true
or false. That is what I want you to do.

In this book I read about God's making the world and one man. That is
all He intended to make. The making of woman was a second thought,
though I am willing to admit that as a rule second thoughts are best.
This God made a man and put him in a public park. In a little while He
noticed that the man got lonesome; then He found He had made a mistake,
and that He would have to make somebody to keep him company. But having
used up all the nothing He originally used in making the world and one
man, He had to take a part of a man to start a woman with. So He causes
sleep to fall on this man--now understand me, I do not say this story is
true. After the sleep had fallen on this man the Supreme Being took a
rib, or, as the French would call it, a cutlet, out of him, and from
that He made a woman; and I am willing to swear, taking into account
the amount and quality of the raw material used, this was the most
magnificent job ever accomplished in this world. Well, after He got the
woman done she was brought to the man, not to see how she liked him, but
to see how he liked her. He liked her and they started housekeeping, and
they were told of certain things they might do and of one thing they
could not do--and of course they did it. I would have done it in
fifteen minutes, I know it. There wouldn't have been an apple on that
tree half an hour from date, and the limbs would have been full of
clubs. And then they were turned out of the park and extra policemen
were put on to keep them from getting back. And then trouble commenced
and we have been at it ever since. Nearly all the religions of this
world account for the existence of evil by such a story as that.